“No, no, Stet. Stake my life. I’m used to it.”
Stetson shook his head bearlike from side to side. “Be funny! I trust you, but you deserve a peaceful convalescence.”
“Get it off your chest,” Orne said. “What’s brewing?”
“We’ve no right to saddle you with an assignment at a time like this,” Stetson said.
Orne’s voice came out low and amused: “Stet?”
Stetson looked at him. “Huh?”
“Save the noble act for someone who doesn’t know you,” Orne said. “You’ve a job for me. All right. You’ve made the gesture for your conscience.”
Stetson managed a wry grin. He said: “The problem is we’re desperate and we haven’t much time.”
“That sounds familiar,” Orne said. “But I’m not sure I want to play the old games. What’s on your mind?”
Stetson shrugged. “Well… since you’re going to be a house-guest at the Bullones’ anyway, we thought… well, we suspect Ipscott Bullone of heading a conspiracy to take over the government, and if you…”
“What do you mean take over the government!” Orne demanded. “The Galactic High Commissioner is the government—subject to the Constitution and the Assemblymen who elected him.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“Orne, we may have an internal situation which could explode us into another Rim War. We think Bullone’s at the heart of it,” Stetson said. “We’ve found eighty-one touchy planets, all old-line steadies that’ve been in the Galactic League for centuries. And on every damn one of them we’ve reason to believe there’s a gang of traitors who’re sworn to overthrow the League. Even on your home planet—Chargon.”
“On Chargon?” Orne’s whole stance signaled disbelief.
“That’s what I said.”
Orne shook his head. “What is it you want from me? Do you want me to go home
for my convalescence? I haven’t been there since I was seventeen, Stet. I’m not sure I…”
“No, dammit! We want you as the Bullones’ houseguest. And speaking of that, do you mind explaining how they were chosen to ride herd on you?”
“That’s odd, you know,” Orne said, withdrawing reflexively. “All those trite little jokes in the I-A about old Upshook Ipscott… then I discover that his wife went to school with my mother—roommates, for the love of all that’s holy!”
“Your mother never mentioned it?”
“It never came up that I can recall.”
“Have you met Himself?”
“He brought his wife to the hospital a couple of times. Seems like a nice enough fellow, but somewhat stiff and reserved.”
Stetson pursed his lips in thought, glanced to the southwest, back to Orne. He said: “Every school kid knows how the Nathians and the Marakian League fought it out in the Rim Wars—how the old civilization fell apart. It all seems kind of distant now that the Marakian League has become the Galactic League and we’re knitting it back together.”
“Five centuries is a long time,” Orne said, “if you’ll pardon a statement of the obvious.”
“Maybe it’s no farther away than yesterday,” Stetson said. He cleared his throat, stared penetratingly at Orne.
Orne wondered why Stetson was moving with such caution. What had he meant by that reference to the Nathians and the Marakians? Something deep troubling him. Why speak of trust?
Stetson sighed, looked away.
Orne said: “You spoke of trusting me. Why? Has this suspected conspiracy involved the I-A?”
“We think so,” Stetson said.
“Why?”
“About a year ago, an R&R archaeological team was nosing into some ruins on Dabih. The place had been all but vitrified in the Rim Wars, but an entire bank of records from a Nathian outpost escaped.” He glanced sidelong at Orne.
“So?” Orne asked when the silence became prolonged.
Stetson nodded, as though to himself, said: “The Rah-Rah boys couldn’t make sense out of their discovery. No surprise there. They called in an I-A cryptanalyst. He broke a complicated cipher into which the stuff had been transferred. Then, when the stuff he was reading started making sense, he pushed the panic button without letting on to R&R.”
“For something the Nathians wrote five hundred years ago?”
Stetson’s drooping eyelids lifted, opening his eyes into a cold, probing stare. He said: “Dabih was a routing station for selected elements of the most powerful Nathian families.”
“Routing station?” Orne asked, puzzled.
“For trained refugees,” Stetson said. “An old dodge. Been used as long as they’ve been…”
“But five hundred years, Stet!”
“I don’t care if it was five thousand years,” Stetson snapped.
“We’ve intercepted message scraps in the past month that were written in the same code. The bland confidence of that! Wouldn’t that gall you?” He shook his head. “And every scrap we’ve intercepted deals with the coming elections!”
Orne found himself caught up in Stetson’s puzzle, excited, interpreting it all through the I-A’s prime directive—prevent another Rim War at all costs.
“The upcoming election’s crucial,” Stetson said.
“But it’s only two days off!” Orne protested.
Stetson touched the time-beat repeater at his temple, paused to get the cronosynch, then: “Forty-two hours and fifty minutes to be exact. Some deadline.”
“Were there any names in those Dabih records?” Orne asked.
Stetson nodded. “Names of planets, yes. And family names, but those were translated into a new code system which we haven’t broken and may not break. Too simple.”
“What do you mean, too simple?”
“They’re obviously cover names relating to some internal Nathian social understanding. We can translate the Dabih records into words, but how those words have been translated into cover names is beyond us. For example, the code name on Chargon was Winner. That ring any bells?”
Orne shook his head from side to side. “No.”
“I didn’t expect it to,” Stetson said.
“What’s the code name on Marak?” Orne asked.
“The Head,” Stetson said. “Can you make that tie up with Bullone?”
“I see what you mean. Then, how do you…”
“They’re sure to’ve changed the names by now anyway,” Stetson said.
“Maybe not,” Orne said. “They didn’t change their cipher system.” He shook his head, trying to capture a thought he sensed lurking just beyond his awareness. The thought didn’t come to him. He felt drained suddenly by the effort of following Stetson’s cautious unveiling of the plot.
“You’re right,” Stetson murmured. “We’ll keep at it, then. Something may show up.”
“What leads are you working on?” Orne asked. He knew Stetson was holding back something vital.
“Leads? We’ve gone back to our history books. They say the Nathians were top-drawer political mechanics. The Dabih records give us a few facts, just enough to tease us into frustration.”
“Such as?”
“The Nathians chose cover sites for their trained refugees with diabolical care. Every one was a planet so torn up by the wars that its inhabitants just wanted to rebuild and forget violence. The instructions to the Nathian families were clear enough, too: dig in, grow up with the adopted culture, develop the political weak spots, build an underground force, train their descendants to take over.”
“The Nathians sound long out of patience,” Orne said.
“By any measurement you use. They set out to bore from within, to make victory out of defeat.”
“Refresh me on the history,” Orne said.