What had Lilisaire really promised him?
The stop jolted him from his inner darkness, back to the outer. Norton sat up. “I guess we’ve arrived,” she said. Eagerness throbbed in the words. As the vehicle opened, she scrambled lithely out, all her energy regained. Young, Kenmuir decided. He himself felt stiff and chilled. Fifty-five wasn’t old, not nowadays, but probably the years wore away the spirit as much as ever in the past. He followed her.
Sky-glow above walls told of a settlement not far off. No doubt the building before him tapped its utilities. Windows steel-shuttered, the brick facade appeared in good condition, as nearly as he could tell through the gloom, but its neighbors crumbled empty and one was a rubble heap. Iscah wanted isolation, did he?
Norton moved toward the door with a sudden hesitancy not due to the poor seeing. “I’ve never been here,” she admitted. “I just met him once, at a … an organizational conference, and heard a little about what he does. Assorted technical jobs.” For people who perhaps couldn’t afford a regular service, or perhaps did not wish the work known, Kenmuir thought. “Carfax—Lilisaire’s agent who briefed me mentioned him too, among possible contacts.”
Yes, Kenmuir thought, the Wardress had more operatives on Earth than Norton, some of them likely more active than she. He had a strong impression that she was carrying out her first mission for the Lunarian, because she happened to be the best qualified for these special circumstances. Or because she was the most powerfully motivated? … The others, though, at least gathered what information they could, information of every sort that might conceivably someday prove useful. Much of it would concern the Hetero-sphere, where unregistered facilities and unconforming lives were many …
The door swung back on hinges. Light spilled around the hulk of a female Titan. She gestured them to come inside, and closed the door behind them.
The entry room seemed too small for her. But if you allowed for the stockiness demanded by the mass, she was a handsome woman, evidently of Near Eastern descent, neatly clad in blouse and trews. A knife at her hip, with knuckleduster haft, was the single disagreeable feature. When she spoke, the bass sounded educated and quite feminine: “Bienvenida, Senorita Tarn and senor. I hope everything went well?”Tarn? Kenmuir shot a glance at Norton. Yes, she’d have given her right name to the waiter, else he’d never have cooperated. “As far as I can tell, we got clean away,” she answered.
“Muy bien. Would you like to shed that coat, senor? The house is thoroughly screened and shielded.” The Titan helped Kenmuir take the garment off while she added: “I am Soraya, For favor, follow me.” She laid the mesh across a chair and started down the hall, so soft-footed that the dry old floorboards made hardly a sound. He did feel them tremble.
At the end of the house, a modern door contracted. The chamber beyond also belonged to the present era, cluttered though it was. Several rooms must have been demolished to make this large a space. The ceiling shone white on shelves, cabinets, benches, consoles, apparatus of physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, computation, and things Kenmuir did not recognize. Despite ventilator grilles, the air kept a faint acridity, smells of what happened here. Something in the background ticked.
A man got up from a computer terminal. He was a Chemo, totally hairless, skin obsidian-black. The lean body, long skull and visage, pale eyes were nordic. He wore little more than a gray smock over a shirt and hose, but somehow he made it imperial. Yet he spoke quietly, in a rather high-pitched voice: “Buenas tardes, senorita and seflor. Will you be seated?” He waved at tall stools. Clearly he did not mean to shake hands, bow, or otherwise salute. “Would you care for coffee?”
“Gracias, no,” Norton said. “I’m too charged.” She turned to Kenmuir. “You?”
“Nor I,” he replied, truthfully enough. Something wet would have been rather welcome, as dry as his mouth had gone, but he didn’t want to delay matters and wondered, besides, whether he could get anything past his gullet. The weariness in him had become a pulsing tension. Like Norton, he perched himself. Soraya loomed at their backs. \l am Iscah.” Facing them, the man folded his arms, leaned against a lab bench, and talked methodically. “I take it that you, senorita, are Alice Tarn, known too as Aleka Kame. It is prudent to make sure. Would you remove your mask? Soraya will assist you.”