"When do you expect her?"
"That information is not available," the synthesized voice began, and then suddenly the screen blanked, and a second, human voice came on. A very polite one.
"This is Message Center. You were trying to contact Captain Lisa Haines. We are prepared to relay a message... however, please stand by. We are experiencing difficulties receiving you. Do not break the transmission. An operator will be with you in moments when the signal is corrected."
Sten, out of sheer habit and training, never stood inside camera range of any com. He was therefore unseen when the red receiving light glowed on. Shortly thereafter, he was some meters away, appearing to be in the middle of a bargaining session with a shopkeeper when two heavyset men with close-cropped hair thundered toward the com booth.
Security thugs, he made them for. He paid for whatever it was he was bargaining for and slipped into the crowd.
Lisa had been caught up in the war. Obviously she was somewhere in the bowels of Intelligence. Message Center, indeed. Sten grimaced. It looked as if he were about to spend a solitary leave, at least until he ran across some local talent. Speaking of which, he headed for a library to find out if his real estate included local talent.
It did not—or so, at least, the various star riches he consulted suggested.
The world's name was Smallbridge. About .87 E-size, commensurate gravity, E-normal atmosphere, three AU from a dying yellow star. Climate tropical to subarctic. Flora/Fauna...
The slender report from the Imperial Survey Mission that said that there was nothing particularly interesting about the world of Smallbridge—then called Survey World XM-Y-1134 and many other numerals and letters—other than extensive members of the Orchidae family, giant specimens of Polypodiosida... blur... blur... insect life... blur... blur... nonmalevolent... water potable, with following blur blur presences... following water-dwelling species found edible, worthy of possible commercial exploration... fauna... nothing that would try to eat Sten, with the exception of a small, rather shy catlike creature that might try to nail him if he were passed out in front of its den—maybe. Nothing else of interest—which meant, to the survey crew, that nothing had tried to kill them, no beings of higher development OBSERVED.
Sten appeared to be owner of an eight-tenths-scale Eden, if one that seemed never to have progressed very far.
Now, what had man done to screw it up after discovery? After all, somebody had given Survey World Whatever-it-was a name. Sten fed in the fiche from his own files.
The answer was—nobody. It had been acquired by an entrepreneur who had made his fortune doing something that nobody had ever thought of and had then decided he had a corner on entrepreneuring. He had named the world, built himself and, Sten gathered, his paid companions in joy a rather wonderful mansion, added a state-of-the-art spaceport, and then gone bankrupt trying to make a second, third, and so on fortune.
Once again—an Eden.
Sten swore a rather surprised oath in Low Tahn, suggesting that the hearer's mother had private parts that could accommodate a battalion—and jerked away from the screen, hearing a giggle.
The giggle came from a very young, very tall, very blond woman sitting at the computer table next to him.
"You understood?" he asked.
"I understood."
Sten, all too aware that his somewhat limited social graces probably had not been improved by his time as a POW, made himself blush and apologized.
The woman, who introduced herself as Kim Lavransdotter, explained. She spoke High, Low, Medium, and War Tahn.
She was a researcher and historian, doctor of this in Tahn culture and that in Tahn history, and very pleased that her studies had been honored by a request to come to Prime World and work with Imperial Social Analysis.
"Maybe I shouldn't tell you this," she said, looking worried. "I guess we've got some kind of feed into
Intelligence, even though they never say anything."
Sten reassured her.
He had clearances. Right up to and including "Eyes Only—Imperial Staff," although he did not tell her quite that much.
She was very beautiful.
And Sten was very lonely.
He offered to buy her a caff.
She stayed very beautiful.
Sten bought her dinner.
The next day, he took her with him to look up some old friends—Marr and Senn, in their crystal light tower.
She charmed them.
She continued to charm Sten.
And she was very beautiful, he noted the next morning as he studied her, lying naked beside him.
Perhaps...
Sten felt very lucky that it happened that Kim was well overdue for a vacation and thought that going with him to Smallbridge was perfect. She had never known anyone who owned his own planet, let alone the racing yacht that took them there.
He should have realized.
But he did not.
Perhaps Sten's perceptions were still dulled from the time in prison. Or perhaps it was Kim. Or perhaps it was Smallbridge itself.
Eden... from its arctic slopes to the long sandy beaches on its islands, with waves that curled in perfectly and endlessly. The fruit was delicious; the mansion was lavish, roboticized, and seemingly equipped with any liquor or food that could be conceived of.
Even that catlike predator turned out to be moderately friendly and more interested in lifeboat emergency rations than a human arm.
As they lazed and explored, Sten was learning.
Lavransdotter, he realized, deserved however many degrees she had and then some. She was an expert on the Tahn. Even Sten, who thought he had learned, by the whip, everything there was to know about the warrior culture, learned. And his hatred subsided. He almost felt sorry for any single Tahn, crippled by his or her background and his or her culture.
Almost, but not quite.
After the last Tahn lord had been destroyed and their culture and works lay in ruins, he might be willing to concede that the Tahn would be eligible to join the civilized races.
Almost, but not quite.
And so the leave passed, dreaming days and nights.
Sten should have realized.
But he did not.
Not until the morning, when a remote from his spaceport buzzed and he came awake. Kim yawned, her head pillowed on his upper thigh, snorted, and went back to sleep.
Sten stretched and flipped a screen on.
He looked at the huge ship that sat on his tarmac, dwarfing the yacht, snarled, and was on his feet. He glowered at Kim as she woke again, stretched, and smiled.
"What's your rank?"
Kim's smile stayed in place. "Very good, Sten. Colonel."
"Mercury Corps?"
"Mercury Corps."
The huge ship sitting in the spaceport was the Normandie. The Eternal Emperor's personal yacht.
"Where," Sten wondered aloud, "did I ever get the idea that somehow, someway, I am so charming and clottin' attractive that, sitting in a library, the world's most beautiful woman just happens to fall in love with me?"
"You sell yourself short," Kim said.
"Thanks. But why you?"
"The Eternal Emperor said to tell you—when or if you figured it out—that the best kind of dictionary is one you sleep with."
"Aw... clot!"
"It is a hell of a war," Kim sympathized. "Now... shall we get dressed and report?"
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Sten glowered his way up the ramp to the Normandie, saluted the OOD, snarled at Kim as she tried to say good-bye, and stomped off, following, as requested, a snappily uniformed aide.