“What do you mean, covert agent?” asked Lutha. “Why would the Alliance have a covert agent here?”
“Why, why,” he stuttered, “to receive information. To forward it to Alliance Prime. They sent me because there’s some conspiracy here. Something going on. They needed someone of my experience. I knew you must have been sent to …” He made an inclusive gesture.
“I see,” said Trompe fretfully, pinching the flesh between his eyes into a ridge as he felt for what was actually going on inside the oldster’s mind. He seemed perfectly sincere, feeling a little outraged dignity, a little pomposity. A minor functionary living on dreams of glory. “How did you know we’d been sent to …?” He aped the other’s inclusive gesture.
“The ship,” the man whispered. “It was an official ship.”
As it had been, without question. Well. Trompe bowed formally. “Thank you for your offer. If we learn anything at all, we will bring it directly to you.”
“I thank you sir. I will keep my, ah …network in readiness. Should you, by any chance, happen upon something urgent, the code word is vigilance.” He pursed his lips and nodded rapidly to himself several times. “Vigilance.”
“I see,” said Lutha, trying to keep from laughing.
Leely chose that moment to stroke her face and mutter his customary polysyllable.
“So this is the young man,” Thosby said, peering at Leely like a squirrel peering at a nut, as though wondering where to begin nibbling. “They were speaking of him in the corridor. So this is he.”
“He is,” said Lutha. “And we’ve come a long way, and we’re tired. If you gentlemen will excuse us.” She stood up and took Leely away with her to what was called on Dinadh the female privacy facility.
Trompe bid Thosby Anent farewell, though it took several more conspiratorial exchanges to do so. As Thosby went the vehicle man arrived.
“Are you the last one we have to deal with?” demanded Trompe in a weary voice.
“The last person here at the port, yes,” the man replied. “I am about to rent you a vehicle at an exorbitant price, and sell you a guidebook, also quite expensive, by which means you may reach the hive where Bernesohn Famber had—or, I should say, has—a lease on a certain number of cells. On Dinadh, leases survive the lessees. Kin may claim them as inheritance and may sell the remaining rights, with our approval, of course. So, Famber’s place is still there, undisturbed, his belongings as they were the day he left, in the hive of Cochim-Mahn, where the songfather has been told to expect you.”
“How long a journey to Cochim-Mahn?”
“It will take you several days. There are hostels along the way.”
“It seems a long time. Why can’t we fly?”
“Flight is permitted only in certain, well-defined cases of emergency.”
“And why is that?” asked Trompe.
The vehicle man shrugged. “Have you seen persons sitting at their ease in the afternoon, drinking, perhaps, or talking with one another, when an insect comes suddenly buzzing and darting about their faces? Have you seen how they slap at it, wave it away, how it plagues them? Or in the evening, beside the lamp, when one is reading, and a flapping thing comes to the light?”
Trompe nodded.
“So our mother world feels about unnatural flying things buzzing about her face.”
“But she doesn’t object to unnatural things crawling on her?” Trompe exploded.
“On her clothing,” corrected the vehicle man. “We can all put up with a few tiny things crawling about in our clothing. So long as they do it quietly and do not bite!”
“Which pretty well put us in our place!” Trompe remarked to Lutha when she returned. “In effect, we’re mites in the seams of Dinadh’s garments. Harmless ones, of course.”
Lutha went to one of the porelike openings in the outer wall and stood looking out. “Several of the female port workers came in to use the facilities while I was there. They were curious. Mostly about Leely.”
“Trying to talk to him?”
“Just watching him. He did a portrait of one of them on the wall.”
“In what medium, dare one ask?” He allowed himself a hint of distaste, hoping she would look at him, speak to him, Trompe, rather than to the air over his shoulder as she seemed always to do.
She ignored his tone. No Fastigat would use such a tone unless he were eager for argument, and she was not interested in argument. “In some pinky-colored dirt he found in a flowerpot in there. He peed in it to make mud.”
Trompe turned away, frustrated. “They were impressed?”
“They seemed to be.” She fell silent for a moment. They had been impressed. More than merely impressed. Awed, perhaps. “There was a great deal of discussion about Weaving Woman….”
“A goddess, as I recall,” he said distantly.
“A goddess, yes.”
“One they feel rather guilty about,” he said.
“Guilty?”
“Hmm. I note some who, when they speak of her, brood with a sort of self-reproach.”
“Then you note more than I do. All I know about Weaving Woman indicates she’s an indwelling spirit of art and craftsmanship. The women using the facilities spoke of Leely as her child.”
“Which means?”
She shrugged. The women’s concentration had been a little frightening, but she chose not to mention that. Instead she gestured vaguely. “From what I recall of the culture chips I reviewed on the way out, Weaving Woman is pattern, which probably includes portraiture and sculpture, portrayal of any and everything.”
Trompe turned the idea around, seeing if it had any focus for him, then let it go with an impatient grunt. It was time to get moving. They had already wasted too much time.
At the garages below, the manager of vehicles gave them precise instructions. The vehicles were economical, but of low performance. They could not be driven off the roads, which the hives kept clear of overhanging foliage by cutting winter firewood along them. If visitors traveled without a guide, the route would be programmed into the vehicle before departure and could not be deviated from thereafter.
