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  “She interested in us?” Xris asked quietly.

  The Little One nodded.

  “I don’t suppose she thinks I’m incredibly sexy and hopes I’ll ask her to go dancing.”

  The Little One shook his head.

  “Who’s she working for?”

  The Little One shrugged.

  “She is very single-minded, is thinking only of us. Perhaps she is aware that we have a telepath. Do you want me to deal with her, Xris Cyborg?” Raoul asked, his hand reaching for his purse, where he kept a tube of very special lipstick.

  “No,” Xris said, and continued walking out the door. He watched, out of the corner of his eye, the woman follow after them. “It’s nice to know someone cares.”

  Chapter 5

  Advance knowledge cannot be gained from ghosts and spirits, inferred from phenomena, or projected from the measures of Heaven, but must be gained from men for it is the knowledge of the enemy’s true situation.

  Sun-tzu, The Art of War

  The Mag Force 7 team was scheduled to meet later that evening in a small conference room in the Megapolis Spaceport Hotel, in a room that had been reserved by Xris under the auspices of a corporate leader gathering together his regional managers for a sales conference. When Xris had first been contacted by Sakuta for the job, he’d put the word out to the Mag Force 7 team— disbanded since the Knights of the Black Earth affair— to meet him on Megapolis, gave them the name and location of the standard business-class hotel adjacent to the spaceport.

  A job for the Megapolis Space and Aeronautics Museum wasn’t likely to call for top-level security conditions; no need to travel to the edge of the galaxy, to Hell’s Outpost to discuss their plans at the Exile Cafe, for example. Xris guessed beforehand that this would be a simple job and he’d been right—in that, at least.

  What he hadn’t counted on was Amadi and friends dropping by to join the party—if that woman at the museum had been one of Amadi’s. Logic told Xris she was a bureau agent. Paranoia whispered that she was one of the Hung.

  Whoever she was, he hoped to throw her off the trail. Xris and Raoul and the Little One drove to the spaceport. No sign of Amadi or any of his agents following. Small comfort. Amadi was good and when he didn’t want to be seen tailing a suspect, he wouldn’t be seen.

  Dropping off the rental vehic, the three merged with the crowds in the terminal, purchased three tickets for an outbound flight, and then lounged around in the bar until it was time for their flight to leave. Xris sipped a beer and studied the professor’s notes. He formed a preliminary plan to steal the robot, then spent the rest of the time worrying about Darlene.

  Raoul bought the latest edition of the Galactic Inquisitor and caught up on the gossip about the Royal Family, began ooohing and aahing over the first official family photos of the newly arrived baby prince, attempted to show Xris, who wasn’t interested. The Little One crept into the minds of everyone in the immediate vicinity and, though he expanded his store of knowledge on humans considerably, the telepath caught no one tailing them.

  When the flight was called, they weren’t around to catch it. By the time Amadi—or whoever was keeping an eye on them, if anyone was keeping an eye on them— realized they’d been given the slip, the three were long gone. Xris, Raoul, and the Little One left the spaceport, caught a tram to the nearby spaceport hotel.

  Xris had plenty of opportunity for thought, with the result that paranoia fought logic and emerged the victor. By the time he reached the hotel, Xris had worked himself into such a fevered state of anxiety that he posted Raoul and the Little One to keep watch, then used the house phone. Asking for Darlene under the name of Mohini, he buzzed her room.

  Having already convinced himself that something terrible had happened to his friend, Xris was startled and relieved and even slightly angry at her voice—calm and sleepy-sounding—at the other end.

  “ ‘Lo?” she mumbled.

  All that worry, and she’d been taking a nap!

  “Darlene, is that you? Are you all right?” Xris demanded.

  She heard the tension in his voice, woke up fast. “Yes, it’s me. I’m all right. What’s wrong?”

  “Has anyone been inside your room? For any reason?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone make you switch rooms? Offer you cash to move?”

  “No, Xris.” Darlene sounded exasperated. “And I remember the routine, okay? No maintenance man has been in to ‘fix’ the phone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Good. What’s your room number? I’m coming up.”

  She told him. He switched off the phone, turned to Raoul. “The Little One latch on to anything? Anybody interested in us?”

  Raoul shook his head—carefully, so as not to disturb his homburg. “No, there is no one watching us, no one following us, no one paying the slightest bit of attention to us, probably because I am wearing this drab gray suit, which—while it is in the latest style—simply does not suit my personality. May I add, my friend, that the Little One and I”—he patted the fedora that stood somewhere about waist-level—”believe that you are behaving most irrationally. It would indeed be remarkable if anyone were to have kept up with us after all those twistings and turnings and dodgings and feintings we made at the spaceport. My head is still swimming.”

  “You’re a Loti. Your head is always swimming. As for it being remarkable, the Hung’s pretty damn remarkable, and don’t you ever forget it. I’m going up to talk to Darlene. You and the leech here find Jamil—”

  “I was going to change my clothes!” Raoul protested.

  “You’re beautiful,” Xris assured the Adonian. “The gray brings out the red in your eyes. Go find Jamil, tell him what’s up, have him search the conference room. When he’s covered it, call Darlene’s room, let us know. We’ll be down.”

  “What is he looking for?” Raoul’s lashes fluttered.

  “Anything. Everything—from bugs to plastic explosives.”

  “Plastic bugs to explosives,” Raoul murmured, attempting to commit the instructions to what memory he had. “Now, about my request for a leave of absence—”

  “Go!” Xris said through clenched teeth.

  Raoul, offended, went. The Little One trailed along behind.

  Xris hoped his orders would survive in translation and that Jamil wouldn’t spend the next thirty minutes hunting for rubber cockroaches. The cyborg headed for Dar-lene’s room.

  Darlene Rowan listened to Xris in silence and even when he had finished, she remained silent.

  Xris stood in the small hotel room, peering moodily out a gap in the curtains covering the sliding glass door. He had a twist in his mouth, was chewing it to a bitter pulp.

  Hearing nothing from Darlene, Xris turned.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  She looked at him, shrugged, gave him a faint, lopsided smile. “We’ve known all along this was coming, Xris.”

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “What do you want me to say, Xris?” Darlene’s voice sharpened. “That I’m scared? I lived for years being scared. Then one day, it just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort. I got tired of my heart clogging my throat every time some stranger knocked at my door. Now I just swallow and go on.”

  “Yeah, well, swallow this. The bureau’s pulled Amadi out of retirement to handle this case. They wouldn’t have done that unless something big was going down. And Amadi was making sure that no one saw or heard us talking. He’s made the connection, all right. He may not know who you are or where you are, but he knows that I know.”

  Darlene shook her head, shoved a strand of brown hair out of her eyes. She was composed, slightly pale, but then she never had much color in her face. Her hairwas tousled from her nap. She’d thrown on a hotel robe. Her overnight bag was where she’d dropped it on the floor, hadn’t even been opened. The only item she’d unpacked was her computer case. She’d placed the portable computer on the table near the bed; she’d probably programmed it
to wake her. Darlene turned to it now, perhaps instinctively. Her fingers ran idly over the keys. Her comfort, her solace—the machine.

  Xris remembered clearly the first time he’d seen her— her, Darlene, not him, Dalin Rowan. He’d been surprised to discover that his friend was a damn attractive woman. He’d been more surprised to hear from his friend that deep inside, that’s what Dalin Rowan had always been—a woman. Now that Xris had been around Darlene for a couple of months, he understood.

  There had always been something jarring about Dalin Rowan, a dissatisfaction with life, with himself. He’d drifted through life in a kind of dull, gray haze of unhappiness that only lifted when he was inside his—or someone else’s—computer. Dalin’s halfhearted attempts at relationships with women had inevitably ended in disaster. They complained that he kept himself shut off from them, that they never truly came to know him.

  Even his best friends, Xris and Ito, had never truly known Dalin Rowan. Xris had proved that by being ready to believe Dalin had actually sold them out to the Hung, that he’d been the one to send them into that death factory.

  Xris was starting to know Darlene Mohini. He was starting to like her, too, as were all the other members of the Mag Force 7 team. She was more relaxed, more at ease, able to open up, to talk about herself. When she spoke of Dalin Rowan, it was as if she were speaking of some unfortunate friend who had now passed out of her life. She remembered Dalin fondly, a little sadly, but with no regrets.

  “I’m not so sure Amadi has made the connection, Xris,” she said, tapping the computer keys. “He knows that Dalin is around. All right, yes, it was foolish of me going back into the bureau’s files to ferret out that information on the Knights of the Black Earth, but God only knows what would have happened if we hadn’t cracked that case. And that’s the only link Amadi’s got: me snooping around the knights and you putting a halt to their operation.”

  “If Amadi saw you alone, he’d walk past you in the street and never recognize you,” Xris conceded. “But if he gets a close look at the two of us together, that’s all the link he’ll need.” Xris chomped savagely on the twist. “That old man’s sharp. His mind’ll ring up a ‘Xris-Dalin, Dalin-Darlene’ match faster than Harry Luck can shove coins into a slot machine. And as far as we know, no one but you ever made the connection between the Hung and the bureau. Odds are, whoever the traitor is, he or she is still there.”

  “Amadi knows about the traitor,” Darlene said. She switched the computer on. “That’s why he’s being careful.”

  “Amadi was born careful. When he came out of the birth canal he had his head turned, looking over one shoulder. That’s why he’s still alive. Did you ever say anything to him about Armstrong’s death? About the evidence that someone in the bureau was involved?”

  Darlene shook her head. “How could I? I didn’t know who to trust.”

  “And we still don’t,” Xris said emphatically. “So, here’s the deal. You and I split up. Let Amadi and the Hung traipse after me for a while, if they can keep up. Once they see that I’m not leading them to you, they’ll lay off, lose interest, follow some other line.”

  Darlene protested, “But the job—”

  “This robot snatch is easy. I’ve got most of it planned out. Jamil and I can handle it. I was going to dismiss the rest of the team anyway. Give everyone a vacation. I want you to go along with someone—anyone but me. You can have your choice.”

  Xris ran down the list. “Harry Luck. He’s trying to decide whether to go to some high-rolling town to lose what money he made on that last job or to attend some seminars being held on the ‘Capabilities of the Dirk Fighter in Close Proximity to Atmosphere’ or something like that. He can’t decide. Harry’s taken one too many stun blasts to the head, but he’s a damn good pilot, Darlene. You know—you saw him in action on that last job. And he’s devoted to you—”

  Darlene shook her head, half smiled. “Not Harry, Xris. He’s sweet, but, as you say, he’s devoted ...”

  She left the rest unfinished. Xris, grinning, moved on.

  “There’s Dr. Quong. He’s anxious to finish that study on the Little One, on Tongan physiology. He could probably use your help. The Doc’s a bit touchy, but you seem to be able to get along with him better than any of us. Plus he’d have you eating right and exercising. You could gain weight into the bargain. The Doc’s a good surgeon and—” Xris stopped, not quite certain where that was going.

  “And if anything happened, I’d have a doctor on call.” Darlene grinned wryly. “Sorry, Xris, but if the Hung catch me, all the Doc would be able to do is certify the time of my death. Plus I don’t really see myself spending my vacation immersed in the psychological oddities of the Tongans—outre as they are.”

  “Tycho, then. He’s planning to go back to his home planet for a visit. The planet of the chameleons, only don’t call them that. They find it offensive. I’ve been there, met his family. They’re a fun group. They all look alike. I mean exactly alike. You can’t tell his mother from his father, his brothers from his sisters, his relatives from the neighbors. They can tell each other apart, of course. I think it has something to do with skin pigmentation but I’ve never figured it out. They’re all tall and skinny, like he is, and they blend nicely into the surroundings. Of course, you’d stand out like a red flag on an ice floe, but then so would a member of the Hung or the bureau. Tycho’s a crack shot and a good person to have on your side.”

  Darlene was shaking her head. “You know as well as I do, Xris, that the Hung could recruit someone from the ‘chameleons’ and then I’d be in worse danger simply because I would be so highly visible.”

  “Well, Jamil would probably be the best. He’s steady, reliable, quick-thinking, ex-military. His only flaw is that he’s a bit of a womanizer, but with two wives on different planets I think he’s got about as much as he can handle. He’d be ideal, but I need him for this museum job. All that leaves is Raoul. He’s been pleading for years to go back to Adonia to attend some weird hedonistic religious festival—”

  “Really?” Darlene looked interested.

  Now it was Xris who protested. “You can’t be serious!”

  “But I am. Think about it, Xris. Carnival time on Adonia! What could be better? Crowds of people of all types. Everyone who isn’t Adonian wears masks. I’d have Raoul with me—”

  “He’d be a big help.” Xris grunted. “Especially if your mascara’s smeared.”

  Darlene made a face at him. “Come off it, Xris. You think quite highly of Raoul. You wouldn’t have him on the team otherwise.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know why,” Xris returned. “And that’s what bothers me. He’s a Loti—a habitual drug user. I know it; he claims it himself, I’ve seen him higher than a jumpjet in hyperspace, yet I’ve never personally seen him swallow so much as an aspirin. When I assign him to a job, he spends more time worrying about what to wear than he does on how to accomplish his mission—”

  “But he gets the job done,” Darlene stated.

  “True,” Xris admitted. “I have to give him credit, in all the years he’s worked for me, he’s only failed us once, during that Olicien bug thing—”

  “And that was under extenuating circumstances.” Darlene argued her case. “The Little One would be with him. He could pick up on the thoughts of anyone trying to find me.”

  Xris considered the matter. “There would be a drawback to the crowds, you know that. An assassin can lose himself among them as easily as you can.”

  “But he’s got to find me first,” Darlene returned. “Honestly, Xris, I—”

  The phone buzzed. It was switched to nonvid, as per instructions for all the team. Xris answered, not saying a word, his usual technique. Team members were prepared for silence on his end, knew how to respond to it. Anyone who shouted “Hello! Hello?” was definitely a wrong number.

  “Jamil here. The room’s clean.”

  “I’ll be down in a sec.” Xris switched the phone off. He regarded Darlene
thoughtfully. “Raoul, huh?”

  She nodded, smiled. “I haven’t had a vacation in years. This might be fun.”

  “All right. If that’s what you want. I have to admit, it does make a certain kind of sense in a nonsense kind of way. It’s sure as hell the last place anyone would figure you going. Once Raoul and the Little One have made their report on Sakuta, I’ll send them to you. You can leave tonight.”

  Xris walked to the door, tripped over the computer case on his way. He shoved it with his foot, kicked it under the desk.

  “Lock the door after me,” he instructed. “Don’t answer the phone unless it buzzes three times, then quits, then buzzes again. Don’t—”

  “For God’s sake, Xris, I was in the bureau as long as you,” Darlene cut in, annoyed. “I repeat—I know the routine.”

  “I know you do,” he said quietly. She stood beside him, near the door. He reached up, smoothed back the errant lock of hair that was falling in her eyes. “It makes me feel better, all right? Like I’m doing something constructive when I know all along there’s not a goddamn thing I can do. If the Hung are looking for you ...” He shook his head.

  She put her hand on his arm, his good arm, his flesh-and-blood arm. Her touch was cold, her fingers chill. He’d been worried that she was taking this too lightly. She wasn’t. She knew the Hung better than he did. She’d been inside their organization for months.

  “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  “All right. And I promise to quit the mother-hen routine.”

  “I’ll lock the door. You’ll tell Raoul the signal?”

  Xris sighed. “I’ll tell him, but God only knows if he’ll remember it. If he doesn’t, you can smell his perfume through the woodwork. I think it’s lilac today.”

  Darlene smiled at him—her lopsided smile. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  He nodded, started to leave.

  She stopped him, detained him, her hand still on his arm. “You know this is only a stopgap measure, Xris. I can’t keep running away. I can’t keep you from doing your job. Yes, I know you don’t need me this time around—or at least you claim you don’t—but how about next time? And look how I’ve disrupted your life. And the team. They don’t resent me now, but they soon will. Next thing you know, you’ll be turning down jobs because of me. This can’t go on.”