uneasily.
Millisor sighed. 'Let me present you with two facts. Obsolete facts, since that idiot Stationer female committed her mindless act of sabotage. One. The gene-complex, ah, in question—' he glanced at Arata, 'was recessive, and would not appear in phenotype until found in both halves of the genotype. Two. Every single one of the cultures bound for Athos had had the complex spliced into them. Think it through, Doctor.'
Ethan did.
In the first generation, the ovarian cultures would contribute their recessive, hidden alleles to the children —and at the rate the old cultures were dying off, very soon all the children—born on Athos. But not until the second generation reached puberty would the functional telepathic organ appear in its statistical one-half of the population, from breeding back to the double-recessive cultures. In the third generation, half the remaining population would pass from latent to functional, and so on, the telepathic majority edging out the non-telepathic minority in perpetual half-increments.
But by then even the non-telepaths would bear the genes in their bodies, potential fathers of telepathic sons. The entire population would be permeated with the gene complex, too late, impossible to eradicate.
The question, Why Athos? was answered at last. Of course Athos. Only Athos.
The audacity, the perfection, the beauty—and the enormity—of Cee's plot took Ethan's breath away. It all fit, with the overpowering self-evidence of a mathematical proof. It even accounted for Cee's missing mountain of money.
'Now who cannot recognize truth?' mocked Millisor softly.
'Oh,' said Ethan, in a very small voice.
'The most insidious thing about the little monster is his charm, ' Millisor went on, watching Ethan closely. 'We built him that way on purpose, not knowing then that the limits of his talent would render him unsuitable as a field agent. Although from the trouble he subsequently gave us we may have been wrong on that point as well. But do not mistake charm for virtue, Doctor. He is dangerous, utterly devoid of loyalty to the humanity from which he sprang, but of which he is not a part—'
Ethan wondered if that should be understood as Humanity = Cetaganda.
'—a virus of a man, who would make the whole universe over in his twisted image. Surely you of all men understand that lethal contagions demand vigorous counter-measures. But ours is the controlled violence of surgery. You must not swallow the virus's propaganda. We are not the butchers he would have you believe us to be.'
Millisor's hands turned in their restraints, opened in pleading. 'Help us. You must help us.'
Ethan stared at Millisor's bonds, shaken. 'I'm sorry …' God the Father, was he actually apologizing to Millisor? 'No, Colonel. I remember Okita. I can understand a man being a killer, I think. But a bored killer?'
'Okita is only a tool. The surgeon's knife.'
'Then your service has turned a man into a thing.' An old quote drifted through Ethan's memory: By their fruits you shall know them…
Millisor's eyes narrowed; he did not pursue the argument, but rather, with a glance at Arata, inquired, 'And just what did you do to Sergeant Okita, Dr. Urquhart?'
Ethan glanced at Arata too, sorry he'd brought up the subject. 'I didn't do anything to him. Maybe he met with an accident. Or perhaps he deserted.' Or considering Okita's ultimate fete, perhaps 'desserted' might be the better term… Ethan squelched that line of thought. 'In any case, I can't help you. Even if I wanted to betray Cee to you—if that's what you're asking me to do—I really don't know where he is.
'Or where he is headed?' said Millisor suggestively.
Ethan shook his head. 'Anywhere, for all I know. Anywhere but Athos, that is.'
'Alas, yes,' murmured Millisor. 'Before, Cee was tied to that shipment. If I had the one, I had a string to the other. Now that the shipment is destroyed, a very poor second choice to our recovering it, he is entirely unleashed. Anywhere,' Millisor sighed. 'Anywhere…'
The ghem-colonel, Ethan reminded himself firmly, was the one who was tied down. He had his feet under him; it was up to him to end this interview before the smooth spy plucked any more information from him.
Ethan paused in his strategic retreat out the door. 'I will leave you with one last thought, though, Colonel. If you had made that pitch to me when we first met, instead of doing what you did, you might have convinced me, and had it all.'
Millisor's hands clenched and jerked against their bonds at last.
And so Ethan returned to his own hostel room, rented his first day on Kline Station and never occupied since. He thanked his spotty luck that he had paid for it in advance, for his personal effects were all as he had left them. He bathed, shaved, trimmed, changed back in to his own clothes at last, and ate a light meal from the room service console.
He sighed over his coffee. Pushing two weeks—he would have to look up the date, having lost track— expended on this adventure, as Quinn's stalking-goat, as Millisor's moving target, Cee's pawn, anybody's ping pong ball, and what did he have to show for it? An education? Once he returned his red coveralls and boots, he would have no more tangible souvenir than the learning. He got out his credit chit and regarded it. Quinn's microscopic bug was presumably still on it somewhere. If he shouted into it, might he cause a feedback squeal in her left ear? But she was gone, with no word of farewell. Anyhow, people who talked to their credit cards would doubtless make their neighbors uneasy, even on Kline Station.
He lay down wearily, only to find his nerves still too strung up to allow sleep. Was it day, or night? On Kline Station, who could say? He wasn't sure if he missed Athos's diurnal rhythm or its weather more. He wanted rain, or a brisk polar front to blow the cobwebs out of his brains. He could turn up the air conditioning, but it would still smell the same.
After nearly an hour spent comparing all the things he should have said and done this last fortnight with the actual events, he gave up in disgust, dressed, and went out. If sleep was to elude him, he might at least be doing something useful with his time. Athos was paying an ungodly enough sum for it.
He strolled back to the Transients' Lounge level where the embassies and consuls were concentrated and began doing some serious shopping for legitimate biological supply houses. Most of the more technically advanced planets offered something. Beta Colony offered nineteen separate sources, from purely commercial ventures to a government-sponsored gene pool at Silica University stocked entirely by invited donations from talented and gifted citizens. As much as Ethan cringed at taking any more of Quinn's advice on anything, Beta Colony did seem to be the best destination. He would not be disappointed, the woman expediting the commercial directory interface assured him. He exited feeling he had done a good day's work at last, and a little smug. He had dealt with the female expediter just as he would have dealt with a man. It could be done; wasn't hard at all.
He returned to his room for a quick snack, then sat down to his comconsole for a little comparison-shopping for the best price on a round-trip ticket to Beta Colony. The straightest route was via Escobar, giving him a chance to check out another potential source at no added cost to the Population Council. At least half the committee would be pleased with him, about as good odds as he was likely to obtain.
All his decisions made at last, his weariness washed over him. He lay down to rest for a minute.
Hours later, an insistent chiming from his comconsole hooked him to mushy consciousness. One foot was asleep, from lying at an odd angle with his shoes on, and it tingled numbly as he stumbled to press the 'Receive' keypad.
Terrence Cee's face materialized over the holovid plate. 'Dr. Urquhart?'
'Well. I didn't expect to hear from you again.' Ethan rubbed sleep from his face. 'I thought you'd have no further use for the asylum of Athos. You and Quinn both being the practical sort.'
Cee winced, looking distinctly unhappy. 'In fact, I'm about to leave,' he said in a dull voice. 'I wanted to see you one more time, to—to apologize. Can you meet me in Docking Bay C-8 right away?'
'I suppose,' said Ethan. 'Are you off to the Dendarii Mercenaries with Quinn, then?'
'I can't talk any more now. I'm sorry.' Cee's image turned to sparkling snow, then emptiness.
Quinn was hanging over Cee's shoulder, perhaps, inhibiting his frankness. Ethan suppressed an impulse to call Security and tell Captain Arata where to look for her. He and Quinn were even now, help averaging harm. His mystery was solved; she had the intelligence coup she wanted. Let it end so.
As he exited his hostel to the mall a man, who had been idly seated by the central pool feeding the goldfish with pellets from a credit-card-operated dispenser placed nearby, rose and approached him.
