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"What?"

"Nothing. You're right. Maybe it doesn't."

"Come on. What?"

"It's just that if they wanted to shut you up and keep you from finding out any more--"

"They'd throw me out."

"But that wouldn't shut you up. It would make you angry. And they'd lose the money they've already invested in you."

Clark saw. "They gave me a juicy problem instead. Then it's not because they like my work."

"It's...a more backhanded compliment than you might think. Or you could be right. They might just want to keep you from getting carried away."

Clark stared at the floor between his feet. He traced a line between the dark tiles with his toe and then kicked lightly against the table leg. He had not thought it through. He had been all too ready to believe everyone wanted to reward him for his perception. He glanced across the table at Paula, who was looking sympathetically at him, waiting while he made the discovery that he was being flattered because he happened to be in a place where others needed his compliance, and that behind the flattery lay threats. It was a discovery she had made a long ago, he thought, and that had overshadowed much of her life.

"This is a perfect no-win situation, isn't it?" He looked over her head at the window. Outside there was darkness and then another window to the neighbors' kitchen. He could see the tops of heads in the next kitchen where people were talking and laughing in blithe assurance that they knew something, anything at all.

"That's why I didn't go into medicine," he remarked. "Not enough chemistry and too many impossible situations. You have to lie and give your patients placebos, give them rotten choices. Sometimes you have to deliberately get them sick. To hell with that. I wanted to be able to tell what was going on. I wanted to do the right thing and always know which it was."

"There's no right thing to do," Paula said. She went into the living room. Clark could see her lie down on the carpet to sleep and thought of trying to encourage her, but felt too miserable to stay. There must be some direct action that would pry Sevit from their grip.

He walked at random again. The sky was growing light when he went into the underground. He changed lines and went to the embassy. Now there, he thought, a simple target. One attack, carefully planned, with a poison absorbed through the skin. Walking along the opposite side of the street in the cool grey twilight while pigeons wandered among the litter underfoot and the streetlamps faded out, Clark horrified himself by contemplating murder.

He studied the building. It was a dome with black panels and dark brown window bands running up one side and down the other. Stable. The green and white Eyimalian flag snapping in the dawn breeze was its only ornament. A stout man in a grey uniform unlocked the front and then the back doors. The sound of his footsteps and the chink of keys, even the jingle of his bracelets, carried across the street.

At the back door, the guard met Efirr Nije, who was coming out. Another man stood behind him in shadow, one heavy forearm extended to wave the guard on. Efirr and the stranger argued. Clark could hear the harsh gutterals and hissing whispers but could make out no words. Finally Efirr turned his back on the other and stomped off.

Clark followed him. He had to run to keep pace, but the Eyimalian was too preoccupied to hear him. They stomped and ran down a side street to an overland stop. Clark got on behind two bony charwomen whose ID tags gave him a moment's pause; both had been named for famous actresses. He sat low in his seat, hair straggling across his face, so engaged in hiding that he almost let Efirr get off alone.

At the last moment, Clark stumbled out of the car into a neighborhood full of warehouses. Efirr was a long way ahead, walking quickly. Clark persued as fast and quiet as he could. Efirr went into a warehouse office. Clark sat on the curb to wait for him.

No one lives here, he thought. The area was sunk in profound silence, the windowless buildings utterly still. Even the plants had a survivor's fierceness. A few tough weeds erupted through a crack in the pavement before him. More weeds shot up close to the warehouse walls and more in the patch of rock-hard dirt in front of the office. Vines clutched the fence around the building. Patches of stiff yellow grass separated the warehouse from its neighbors.

Clark tried to imagine what Efirr might be doing here. It seemed to him that no one who claimed to be anti-Dagrov, even a journalist, ought to have friends so high up that they could come and go at the embassy when it was closed. Of course, the mysterious friend might be secretly trying to help Sevit. But then he would not dare meet Efirr at the building.

The office door slammed. Efirr stood outside, hands on hips, laughing harshly.

"I'm done for!" he declared. "Done for, altogether and beyond doubt. Our friend is dead. I have killed him."

You're lying, Clark thought, but disbelief vanished like the last gleam of daylight before the fact of Sevit, dead. There was no reason to suppose he was lying.

Efirr began to walk. Clark again followed, keeping a few paces behind, not hurrying. The Eyimalian walked very slowly. They passed the overland stop without pausing.

The neighborhood was still deserted. Their footsteps echoed among the buildings. Once an old woman in a grey uniform emerged from a narrow alley to stare at them and then turn away in silence, as though a life of solitary watchfulness had left her incapable of speech.

They walked for an hour and came to an underground station. Now the day shift had begun to arrive and the skeleton night crews were going home. They caught one of the inbound lines and rode among tired workers who knew one another and stared at the outsiders. Clark noted, with a detatchment that surprised him, that they stared at no one else, so there were probably no Eyimalian secret police nearby.

Efirr did not bother trying to fit into a seat, but stood above one of the a-grav patches in the floor and kept himself in place by pressing his head against the ceiling. He stared about him, now and then dropping his gaze to look at Clark.

"I'm a double agent," he said in Eyimalian.

"For whom?" Clark asked.

Efirr took a roll of napit from his pocket and bit off a large piece. "The Eyimalian secret police." He chewed slowly. When they rounded a turn he moved his head to keep his place in the car.

"How long--?"

"Before I came to Reshebora, I was recruited by two men. One was hostile, the other friendly," he explained, looking at Clark from the corner of his eye. He grinned. "Indeed, I was a fool."

Clark shook his head. Efirr thinking he could outwit the whole of the government security system. Had he not thought the same?

"At first I was protecting everyone, then I was protecting Sevit, and finally I was protecting no one at all. They assigned another agent to him. I was introducing him at the party when you interrupted me," Efirr said. The car stopped with a jolt that swung his body sharply. He let his head roll against the cieling until the back of his neck was uppermost and he looked as though he had been hung.

Efirr moved away from the patch and came down. The workers got out. Clark and Efirr changed to a line that brought the clericals, whose day began later, downtown. The napit was beginning to work on Efirr. He manuvered himself into position over an a-grav with more difficulty.

"He stood at my elbow," he said.

"All evening?"

"All evening." Efirr was in a corner this time, head resting in the intersection of the walls and cieling. One eyebrow rose a trifle. "You are thinking of the moments I spent with you in Paula's room. He was in the hall. Paula..." His attention wandered. He looked over the heads of the clericals chatting, trading anecdotes of complaints they handled on the job."...imagines that she loves him, but you and I are the only ones who truly did."

A woman was staring at them. Clark's hands gripped his knees, tense with the effort of keeping still. He felt that at any moment their strength might fail and he would leap up, seize Efirr--he made himself relax. She still stared. He stared back. She looked down. He heard Efirr chuckle.

"The party," Clark said as evenly as he could. "Why was Sevit arrested?"

"He was Sevit Uchide."

"But what exactly--"

"You were in the next room. You heard him speak of the necessity of organizing now, while they are weak, did you not?"

"Yes."

"They do not permit that." Efirr shut his eyes. "I was with him. In the candlelight our shadows were dancing across the walls. I knocked over candles, hoping to create confusion about who said what, but to no avail. And then Sevit jumped up. You must have heard him, to free our people... He was in the light that came from Paula's room, his face in shadow. I imagine him gazing fiercely, with sincerity, as before all this began." Efirr glanced down at Clark. "Awful, yes. The door slammed and the shadows took him. That's all."

"And after that," Clark prompted.

"After that, nothing," Efirr said. He folded his arms, then let them fall. "No one dies from despair." The train slowed. They were at the end of the cape, on the Bay side.

"Why did you kill him?"

Efirr drifted away from the a-grav. "They would have tortured him to death," he said as he descended.

They came up into daylight. The sun shone ferociously. Efirr still led the way, though with uneven steps, and Clark followed, pushing people aside when they blocked him. The clumsy chase ended at a Bayside cafe, a big open room with a high arched cieling and tables scattered about. It was nearly empty. Outside on the patio, the patrons kept up a strident din with their dishes and conversations. Beyond lay glittering water, too bright to behold.

Efirr stopped in the middle of the room. He took a cannister from inside his shirt and gave it to Clark, saying, "I have written a manifesto about Eyimalia." He leaned down to embrace Clark, whispering, "Little brother, your friendship with Paula has sustained me. I thank you both. You must hate me now, but I hope that when you have done grieving for Sevit you will grieve for me a little."

He eased Clark into a chair. Clark sat. Efirr went slowly away toward the washroom, stopping once to contemplate a chair before he stepped over it and went on.

Clark rested his head on the table. Shock protected him for the moment and he thought little, but some corner of his mind remained active and there he measured the pain to come by his inability to feel now. He made the working corner concentrate on what he should do next. Someone would doubtless come after Efirr. They would have to hide him...no one at Eyimalia House would do it if they knew he had killed Sevit, but not to tell them meant letting them continue to suffer in the belief that he suffered, and to waste their energy in schemes for his rescue. Lying to Paula was unthinkable. Clark groaned. Efirr, the leaf in the storm. He knew he was alone now; he must know it.

Did Efirr know what he would do? He seemed to be acting on impulse. Certainly his confession was unplanned, unless--the gleam of doubt appeared again and vanished--surely it was unplanned as his collaboration with the police had been. Efirr had learned nothing. Most likely he would seek the quickest route of escape. The quickest route. Clark got to his feet, but already someone who had just entered the washroom was running out, face ashen.

Clark leaned against the table. Too late, once again blind to what now became so clear. He staggered toward the washroom, but the witness detained him. Clark stared without speaking at that gaping mouth, those fearful eyes. This is the link that can never be broken, he thought. This is where reason meets its bound. Others were going in and out now. The police arrived. A fat officer drew Clark away from the scene. He opened his mouth to argue, but all that emerged was an inarticulate sob.

"Wait till they bring him out here," the policeman urged. Clark waited, but when the door opened and he heard people straining to lift Efirr's body, he fled.

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CONTINUE

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INDEX