“And I, I learned a Dennitzan girl of ranking family had been caught at subversion on Diomedes. Her own statements out of partial recollections, her undisguised hatred of the Imperium, they seemed to confirm those accusations. Being asked to look into the questions, what would I do but bring you along?”
He sighed. “A terrible mistake. We should’ve headed straight for Dennitza. Hindsight is always keen, isn’t it, while foresight stays myopic, astigmatic, strabismic, and drunk. But I haven’t even that excuse. I’d guessed at the truth from the first. Instead of going off to see if I could prove my hunch or not—” His fist smote the table. “I should never have risked you the way I did. Kossara!”
She thought, amazed, He is in pain about that. He truly is.
“A-a-ah,” Flandry said. “I’m a ruthless bastard. Better hunter than prey, and have we any third choice in these years? Or so I thought. You … were only another life.”
He ground out his cigarette, sprang from the bench, strode back and forth along the cabin. Sometimes his hands were gripped together behind him, sometimes knotted at his sides. His voice turned quick and impersonaclass="underline"
“You looked like a significant pawn, though. Why such an incredibly bungled job on you? Including your enslavement on Terra. I’d have heard about you in time, but it was sheer luck I did before you’d been thrown into a whorehouse. And how would your uncle the Gospodar react to that news if it reached him?
“Might it be intended to reach him?
“Oh, our enemies couldn’t be certain what’d happen; but you tilted the probabilities in their favor. They must’ve spent considerable time and effort locating you. Flandry’s Law: ‘Given a sufficiently large population, at least one member will fit any desired set of specifications.’ The trick is to find that member.”
“What?” Kossara exclaimed. “Do you mean—because I was who I was, in the position I was—that’s why Dennitza—” She could speak no further.
“Well, let’s say you were an important factor,” he replied. “I’m not sure just how you came into play, though I can guess. On the basis of my own vague ideas, I made a decoy of you in the manner you’ve already heard about. That involved first deliberately antagonizing you on the voyage; then deliberately gambling your life, health, sanity—”
He halted in midstride. His shoulders slumped. She could barely hear him, though his look did not waver from hers: “Every minute makes what I did hurt worse.”
She wanted to tell him he was forgiven, yes, go take his hands and tell him; but no, he had lied too often. With an effort, she said, “I am surprised.”
His grin was wry. “Less than I am.” Returning, he flopped back onto the bench, crossed ankle over thigh till he peered across his knee at her, swallowed a long draught from his glass, took out his cigarette case; and when the smoke was going he proceeded:
“Let’s next assume the enemy’s viewpoint, i.e. what I learned and deduced.
“They—a key one of them, anyhow—he realizes the Terran Empire is in an era when periods of civil war are as expectable as bouts of delirium in chronic umwi fever. I wasn’t quite aware of the fact myself till lately. A conversation I had set me thinking and researching. But he knew right along, my opponent. At last I see what he’s been basing his strategy on for the past couple of decades. Knowing him, if he believes the theory, I think I will. These days we’re vulnerable to fratricide, Kossara. And what better for Merseia, especially if just the right conflict can be touched off at just the right moment?
“We’ve been infiltrated. They’ve had sleepers among us for … maybe a lifetime … notably in my own branch of service, where they can cover up for each other … and notably during this past generation, when the chaos first of the Josip regime, then the succession struggle, made it easier to pass off their agents as legitimate colonial volunteers.
“The humans on Diomedes. brewing revolution with the help of a clever Alatanist pitch—thereby diverting some of our attention to Ythri—they weren’t Dennitzans. They were creatures of the Roidhunate, posing as Dennitzans. Oh, not blatantly; that’d’ve been a giveaway. And they were sincerely pushing for an insurrection, since any trouble of ours is a gain for them. But a major objective of the whole operation was to drive yet another wedge between your people and mine, Kossara.”
Frost walked along her spine. She stared at him and whispered: “Those men who caught me—murdered Trohdwyr—tortured and sentenced me—they were Merseians too?”
“They were human,” Flandry said flatly, while he unfolded himself into a more normal posture. “They were sworn-in members of the Imperial Terran Naval Intelligence Corps. But, yes, they were serving Merseia. They arrived to ‘investigate’ and thus add credence to the clues about Dennitza which their earlier-landed fellows had already been spreading around.
“Let the Imperium get extremely suspicious of the Gospodar—d’you see? The Imperium will have to act against him. It dare not stall any longer. But this action forces the Gospodar to respond—he already having reason to doubt the goodwill of the Terrans—”
Flandry smashed his cigarette, drank, laid elbows on table and said most softly, his face near hers:
“He’d hear rumors, and send somebody he could trust to look into them. Aycharaych—I’ll describe him later—Aycharaych of the Roidhunate knew that person would likeliest be you. He made ready. Your incrimination, as far as Terra was concerned—your degradation, as far as Dennitza was concerned—d’you see? Inadequate by themselves to provoke war. Still, remind me and I’ll tell you about Jenkins’ Ear. Nations on the brink don’t need a large push to send them toppling.
“I’ve learned something about how you were lured, after you reached Diomedes. The rest you can tell me, if you will. Because when he isn’t weaving mirages, Aycharaych works on minds. He directed the blotting out of your memories. He implanted the false half-memories and that hate of the Empire you carry around. Given his uncanny telepathic capabilities, to let him monitor what drugs, electronics, hypnotism are doing to a brain, he can accomplish what nobody else is able to.
“But I don’t think he totally wiped what was real. That’d have left you too unmistakably worked over. I think you keep most of the truth in you, disguised and buried.”
The air sucked between her teeth. Her fists clenched on the table. He laid a hand across them, big and gentle.
“I hope I can bring back what you’ve lost, Kossara.” The saying sounded difficult. “And, and free you from those conditioned-reflex emotions. It’s mainly a matter of psychotherapy. I don’t insist. Ask yourself: Can you trust me that much?”
XII
Sickbay was a single compartment, but astonishingly well equipped. Kossara entered with tightness in her gullet and dryness on her tongue. Flandry and Chives stood behind a surgical table. An electronic helmet, swiveled out above the pillow, crouched like an ugly arachnoid. The faint hum of driving energies, ventilation, service and life-support devices, seemed to her to have taken on a shrill note.
Flandry had left flamboyancy outside. Tall in a plain green coverall, he spoke unsmiling: “Your decision isn’t final yet. Before we go any further, let me explain. Chives and I have done this sort of thing before, and we aren’t a bad team, but we’re no professionals.”
This sort of thing—Muhammad Snell must lately have lain on that mattress, in the dream-bewildered helplessness of narco, while yonder man pumped him dry and injected the swift poison. Shouldn’t I fear the Imperialist? Dare I risk becoming the ally of one who treated a sentient being as we do a meat animal?