“How fast?”
“My own guess,” said the Commissioner, “would be around a week. If she hasn’t moved by then, we might help things along a little.”
“Make a few of those openings for her, eh? Well, that doesn’t sound too bad.” Trigger reflected. “Then there’s Point Number Two,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She grimaced. “I’m not real keen on it,” she confessed, “but I think we’d better do something about that interview with Whatzzit I ducked out of. If they still want to talk to me—”
“They do. Very much so.”
“What’s that business about their saying it was okay now for me to go on to Manon?”
Commissioner Tate tugged gently at his left ear lobe. “Frankly,” he said, “That’s something that shook me a little.”
“Shook you? Why?”
“It’s that matter of experts coming in grades. The upper ranks in the Psychology Service are extremely busy people, I understand. After your first interview we were shifted upward promptly. A couple of middling high-bracket investigators took over for a while. But after the fourth interview I was told I’d have to bring you to the Hub to let somebody really competent handle the next stage of whatever they’ve been doing. They said they couldn’t spare anybody of that caliber for a trip to Manon.”
“Was that the real reason we went to Maccadon?” Trigger asked, startled.
“Sure. But we still hadn’t got anywhere near the Service’s top level then. As I get it, their topnotchers don’t spend much time on individual cases. They keep busy with things on the scale of our more bothersome planetary cultures—and there are supposed to be only a hundred or so of them in that category. So I was more than a little surprised when the Service informed me finally one of those people was coming to Maccadon to conduct your ninth interview.”
“One of the real eggheads!” Trigger smiled nervously. “And then I just took off! They can’t have too good an opinion of me at the moment, you know.”
“Apparently that didn’t upset them in the least,” the Commissioner said. “They told me to stay calm and make sure you got to Manon all right. Then they said they had a ship operating in this area, and they’d route it over to Manon after you arrived here.”
“A ship?” Trigger asked.
“I’ve seen a few of their ships—they looked like oversized flying mountains. Camouflage jobs. What they actually are is spacegoing superlaboratories, from what I’ve heard. This one has a couple of those topnotchers on board, and one of them will take you on. It’s due here in a day or so.”
Trigger had paled somewhat. “You know,” she said, “I feel a little shaken myself now.”
“I’m not surprised,” said the Commissioner.
She shook her head. “Well, if they’re topnotchers, they must know what they’re doing.” She gave him a smile. “Looks like I’m something extremely unusual! Like a bothersome planetary culture . . . Weak joke,” she added.
The Commissioner ignored the weak joke. “There’s another thing,” be said thoughtfully.
“What’s that?”
“When I mentioned your reluctance about being interviewed, they told me not to worry about it—that you wouldn’t try to duck out again. That’s why I was surprised when you brought up the matter of the interview yourself just now.”
“Now that is odd,” Trigger admitted after a pause. “How would they know?”
“Right,” he said. He sighed. “Guess we’re both a little out of our depth there. I’ve come close to getting impatient with them a few times—had the feeling they were stalling me off and holding back information. But presumably they do know what they’re doing.” He glanced at his watch. “That hour’s about up now, by the way.”
“Well, if there’s something else that should be discussed I can break my dinner date,” Trigger said, somewhat reluctantly. “I had a chance to talk with Brule at the spaceport for a while, when we came in this morning.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that,” said Holati. “There still are things to be discussed, but a few hours one way or the other won’t make any difference. We’ll get together again around lunch tomorrow. Then you’ll be filled in pretty well on all the main points of this business.”
Trigger nodded. “Fine.”
“What I had in mind right now was that the Service people suggested having you look over their last report on you after your arrival. You’d have just enough time for that before going to keep your date. Care to do it?”
“I certainly would!” Trigger said.
The transmitter signaled for attention while she was studying the report. Holati Tate went off to answer it. The report was rather lengthy, and Trigger was still going over it when he got back. He sat down again and waited.
When she looked up finally, he asked, “Can you make much sense of it?”
“Not very much,” Trigger admitted. “It just states what seems to have happened. Not how or why. Apparently they did get me to develop total recall of that knocked-out period in the last interview—I even reported hearing you moving around in the next compartment. Then, some time before I actually fell down,” she continued, “I was apparently already in that mysterious coma. Getting deeper into it. It started when I walked away from Mantelish’s group, without having any particular reason for doing it. I just walked. Then I was in another compartment by myself and still walking, and the stuff kept getting deeper, until I lost physical control of myself and fell down. Then I lay there a while until you came down that aisle and saw me. And after you’d picked me up and put me in that chair—just like that, everything clears up! Except that I don’t remember what happened and think I’ve just left Mantelish to go looking for you. I don’t even wonder how I happen to be sitting there in a chair!”
The Commissioner smiled briefly. “That’s right. You didn’t.”
Her slim fingers tapped the pages of the report, the green stone in the ring he’d given her to wear reflecting little flashes of light. “They seem quite positive that nobody else came near me during that period. And that nobody had used a hypno-spray on me or shot a hypodermic pellet into me—anything like that—before the seizure or whatever it was came on. How do you suppose they could be so sure of that?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Holati said. “But I think we might as well assume they’re right.”
“I suppose so. What it seems to boil down to is they’re saying I was undergoing something like a very much slowed-down, very profound emotional shock—source still undetermined, but profound enough to knock me completely out for a while. Only they also say that—for a whole list of reasons—it couldn’t possibly have been an emotional shock after all! And when the effect left, it went instantaneously. That would be just the reverse to the pattern of an emotional shock, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “That occurred to me too, but it didn’t explain anything to me. Possibly it’s explained something to the Psychology Service.”
“Well,” Trigger said, “it’s certainly all very odd. Very disagreeable, too!” She laid the report down on the arm of her chair and looked at the Commissioner. “Guess I’d better run now,” she said. “See you around lunchtime, Commissioner.”
“Right, Trigger,” he said, getting up.
He closed the door behind her and went back to the transmitter. He looked rather unhappy.
“Yes?” said a voice in the transmitter.
“She just left,” Commissioner Tate said. “Get on the beam and stay there!”
18
“Well,” Trigger said, regarding Brule critically, “I just meant to say that you’re getting the least little bit plump here and there, under all that tan. I’ll admit it doesn’t show yet when you’re dressed.”
Brule smiled tolerantly. In silver swimming trunks and sandals, he was obviously a very handsome hunk of young man, and he knew it. So did Trigger. So did a quartet of predatory young females eyeing them speculatively from a table only twenty feet away.
“I’ve come swimming here quite a bit since they opened the Center,” be said. He flexed his right arm and regarded his biceps complacently. “That’s just streamlined muscle you’re looking at, sweetheart!”
Trigger reached over and poked the biceps with a fingertip. “Muscle?” she said, smiling at him. “It dents. See?”
He clasped his other hand over hers and squeezed it lightly.
“Oh, golly, Brule!” she said happily. “I’m so glad I’m back!”
He gave her the smile. “You’re not the only glad one!”
She looked around, humming softly. They were having dinner in one of the Grand Commerce Center’s restaurants. This one happened to be beneath the surface of the artificial swimming lake installed in the Center—a giant grotto surrounded by green-gold chasms of water on every side. Underwater swimmers and bottom walkers moved past beyond the wide windows. A streak of silvery swiftness against a dark red canyon wall before her was trying to keep away from a trio of pursuing spear fishermen. Even the lake fish were Hub imports, advertised as such by the Center.