“Marshal,” it was the young Military Police captain, McKussic, “we aren’t going to give him back to the Morah, no matter what, are we, sir…”
He trailed off. Whin merely looked at him.
“Get to your quarters, Captain!” said Stigh, roughly.
The room cleared. When they were left alone with the fugitive, Stigh’s gaze went slowly to Whin.
“So,” said Whin, “you’re wondering that too, are you, Mack?”
“No, sir,” said Stigh. “But word of this is probably spreading through the men like wildfire, by this time. There’ll be no stopping it. And if it comes to the point of our turning back to the Morah a man who’s been treated the way this man has—”
“They’re soldiers!” said Whin, harshly. “They’ll obey orders.” He pointed at the fugitive. “That’s a soldier.”
“Not necessarily, Marshal,” said Stigh. “He could have been one of the civilian agents—”
“For my purposes, he’s a soldier!” snarled Whin. He took a couple of angry paces up and down the room in each direction, but always wheeling back to confront the fugitive. “Where are those doctors? I’ve got to get back to the Jhan and Dormu!”
“About Ambassador Dormu,” Stigh said. “If he hears something about this and asks us—”
“Tell him nothing!” said Whin. “It’s my responsibility! I’m not sure he’s got the guts—never mind. The longer it is before the little squirt knows—”
The sound of the office door opening brought both men around.
“The little squirt already knows,” said a dry voice from the doorway. Ambassador Alan Dormu came into the room. He was a slight, bent man, of less than average height. His fading blond hair was combed carefully forward over a balding forehead; and his face had deep, narrow lines that testified to even more years than hair and forehead.
“Who told you?” Whin gave him a mechanical grin.
“We diplomats always respect the privacy of our sources,” said Dormu. “What difference does it make—as long as I found out? Because you’re wrong, you know, Marshal. I’m the one who’s responsible. I’m the one who’ll have to answer the Jhan when he asks about this at lunch.”
“Mack,” said Whin, continuing to grin and with his eyes still fixed on Dormu, “see you later.”
“Yes, Marshal.”
Stigh went toward the door of the office. But before he reached it, it opened and two officers came in; a major and a lieutenant colonel, both wearing the caduceus. Stigh stopped and turned back.
“Here’re the doctors, sir.”
“Fine. Come here, come here, gentlemen,” said Whin. “Take a look at this.”
The two medical officers came up to the fugitive, sitting in the chair. They maintained poker faces. One reached for a wrist of the fugitive and felt for a pulse. The other went around back and ran his fingers lightly over the upper back with its misshapen and misplaced shoulder sockets.
“Well?” demanded Whin, after a restless minute. “What about it? Is he a man, all right?”
The two medical officers looked up. Oddly, it was the junior in rank, the major, who answered.
“We’ll have to make tests—a good number of tests, sir,” he said.
“You’ve no idea—now?” Whin demanded.
“Now,” spoke up the lieutenant colonel, “he could be either Morah or human. The Morah are very, very, good at this sort of thing. The way those arms—We’ll need samples of his blood, skin, bone marrow—”
“All right. All right,” said Whin. “Take the time you need. But not one second more. We’re all on the spot here, gentlemen. Mack—” he turned to Stigh, “I’ve changed my mind. You stick with the doctors and stand by to keep me informed.”
He turned back to Dormu.
“We’d better be getting back upstairs, Mr. Ambassador,” he said.
“Yes,” answered Dormu, quietly.
They went out, paced down the corridor and entered the lift tube in silence.
“You know, of course, how this complicates things, Marshal,” said Dormu, finally, as they began to rise up the tube together. Whin started like a man woken out of deep thought.
“What? You don’t have to ask me that,” he said. His voice took on an edge. “I suppose you’d expect my men to just stand around and watch, when something like that came running out of a Morah ship?”
“I might have,” said Dormu. “In their shoes.”
“Don’t doubt it.” Whin gave a single, small grunt of a laugh, without humor.
“I don’t think you follow me,” said Dormu. “I didn’t bring up the subject to assign blame. I was just leading into the fact the damage done is going to have to be repaired, at any cost; and I’m counting on your immediate—note the word, Marshal—immediate cooperation, if and when I call for it.”
The lift had carried them to the upper floor that was their destination. They got off together. Whin gave another humorless little grunt of laughter.
“You’re thinking of handing him back, then?” Whin said.
“Wouldn’t you?” asked Dormu.
“Not if he’s human. No,” said Whin. They walked on down a corridor and into a small room with another door. From beyond that other door came the faint smell of something like incense—it was, in fact, a neutral odor, tolerable to human and Morah alike and designed to hide the differing odors of one race from another. Also, from beyond the door, came the sound of three musical notes, steadily repeated; two notes exactly the same, and then a third, a half-note higher.
Tonk, tonk, TINK!…
“It’s establishing a solid position for confrontation with the Than that’s important right now,” said Dormu, as they approached the other door. “He’s got us over a barrel on the subject of this talk anyway, even without that business downstairs coming up. So it’s the confrontation that counts. Nothing else.”
They opened the door and went in.
Within was a rectangular, windowless room. Two tables had been set up. One for Dormu and Whin; and one for the Jhan, placed at right angles to the other table but not quite touching it. Both tables had been furnished and served with food; and the Jhan was already seated at his. To his right and left, each at about five feet of distance from him, flamed two purely symbolic torches in floor standards. Behind him stood three ordinary Morah—two servers, and a musician whose surgically-created, enormous forefinger tapped steadily at the bars of something like a small metal xylophone, hanging vertically on his chest.
The forefinger tapped in time to the three notes Whin and Dormu had heard in the room outside but without really touching the xylophone bars. The three notes actually sounded from a speaker overhead, broadcast throughout the station wherever the Jhan might be, along with the neutral perfume. They were a courtesy of the human hosts.
“Good to see you again, gentlemen,” said the Jhan, through the mechanical interpreter at his throat. “I was about to start without you.”
He sat, like the other Morah in the room, unclothed to the waist, below which he wore, though hidden now by the table, a simple kilt, or skirt, of dark red, feltlike cloth. The visible skin of his body, arms and face was a reddish brown in color, but there was only a limited amount of it to be seen. His upper chest, back, arms, neck and head—excluding his face—was covered by a mat of closely-trimmed, thick, gray hair, so noticeable in contrast to his hairless areas, that it looked more like a garment—a cowled half-jacket—than any natural growth upon him.