“There isn’t much to tell. I’m a fairly stodgy career man in the IDC, age forty-two, and this is the first day I’ve spent on Earth in ten years.”
“It must feel strange.”
“It does.”
“How long is your vacation?”
He shrugged. “Six to eight months. I can have more if I really want it. When do you go back to Rigel?”
She smiled strangely at him. “I may not go back at all. Depends on whether I can find what I’m looking for on Earth.”
“And what are you looking for?”
She grinned. “My business,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Never mind the apologies. Let’s have some more wine.”
After Harris had settled up the not inconsiderable matter of the bill, they left the hotel and went outside to stroll. The streets were crowded; a clock atop a distant building told Harris that the time was shortly after seven. He felt warm now that he had adjusted his temperature controls, and the unfamiliar foods and wines in his stomach gave him an oddly queasy feeling, though he had enjoyed the meal.
The girl slipped her hand through his looped arm and squeezed the inside of his elbow. Harris grinned. He said, “I was afraid it was going to be an awfully lonely vacation.”
“Me too. You can be tremendously alone on a planet that has twenty billion people on it.”
They walked on. In the middle of the street a troupe of acrobats was performing, using nullgrav devices to add to their abilities. Harris chuckled and tossed them a coin, and a bronzed girl saluted to him from the top of a human pyramid.
Night was falling. Harris considered the incongruity of walking arm-in-arm with an Earthgirl, with his belly full of Earth foods, and enjoying it.
Darruu seemed impossibly distant now. It lay eleven hundred light-years from Earth; its star was visible only as part of a mass of blurred dots of light.
But yet he knew it was there. He missed it.
“You’re worrying about something,” the girl said.
“It’s an old failing of mine.”
He was thinking: I was born a Servant of the Spirit, and so I was chosen to go to Earth. I may never return to Darruu again.
As the sky darkened they strolled on, over a delicate golden bridge spanning a river whose dark depths twinkled with myriad points of light. Together they stared down at the water, and at the stars reflected in it. She moved closer to him, and her warmth against his body was pleasing to him.
Eleven hundred light-years from home.
Why am I here?
He knew the answer. Titanic conflict was shaping in the universe. The Predictors held that the cataclysm was no more than two hundred years away. Darruu would stand against its ancient adversary Medlin, and all the worlds of the universe would be ranged on one side or on the other.
He was here as an ambassador. Earth was a mighty force in the galaxy—so mighty that it would resent the role it really played, that of pawn between Darruu and Medlin. Darruu wanted Terran support in the conflict to come. Obtaining it was a delicate problem in consent engineering. A cadre of disguised Darruui, planted on Earth, gradually manipulating public opinion toward the Darruu camp and away from Medlin—that was the plan, and Harris, once Aar Khiilom, was one of its agents.
They walked until the hour had grown very late, and then turned back toward the hotel. Harris was confident now that he had established the sort of relationship that was likely to shield him from all suspicion of his true origin.
He said, “What do we do now?”
“Suppose we buy a bottle of something and have a party in your room?” she suggested.
“My room’s a frightful mess,” Harris said, thinking of the many things in there he would not want her to see. “How about yours?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
They stopped at an auto bar and he fed half-unit pieces into a machine until the chime sounded and a fully wrapped bottle slid out on the receiving tray. Harris tucked it under his arm, made a mock-courteous bow to her, and they continued on their way to the hotel.
The signal came just as they entered the lobby.
It reached Harris in the form of a sudden twinge in the abdomen; that was where the amplifier had been embedded. He felt it as three quick impulses, rasp rasp rasp, followed after a brief pause by a repeat.
The signal had only one meaning: Emergency. Get in touch with your contactman at once.
Her hand tightened on his arm. “Are you all right? You look so pale!”
In a dry voice he said, “Maybe we’d better postpone our party a few minutes. I’m—not quite well.”
“Oh! Can I help?”
He shook his head. “It’s—something I picked up on Alpheratz.” Turning, he handed her the packaged bottle and said, “It’ll just take me a few minutes to get myself settled down. Suppose you go to your room and wait for me there.”
“But if you’re sick I ought to—”
“No. Beth, I have to take care of this myself, without anyone else watching. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said doubtfully.
“Thanks. Be with you as soon as I can.”
They rode the gravshaft together to the 58th floor and went their separate ways, she to her room, he to his. The signal in his abdomen was repeating itself steadily now with quiet urgency: Rasp rasp rasp. Rasp rasp rasp. Rasp rasp rasp.
He neutralized the force-field on the door with a quick energy impulse and opened the door. Stepping inside quickly, he activated the spy-beam jammer again. Beads of sweat were starting to form on his skin.
Rasp rasp rasp. Rasp rasp rasp.
He opened the closet, took out the tiny narrow-beam amplifier he had hidden there, and tuned it to the frequency of the emergency signal. Immediately the rasping stopped as the narrow-beam amplifier covered the wavelength.
Moments passed. The amplifier picked up a voice speaking in the code devised for use by Darruui agents alone.
“Identify yourself.”
Harris identified himself according to the regular procedure. He went on to say, “I arrived on Earth today. My instructions were not to report to you for about two weeks.”
“I know that. There’s an emergency situation.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“There are Medlin agents on Earth. Normal procedures will have to be altered. Meet me at once.” He gave an address. Harris memorized it and repeated it. The contact was broken.
Meet me at once. The orders had to be interpreted literally. At once meant right now, not tomorrow afternoon. His tryst with the yellow-haired Earthgirl would just have to wait.
He picked up the house-phone and asked for her room. A moment later he heard her voice.
“Hello?”
“Beth, this is Abner Harris.”
“How are you? Everything under control? I’m waiting for you.”
Hesitantly he said, “I’m fine now. But—Beth, I don’t know how to say this—will you believe me when I say that a friend of mine just phoned, and wants me to meet him right away downtown?”
“Now? But it’s after eleven!”
“I know. He’s—a strange sort.”
“I thought you didn’t have any friends on Earth, Major Harris. You said you were lonely.”
“He’s not really a friend. He’s a business associate. From IDC.”
“Well, I’m not accustomed to having men stand me up. But I don’t have any choice, do I?”
“Good girl. Make it a date for breakfast in the morning instead?”
“Lousy substitute, but it’ll have to do. See you at nine.”
Chapter Three
The rendezvous-point the other operative had named was a street corner in another quarter of the city. Harris hired a helitaxi to take him there.
It was a nightclub district, all bright lights and brassy music. A figure leaned against the lamppost on the southeast corner of the street. Harris crossed to him. In the brightness of the streetlamp he saw the man’s face:
lean, lantern-jawed, solemn.
Harris said, “Pardon me, friend. Do you know where I can buy a mask for the carnival?”
It was the recognition-query. The other answered, in a deep harsh voice, “Masks are expensive. Stay home.” He thrust out his hand.
Harris took it, gripping the wrist in the Darruui way, and grinned. Eleven hundred light-years from home and he beheld a fellow Servant of the Spirit! “I’m Major Abner Harris.”
“Hello. I’m John Carver. There’s a table waiting for us inside.”
“Inside” turned out to be the Nine Planets Club, across the street. The atmosphere inside was steamy and smoke-clouded; bubbles of light drifted round the ceiling. A row of long-limbed nudes pranced gaily to the accompaniment of the noise that passed for music on Terra. The surgeons, Harris thought, had never managed to instill a liking for Terran music in him.
Carver said quietly, “Have you had any trouble since you arrived?”
“No. Should I expect any?”
The lean man shrugged. “There are one hundred Medlin agents on Earth right now. Yesterday we discovered a cache of secret Medlin documents. We have the names of the hundred and their photographs. We also know they plan to wipe us out.”
“How many Darruui are on Earth?”
“You are the tenth to arrive.”
Harris’ eyes widened. One hundred Medlins against ten Darruui! “Stiff odds,” he said.
Carver nodded. “But we know their identities. We can strike first. Unless we eliminate them, we will not be able to proceed with our work here.”
The music reached an earsplitting crescendo. Moodily Harris stared at the nude chorus-line as it gyrated. He sensed some glandular disturbance at the sight, and frowned. By Darruui standards, the girls were obscenely ugly.
But this was not Darruu.
He said, “How do we go about eliminating them?”
“You have weapons. I’ll supply you with the necessary information. If you can get ten of them before they get you, you’ll be all right.” He drew forth a billfold and extracted a snapshot from it, “Here’s your first one, now. Kill her and report back to me. You can find her at the Spaceways Hotel.”
Harris felt a jolt. “I’m staying at that hotel.”
“Indeed? Here. Look at the picture,” Harris took the photo from the other. It was a tridim in full color. It showed a blonde girl wearing a low-cut black sheath.
Controlling his voice, he said, “This girl’s too pretty to be a Medlin agent.”
“That’s why she’s so deadly,” Carver said. “Kill her first. She goes under the name of Beth Baldwin.”
Harris stared at the photo a long while. Then he nodded. “Okay. I’ll get in touch with you again when the job’s done.”
It was nearly two in the morning when he returned to the hotel. He had spent nearly an hour with the man who called himself John Carver. He felt tired, confused, faced with decisions that frightened him.
Beth Baldwin a Medlin spy? How improbable that seemed! But yet Carver had had her photo.
It was his job to kill her, now. He was a Servant of the Spirit. He could not betray his trust.
First I’ll find out for certain, though.
He took the gravshaft to the 58th floor, but instead of going to his room he turned left and headed toward the room whose number she had given him—5820. He paused a moment, then nudged the door-signal.
There was no immediate response, so he nudged it again. This time he heard the sound of a doorscanner humming just above him, telling him that she was awake and just within the door.
He said, “It’s me—Abner. I have to see you, Beth.”
“Hold on,” came the sleepy reply from inside. “Let me get something on.”
A moment passed, and then the door slid open. Beth smiled at him. She had “put something on,” but the something had not been much—a flimsy gown that concealed her body as if she were wearing so much gauze.
But Harris was not interested in her body just now, attractive though it was. She held a tiny glittering weapon in her hand. Harris recognized the weapon. It was the Medlin version of the disruptor-pistol.
“Come on in, Abner.”
Numbly he stepped forward, and the door shut behind him. Beth gestured with the disruptor.
“Sit down over there.”
“How come the gun, Beth?”
“You know that answer without my having to tell it to you. Now that you’ve seen Carver, you know who I am.”
He nodded. “A Medlin agent.”
It was hard to believe. He stared at the girl who stood ten feet from him, a disruptor trained at his skull. The Medlin surgeons evidently were as skillful as those of Darruu, it seemed, for the wiry pebble-skinned Medlins were even less humanoid than the Darruui—and yet he would swear that those breasts, the flaring hips, the long well-formed legs, were genuine.
She said, “We had information on you from the moment you entered the orbit of Earth, Abner—or should I say Aar Khiilom?”
“How did you know that name?”
She laughed lightly. “The same way I knew you were from Darruu, the same way I knew the exact moment you were going to come out of your room before.”
“The same way you knew I was coming here to kill you just now?”
She nodded.
Harris frowned. “Medlins aren’t telepathic. There isn’t a single telepathic race in the galaxy.”
“None that you know about, anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” she said.
He shrugged. Apparently the Medlin spy system was formidably well organized. This nonsense about telepathy was merely to cloud the trail. But the one fact about which there was no doubt was—
“I came here to kill you,” Harris said. “But you trapped me. I guess you’ll kill me now.”
“Wrong. I just want to talk,” she said.
“If you want to talk, put some clothing on. Having you sitting around like this disturbs my powers of conversation.”
She said pleasantly, “Oh? You mean this artificial body of mine stirs some response in that artificial body of yours? How interesting!” Without turning her back on him, she drew a robe from the closet and slipped it on over the filmy gown. “There. Is that easier on your glandular balance?”
“Somewhat.”
The Darruui began to fidget. There was no way he could activate his emergency signal without moving his hands, and any sudden hand-motion was likely to be fatal. He sat motionless while sweat streamed down the skin they had grafted to his own.
Beth said, “You’re one often Darruui on Earth. Others are on their way, but there are only ten of you here now. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
“Why should I?” Harris said tightly.
She nodded. “A good point. But I assure you we have all the information about you we need, so you needn’t try to make up tales. To continue: you and your outfit are here for the purpose of subverting Terran allegiance and winning Earth over to the side of Darruu.”
“And you Medlins are here for much the same kind of reason.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” the girl said. “We’re here to help the Terrans, not to dominate them. We Medlins don’t believe in violence if peaceful means will accomplish our goals.”
“Very nice words,” Harris said. “But how can you help the Terrans?”
“It’s a matter of genetics. This isn’t the place to explain in detail.”
He let that pass. “So you deliberately threw yourself in contact with me earlier, let me take you out to dinner, walked around arm-in-arm—and all this time you knew I was a disguised Darruui?”
“Of course. I also knew that when you pretended to be sick it was because you had to contact your chief operative, and that when you said you were going to visit a friend you were attending an emergency rendezvous. I also knew what your friend Carver was going to tell you to do, which is why I had my gun ready when you rang.”
He
stared at her. “Suppose I hadn’t gotten that emergency message. We were going to come here and drink and probably make love. Would you have gone to bed with me even knowing what you knew?”
“Most likely,” she said without emotion. “It would have been interesting to see what sort of biological reactions the Darruui surgeons are capable of building.”
A flash of hatred ran through Harris-Khiilom. He had been raised to hate Medlins anyway; they were the ancestral enemies of his people, galactic rivals for four thousand years or more. Only the fact that she was clad in the flesh of a handsome Earthgirl had kept Harris from feeling his normal revulsion for a Medlin.
But now it surged forth at this revelation of her calm and callous biological “curiosity.”
He wondered how far her callousness extended. Also, how good her aim was.
He mastered his anger and said, “That’s a pretty cold-blooded way of thinking, Beth.”
“Maybe. I’m sorry about it.”
“I’ll bet you are.”
She smiled at him. “Let’s forget about that, shall we? I want to tell you a few things.”
“Such as?”
“For one: did you know that you’re fundamentally disloyal to the Darruui cause?”
Harris laughed harshly.
“You’re crazy!”
“Afraid not. Listen to me, Abner. You’re homesick for Darruu. You never wanted to come here in the first place. You were born into a caste that has certain obligations, and you’re fulfilling those obligations. But you don’t know very much about what you’re doing here on Earth, and for half a plugged unit you’d give the whole thing up and go back to Darruu.”
“Very clever,” he said stonily. “Now give me my horoscope for the next six months.”
“Easy enough. You’ll come to our headquarters and learn why my people are on Earth—”
“I know that one already.”
“You think you do,” she said smoothly. “Don’t interrupt. You’ll learn why we’re on Earth; once you’ve seen that, you’ll join us and help to protect Earth against Darruu.”
“And why will I do all these incredible things?”
“Because it’s in your personality makeup to do them. And because you’re falling in love.”
“With a lot of fake female flesh plastered over a scrawny Medlin body? Hah!”