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explain Morioch s eagerness to wring his prisoners dry.
The lieutenant wet his lips. You, uh, you are most kind, sir, he said; the honorific appeared implicitly in
the pronoun. What do you wish of us?
I would like to get to know you well, Ydwyr said frankly. I have studied your race in some detail; I
have met individual members of it; I have assisted in diplomatic business; but you remain almost an
abstraction, almost a complicated forcefield rather than a set of beings with minds and desires and souls.
It is curious, and annoying, that I should be better acquainted with Domrath and Ruadrath than with
Terrans, our one-time saviors and teachers, now our mighty rivals. I want to converse with you.
Furthermore, since any intelligence agent must know considerable xenology, you may be able to help us
in our research on the autochthons here. Of a different species and culture, you may gain insights that
have escaped us.
This is themore true , and you are the more intriguing in your own right, because of who you are. By
virtue of my family connections, I obtained the story or part of the story behind the Starkad affair.
You are either very capable, Dominic Flandry, or else very lucky, and I wonder if there may not be a
destiny in you.
The term he used was obscure, probably archaic, and the man had to guess its meaning from context
and cognation.Fate?Mana?Odd phrasing for a scientist.
In return, Ydwyr finished, I will do what I can to protect you. With the bleak honesty of his class: I
do not promise to succeed.
Do you think,sir I might ever be released? Flandry asked.
No. Not with the information you hold. Or not without so deep a memory wiping that no real
personality would remain. But you should find life tolerable in my service.
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If you find my service worthwhile, Flandry realized, and if higher-ups don t overrule you when they learn
about me. I have no doubt I shall, sir. Uh, maybe I can begin with a suggestion, for you to pass on to the
qanryf if you see fit.
Ydwyr waited.
I heard the lords speaking about, uh, ordering that the man who hired me Leon Ammon mightas
well give him the name, it ll be in Rax s dispatch that he be eliminated, to eliminate knowledge of
Wayland from the last Terrans. I d suggest going slow and cautious there. You know how alarmed and
alerted they must be, sir, even on sleepy old Irumclaw Base, when I haven t reported in. It d be risky
passing on an order to your agents, let alone having them act. Best wait awhile. Besides, I don t know
myself how many others Ammon told. I should think your operatives ought to make certain they ve
identified everyone who may be in on the secret, before striking.
And there s no hurry, sir. Ammon hasn t any ship of his own, nor dare he hire one of the few civilian
craft around. Look how easy it was to subvert the interplanetary ferrier we used, without ever telling him
what a treasure was at stake. Oh, you haven t heard that detail yet, have you, sir? It s part of how I was
trapped.
Ammon will have to try discovering what went wrong; then killing those who betrayed him, or those he
can find or thinks he s found; and making sure they don t kill him first; and locating another likely-looking
scoutship pilot, and sounding him out over months, and waiting for assignment rotation to put him on the
route passing nearest Wayland, and Well, don t you see, sir, nothing s going to happen that you need
bother about for more than a year? If you want to be ultra-cautious, I suppose you can post a warcraft in
the Mimirian System; I can tell you the coordinates, though frankly, I think you d be wasting your effort.
But mainly, sir, your side has everything to lose and nothing to gain by moving fast against Ammon.
Khraich. Ydwyr rubbed palm across chin, a sandpapery sound under the storm-noise despite his
lack of beard. Your points are well taken.
Yes, I believe I will recommend that course to Morioch. And, while my authority in naval affairs is
theoretically beneath his, in practice
His glance turned keen. I take for granted, Dominic Flandry, you speak less in the hope of ingratiating
yourself with me than in the hope of keeping events on Irumclaw in abeyance until you can escape.
Uh uh, well, sir
Ydwyr chuckled. Don t answer. I too was a young male, once. I do trust you won t be so foolish as to
try a break. If you accomplished it, the planet would soon kill you. If you failed, I would have no choice
but to turn you over to Morioch s inquisitors.
XIII
The airbus was sturdier and more powerful than most, to withstand violent weather. But the sky
simmered quiet beneath its high gray cloud deck when Flandry went to the Domrath.
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That was several of Talwin s eighteen-hour days after he had arrived. Ydwyr had assigned the humans a
room in the building that housed his scientific team. They shared the mess there. The Merseian civilians
were cordial and interested in them. The two species ate each other s food and drank each other s ale
with, usually, enjoyment as well as nutrition. Flandry spent the bulk of his time getting back into physical
shape and oriented about this planet. Reasonably reconciled with Djana who d been caught in the
fortunes of war, he thought, and who now did everything she could to mollify her solitary fellow
human she made his nights remarkably pleasant. In general, aside from being a captive whose fate was
uncertain and from having run out of tobacco, he found his stay diverting.
Nor was she badly off. She had little to fear, perhaps much to gain. If she never returned to the Empire,
well, that was no particular loss when other humans lived under the Roidhunate. Like a cat that has
landed on its feet, she set about studying her new environment. This involved long conversations with the
thirty-plus members of Ydwyr s group. She had no Merseian language except for the standard loan
words, and none of her hosts had more than the sketchiest Anglic. But they kept a translating computer
for use with the natives. The memory bank of such a device regularly included the major tongues of
known space.
She ll make out, Flandry decided. Her kind always does, right up to the hour of the asp.
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