"Not what you can do. What you know." She swirled the ice cubes in her drink moodily. "I have a puzzle. It has nothing to do with a police case, because I would know that. It does not involve high party members or politics with India—I would know if either of those were so, too. But information is being kept secret, and I don't know why."
"Then what can I do?"
"You can lend me some of your wisdom, Scholar." She reached over to the table at the end of the couch and lifted one edge. It exposed a keyboard. The tabletop, erected, became a screen. "For instance," she said, punching in commands, "see here." A table of numbers wrote itself across the screen, faster than the eye could follow:
SELECTED POWER ANOMALIES
Bermuda Drain 0335-0349Q Standby 0350-0450Q
Arecibo Drain 0500-0514Q Standby 0515-0615Q
Gulfport Drain 0605-0619Q Standby 0620-0720Q
Goldstone Drain 0720-0734Q Standby 0735-0830Q
Mauna Kea Drain 0940-0954Q Standby 0955-1055Q
"This is from the energy collective," she said, "and it shows an extraordinary power consumption for about fifteen minutes and then a period of an hour when all major electrical machinery is silenced for quite a large area. It is only these areas that show this, and although this is for yesterday, the same thing has been going on all week. What does it tell you, Scholar?"
He said promptly, "Well, they are all radio-astronomy observatories. The times are Q times—World Standard Time, based on the Beijing meridian—"
"Scholar!" she warned.
He grinned, for almost the first time in their relationship confident. "I did not know how much you knew," he explained. "The times correspond to about the rotation period of the earth. Presumably all observing the same point in space."
"Excellent, Scholar."
He admitted, "I had help, Inspector. We've had these power blackouts every night in my village. I didn't know till now what they were for. I suppose the same thing is going on in the observatories in the rest of the world."
"Very likely," she agreed, "but the records for the energy collectives outside the North American grid are less conveniently accessible for me. What else can you tell me?"
He was getting enthusiastic now. "Well, hell! Obviously they're radaring something—the heavy power drain, then the waiting period for signal return. Since they require so much power, it must be pretty small. Also pretty distant—but not more than, let me see, about five A.U. Because of the round-trip time for the signal at light speed," he explained, answering her frown. "Say seven or eight hundred million kilometers. That would be way past the asteroid belt, almost to the orbit of Jupiter. If," he added with some bitterness, "we had probes in space, we wouldn't have to worry about surface radar observatories to see things like that."
Tsoong Delilah was scowling, but it didn't look like anger, only concentration. "If the People's Republics have no energy to waste on space travel, it is not their fault, Scholar," she reminded him. "What else?"
He said, keeping the reversal-of-role superiority out, or largely out, of his voice, "If I can use your screen, I think I can show you a picture of it."
The look she gave him was sardonic again, but she moved aside for him—and raised her pencil-thin eyebrow* a few minutes later when he looked up, blushing. "Well, Scholar? No picture?"
"It's your system," he said defensively. "I can't access SKYWATCH or the IAF net, or even the current-projects file for the Bama scope. I could probably get something through the Transient Phenomena Center in Mukden if you want to pay for an overseas line—"
"No. Not Mukden," she said sharply.
He spread his hands. Trying to make the position clear without being definitely disagreeable about it, he said, "Your system doesn't seem to have much science capability."
"Why should it? I'm a police inspector, not a professor. I can access anything I like through the police net—but that," she added swiftly, to forestall him, "I think I will not do in this case. There is some delicacy here. I don't know what is being such a mystery, but there must be a reason." She gazed thoughtfully into the fire for a moment, then snapped the screen down decisively. "It is just as well," she announced. "I have told you nothing that is not public record, so there can be no criticism."
She stood up, satisfied, and moved over to the bar. "Another drink, Scholar?" she called over her shoulder, but didn't wait for an answer. When she brought Castor's new drink back, her appearance had changed; she was neither police inspector nor puzzled citizen, and once again she looked much younger.
Castor found his face warming once more. Robbed of his position as lecturer in astronomy to a class of one, he was a rice-field Yankee in the private retreat of a seductive and worldly-wise woman. "But aren't you curious?" he asked.
She sank down next to him. "If I am curious tomorrow, I will have one of my sergeants access the IAF net or SKYWATCH or the Transient Phenomena Center in Mukden through the police net," she said, demonstrating how well she had learned her lesson. "But perhaps I will think it over for a day or two first. In any case, Castor, there are other things I am curious about. How did you come to make that woman pregnant?"
He almost choked on his drink. "You mean my wife."
"Wife, of course," she shrugged. "Did she not receive an implant at twelve?"
"Implants are not compulsory, Inspector," he reminded her and this time did not even get a shrug. He went on, with some embarrassment, "It's hard to explain, because it's a religious matter."
"Ah! Religion! Of course. But I did not think all Yankees were religious."
"Well, personally I'm not, but my wife is. Was. It has to do with, uh, what they call the sanctity of life giving. It means that before you have intercourse you're supposed to have to, well, pause for a while—that's when she puts the thing in—so she can reflect before deciding not to have a child. Only then she said she really wanted one."
Delilah sipped her drink, regarding him over the rim of her glass, while Castor tried to read her expression. Was she going to tell him how quaint these barbarous practices seemed? Or remind him of the duty to control population while the carrying capacity of the world's land was still so low? She did neither. She leaned forward suddenly to brush his cheek with her lips, then stood up. "What we do," she said, slipping loose the cord that held her pajamas, "is to receive an implant just before puberty. Then, if we want children, we have it removed. It is in the fatty part just where the buttocks join the thigh, so it really does not appear in most circumstances. I'll show you, Castor. And then you can show me if you are able to perform without such a preliminary pause to consider the sanctity of life giving."
At daybreak she woke him with her gently, sweetly stroking hand, and they had another bout—the fourth, perhaps, or maybe the fifth or sixth. She seemed inexhaustible. He was twenty-two years old; and besides, what happened in Tsoong Delilah's perfumed and gently resilient bed was light-years away from frantic grapplings at the edge of a rice paddy or even the marriage chamber. She was a marvelous lover, denied him nothing, demanded (it seemed) only his pleasure, and let that magnify hers.
Nothing that passed in that night led Castor to suspect that he was any more to Tsoong Delilah than a one-night stand, and he was wholly sure that he was only one of many. Still, he came out of the shower to find she had made breakfast for him. And when, in her turn, she finished her toilet and came out uniformed for the day, she sipped tea with him as he finished his rice and crab. "Well, Scholar," she said, puffing on the little pipe—it was tobacco this time—"you've had an interesting time, but now it's good-bye. Perhaps we'll meet again."