“One might also,” said Ana boldly, surprising herself at the harshness of her voice, “speak of the crustacean race that has suffered some casualties.” But Sir Tam stopped her by a gentle pressure on the shoulder. She did not protest. She had suddenly begun to fear that it was Ahmed’s group that had caused those casualties, about which she knew so worryingly little.
“I would really enjoy watching you two fight it out,” said Sir Tam, laughing to take the menace out of his words. But Nan wondered if he didn’t really mean it. She also wondered why he was so carefully and publicly possessive of her, arm around her shoulder, hovering over her drink and refilling it from every passing tray. Surely all these foreign people would suppose they had been in bed together! She blushed at the thought. It would have been bad enough to be guilty of an immoral dalliance, like any common tart, and to have it known. But she was not even guilty! The name without the game — how awful! Why would Sir Tam go out of his way to create such an impression? Could it be that the lax morality of the Fuel people was such that he valued the appearance of sexual adventure as much as the relationship itself? Was he trying to show that he was still sexually potent? And what sort of people was she living among here?
“Please excuse me for a moment,” she said, glancing about as though looking for a woman’s w.c. But as soon as she was well away from Sir Tam, she circled around the white-paneled room to the buffet tables. At least she would bring up her blood sugar. Perhaps that would relieve the headaches and the exhaustion, and then she would think of a way to relieve the pressure from Sir Tam.
The table would have been lavish even in Sofia! But was it not the Tibetans who were giving this party? And why did they feel obliged to spread so wasteful a display of food? Caviar that certainly did not come from the Himalayas; delicate fruit ices that surely were unknown in their sparse, high valleys; pвtйs in the original wooden boxes from France. And look what they had done! The centerpieces were carved replicas of the races of Kungson! A balloonist, half a meter thick, in butter! A crustacean carved from what looked like strawberry sherbet! A long, almost ratlike creature — was it a burrower? — made from foie gras! And there, standing next to her, was a distinguished-looking gray-haired man who was directing a pale-haired younger man to fill a plate from the display. A spoonful of the burrower, a few slices of some sort of meat, a croissant, a scoop from the balloonist to butter the roll. He caught her eye and smiled pleasantly without speaking.
It was all incredibly ostentatious. It quite took Ana’s appetite away. She looked away from the food and saw Sir Tam across the room, eyes on her. Strangely, he nodded encouragement and pointed — to whom? To the graying, tall man next to her?
She looked more carefully. Had they ever met? No. But he had a face she seemed to know, from a photograph, she thought — but a photograph that had meant something to her.
She turned to speak to him, and the pale-haired man was suddenly between them, polite but at a state of readiness. For what? Did they think she was an assassin?
Then she remembered where she had seen the face. “You’re Mr. Godfrey Menninger,” she said.
His expression was inquiring. “Yes?”
“We’ve never met, but I’ve seen your picture in a newspaper. With your daughter. I’m Ana Dimitrova, and I met your daughter a few months ago in Sofia.”
“Of course you did! The angel of rescue. It’s all right, Teddy,” he said to the younger man, who stepped back and began collecting silverware for Menninger’s plate. “How nice to meet you at last, Ana. Margie’s here somewhere. Not near the food, poor thing. She has her mother’s metabolism. She can’t even look at a layout like this without putting on a kilo. Let’s go find her so you can say hello.”
Captain Menninger was sipping her Perrier water and allowing a fifty-year-old Japanese attachй to think he was making headway against her defenses when she heard her father’s voice behind her.
“Margie, dear, a surprise for you. You remember Ana Dimitrova?”
“No.” Marge studied the woman carefully, not competitively but in the manner of someone trying to learn a terrain from a map. Then the card file in her head clicked over. “Yes,” she corrected herself. “The Bulgarian woman. How nice to see you again.”
It was not anything of the kind, and she intended the Bulgarian bint to understand that. On the other hand, Margie had no particular wish to make an enemy of her, either. There might be a time when her connection with that Pak she was screwing — Dulla? Yes. Ahmed Dulla, member of the first Peeps’ expedition to Klong — could be a useful line to pursue. So she turned to the Japanese and said:
“Tetsu, I’d like you to meet Nan Dimitrova. She was such a help to me in Bulgaria. You know how foolish I am about making jokes — I just can’t help this mouth of mine. It says things that get me into the most terrible trouble. And so, of course, I said something ridiculously awful. Political, you know. It could have had really sticky consequences. And along came Nan, total stranger, just a good person, and got me out of it. How is that nice young man you were with, Nan?”
“Ahmed is on Kungson,” said Nan. She was unwilling to give offense, but she was not obliged to like this plump blond’s nasty little put-down games.
“Is he! Why, that’s a coincidence. You remember Dr. Dalehouse, of course? He’s there too. Perhaps they’ll meet.” She saw that her father’s aide had just signaled something to him and added, “Poppa, you’re looking worried. Am I saying something awful again?”
Godfrey Menninger smiled. “What I’m worried about is that if I’m going to give you a lift to Boston, it’s time we were on our way. You do remember you have a date at MIT tonight?”
“Oh, dear. I’d forgotten.” Wholly untrue. Margie had not forgotten the time of her date, which was the following morning, and she had no doubt that her father had not either.
“Also,” he went on, “you’ll be sneezing and scratching if we stay here much longer. Or had you also forgotten that you are allergic to flowers?”
Margie had never in her life been allergic to anything, but she said, “You do take such good care of me, poppa. Nan, I’m sorry this was so short, but it’s really nice seeing you again. And Tetsu, don’t be a stranger next time you’re in Houston. Stop by and say hello.” The Japanese hissed and bowed. Of course, Margie reflected, she could be out of town if he ever did happen to show up in Houston. Not that it mattered. She had already accomplished her objective. Past a certain age, even going to bed with a man did not give you quite as firm a grip on his emotions as communicating the impression that you certainly would like to if you ever got the chance.
In her father’s car, with the bodyguard-aide sitting in front, she said, “Now what was that all about, poppa?”
“Maybe your little Bulgarian friend isn’t quite as much of a country girl as she seems. Teddy swept her as a matter of routine. There was a microphone in her corsage.”
“Her? Bugged? That’s a crock!”
“That’s a fact,” he corrected. “Maybe her delegation put it on her, who knows? That place was full of sharks. It could have been any one of them. And speaking of sharks—”
“You want to know what I picked up,” she said, nodding, and told him what the Japanese had said about the Bengali resolution.
He leaned back in the seat. “Just the usual UN Mischief Night, I’d say. You turn over my garbage can, I throw a dead cat on your roof. Are they going to press it?”
“He didn’t say, poppa. He didn’t seem to take it very seriously.”