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BenRabi followed Mouse s gaze. It was fixed on the Sangaree woman like the
cross hairs of an assassin s rifle scope.
She s working on me, Moyshe. She s got me working on myself. I ve been
having trouble sleeping. I just lay there thinking up ways . . . Thinking
about her being right down the passage. It s because of the mess on
Blackworld. I can t get it out of my head. And I thought I had it under
control.
You too? What the hell did Beckhart do to us?
Amazing, Mouse s finally owning up to a connection with the Shadowline War.
He must be under real stress.
Self-discipline, Mouse. That s the only answer I ve got. And maybe the
notion that you ought to save yourself for a bigger target. She s not worth
getting burned over.
She s the queen in the game. And the stakes are as big as they can get,
Moyshe. Watch her. I ve never seen anybody so sure they had a winning hand.
She s got a royal flush in spades look.
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You re mixing metaphors.
Metaphors be damned, Moyshe. I need help.
Jesus, benRabi thought.Here I am halfway to the psycho ward and my partner is
crying for me to keep him out. Are we going to have one nut stand guard over
the cracks in the other s noggin? Let s take it to Kindervoort, then.
Oh, no. This stays in the family. Jarl doesn t get anything free. How s your
head doing?
The docs keep saying there s nothing wrong. It don t sound right. I mean,
how come I hurt so goddamned much? But maybe it s true. For a while I thought
it was a tumor and they were just jollying me so I wouldn t panic. But the
scans didn t show anything when I finally got them to let me see them. Now I
think something external is causing it.
Allergy?
No. I can t explain yet. It s just barely a suspicion so far.
That suspicion did not leaf out, blossom, and bear fruit for months.
Time lumbered forward. Mouse worked himself into the shipwide chess finals.
BenRabi had a falling out with the collector crowd, among whom he had been a
brief, bright star. They were older, more prejudiced people, and unable to
tolerate his alienness indefinitely. He trudged onward in his laborious
relationship with Amy.
He tried to make it work. He sincerely believed he was giving it an honest
go, and for a while the curious Alyce memories and attendant mental oddities
withdrew, but he never saw any long-term hope.
He even abandoned his writing in order to give her more time. I just don t
feel like writing, he lied. It isn t me anymore.
She protested, but with such restraint that he began to resent her presence
during moments when he could have written.
Turn around twice and there went another month into the file cabinets of
time. And here was Mouse with another. Moyshe, I think I need help.
Stay out of her way.
Not the Sangaree woman this time, Moyshe. Another one.
What else?
Carrie just gave me the word. That Sally I was going with . . . She s
peegee.
Come on. You re shitting me. People don t get pregnant unless . . . Oh, my.
Oh, my, yes. Unless they want to.
Moyshe fought a grin.
You laugh and I ll kick your head in.
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Me? Laugh? I m sorry. It s just that . . . What do you want me to do?
Shee-it, Moyshe. I don t know. Talk to me. I ve never been up this tree
before.
What is it? She figure you d do the honorable thing? Why are you doing this
to me, Mouse? I had a handle on the Alyce thing .
That s the name of the game. That s the way they do things here. And the way
they lay their little traps. Straight from Century One.
No law says you ve got to give her what she wants, though. Kiss her
good-bye. That was how he had failed Alyce, so long ago. He had not found the
strength to say no until it was too late.
I don t like to hurt anybody s feelings.
That s the chance she took, isn t it? How come it was so easy to say, but
so hard to do? I don t see how anybody could believe in a marriage that
started out that way anyway. Go on. Tell her to kiss off.
Easier said than done, Moyshe.
I know. Advice is that way. Here s some more, while we re at it. Take your
own precautions so it doesn t happen again.
That much I figured out for myself. Mouse went away. He returned within the
hour, shaking his head. She couldn t believe that landsmen don t give a damn
if a kid s parents are married or not. But I think I finally got through to
her.
For a while Mouse s social calendar was less crowded. But only for a while.
The ladies seemed incapable of remaining away.
Tell me something, Amy, benRabi said one afternoon. Why are we here?
She started giving him the standard story.
That s not true.Danion didn t really need us. Certainly not a thousand of
us. Even with only two hundred we ll finish up six months early. Your own
Damage Control people wouldn t have taken much longer. So what s really going
on?
She would not tell him. She even refused to speculate. He suspected, from her
expression, that she might not know, that she was beginning to ask herself the
questions that were bothering him.
His came of a long line of thinking sparked by snippets of information and
flashes of intuition that had begun accumulating on Carson s.
Correct me if you can fault this hypothesis, he told Mouse when Amy was out
of hearing. We re guinea pigs in a coexistence experiment. They ve got
something big and dangerous going and they thought they could hire outside
help to get through it. I d guess they expect heavy fighting. Our job
descriptions all deal with damage control. But the experiment was a failure.
No takers.
I wouldn t know, Moyshe. You ve got your head working. Who were they going
to fight? Not us.
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Sharks?
Maybe. But it doesn t add up. Still, I m not much good at puzzles. How s
your head doing?
Real good. Why?
I thought so. You re more like the old Moyshe lately. They completed the
last scheduled repair three weeks later. From then on there was little to do.
One day a long-faced Amy announced, They just told me. Starting Monday
you ll be assigned to Damage Control. To the emergency ready room at D.C.
South. I ll take you over and introduce you.
Breaking up the team, eh? Mouse asked. Where are you going?
Back to Security. She did not sound pleased. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]