If only he had not left the apartment that afternoon to pick a little money off the spacers at cards down by the shuttleport docks and get groceries. If only he had arrived back a little earlier, and Captain Rau a little later. If only Janine had not gambled her life against Captain Rau's nerve disruptor to warn him. If only. If only. If only.
Cee discovered the altered consciousness of the berserker within himself in the battle to keep her body, every cell harboring the genetic secret, from falling back into Millisor's hands. It was a full day before Cee was able to get her corpse cryogenically frozen, much too long to beat brain-death even if there had been no disruptor damage.
He hoped anyway. All his will was focused now on the single obsession of making as much money as he could as quickly as possible. Terrence Cee, who had embraced a near-honest poverty for the sake of Janine's scruples while she lived, now plumbed the twisted uses of his power to their limits to amass the wealth needed to serve her corpse. Enough for the passage of a man and a heavy cyro-carton to the laboratories of Jackson's Whole where, it was whispered, enough money could buy anything.
But even a great deal of money could not buy life back from that death. Alternatives were gently suggested. Would the honored customer perhaps wish a clone made of his wife? A copy could be produced which even the most expert could not tell from the original. He would not even have to wait seventeen years for the copy to grow to maturity; things could be speeded up amazingly. The copy's personality could even be recreated with a surprising degree of verisimilitude, for the right price—perhaps even improved upon, were there aspects of the original not quite to the honored customer's taste. The clone herself would not know the difference.
"All I needed to get her back," said Cee, "was a mountain of money and the ability to convince myself that lies were truth." He paused. "I had the money."
Cee was silent for a long time. Ethan stirred uneasily, embarrassed as a stranger in the presence of death.
"Not to be pushy or anything," he prodded at last, "but I trust you were about to explain the connection of all this with the order for 450 live human ovarian cultures Athos sent to Bharaputra Laboratories?" He smiled winningly, hoping that Terrence Cee was not about to clam up just before the pay-off.
Cee glanced at Ethan sharply, and rubbed his forehead and temples in unconscious frustration. In a little while he answered, "Athos's order came into the genetics section of Bharaputra Labs while I was going around and around with them about Janine. I'd never heard of the planet before. It sounded so strange and distant to me—I thought, if only I could get there, maybe I could lose Millisor and my past forever. After Janine's remains were—" he swallowed painfully, his eyes flinching away from Ethan's, "were cremated, I left Jackson's Whole and started on a roundabout route designed to bury my trail. I lined up a job here to give me a cover identity while I waited for the next ship to Athos.
"I got here five days ago. Out of pure habit, I checked the transients' register for Cetagandan nationals. And found Millisor had been set up here for three months as an art and artifacts broker. I couldn't imagine how I'd spotted him before he spotted me, until I maneuvered close enough to read him. He'd pulled everyone off transient surveillance to hunt for you and Okita. They're at least a week behind in covering the exits, and with one man short they're going to be a long time catching up. I believe I owe you more than one thank you, Doctor. What did you do with Okita, anyway?"
Ethan refused to be diverted. "What did you have Bharaputra Laboratories do to Athos's order?" He experimented with giving Cee a stern and fishy stare.
Cee moistened his lips. "Nothing. Millisor just thinks I did. I'm sorry it got him all wound up."
"I'm not quite as dense as I appear," said Ethan gently. Cee made a vague I-never-suggested-it gesture. "I happen to have independent information that Bharaputra's top genetics team spent two months assembling an order that could have been put together in a week." He glanced around at the tiny, sparse room. "I also note that you appear to be minus a mountain of money." Ethan gentled his voice still further. "Did you have them make an ovarian culture from your wife's remains, instead of having her cloned, when you realized cloning could not bring back what was essential in her? And then bribe them to slip the culture into our order, meaning to follow it on to Athos?"
Cee twitched. His mouth opened; he finally whispered, "Yes, sir."
"Complete with the gene complex for this pineal mutation?"
"Yes, sir. Unaltered." Cee stared at the floor. "She liked children. She was beginning to dare to want them, when we thought we were safe, before Rau caught up with us the final time. It was the last thing—the last thing I could do for her. Anything else would have merely been for myself. Can you see that, sir?"
Ethan, moved, nodded. At that moment he would have cheerfully decked any Athosian fundamentalist who dared to argue that Cee's tragic fixation upon his forbidden female could have no honor in it. He trembled at his own radical emotion. And yet, something did not add up. He almost had it…
The door buzzer blatted.
They both jumped. Cee's hand checked his jacket for some hidden weapon. Ethan merely paled.
"Does anyone know you're here?" Cee asked.
Ethan shook his head. But he had promised this young man the protection of Athos, such as it was. "I'll answer it," he volunteered. "You, er—cover me," he added as Cee started to object. Cee nodded, and slipped to one side.
The door hissed open.
"Good evening, Ambassador Urquhart." Elli Quinn, framed in the aperture, beamed at him. "I heard the Athosian Embassy might be in the market for security guards—soldiers—an intelligence corps. Look no further, Quinn is here, all three in one. I'm offering a special discount on daring rescues to any customer who places his order before midnight. It's five minutes till," she added after a moment. "You going to invite me in?"
CHAPTER NINE
"You again," groaned Ethan. He gave Commander Quinn a malignant glower as her exact words—his exact words—registered. "Where'd you plant the bug, Quinn?"
"On your credit chit," she answered promptly. "It was the one item you slept with." She rocked on her toes, and cocked her head to peer around Ethan's shoulder. "Won't you introduce me to your new friend? Pretty please?"
Ethan bleated under his breath.
"Exactly," Quinn nodded. "And I must say you're the best stalking-goat I ever ran. The way troubles flock to you is just astonishing."
"I thought you had no use for—ah—queers," said Ethan coldly.
She grinned evilly. "Well, now, don't take that too much to heart. To tell the truth, I was starting to wonder just how I was ever going to shift you out from under my bed. I was really very pleased with your initiative."
Ethan's lip curled, but until she took her booted foot off the door groove the safety seals would refuse to close. He stepped aside with what grace he could choke up.
Terrence Cee's right hand smoothed his jacket, tensely. "Is she a friend?"
"No," said Ethan curtly.
"Yes," Commander Quinn nodded vigorously, turning her best smile on the new target.
Cee, Ethan noted irritably, showed the same silly startlement that all galactic males displayed upon their first encounter with Commander Quinn; but to Ethan's relief he seemed to recover far more quickly, his eyes jumping from her face to her holster to her boots and other likely weapons check-points. Quinn's eyes mapped Cee's inventory of her against Cee himself, and crinkled smugly in the knowledge of where to look for his weapons. Ethan sighed. Was the mercenary woman always destined to be one step ahead of them?
The doorseals hissed shut and Quinn seated herself with her hands resting demurely on her knees, away from whatever arsenal she carried. "Tell this nice young man who I am, Ambassador Doctor Urquhart."
"Why?" Ethan grumped.
"Oh, c'mon. You owe me a favor, after all."
"What!" Ethan inhaled in preparation for fully expressing his outrage, but Quinn went on.
&n
bsp; "Sure. If I hadn't primed my cousin Teki to ease you on out of quarantine you'd still be hung up in there with no ID, legal prisoner of the handwashers. And you and Mr. Cee here would never have met."
Ethan's jaw snapped shut. "Introduce yourself," he finally fumed.
She gave him a gracious nod and turned to Cee, her studied ease not quite concealing an intent excitement. "My name is Elli Quinn. I hold the rank of Commander in the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, and the post of a field agent in the Fleet intelligence section. My orders were to observe Ghem-colonel Millisor and his group and discover their mission. Thanks largely to Ambassador Urquhart here, I have finally done so." Her eyes sparked satisfaction.
Terrence Cee stared at them both in new suspicion. It made Ethan boil, after all his careful work to coax Cee's damaged spirit to trust him a little.
"Who are you working for?" asked Cee.
"Admiral Miles Naismith commands me."
Cee brushed this aside impatiently. "Who is he working for, then?"
Ethan wondered why this question had never occurred to him.
Commander Quinn cleared her throat. "One of the reasons, of course, for hiring a mercenary agent instead of using your own in-house people is precisely so that if the mercenary is captured, he cannot reveal where all his reports went."
"In other words, you don't know."
"That's right."
Cee's eyes narrowed. "I can think of another reason for hiring a mercenary. What if you want to do an in-house check of your own people?
How can I be sure you're not working for the Cetagandans yourself?"
Ethan gasped at this horrific, logical idea.
"In other words, might Colonel Millisor's superiors just be evaluating him for his next promotion?" Quinn's smile grew quizzical. "I hope not, because they would be awfully unhappy with that last report of mine—" by which vagueness Ethan gathered that she had no intention of publically reclaiming Okita as her kill. This generosity failed to fill him with gratitude.
"—the only guarantee I can offer you is the same one I'm relying on myself. I don't think Admiral Naismith would accept a contract from the Cetagandans."
"Mercenaries get rich by taking their contracts from the highest bidder, " said Cee. "They don't care who."
"Ah—hm. Not precisely. Mercenaries get rich by winning with the least possible loss. To win, it helps if you can command the best possible people. And the very best do care who. True, there are moral zombies and outright psychos in the business—but not on Admiral Naismith's staff."
Ethan barely restrained himself from quibbling with this last assertion.
Well-launched, she continued, forgetting her carefully non-threatening posture and rising to pace about in all her nervous concentration. "Mr. Cee, I wish to offer you a commission in the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. Based on your telepathic gift alone—if proved—I can personally guarantee you a tech/spec lieutenancy on the Intelligence Staff. Maybe something more, given your experience, but I'm sure I can deliver a lieutenancy. If you were indeed bred and born for military intelligence, why not make that destiny your own? No secret power structures like the ghem-lords make or break you in the Dendarii. You rise on merit alone. And however strange you think yourself, there you will find a comrade who is stranger still—"
"I'll bet," muttered Ethan.
"—live births, replicator births, genetically altered marginal habitat people—one of our best ship captains is a genetic hermaphrodite."
She wheeled, she gestured; she would swoop down like a hawk if she could, Ethan felt, and carry off his new charge.
"I might point out, Commander Quinn, that Mr. Cee asked for the protection of Athos."
She didn't even bother to be sarcastic. "Yes, there you are," she said quickly. "If it's Millisor you fear, what better place to find protection than in the middle of an army?"
Furthermore, Ethan thought, Commander Quinn was unfairly good-looking when she was flushed with excitement…. He peeked fearfully at Cee, and was relieved to find him looking cold and unmoved. If that pitch had been aimed with such passion at him, he might be ready to run out and sign up himself. Did the Dendarii need ship's surgeons?
"I presume," Cee said dryly, "they would wish to debrief me first."
"Well," she shrugged, "sure."
"Under drugs, no doubt."
"Ah—well, it is mandatory for all Intelligence volunteers. In spite of all good conscious intent, it's possible to be a plant and not know it."
"Interrogation with all the trimmings, in short."
She looked more cautious. "Well, we have all the trimmings in stock, of course. If needed."
"To be used. If needed."
"Not on our own people."
"Lady," he touched his forehead, "when this thing is activated I am the other people."
Some of her energy drained away in doubt for the first time. "Ah. Hm."
"And if I choose not to go with you—what will you do then, Commander Quinn?"
"Oh—well…" She looked, Ethan thought, exactly like a cat pretending not to stalk a mouse. "You're not off Kline Station yet. Millisor's still out there. I might be able to do you a favor or two yet—"
Was this a threat or a bribe?
"In return, you might care to give me some more information about Millisor and Cetagandan Intelligence. Just so I have something to take back to Admiral Naismith."
Ethan pictured a cat proudly depositing a dead mouse on its owner's pillow.
Cee must have been picturing something similar, for he inquired sardonically, "Would my dead body do?"
"Admiral Naismith," Quinn assured him, "wouldn't like that nearly so well. '
Cee snorted. "What do you blindlings know of men's real minds? What can any of you really tell? When I look at you blind like this, what can I know?"
Quinn hesitated in real thought. "Well, that's the way we must judge people all the time," she offered slowly. "We measure actions, as well as words and appearances. We make imaginative guesses. We place faith, if you will," she nodded toward Ethan, who prodded by honest conscience, nodded back even though he had no wish to prop any argument of hers.
Cee paced. "Both actions and lies may be compelled, against the real will. By fear, or other things. I know." He turned, turned again. "I must know. I must know." He stopped, fixed them both with a stare like a man trying to penetrate black midnight. "Get me some tyramine. Then we'll talk. When I can know what you really are."
Ethan wondered if the dismay in his own face matched Quinn's. They looked at each other, not needing telepathy to picture the other's thoughts; Quinn, doubtless stuffed with secret Dendarii intelligence procedures; himself, well—Cee was bound to find out eventually what a mistake he'd make seeking protection from Ethan. Perhaps it had better not be the hard way. Ethan sighed regret for the demise of his flatteringly exalted image in Cee's eyes. But a fool is twice a fool who tries to conceal it. "All right by me," he conceded mournfully.
Quinn was chewing her lip, abstracted. "That's obsolete," she muttered, "and so's that, and they have to have changed that by now—and Millisor knows all that already. And all the rest is purely personal." She looked up. "All right."
Cee appeared nonplussed. "You agree?"
Quinn's mouth quirked. "The first time the Ambassador and I have agreed on anything, I think?" She raised her eyebrows at Ethan, who muttered, "Humph."
"Do you have access to purified tyramine?" Cee demanded of them. "On hand?"
"Oh, any pharmacy would stock it," Ethan said. "It has some clinical uses in—"
"There's a problem with going to a pharmacy," Cee began grimly, when Quinn burst out in a tone of sudden enlightenment. "Oh. Oh."
"Oh, what?" asked Ethan.
"Now I understand why Millisor went to such trouble to penetrate the commercial computer network, but didn't bother trying to get into the military one. I didn't see how he could have possibly got 'em mixed up. " The satisfaction of a puzzle solved glowed attractively in he
r dark eyes.
"Huh?" said Ethan.
"It's a trap, right?" said Quinn.
Cee nodded confirmation.
She explained to Ethan, "Millisor has the commercial computer network flagged. I bet if anybody on Kline Station purchases purified tyramine, whistles go off in Millisor's listening post, and up pops Rau, or Setti or somebody—cautiously, on account of there are sure to be false alarms—and—oh, yes. Very neat." She nodded professional approval.
She sat a moment, absently scratching one perfect front tooth with a fingernail. An ex-nail biter, Ethan diagnosed. "I may have a way around that," she murmured.
Ethan had never manned an espionage listening post before, and he found the gadgetry fascinating. Terrence Cee seemed coolly familiar with the principles if not the particular models. The Dendarii apparently went in heavily for microminiaturization along Betan lines. Only the need to interface with gross human eyes and fingers bloated the control pad, propped open on the table between Cee and Ethan, to the size of a small notebook.
The view displayed by the little holovid plate of the Station arcade where Quinn now stood tended to jump rather disorientingly with movements of her head, since the vid pick-up surfaces were concealed in her tiny bead earrings. But with concentration and a little practice Ethan found himself absorbed in the display with almost the illusion of being an eyewitness to the scene half the Station away. Cee's darkened hostel room faded from his consciousness, although Cee himself, intent beside Ethan, remained a distracting presence.
"Nothing can go wrong, if you do exactly what I tell you and don't try to ad lib," Quinn was explaining to her cousin Teki, who was looking smart in a fresh pine-green and sky-blue uniform. The white bandage on Teki's forehead from yesterday's float pallet accident had been replaced by a clear permeable plastic one. Ethan noted with approval no sign of redness or swelling around the neatly sealed cut. "Remember, it's the absence of a signal that calls for an abort," Quinn went on. "I'll be nearby in case of emergencies, but try not to look at me. If you don't see me wave from the balcony, just turn right around and take the stuff back and tell them you wanted the other, the, um…"
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