by Sharon Green
The little man's satisfaction shifted to a frown, and he peered at me.
"This is an observation outpost of our Absari Confederacy," he answered sharply. "The planet is called Tildor by its natives. Hadn't you any idea you were in our neighborhood? The area happens to be proscribed."
I stopped where I was, about five feet from my visitor, determined not to show how off balance I suddenly felt. Not only hadn't I known that the area was proscribed, I'd never even heard of proscribed areas, not to mention something called the "Absari Confederacy."
Things were back to being unreal again, but there was one thing I knew for a rock-hard fact: if my Federation had ever had contact with an Absari Confederacy I would have heard about it. My not having heard about them meant we'd never contacted them, which meant I was back to wandering in the dark, searching for a candle.
The little man was still watching me closely, so I decided to use some of the confusion I felt to my own advantage.
"I must have gone farther astray than I thought," I breathed weakly, putting my hand to my head. "I haven't the faintest idea of how I got here."
"But, my dear girl, where were you going?" he asked, stepping closer to me with professional concern. "And where did you start from? Surely no one would have allowed someone with such meager knowledge of star locations to travel about alone?"
We were no more than three feet apart, and that was just about right for what I was going to have to do. He'd already asked three questions I couldn't possibly answer, and I also couldn't afford to wait around until those questions came from a more official source. I had to get out of wherever I was as fast as possible, without leaving anyone behind who could start to yell before I was well out of reach.
I had stiffened the fingers of my right hand and was just lifting the arm, when a section of the wall panel directly behind the little man slid aside, showing a second male visitor. This one was a good deal larger than the first, much taller and with much broader shoulders and no pot-belly, wearing the same sort of one-piece uniform that the little man wore.
But the newcomer's uniform was a cobalt blue, with the patches in different places. His dark eyes gave me a slow, frank stare of appraisal, and he must have been pleased with what he saw; his rugged face creased into a grin, and he stopped next to the little man, his stare still on me.
"How's our patient doing, Landren?" he asked in the sort of deep voice one would expect. "Is she up to having visitors yet?"
The little man had glanced at the newcomer, but his attention was also still on me.
"She continues to be a bit shaky, Commander," he answered with what was becoming a familiar frown. "But there seems to be something odd going on here. You specifically told me she was alone, but why would such a helpless young woman be traveling alone? And another thing-"
"You're perfectly right, Landren," the man addressed as Commander interrupted in a jolly way. "I'm sure there are many things to discuss, but this isn't the time for it. The young lady and I are going to have a chat now, and I'd appreciate it if you would have someone bring a tray of edibles to us. You and I can have a talk later."
I stood casually where I was, making sure my muscles were relaxed in spite of the fact that the bigger man hadn't taken his dark eyes off me and now stood between me and my erstwhile target. The little man was annoyed all over again, not knowing how close he had come to the end of every annoyance, but there seemed to be little he could do. He nodded once, angrily, and drew himself up.
"Very well, Commander," he grudged to the larger man's back. "We'll discuss the matter later. And I'll speak to one of your team members about the rest of it."
He looked at me with what was probably supposed to have been a smile, bowed stiffly, then turned and walked out. The man who now stood and studied me with folded arms and sharp, intelligent eyes was nothing like the first man and would not be as easy to handle, but he would still have to be handled one way or another. I'd done a lot of bluffing in my professional life, but never in a situation where I didn't even know what I was supposed to be bluffing about.
The man's gaze kept moving over me, as though he were looking for some sign of embarrassment on my part due to the fact that he was dressed and I wasn't, but he wasn't likely to find one. I'd been born and raised on one of the only two nudist planets in the Federation, and standing around raw had never bothered me. I looked away from the man, extended my left arm for inspection, then rubbed at an invisible spot with a small frown and a whole lot of concentration. I heard the sound of a snort of amusement, then the big man shifted slightly where he stood.
"You're really very good, girl," he commented in that deep voice. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were as innocent as you look."
The comment did nothing for my peace of mind, but I smiled at him with polite interest.
"I don't understand, Commander," I said, putting just a touch of confusion into my tone. "Am I supposed to be guilty of something?"
The question made the man smile again, then he laughed aloud.
"All right, I give up," he conceded with a chuckle. "I'd better stop trying to shake that calm of yours before I push you into trying something violent. I'll start off by telling you that I already know you're not native to our Confederacy, so you can relax as far as that goes. If you'll join me out on the terrace, we can both relax and discuss the rest of it."
He stood not three feet away from me, grinning lazily but in no way off guard, and I didn't know what the hell to do. Insisting you know something as a fact when all you do is suspect is such an old trick that lots of people have forgotten about it. If he was telling the truth, the fact that I wasn't in a jail cell was an encouraging sign, but then I reminded myself that iron bars do not a prison make.
"I hate to seem dense, Commander, but I'm afraid I have very little idea of what you're talking about," I drawled. "Suppose you add a few details to what you've already said, and then maybe I'll be able to hold up my end of the conversation."
He studied me again, then he nodded.
"Considering your position, I can't blame you for being cautious," he conceded. "Maybe it would be better if we both knew what was happening." He moved to his right, no more than five or six steps, then touched one of the salmon-colored wall panels. A thin, horizontal section of the wall snapped out, knee height from the floor, and the Commander sat himself down on it.
"All right, from the beginning," he said, leaning back against the wall in his bench seat. "As soon as we looked at your ship, we knew you were not from one of the member planets of the Confederacy. By 'we' I mean my second in command and myself. He and I are the only ones who know about you, which is why Landren was so confused."
He stretched his legs out and crossed his ankles, frowning slightly in concentration.
"The Absari Confederacy has known about your Federation for some twenty standard years now, but the knowledge hasn't been spread about. One of our scout ships netted a primitive rocket, calculated the direction from which it had come, then backtracked on it. When they began to pick up communicator signals they turned back and reported to Absar Central, and we've been tiptoeing around the edges of your volume of space ever since. We're nearly to the point of introducing ourselves, but things like that take time."
His eyes came back to me, and the grin was starting again.
"If I were going to execute you as an undesirable alien it would have been done by now, so how about calling a truce and having something to eat with me? I'll feel like a fool if I have to call a bodyguard before I can relax with you in arm's reach."
This time I studied him and his grin, weighing my options. I could trust him and take my chances or wipe him and take my chances, but either way it would be a risk. The way he moved and held himself said a lot about his ability, and the lack of fat on his well muscled body said he had very little need of a bodyguard. I would have backed my own ability against his no matter what he knew, but even if I did best him and then managed to find my way to a ship wi
thout running afoul of anyone else, which way did I point the ship? Which quadrant had I come in from? I took a strand of my hair to chew on, and the Commander's grin widened.
"You look as though you're having trouble making up your mind," he observed, moving his back away from the wall to lean one elbow on a broad thigh. "Suppose I add this as support for being reasonable: you must have a lot Of questions you'd like answered, and I'll be glad to answer them - as well as fill you in on what you said when I questioned you. You were unconscious at the time, so you're hardly likely to remember it by yourself."
I continued to stare at him for a second, then grinned the way he was doing. The man was trying to bribe me with my own curiosity, and that made me feel better about him. Someone who understands bribery can't be all bad.
"All right, Commander, you've got me," I said with a laugh, shaking my head at him. "Curiosity always has been my fatal flaw, and I've got a question that's been bothering me since that other man first opened his mouth. I feel as though I'm speaking my own language, but what I'm speaking and hearing isn't my own language. I mean, I'm pretty sure it isn't my own language, even though I'm thinking in it, too. Does that make any sense, or do I have a lump on the head to account for the impression?"
"You're perfectly all right," he assured me with a chuckle, getting to his feet before sending the seat back into the wall. "You had to have a language lesson before I could question you, and there was no reason to take the language back again once you had it."
I could have spent a lot of time thinking about their methods of teaching languages to people who were unconscious, but the commander had moved another two feet to his right and had put his hand on the wall again. A panel popped open, revealing a footed jumpsuit, and he pulled it out then closed the panel again. The jumpsuit looked like the uniform he wore and, aside from being dark green in color and having no patches, it also looked like it might fit me.
"You'd better put this on," he said, tossing me the suit with what looked like regret on his face. "We usually wear clothing of some sort around here, and there's no sense in getting people curious."
As soon as I had the suit, he turned away from me and walked over to that shimmering golden square on the far wall. He brushed his fingers along the upper right side of the square, and I blinked as it began to lengthen and widen as though it were made of syngel. The former square kept changing until it was about seven feet high and four feet wide, then it seemed to be satisfied.
The former square still shimmered goldenly but now it was a doorway, showing a hazy view of green skies and yellow sunshine above a wide, carved wood balcony. The big man took time out from staring through the doorway to glance at me, and I realized I'd just been standing there holding the suit in my hand, so I began getting into it. It didn't take more than a minute, which made the timing just right.
"Ah, here's the food," the big man observed, causing me to turn around.
The panel door had slid aside again, and this time it was a really oversized male who entered pushing a cart. The newcomer was bigger and wider - and younger - than the commander, with brown hair and eyes and a broad, square face. He also wore the same uniform outfit, only in a deep red.
The big man pushed the cart - which had no wheels but some sort of runners - through the golden haze and out onto the terrace, then came back through the golden doorway without it. He nodded to Commander whoever, sent a wink in my direction, then left again without a word. When the panel had slid closed behind his broad back, I looked over toward the commander again.
"Now I know why that doorway is so high," I commented. "I'm glad to see he's friendly."
"That's Leandor, head of my special section," the commander supplied, looking toward the now empty doorway. "He must have heard about our visitor and decided to get a look at her to break up the boredom. Waiting on tables isn't what he was trained for."
"How about discussing what he was trained for," I suggested with a bright smile. "As an easy lead-in to all those questions you're going to answer for me."
"You sound as though you think I won't be answering any questions," he said with an injured air of innocence. "You do have my word, you know, and I consider my word a solemn oath. Let's take a look and see what was brought."
He headed out through the golden haze with a half-swallowed grin on his face, leaving me no option but to ignore my annoyance and follow him. It was pretty obvious the man intended to run our interview to suit himself, and it didn't yet suit him to get down to cases.
As I passed through the golden haze I felt a light tingling sensation, the same sort of tingling you feel when moving through a light grade force shield. Once I was through the haze I noticed immediately that the quality of the air was different. Inside the air was fresh and clean, but fresh and clean in the way of having been laundered through a recirculator; outside was the fresh and clean of true outdoors, with a lot of that just-born feeling of recent rain. I took a deep, sweet breath of it, knowing how lucky I was to be able to breath air like that again, then looked around.
The green sky was early-afternoon light, lacking the too-bright glare of morning. The yellow sunshine covered everything and in some strange way made the ten foot, carved wood balcony a very dark brown. The wood gleamed as though it were polished, intricate designs following themselves around the entire area of it. Commander who-sis was busy at the tray, so I walked to the thigh-high balcony rail, leaned one hand on it, and looked over.
Below the balcony was miles of unoccupied air, falling away dizzily to medium-sized foothills a long way down. If there was anything on the ground far below I couldn't see it, but there didn't seem to be anything anywhere, just miles and miles of emptiness. That first little man had said we were in an outpost, and I wondered briefly what sort of an outpost it could be.
I turned away from the balcony rail to see that the commander had transferred a number of thin, oblong dishes to a wide block of pure white stone that was obviously going to be our table, so I left the rail and joined him. There were matching white stone benches to sit on, so I lowered myself and rested an elbow on the table.
"Question number one which requires a detailed response," I announced, watching the big man as he paused over uncovering a dish to glance at me. "What do I call you when I get tired of 'Commander'?"
The question was obviously an acceptable one, and the wary look faded from his eyes as he bowed.
"I am Commander Arlent Selam Delrah Garmar Hantal Queltes Dameron," he answered, pronouncing the names slowly and distinctly. "Please call me Dameron."
"That's what I get for asking for detail," I told him with a sigh, shaking my head. "If you hadn't added that last, I might have gotten discouraged."
"I somehow doubt that," he countered with a laugh, seating himself on his own white bench. "And what would you like to be called?"
"Now, why should you have to ask my name?" I mused, keeping my eyes on him. "What about all that sleep-talking I did?"
He smiled gently.
"I know that your name is," and suddenly his pronunciation became foreign, "'Special Agent of the Federation Council Diana Santee,' but which of those names do you prefer being addressed by? We usually choose the one we like best, no matter what position it holds in the full title."
"Our familiar names are usually chosen for us," I answered with an air of faint disappointment. "My chosen name is Diana, and Diana thought she'd caught you in a little bit of fast foot-shuffling. I'll just have to drown my sorrow at the mistake in some of that food which smells so delicious."
"Best idea I've heard yet," he agreed with what was becoming a usual grin, then started to dig in. I went at it a little more cautiously, but didn't find any hidden caches of camouflaged ptomaine. Everything tasted as good as it smelled, which let me shift my eating to automatic while my mind paid attention to thinking.
For some reason it appeared I had given my name and rank in Basic rather than in whatever I was speaking now. I didn't know enough about the situat
ion to even begin to guess why, but could only hope I also hadn't gone into detail about my job. No matter what my position here turned out to be, they would watch a non-combatant a lot less carefully than they'd watch an experienced professional.
And as large as I was, the man who had named himself Dameron was larger still, and obviously a fighting man. No matter what he had learned about me, it probably would not be enough to make him call that bodyguard he'd joked about earlier and therein lay another advantage for me. His eyes came to me as I watched him chew, and I smiled in response to his smile, but we weren't smiling at the same thing.
After I'd eaten most of what had been put in front of me, I decided to get on with the question and answer game. I picked up the hexagonal glass of what had turned out to be a light, sparkling silver wine, sipped at the wine, then cleared my throat. When Dameron's dark eyes were on me, I put the glass down again.
"If you've regained part of your strength, I'd like to get on with our information exchange," I said, gesturing at all the empty dishes. "So far all we've exchanged is our names, and that's not my idea of making headway."
"You do have a point." He sighed, looking regretfully at the leftovers before pushing his plate away. "Go ahead and ask your questions."
"I've got the next one all ready," I said, leaning forward a little. "I was told that this is an outpost, but no one's said what sort of an outpost. Does your Confederacy have a colony here?"
Dameron poured himself more of the wine, then leaned to one side of his bench with a another sigh.
"We have no colony here, but there are people who we protect - in a way," he said, sipping from his glass before waving a finger at me. "No, don't start to look at me like that, I'm trying to explain!"
He was annoyed at the expression on my face, but if that was his idea of explaining, he was bound to get even more annoyed. I kept my skepticism voiceless and leaned my forearm down to my own bench, and he continued with a vague gesture of his wine glass.