“As you wish,” the Terran mumbled.
Damn, damn, and damn to the power of hell! He’d been on a scent. He could swear he’d been. He felt nauseated with frustration.
Some draughts of ale soothed him. He’d never been idiot enough to imagine himself making any spectacular discoveries or pulling off any dazzling coups on this junket. (Well, certain daydreams, but you couldn’t really count that.) What he had obtained now was—a hint which tended to confirm that the early Merseian expeditions to Starkad had found a big and strange thing. As a result, secrecy had come down like a candlesnuffer. Officers and crews who knew, or might suspect, the truth were snatched from sight. Murdered? No, surely not. The Merseians were not the antlike monsters which Terran propaganda depicted. They’d never have come as far as this, or be as dangerous as they were, had that been the case. To shut a spacefarer’s mouth, you reassigned him or retired him to an exile which might well be comfortable and which he himself might never realize was an exile.
Even for the post of Starkadian commandant, Brechdan had been careful to pick an officer who knew nothing beforehand about his post, and could not since have been told the hidden truth. Why … aside from those exploratory personnel who no longer counted, perhaps only half a dozen beings in the universe knew!
Obviously Tachwyr didn’t. He and his fellows had simply been ordered to keep Flandry off certain topics.
The Terran believed they were honest, most of them, in their friendliness toward him and their expressed wish that today’s discord could be resolved. They were good chaps. He felt more akin to them than to many humans.
In spite of which, they served the enemy, the real enemy, Brechdan Ironrede and his Grand Council, who had put something monstrous in motion. Wind and surfbeat sounded all at once like the noise of an oncoming machine.
I haven’t found anything Abrams doesn’t already suspect, Flandry thought. But I have got for him a bit more proof. God! Four days to go before I can get back and give it to him.
His mouth still felt dry. “How about another round?” he said.
“We’re going for a ride,” Abrams said.
“Sir?” Flandry blinked.
“Little pleasure trip. Don’t you think I deserve one too? A run to Gethwyd Forest, say, that’s an unrestricted area.”
Flandry looked past his boss’s burly form, out the window to the compound. A garden robot whickered among the roses, struggling to maintain the microecology they required. A secretary on the diplomatic staff stood outside one of the residence bubbles, flirting boredly with the assistant naval attache’s wife. Beyond them, Ardaig’s modern towers shouldered brutally skyward. The afternoon was hot and quiet.
“Uh … sir—” Flandry hesitated.
“When you ‘sir’ me in private these days, you want something,” Abrams said. “Carry on.”
“Well, uh, could we invite Donna d’Io?” Beneath those crow’s-footed eyes, Flandry felt himself blush. He tried to control it, which made matters worse. “She, uh, must be rather lonesome when his Lordship and aides are out of town.”
Abrams grinned. “What, I’m not decorative enough for you? Sorry. It wouldn’t look right. Let’s go.”
Flandry stared at him. He knew the man by now. At least, he could spot when something unadmitted lurked under the skin. His spine tingled. Having reported on his trip, he’d expected a return to desk work, dullness occasionally relieved after dark. But action must be starting at last. However much he had grumbled, however sarcastic he had waxed about the glamorous life in romantic alien capitals, he wasn’t sure he liked the change.
“Very good, sir,” he said.
They left the office and crossed aboveground to the garages. The Merseian technics reported periodically to inspect the luxury boat lent Abrams, but today a lone human was on duty. Envious, he floated the long blue teardrop out into the sunlight. Abrams and Flandry boarded, sealed the door, and found chairs in the saloon. ” Gethwyd Forest, main parking area,” Abrams said. “Five hundred KPH. Any altitude will do.”
The machine communicated with other machines. Clearance was granted and lane assigned. The boat rose noiselessly. On Terra, its path could have been monitored, but the haughty chieftains of Merseia had not allowed that sort of capability to be built in for possible use against them. Traffic control outside of restricted sections was automatic and anonymous. Unless they shadowed a boat, or bugged it somehow, security officers were unable to keep it under surveillance. Abrams had remarked that he liked that, on principle as well as because his own convenience was served.
He groped in his tunic for a cigar. “We could have a drink,” he suggested. “Whisky and water for me.”
Flandry got it, with a stiff cognac for himself. By the time he returned from the bar, they were leveled off at about six kilometers and headed north. They would take a couple of hours, at this ambling pace, to reach the preserve which the Vach Dathyr had opened to the public. Flandry had been there before, on a holiday excursion Oliveira arranged for Hauksberg and company. He remembered great solemn trees, gold-feathered birds, the smell of humus and the wild taste of a spring. Most vividly he remembered sunflecks patterned across Persis’ thin gown. Now he saw the planet’s curve through a broad viewport, the ocean gleaming westward, the megalopolitan maze giving way to fields and isolated castles.
“Sit down,” Abrams said. His hand chopped at a lounger. Smoke hazed him where he sprawled.
Flandry lowered himself. He wet his lips. “You’ve business with me, haven’t you?” he said.
“Right on the first guess! To win your Junior Spy badge and pocket decoder, tell me what an elephant is.”
“Huh, sir?”
“An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications. Or else a mouse is a transistorized elephant.” Abrams didn’t look jovial. He was delaying.
Flandry took a nervous sip. “If it’s confidential,” he asked, “should we be here?”
“Safer than the Embassy. That’s only probably debugged, not certainly, and old-fashioned listening at doors hasn’t ever quite gone out of style.”
“But a Merseian runabout—”
“We’re safe. Take my word.” Abrams glared at the cigar he rolled between his fingers. “Son, I need you for a job of work and I need you bad. Could be dangerous and sure to be nasty. Are you game?”
Flandry’s heart bumped. “I’d better be, hadn’t I?”
Abrams cocked his head at the other. “Not bad repartee for a nineteen-year-old. But do you mean it, down in your bones?”
“Yes, sir.” I think so.
“I believe you. I have to.” Abrams took a drink and a long drag. Abruptly:
“Look here, let’s review the circumstances as she stands. I reckon you have the innate common sense to see what’s written on your eyeballs, that Brechdan hasn’t got the slightest intention of settling the squabble on Starkad. I thought for a while, maybe he figured to offer us peace there in exchange for some other thing he really wants. But if that were the case, he wouldn’t have thrown a triple gee field onto the parley the way he has. He’d have come to the point with the unavoidable minimum of waste motion. Merseians don’t take a human’s glee in forensics. If Brechdan wanted to strike a a bargain, Hauksberg would be home on Terra right now with a preliminary report.
“Instead, Brechdan’s talkboys have stalled, with one quibble and irrelevancy after another. Even Hauksberg’s getting a gutful. Which I think is the reason Brechdan personally invited him and aides to Dhangodhan for a week or two of shootin’ and fishin’. Partly because that makes one more delay by itself; partly to smooth our viscount’s feelings with a ‘gesture of goodwill.’ ” The quotes were virtually audible. “I was invited too, but begged off on grounds of wanting to continue my researches. If he’d thought of it, Brechdan’d likely have broken custom and asked Donna Persis, as an added inducement for staying in the mountains a while. Unless, hm, he’s provided a little variety for his guests. There are humans in Merseian service, you know.”