“The original human stock came from Nathia II. Their mythology calls them Arabs or Ayrbs. Peculiar customs—space wanderers, but with a strong sense of family and loyalty to their own people. Moody types, very volatile, so it says. Go review your seventh grade history. You’ll know almost as much as I do.”
“On Chargon,” Orne said, “our history texts referred to the Nathians as ‘one of the factions involved in the Rim Wars.’ The impression I got was that they shared the blame just about equally with the Marakian League.”
“There are places where that might sound seditious,” Stetson said.
“How does it sound to you?” Orne asked.
“The victors always write the history,” Stetson said.
“Except perhaps on Chargon,” Orne said. “What has you haring after High Commissioner Upshook? And while we’re on that question, why’re you parceling out your information like a miser giving money to a spendthrift son-in-law?”
Stetson wet his lips with his tongue, said: “One of Upshook’s seven daughters is currently at home. Name of Diana. She’s a field leader in the I-A women.”
“I seem to’ve heard of her,” Orne said. “I think Mrs. Bullone mentioned the fact she was at home.”
“Yes, well… one of these Nathian code messages we intercepted had her name as addressee.”
“Wheeewww!” Orne exhaled in surprise, then: “Who sent the message? What was the content?”
Stetson coughed. “You know, Lew, we cross-check everything.”
“So what else is new?”
“This message was handwritten and signed MOS.”
When Stetson didn’t go on, Orne said: “And you know who MOS is, that it?”
“Our cross-check gave us an MOS on a routine next-of-kin reply. We followed it down to the original. The handwriting checks out. Name of Madrena Orne Standish.”
Orne froze. “Maddie?” He turned slowly to face Stetson. “So that’s what’s eating you.”
“We know for certain that you haven’t been home since you were seventeen,” Stetson said. “We can account for all the significant blocks of time in your life. With us, your record is clean. The question is…”
“Permit me,” Orne said. “The question is: Will I turn in my own sister if it falls that way?”
Stetson remained silent, staring. And Orne noticed now that the man had retreated behind the mask of I-A senior officer, holding one hand concealed in a uniform pocket. What was in that pocket? A transmitter? A weapon?
“I read you,” Orne said. “I remember the oath I took and I know my job: see to it that we don’t have another blowup like the Rim Wars. But Maddie in this?”
“No doubt of it,” Stetson grated.
Orne thought back to his own childhood. Maddie? He remembered a red-headed tomboy, his ready companion for adventure, a fellow conspirator when adults pressed too closely on the secret world of the young.
“Well?” Stetson pressed.
“My family isn’t one of these traitor clans you refer to,” Orne said. “How can Maddie be mixed up in this?"
“This whole thing is all tangled in politics,” Stetson said. “We think it’s because of her husband.”
“Ahhhh, the Member for Chargon,” Orne said. “I’ve never met him, but I’ve followed his career with interest… and Maddie wrote me and sent a picture when they were married.”
“You like this particular sister very much," Stetson said. It was a statement, not a question.
“I have… fond memories,” Orne said. “She helped me when I ran away.”
“Why’d you leave home?” Stetson asked.
Orne sensed the weight behind the question, fought to keep his voice casual. “It was a family thing. I knew what I wanted to do. The family objected.”
“You wanted to join the Marines?”
“No, they were just a way into the R&R. I don’t like violence. And I don’t like women running my life.”
Stetson glanced to the southwest where a flitter could be seen approaching. Green sunlight glinted from it. He asked: “Are you willing to… infiltrate the Bullone family for…”
“Infiltrate!”
“To find out whatever you can about this plot centered on the upcoming election.”
“In forty-two hours!”
“Or less.”
“Who’s my contact?” Orne asked. “I’ll be trapped out there at the Residency.”
“That mini-transceiver we planted in your neck for the Gienah job,” Stetson said. “The medics replaced it at my request while they were putting you back together.”
“How nice of them.”
“It’s functioning,” Stetson said. “Anything happens around you, we hear it.”
“That’ll keep me loyal,” Orne said. As he spoke, he experienced the thought that if he just willed the transceiver to leave his flesh, the thing would pop out of his skin like a seed squeezed from ripe fruit. He shook his head. That was a crazy thought!
“That’s not why it’s there,” Stetson protested.
Frightened by the waywardness of his own thoughts, Orne touched the hidden stud at his neck, spoke sub-vocally. He knew a surf-hissing voice was being picked up by an I-A monitor somewhere within beam distance.
“Hey, eavesdropper! You pay attention while I’m making my play for this Diana Bullone, you hear? You may learn something about the way an expert works.”
Surprisingly, Stetson answered him: “Don’t get so interested in your work that you forget why you’re out there.”
So Stet was wearing one of these damn devices, too. Didn’t the I-A trust anyone anymore?
Chapter Twelve
In terms of human systems, feedback involves complicated unconscious processes, both individual and in a collective or social sense. That individuals can be influenced by such unconscious forces has long been recognized. The large-scale processes and their influence, however, are less well known. We tend to see them only latently in a statistical sense—by population curves, by historical evolution, by changes which stretch across the centuries. We often ascribe such processes to religious forces and have a tendency to avoid examining them analytically.
Mrs. Bullone was a fat little mouse of a woman standing almost in the center of her home’s guest room, hands clasped across the paunch of a long dull-silver gown.
Orne thought: I must remember to call her Polly as she requested.
She possessed demure gray eyes, grandmotherly gray hair combed straight back in a jeweled net—and that shocking baritone husk of a voice issuing from a tiny mouth. Her figure sloped out from several chins to a matronly bosom, then dropped straight as a barrel. The top of her head came just above Orne’s dress epaulets.
She said: “We want you to feel perfectly at home with us, Lewis. You’re to consider yourself one of the family.”
Orne glanced around at the Bullone guest room: low-key furnishings with an old fashioned selectacol for change of color scheme. A polawindow looked out onto an oval swimming pool. The glass (he was sure it was glass and not a more technologically sophisticated substance) had been muted to dark blue. This imparted a moonlit appearance to the view outside. A contour bed stood against the wall at the right; several built-ins there. A door partly open on the left revealed a wedge of bathroom tiles. Everything about the place seemed traditional and comfortable. He did feel at home.
Orne said it: “I already feel at home here. You know, your house is very like our place in Chargon. Just as I remember it. I was really surprised when I saw it from the air as we were coming in. Except for the setting, it’s almost identical.”