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"Some argument," he admitted. "Maybe `cooperating independent agents' describes it."

"I see. She's quite professional. Mac, do you know where the Ears are in here or will we have to work out some way to defeat them? Are you willing to have your sordid past discussed and recorded on tape somewhere? I can't think of anything that would embarrass meÄafter all, I was the innocent victimÄbut I want you to speak freely."

Instead of answering he pointed: over my couch on the lounge side, over the head of my bed, into my bathroomÄthen he touched his eye and pointed to a spot where the bulkhead met the overhead opposite the couch.

I nodded. Then I dragged two chairs off into the corner farthest from the couch and out of line of sight for the Eye location he had indicated. I switched on the terminal, punched it for music, selected a tape featuring the Salt Lake City Choir. Perhaps an Ear could reach through and sort out our voices but I did not think so.

We sat down and I continued, "Mac, can you think of any good reason why I should not kill you right now?"

"Just like that? Without even a hearing?"

"Why do we need a hearing? You raped me. You know it, I know it. But I am giving you this much of a hearing. Can you think of any reason why you should not be summarily executed for your crime?"

"Well, since you put it that wayÄ No, I can't."

Men will be the death of me. "Mac, you are a most exasperating man. Can't you see that I don't want to kill you and am looking for a

reasonable excuse not to do so? But I can't manage it without your help. How did you get mixed up in so dirty a business as a gang rape of a blindfolded, helpless woman?"

I sat and let him stew and that's just what he did. At last he said, "I could claim that I was so deep into it by then that, if I balked at raping you, I would have been killed myself, right then."

"Is that true?" I asked, feeling contempt for him.

"True enough, but not relevant. Miss Friday, I did it because I wanted to. Because you are so sexy you could corrupt a Stylite. Or cause Venus to switch to Lesbos. I tried to tell myself that I couldn't avoid it. But I knew better. All right, do you want my help in making it look like suicide?"

"Not necessary." (So sexy I could corrupt a Stylite. What in the world is a Stylite?Ämust find out. He seemed to mean it as a superlative.)

He persisted. "Aboard ship you can't run away. A dead body can be embarrassing."

"Oh, I think not. You were hired to watch over me; do you think anything would be done to me? But you already know that I intend to let you get away with it. However, I want explanations before I let you go. How did you escape the fire? When I smelled you, I was astonished; I had assumed that you were dead."

"I wasn't at the fire; I ran for it before that."

"Really? Why?"

"Two reasons. I planned to leave as soon as I learned what I had come for. But mostly on your account."

"Mac, don't expect me to believe too many unlikely things. What was this you had come there to learn?"

"I never found out. I was after the same thing they were after:

Why you had gone to Ell-Five. I heard them interrogate you and I could see that you did not know. So I left. Fast."

"That's true. I was a carrier pigeon... and when does a carrier pigeon know what a war is about? They wasted their time, torturing me."

Swelp me, he looked shocked. "They tortured you?"

I said sharply, "Are you trying to play innocent?"

"Eh? No, no, I'm guilty as sin and I know it. Of rape. ButI didn't

have any notion that they had tortured you. That's stupid, that's centuries out of date. What I heard was straight interrogation, then they shot you with babble juiceÄand you told the same story. So I knew you were telling the truth and I got out of there. Fast."

"The more you tell me, the more questions you raise. Who were you working for, why were you doing it, why did you leave, why did they let you leave, who was that voice that gave you ordersÄthe one called the MajorÄwhy was everybody so anxious to know what I was carryingÄso anxious that they would mount a military attack and waste a lot of lives and wind up torturing me and sawing off my right tit? Why?"

"They did that to you?" (Swelp me, Mac's face was utterly impassive until I mentioned damage done to my starboard milk gland. Will somebody explain males to me? With diagrams and short words?)

"Oh. Complete regeneration, functional as well as cosmetic. I'll show youÄlater. If you answer my questions fully. You can check it against how it used to look. Now back to business. Talk."

Mac claimed to have been a double agent. He said that, at the time, he was an intelligence officer in a quasi-military hired out to Muriel Shipstone Laboratories. As such, and working alone, he had penetrated the Major's organizationÄ "Wait a minute!" I demanded. "Did he die in the fire? The one called the Major?"

"I'm fairly sure he did. Although Mosby may be the only one who knows."

"Mosby? Franklin Mosby? Finders, Incorporated?"

"I hope he doesn't have brothers; one is too many. Yes. But Finders, Inc. is just a front; he's a stooge for Shipstone Unlimited."

"But you said you were working for Shipstone, tooÄthe laboratories."

Mac looked surprised. "But the whole Red Thursday ruckus was an intramural fight amongst the top boys; everybody knows that."

I sighed. "I seem to have led a protected life. All right, you were working for Shipstone, one piece of it, and as a double agent you were working for Shipstone, another piece of it. But why was I the bone being fought over?"

"Miss Friday, I don't know; that is what I was supposed to find out. But you were believed to be an agent of Kettle Belly BalÄ"

"Stop right there. If you are going to talk about the late Dr. Baldwin, please do not use that dreadful nickname."

"Sorry. You were thought to be an agent of System Enterprises, that is to say, of Dr. Baldwin, and you confirmed it by going to his headquartersÄ"

"Stop again. Were you part of the gang that jumped me there?"

"I am happy to say that I was not. You killed two and one died later and none of them was unhurt. Miss Friday, you're a wildcat."

"Go on."

"KetÄ Dr. Baldwin was a mugwump, a maverick, not part of the system. With Red Thursday being mountedÄ"

"What's Red Thursday got to do with this?"

"Why, everything. Whatever it was that you carried was bound to affect the timing, at least. I think the Council for SurvivalÄthat's the side Mosby's goons were working forÄgot the wind up and moved before they were ready. Perhaps that's why nothing much ever came of it. They compromised their differences in the boardrooms. But I've never seen an analysis."

(Nor had I, and now I probably never would. I longed for a few hours at the unlimited-service terminal I had had at Pajaro Sands. What directors if any had been killed on Red Thursday and its sequelae? What had the stock market done? I suspect that all really important answers never get into the history books. Boss had been requiring me to learn the sort of things that would eventually have led me to the answersÄbut he had died and my education stopped abruptly. For now. But I would still feed the Elephant's Child! Someday.)

"Mac, did Mosby hire you for this job? Guarding me in this ship.

"Eh? No, I've only had that one contact with Mosby and that under a phony. I was hired for this through a recruiter working for a cultural attach‚ of the Ambassador for The Realm in Geneva. This job isn't one to be ashamed of, truly. We are taking care of you. The best care."

"Must be dull with no rape."

"Ouch."

"What are your instructions about me? And how many of you are there? You're in charge, are you not?"

He hesitated. "Miss Friday, you are asking me to tell my employer's secrets. In the profession we don't do that... as I think you know."