"What's the program?" Mouse asked.
"First we bluff the Fishers. Then we move to Stars' End and ride herd on the scientists Marathon brought out. They'll supervise the Seiner teams. When I'm satisfied with progress, we space for Luna Command. After debriefing, you loaf till Thomas' Board is over. I imagine Thomas will get hung with a desk. He might even move back to the Line."
"How hard will they be on him?"
"The Board will clear him. On psychological grounds. There's precedent. But they'll want him off operations. Which makes sense, I guess. He could be burned out. He might still do commercial or diplomatic work. That wouldn't waste his training. You I don't know about yet, Mouse."
McClennon looked inside himself and could find no remorse over his potential loss of job. He did not like his profession much.
"I might retire," Mouse mused. "Captain draws a good pension." Though he smiled, the coals of lost dreams lay banked behind his eyes. He had fulfilled his goals too early in life.
"Not till after the war, you won't," Beckhart said. "Nobody retires till then. Thomas? Are you going to give me what I need? Do I have to rub your nose in our intelligence tapes first?"
"All right. It's Three Sky Nebula. Inside the wedge and pointing toward galactic center, beginning about one a.u. inside. Give me a pen." He wrote a series of numbers on a memo sheet. "There're your jump-in coordinates. From there you go ahead in normspace. I can't give you the route through the junk. People who know it aren't allowed to leave."
"Three Sky? Really? I thought it would be way outside our usual sphere." Beckhart's stiffness began to fade. He became the Admiral of old. Smiles and friendship. And willingness to spend a man's life. "The purloined letter thing. That's why ships disappear there." After a pause, "I have things to do before we leave. Meet me in the lobby in half an hour. Ready for space."
"Ready for space?" McClennon asked.
"That was a subtle hint, son. Get cleaned up. I'll have a man bring you a uniform. And try to make peace with your woman."
"Thank you, sir."
He set a record for bathing, shaving, and shifting to the clean uniform. He had ten minutes left when he finished.
One minute later he entered the room Beckhart was using as a brig. It was just a hotel room without windows, with two guards posted outside its only door. Amy and Marya sat against opposite walls, ignoring one another.
"Amy?"
She refused to acknowledge his presence.
He grabbed her chin, forced her to face him. "Look at me, dammit!" For two weeks he had been trying to make her understand. She had refused. He wanted to beat it into her stubborn head. It took an effort to speak calmly. "We're leaving in a few minutes. If you want, you can come with us."
She glared.
"We'll end up at Stars' End. I thought you might want to join your research team there. Instead of being sent straight home."
Still she glared.
"If you go back with the internees, you'll end up at the Yards. With your mother. I thought maybe you'd want to go where you had a friend."
She would not say anything.
"All right. Be stubborn." He turned to the door. "Officer? I'm ready."
"Moyshe, wait. I... Yes. I'll go."
He sighed. Finally. The first yielding. "I'll clear it with the Admiral." A wan smile teased his lips as he left the room.
It would be a long journey. Maybe long enough for him to win his case.
Beckhart did not like his idea at first.
"Sir," McClennon explained, "she's best friends with one of the senior Fisher scientists. If we can tame her, she can help sell cooperation. You keep talking about Ulantonid intelligence tapes. Use them to persuade her. We don't really have to turn her, just to open her mind."
"Thomas... I can see right through you. You don't give a shit about... All right. It's another trade-off. Bring her. But you're responsible for her."
"Tell the guards to turn her over to me."
"Go get her, will you? You're wasting time."
An hour later, they were aboard the shuttle to Marathon. Mouse was shaking. Beckhart was lost in dispatches that had come out aboard the cruiser. Amy had her eyes closed. She was pale and grim.
McClennon stared at her and mentally roamed fields of might-have-beens and should-have-dones. He had gotten her to admit an intellectual understanding of his actions. And her inability to differentiate between personal and social allegiances.
She could not see his betrayal of her people as impersonal. She wanted his feelings for her to have been an agent's play-acting. Somehow, that would absolve her of complicity.
She was a self-torturer.
Could he criticize her? Or anyone else? He lived his life in a self-inflicted Iron Maiden.
He and Amy had been doomed from the beginning. His program's instability had made him a natural victim for her inadequacies. They had been too much alike. And she too much like the Alyce creature programmed as one of his triggers. Maybe his ideal woman was a Marya, a cold, gunmetal woman armored at the pain points. A woman with whom it was unnecessary to exchange emotional hostages.
Had he changed during this mission? People did, but usually too slowly to notice. He did not trust the changes he saw. Too many might be artificial.
The Psychs would sort him out. A small team had come out aboard Marathon. Maybe when they finished he would know who he really was. He was not sure he wanted to know.
Book Three
STARS' END
Twenty-one: 3050 AD
The Main Sequence
The lights came on. McClennon, Mouse, and Amy sat in silence. The tapes had been grotesque. Storm finally squeaked, "Admiral... That's really what we're up against?"
McClennon peered at Amy. She met his gaze for an instant. "Moyshe," she whispered, "I think I'm going to be sick."
"It is," Beckhart promised Mouse. "It's tough to swallow. Even when you're there yourself. All that ruthlessness, for no discernible purpose, only makes it more frightening"
McClennon took Amy's hand. It was cool. She was shaking. "You need something?"
"I'll be all right. Just give me a minute."
McClennon turned, "Admiral. I've seen that kind of ship before."
"What? Where? How?" Beckhart came toward McClennon like a tiger stalking game. He seemed to have caught a sudden fever. A haze appeared on his upper lip. "Where?" he breathed.
"The Seiners have one at their xeno-archaeological research facility. You remember, Amy? I asked if it had been built by an intelligent slug? The one nobody wanted to work."
"That's right. You're right, Moyshe, It was exactly like the ships in the tape."
"Tell me about it," Beckhart said.
"There isn't much to tell," McClennon replied. "The Seiners found it in the Nebula. They considered it comparatively modern. They found it surrounded by ships left behind by the people they think built Stars' End. The same people who, I think, built the base Darkside. They assumed the ship had been attacked by accident during the Ulantonid War. I said its crew might have been studying the ships belonging to the Stars' End race. That's all."
Beckhart became thoughtful. "That isn't all, Thomas. There's always more. You just don't know it. Is there a connection? Think about it. Stars' End might be more than just a handy arsenal."
Beckhart was talking to himself, not his audience, McClennon smiled. The Admiral was making the sort of random connections that, when they paid off, caused him to be so effective.
"Thomas, I want you and Amy to talk to Doctor Chancellor's people. They came off the Lunar digs. There might be an angle."
"They should get together with Amy's friend, Consuela el-Sanga. She's more knowledgeable than we are."