purchase hyperdrive parts.'
Perpetua began laughing. It took her a while to get it under control.
The gold began arriving two days later.
XI
The trip to Earth took almost ten weeks. As usual, they spent a lot of time playing games; as usual, Ginger almost always won.
The dangerous part of the trip, at least in Ginger's estimation, had been right at the start, when they were depending on pursuit countermeasures to stay intact. Perpetua, however, grew more uneasy the closer they got to Earth. She didn't say anything about it, but she was at least partly conscious of it: She bathed more often, sometimes twice in a day. (He in turn was not conscious of the fact that his tail began lashing when she smelled upset; but she was. She was trying to keep at least one of them calm.)
He would never have asked why. Such an assumption of authority over her mental state would have been treating her as a subordinate, and she was a friend; more, she was a Hthnar-something humans translated as Battle Companion, a term which did express the concept if given sufficient thought.
However, she was also a human, and therefore weird, so one day she suddenly decided to explain. 'I don't trust the ARM,' she said when he showed up for his watch on the mass detector.
'Good,' he said agreeably, steering them around a fuzzy patch that was probably nothing much. (The thing worked better for him than for her. Its manual spoke of psionic aptitude and something called the Copenhagen Interpretation, but to him the matter was simple: It was a hunting device.)
'That's why I've been so worried. They were the ones who got Wunderland conquered, you know.'
Ginger cupped an ear at her. 'I'm pretty sure the Patriarchy was involved too.'
She snorted. 'They suppressed weapon technology and rewrote history books as propaganda, so everybody believed that no civilized being was capable of making war. When the first reports of contact with the kzinti came in they suppressed those too, as disruptive.'
'I didn't know that!' he exclaimed.
'It's not something humans are proud to discuss,' she said.
He had no idea what to say-before confiding something that potentially demeaning, a Hero would want hostages. However, she continued almost at once.
'They're perfectly capable of suppressing knowledge of the Romans and keeping them all for study somewhere,' she said.
'They'd want them off Kzrral first, though, right?' Ginger said.
'I would think so,' Perpetua said, sounding puzzled.
'Then we'll be fine. I won't make a final plan until we've left Earth, so they won't be able to get it out of us.'
'You haven't decided what to do after we have the Romans?'
'What would be the point? We don't have them,' he said, honestly puzzled. 'We don't even know if we can get the hyperdrives here.'
'What? You acted so confident!'
'I'm a kzin. I am confident. I may also be wrong.'
'I'm starting to get a glimmering of why we won,' she muttered, walking out.
Ginger thought about that for a while, but couldn't see the connection.
They'd dropped out of hyperspace and were moving into Sol System, and Perpetua was trying to ease her own tension. '…and the Herrenmann says, 'Never mind the thanks-repeat the instructions!' '
Ginger was just starting to laugh when the hyperwave spoke up: 'Incoming ship, identify yourselves.'
Ginger tapped the mike. 'We're the Jubilee, out of Wunderland,' he said in quite good Flatlander. 'Who are you?'
'Triton Relay Customs Station. Are you carrying any fissionables or bioactives?'
'No, but if you make a list we could come back,' Ginger said cheerfully. Perpetua's eyes went wide and she clapped her hands over her mouth as he continued, 'We'd like to talk to an ARM.'
The Belter Customs officer said, 'Why?' He sounded honestly perplexed.
'To engage in commerce.'
'With the ARM? You'll walk out smiling and holding two coat hangers.'
Ginger looked at Perpetua, who was no more enlightened than he. 'Nevertheless.'
'Well, I'll pass the word.-I advise against joking with them,' the voice added. 'There's a flatlander law against ARMs laughing at any jokes but their own.'
'Thanks,' Ginger said, and cut the mike.
'You don't ever joke with Customs, have you taken leave of your senses?' Perpetua exploded.
'No, but hopefully you won't be the last to think of that,' Ginger said. 'It may help. The idea came to me when I heard that silly question-as if a smuggler of murder supplies would be surprised into blurting out a truthful answer.' His ears waved, once. 'Suddenly I thought of a way to cope with human bureaucracy.'
'I'll talk to the next one!' she said.
A com laser found them about an hour later. 'Attention Jubilee, this is T.C. Smith, senior agent, ARM ident RM35M4419. I am the ARM officer at earliest available rendezvous, presently at Juno, coordinates follow. Be seeing you.' A datastream beeped in and was recorded.
As Ginger altered course, Perpetua sent, 'Senior Agent Smith, this is Jubilee, we will arrive your location-' Ginger showed the figures '-in about twenty-nine hours.' She set that to repeat, then said, 'He sounded positively friendly.'
'I've heard that ARMs are all supposed to be kept insane,' Ginger said. 'Perhaps he welcomes the company. I wonder what he's doing at Juno?'
'Why, where's Juno?'
'According to these figures, it's an asteroid. Not under ARM jurisdiction.'
Perpetua looked for herself, because she had to-if a kzin had done so it would have been insulting-and said, 'That's weird.'
Juno Traffic Control had them lie off two thousand kilometers, and at that the region seemed pretty busy. 'There must be five hundred ships here!' Perpetua said wonderingly.
'About half with their drives aimed at us,' Ginger commented. When she stared at him, he said, 'We are of largely kzinti design, after all. And Belters who trusted strange ships in either war probably didn't survive long enough to teach the habit to anyone.'
A tanker began signaling them. Perpetua acknowledged, and the speaker said, 'Smith here. You need any fuel?'
'No, our planer is rigged to scoop up ambient hydrogen constantly,' she replied, and Ginger stuck his finger in her mouth. She spit it out, cut the mike, and said, 'What are you doing?'
'Not revealing capabilities,' he said. 'How did you people last long enough to get to space?'
She glared, then switched back on. 'Are you in the tanker, or relaying?'
'In. Permission to come aboard?'
'Granted.'
The tanker moved alongside and extended a travel tube, and presently Smith came through the lock with a parcel bigger than he was. 'Great, gravity,' he said, taking his helmet off.
He was one-gee short, and blond as a Herrenmann, but his skin was quite black, at least on his head. Also, his pressure suit was decorated with the head and shoulders of a pale-skinned man in an odd-looking cap, with a bill in back as well as in front; the man was smoking a curly pipe and holding a magnifying glass before one eye. Perpetua, who had spent the past day learning something about Sol Belter culture, said, 'Just how long have you been at Juno?'
'Open curiosity, that's refreshing! Just over eleven years now. Well done. Junior assistant to the second deputy secretary of the consul.'
