Aftershocks (50 page)

She felt like having a taste of ginger to celebrate surviving her encounter with the maniacal Big Ugly, but refrained. Suppertime was coming, and she knew she would want to go down to the refectory: through some tradition probably older than the unification of Home under the Empire, aircraft never served adequate meals.
The time for the herb will come,
she told herself. Sooner or later, she always found a chance to taste.

When she did go to the refectory, she had trouble getting time to eat. She was too busy greeting friends and acquaintances and giving them gossip from Cairo and about her work with Straha. Everyone paid attention when she talked about that; the ex-shiplord fascinated veterans from the conquest fleet and also males and females from among the colonists. He’d fascinated Felless, too; his tale of disobedience and defection was far outside the Race’s normal pattern of behavior.

Because Felless spent so much time talking, she took a while to notice that the food wasn’t up to the quality of what she’d been eating in Cairo. She shrugged—what could one expect in a provincial place like France? She also took a while to notice that one familiar face was missing. “Where is Business Administrator Keffesh?” she asked the female sitting beside her.

“Had you not heard?” the other female exclaimed in surprise. “But no, you could not have—you were in Cairo. How foolish of me. Well, Business Administrator Keffesh is now Prisoner Keffesh, I am afraid. He was caught dealing ginger with a notorious Tosevite. The herb is such a nuisance.” She spoke with the smug superiority of one who had never tasted.

“Truth: the herb is indeed a nuisance,” Felless said in a hollow voice. If Keffesh was a prisoner, he’d presumably been interrogated and had presumably confessed and told all he knew in the hope of gaining leniency. Felless wondered if he’d reckoned his dealings with her important enough to mention to the authorities.

One way or the other, she would find out before long. Either nothing would happen or she would get yet another unpleasant telephone call from Ambassador Veffani. Or perhaps Veffani wouldn’t bother telephoning. Perhaps he would simply send law-enforcement officials to search her chamber and arrest her if they found any illicit ginger—a redundancy if ever there was one.

But then she made the negative gesture under the table. Veffani could have ordered her chamber searched while she was in Cairo. Had he done so, he would without a doubt have radioed an order for her arrest to the Race’s administrative center. Since he hadn’t, maybe Keffesh hadn’t implicated her after all. She could hope he hadn’t, anyhow.

She sipped at the fermented fruit juice that accompanied her meal. Alcohol was a pleasure familiar from Home, and she didn’t mind the taste of this particular Tosevite variation on the theme. Next to ginger, though, alcohol seemed pretty pallid stuff.
I will taste again,
she thought fiercely.
I
will,
by the Emperor.

As she cast down her eye turrets, the irony of swearing by her sovereign when contemplating the illegal herb struck her. She shrugged. The Emperor didn’t know what he was missing. It would be many years before he found out, if he ever did.

After learning the news about Keffesh, getting out of the refectory and back to her chamber felt like escape, almost as much as getting out of the wild Big Ugly’s motorcar had. But that Français male couldn’t have pursued her here. The telephone, that dangerous instrument, could—and did. She flinched when it hissed. “Senior Researcher Felless,” she said. “I greet you.”

As she’d feared, Veffani’s image was the one that appeared on her monitor. “And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” he replied. “Welcome home. I trust your journey from Cairo went well?”

“I thank you, superior sir. Yes, it went well enough.” Felless was delighted to stick to polite commonplaces. “It went well enough till I landed here at Marseille, at any rate.” She had no trouble working up indignation while recounting the antics of her driver.

And Veffani was sympathetic there, when he’d proved much less so elsewhere. “This is a problem here, and it is a problem in many parts of Tosev 3 where we rule directly,” he said. “Before we came to Tosev 3, the Big Uglies did not even build their motorcars with safety belts. They kill one another by the tens of thousands, and seem utterly indifferent to the carnage.”

“I count myself lucky that I was not among the slain earlier today,” Felless said.

“I am glad you were not,” Veffani said. “I have had nothing but fine reports of your work in Cairo, and I take no small pleasure in telling you so.”

“That is very good news, superior sir,” Felless replied.
You have no idea how good it is. If you did have any such idea, you would be telling me something altogether different. And you would take no small pleasure in that, either.
“It was a very interesting experience, and one where I learned a good deal.”

“Do I understand that your commission concluded the Tosevite Warren acted as he did from reasons of policy rather than on a whim or out of despair after being discovered in his efforts against us?” Veffani asked.

“That is the consensus, yes,” Felless answered. “Thanks to data Straha obtained from private Tosevite sources, no other conclusion seemed possible.”

“Too bad,” Veffani said. “I would rather have been able to reckon him a fool, but he served his not-empire well.”

“He was a murderous barbarian, and I am glad to know that he is dead and no longer a danger to the Race,” Felless said.

“I agree with every word of what you have said,” Veffani answered. “None of that, however, in any way contradicts what I said.”

“No, I suppose not.” Felless paused and thought about the ambassador’s tone of voice. “You
admire
him, superior sir. Is that not a truth?” She knew she sounded accusing. She enjoyed sounded accusing, as a matter of fact. She’d spent a lot of time listening to Veffani’s accusations, which were usually all too well justified. Now she could get some of her own back.

“Maybe I do,” Veffani admitted. “Have you never admired some particularly skillful opponent in a game?”

“Of course I have.” Felless made her voice stiff with disapproval. “But I would hardly call our continuing struggle against the Big Uglies a game.”

“No? Would you not, Senior Researcher?” Veffani said. “Then what else is it? To me, it is the largest, most complex game ever played, and also the game with the highest stakes. One can hardly help respecting the Big Uglies who played it well.”

“They play it with our lives,” Felless said angrily.

“Well, so they do,” Veffani said. “We play it with their lives, too. And if you are going to look at methods, they have done few things to us that we have not also done to them. They save their worst horrors for their own kind.”

“And I suppose you will be excusing those next,” Felless said.

The ambassador made the negative gesture. “I excuse nothing. But neither do I diminish the Tosevites and their accomplishments. That is a failing too much encountered among the males and females of the colonization fleet. The Big Uglies are barbarians, yes. They are
not
fools.” He used an emphatic cough. “Treat them as fools and you will regret it.” That rated another emphatic cough.

“I understand, superior sir,” Felless said, which was a long way from saying that she agreed.

With maddening patience, Veffani said, “Experience will eventually teach you the same thing, Senior Researcher.” Felless thought he would say farewell then. Instead, he added, “Experience should also teach you to be wary of which males you choose as your acquaintances. Good day.” His image did disappear then.

Felless stared at the monitor even after Veffani was gone.
He knows.
She shuddered.
He may not know quite enough to charge me, but he knows. What do I do now?

Penny Summers set hands on hips and glared at Rance Auerbach across their hotel room. She was wearing a beige dress with a flowery print. That almost made her disappear into the wallpaper, which was also beige and floral. She said, “I didn’t know we were setting ourselves up as a charity. I reckoned we got into this business to make money, not to save the poor and the downtrodden.”

“Oh, we might make some money off this,” Rance answered. He’d known Penny would be angry. He hadn’t thought she’d be quite so angry as she was.

“That’s not why you’re doing it, though,” she snapped. “You’re doing it because you think that little French gal is cute.”

Oho,
he thought.
So that’s it.
As a matter of fact, he did think Monique Dutourd was cute, but letting Penny know that didn’t strike him as the smartest idea he’d ever had. He said, “Yeah, and I gave David Goldfarb a hand on account of he was just the prettiest thing I ever did see.” He rolled his eyes and sighed as if he meant it.

Penny did her best to stay mad, but she couldn’t quite manage. “God damn you,” she said affectionately. “You are a piece of work, aren’t you?”

“Have to be, to keep up with you,” he said. That was flattery, but flattery with a good deal of underlying truth. He went on, “Besides, with Pierre the Turd in the Lizard hoosegow, doing our regular sort of business isn’t as easy as it used to be. We ought to thank God he hasn’t ratted on us. So we’ll try something different for a while, okay? And his sister did warn us the Lizards caught him.”

Penny still didn’t look happy. “I know when I’m being sweet-talked, Rance Auerbach. I know when I’m being conned, too. And if this ain’t one of those times . . .”

“Then it’s something else,” Auerbach said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, if you’d only listen to me.”

“You’ve been trying to tell me all kinds of things,” Penny said sourly. “I haven’t heard a whole lot of what I’d call truth. But you’re bound and determined to try this, aren’t you?” She waited for Rance to nod, then nodded herself. “Okay. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, or if you start fooling around behind my back, there’s not going to be any place far enough away for you to hide.”

Rance nodded again. “I like lost causes. I must. I took you in a while ago, didn’t I? Or did you manage to forget about that?”

Astonishment spread over her face as she raised a hand to her cheek. “Now you’ve gone and made me blush, and I don’t know when the hell the last time I did that was. Okay, Rance, go do it, and we’ll see what happens. But you better remember what I said about that French gal, too.”

“I’m not likely to forget,” he said. “You want to come along and hold my hand?”

“I oughta say yes,” Penny answered. “But you’re the one who speaks French, and I’m the one Pierre’s likelier to have fingered to the Lizards, if he went and fingered anybody. Go on. Just be careful, that’s all.”

“I will.” Auerbach wondered how much help he’d get from Penny if something did go wrong.
One more thing I don’t want to have to find out,
he thought.

He met Monique Dutourd in a little café not far from the dress shop where she’d found work after her brother was arrested.
“Bonjour,”
he said, and then, in English, “Are you ready?”

“I think so,” she said. “I hope so.” She rose, draining the wineglass in front of her.

“Then let’s go,” he said.
“Allons-y.
I have the taxi waiting outside.”

The taxi, inevitably, was a Volkswagen. Rance hated getting into and out of the buggy little holdovers from the
Reich.
Being knee to knee with Monique in the back seat made up for some of that, as it had with Penny, but not enough. Monique was the one who spoke to the driver: “The consulate of the Race, if you please.”

“It shall be done,” he said in the Lizards’ language, and got the VW going with a horrible clash of gears.

Getting out of the taxi, as usual, was even harder for Auerbach than getting into it had been. He paid off the driver; from what he’d seen, Monique wasn’t rolling in loot. They went into the consulate together. A Lizard looked up from whatever he—or maybe she—had been doing and spoke in hissing French:
“Oui? Qu’est-ce que vous désirez?”

“We want to see the female named Felless,” Rance answered in the language of the Race. He didn’t speak it well, but judged it would be useful here.

It got the receptionist’s attention, at any rate. “I will ask,” the Lizard said. “Give me your names.”

“It shall be done,” Rance said, as the taxi driver had before him. Once he’d named himself and Monique, he added, “I thank you.” When dealing with Lizard officialdom, he made a point of being polite.

“You are welcome,” this Lizard said, so it must have done some good. “Now please wait.” After talking on the telephone, the Lizard swung an eye turret back toward Auerbach and Monique. “Senior Researcher Felless will be here shortly.”

“I thank you,” Rance said again. Monique nodded. He switched to French for her: “It could be that this will work.”

“It could be,” she echoed. Then, just for a moment, she set a hand on his arm. “Thank you very much for trying. No one else has cared at all.”

“We’ll see what we can do, that’s all,” he said in English. “If you don’t bet, you can’t win.” He wasn’t sure he could have put that into French. She nodded again to show she understood.

Auerbach started to say something more, but a Lizard came up the hallway from the back part of the consulate. The receptionist pointed with his—her?—tongue. The newly arrived Lizard walked over to him and Monique and said, “I greet you. I am Felless. Which of you is which?”

“I am Auerbach,” Rance said in the Lizards’ language. Then he introduced Monique, adding, “And we greet you.” He wanted to laugh about Felless’ inability to tell them apart at a glance, but he didn’t. If Monique hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t have known Felless was a female, so why wouldn’t it work the other way?

“What is it that you want with me?” Felless asked. Did she recognize Monique’s name? Rance couldn’t tell. He didn’t think she would have heard his before. That was probably just as well.

He said, “Can we find some private space to speak?” That was probably a warning—it was certainly a warning if she had any brains—but he didn’t see what else he could do. He sure didn’t want to talk business out here in the foyer.