Flandry stumbled through drenched flowerbeds. He helped Bryce carry Temulak down into the hurricane cellar: standard for every house in Garth. A tunnel had been dug from this one; its door, at least, was well concealed. Flandry and Bryce groped for several hundred meters to the other end. They emerged beneath a house whose address they should not have been permitted to know.
Judith Hurst turned about with a small shriek when the cellar door opened. Then dim light picked out Bryce’s heavy form, and Temulak still limp in the hunter’s arms. Flandry came behind, shedding his cape with a relieved whistle. “Oh,” gasped Judith. “You got him!”
Bryce’s eyes went around the circle of them. A dozen men stood with taut brown faces in the light of a single small fluoro. Their shadows fell monstrous in the corners and across the window shutters. Knives and forbidden guns gleamed at their belts. Kit was the only person seated, still slumped in the dull sadness of stimulol reaction.
“Damn near didn’t,” grunted Bryce. “Couldn’t have, without the captain here. Sir Dominic, I apologize for some things I’d been thinkin’ lately ’bout Terra.”
“An’ I.” Judith Hurst trod forward, taking both the Navy man’s hands. She was among the few women in the underground, and Flandry thought it a crime to risk such looks being shot up. She was tall, with long auburn hair and skin like cream; her eyes were sleepy brown in a full, pouting face; her figure strained at shorts and bolero. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said. “But you’ve come back with the first real success this war’s had for us.”
“Two swallows do not make a drinking bout,” warned Flandry. He gave her his courtliest bow. “Speaking of which, I could use something liquid, and cannot imagine a more ornamental cupbearer. But first, let’s deal with friend Temulak. This way, isn’t it?”
As he passed Kit, her exhausted eyes turned up to him. Slow tears coursed down her face. “Oh, Dominic, you’re alive,” she whispered. “That makes everything else seem like nothin’.” She rose to wobbly legs. He threw her a preoccupied smile and continued on past, his brain choked with technicalities.
Given a proper biopsych lab, he could have learned how to get truth out of Temulak with drugs and electronics. But now he just didn’t have enough data on the species. He would have to fall back on certain widely applicable, if not universal, rules of psychology.
At his orders, an offside room in the cellar had been provided with a comfortable bed. He stripped Temulak and tied him down, firmly, but using soft bonds which wouldn’t chafe. The prisoner began to stir. By the time Flandry was through and Temulak immobile, the gray alien eyes were open and the muzzle wrinkled back over white teeth. A growl rumbled in Temulak’s throat.
“Feeling better?” asked the man unctuously.
“Not as well as I shall when we pull you down in the street.” The Anglic was thickly accented, but fluent, and it bore a haughtiness like steel.
“I shudder.” Flandry kindled a cigaret. “Well, comrade, if you want to answer some questions now, it will save trouble all around. I presume, since you’re alive, you’ve been blanked of your home sun’s coordinates. But you retain clues.” He blew a thoughtful smoke ring. “And, to be sure, there are the things you obviously do know, since your rank requires it. Oh, all sorts of things, dear heart, which my side is just dying to find out.” He chuckled. “I don’t mean that literally. Any dying will be done by you.”
Temulak stiffened. “If you think I would remain alive, at the price of betraying the orbekh—”
“Nothing so clear-cut.”
The red fur bristled, but Temulak snarled: “Nor will pain in any degree compel me. And I do not believe you understand the psycho-physiology of my race well enough to undertake total reconditioning.”
“No,” admitted Flandry,” not yet. However, I haven’t time for reconditioning in any event, and torture is so strenuous … besides offering no guarantee that when you talk, you won’t fib. No, no, my friend, you’ll want to spill to me pretty soon. Whenever you’ve had enough, just call and I’ll come hear you out.”
He nodded to Dr. Reineke. The physician wheeled forth the equipment he had abstracted from Garth General Hospital at Flandry’s request. A blindfolding hood went over Temulak’s eyes, sound-deadening wax filled his ears and plugged his nose, a machine supplied him with intravenous nourishment and another removed body wastes. They left him immobile and, except for the soft constant pressure of bonds and bed, sealed into a darkness like death. No sense impressions could reach him from outside. It was painless, it did no permanent harm, but the mind is not intended for such isolation. When there is nothing by which it may orient itself, it rapidly loses all knowledge of time; an hour seems like a day, and later like a week or a year. Space and material reality vanish. Hallucinations come, and the will begins to crumble. Most particularly is this true when the victim is among enemies, tensed to feel the whip or knife which his own ferocious culture would surely use.
Flandry closed the door. “Keep a guard,” he said. “When he begins to holler, let me know.” He peeled off his tunic. “From whom can I beg something dry to wear?”
Judith gave his torso a long look. “I thought all Terrans were flabby, Sir Dominic,” she purred. “I was wrong about that too.”
His eyes raked her. “And you, my dear, make it abundantly plain that Vixenites are anything but,” he leered.
She took his arm. “What do you plan to do next?”
“Scratch around. Observe. Whip this maquisard outfit into something efficient. There are so many stunts to teach you. To name just one, any time you’ve no other amusement, you can halt work at a war factory for half a day with an anonymous telecall warning that a time bomb’s been planted and the staff had better get out. Then there’s all the rest of your planet to organize. I don’t know how many days I’ll have, but there’s enough work to fill a year of ’em.” Flandry stretched luxuriously, “Right now, though, I want that drink I spoke of.”
“Here you are, sir.” Bryce held out a flask.
Judith flicked a scowl at him. “Is that white mule all you can offer the captain?” she cried. Her hair glowed along her back as she turned to smile again at Flandry. “I know you’ll think I’m terribly forward, but I have two bottles o’ real Bourgogne at my house. ’Tis only a few blocks from here, an’ I know a safe way to go.”
Oh-ho! Flandry licked his mental chops. “Delighted,” he said.
“I’d invite the rest o’ you,” said Judith sweetly, “but ’tisn’t enough to go aroun’, an’ Sir Dominic deserves it the most. Nothin’s too good for him, that’s what I think. Just nothin” at all.”
“Agreed,” said Flandry. He bowed goodnight and went out with her.
Kit stared after them a moment. As he closed the door, he heard her burst into weeping.
XI
Three of Vixen’s 22-hour rotation periods went by, and part of a fourth, before the message came that Temulak had broken. Flandry whistled. “It’s about time! If they’re all as tough as that—”
Judith clung to him. “Do you have to go right now, darlin’?” she murmured. “You’ve been away so much … out prowlin’, spyin’, an’ the streets still full o’ packs huntin’ for whoever attacked that squad — I’m terrified for you.”
Her look was more inviting than anxious. Flandry kissed her absent-mindedly. “We’re patriots and all that sort of rot,” he said. “I could not love you so much, dear, et cetera. Now do let go.” He was out the door before she could speak further.
The way between her house and the underground’s went mostly from garden to garden, but there was a stretch of public thoroughfare. Flandry put hands in pockets and sauntered along under rustling feather palms as if he had neither cares nor haste. The other humans about, afoot or in groundcars, were subdued, the pinch of hunger and shabbiness already upon them. Once a party of Ardazirho whirred past on motor unicycles; their sharp red muzzles clove the air like prows, and they left a wake of frightened silence behind them. The winter sun burned low to northwest, big and dazzling white in a pale sky, among hurried stormclouds.
When Flandry let himself into the cellar, only Emil Bryce and Kit Kittredge were there. The hunter lounged on guard. From the closed door behind him came howling and sobbing. “He babbled he’d talk,” said Bryce. “But can you trust what he says?”
“Interrogation is a science too,” answered Flandry. “If Temulak is enough like a human to break under isolation, he won’t be able to invent consistent lies fast enough when I start throwing questions at him. Did you get that recorder I wanted?”
“Here.” Kit picked it up. She looked very small and alone in all the shadows. Sleeplessness had reddened her eyes. She brought the machine to Flandry, who met her several meters from Bryce. She leaned toward him on tiptoe and whispered shakily: “What will you do now?”
Flandry studied her. He had gotten to know her well on the journey here, he thought. But that was under just one set of conditions — and how well does one human ever know another, in spite of all pretentious psychology? Since capturing the Ardazirho, he had only seen her on a single brief visit to this cellar. They had had a few moments alone, but nothing very personal was said. There had been no time for it. He saw how she trembled.
“I’m going to quiz brother Temulak,” he told her. “And afterward I could use some dinner and a stiff drink.”
“With Judith Hurst?” It startled him, how ferociously she spat it out.
“Depends,” he said in a careful tone.
“Dominic—” She hugged herself, forlornly, to stop shivering. Her gaze blurred, seeking his. “Don’t. Please don’t make me do … what I don’t want—”
“We’ll see.” He started toward the inner door. Kit began to cry, hopelessly this time.
Bryce got up. “Why, what all’s the matter?” he asked.
“She’s overtired.” Flandry opened the door.
“Worse’n that.” The hunter looked from him to the girl and back again. Resentment smoldered in his growclass="underline" “Maybe it’s none o’ my business—”
“It isn’t.” Flandry stepped through, closing the door behind him.
Temulak lay shuddering and gasping. Flandry set up the recorder and unplugged the Ardazirho’s ears. “Did you want to speak to me?” he asked mildly.
“Let me go!” shrieked Temulak. “Let me go, I say! Zamara shammish ni ulan!” He opened his mouth and howled. It was so much like a beast that a crawling went along Flandry’s spine.
“We’ll see, after you’ve cooperated.” The man sat down.
“I never thought … you gray people … gray hearts—” Temulak whimpered. He dribbled between his fangs.
“Goodnight, then,” said Flandry. “Sweet dreams.”
“No! No, let me see! Let me smell! I will … zamara, zamara—”
Flandry began to interrogate.