Does that make any sense, or do I have a lump on the head to account for it?”
“You’re perfectly all right,” he chuckled, getting to his feet and hiding the seat. “You had to have a language lesson before I could question you, and there was no reason to take it back again once you had it.”
I could have spent a lot of time thinking about their methods of teaching languages to people who were unconscious, but the Commander had moved another two feet to his right and had put his hand on the wall again. A panel popped open, revealing a footed jumpsuit, and he pulled it out then closed the panel again. The jumpsuit looked like the uniform he was wearing – aside from being dark green in color and having no patches – and it also looked like it might fit me.
“You’d better put this on,” he said, tossing me the suit with what looked like regret on his face. “We usually wear clothing of some sort around here, and there’s no sense in getting people curious.”
As soon as I had the suit, he turned away from me and walked over to that shimmering golden square on the wall. he brushed his fingers along the upper right side of it, and I blinked as it began lengthening and widening as though it were made of syngel. The former square kept changing until it was about seven feet high and four feet wide, then he seemed to be satisfied. It still shimmered goldenly, but now it was a doorway, showing a hazy view of green skies and yellow sunshine above a wide, carved wood balcony. The big man took time out from staring through the doorway to glance at me, and I realized I’d just been standing there holding the suit in my hand, so I began getting into it. It didn’t take more than a minute, which made the timing just right.
“Ah-here’s the food,” the big man observed, causing me to look around.
The panel door had slid aside again, and this time it was a really oversized male who entered pushing a cart. he was bigger and wider – and younger – than the Commander, with brown hair and eyes and a broad, square face, and he wore the same uniform outfit, only in a deep red. he pushed the cart – which had no wheels but some sort of runners – through the golden haze and out onto the terrace, then came back through the golden doorway without it. he nodded to Commander whoever, sent a wink in my direction, then left again without a word.
When the panel had slid closed behind his broad back, I looked over toward the Commander again and commented, “Now I know why that doorway is so high. I’m glad to see he’s friendly.”
“That’s Leandor, head of my special section,” the Commander supplied, looking toward the now empty doorway. “He must have heard about our visitor and decided to get a look at her to break up the boredom.
Waiting on tables isn’t what he was trained for.”
“How about discussing what he was trained for,” I suggested with a bright smile. “As an easy lead-in to all those questions you’re going to answer for me.”
“You sound as though you think I won’t be answering any questions,”
he said with an injured air of innocence. “You do have my word, you know, and I consider my word a solemn oath. Let’s take a look and see what Leandor brought.”
He headed out through the golden haze with a half-swallowed grin on his face, leaving me no option but to ignore my annoyance and follow him. It was pretty obvious he intended running our interview to suit himself, and it didn’t yet suit him to get down to cases.
As I passed through the golden haze, I felt a light tingling sensation, the same sort of tingling you feel when moving through a light grade force shield. Once I was through it, I noticed immediately that the quality of the air was different. Inside the air was fresh and clean, but fresh and clean in the way of having been laundered through a recirculator; outside was the fresh and clean of true outdoors, with a lot of that just-born feeling of recent rain. I took a deep, sweet breath of it, knowing how lucky I was to be able to breath air like that again, then looked around.
The green sky was early-afternoon light, lacking the too-bright glare of morning. The yellow sunshine covered everything, and in some strange way made the ten foot, carved wood balcony a very dark brown.
The wood gleamed as though it were polished, intricate designs following themselves around the entire area of it. Commander who-sis was busy at the tray, so I walked to the thigh-high balcony rail, leaned one hand on it, and looked over.
Below the balcony was miles of unoccupied air, falling away dizzily to medium-sized foothills a long way down. If there was anything on the ground far below I couldn’t see it, but there didn’t seem to be anything anywhere – just miles and miles of emptiness. That first little man had said we were in an outpost, and I wondered briefly what sort of an outpost it could be.
I turned away from the balcony rail to see that the Commander had transferred a number of thin, oblong dishes to a wide block of pure white stone that was obviously going to be our table, so I left the rail and joined him. There were matching white stone benches to sit on, so I lowered myself and rested an elbow on the table.
“Question number one which requires a detailed response,” I announced, watching the big man as he paused over uncovering a dish to glance at me. “What do I call you when I get tired of
‘Commander’?”
The question was obviously an acceptable one, and the wary look faded from his eyes as he bowed.
“I am Commander Arlent Selarn Delrah Garmar Rantal Queltes Dameron,”
he answered, pronouncing the names slowly and distinctly. “Please call me Dameron.”
“That’s what I get for asking for detail,” I sighed, shaking my head.
“If you hadn’t added that last, I might have gotten discouraged.”
“I somehow doubt that,” he laughed, seating himself on his own white bench. “And what would you like to be called?”
“Now, why should you have to ask my name?” I mused, keeping my eyes on him. “What about all that sleep talking I did?”
He smiled gently.
“I know that your name is,” and suddenly his pronunciation became foreign, ” ‘Special Agent of the Federation Council Diana Santee,’
but which of those names do you prefer being addressed by? We usually choose the one we like best, no matter what position it holds in the full tide.”
“Our familiar names are usually chosen for us,” I answered with an air of faint disappointment. “My chosen name is Diana, and Diana had thought she’d caught you in a little bit of fast foot-shuffling. I’ll just have to drown my sorrow at the mistake in some of that food which smells so delicious.”
“Best idea I’ve heard yet,” he agreed with what was becoming a usual grin, then started digging in. I went at it a little more cautiously, but didn’t find any hidden caches of camouflaged ptomaine. Everything tasted as good as it smelled, which let me shift my eating to automatic while my mind paid attention to thinking.
For some reason, it appeared I had given my name and rank in Basic rather than in whatever I was speaking then. I didn’t know enough about the situation to even begin to guess why, but could only hope I also hadn’t gone into detail about my job. No matter what my position there turned out to be, they would watch a non-combatant a lot less carefully than they’d watch an experienced professional. And as large as I was, the man who had named himself Dameron was larger still, and obviously a fighting man. No matter what he had learned about me, it probably would not be enough to make him call that bodyguard he’d joked about earlier-and therein lay another advantage for me. His eyes came to me as I watched him chew, and I smiled in response to his smile, but we weren’t -smiling at the same thing.
After I’d eaten most of what had been put in front of me, I decided to get on with the question and answer game. I picked up the hexagonal glass of what had turned out to be a light, sparkling silver wine, sipped at it, then cleared my throat. When Dameron’s dark eyes were on me, I put the glass down again.
“If you’ve regained part of your strength, I’d like to get on with our information exchange,” I said, gesturing at all the empty dishes.
“So far, all we’ve exchanged is our names, and that’s not my idea of making headway.”
“You do have a point,” he sighed, looking regretfully at the leftovers but pushing his plate away anyway. “Go ahead and ask your questions.”
“I’ve got the next one all ready,” I said, leaning forward a little.
“I was told that this is an outpost, but no one’s said what sort of an outpost. Does your Confederacy have a colony here?”
Dameron poured himself more of the wine, then leaned to one side of his bench with a sigh.
“We have no colony here, but there are people who we protect – in a way,” he said, sipping from his glass before waving a finger at me.
“No, don’t start looking at me like that, I’m trying to explain!”
He was annoyed at the expression on my face, but if that was his idea of explaining, he was bound to get even more annoyed. I kept my skepticism voiceless and leaned my forearm down to my own bench, and he continued with a vague gesture of his wine glass.
“We of the Absari Confederacy like to think of ourselves as civilized,” he groped. “Being civilized, we feel it our duty to help those people in our area of space who haven’t gotten as far as we have. We watch over them and lend an anonymous hand, easing them more quickly through certain standard steps of advancement. For instance, we supply various rulers with advisors who put a premium on intelligence and a gift for invention. When our assisted kingdoms begin to prosper, their neighbors copy the methods used to catch up, thereby spreading the idea painlessly. We also encourage force of arms-no sense helping a kingdom to prosperity just to see them lose it to the nearest strong man-but we don’t supply any clues which will lead to the more advanced sorts of weaponry. They don’t know about us, won’t know about us unless a catastrophe happens, and we maintain a strict hands-off policy with anything that’s really new. We won’t try to change something we’ve never seen before; after all, how can we evaluate it?”
He paused at that point to swallow at his wine, and I sipped at my own, finally understanding why he’d had such a problem with his explanation. His Confederacy mixed into the affairs of non-member planets, and it’s easy to misinterpret something like that, no matter what the motive behind it is. I took another sip of wine and smiled at him.
“I can understand why you’re careful about something new. Have you come across many really new things?”
“Not many,” he smiled back, relaxing a little. “But a few. As a matter of fact, this planet has a beauty of a poser that we’ve been trying to get to the bottom of since we got here. We try not to have our agents commit their full lives to a backward planet like this one, and we certainly don’t allow families to settle here, but we may have to make an exception. The mystery is handed down in certain families only, and outsiders don’t have a chance of getting anywhere near it. Something will have to be done, but I hope it’s done after my time. It’s bound to be involved and risky.”
He stopped again, as though he’d already said whatever there was to say, and I shifted on the bench, my curiosity really aroused.
“Well?” I prompted, wondering if he’d ever remember to include details. “What is this fantastic mystery? Don’t tell me the secret is a secret?”
He looked down into his glass as he gently swirled the light, silvery wine, and he seemed to be fascinated with whatever he saw there.
“I’m sorry to say that the secret is just exactly that,” be murmured.
“I don’t think you should be too overburdened with knowledge when you go back to your home sector.”
He was so off-hand and casual about it that I nearly missed it. My arm, which was stretched out to put my glass back on the table, froze to complete motionlessness, and my jaw dropped down to where I was sitting.
“Do you mean to sit there and say that you’re sending me home?” I gasped, staring at him. “Why?”
The grin he’d been hiding came all the way out, and he laughed aloud.
“Because, as I told you, we hope to make peaceful contact with your people some day,” he chuckled. “The more friends we have there when the day comes, the better off we’ll be. I’m also personally convinced you’ll say nothing about us when you do get back.”
I finished putting my glass on the table, then added my forearms right in front of it.
“Oh, yes,” I nodded with a grumble. “I’d almost forgotten that unconscious conversation we had. Maybe if you tell me what I said, I’ll find it easier to believe what you’re saying.”
“You’ll believe it when you get there,” he grinned, then finished off his wine. “I found out that much about you. You said you’d been sent away from your people by someone who wanted to get rid of you before you put him out of business. I gathered that the business was illegal, and you’re some sort of law enforcement agent for your Federation.”
His eyes were on me in a casual, mildly curious way, so I made sure to squirm uncomfortably and blush enough to be noticed.
“I’d already gotten the proof I needed, but I got careless,” I confessed in an embarrassed voice. “Radman’s a slaver, and that’s too lucrative a business not to watch closely. My department would have known he was responsible for my disappearance, but the way he worked it, be would have come out as innocent as an infant if he were put to the Question. he would have been asked about my present physical whereabouts and condition, and he would have been able to answer in all honesty, ‘I don’t know’!”
The thought of it made me furious all over again, but I was careful not to show the feeling. Radman had seen to it that I would have been able to stay alive and healthy for years, and hadn’t given a damn that during those years I most likely would have become a raving lunatic. The thought had been with me constantly during those two months aboard the ship, but now I was able to think about coming face to face with him again, now there was more than just the dream of it.
The fingernails of my right hand scraped along the white stone of the table top, and I barely felt it.
I was brought back to my surroundings when Dameron rose from his bench and put his hand out to me.