Norton—no, Tarn?—hesitated for an instant, then jerked a nod. “Might as well, I suppose.” She accompanied the Titan on a labyrinthine course to a medical couch and counter.
“It is equally wise from your standpoint,” Iscah remarked as she passed by. “If the pursuit inquires among patrons at the Asilo, it will obtain a description of you in your disguise. I assume it will find no reason to associate that with your real persona—“ he grinned “—insofar as ‘real’ has meaning in this context.”
“Oh, I’m Aleka, all right,” she flung back over her shoulder. “Anyhow, I was the last time I looked.” The forlorn attempt at a jest appealed to Kenmuir.
Iscah focused on him. How shall I address you, seflor?” he asked.
The spaceman considered. What the Q, he wasn’t a character in a historical thriller on the multi, required to act mysterious. He snapped forth his name and profession. “And I’d like to know what this rigmarole is about,” he added. The roughness surprised him. Not his normal style.
Iscah stayed cool. “We share that desire. Let us try to learn. What can you tell me of the situation, Captain?”
Kenmuir swallowed. What should he tell, in this den of grotesquerie?
“Go ahead,” called the woman who tagged herself Aleka. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” After a moment: “And you won’t proceed blindfold, will you, Iscah? Besides, I suspect having the facts spread around will upset those bastards.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, thought Kenmuir, harking back to centuried texts that had beguileddaycycles in space. But—He smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid I have very little in that line,” he said. Indeed, a few sentences delivered his tale. “In spite of Lilisaire’s animus against the Federation, I had no idea its police were aware of me till Mamselle Nor—Tarn hauled me off.”
“’Animus,’” I scab murmured. “I can like a man who uses words of that kind.”
“I’ve no wish to become an outlaw, either,” Kenmuir stated. “If the government is trying to stop this business, it must have a reason.”
“Necessarily a good reason?” rumbled Soraya. She took instruments from a case.
“Let us first collect what further data we may,” Iscah said. He walked off. “Over here, por favor.”
Electronic equipment was ranked along one wall. Kenmuir knew the object Iscah first picked up, a magnetic field mapper. He couldn’t see what it read as it was moved across his torso, and Iscah’s midnight countenance had turned expressionless. Across the room, Soraya worked with a delicacy incredible for those gigantic hands, teasing the life mask skin free of Aleka’s. You could do the job alone, and! no doubt Aleka had donned it thus, but removal without help took a long time if you weren’t to hurt the delicate organism.
Peculiar partnership, Kenmuir thought. Titan, gene-bred for strength and endurance, infantry to go where war machines could not; Chemo, hardy against radiation and pollution that would sicken or kill ordinary humans; both stemming from a few ancestors engineered to deal with things as long vanished as the governments and the fanaticisms that had ordered it. Beings obsolete, purposeless, except for what they could make of their lives by themselves. He could only guess at that. Plainly, Soraya was more than a bodyguard. Was Iscah more than a technician? Might they even be lovers? The idea seemed freakish at first, then touching, then tragic.
Various instruments had been busy about his person. Iscah laid the last of them down, stepped back, and nodded. “You were right, Seflorita Tarn,” he said, still imperturbable. “He carries a spy.”
The notion had barely skimmed over Kenmuir’s mind. The utterance hit him like a fist. He snatched after breath. “No, impossible!” he cried. “How could anybody—no way—”
The ice-colored glance laid hold of his. “Let me explain,” Iscah said. “The technique is not publicized, but a part of my business is to know such things. A conjoined set of molecular assemblers was slipped into you. You may think of it as a pseudo-virus. Obviously, the servitor in the lounge put it in the drink it gave you. A single drop of liquid would be ample to hold the nanomass involved. I would guess that the dropper was in a substituted finger. Did you later feel a trifle ill and fevered for a short while? … I thought so. The pseudo-virus was taking material from your bloodstream to multiply itself. When there were sufficient assemblers, they set to work, again using elements in your body, carbon, iron, calcium— I won’t bore you with the list. The process was harmless per se, because the device they built masses less than a gram, neatly woven into your peritoneum near the diaphragm, and taps less than a microwatt from the metabolism of surrounding cells. Essentially, it is a circuit controlled by a simple computer with a hardwired program, although it does include a transponder for sonic-range vibrations.”