The only mishap came when Kawar turned his ankle descending the hill of rubble on which the city sat. He stumbled on, his arm around Magda's shoulder. The night was hot and sticky. The contact should have been uncomfortable, but it was a relief to them both. Kawar did not let go even after they reached flat, smooth ground.
When the Holy City was well behind them, Magda keyed her transceiver. "You may as well come get us," she said. "This spot is as good as any."
"Half an hour," Brusilov said. He was not one to waste words.
Magda sat in the dust with a sigh of relief. Kawar sprawled, panting, beside her. In the darkness, she took a while to recognize the expression on his face. It was more than exhaustion; it was fear.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"We'll have to cover this up," he blurted.
She gaped at him. "What? Are you crazy?"
"Not me. You were the one talking about the damned Purists a couple of days ago. What better club than Bilbeis IV for beating the Survey Service over the head?"
Magda drew in a thoughtful breath. There was a good deal of truth in that. Still, she answered slowly, "Strikes me we deserve to get beaten over the head for this one. We've managed to twist the history of a whole planet out of shape. How do you go about justifying that? People have to know we screwed up, and how badly we screwed up. Maybe getting it out in the open will keep it from happening again."
"But under Sabium, the planet is better off and farther along than it would have been without her. Why not leave well enough alone?" Kawar said, returning to the argument he had raised before.
"It won't wash," Magda said. "A bit of interference I could overlook; that's the kind of stuff the Purists howl about, and it doesn't mean a thing. But this is too big to sweep under the rug: a whole powerful religion?powerful, hell! Real!?that never should have been here, and a goddess who wouldn't be either, if it weren't for us. I just shiver in my shoes to think how lucky we were here."
"Make up your mind. If what Ware did was as terrible as you're making out, how can we be lucky now?"
"How? Easy?suppose he'd been a rotten judge of character along with being an altruistic idiot. That Bilbeis IV is what it is, is all thanks to Sabium. You saw her. She happens to be just what Ware thought she was?a wise, kindly woman. What if she hadn't been? What if she'd used her immortality to burn anybody with green hair or to wipe out all the people who spoke with a lisp? Think what we'd be facing now."
"Ware didn't know he was giving her immortality," Kawar protested.
"Yes, and that's the point?when you interfere, you don't know what's going to happen afterward. What do you want, us using planets full of people as smart as we are for laboratories? Count me out."
"Well, what do you want? The Service to go down the drain, and us with it? Is that better?" He reached almost pleadingly to touch Magda's face, but his hand faltered and stopped before it reached her.
Through her own hurt, she answered, "I don't know. But if I have to go down, I'd rather do it for the truth than nailed to a lie. And as for the Service, it can take care of itself. Bureaucracies are tough beasts."
"Yes, and one reason is that they find scapegoats when things go wrong. Three guesses who they'll pick here. I'm serious, Magda?we can't let word of what's happened here get out. Too much rides on it. I think a lot of the crew will agree with me, too."
Magda grunted. She knew where she could find one certain ally?Atanasio Pedroza. His Afrikaner rectitude wouldn't let him be a part of anything underhanded.
She would rather have had a leg taken off without anesthetic. She liked Irfan Kawar; once or twice she had imagined she was in love with him. The thought of lining up against him with someone she loathed made her guts clench. But she realized how hard Kawar was trying not to see the scope of the interference on Bilbeis IV. She could not deliberately blind herself the same way.
The flier came down beside them, quiet as a dream. Magda climbed wearily to her feet. When she offered Irfan Kawar a hand, he ignored her and struggled up by himself.
She shrugged and turned away, but her nails bit into her palms. It was going to be a long trip home.
IV
"Thank you so much, Chairman Koch," Assemblyman Valleix said. He was a Purist; his voice dripped sarcasm.
"It is my duty and my pleasure, sir," replied the plump middle-aged woman who was Chairman of the Survey Service. Paulina Koch's own voice was studiedly neutral. She wore her habitual gray?the better to blend into the background, her detractors said.
Valleix returned to the attack. "Isn't it a fact, Madam Chairman, that the natives of Rugi II learned of the moldboard plow through an indiscreet remark by one of your Survey Service operatives? That strikes me as a serious breach."
Paulina Koch did not smile. One of her subordinates had leaked that report to the aide of another, less prominent Purist months ago. Now it was going to come home to roost.
She let him blather along, listening with half an ear.
"Under the best of circumstances, the Survey Service strikes me as a luxury the Federacy can ill afford in these days of budgetary constraints. Such debacles as Rugi II only make matters worse. I ask you again, Madam Chairman, isn't it a fact that the natives of that planet learned about the moldboard plow from Service personnel?"
"No, I am afraid that is not a fact, Assemblyman." That he showboated by repeating his question only made springing the trap sweeter, though she did not let her face show it.
His eyebrows shot up. "I suppose you have evidence to support such a startling assertion." By his tone, he did not suppose so at all.
"Yes, Assemblyman, here it is." She produced a data card. "This will show that the moldboard plow was in fact invented on an island off the main continent of Rugi II and that it spread there through normal trade contacts at around the time of the last Survey Service examination of the planet. That accounts for its sudden appearance in areas where it had previously been unknown."
Valleix was a black man; had he been white, he would have blanched. He had tangled with Paulina Koch too often to suppose her data were anything but what she said they were. He was also painfully aware she had just made a fool of him throughout the Federacy. He cut his losses, nodding to the head of the subcommittee. "I request a day's recess to evaluate these documents."
"Granted. Madam Chairman, you will be available tomorrow?"
"Certainly, madam." Paulina Koch still did not smile or show any outward sign of triumph. She had been a bureaucrat too long for that. But having savaged one Assemblyman, she did not expect any problems from the others. The Survey Service's appropriation looked safe again.
Professor Fogelman breezed into the classroom fifteen minutes late, something he had done a lot in his undergraduate lecture course. Stavros Monemvasios was not surprised to find him acting the same way in his graduate seminar.
"Greetings, greetings, greetings." Fogelman peered around the room. The anthropology prof liked to show off. He started guessing students' home worlds by their looks and dress: "Iberia, Hyperion, Epirus, Saigon, Inshallah, Hyperion, Iowa?"
He came to Stavros and hesitated. "Alexander?"
Monemvasios grinned; Fogelman had made the same mistake in the undergrad course. "I'm from New Thessaly, sir." Unlike most men of his planet, he wore a beard.
"Damn!" The professor smacked his fist down on the lectern?he remembered, too. He got three of the last four people in the seminar right.
The one he missed was a girl from Earth?the University of Hyperion's anthro department drew students from all over the Federacy. "Earth! Anyone could come from Earth," Fogelman snorted, dismissing his error.