Mansour looked at him oddly. Robard opened his mouth, but the foreign colonel managed to speak before he could change the subject. “It?”
‘The baby,“ Kurtz confided, looking miserable. ”It’s an elephant. I don’t know what to do with it. If its father—“ He stopped. His expression of alarm was chilling.
“Ahem. I think you’d better withdraw now, sir,” said Robard, staring coldly at Rachel. “It’s time for His Lordship’s medicine. I’m afraid it would be for the best if in future you’d call ahead before visiting; he has these spells, you know.”
Rachel shook her head. “I’ll remember to do that.” She stood. “Good-bye, sir.” She turned and departed.
As he was helping the Admiral out of his chair, Robard thought he heard a soprano voice from outside:
“—Didn’t know you had elephants!” He shook his head hopelessly. Women aboard the Imperial flagship, admirals who thought they were pregnant, and a fleet about to embark on the longest voyage in naval history, against an unknown enemy. Where was it going to end?
The Citizen curator was unamused. “So. To summarize, the Navy boys gave you the runaround, but have now allowed you on board their precious battlecruiser. Along the way, you lost contact with your subject for an entire working day. Last night you say he did nothing unusual, but you report patchy coverage. And what else? How did he spend that evening?”
“I don’t understand, sir,” Vassily said tightly. “What do you mean?” The Citizen scowled furiously; even at a forty-thousand-kilometer remove, his picture on the screen was enough to make Vassily recoil. “It says in your report,” the Citizen said with heavy emphasis, “that the subject left his apartment, was lost for a few minutes, and was next seen dining at a public establishment in the company of an actress. At whose apartment he subsequently spent a good few hours before returning to base. And you didn’t investigate her?”
Vassily flushed right to the tips of his ears. “I thought—”
“Has he ever done anything like this before? While in New Prague, for example? I think not. According to his file he has led the life of a monk since arriving in the Republic. Not once, not once in nearly two months at the Glorious Crown Hotel, did he show any sign of interest in the working girls. Yet as soon as he arrives and starts work, what does he do?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“I know you didn’t.” The Citizen Curator fell silent for a moment, but his expression was eloquent; Vassily cringed before it. “I’m not going to do any more of your thinking for you, but perhaps you’d be so good as to tell me what you propose to do next.”
“Uh.” Vassily blinked. “Run a background check on her? If it’s clear, ask her a few questions? Keep a closer eye on him in future …?”
“Very good.” The Citizen grinned savagely. “And what have you learned from this fiasco?”
“To watch the subject’s behavior, and be alert for changes in it,” Vassily said woodenly. “Especially the things he doesn’t do, as much as those he does.” It was a basic message, one drilled into recruits all the way through training, and he could kick himself for forgetting it. How could he have missed something so obvious?
“That’s right.” The Citizen leaned back, away from the camera on his phone. “A very basic skill, Muller.
Yet we all learn best from our mistakes. See that you learn from this one, eh? I don’t care if you have to follow your man all the way to Rochard’s World and back, as long as you keep your eyes open and spot it when he makes his move. And think about all the other things you’ve been told to do. I’ll tell you this for free: you’ve forgotten to do something else, and you’ll be happier if you notice it before I have to remind you!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good-bye.” The videophone link dissolved into random blocks, then went blank. Vassily eased out of his cubicle, trying to work out just what the Citizen’s parting admonition meant. The sooner he cleared everything up, proving once and for all that Springfield was or was not a spy, the better — he wasn’t cut out for shipboard life. Maybe it would be a good idea to start the new day by interviewing the engineering chief Springfield was working under? Probably that was what the Citizen meant for him to do; he could leave following up on the whore until later. (The idea filled him with an uncomfortable sense of embarrassment.)
No sooner did he poke his nose into the corridor than he was nearly run down by a team of ratings, hustling a trolley laden with heavy equipment at the double. On his second attempt, he took the precaution of looking both ways before venturing out: there were no obstacles. He made his way through the cramped, blue-painted corridor, following the curve of the inner hull. Floating free, the Lord Vanek relied on its own curved-space generator to produce a semblance of gravity. Vassily hunted for a radial walkway, then a lift down to the engineering service areas located at the heart of the ship, two-thirds of the way down its length.
There were people everywhere, some in corridors, some in chambers opening off the passageways, and others in rooms to either side. He caught a fair number of odd glances on his way, but nobody stopped him: most people would go out of their way to avoid the attentions of an officer in the Curator’s Office. It took him a while to find the engineering spaces, but eventually, he found his way to a dimly lit, wide-open chamber full of strange machines and fast-moving people. Oddly, he felt very light on his feet as he waited in the entrance to the room. No sign of Springfield, but of course, that was hardly surprising; the engineering spaces of a capital ship were large enough to conceal any number of sins. “Is this the main drive engineering deck?” he asked a passing technician.
“What do you think it is? The head?” called the man as he hurried off. Vassily shrugged irritably and stepped forward— and forward — and forward—“What are you doing there?” Someone grabbed his elbow. “Hey, watch out!” He flailed helplessly, then stopped moving as he realized what was going on.
The ceiling was close and the floor was a long way away and he was falling toward the far wall—
“Help,” he gasped.
“Hold on tight.” The hand on his elbow shifted to his upper arm and yanked, hard. A large rack of equipment, bolted to the floor, came close, and he grabbed and held on to it.
“Thanks. Is this the engineering deck? I’m looking for the chief drive engineer,” he said. It took an effort to talk over the frantic butterfly beat of his heart.
“That would be me.” Vassily stared at his rescuer. “Couldn’t have you bending the clocks now, could I?
They curve badly enough as it is. What do you want?”
“It’s—” Vassily stopped. “I’m sorry. Could we talk somewhere in private?” The engineering officer — his overalls bore the name Krupkin — frowned mightily. “We might, but I’m very busy. We’re moving in half an hour. Is it important?”
“Yah. It won’t get your work done any faster, but if you help me now it might take less of your time later.”
“Huh. Then we’ll see.” The officer turned and pointed at the other side of the open space. “See that office cubicle? I’ll meet you in there in ten minutes.” And he turned abruptly, kicked off, and disappeared into the gloom, chaos and moving bodies that circled the big blue cube at the center of the engineering bay.
“Holy Father!” Vassily took stock of his situation. Marooned, clinging to a box of melting clocks at the far side of a busy free-fall compartment from his destination, he could already feel his breakfast rising in protest at the thought of crossing the room.