by Matt
"Go to the Communications Room," said the officer. "I'll give the necessary orders."
When Shane reached the Communications Room, the Interior Guard captain in charge there motioned him over into a cleared area in one corner of the room.
"Your request to report is already put through," the captain told Shane. He smiled. "Now you wait for the First Captain to find time to listen to you."
Shane stood in the center of the clear area. It was no different from several thousand other such waits he had made in the past two years, but this time there was both an uneasiness and a curiosity in him that made the time seem to go more slowly than training had accustomed him to experience it. He was puzzled over what Lyt Ahn had expected him to find in such a new Unit that could be of interest to someone like the First Captain. It was too soon for any results to show either in personnel or operations, much as the Aalaag might like to think that an order creating an organization such as this set things there to running instantaneously.
Eventually, the figure of Lyt Ahn, standing, appeared in the cleared space facing Shane.
"This is to be a secure report," said Lyt Ahn.
The Aalaag who was Officer of the Day had come in some few minutes before and had been waiting as Shane had been waiting. Now it was that officer who answered rather than the captain in charge of the Communications Room.
"Understood, immaculate sir," said the Aalaag. He reached out to the wall and touched something. The room around Shane vanished. At the same time, the shapes of Lyt Ahn's office appeared around both Shane and the First Captain, so that only Shane's knowledge that these surroundings were images protected him from the otherwise natural assumption that he had suddenly been transferred around the world to the House of Weapons.
"So, Shane-beast," said Lyt Ahn, looking at him. "Your report on the Milan Government Unit. Give it to me."
Shane began talking. The same memory that his job had developed in him, the memory that had allowed him to remember in order the list of cities he was to visit next which Lyt Ahn had reeled off in his message to the hotel suite worked for him now as he talked about the Unit, giving the names of all those, Aalaag and human, who worked there presently, and his assessment of them—a discreet assessment in the case of each of the Aalaag officers, for all the privacy in which he was now reporting. It would not be considered good form by any Aalaag, and least of all the First Captain, that even a very favored beast should criticize a true person.
He watched Lyt Ahn closely as he spoke, in search of some reaction that would give him a clue to the answer he sought, to the question of what Lyt Ahn might be expecting him to have learned from a Unit so newly formed. It might be that the whole matter of having him report was simply good procedure in Lyt Ahn's eyes—but in that case, why have him come here to look the place over at all?
It was difficult but not always impossible for Shane to read a reaction in the First Captain. By most humans, the Aalaag were considered to be all but expressionless, and in practical consequence, incapable of reading expressions on a human face. This inability to read human expressions was something often taken advantage of by human children, and those human adults who, like the children, did not stop to think that the faces they made might also be seen by a human servant of the Aalaag, who would have no compunction about reporting on how their looks belied their respectful tone and words.
But, in fact, the Aalaag did express themselves; not only facially but by small body positions and movements, and long-term human servants had learned to read these signals. For one thing, an Aalaag normally looked directly at whoever he or she was addressing. Not to do so was an insult, implying that the being addressed, like an unknown human beast for example, was beneath notice. It was a mark of favor for an Aalaag to look directly at a human servant as the Aalaag spoke to him or her. But there were differences almost too small to be consciously seen in how the direct look was given. A certain type of direct stare could be the ultimate in threat, a signal of approval, or a signal of something as close to fury as an Aalaag ever permitted himself to come.
Or, it could be that it merely implied an extreme interest in what was being said or heard. How Shane had come to tell the differences in implication of different expressions of Lyt Ahn, he did not really know. Physically, he could have had difficulty describing any specific differences; but he had come to be able to know what the First Captain was feeling by the way he stared.
Primarily, the particular look that Shane was seeing now was a matter of focus. Privately, Shane had named it the "pinpoint stare." An ordinary Aalaag stare was one in which the eyes of the alien seemed to take in at least the full spread of eyes in the person looked at. But in the pinpoint stare, it was as if that focus had been narrowed down to a point no larger than the head of a pin on the forehead between the eyes of the one stared at. It signaled extreme interest on the part of the Aalaag.
As Shane began talking now, he saw Lyt Ann's eyes narrow to that pinpoint stare. But after his first few sentences, the alien eyes relaxed again, and Lyt Ahn was merely meeting him, eye to eye.
Puzzling over this, for his first few sentences had merely been a listing of those he had talked to at this Unit, Shane felt the tension and the quickening of his mind that came whenever he had to deal with a problem involving himself and one of the Aalaag; and, as if by intuition, the idea came to him that possibly it was not what he had said first, but what he had not said, that Lyt Ahn had been waiting to hear. If so, what could that be?
There was no good answer apparent. Shane finished his report, was told to continue on to Cairo, Egypt, on a courier ship that would be waiting for him and Maria in three hours at the Milanese airport; and the communications contact between himself and his master was broken.
Shane left the Unit and returned to the hotel to find everything packed and ready to leave, as a result of Maria's activities.
"Peter phoned—," she said as Shane came through the door—and was interrupted by the phone at that moment beginning to ring. Shane crossed the room and picked it up.
"Pronto," he said in Italian.
"Shane?" It was Peter's voice.
Fleetingly, after his experience with the executives of the Government Unit in London who had recorded his conversation with Laa Ehon, Shane found himself on the verge of hanging up. He had forgotten how wrong he had been in his first assurance to Peter that no one would dare tap his phone; and now Shane understood that there were always a few people foolish enough to do anything.
"It's all right," Peter's voice interrupted the impulse. "I'm speaking through a special circuit and over a special scrambler phone. I just thought I'd tell you our business deal was successful and I'll be seeing you in the next few days, if you'll make contact once you reach your destination."
The line went dead.
"He's more sensible than I am," said Shane aloud, slowly hanging up the phone in his hand.
"Peter? That was Peter again, wasn't it?" Maria's gaze at him was shrewd. "That's what I was trying to tell you—he called just a little bit ago."
Shane nodded.
"We'll talk, later," he said. "You didn't pack my robe and staff, did you?"
"Of course not," said Maria. "That's a stupid question."
The Interior Guard car that arrived a quarter of an hour later to pick them up found a note stuck on the door of the suite, saying that because of sudden special considerations, they had taken other transportation to the airport.
The other transportation was, in fact, simply as usual a taxi, bearing Shane and Maria, both in pilgrim garb.
At the airport they went directly to that part of it that was now exclusively kept for traffic of the aliens and—occasionally—their servants. Here, on showing their credentials, they were escorted by one of the rare women who were tall enough to be in the Interior Guard, to an eight-place courier ship down on the field. There was no sign of other passengers, alien or human, or of the pilot. They settled down to wait, but in fact it was within a coupl
e of minutes that the pilot—a young male Aalaag—made his appearance and they took off.
Shane had said nothing except to give necessary directions and answers to those they dealt with all the way from the hotel to this present moment. In fact, his mind was still fully caught up in trying to find some reason for Lyt Ann's unusual interest at the beginning of the report Shane had given him. But no good explanation would come. His thoughts were beginning to run in circles, so he shelved the problem for the moment, and turned to Maria.
He opened his mouth—and closed it again as the memory of how wrong he had been about anyone who was a servant of the Aalaag daring to record what he might say. They were seated several rows back from the Aalaag pilot, who could not only easily overhear them, but record their conversation for later translation; and he had been about to speak to Maria quite openly in Italian—simply because he doubted any Aalaag on the planet could understand more than a word or two of it. He knew some of the aliens in the House of Weapons could understand a little English, but it was only of the simplest and most limited variety—and had been picked up largely by accident, since the Aalaag officially disdained the tongues of beasts.
And yet, that one memory of how he had been wrong in what he had said to Peter about phones had just now cautioned him into silence in a similar situation. He laughed out loud, at himself, and at Maria's uncomprehending stare. He was beginning to doubt all that it had taken him two hard years to learn.
"I may not know people as well as I think," he said in Italian to Maria in a clear voice that the pilot could easily overhear. "But I know the Aalaag."
Maria's gaze sharpened.
"That's right," she replied.
He blinked at her, uncomprehending.
"What?" he said. "What do you mean?"
"I mean you're right," said Maria, her dark eyes still hard on him, "you do know the Aalaag—and you certainly don't know your fellow humans."
He laughed again, suddenly a little uneasy.
"I was talking about—," he began.
"It doesn't matter what you were talking about, or going to talk about," said Maria deliberately. "You've really got as little understanding of people as anyone I ever knew."
He felt a sudden irrational fear that this change in her meant that he was about to lose her—lose that closeness that had come to mean as much as survival itself to him—together with an uneasiness that was like that which he remembered some words of hers had produced in him once before; though he could not remember exactly when, and what they had been.
"Well, I've been wrapped up in study or work most of my life...." he said hesitantly.
"Yes," said Maria. "Your life. Why don't you ever want to talk about it?"
"Talk about it?"
"Don't you realize," she said, "you've never told me one thing about yourself, who you were and what you did before the aliens came? And even when I've given you the chance to ask me about my life, and who I was, you always turned the conversation to something else. It was just as if by not asking me anything, you set up a barrier against my asking you anything about you. Why don't you want to talk about yourself?"
"But there's nothing to talk about," he said. "I was a graduate student in languages when the Aalaag landed, so when they took over, I was one of those who had to take the language tests to see if I'd qualify for Lyt Ahn's group of interpreter-couriers. I did, and I ended up being one. That's all there is to tell."
"How about all the years before they landed? How about your family? Where did you grow up?"
"Oh, that," he said.
"Yes. That."
"As I say, there's nothing to tell." The feeling of uneasiness kept growing inside him. "My father died before I was old enough to remember him. My mother and I went to live with her married brother. That's how I grew up—I don't really see why you should think I'm worse than anyone else you ever met at understanding other people. My uncle was a job-hopping executive—his field was production management—and we were always moving. That meant I was always having to start over in a new school, so I never did get to make any close friends and keep them. That's probably why I don't seem to get along with other people quite so well as some other people do—"
"But you did make friends in the schools while you were at them?"
"Well," he said uncomfortably, "you see, my uncle was making a lot of money when we first went to live with him, and nothing would satisfy him but I should go to some sort of private school where they let you work at your own speed. It was actually about the only school I ever liked—anyway, I could study what I liked; so I ended up being double-promoted a couple of grades and always after that I was in a grade with kids two years older than I was. You know, when you're young, two years makes a lot of difference. The other kids I spent most of my time with didn't have much use for someone two years younger. I got pretty used to being by myself, so I spent even more time reading... and what with one thing and another, I just didn't have as much to do with other people, even when I got to college...."
He ran down. It was all true; and there had been nothing he could do about it—then, at least. But somehow, telling it to her now made it sound in his own ears as if he was trying to excuse himself.
He waited for her to say something, but she sat silent. She was still looking at him penetratingly, but there was a softening in her gaze now.
"I just haven't had the chance to get as close to people as a lot of people do," he said. "I suppose that got me into being something of a loner. That's all."
"You really do feel completely alone in the world, don't you?" she said. "You think of yourself as standing off, apart from everyone else."
"Oh, I don't think so, not any more so than anyone else does once they're grown up," he said. "Didn't you, once you were old enough to be on your own, feel..."
He could not think of a good word for what he wanted to say. He made a small, helpless gesture with one hand. "... apart," he said at last.
"Both my parents died, too, when I was young," she answered. "I was raised by relatives, too. But the house was full of my cousins, and my uncle and aunt were as much a father and mother to me as they were to their own children. No, I never felt what you feel. You're cold—as if you're standing so far from the world, out in space, that nothing from it could warm you."
He laughed once more, but his laugh did not even convince himself.
"Come on now," he said.
"You're so alone," she said, her eyes searching his face as if to pick out the human features from what was otherwise a mask. "So terribly, terribly alone; and the worst of it is when I reach out for you, you draw back."
"I don't draw back," he said.
"Yes, you do. You go away from me even when we're in bed together. Even when we're making love, you're running away and escaping from me. Do you know what it's like to have someone in your arms and feel he wants to get away from you, even when he's telling you how much he loves you?"
"But I don't do that!" he said angrily.
"You do! Every time!" Her voice, which had tightened, softened again. "It isn't as if you're deliberately doing it—it's as if you can't help running when you find yourself that close to someone."
He could think of nothing to say.
"But you're driving even me away from you, don't you know that?" she went on.
"If you feel that way," he said, suddenly reckless with bitterness, "why don't you just leave now? You want out of the Courier-Translator Corps? I can get you out. Not legally— and it'd take a little cooperation by some people like your Resistance friends—but it can be done."
"I don't want to leave you, you ought to know that," she said softly. "I said you were driving me away, that's all. I'd never want to leave you because I know the other side of you, how desperately you love people, even though you think they'll never understand you enough to love back. You loved people so much you could risk your life to save one of them —which was me—even though you'd never met me."
"I—" He
wanted to tell her that was not the way it had been, but he was too cowardly.
"I'm only warning you," she said, "that if you push hard enough, if you really reach the point where you want me to leave you, I'll have to go. You've got to understand that. It'll be your doing, not mine. It'll be up to you to stop yourself from pushing that hard if you don't want to do without me. That's all."
"You'd go," he said numbly; forgetting his words of a moment before in which he had offered to help her leave him.
"If you really want it," she said. "I couldn't do anything else. So now you know. You've been warned; and I'll pray, as I've been praying, all along, that you'll never do anything like that."
21
Cairo was warm and dry, except in those enclosed spaces where air conditioning made it icy; and Laa Ehon's representatives there had simply taken over a small hotel to set up their local Government Unit. It was a rambling, one-story structure that had been built just before the arrival of the Aalaag, in imitation of a motel in the U.S—all glass and parking lot. The result was that the Unit's offices were spread out through what had been a number of guest rooms, and there was a great deal of going to and fro in the corridors—particularly, but not exclusively, by the human staff.