by Matt
They were around the corner. Peter pulled the car to a halt beside the wet curb. Shane got out.
"Remember," he said before closing the car door, "get that message to Maria off right now, and by the fastest way you know."
"I'll do it," answered Peter. "But as I told you, it's the most I can do."
"Just do your part—and hope, for your sake as well as mine, and for everyone else's, that she's here in time for me to take back to Aalaag Headquarters with me," said Shane. He pulled his staff from the rear seat where he had put it on getting into the car, jerked his hood more fully over his head and ran through the still falling light rain toward the corner.
He turned in at the courtyard entrance, finding some small shelter from the rain, and hurried across the open space, past half a dozen human cars and two of the Aalaag mercury-shining vehicles, then up a flight of half a dozen stone steps to a heavy door, which opened automatically before him. He stepped inside to find himself standing between two young fresh-faced giants of Interior Guard enlisted men.
Neither of them made any move either to stop or acknowledge him. The door here would be controlled by Aalaag equipment and it would not have opened to him if that equipment had not somehow recognized his right to enter. A few steps farther on brought him through a sort of small cloakroom or anteroom into a larger foyer with a marble floor and dark woodwork on the walls. A desk with an Interior Guard lieutenant was at his right, and ahead to his left a wide oak staircase led up a flight of steps to the floor above. An elevator for Aalaag use had its door inset in the wall opposite the staircase. The lieutenant at the desk looked up as Shane stopped before him.
"Shane Evert?" asked the officer automatically, reading the name off the screen inset in the surface of his desk.
"Yes," said Shane. The question and the answer would be recorded as password and countersign, for future reference by their masters and the machinery at their masters' disposal.
"We've been expecting you." The lieutenant was as tall, but of slighter build than the two enlisted Guards at the door and looked if anything younger than they did. "If you'll take a seat over there"—he nodded at some benches against the wall opposite his desk—"someone will be down in a moment to take care of you."
The English accent, the situation, was all so normal and pre-Aalaag in what was being said and done that Shane was briefly moved, almost to tears, for what once had been.
"Thank you," he said, and sat down on the bench.
Less than five minutes later, a colonel of the Interior Guard, a tall, bony, narrow-faced man in his forties with neatly combed, straight gray hair, descended the staircase and greeted Shane.
"I'm Colonel Rymer," he said, extending his hand for Shane to shake. "We're glad to have you here. The immaculate sir Laa Ehon has been interested in seeing you as soon as possible."
"Right now, you mean?" Shane asked—for it was not unheard of for him to be ushered in to see one of the aliens immediately on arrival, for all that he was usually made to wait at least an hour or so.
"If you're presentable." Colonel Rymer ran his eye over Shane's cloak and staff. "I don't know enough about that outfit. Are you?"
"Presentable enough to be let in to see the First Captain back at Headquarters," said Shane.
"You should be all right here, then," said Rymer.
"Laa Ehon makes a point of appearance?" Shane asked. "I only met him once before and he didn't say anything to me about it."
"Perhaps you were lucky. Perhaps you were all right," said Rymer. "But he likes things correct."
"Thanks for telling me," Shane said.
Rymer shrugged. "You asked."
They had reached the top of the stairs. They made a right turn into a corridor that had been enlarged to Aalaag-comfort-able dimensions, and followed it to a door at its far end.
Rymer touched the door with his index finger.
"Come," said an Aalaag voice.
They stepped into a room not so large as the office of Lyt Ahn, with which Shane was familiar, but nonetheless a good-sized office, with its windows blacked out and largely covered by wall viewing screens. An Aalaag officer of the twelfth rank sat at a desk to one side of the entrance. Straight ahead, behind an exactly equivalent desk, sat Laa Ehon.
"This is the courier-beast?" Laa Ehon asked Rymer.
"Yes, immaculate sir," answered Rymer.
"You also may stay for the moment. Courier-beast—what is it the First Captain calls you? Shane-beast, you may come to the desk, here."
Shane walked forward until he was only the regulation two paces of distance—Aalaag paces—from the front edge of Laa Ehon's desk. The large, white face, lean by Aalaag standards, examined him.
"Yes," said Laa Ehon after a moment, "I might almost recognize you. You stand with an attitude a little different from that of other beasts I have seen. Do you know if your dam or sire was known for any noticeably different way of standing?"
"I do not, immaculate sir," said Shane.
"It does not matter. But it will be convenient for me to recognize you on sight. I have an eye for beasts and can often tell one from the other. You've met the Colonel Rymer-beast; and you will be having to do with Mela Ky, of the twelfth rank, who is my adjutant and shares this office with me."
Shane turned his head to meet the black-eyed gaze of the alien at the other desk.
"I am honored to encounter the untarnished sir," he said.
Mela Ky neither answered nor changed expression. He went back to his work.
Laa Ehon put a hand to the belt at his waist, and then hesitated.
"I will speak with this beast privately," he said to the other Aalaag. "Do you have a privacy tool with you, Mela Ky?"
"I have, immaculate sir." The adjutant got up from his own desk, came over to that of Laa Ehon and took from his own belt a small, flat rectangle of what seemed to be metal, which he handed to Laa Ehon. In the big fingers of the Aalaag, it looked like a business card as it changed hands, though it would have filled Shane's hand to hold it. Mela Ky returned to his desk. Laa Ehon touched the device with one finger of his other hand and a silvery sphere seemed to enclose him, his desk and Shane.
Shane had experienced this sort of thing before. The privacy tool, so-called, evidently set up a field that acted as a lens to bend light around the field, so that anyone looking at it saw not the field itself but what was on the other side of it, no matter from what angle it was looked at. As Laa Ehon took it into one of his hands there was a flash of silver that Shane knew only he and Laa Ehon could see, and for a fraction of a second it enclosed Shane and Laa Ehon in what seemed like a glistening, egg-shaped space. Then this cleared and he saw the office around him once more—but knew that he and Laa Ehon were now invisible and inaudible to Rymer and Mela Ky.
"The First Captain," said Laa Ehon, "has expressed a wish that you act as liaison between him and me. He also informs me he has asked you to observe and report on the beasts making up this controlling staff with which we are experimenting here. With my concurrence, of course. I am happy to concur with the First Captain in this. In a moment, when we are alone, I will be giving you a private command of which you will say nothing to anyone. I wish it to be thought that if any private information passed to you from me, it did so during this moment we are unobserved by the sir Mela Ky and Rymer-beast. If questioned at any future time, I would like you to give the impression that it was at this moment I said all I had to say that was private to you. Do you understand?"
"Yes, immaculate sir," said Shane.
There was another flash of silver and Laa Ehon laid the privacy tool down on the top of his desk. Shane knew they were visible once more to the other two occupants of the room.
"The Colonel Rymer-beast will introduce you to the cattle of the staff, from the beast who is Governor on down," Laa Ehon said. "Thereafter you may observe them as you will— avoiding as much as possible any interference with their work. You may also observe, but of course not interfere with, the activities
of the Colonel Rymer-beast and his company of Interior Guards in their duties. In the case of any questions, you will come to me. In fact, we will be talking regularly. In my absence, you will treat the sir Mela Ky as myself."
Silently, Shane took this last piece of information with a measured amount of skepticism, born of his experience at the First Captain's Headquarters. In the momentary, transient relationships of most humans to their alien masters, such a statement could be taken literally. But in a situation like this where contact between specific individuals of the two races was not only close but continuing, it was not always exactly true that one Aalaag could be counted on to act as another. The aliens had individual personalities, and the human who had to live closely with them quickly learned who to ask and for what.
But he said nothing. Again, no verbal reaction had been called for from him.
"That much disposed of," said Laa Ehon, "I am interested in talking to you now on various matters. Colonel Rymer-beast, you may now wait for Shane-beast outside. Mela Ky, would you be so kind as to go prepare the Governor-cattle to be of use and cooperative with this liaison?"
"Gladly, immaculate sir," said Mela Ky, getting to his feet behind his desk. Two long strides took him to the door and out. Colonel Rymer followed him.
"Now we will talk," said Laa Ehon. His eyes were unmoving on Shane. "While you are of course a beast of the First Captain, here you are also under my command; and I have a duty for you."
These words, of course, did require an answer from Shane; and there was only one which could be given.
"I am honored, immaculate sir," said Shane.
"My understanding," said Laa Ehon, "is that you will report back to the First Captain regarding the success of this experimental project, and also on the beasts who are being used to staff it, so that he may make his best estimate of the Project's future success. To the best of your knowledge, that is your duty here for the immaculate sir, Lyt Ahn, is it not?"
"Yes, immaculate sir."
"I am extremely interested," said Laa Ehon. "This seems to me to be very useful information and information that I would do well to have myself. I have no wish, of course, to know what you will report to the First Captain, but I have decided that in addition to examining the situation and the cattle connected with this project for Lyt Ahn, you will also examine these things and report separately on them to me."
He paused.
"It will be an honor to do so, immaculate sir," said Shane.
"Good. Such understanding in a beast is most desirable. I have been very interested in you, in any case. You are clearly a valuable beast. I would have concluded as much, even if I had not learned of the high price set upon you by the First Captain. What is your rank?"
Shane was caught unawares. Everything, to the Aalaag, was ranked—according to usefulness, according to value, according to desirability. As a result, even he and the others in the Courier-Translator Corps had been assigned ranks; but as these had no real purpose or use to the humans, they were referred to so seldom he had almost forgotten his. If he had forgotten, it would have been necessary to guess at his rank, hoping that Laa Ehon would not check to see that he had told the truth. But luckily, in that moment, his memory was with him.
"I am of ninth rani: in the Courier-Translator Corps."
"Of ninth? You might be interested to know that at our last meeting of senior officers, the First Captain gave us all to understand you were one of his most valuable, if not the most valuable, of your Corps of cattle—"
It was typical, thought Shane, that while Laa Ehon undoubtedly remembered that he had been frustrated at that same meeting by Shane's protest that the human children brought up in alien households might learn to understand but not speak the alien language, his Aalaag social blindness to the understanding of beasts had caused him to overlook the fact that Shane would also have heard and understood what Lyt Ahn had said about Shane's value, at the meeting.
"—and on the basis of what I have seen of you so far," Laa Ehon was going on, "that confidence of the immaculate sir does not seem to have been misplaced. Indeed, if your value had not been so great in Lyt Ahn's mind, I might have bought you to start my own corps of translators."
"I am honored, immaculate sir," said Shane through stiff lips.
"In which case, I might well have ranked you of no less than third rank. However, it now seems unlikely—"
Laa Ehon paused to stare at the plain gray expanse of one of the large viewing screens on the wall to his right. As his eyes fastened on it, it cleared to give a view of the London outside the building. The clouds had brought the darkness of evening down promptly upon the city, and the rain still fell.
"—that I will be purchasing you," finished Laa Ehon, looking away from the screen, which immediately became blank again, and fixing his gaze once more on Shane. "However, I think you might not despair of reaching the second rank, eventually—that is, if my early opinion of you is borne out."
Shane felt an ugly chill within him. "Thank you, immaculate sir."
"I think that is all, for the moment," said Laa Ehon. "You will find the Colonel Rymer-beast outside and inform him it is my order that he take you to, and make you acquainted with, the Governor staff cattle. You may go."
"Immaculate sir." Shane bent his head in a gesture of understanding, and took a step backward before turning and going to the door to let himself out. In the hall, Colonel Rymer stood a little to one side of the doorway, patiently waiting.
"Done in there, are you?" said Rymer as Shane emerged. "It'll be my job to introduce you to our fellow-humans now. Come along."
9
"I hope you like this place," said the Governor, as the human executive officer of the governing unit was apparently to be called. "It's black market, of course—I mean, it can serve the food and drink it does, and charge the way it does, because here's where a good number of the people in the black market come to do business over a meal. Perhaps I should say gray market—our alien masters haven't really left us the freedom to indulge in anything really black."
It was a small place, with what seemed to Shane to be tables which were proportionately smaller, but meticulously tableclothed and set with attractive china and silverware. The table where the four of them sat was one of the largest in the place, tucked back into a corner so that they had some privacy for conversation. The ceiling was high, the walls were light-colored panelled woodwork, and the reddish blue carpet underfoot was deep and soft. The Governor was a powerful-appearing, square-faced man in his late forties, and while large rather than overweight, seemed as if he might be the kind to like his food.
"From the look of things here the meal ought to be good," said Shane.
He was not someone who enjoyed dining out, or someone who dined out gracefully. Nor could the present gathering honestly be called a happy one. There was an air around the table of businesslike cheer underlaid by an armed neutrality and watchfulness. With these, unlike his experience with the London Resistance people, he felt some confidence. These three would have points in common with other human servants of the Aalaag he had dealt with everywhere, but particularly in the House of Weapons.
"No point in having the staff wait, just so you could look them over tonight," the Governor went on. "I always think it's best to start off with a small, cozy dinner, anyway—and of course we'd have been taking you out to feed you tonight, no matter what. But it's much more relaxing with just you, me, Walter and Jack."
Walter, Shane had learned, was Rymer, who sat at Shane's left. The Governor—what was his name again, Tom Aldwell? Jack was the Lieutenant Governor, a large, balding, silent man past his thirties and apparently in the Governor's shadow, in that he spoke only when called upon to do so by Aldwell. Since Rymer also was clearly not strong on making conversation, this had left the conversation pretty much a dialogue between Shane and the Governor—who seemed to enjoy talking, with the zest and ease of a politician.
"I'll have another drink," said Rymer, waggi
ng one finger at a passing waiter. "You, Shane?"
"No thanks," said Shane. "I've still got a way to go with this one yet."
The past two years had conditioned him to the dangers of the relaxation that alcohol brings, to the point where he really did not enjoy drinking; although he pretended to for people like Sylvie and his other fellow translators on their rare social occasions together. Here was another cause for pretense. Either his companions did like their alcohol, or they were out to get him drunk in hopes of learning things from him that he would not tell them sober.
"Well, I think I'll have another, too," said the Governor.
The waiter, an older man with a bushy mustache and a slight limp, who had seemed to ignore Rymer's original signal, was now coming back to them with an agreeable smile on his face. "How about you, Jack?"
"I'm not quite ready—but, yes," said the Lieutenant Governor. Jack was short for some longer first name, which at the moment, along with the surname it belonged to, had slipped Shane's mind completely—ah, he had it. Jackson Wilson. Wilson had lost most of his hair in front, which gave his long face an egg-shaped look; and his name seemed an awkward one for someone who was not a physically impressive individual to begin with.