Spangler reached for the studs of the limousine's communicator, set into the front wall of the compartment. His wrist-phone would have been easier and more private, but he wanted to see her face.
"You'll excuse me?" he said perfunctorily.
"Of cawse." The little man turned toward the window on his side of the car, presenting his back to Spangler and the communicator screen.
Spangler punched the number. After a moment the screen lighted and Joanna's face came into view.
"Oh—Thorne."
Her tone was poised, cool, almost expressionless—that was to say, normal. She looked at him, out of the screen's upholstered frame, with the expression that almost never changed: direct, gravely intent, receptive. Her skin and eyes were so clear, her emotional responses so deliberate and pallid that she seemed utterly, almost abstractly normaclass="underline" a type personified, a symbol, a mathematical fiction. Everything about her was refined and subdued: her gesture, movements, her rare laughter. Her face itself might have been modeled to fit the average man's notion of "aristocracy."
That, of course, was why Spangler had to have her.
In this one respect, she was precisely what she looked— the Planters were one of the oldest, most powerful, and most unassailably patrician families in the Empire. Without such an alliance, Spangler knew painfully well, he had gone as far as he could, and a good deal farther than a less determined man would have hoped. With her, he would only have begun —and his children would receive, by right of birth, all that he had struggled to gain.
In nearly all other ways, Joanna was a mirror of deception. She seemed cool and self-possessed, but was neither; she was only afraid. It was fear that delayed and censored every word she spoke, every motion: fear of betraying herself, fear of demanding too much, fear of giving too much.
He let the silence lengthen until, in another second, it would have been obvious that he was hesitating for effect. Then he said politely, "I'm not disturbing you?"
"… No, of course not." The pause before she answered had been a trifle longer than normal.
She's hurt, Spangler thought with satisfaction.
"I would have called earlier, if I could," he said soberly. "This is the first free moment I've had in three days."
It was a lie, and she knew it; but it was so near the truth that she could accept it, if she chose, without loss of dignity. That was the knife-edge on which Spangler had hung his fortunes. Deliberately, knowing the risk, he had drawn their relationship so thin that a touch would break it.
Had there been any other course he could have taken? Despite himself, Spangler's anxiety led him through each stage of the logic again, searching for a flaw.
Cancel the approach direct. He had asked her to marry him, for the first time, a week after they had become lovers. She had refused without hesitation and without coyness; she meant it.
Cancel the approach dialectical. Joanna had a keen and capable mind, but she could be as stubborn as any dullard.
There is no argument that will wear down a woman's "I don't want to."
Cancel the approach violent: tentatively. Four days ago, at the end of a long weekend they had spent together in the Carpathians, he had tried brutality—not on impulse, but with calculated design which had achieved its primary object: he had reduced her to tears.
After that, apology and reconciliation. After that, silence: three days of it. Silence wounds more than a blow, and wounds more deeply.
Joanna had spent her whole life in retreating from things which had injured her.
But Spangler had three things on his side: Joanna's affection and need for him; ordinary human perversity, which desires a thing, however often refused, the instant it is withdrawn; and the breaking of the rhythm. Rhythm, however desirable in some aspects of the relations between sexes, is fatal in most others. Request, argument, violence— If he had begun the cycle again, as both of them subconsciously expected, he would simply have made his own defeat more certain.
As it was, he had weakened her resistance by making her gather it against a thrust that never came…
Joanna said, "I understand. You do look tired, Thorne. You're all right, though, aren't you?"
Spangler said abruptly, "Joanna, I want to see you. Soon. Tonight. Will you meet me?"
Before, his tone had been almost as casual as hers, and he had watched the minuscule changes in her expression that meant she was softening toward him. Now he spoke urgently, and saw her stiffen again.
Never let her rest, he thought. Never let her get her balance… He spoke softly again: "It will be the last time, if you decide it that way. But let me see you tonight."
"… All right."
"Shall I send a car for you?"
She nodded, and then her image dissolved. Spangler leaned back, with a sigh, into the cushions.
"My," said Pembun, "look at aw the taw buildings!"
They were stopped twice more before they reached Administration Hill, and went through a routine search at the entrance. From there, the trip to Security Section took less than a minute. The chauffeur left them at Spangler's office door and took the limousine to the motor pool three levels below.
Contrasted with the group that was waiting at the conference table, under the hard, clear glow-light, Pembun looked like a shabby mongrel that had somehow crawled into a purebred kennel. His skin was yellowish under the brown; his jowls were wider than his naked cranium; his enormous ears stuck out straight from his head. His tunic and pantaloons were correctly cut, but he looked hopelessly awkward in them.
After all, Spangler reminded himself carefully, the man could not help being what he was.
"Gentlemen," he said, "allow me to present Mr. Jawj Pembun of Manhaven. Mr. Pembun was a member of the colonial government before his planet gained its independence, and since that time has been of service to the Empire in various capacities. He brings us expert knowledge of the Rithians. Lieutenant Colonel Cassina, who is our liaison with the Space Navy—his new aide, Captain Wei—Dr. Baustian of the Bureau of Alien Physiology—Mr. Pemberton of the Mayor's staff—Miss Timoney and Mr. Gordon, of this office."
Pembun shook hands with all of them without any noticeable sign of awe. To the Mayor's spokesman he said affably, "You know, Pemberton was origin'ly my family's name. They just gradually shortened it to Pembun. That' a coincidence, isn't it?"
Pemberton, a fine-boned young man with pale eyes and hair, stiffened visibly.
"I hardly think there is any relation," he said.
Spangler picked up a memo spool that lay before him and tapped it sharply against the table. "At the suggestion of the Foreign Relations Department," he said delicately, "Mr. Pembun was brought in from Ganymede especially for this emergency. I arranged for his passage through the cordon and met him personally at the spaceport." In short, gentlemen, he thought, this incredible little man has been wished on us by the powers that be, and we shall have to put up with him as best we can.
"Now," he said, "I imagine Mr. Pembun would like to be brought up to date before we proceed." There was a snort from Colonel Cassina which Spangler pointedly ignored. He began the story, covering the main points quickly and concisely. Pembun stopped him only once to ask a question.
"Are you sure that's all the Rithi there were to begin with— just seven?"
"No, Mr. Pembun," Spangler admitted. "We don't yet know how or by whom they were smuggled through to Earth, therefore we must consider the possibility that others are still undetected. To deal with that possibility, Security is patrolling the entire planet, using a random-based spot check system. But we know that these seven were here, and that one of them is still at large. When we find him, we hope to get all the information we need. The idea of suicide is repugnant to these Rithians, I understand."