The guard stiffened to attention. "Sir!" he barked.
Ardan nodded pleasantly and set his thumb against the identity plate. At once, the familiar voice called out, "Ardan! Come in!"
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, setting in place the bar that prevented automatic unlocking. Hanse met him with outstretched arms, and Ardan returned the bear hug fiercely. "I was wrong," he said, as they stepped apart. "I know now that you do only what you have to do. So much has come into focus for me these past months. Forgive me, Hanse."
Hanse Davion was beaming down at him, his ruddy face bright with relief. "Oh, stow it! he said. "Just let me look at you. What happened out there, Ardan?"
It was to be, of course, a very long tale. They sat together before the window that gave a wide view of the land around the eminence where the palace sat. This was a soft country, the cornucopia of this part of the system. Wide fields were edged with walls to prevent erosion. Flocks of birds wheeled overhead.
Ardan sighed with pleasure at the view. "How good it is to be here! I never much liked Argyle before...too quiet and peaceful. But now I can stand any amount of that, and then some more." He turned to his Prince and began the account of all that had recendy happened.
When he fell silent at last, Hanse sat still, staring at him. Ardan could feel his old friend weighing his story, assessing his appearance and his attitude. The Prince had doubtless been advised that Ardan Sortek was mentally ill. Now he had to make his own decision.
Ardan rose and moved to the window. A shuttle was moving downward onto the private port. Messengers or bureaucrats, he supposed. He turned back to Hanse.
"I am convinced that there is a conspiracy of some sort afoot. Why else would I have been allowed to see the double and then to escape? Even Lees thought that escape was suspiciously easy. I suspect that he must have reported that to you."
The Prince rose and came to stand beside him. "I have been hearing many wild things about you," he said slowly, thoughtfully. "But I know you too well. Whatever happened out there, you are quite sane. But someone has done a remarkable job of trying to destroy your credibility. Why? I cannot imagine how anyone could expect to substitute another man for me."
Ardan set his hand on his friend's shoulder. "Your betrothed has quite a head on her young shoulders. She is the one who found the records of former impersonations. She is the one who set me to thinking about the suspicious ease of everything leading to my escape. She is the one who got her mother to lend me a JumpShip. Without that, I could not have hoped to leave Tharkad City without being seen and reported.
"She thought at least one of the doctors in attendance was involved in some way, and particularly asked me to warn you to be careful." Ardan smiled. "I believe that you have linked yourself with a woman who will be a joy to you. And not only politically."
Hanse looked at him quizzically. "A bit in love with her, yourself?" he asked gently.
The thought surprised Ardan. He was fond of Melissa, true, but that particular part of his heart seemed to be already occupied.
"Very fond of her," he said. "But there might be someone else. Some day. When things are suitable."
Hanse chuckled. "I can guess..." he started to say, before being cut off by a disturbance audible even through the thickness of the study door.
"What the...?" He went to the doorway and unlocked the portal, opening it with a jerk. "What on the Great Green Runway is going on?" he demanded. Then Hanse Davion stopped dead, his face turning very pale.
He was looking direcdy into his own eyes.
27
It was not easy for the Archon-Designate to do anything secretly, but Doctor Erl Karns never suspected Melissa's quiet surveillance.
Ardan had left Tharkad City at the dull and dreary tag-end of winter. With the snow too soft for skiing and too deep for hiking, there were few other entertainments left. Nearly everyone in Tharkad was bored and resdess, now that the end of winter's rule seemed so near at hand. And so Melissa's ceaseless, seemingly aimless prowling about the great house of the Steiners did not seem strange. The computer system was, of course, her most valuable ally.
The Steiner library was comprehensive, updated constandy. Data files from every conceivable source poured into its unlimited capacity every day, including personal dossiers for anyone on Tharkad who had any dealing, however remote, with the royal family, the staff, the military, the diplomatic corps, known and suspected criminals, spies, and agents for commerce. There were few things that didn't find their way into that system, sooner or later.
Melissa knew her way around a computer system. She had learned her letters when she was two from such a source, and had been burrowing her way through all manner of exotic, boring, and unusual files ever since. She knew, too, how to cover her tracks after having sought out the dossier on Erl Karns. Not a trace remained on record to reveal that anyone had been asking questions about him.
She had, of course, told her mother what she intended doing. Katrina, loaded down with overseeing the many matters vital to the Commonwealth, had assented without giving the matter a second thought. So it was that when Melissa tapped on her study door early one morning with a hint of spring in the air, Katrina was astonished at the news the young woman brought to her.
"The good doctor Karns has had dealings with our enemies," Melissa told her. "More than once. He was on Luthien for four years, ostensibly to track down a virus that was plaguing the troops Kurita had stationed on Rasel-hague. Some sort of mysterious tropical disease."
"That's reasonable enough," said Katrina. "A doctor investigates many matters. A virus on one world, even an enemy one, can become a threat to many others, if left unchecked."
"Then he moved on to Capella, where he took an advanced degree in internal medicine, with emphasis on unusual viruses. From there, he went to New Syrtis, where he became an intimate of the Liao consular official. This was during a period of particular stress between the Davion interests that control that world and those of Kurita and Liao."
"I still do not see anything suspicious about a doctor who is obviously interested in unusual viral diseases pursuing them to their sources and studying them in places where they are most commmon." Katrina was beginning to look impatient.
Melissa unfolded a printout. "Here are the people with whom he was friends in all those places. His regular companions and his occasional haunts. Read them and then tell me there is nothing suspicious about our dedicated physician!"
Katrina scanned the sheet. At first, her eyebrows were quirked skeptically. They straightened. Then they rose in an arch. She looked up, her eyes wide and angry.
"Why hasn't Security picked up all this?" she asked Melissa.
"I wondered about that, too. I checked through the system, running down everything I could think of. But without an override code, I could never have traced Karns' activities at all. There's a lock on all his files. Nobody of less authority than you or me could possibly access this material. Security, for all its power, hasn't that ultimate override. And nobody, I suspect, ever thought that we would look into such a minor medical person's record."
"Nor would we, if he had not been sent to the Folly to attend the wounded in their transit to Tharkad," mused her mother. "I wonder...if that was the normal rotation of staff, or if it was efficiendy managed. The other doctors seemed almost in awe of Karns. There has been interference on his behalf, perhaps?"