I have no idea how much time passed, as I stared at that tiny screen, before Chloe nudged me in the ribs.
"Bob!" she whispered urgently into my ear. "We've got to get out of here."
I shook myself into awareness and out of shock. It wasn't until much later that I fully appreciated Chloe's achievement in coming out of shock before I did. After all, she'd known Renata Novak far longer than I had, and didn't share the dislike that should have served as a prophylactic for me. When I did appreciate it, I fell even more deeply in love with her. Come to think of it, I did so with each new demonstration of the undeniable fact that she was smarter than I was. In fact, I've come to believe that men only truly fall in love (as opposed to thinking they've fallen in love) with women smarter than they are. I ought to write a learned paper on the subject. Of course, I'd have trouble getting it published now, in light of . . . but all that in its proper place.
"No," I finally managed. "We have to stay until they're all gone. I've got to go back down there and retrieve the bug."
"Why?" Chloe kept her voice down with an obvious effort. "We've seen everything we need to see."
"But we haven't heard," I whispered back.
Not for the first time, I heartily cursed the nanobug I was using, straight off the shelf of Izzy's Toy Store. It could transmit real-time digital images of everything its pickup was scanning. But unlike the state-of-the-art Delkasu models, its audio recording could only be accessed by putting the bug itself into the appropriate device and playing it. We were watching a silent film with no subtitles.
"We've got to have the audio," I continued, keeping my whisper as low as possible. "Until we can hear what they're saying, we won't know the plans for the actual transfer of the goods—the information Khorat needs."
"To hell with Khorat!" hissed Chloe, who seldom swore. "With what we know now . . ." She gestured angrily downward toward the octagonal chamber, still unable to verbalize what we'd seen there. "We've got to get back and tell—"
"—Who?" That stopped her. We had visualized ourselves triumphantly presenting the identity of the traitor—the solution to the mystery that had baffled the Project for the past five years—to the leader of our mission. Now . . . well, what we had seen sort of put a new face on things.
"No, Chloe. We're just going to have to go back to the ship, be a couple of perfect little lambs until we're back on Earth, and then take our evidence to Novak's superiors. For that, we're going to need all the evidence. Besides, even if we didn't owe Khorat anything, I'd still do my damnedest to help him stop this sale from going through. I don't even have to know what the merchandise is. The mere fact that Novak wants it is enough to put me a hundred percent behind Khorat's efforts to keep her from getting it."
Judging from the look on Chloe's face, I must have let more of my true feelings show than was my habit. But she made no protest. We continued to wait, watching the screen with horrified fascination as Novak talked animatedly. I was a pretty fair lip-reader, and I mentally kicked myself for attaching the bug in such a location as to catch her at the wrong angle for using that skill.
Finally, the meeting ended. Handshaking was not a Delkasu custom, but I could tell from Novak's smile and the general aspect of things that an agreement had been reached. The Tonkuztra bigwigs filed out, accompanied by their guards. Another guard escorted Novak out the way she'd come. I deactivated the bug. We waited a few moments to be sure everyone had gone.
"Wait here," I told Chloe, still speaking in a cautious whisper. I let myself down into the antechamber, and then through the door into the big domed room. I reached up, unstuck the bug, and put it in a plastic safety casing.
I was just slipping it into my pocket when I heard the sound behind me.
To this day, I have no idea why one of the Delkasu security types had come back. Maybe he'd forgotten something. At any rate, when I whirled around he was standing in the door through which I myself had come, leveling a weapon at me. I recognized a pistol-sized paralysis beam projector—the kind of beam that had fleetingly brushed me at Seventh and F Streets in Washington, five years before. I had no desire to repeat the experience in intensified form. I raised my open hands slowly, hoping this would convey the appropriate message to a Delkar. I didn't want to spook this one, in whose face and stance I already read confused surprise at finding a human there.
My hands were still on the rise when Chloe, gripping the ledge over the doorframe with both hands, swung herself down silently into the antechamber behind the Delkar, and continuing the swing, slammed her feet into his back
The impact sent him staggering forward. He discharged his weapon, but the beam hit the floor, possibly paralyzing some crawling insect or other. At the same instant, I launched myself at him, gripping his paralysis beamer by the barrel and bringing my right knee up into his face.
He released his weapon and fell back against Chloe, who had landed on her feet and was still trying to get her balance. They fell in a heap.
The Delkasu are small but not especially fragile. And this one was combat-trained. He shook his head to clear it, and grasped Chloe around the waist from behind, sensing that I wouldn't beam him if it meant paralyzing her as well.
She jerked her head backwards into his face, smashing him on the pointed Delkasu snout that must have still been sensitive from its encounter with my knee. He emitted a shrill yelp that my earphone didn't translate. Chloe twisted out of his grip, leaving him exposed.
Unfortunately, I wasn't familiar with this model of paralysis beamer. Furthermore, a pistol-type grip designed for a Delkasu hand was awkward to the point of impossibility for a human to use. So I didn't even try. Instead, I put as much force as I could behind a swift, artless kick to his crotch.
I've been saying "he," but as usual with the Delkasu it was hard to tell. I was banking on my initial impression of gender being correct, for Delkasu males are even more vulnerable between the legs than human ones. As it transpired, my instinct was right. With a sound halfway between a gasp and a shriek, he doubled over and lay on the floor, making like a shrimp. Taking advantage of his immobility, I fumbled with the paralysis beamer until I was able to discharge it in his direction. His writhing and groaning ceased.
"Come on!" I snapped at Chloe. Plenty of time later to compliment her on that awesome move. I ran back up the ramp, retrieved my satchel, and reactivated the contact-lens display. It was programmed for a round-trip. We started back the way we'd come.
We were out of the vast hexagonal well and on the upgrade when we heard the sounds of outraged discovery behind us. We broke into a run.
Up and up we went, into the more frequented, brightly lit areas. I began to breathe a little easier, and take only occasional looks over my shoulder.
Then, with one of those looks, I caught sight of the tall, loping figures that loomed over the Delkasu crowds.
"They've brought in the Agardir," I told Chloe. "They're behind us. Stay with me, whatever you do."
Even as I said it, I glimpsed a commotion up ahead. The crowds were roiled like a school of fish at the passage of a shark.
What had happened was obvious. The Agardir trackers had called in our location to their bosses, who had then called ahead and ordered the neighborhood wise guys to converge on our route.
With cold certainty, I knew we weren't going to make it out of those passageways. I saw no purpose to be served by telling Chloe that.
But we'd just about come far enough for me to do one not altogether valueless thing.
I waited until we came to a certain intersection of passageways that Khorat had described to us—he'd even flagged it with a flashing light in the contact-lens display, which activated when we got there. Then I grabbed Chloe's hand and pulled her to the right, down a branching passage.
"Bob!" she demanded. "What are you doing? If we get off the track . . ." Her voice trailed off. She'd been about to tell me what I already knew about the difficulty of getting the display that was guiding us to reactivate after you'd departed from that immaterial thread through the Labyrinth. But then she'd remembered what we'd been told about this last-ditch option.
Our eyes met. She understood what I'd seen no point in telling her before. And I knew she knew it. And there seemed nothing to be said. So nothing was. Instead, we clasped hands more tightly and continued along that side passage, or "alley," as I thought of it.
The flavor was different there. There was the same array of food shops, but the aromas had an even greater variety, suggesting—at least to me—an assortment of ethnic cuisines. There were also other establishments of less obvious function. One of these was a dim little narrow-fronted place with a sign Khorat had told us to look for.
I say "sign," but the legend actually floated immaterially a few inches in front of the door. It was in the standard Delkasu ideographs, which I had learned to read, although doing so was still far from second nature to me. I puzzled these out as Antiquities of Astogra. We ducked into the door, passing through the holographic lettering.
The Delkar behind the counter was dark in coloring even for his species, almost a blue-black. Against that backdrop, a silver tracery of tattoos showed in striking contrast. Khorat had mentioned that this kind of body-art was characteristic of the Delksau of Astogra, a culturally eccentric colony world lying within the Ekhemasu Empire.
She stared at us. (Yes, she; I was getting better at Delkasu genders.) "May I help you?" my translator rendered the Delkasu, without the quaver my ears picked up.
I did as I had been instructed. "An old friend sent us," I said carefully. This was how my earpiece had interpreted what Khorat had told us to say, and I trusted that the software would faithfully retranslate it. As I spoke, I reached into the satchel and withdrew a complex silver medallion with a purple jewel set in its center.
The shopkeeper's large Delkasu eyes grew even larger, and glowed dark amber in the dimness. She said nothing, and I thought it would probably be good form if I didn't either. Instead, I brought forth the nanobug in its plastic casing and slid it across the counter.
The Delkar swiftly palmed it out of sight. "I'm sorry. I think you must have the wrong shop." Body language that transcended species and culture screamed at me: Get out! Quick!
I needed no urging. If we were sighted here, linking this shop to us, all was for naught. I turned away, leaving the satchel whose contents would have revealed the kind of equipment we'd been using. The shopkeeper evidently understood, for she grabbed it and stuffed it under the counter. Chloe and I made a hasty exit and headed back for the main passageway.
As we approached it, the crowd thinned out abruptly, revealing a trio of Agardir blocking our way out of the side passage our lingering scent had led them to.
They weren't carrying paralyzers, or any other weapon that I could see. But they were products of a culture whose males were presumed to be warriors, and their species was a lot more physically formidable than the Delkasu. And they—and their anatomy—were new to us, so I'd never gotten any pointers on unarmed combat with them.
Of course, by the same token, they surely hadn't gotten any such pointers on us.
One of them stepped forward and made an unmistakable Come! gesture.
I motioned Chloe back, and shuffled forward, doing my best submissive number. I hoped it had a soothing effect on the Agardir, but I couldn't tell. So without further ado I pulled in my right leg and launched a flying side-kick at the Agardir's midriff.
It rocked him back, but seemed to have little effect beyond that. A second Agardir gave a thin, high-pitched cry and leaped at me like his remote predatory ancestors: leading with his feet, their three knifelike claws fully extended.
I went to the ground (well, floor) to get under that soaring attack, landing on both hands and bringing my legs around in a hundred-and-eighty-degree sweep that cut the Agardir's descending legs out from under him. He crashed atop me. He was heavier than he looked, and his body odor was acrid. I heaved him off me, into the path of the third Agardir. This gave me time to get to my feet and back into fighting stance.
"Enough."
I swung around and saw the source of the voice, to which my earpiece had imparted a tone of testy impatience. A Delkar with the physical indicia of middle age was approaching, with several of the security guards behind him. He motioned two of them forward. I saw the weapons they carried.
To say that my blood ran cold would not only be a clichŽ, it would also be misleading, for it implies a state of icy calm. In fact, all I felt was a panic-stricken desire to grab Chloe and run back down the alley from which we'd come.
But it would have been useless, and it might have carried a risk of linking us with that eccentric little shop. So I held still as the Agardir—who also recognized those weapons—scrambled to their feet and got out of the way with ludicrous haste.
"Raise your hands slowly," I managed to say to Chloe. "And look as harmless as you can."
It did no good. The Tonkuztra boss gave the guards another curt gesture.
At once, I ceased to have a mind or a soul. All I had was pain. In any meaningful sense, I ceased to be human; I was nothing more than a vessel of agony.
The neural pulsers, as Section Four had dubbed them, were a very different application of the technology that had produced the paralysis beamer. They, too, acted directly on the nervous system, but in such a way as to stimulate it into a state of transcendent pain. Every Delkasu government outlawed them . . . which, of course, meant that outlaws had them.
Above the sound of my own throat-tearing screams I heard Chloe's, and since I am trying to give as honest an account as possible, I will say that I didn't care. The capacity to care about another being—even Chloe—no longer existed in me. Love, like pride and dignity and honor, had been crowded out, leaving only the unendurable pain that allowed no room for anything else.
But some tiny part of me somehow clung to what I had been told: that the pain really was unendurable, and that the body would soon shut down rather than endure it.
Chloe's screams stopped just before shock took me.
No actual physical trauma caused the pain of the neural gun, so when I awoke it was gone. And my mind was already setting about the blessed process of forgetting how it had felt.
My brutalized nervous system was another matter. Any attempt to move my hands—the only movement I could even think about, for I was strapped down on a hard bed—resulted only in a spasm of twitches. I lay still, managing to slowly turn my head to the right, from which direction I could hear the sound of groans. Chloe was strapped into an identical bed, still in the grip of nightmares. Like me, she was naked. They'd doubtless done a very comprehensive search of our clothing, which naturally would have turned up Khorat's little trinkets. At least they'd attached catheters to prevent us from soiling the beds.
Delkasu technicians came, examined us and drugged us, all with impersonal efficiency. Time began to lose its meaning as I drifted in and out of a chemical haze.
Once, one of my lucid periods coincided with one of Chloe's. "Where are we?" she rasped drily. She was blushing down to below her neck in her nakedness.
"I don't know," I replied on my second try, after swallowing the miniscule quantity of saliva I could summon up. "Have you told them anything?"
"No." A pause. "Not that I know of."
"Neither have I." I didn't bother to repeat her qualifier. We both knew that we could have already blurted out everything—including Khorat's involvement—in our sleep, under the irresistible compulsion of truth drugs that did not require the subject to be awake.
But then again, we might not have. So I said nothing further, given the near certainty of our room being bugged. Chloe must have figured it out as well, for she also kept quiet.
After a while, the drugs ceased, and time resumed its accustomed pace. At the same time, we found we could move our hands without inducing an uncontrollable fit of trembling. Water was brought, and some kind of tasteless food.
Soon after that, the door of our bleak little chamber slid open to admit the Delkar who had ordered the nerve pulsers used on us, followed by a quartet of his goons. Abject terror gripped me by the guts, before I noticed that they were unarmed except for the leader himself, who carried one of the pistol-sized paralysis beamers.
"You are to be questioned," he stated without preamble. They had left us our translator earpieces. "You can go willingly, or paralyzed."
"Can't we at least have some clothes?" I demanded. Sudden inspiration: "It's a, uh, cultural imperative with us. We won't be able to give intelligent responses to questions otherwise."
Smocks were brought—even more dehumanizing than the kind you get in human hospitals, since these were scaled for Delkasu dimensions. The goons unstrapped us and helped us to our feet . . . only to have us collapse from the weakness of hunger and the sheer stiffness that had set in while we'd lain immobilized. The head Delkar impatiently sent for his culture's equivalent of wheelchairs, which floated a few inches above the floor on extremely powered-down impellers. They wobbled alarmingly under our human size and weight, and the seats were a damned uncomfortable fit for us, but we managed to get settled in, after which the goons pushed us along the featureless corridors of wherever it was we were.
We came to a small room with a table in its center. The goons maneuvered us into two chairs on one side of the table. They were modern Delkasu chairs, which meant they tried valiantly to adjust to us, but without success. The goons departed, but their boss remained, his paralysis beamer trained on us.
"The individual who is to question you will be here shortly," he informed us.
That turned out to be an understatement. Before I could even frame a question about the nature of this individual, the door slid open to admit Renata Novak.
o