The Duke saw their hesitation and laughed. ‘Can’t even tell your poorpapa, eh? Don’t be embarrassed about it. I’ve known so many secrets in my life that knowing one less certainly won’t kill me. I’m very proud of you both today, mes enfants. An assignment this crucial means you are finally ready to take your place in the universe, a place that’s awaited you since birth. I may worry a little about your safety, at times, but not too much. You know what you’re doing- last night proved that. I’ve taught you all I know; now’s the chance for you to use it.
‘But,’ he continued sadly, folding his hands in his lap, ‘this of course means that you will have to leave the Circus, your home for nearly thirty years.’
‘I know,’ Yvette said softly. ‘That’s the thing we’ve dreaded most.’
‘It’s one thing to face danger,’ Jules agreed, ‘andquite another to leave such good family and friends behind.’
‘It is necessary,’ their father shrugged. ‘All growth requires changes and sacrifices of something, I suppose. Fortunately, the break need not be total or permanent; you will be cherished, but not missed.’ He stopped, and looked up at them. ‘Alors, what are you waiting for? Get out of my office before I start to cry and ruin my whole day.’
Yvette came over to him, kissed him on the cheek and whispered, ‘Mon bon papa,’ in his ear. Then the two top agents in the entire Galaxy walked out of the office.
They did not leave the Circus just yet, though. By unspoken agreement they stayed around until the evening performance, where they melted into the crowd of Earthers who jammed the arena to see the show. As part of the audience they watched, with trained and minutely observant eyes, as Yvette and Jules d’Alembert flawlessly performed a heart-stopping variation of the act they themselves had performed only the night before. Then, with the performance over, they went down to the commissary to congratulate their younger ‘selves’.
The new Jules and Yvette, still in their spangled outfits, sat down boisterously at the table with the older pair. The two men looked very much alike, as did the two women – unsurprising, in view of the fact that they were chosen, among other things, for their appearance. The younger models were their cousins, twin children of Marcel d’Alembert, the Duke’s younger brother. They were ten years junior to the older pair, but only a DesPlainian could have spotted the age differences. As for the minute differences in facial appearance, few people outside the Circus would know. Jules and Yvette d’Alembert were never photo graphed close-up, and never appeared on tri-dee or sensables. All the audience ever saw of them was their flashing forms flying through the air, performing seemingly impossible acrobatics. Only now, those flying forms would be unnoticeably different.
This succession of top stars was routine to the personnel of the Circus of the Galaxy. In the two-hundred- year history of the Circus, there had been more than a score of pairs called ‘Jules and Yvette d’Alembert’; and, as long as the d’Alembert clan and the Circus held out, there would continue to be a new pair every decade. The pair now retiring had gotten their own start when their predecessors died on a mission for SOTE twelve years ago, and hence began their careers prematurely. The new pair would have a quiet and unexciting changeover.
‘How’d we do, Grand pere?’ asked the younger Jules. This was his first public performance in the starring role, and the thrill of the applause was still racing through his bloodstream. ‘It must have been a treat to see a good performance of your act.’
‘Close the orifice, Jules,’ his partner broke in. ‘Oh, you’re calling me “Jules” already, then?’
‘Certainly,’ said the younger Yvette. ‘You are Jules, now, while he goes on to be a nameless shadow serving the Empire. But what I started to say was, that’s the way people break their arms, patting themselves on the back so much.’
‘Khorosho.What I meant was, I’m glad the Head pulled them out of the Circus for special duty. It wouldn’t be too long before they’d splattered themselves all over the ring, the way their joints are creaking now. How about that, Jules?’ and Jules II grinned at Jules I.
‘That is true and very sad, Jules,’ Jules I agreed as a waitress came up to take their orders. ‘Yvette and I got this cushy assignment just in time. The ancient and unwieldy bones are just about ready for the fertilizer mill. The old-time pep is all shot …’
‘Dear Jules, you’re breaking my heart,’ said the waitress, dripping with sarcasm. She, of course, was a d’Alembert, too, and had been one of the supporting aerialists twenty five years ago, when Duke Etienne had been a performer with the Circus. Even when the talent to perform was gone, the d’Alembert clan never let any of its members want for employment. ‘Stop crying before I lose all control and dilute your soup with a flood of my own tears. The King and Queen are dead, et cetera. So what? You’re just getting started on your real jobs. The usual?’
‘Not quite, Yvette,’ I said. ‘You can get fresh orange juice here and I’m drowning myself in it. Squeeze me half a liter please, Felice dear, besides the usual.’
“’Drowning yourself” is right,’ the younger Yvette said darkly. ‘I’ve got to watch my figure; I’ll settle for one small glass of lemon sour and a lamb chop.’
‘That’s the thing about performing,’ said the older Jules. ‘Appearance is ev erything. Now that we’re “retired”, Yvette and I can eat to please ourselves.’ Yet his actions belied his words as he ordered a very modest meal. All the d’Alemberts were extremely conscious of the health value of their food.
After eating their late night snack, the older Jules and Yvette bid farewell to their family and left the Circus – without leaving so much as a ripple to let the outside world know they’d gone.
Driving eastward across the darkened highways for several hours, the pair arrived at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, the interstellar terminal that serviced the southeastern portion of the North American continent. The journey was uneventful, and at last they arrived at the field. They snugged their car down into its berth in the belly of their own ultra-fast, two-person subspacer, La Comete Cuivre – The Copper Comet. This vessel, a sleek dart built for speed and power, had been a gift to them from their father two years earlier, in anticipation of the day they’d become full fledged agents and need transportation of their own. Its burnished form was indeed a spectacle in daylight, gleaming under the bright Florida morning sun.
They spent the next two days living aboard their ship as it sat on the ground. They studied, analyzed and reviewed forty-seven reels of top-secret data, then sent them – through the most devious of routes, back to the Head. They drew charts based on the information they’d read, made statistical analyses, tried to find patterns in the confusing and conflicting facts that would point them in the right direction.
With that accomplished, and some tentative hypotheses reached, they consulted with the Head again. Headway was being made but slowly in weeding out potential traitors to the Service, for the simple reason that they couldn’t let the people know they were being weeded. A spy you know can be an asset, as long as his side doesn’t know he’s been spotted. So far, three potential traitors out of the thousands of people working for SOTE on Earth – had been uncovered and were being watched. But there were other signs that all was not well within the Empire.
Crime was flourishing on the Mother Planet. True, a certain amount was to be expected on a world with a population of nine billion, but the situation was much worse than should be anticipated. Criminals were much better organized here, and their hold on the populace was far too tenacious for chance. While the Service was not responsible for dealing with ordinary crime per se, it maintained files on what was going on – and the reports that were filtering up to the Head’s office were deliberately vague and misleading. It was as though someone, at some level, were trying to cover up the true extent of the problem. Estimates of harmful effects were almost unanimously understated, as though to lull the upper echelon into a false sense of security. Until now, those tactics had worked all too well.
To Jules and Yvette d’Alembert, the situation shrieked for action- and instant, effective action at that. If the Service caught a chill, hundreds of outlying planets faced the threat of double pneumonia. For the Service was the central nervous system of the Stanleys themselves – it received and relayed information from the outer systems to the ‘brain’; helped with the formulation official policy; and then set in motion the muscles that would deal with any particular problem. When those nerves tingled, every star, every spacelane, every planet and pocket of cosmic dust trembled and shook.