It wasn’t as if sending a man to Base One was a big deal; the regular supply run was headed out there in another two hours anyway. Passing the problem along would be the simplest solution, and if the fellow really was in Intelligence, the sergeant didn’t want to interfere.
“I’ll have to ask you to submit to a search,” he said, “and from the look of that outfit, a delousing, too. Do you have any credentials?”
Chapter Seventeen
“He wants the bodies,” Best said. “He said I should say that you’d know what he meant, but if you…well, in his words, if you try to play dumb, he means he wants the remains of his wife and daughter.”
Markham drummed fingers on his desk. “Now he’s asking,” he said.
“Because we’ve got them safe and he can’t get them any other way,” Albright said.
“Or because he knows that we know he wants them,” Howe suggested. “He wants us to think he’s coming out in the open.”
“You don’t think he is?” Markham asked her, mildly startled.
Howe shrugged. “I never trust anyone a telepath can’t read,” she said.
“Sensible attitude,” Albright agreed.
“I wonder if we shouldn’t tell the General Secretary about this,” Markham said. “After all, this Brown is effectively a head of state-a real one, not some penny-ante rebel tyrant-and he’s asking us to turn over what might be Imperial property. I don’t see this as within the purview of the Department of Science. We were directed to investigate and contain Shadow, and to contact any other interdimensional civilizations we could locate. We’ve done that-Shadow is dead, and we’ve got this Brown ready to talk. So we’re done.”
“As long as the Empire’s security is threatened, the military is still involved,” Albright said, “but I don’t see this as a military matter, either.”
Albright and Markham turned to Howe, who shrugged. “I’m not authorized to say anything about Intelligence’s opinion,” she said.
“Neither am I,” Best said. “I’m just a field agent on detached duty to the Department of Interdimensional Affairs.”
Best had noticed that John Bascombe, head of that department, was not present; he didn’t have to ask why, but he did wonder whether Bascombe was still alive and free. He hadn’t heard Bascombe’s name spoken since he had arrived at Base One; he’d been sent directly to Markham’s office, where the current gathering had formed. It was quite clear that Bascombe was no longer in any position of authority.
Best was fairly sure that initially, Markham would just have removed Bascombe from duty-that was easier to keep quiet. If Bascombe didn’t want to keep quiet, though, if he protested-well, there were prisons where no word would get out. And if that was too much trouble, a blaster charge was cheaper and more permanent.
In any case, mentioning him did not seem like a good idea, and Best didn’t.
This talk about the General Secretary was not comforting, though. Any blame for screwing up that Secretary Sheffield might want to hand out would be directed at higher levels than mere field agents, but Intelligence’s internal attitude was another matter. Nothing official would be done, but agents who showed any signs of developing a high profile had a tendency to wind up either in obscure backwaters, or on assignments with excessive casualty rates.
Like 100%.
Best hoped Bascombe, wherever he was, was proud of himself.
* * * *
Miletti was slumped in the armchair, staring disinterestedly at the TV, when the daily knock came.
“Come in, it’s open,” he called.
The lieutenant crept in, tape recorder in hand and already running. He’d had practice. The questioning went better if Miletti wasn’t paying attention-and both he and Miletti knew that. Miletti wasn’t being rude by watching reruns of “$25,000 Pyramid,” he was making it easier on everyone.
The lieutenant did wonder sometimes about what shape Miletti was in, physically and emotionally-he obviously didn’t enjoy any of this.
That wasn’t the lieutenant’s department, though; he was just an interviewer. (That sounded much nicer than “interrogator.”)
“Any attempts at contact?” he asked.
“They’re listening,” Miletti said, without looking up.
“Sending?”
“Not sending.”
“Any mention of Earth?”
“Nothing new.”
“Proserpine Thorpe?”
“Nothing new.”
“Amy Jewell?”
“Nothing.”
“Pel Brown?”
“Sent a message.”
Miletti blinked, startled by his own words.
The lieutenant was almost equally startled-until now there had been no change for a couple of weeks. “What’s the message?” he asked.
“He wants the bodies,” Miletti answered without thinking. “His wife and daughter.”
This was outside anything the lieutenant was prepared to deal with, but he could at least ask the obvious. “Why?”
“Don’t know.”
“Is the Empire going to deliver them?”
Miletti looked up at the lieutenant. “This is spooky, you know,” he said. “I really hate this. And I can’t believe it’s real. How do you know I’m getting this right, and not just making it up?”
“Not my department,” the lieutenant said. “Are they going to give Brown the bodies?”
“That’s what’s really spooky,” Miletti said. “They think they don’t know yet, but they do, and I know it.” The lieutenant needed a second to puzzle that out, and had just got it straight when Miletti concluded, “They aren’t going to.”
* * * *
“How do I report that?” Carrie Hall asked her brother.
He didn’t need to ask what she meant.
“You don’t,” he said. “Bad enough they know we’re leaking anything; if they find out we’re leaking things that we aren’t supposed to know, that nobody knows consciously…well, hell, maybe he’s wrong, anyway. Maybe it’s just an opinion he picked up somewhere. Just don’t mention it.”
Carrie nodded reluctantly.
She didn’t like it, though. Telepaths weren’t supposed to keep secrets like that-they had orders to report on Miletti, and they weren’t supposed to leave out anything important. And there shouldn’t be that sort of leakage. There never had been before they started getting involved with these other worlds. Telepaths all knew things they shouldn’t, but nobody in the entire Empire had ever tapped into the group unconscious of the telepaths the way this Miletti had.
Earthpeople were apparently slightly different from Imperials, in some very subtle way-or at least, Miletti was. Maybe he was a mutant himself-maybe he would be a telepath in Imperial space, if he ever came through a space-warp into the normal universe, and maybe that was why they couldn’t shut him out.
They had tried. Miletti was the only psychic they’d found on Earth where they hadn’t been able to make any conscious contact at all, even though they knew he ought to be receptive-maybe it was because he’d had enough telepathic talent that he’d learned to shut them out.
But he couldn’t shut out their unconscious transmissions-and neither could they. They’d been able to close off the others, but not Miletti.
So for the first time ever a non-telepath, someone who hadn’t been brought up from infancy in the Special Branch, who hadn’t been trained in keeping secrets, someone who hadn’t sworn loyalty to the Emperor and the Empire, was linked into the telepathic network.
Nothing like that had ever happened before they’d begun messing around with other universes.
And Prossie hadn’t been an outcast before they contacted Earth. She never would have gone rogue if she’d stayed in the Empire.
And if she had gone rogue anywhere in the Empire she would never have survived if she hadn’t had Earth to escape to. Carrie suspected that bad thoughts were leaking through from Prossie on some subconscious level, just as secrets were leaking through to Miletti, and that Prossie’s horrible rebelliousness was affecting the entire family-everyone seemed to be thinking strangely lately.