"Is this the one?"
"Yes, Superior Dresden, this is Joe Gibson."
"Why is he so pale?"
"There were some problems with the trans. He took it hard."
Dresden thought about this. "It will be best if he goes straight to the apartment."
"Should I take him personally, Superior?"
Dresden nodded. "Yes, you take him, you've come this far with him."
"What about my debriefing from the previous mission?"
"Smith and French are already covering that. You can turn in your report later."
He looked Gibson up and down once more and still didn't like what he saw. "He's not particularly impressive, is he?"
"He's something of a legend in his own dimension."
Dresden let out a short exhalation of breath that seemed to indicate he would never cease to be amazed by what went on in other dimensions, and Gibson, already sensitive to being talked about as though he wasn't there, reached the limit of his tolerance.
"Listen, friend, you may have people jumping around here like you were second cousin to God, but I'm not from around here and I expect to be extended the common courtesies. You know what I'm talking about?"
Dresden's face clearly demonstrated that he wasn't accustomed to being spoken to like that. He glared balefully at Gibson.
"Do you know who I am?"
Gibson grinned and looked Dresden straight in the eye, refusing to be intimidated.
"Yeah, I know who you are. Your name's Dresden and supposedly you're the big wheel round here. Trouble is, that doesn't do too much for me. I'm Joe Gibson and I didn't want to come here; I'm also not a part of your Boy Scout troop and wouldn't advise trying to treat me like I was. I've put up with a great deal in the last few days and I'm really in no mood to be pushed around."
Dresden held his gaze. "I don't like your manners, Gibson."
"That's funny, I was just thinking the same about yours."
"You may regret this." With a curt gesture of dismissal, Dresden turned back to Klein. "Take him directly to the apartment and then report back to me."
As Dresden and his escort marched away, Klein looked at Gibson and slowly shook his head. "You shouldn't have done that. Superior Dresden is vindictive and has a long memory. He won't let an insult like that pass."
Gibson stuck out his lower jaw. "I've dealt with power-crazed assholes before. I can take my chances."
Klein nodded. "You may well have to." He took Gibson by the arm and steered him down through the huge space of light and dark. They passed a gang of laborers humping large wooden packing cases from off the back of a big, old-fashioned semitrailer. The laborers, who wore baggy tan coveralls, were uniformly short and dark, with lank black hair and Prussian-blue skin. Maybe there really was something to this idea of the streamheat practicing selective breeding. If their society as a whole, back in their home dimension, was organized anything like their interdimensional secret police, it had to be a fascist anthill. It wasn't at all encouraging to think that he'd been forced to throw in his lot with a bunch of fascist ants. He couldn't dwell on the concept, however; some more immediate thoughts required his attention.
"What's this apartment Dresden was talking about?"
"We maintain a number of anonymous apartments throughout the city for the use of our people when they need to blend in with the native population. You're going to stay in one of them until your situation has been rationalized."
"Rationalized?"
"You'll be briefed when the time comes."
"And who'll do the briefing?"
Klein almost smiled.
"Superior Dresden."
Gibson's face fell.
"Oh, shit."
"Maybe that'll teach you to put a curb on your mouth."
They turned right at a point where a formidable chain-link and razor-wire fence cut off access to the rest of the area. Gibson couldn't read the red-and-white signs that were posted at regular intervals along the fence, as the text seemed to be in the same alien script that he had seen on the keyboard of the Cadillac's computer, but the red lightning bolts on each sign made the message pretty clear-the fence was electrified. Through it he could see figures, both tan and dark blue, moving around among rows of bulky, tarpaulin-shrouded shapes. For what was supposed to be a covert organization, the streamheat were amassing themselves quite a mess of materiel here in Luxor.
Gibson and Klein entered a tunnel or corridor, Gibson wasn't sure which; ever since he'd woken up from the transition, he'd had the feeling that he was underground, although he wasn't absolutely certain why. They seemed to be passing through the administrative hub of the base; the rooms and cubicles that opened onto the tunnel/corridor were filled with men and women in blue jumpsuits who were either shuffling papers or bent over computer monitors. In one large room, a line of operators stared at a hundred or more purple-and-white, postcard-size monitor screens that had to be a part of some Big Brother surveillance system. Gibson made a mental note of that-you never knew when the streamheat might be watching. It was also along this tunnel/corridor that Gibson caught sight of himself in a mirror. What he saw was enough of a shock to stop him dead in his tracks. His features and figure were much as he had last seen them, but practically everything else had changed. He was pale blue, a very pale blue. Even accepting the fact that he was temporarily seeing a world of people with blue faces, he had become extraordinarily pallid, not a healthy robust blue like Klein and Dresden and all of the others he'd seen since his arrival in Luxor, but a faded-unto-death, corpselike pastel. If anything shocked him more than the color of his skin, it was the way that his hair had changed: it had bleached out like his suit, white as the driven snow. It was also considerably shorter and brushed back into the pompadour of a fifties greaser.
"I'm fucking Eddie Cochran in negative!"
Klein looked a little guilty. "I was intending to tell you about that later when we got to the apartment."
"Tell me what exactly."
"You're extremely pale. You seem to have lost a lot of pigment in the transition."
"This isn't an illusion like the blue faces?"
"I'm afraid not."
Gibson's expression turned from shocked to suspicious. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Klein took a deep breath, as though steeling himself before delivering the bad news.
"You're pretty much an albino."
"An albino? I don't want to be an albino."
"There really isn't too much we can do about it."
"So much for blending in with the native population. I'm going to stand out like a sore thumb."
"In actual fact, you may not."
"The place is loaded with albinos?"
"Luxor has more than its fair share of strange people. Their development of nuclear energy was extremely sloppy and, on top of that, they've had three limited nuclear wars, so there are a lot of quite weird-looking folk walking around."
"So you think I won't be that noticeable."
"I'm hoping not."
"This is getting ridiculous."
The two of them waited at the door of an elevator. When they stepped inside and Klein pushed the buttons, they started going up.
"Where are we headed for?"
Klein glanced up at the ceiling. "Ground level."
Gibson nodded. He was pleased that his sense of being underground had been correct. It was good to know that one's instincts were functioning properly.