Mission of Honor

possibly even amusement at having awakened her, was something else entirely. A mask. Or perhaps not so much a mask as a thin surface veneer of calm, a fragile shield for the shocked echoes of a universe turned upside down still rumbling around somewhere deep inside him.

'Well, in that case,' she heard her own voice saying calmly, 'I think you'd better go ahead and start waking up a few other people.'

* * *

'So, our is wandering boy returns, I see,' Eloise Pritchart murmured, an hour later, as Victor Cachat, a troll- like man who looked suspiciously like the officially deceased Anton Zilwicki, and a sandy-haired, hazel-eyed man were escorted into the Octagon briefing room. 'Welcome home, Officer Cachat. We'd been wondering why you hadn't written.'

Somewhat to her surprise, Cachat actually colored with what looked a lot like embarrassment. It probably wasn't, she told herself—that would be too much to hope for, although she couldn't think of anything else it might have been—and turned her attention to the young man's companions.'And this, I take it, is the redoubtable Captain Zilwicki?'

If Cachat might have looked a little embarrassed—or harried, at least—Zilwicki, despite the fact that (as a Manticoran) he was in the very presence of his enemies, didn't. In fact, he didn't really look like a troll, either, she admitted. He actually looked more like a granite boulder, or perhaps an artist's model for a mountain dwarf. The grim, dangerous sort of mountain dwarf. If he felt any emotion at this moment, it was probably amusement, she decided. Well, that and something else. An odd fusion of emotions that were almost like grim triumph coupled with singing anxiety, all under the control of iron self-discipline. It was the first time she'd ever actually laid eyes on the Manticoran, and he was even more impressive in person than she'd expected. No wonder he and Cachat made such a formidable combination.

'I'm afraid the galaxy at large thinks you're, well, dead , Captain Ziliwicki,' she said. 'I'm pleased to see the reports were in error. Although I'm sure quite a few people in Manticore are going to be just as curious to know where you've been for the last several months as we are about Officer Cachat's whereabouts.'

'I'm sure there are, too, Madam President.' Zilwicki's voice was exactly the deep, rolling one she would have expected out of his physique. 'Unfortunately, we had a little, um, engine trouble on the way home. It took us several months to make repairs.' He grimaced. 'We played a lot of cards,' he added.

'I imagine so.' The president cocked her head. 'And I imagine you've also discovered there have been a few developments since whatever happened—and I do trust you're going to tell us what it was that did happen—in Green Pines?'

'I'm sure that will be covered, Ma'am,' Zilwicki said, and there was more than a trace of grimness in his tone. 'It wasn't much like the 'official version' I've heard, but it was bad enough.'

Pritchart gazed at him for a moment, then nodded slowly. So, he and Cachat had been involved, at least peripherally. Of course, when it turned out he was still alive, it was going to be a nasty blow to Mesa's version of events. She found that notion appealing.

'But I don't believe I know who this gentleman is,' she continued, looking at the third member of the ill-assorted trio her security detail was watching like a bevy of particularly ill-tempered hawks.

The stranger's expression was the most interesting of the three, actually, she thought. He was obviously nervous as a cat at a dog show, and not just because of the way Shiela Thiessen and her cohorts were watching him. Yet there was something else, as well . . . something that seemed to mingle determination as grim and purposful as Anton Zilwicki's with something very like . . . guilt?

'No, Madam President, you don't—yet.' If Cachat had, in fact, felt anything approaching embarrassment, there was no sign of it in his reply. 'This is Dr.Herlander Simхes. Of the planet Mesa.'

Pritchart felt her eyes narrowing again. She, Theisman, LePic, Linda Trenis, and Victor Lewis sat side by side across a conference table from the three chairs waiting for Cachat, Zilwicki, and Simхes. Of them all, only LePic had had the opportunity to even skim Cachat's preliminary report, however, and the fact that the attorney general hadn't even wasted any time personally debriefing Cachat and his companions before bringing them straight to her said a great deal about how he'd reacted to whatever it was they'd discovered.

Or thought they'd discovered, at least, she reminded herself.

'I see.' She gazed speculatively at the Mesan, then cocked her head. 'May I assume Dr. Simхes is the reason you've been . . . out of touch, let's say, for the last, oh, six or seven T-months?' she asked after a moment.

'He's one of the reasons, Ma'am,' Cachat replied.

'Then, by all means, be seated,' she invited, waving a hand at the empty chairs, 'and let's hear what you— and Dr. Simхes, of course—have to tell us.'

* * *

'My God,' a visibly shaken Eloise Pritchart said several hours later. 'My dear sweet God, Tom. Do you think this could possibly be true ?'

Thomas Theisman hadn't seen the president's face that pale since Genevieve Chin and her battered survivors crawled home from the Battle of Manticore. In fact, he hadn't seen her this close to being literally stunned since he'd personally brought her the news of Javier Giscard's death. Not that he blamed her, since he was fairly certain his own expression was pretty much an exact mirror of hers.

'I . . . don't know,' he admitted slowly, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head. 'I don't know. But —'

He paused and closed his eyes for a moment, his mind running back over Dr. Simхes' incredible rolling barrage of revelations. And the even more incredible—and maddeningly incomplete—hints of still more of them which a Mesan named Jack McBryde had doled out to prove the value of allowing him to defect to the Republic. At the time, he'd been able to do little more than sit there and listen, just trying to absorb the devastating series of blows to his understanding of how the galaxy was organized. Of course it couldn't possibly be true! And yet . . . .

'As a matter of fact,' he said, opening his eyes and bringing his chair back fully upright again, 'I think it could be. True, I mean.'

'It's got to be some kind of organized disinformation operation, Madam President,' Linda Trenis argued. Yet even as she spoke, her tone said that, like Theisman, she thought it might just possibly be true. That it was her job to be skeptical, and so she would, even though, deep down inside, where instinct took over from trained intellect . . . .

'I think Admiral Theisman may be right, Linda,' Victor Lewis disagreed. 'In fact, I think I actually believe it.'

The CO of Operational Research sounded as if he were surprised to hear himself saying it, but his expression was probably closer to normal than that of anyone else in the president's office. Where the others' faces still looked rather like Pritchart had always assumed a poleaxed steer must look, his was intensely thoughtful.

'But—' Pritchart began.

'Think about it, Eloise,' Theisman interrupted. She looked at him, and he shrugged. 'Think about what Simхes said—and what Cachat and Zilwicki both agree this McBryde had to say, as well. Crazy as it all sounds, it all hangs together, too.'

Pritchart started to protest again, then made herself stop. Insane as it all seemed, Theisman was right. It did hang together. Of course, if Trenis was right about its being some sort of disinformation effort, it would hang together. On the other hand, she thought, there probably wouldn't be quite so many gaps in their information, either. If someone had wanted to sell the Republic a bill of goods, they would have come up with plausible excuses and lies to plug more of those holes.

And they would have known Zilwicki was alive, since they needed him to get the disinformation home. So they'd hardly have announced he was dead! Except, of course, that according to McBryde's story, the system government in Mesa doesn't even realize how riddled it is with agents of this 'Alignment,' so the government might've put the Green Pines story together without any orders from its . . . puppet masters.

Oh, lord! Did I really just think all that? She shook her head. My brain hurts already, and it's not even dawn yet.