Trigger held the smile firmly.
“Thanks so much, again!” she said.
Nelauk nodded, smiled back and drifted gracefully off the screen. Brule blew Trigger a kiss. “They’ll be cutting contact now. See you very, very soon, Trigger, I hope.”
His image vanished before she could answer.
She paced her office, muttering softly. She went over to the ComWeb once, reached out toward it and drew her hand back again.
Better think this over.
It might not be an emergency. Brule didn’t exactly chase women. He let them chase him now and then. Long before she left Manon, Trigger had discovered, without much surprise, that the wives, daughters and girl friends of visiting Hub tycoons were as susceptible to the Inger charm as any Precol clerks. The main difference was that they were a lot more direct about showing it.
It hadn’t really worried her. In fact, she found Brule’s slightly startled reports of the maneuverings of various amorous Hub ladies very entertaining. But she had put in a little worrying about something else. Brule’s susceptibility seemed to be more to the overwhelming mass display of wealth with which he was suddenly in almost constant contact. Many of the yachts he went flitting around among as Precol’s representative were elaborate spacegoing palaces, and it appeared Brule Inger was soon regarded as a highly welcome guest on most of them.
Brule talked about that a little too much.
Trigger resumed her pacing.
Little Nelauk mightn’t be twenty yet, but she’d flipped out a challenge just now with all the languid confidence of a veteran campaigner. Which, Trigger thought cattily, little Nelauk undoubtedly was.
And a girl, she added cattily, whose father represented the Pluly Lines did have some slight reason for confidence . . .
“Meow!” she reproved herself. Nelauk, to be honest about it, was also a dish.
But if she happened to be serious about Brule, the dish Brule might be tempted by was said Pluly Lines.
Trigger went over to the window and looked down at the exercise quadrangle forty floors below.
“If he’s that much of a meathead!” she thought.
He could be that much of a meathead. He was also Brule. She went back to her desk and sat down. She looked at the ComWeb. A girl had a right to consider her own interests.
And there was the completely gruesome possibility now that Holati Tate might call in at any moment, give her an entirely reasonable, satisfactory, valid, convincing explanation for everything that had happened lately—and then show her why it would be absolutely necessary for her to stay here a while longer.
If it was a choice between inconveniencing Holati Tate and losing that meathead Brule . . .
Trigger switched on the ComWeb.
4
The head of the personnel department of Precol’s Maccadon office said, “You don’t want me, Argee. That’s not my jurisdiction. I’ll connect you with Undersecretary Rozan.”
Trigger blinked. “Under—” she began. But he’d already cut off.
She stared at the ComWeb, feeling a little shaken. All she’d done was to say she wanted to apply for a transfer! Undersecretary Rozan was one of Precol’s Big Four. For a moment, Trigger had an uncanny notion. Some strange madness was spreading insidiously through the Hub. She shook the thought off.
A businesslike blonde showed up in the screen. She might be about thirty-five. She smiled a small, cold smile.
“Rozan,” she said. “You’re Trigger Argee. I know about you. What’s the trouble?”
Trigger looked at her, wondering. “No trouble,” she said. “Personnel just routed me through to you.”
“They’ve been instructed to do so,” said Rozan. “Go ahead.”
“I’m on detached duty at the moment.”
“I know.”
“I’d like to apply for a transfer back to my previous job. The Manon System.”
“That’s your privilege,” said Rozan. She half turned, swung a telewriter forward and snapped it into her ComWeb. She glanced out at Trigger’s desk. “Your writer’s connected, I see. We’ll want thumbprint and signature.”
She slid a form into her telewriter, shifted it twice as Trigger deposited thumbprint and signature, and drew it out. “The application will be processed promptly, Argee. Good day.”
Not a gabby type, that Rozan.
If not gabby, the Precol blonde was a woman of her word. Trigger had just started lunch when the office mail receiver tinkled brightly at her. It was her retransfer application. At the bottom of the form was stamped “Application Denied,” followed by the signature of the Secretary of the Department of Precolonization, Home Office, Evalee.
Trigger’s gaze shifted incredulously from the signature to the two words, and back. They’d taken the trouble to get that signature transmitted from Evalee just to make it clear that there were no heads left to be gone over in the matter. Precol was not transferring her back to Manon. That was final. Then she realized there was a second sheet attached to the application form.
On it in handwriting were a few more words: “In accordance with the instructions of Commissioner Tate.” And a signature, “Rozan.” And three final words: “Destroy this note.”
Trigger crumpled up the application in one hand. Her other hand darted to the ComWeb.
Then she checked herself. To fire an as-of-now resignation back at Precol had been the immediate impulse. But something, some vague warning chill, was saying it might be a very poor impulse to follow.
She sat back to think it over.
It was very probable that Undersecretary Rozan disliked Holati Tate intensely. A lot of the Home Office big shots disliked Holati Tate. He’d stomped on their toes more than once—very justifiably; but he’d stomped. The Home Office wouldn’t go an inch out of its way to do something just because Commissioner Tate happened to want it done.
So somebody else was backing up Commissioner Tate’s instructions.
Trigger shook her head helplessly.
The only somebody else who could give instructions to the Precolonization Department was the Council of the Federation!
And how could the Federation possibly care what Trigger Argee was doing? She made a small, incredulous noise in her throat.
Then she sat there a while, feeling frightened.
The fright didn’t really wear off, but it settled down slowly inside her. Up on the surface she began to think again.
Assume it’s so, she instructed herself. It made no sense, but everything else made even less sense. Just assume it’s so. Set it up as a practical problem. Don’t worry about the why . . .
The problem became very simple then. She wanted to go to Manon. The Federation—or something else, something quite unthinkable at the moment but comparable to the Federation in power and influence—wanted to keep her here.
She uncrumpled the application, detached Rozan’s note, tore up the note and dropped its shreds into the wall disposal. That obligation was cancelled. She didn’t have any other obligations. She’d liked Holati Tate. When all this was cleared up, she might find she still liked him. At the moment she didn’t owe him a thing.
Now. Assume they hadn’t just blocked the obvious route to Manon. They couldn’t block all routes to everywhere; that was impossible. But they could very well be watching to see that she didn’t simply get up and walk off. And they might very well be prepared to take quite direct action to stop her from doing it.
She would, Trigger decided, leave the method she’d use to get out of the Colonial School unobserved to the last. That shouldn’t present any serious difficulties.
Once she was outside, what would she do?
Principally, she had to buy transportation. And that—since she had no intention of spending a few months on the trip, and since a private citizen didn’t have the ghost of a chance at squeezing aboard a Federation packet on the Manon run—was going to be expensive. In fact, it was likely to take the bulk of her savings. Under the circumstances, however, expense wasn’t important. If Precol refused to give her back her job when she showed up on Manon, a number of the industrial outfits preparing to move in as soon as the planet got its final clearance would be very happy to have her. She’d already turned down a dozen offers at considerably more than her present salary.
So . . . she’d get off the school grounds, take a tube strip into downtown Ceyce, step into a ComWeb booth, and call Grand Commerce transportation for information on the earliest subspace runs to Manon.
She’d reserve a berth on the first fast boat out. In the name of—let’s see—in the name of Birna Drellgannoth, who had been a friend of hers when they were around the age of ten. Since Manon was a Precol preserve, she wouldn’t have to meet the problem of precise personal identification, such as one ran into when booking passage to some of the member worlds.
The ticket office would have her thumbprints then. That was unavoidable. But there were millions of thumbprints being deposited every hour of the day on Maccadon. If somebody started checking for her by that method, it should take them a good long while to sort out hers.