"Rayeal Promton, I presume."
The voice was an assured feminine purr behind Gweanvin Oster. She twisted her head to look up at the smiling woman, then rose from her chair at the work console.
"Yes, I'm Rayeal Promton," Gweanvin said, "and you must be Marvis Jans, girl security agent."
The woman nodded. "How did you identity me so quickly?" she asked.
"Because I was expecting you. What's being done here on Narva, and more specifically here in Gordeen Consolidated Systems Lab, calls for the presence of the Federation's sharpest security agent. That's you. And you wouldn't come here and not take a look at your genetic sister. Of course, now that I've had a close look at you, I see that your nose is like mine . . . based on permanent bone instead of cartilage."
"And just what is being done in this building, Rayeal?" Marvis Jans asked softly.
Gweanvin laughed. "Is this a friendly visit or a security interview? Okay, so I've guessed a lot more about this project than my job requires me to know. Does that surprise you?"
"No." Marvis smiled. "A mind like yours is wasted on circuit growth technology, Rayeal. You should be a frontliner like myself. It's far more challenging work."
"I don't know," murmured Gweanvin. "I've thought about it, but sabotage, spying, counter-spying and other such derring-do strikes me as awfully masculine."
"Humpf! I like that!"
Gweanvin giggled. "No aspirations on your femininity intended, Miss Jans. Maybe I'd be more willing to swash about with a zerburst pistol on my hip if my hips were as curvy as yours." She paused, giving the older woman's figure an admiring once-over. "Gosh, how gorgeous you are! I hope I'm that well-stacked when I grow up."
"Thank you, dear." Marvis let her pleasure show. "You are twenty-seven standard years old, aren't you?"
"Yes. And you're about thirty-four."
"Right. If you develop at the same rate I did you'll start budding very soon, Rayeal."
"I've already started," Gweanvin grinned, "and not a minute too soon to suit me. I'm tired of looking like a boy."
"I wish you were a boy," Marvis remarked wryly.
"I'll bet you do," snickered Gweanvin. Then she asked more seriously, "Any clue of where one might be?"
"A male of our species? No, not a clue."
Gweanvin considered the undertones of that brusque reply. "That bugs you, doesn't it?" she asked.
"When your urges become as strong as mine . . ." She shrugged and turned away. "Isn't there any coffee in this joint?"
"Sure. Over here."
Gweanvin led the way to the spenser and drew steaming mugs for Marvis and herself. She motioned her visitor into a chair and seated herself nearby.
"Why not talk about it?" she asked. "Your search for a male is no secret from me."
"Aha! Spying on a Federation security agent, hah?"
"Oh, don't be such a warrior!" snorted Gweanvin. "Of course I've been spying on you, and you've probably known it all the time. Or certain friends of mine have, but don't fret. They're security people, too, and haven't told me any deep Federation secrets. They've merely kept me informed on your male-hunt."
Marvis sipped her coffee. "I was kidding you, dear. Of course I know what you've been up to. I haven't tried to keep my hunt all that secret anyway—because there may be a male somewhere as eager to find me as I am to find him. I wanted a bit of publicity."
"But nobody turned up?"
"Oh, a lot of guys turned up, but not one of us. Some looked like good bets but cases of delayed maturity are not unheard of among ordinary homo sapiens; that's all any of them turned out to be." She studied Gweanvin's face questioningly. "Just how much did your friends tell you about my search?"
"Well, they told how you finagled a permit to go into the Federation's central personnel files and run a computer check for individuals with genetic charts that match your own. My name was the only one thrown out—and you already knew about me, didn't you?"
Marvis nodded. "Go on."
"All right. Next you enlisted Monte's help. It assisted by working out a scheme to get one of our agents into the Commonality's personnel files to see what they had to offer."
"Monte's a he, not an it," put in Marvis. "The feel is definitely that of a masculine mind, as anyone who has ever been on Orrbaune knows."
"Which I haven't," said Gweanvin, "but we'll soon know the feel of Monte's mind here on Narva, won't we? If the project's a success, that is. Right?"
Marvis gave her a cool smile. "If you expect a security agent to join you in loose talk about a secret project, dearie, think again. Get back to the subject."
"Well, that's about all I know, except that you had no luck with the Commonality files. All that search produced was another female . . . somebody about my age named Gweanvin Oster."
Marvis nodded slowly. When she said nothing, Gweanvin added, "I'd like to know more about that Oster wench."
Marvis smirked. "Don't ask me, Rayeal, dear. Check with those spies of yours. If they can't tell you anything, tough."
"Not that tough," Gweanvin replied equably. "If you find out Miss Oster has located a male—and that's the only thing about her I'm really interested in—I'll know soon enough. When you vanish into the Commonality."
Marvis gave a little chuckle. "You think I'd be so unpatriotic as to defect for a man?"
"Yep. And so would I."
"Well . . . you could be right about that," murmured Marvis. "Actually, Rayeal, I don't mind telling you about Gweanvin Oster, but there's precious little to tell. She's a Commonality frontliner. We're unable to obtain data about her appearance, present activities, or whereabouts."
"Then . . . she may have found a male!" breathed Gweanvin, all wide-eyed ingenuousness.
"Unlikely. Our information is fairly solid on one point—that she's on assignment, not off in the bushes."
"Oh."
For a while Marvis gazed at Gweanvin without speaking. "You needn't peer at me like that," Gweanvin protested. "I'm not Gweanvin Oster, and I've got a long pedigree to prove it."
"I almost wish you were," grumbled Marvis.
"Why? Would you and the whole security bureaucracy enjoy looking like champion idiots?"
"I'm referring to the odds," Marvis said.
"Which odds?"
"Those against three mutant females being born without a single matching male." She frowned. "Don't tell me that hasn't occurred to you, too."
Actually, it had not, because Gweanvin knew there were only two females, not three. She realized she had made a slip with that "Which odds?" question . . . a rather subtle slip, but one that could nevertheless blow her cover sky-high . . . and just when her assignment was reaching the pay-off point. Had she shown dismay? No. Like Marvis, she had the ability to maintain a perfect poker-face at will.
"Surely you understand the laws of probability better than that!" she exclaimed. "Or does security work dull the reasoning powers?"
Marvis replied flatly: "I know the odds are eight to one against flipping a coin for three heads in a row. If there were no factors working against the conception of a male . . . if the odds were fifty-fifty in any given birth, then at least one of us three should be male."
Gweanvin laughed. "Have you actually done any coin-flipping recently?" she asked.
"Of course not! Why should I?"
"Try it sometime. It should make you happier about those 'odds'. I tried it myself not long ago, and flipped a sequence of five tails, one head, another tail, three heads, two tails, two heads, a tail, and so on. What were the odds against my starting out with a sequence of five tails like that?"
"Well . . . thirty-two to one. But a run like that is unusual."
"Sure, but it happens! I made over a hundred tosses without getting another string of five. But I had three fours, and five runs of three.
"The point is, Marvis, that probability works out to what we call 'the law of averages' only when we're dealing with a statistically significant number of events . . . the more the better. A gambler can actually have a lucky streak, you know. But he doesn't leave the game a winner unless he gets out at the right time. If he keeps playing long enough, the law of averages catches up with him. Don't depend on what you've read about probability, Marvis," she concluded with a grin. "Get a coin and start flipping it. The results should prove therapeutic."
Marvis thought about it for a moment. "You're right about mathematical probability, Rayeal," she said at last, "but the circumstances leave the possibility open that something is repressing conceptions of males of our species."
Gweanvin shrugged. "A possibility, sure. In which event, we're not the next evolutionary step for man, just three more old maids in the making. And if so, so what? I see no signs that man's about to cave in for lack of a new breed, anyway. But I don't really think that, Marvis. I think we're being balked out of motherhood, temporarily, by a streak of bad luck."
"I hope you're right. I . . ." Marvis paused in the listening attitude that told Gweanvin someone was speaking to her via her communications-implant. "Right away, Thydan," she responded to the call, then looked up at Gweanvin. "I must run along, dear. Some people I'm supposed to join for lunch."
"Oh. I'm sorry. We've got so much to talk about," said Gweanvin, rising.
"I'll have some time later," Marvis assured her, walking toward the door. "I'll get in touch."
Gweanvin followed her. "One thing I simply must ask you now. You've been mature, sexually, for some years, Marvis. Are you sure we can't procreate with an ordinary homo sap male?"
Marvis paused on the balcony jutting into the building's west wing scramble area and turned. "I'm positive, dear. And that's not theoretical." She gave a slight smile. "Maybe I did not bother with coin-flipping, but that I checked out with experiment. Many experiments, in fact. We're a new and different species, Rayeal. We can't cross-breed with the old."
"I was afraid of that," nodded Gweanvin, soberly.
"Sorry. See you later, dear."
Marvis stepped off the platform and plummeted downward on semi-inert transport mode. Probably on her way to the tightly restricted basement test-chambers, Gweanvin guessed. She knew the project was due to reach its climax very soon, probably that very afternoon. The arrival of Marvis Jans made that almost certain . . .
Across the scramble area from her balcony was the balcony and open door to Don Plackmon's office, with his desk so situated that he could sit looking out. When she glanced that way she found Don watching her. She waved, and he waved back. Don was supposed to be a circuitry growth technician . . . and he wasn't too bad at it . . . but she suspected he also had a security function. On a project like this one of every two people were probably involved in counterespionage.
And how many were spy-saboteurs?
None but her, she guessed. An operation such as this was too thoroughly guarded. First, it took the ability to lie to an emo-monitor without detection, which was something not one human in a thousand could do. Also it took a personal history that could be checked out by some of the most suspicious eyes in the Federation without revealing a flaw. That kind of cover took time, effort and money to build. Actually, it took a long-established family, one which had devoted itself for generations to the job of resembling loyal citizens of the Lontastan Federation, for Gweanvin Oster to be "born into"—with a minimal and painstaking doctoring of public records—as Rayeal Promton.
And getting inside this kind of project required one more thing: a reason for being there. To work on something that would of necessity involve circuitry growth one became an expert circuit-grower. The more expert the better. And with her mental equipment, Gweanvin had not had too much trouble becoming tops in the field, so far as the Federation was concerned. The Primgranese Commonality had the real leadership there, and Gweanvin had the benefit of being coached for her assignment by some of those leaders.
She knew more of circuitry growth than she was using on this project—and she was using more than her Lontastan colleagues knew.
Thus, she might actually wind up a net contributor to the Lontastan project if she were caught, or her assignment goofed in any way.
She returned to her work console. It lighted as she sat down, revealing the bitbox diagram she had been studying when Marvis Jans interrupted her. In a sense, this was make-work she was doing—the examination of alternate possibilities for the Lontastan version of a Bauble. Just in case the Bauble her section had completed, and that was now resting well-guarded in one of the basement test chambers, failed to work.
She knew it would work . . . and do other things the Lontastans would find far less desirable. This territory had been explored by Commonality scientists over a decade earlier, after the success of the first Bauble telepathic-communication systems led to a great deal of experimentation into the potentials of various Bauble-type constructs.
Was anything happening in the test chamber yet?
While continuing to gaze studiously at the console screen, she exteriorized from her body and—as an ego-field—dropped to the basement room. There she touched the Bauble gently, not really entering it, but establishing enough contact with it to use some of the special features its circuitry contained, features the Lontastans knew nothing about.
She found the Bauble was unchanged. It was in contact only with the pedestal on which it sat, like a beachball-size pearl. Nor was any field, ego or electronic, impinging on it. Judging from the silence of the room, no human was in the test chamber where it waited.
So Marvis Jans and the others who were to be on hand for the test probably actually were at lunch. Nothing would happen for at least an hour. And speaking of lunch . . . she had better start the afternoon with a full stomach herself. Her cover might be blown if her plans slipped just a little, in which event days might pass before her next solid meal.