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“Doesn’t look that way,” Sam answered. “Now that you’ve got this guy, maybe you can find out who.”
“Hope so,” the Gardena policeman said. “Let’s get him into proper handcuffs-gotta look right when we take him to the station, you know.”
“Okay by me,” Yeager said. “Give me a call when you know something, will you? I want to get to the bottom of this.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why anybody’d have it in for me, but somebody sure does.”
“Yeah.” While his partner covered him, the cop cut the twine with which Sam had bound the intruder and handcuffed him instead. Then he hauled him to his feet. “Come on, pal. We’ve got some talking to do.” He led him out to the squad car.
Yeager collapsed the legs to the telescope tripod and brought the instrument inside. “It’s a good thing you were out there,” Barbara said, shivering even though she was wearing a warm housecoat. “Otherwise…”
“Don’t remind me.” Sam stowed the scope on the service porch-the same spot Mickey and Donald’s incubator had once occupied. Then he poured himself a stiff belt of bourbon. After he’d downed it, he poured another one. That let him get some sleep.
When the Gardena police didn’t call him for two days, he called them. “Sorry, sir,” said the lieutenant to whom his call was passed. “I can only tell you two things. That fellow didn’t tell us anything much, but we didn’t have him long. The FBI took charge of him yesterday morning.”
“Did they?” Sam said. “Nobody tells me anything-they haven’t called me for a statement yet, either. Give me their number, will you?”
“Yes, sir,” the police lieutenant said. “It’s KLondike 5-3971.”
“Thanks.” Yeager wrote it down, hung up, and dialed it. When he got the Los Angeles FBI headquarters, he explained who he was and what he wanted to know.
“I’m sorry, sir.” The fellow on the other end of the line didn’t sound sorry; he sounded bored. “I’m not allowed to release any information on the phone. I’m sure you understand why.”
“Okay.” Sam suppressed a sigh. Bureaucrats, he thought. He’d complained about them to Kassquit. “If I come down there and show you who I am, will somebody please tell me what the hell’s going on?”
“I don’t know anything about that, sir,” the FBI man said, and hung up on him.
When Yeager drove downtown, he did it in full uniform, hoping to overawe the flunkies. That worked-to a point. He got kicked up to a senior inspector named O’Donohue. The Irishman looked him over, inspected his ID, and said, “All I can tell you, Lieutenant Colonel, is that we’ve flown this fellow to Little Rock for more questioning.”
“Christ,” Sam said. “Who the hell is he, anyway, and why won’t anybody tell me anything?”
“We’re still trying to find out, sir,” O’Donohue answered. “When we do, I’m sure you’ll be contacted?”
“Are you? I wish I were.” Yeager got to his feet. “All I see is that I’m getting the runaround, and I wish to hell I knew why.”
O’Donohue just looked at him and didn’t say a word. After perhaps half a minute, Yeager put on his hat and walked out. He wondered if anyone would call him. Nobody did.
“Would you believe,” Ttomalss said, “there are actually times when I wish I were a Big Ugly?”
In the monitor on his desk, Felless’ image drew back in surprise and alarm. “No, I would not believe that,” she said, and used an emphatic cough to show how strongly she disbelieved it. “By the Emperor, why would you entertain such a mad desire?”
“Because our society has trained us for many thousands of years to treat vengeance as undesirable,” he answered, “and because I wish I could enjoy taking my vengeance on the Tosevite female who kidnapped and imprisoned me during the fighting. Big Uglies still see nothing unfitting in revenge.”
“Ah,” Felless said. “That, at least, I can understand. What I would like is vengeance on the male from the conquest fleet who first discovered ginger.”
“And I can understand that,” Ttomalss said. “At least you finally managed to escape from Nuremberg.”
“This Marseille place is not much of an improvement,” Felless said with another emphatic cough. “And the Big Uglies here, I think, may be even more addled than those in Nuremberg. I ev
en had one female refuse what would be a great reward for a Tosevite. Addled, I tell you.”
“Most likely a criminal, or someone else with a good reason not to stick her snout in the air,” Ttomalss said.
“It could be,” Felless said. “I had wondered about that myself. Having someone of your experience confirm it is valuable.”
“I thank you,” Ttomalss said. But he didn’t want to talk about things that concerned Felless; he wanted to go on with his own train of thought. “Revenge is not unknown among us, or else Shiplord Straha would not still be living the life of an exile in the not-empire called the United States. I doubt Fleetlord Atvar will ever forgive him.”
“I have heard something of this scandal,” Felless said. “Did Straha not try to raise a mutiny against the fleetlord?”
“Not exactly-he tried to relieve Atvar, but proved not to have quite enough support among the other fleetlords,” Ttomalss answered. “But Atvar would have punished him as if it were a mutiny. I, though, cannot escape the belief that such efforts at vengeance are wrong.”
“I have long been of the opinion that you males of the conquest fleet, from continual association with Big Uglies over so many years, have become more like them than is healthy,” Felless said.
“It could be so,” Ttomalss said. “The converse is that you of the colonization fleet sometimes seem to have no understanding whatever of the realities of life on Tosev 3 and the need for certain accommodations with the Tosevites.”
“We understand more than you think,” Felless replied. “But you of the conquest fleet do not seem to grasp the difference between understanding and approval. Approving of what goes on is in many cases impossible; we intend to change it.”
“Good luck,” Ttomalss said.
“And the continual sarcasm of the males of the conquest fleet is not appreciated, either,” Felless snapped. “I bid you farewell.” She broke the connection.
Ttomalss glared at the blank monitor screen. As far as he was concerned, Felless represented a good part of what had gone wrong with the colonization fleet. Finding he represented what she thought was wrong with the conquest fleet did nothing to increase his fondness for her.
