a joke,' she added as Ethan lurched, recoiling. 'Yes. Why. My very own assigned question. Millisor seemed convinced that what Bharaputra's labs produced was actually intended for Athos, in spite of the subsequent diversion. Now, if nothing else, I've learned in the past few months that what Millisor thinks had better be taken into account. Why Athos? What does Athos have that nobody else does?'
'Nothing,' said Ethan simply. 'We're a small, agriculturally based society with no natural resources worth shipping. We're not on a nexus route to anywhere. We don't go around bothering anyone.'
''Nothing,'' she noted. 'Think of a scenario where a planet with 'nothing' would be at a premium… You have privacy, I suppose. Other than that, only your insistence upon reproducing yourselves the hard way sets you apart.' She sipped her beer. 'You say Millisor was talking about attacking your Reproduction Centers. Tell me about them.'
Ethan needed little encouragement to wax enthusiasm about his beloved job. He described Sevarin and its operations, and the dedicated cadre of men who made it work. He explained the beneficent system of social duty credits that qualified potential fathers. He ran down abruptly when he found himself describing the personal troubles that prevented him from achieving his own heart's desire for a son. This woman was getting entirely too easy to talk to—he wondered anew what was in his beer.
She leaned back in her chair and whistled tunelessly a moment. 'Damn that diversion anyway. But for that, I'd say the cuckoo's-egg scenario had the most appeal. It accounted so nicely for Millisor's activities…. Rats.'
'The what scenario?'
'Cuckoo's-egg. Do you have cuckoos on Athos?'
'No… Is it a reptile?'
'An obnoxious bird. From Earth. Principally famous for laying its eggs in other birds' nests and skipping out on the tedious work of raising them. Now found galaxy-wide mainly as a literary allusion, since by some miracle nobody was dumb enough to export them off-planet. All the rest of the vermin managed to follow mankind into space readily enough. But do you see what I mean by a cuckoo's-egg scenario?'
Ethan, seeing, shivered. 'Sabotage,' he whispered. 'Genetic sabotage. They thought to plant their monsters on us, all unawares…' He caught himself up. 'Oh. But it wasn't the Cetagandans who sent the shipment, was it? Uh—rats. It wouldn't work anyway, we have ways of weeding out gene defects…' He subsided, more puzzled than ever.
'The shipment may have incorporated material stolen from the Cetagandan research project, though. Thus accounting for Millisor's passion for retrieving or destroying it.'
'Obviously, but—why should Jackson's Whole want to do that to us? Or are they enemies of Cetaganda?'
'Ah—hm. How much do you know about Jackson's Whole?'
'Not much. They're a planet, they have biological laboratories, they submitted a bid to the Population Council in response to our advertisement year before last. So did half a dozen other places.'
'Yes, well—next time, order from Beta Colony.'
'Beta Colony was the high bid.'
She ran a finger unconsciously across her lips; Ethan thought of plasma burns. 'I'm sure, but you get what you pay for…. Actually, that's misleading. You can get what you pay for on Jackson's Whole too, if your purse is deep enough. Want to have a young clone made of yourself, grown to physical maturity in vitro, and have your brain transferred into it? There's a 50% chance the operation will kill you, and a 100% guarantee it kills—whatever individual the clone might have been. No Betan med center would touch a job like that—clones have full civil rights there. House Bharaputra will.'
'Ugh,' said Ethan, revolted. 'On Athos, cloning is considered a sin.'
She raised her eyebrows. 'Oh, yeah? What sin?'
'Vanity.'
'Didn't know that was a sin—oh, well. The point is, if somebody offered House Bharaputra enough money, they'd have cheerfully filled your boxes with—dead newts, for instance. Or eight-foot-tall bio-engineered super- soldiers, or anything else that was asked for.' She fell silent, sipping her beer.
'So what do we do next?' he prodded bravely.
She frowned. 'I'm thinking. I didn't exactly plan this Okita scenario in advance, y'know. I don't have orders for active interference in the affair—I was just supposed to observe. Professionally speaking, I suppose I shouldn't have rescued you. I should have just watched, and sent off a regretful report on the radius of your splatter to Admiral Naismith.'
'Will he, ah, be annoyed with you?' Ethan inquired nervously, with a skewed paranoid flash of her admiral sternly ordering her to restore the original balance by sending him to join Okita.
'Naw. He has unprofessional moments himself. Terribly impractical, it's going to kill him one of these days. Though so far he seems able to make things come out all right by sheer force of will.' She speared the last tidbit on the platter, finished her beer, and rose. 'So. Next I watch Millisor some more. If he has more back-up team than what I've spotted so far, his search for you and Okita should smoke them out. You can lie low in here. Don't leave the room.'
Imprisoned again, although more comfortably. 'But what about my clothes, my luggage, my room…' his Economy Cabin, unoccupied, ticking up his bill nonetheless, 'my mission!'
'You absolutely must not go near your room!' She sighed. 'It's eight months till your return ship to Athos, right? Tell you what—you help me with my mission, I'll help you with yours. You do what I tell you, you might even live to complete it.'
'Always assuming,' said Ethan, chapped, 'that Ghem-colonel Millisor doesn't outbid House Bharaputra or Admiral Naismith for your services.'
She shrugged on her jacket, a lumpy thing with lots of pockets that seemed to have a deal more swing than accounted for by the weight of the fabric. 'You can get one thing straight right now, Athosian. There are some things money can't buy.'
'What, mercenary?'
She paused at the door, her lips curving up despite her sparking eyes. 'Unprofessional moments.'
The first day of his semi-voluntary incarceration passed sleeping off the exhaustion, terror, and biochemical cocktails of the preceding 24 hours. He came to muzzy consciousness once just as Commander Quinn was tiptoeing out of the room, but sank back. The second time he awoke, much later, he found her asleep stretched out on the floor dressed in uniform trousers and shirt, her jacket hung ready-to-hand. Her eyes slitted open to follow him as he staggered to the bathroom.
He found on the second day that Commander Quinn did not lock him in during the long hours of her absences. He dithered in the hallway for twenty minutes, upon discovering this, trying to evolve some rational program for his freedom besides being immediately gobbled up by Millisor, who was by now doubtless tearing the Station apart looking for him. The whirr of a cleaning robot rounding the corner sent him spinning back into the room, heart palpitating. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to let the mercenary woman protect him a little longer.
By the third day he had recovered enough of his native tone of mind to begin serious worrying about his predicament, although not yet enough physical energy to try doing anything about it. Belatedly, he began boning up on galactic history through the comconsole library.
By the end of the next day he was becoming painfully aware of the inadequacy of a cultural education that consisted of two very general galactic histories, a history of Cetaganda, and a fiction holovid titled 'Love's Savage Star' that he had stumbled onto and been too stunned to switch off. Life with women did not just induce strange behavior, it appeared; it induced very strange behavior. How long before the emanations or whatever it was from Commander Quinn would make him start acting like that? Would ripping open her jacket to expose her mammary hypertrophy really cause her to fixate upon him like a newly hatched chick on its mother hen? Or would she carve him to ribbons with her vibra-knife before the hormones or whatever they were cut in?
He shuddered, and cursed the study time he'd wasted on timidity during the two months voyage to Kline Station. Innocence might be bliss, but ignorance was demonstrably hell; if his soul was to be offered up on the altar of necessity, by God the Father Athos should have the full worth of it. He read on.
The opposite of nirvana in his spiritual descent, Ethan decided, was tizzy; and by the sixth day he had achieved it.
'What the hell is Millisor doing out there?' he demanded of Commander Quinn during one of her brief stop-
