ins.
'He's not doing as much as I'd hoped,' she admitted. She slumped in her chair, winding a curl of her dark hair around and around her finger. 'He hasn't reported you or Okita missing to the Station authorities. He hasn't revealed hidden reserves of personnel. He's made no move to leave the Station. The time he's spending maintaining his cover identity suggests he's digging in for a long stay. Last week I'd thought he was just waiting for the return ship from Athos that you came on, but now it's clear there's something more. Something even more important than an AWOL subordinate.'
Ethan paced, his voice rising. 'How long am I going to have to stay in here?'
She shrugged. 'Until something breaks, I suppose.' She smiled sourly. 'Something might, although not for our side. Millisor and Rau and Setti have been searching the Station themselves, real quiet-like—they keep coming back to this one corridor near Ecobranch. I couldn't figure out why, at first. Now, Okita's clothes scanned clean of bugs, but just to be sure I mailed 'em off to Admiral Naismith. So I knew it couldn't be that. I finally got hold of the technical specs for that section. The damned protein-culture vats are behind that corridor wall. I think Okita may have had some sort of inorganic code-response-only tracer implanted internally. Some poor sod is going to break a tooth on it in his Chicken Kiev any day now. I just hope to the gods it won't be a transient who will sue the Station… So much for the perfect crime.' She heaved a sigh. 'Millisor hasn't figured it out yet, though—he's still eating meat.'
Ethan was getting mortally tired of salads himself. And of this room, and of the tension, indecision, and helplessness. And of Commander Quinn, and the casual way she ordered him around….
'I have only your say-so that the Station authorities can't help me,' he broke out suddenly. 'I didn't shoot Okita. I haven't done anything! I don't even have an argument with Millisor—it's you who seem to be carrying on a private war with him. He'd never have thought I was a secret agent in the first place if Rau hadn't found your bug. It's you who's been getting me in deeper and deeper, to serve your spying.'
'He'd have picked you up in any case,' she observed.
'Yes, but all I needed was to convince Millisor that Athos didn't have his stuff. His interrogation might have done that, if your interference hadn't aroused his suspicions. Hell, he'd be welcome to come inspect our Rep Centers if he wants.'
She raised her eyebrows, a gesture Ethan found increasingly irritating. 'You really think you could negotiate that with him? Personally, I'd rather import a new plague bacillus.'
'At least he's male,' Ethan snapped.
She laughed; Ethan's temper rose to the boiling point. 'How long are you going to keep me locked up in here?' he demanded again.
She paused, visibly. Her eyes widened, narrowed; she tamped out her smile. 'You're not locked up,' she pointed out mildly. 'You can leave any time. At your own risk, of course. I shall be saddened, but I shall survive.'
He slowed in his frenetic pacing. 'You're bluffing. You can't let me go. I've learned too much.'
Her feet came down from the desktop, and she stopped twisting her hair. She stared at him with a discomforting expressionlessness, like someone calculating the narrowness of slide necessary to prepare a biological specimen for slide mounting. When she spoke again, her voice grated like gravel. 'I should say you haven't learned bloody enough.'
'You don't want me to tell the Station authorities about Okita, do you? That puts your neck on the line with your own people—'
'Oh, hardly my neck. They would of course have a shit fit if they found out what we did with the body—to which I might point out you were a willing accessory. Contamination is a much more serious charge than mere murder. Nearly up there with arson.'
'So? What can they do, deport me? That's not a punishment, that's a reward!'
Her eyes slitted, concealing their sharpening light. 'If you leave, Athosian, don't expect to come bleating back to me for protection. I have no use for quitters, quislings—or queers.'
He supposed she was insulting him. He took it as intended. 'Well, I have no use for a sly, tricky, arrogant, overbearing—woman!' he sputtered.
She spread her hand invitingly toward the door, pursing her lips. Ethan realized he had just had the last word. His credit chit was in his pocket, his shoes were on his feet. Nostrils flaring, he marched out the door, head held high. His back crawled in expectation of a stunner beam, or worse. None came.
It was very, very quiet in the corridor when the airseal doors had hissed shut. Had the last word really been what he'd wanted? And yet—he'd rather face Millisor, Rau, and Okita's ghost together than crawl back into his prison and apologize to Quinn.
Determination. Decision. Action. That was the way to solve problems. Not running away and hiding. He would seek out and confront Millisor face-to-face. He stomped off down the corridor.
By the time he reached the mallway exit from the hostel he was walking normally, and he had revised his plan to the more sane and sensible one of calling Millisor from the safe distance of a public comconsole. He could be tricky himself. He would not approach his own hostel. If necessary, he might even abandon his personal gear, and purchase a ticket off-Station—to Beta Colony?—at the last moment before boarding, thus escaping the whole crowd of insane secret agents. By the time he got back to Kline Station, they might even have chased each other off to some other part of the galaxy.
He removed himself a couple of levels from Quinn's hostel and found a comconsole booth.
'I wish to reach a transient, Ghem-colonel Ruyst Millisor,' he told the computer. He spelled the name out carefully. His voice, he noted with self-approval, scarcely quavered.
No such individual is registered at Kline Station, the holoscreen flashed back.
'Er… Has he checked out?' Gone, and Commander Quinn stringing him along all this time… ?
No such individual registered within the past 12-month cycle, the holoscreen murmured brightly.
'Um, urn—how about a Captain Rau?'
No such individual…
'Setti?'
No such individual…
He stopped short of mentioning Okita, and stood blankly. Then it came to him; Millisor was the man's real name. But here on Kline Station he was doubtless using an assumed one, with forged identity cards to match. Ethan had not the first clue what the alias might be. Dead end.
At a loss, he wandered down the mall. He could, he supposed, just return to his room and let Millisor find him, but whether he'd get a chance to negotiate or even get a word out before being scragged by Okita's vengeful comrades was a very moot point.
The varigated passers-by scarcely ruffled his self-absorption, but two approaching faces were extraordinary. A pair of plainly-dressed men of average height had brilliant designs painted upon their faces, completely masking their skin. Dark red was the base color of one, slashed with orange, black, white, and green in an intricate pattern, obviously meaningful. The other was chiefly brilliant blue, with yellow, white, and black swirls outlining and echoing eyes, nose, and mouth. They were deep in conversation with each other. Ethan stared covertly, fascinated and delighted.
It wasn't until they passed nearly shoulder to shoulder with him that Ethan's eye teased out the features beneath the markings. He suddenly realized that he did know what the face paint meant, from his recent reading. They were marks of rank for Cetagandan ghem-lords.
Captain Rau looked up at the same, moment square into Ethan's face. Rau's mouth opened, his eyes widening in the blue mask, his hand reaching swiftly for a pouch on his belt. Ethan, after a second of confounded paralysis, ran.
There was a shout behind him. A God-the-Father nerve disrupter bolt crackled past his head. Ethan glanced back over his shoulder. Rau had only missed, it appeared, because Millisor had knocked the lethal weapon upward. They were yelling at each other even as they began pursuit. Ethan now remembered clearly just how terrifying the Cetagandans could be.
Ethan dove head-first into an Up lift tube and swam as frantically as any salmon through its languid field, hand over hand down the emergency grips. Jostled rising passengers swore at him in surprise.
He exited on another level, ran, took another lift, changed again, and again, with many a panicked
