Ken chuckled, and left.
Grofield went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, and while the water was getting hot he stripped out of his clothes. He hadn’t had them off since first putting them on in the back of that truck a day and a half ago, and in the intervening time he’d done a lot of strenuous moving around.
A nice shower, and then sleep. He stepped into the tub and let the hot water roll over his body. The frozen north was just a dream, just a dream.
He walked back into the bedroom drying himself, and there was Vivian, sitting in the same chair. Grofield stood flat-footed, looking at her. “Oh, come on,” he said. “I’m tired.”
She was smiling. “Colonel Marba sent me down,” she said, “to express his appreciation for everything you’ve done for him.”
“Colonel Marba?”
“No one at home knows about Colonel Rahgos’s death yet,” she said, and the smile widened. “They’ll learn about it from his successor.”
“My best to Colonel Marba,” Grofield said, and went over to the bed and lay down and pulled the covers over himself.
She got up from the chair and came over to the bed and sat down beside him. “And I wanted to thank you, too,” she said. “For everything you’ve done for me.”
“Is that right.”
“And to tell you your room isn’t bugged any more. All the microphones are gone.”
He looked at her with renewed interest. “Is that right?”
Quite a while later, she said, “Remember the snotty thing I said to you the very first time I saw you?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I was wrong.”
“Oh, that,” Grofield said. “That’s a common misconception. It has to do with a physiological difference between the races when flaccid.”
“So I see,” she said.
“But there’s no difference while operational,” Grofield explained.
“I love scientific men,” she said.