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CHAPTER SIX

Katy's apartment (it wasn't just one room) was in the middle levels of the Hov-Korth tower. She'd obviously been living there for some time—it had that undefinable but unmistakable air of long-term female occupancy.

Katy left immediately after they arrived, with a hurried explanation that she had to complete the original errand that had taken her down that subterranean corridor, and a needless admonition to Roark to lie low. It gave him time to explore the place, and to get over his initial skepticism about Katy's assurance that it was surveillance-free. After all, she seemed quite certain of it, and he knew her well enough to know she wouldn't feel that way without good reason.

At least I thought I knew her, he amended. It was one of the many things he had a chance to reflect on as he awaited her return.

That downtime didn't help as much as it should have. Without the press of action and urgency that had held it at bay, he was left face-to-face with the wreckage of his reality structure, an unsatisfactory but familiar object that now lay shattered on the floor. All he could do was sit and stare at it, occasionally picking up and examining a shard with numb bewilderment.

But, rising out of that debris, a single realization grew and grew: Katy is alive. He had to cling to that.

He was clinging to it when she returned, hastily closing the door behind her and leaning on it as she turned to face him.

"All right," she said, catching her breath. "I shouldn't be missed by anybody. I won't be expected anywhere until tomorrow." Her words dropped tracelessly into a bottomless well of awkward silence. She drew another deep breath. "It's hard to know where to begin, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." Oddly, it never for an instant occurred to Roark to use what some might have thought the obvious conversation opener: Are you really Katy Doyle? There was no room for doubt in his mind, so full was it of well-remembered gestures, motions, facial expressions, husky soprano voice, coppery-red glint of overhead lights off deep brown hair. . . . No, there could be no possible question. It was as undeniable as it was impossible.

He wanted to take her in his arms. But it wasn't right—not yet.

Almost desperately, she broke the silence again. "Ah, would you like a drink? I've got rum."

Roark forced back down that which leaped in him—possibly the most difficult thing he'd ever done. "No, Katy, I'd better not. I don't always know just exactly when to stop. And we've got to talk. I've got to know . . . " But there were too many questions. How could she be alive? How was it that she was living here, in the heart of this Lokaron tower? How had she known Travis was an Eagleman (if, indeed, she was right about it)? How . . . ? "How?" he finally blurted out, concentrating all his bewilderment into the one word. "You died!"

She winced, and averted her eyes as she began to speak. "No, I almost died. I was dying when you last saw me. Then the security guards arrived. They thought I was too far gone to be worth trying to save. But . . . there was a Lokar with them."

"Yes, I remember." Roark nodded, recalling the tall nonhuman figure silhouetted against the lights and the flames, towering above the human guards. "That was why I held my fire."

"Damned good thing you did. His name is Svyatog'Korth, and he's what you might call a VIL—a very important Lokar. A very, very important Lokar. I'll tell you more about him later. Anyway, he saw that I was still alive—barely. He told them to take me to his personal shuttle. There I was put into some kind of cryogenic suspension until they could get me here, to the Enclave." Her eyes seemed to gaze with incredulous awe at something unattainably far away. "You simply can't believe what Lokaron medical science can do, Ben! The stuff they've sold us is nothing. They can revive a corpse that hasn't been dead too long—which was, I'm told, precisely what I was. They can stimulate cellular regeneration of destroyed tissue. Things they can't regrow in place—major organs, or an entire arm or leg—they can selectively clone, and force-grow in no time as replacement parts. They can . . . Well, suffice it to say that they put Humpty-Dumpty back together again."

"But why did this . . . Svyatog'Korth go to so much trouble to save you? A human, and one who'd been engaged in an operation counter to Lokaron interests, at that."

"I asked him that, using their translators, as soon as I was in shape to say anything. His motives were complex. Part of it was guilt—and don't give me that look! I didn't believe it either, at first. But I eventually came to realize there was a genuine feeling there. Not really guilt, though. I think it was more a case of being appalled. Svyatog's not a soldier or anything. He'd never actually seen what automatic weapons do to bodies."

"I'm surprised he didn't simply order the guards to put you out of your misery."

"Svyatog's not like that!" Surprised by her vehemence, Roark didn't contest the point. After a moment, she resumed. "Anyway, he had another motive as well, although he didn't think it through until later. You see, in his position he needs accurate intelligence on humans. And he'd come to realize that mere data wasn't enough. He needed a human advisor, someone he could trust, to interpret the data in terms of human culture, human psychology."

"What is this `position' of his? You mentioned before that he's some kind of high muckety-muck."

"I'll have to explain about their system." The generous mouth quirked upward in a smile that would have banished any remaining doubts that this was really Katy, had he still been harboring such doubts. "You've heard the expression, `everything you know is wrong.' It's always been a favorite graffito of college twerps. Well, in the case of what humanity at large thinks it knows about the Lokaron it happens to be absolutely true." She paused as though organizing her thoughts. "In the first place, while the Lokaron are all one species they're not politically unified. They want us to think they are, but they're not. We're dealing with divided sovereignties."

"Huh? You mean like our nations?"

"You could say that. But don't lean too heavily on the analogy. The Lokaron `nations'—gevahon in their language, like Gev-Harath, to which Svyatog belongs—are rooted in differences that mean a lot more than the differences between a Frenchman and a German . . . or, for that matter, a Frenchman and a Melanesian. As you know, ever since they arrived we've noticed that there are physical differences between them."

"Oh, yeah: the blue ones that are typical, and the greenish ones who aren't quite as attenuated, and the bluish-white ones who're even more so. You're telling me that each of these types equates to the members of a certain, uh, gevah? Everybody's always assumed that we were looking at racial groups like our whites and blacks and Asians and so forth."

"I'm sure the Lokaron had such groupings in their early history. But by the time they'd left their native star system their geographical gene pools had pretty much blended, just as ours have been blending ever since the day Columbus' sailors first started making whoopee with the Arawaks. No, the different-colored Lokaron belong to different subspecies—artificially created subspecies at that, designed to colonize various planets. Listening to Svyatog, I've gotten the impression that they're a lot less queasy about genetically engineering their own species than we would be.

"It's a state of affairs we find hard to imagine, because humans have all belonged to the same subspecies for tens of thousands of years. `Ain't nobody here but us Homo sapiens sapiens.' Try to picture us carrying on diplomatic relations with a nation of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis." She smiled again. "You might say the members of different gevahon really are as biologically different from each other as human nationalists have always believed their own nationalities to be!

"But the comparison to our nations is valid in that the gevahon are just as sovereign. More so, since no one of them is enforcing a hegemony like the U.S. is on Earth—not even Gev-Harath, the most powerful of the lot. They're all expanding in a rough-and-tumble way, complete with occasional inter-gevah wars, although there seem to be unwritten rules that restrict the actual fighting to the frontiers."

Roark struggled to assimilate the new data. "So all along we've been dealing with a gaggle of rival power-groupings, and never known it." His voice trailed off as he pondered the implications.

"Makes you realize why they've kept it a secret." Katy smiled.

"I'd say so! But to get back to your buddy Svyatog, I suppose you're leading up to telling me he's a government official of this Gev-Harath outfit."

"There you go again, thinking in terms of human assumptions. You'll never understand the Lokaron unless you grasp the fact that a gevah is not organized like a human government. They're like . . . Have you ever heard of the Hanseatic League?"

Roark blinked. "I seem to recall the term from somewhere."

"Probably some required history course a long time ago. I was never a history buff myself, but I've read up on it lately, trying to find human parallels to the Lokaron setup. There are no exact ones, but the League comes about as close as any. It was an alliance of North German city-states in the late Middle Ages, run by the great merchant houses, who'd set it up for mutual defense and other bare-bones governmental functions. Likewise, the gevahon aren't `states' as we understand the term, ruling directly over individuals. They're set up and financed by the hovahon, or corporations—at least I think of them as corporations, even though they're still family-run to a large extent. What we'd call `government officials' have the status of . . . well, not exactly `hired hands.' The gevah functionaries get the respect they need in order to function. For example, each of the gevahon that are operating on Earth has a government representative—a `resident commissioner' as the machine translates it. But they serve, not some deified abstraction of the nation, but the currently dominant coalition of hovahon. And everybody recognizes this."

Roark gave a skeptical head shake. "For a civilization way beyond our technological horizons, it seems . . . primitive."

"That's your indoctrination talking! I know damned well you don't like the centralized bureaucratic state. But you still think of it as the most `advanced' form of human association, the end-result of `progress,' and all that crap, because that's what you've been told to think."

"Nobody tells me what to think! But . . . damn it, you can't deny that history has in fact taken that route."

"Our history. But it doesn't have to be that way. Listen: the Lokaron had states like ours a long time ago, and think of them as something `primitive' that they've struggled up from! They look back on things like conscript armies and direct taxation of individuals the way we look back on slavery and human sacrifice! And they see us much like we'd see a civilization that had gotten as far as the scientific revolution but still had god-kings like the pharaohs." Her tone softened, and for the first time she reached out and tentatively touched Roark's arm. "I know Ben—it's a hell of an adjustment. But I've made that adjustment. I've come to see that the course of modern human history hasn't been inevitable at all—it's just been a series of mistakes."

Roark wanted to reciprocate her touch—wanted it even more than he'd wanted to take her up on her offer of a drink. But he held her eyes with his and spoke in a very controlled voice. "Is that why you decided to stop working for the Eaglemen?"

For several heartbeats the silence reverberated around the room. Then Katy slumped down onto a couch. Funny, Roark thought. We've been standing all this time. I hadn't even noticed that we'd never sat down. 

"How did you know?" she finally breathed.

"It was the only logical answer to a lot of questions. You were certain—not just suspicious, but certain—that Travis was an Eagleman. But what bothered me even more than that was the way he tried to kill you, with no apparent motive. Then I recalled what Havelock told us: his knowledge of the Enclave had been captured from the Eaglemen, who'd gotten it from an agent who'd ceased reporting. The only explanation that made sense was that you were the agent, and that Travis was an Eagleman who they'd managed to plant in this operation. He recognized you and immediately decided that, not being dead, you must have been turned. So you had to be eliminated." He paused and allowed the train of thought to proceed to its logical destination. "The mention of Ada Rivera really spooked you. I suppose she must be an Eagleman too." My God! he thought to himself even as he spoke. How deep does the infiltration of the Company go? 

Katy nodded. "Yes. We followed the cell system, each member of the higher-level cells controlling a cell on the level below. Rivera was my cell's control—a member of the command cell, as you might call it, with nothing above it but the ultimate leader, whose identity we never knew."

Roark released the breath he became aware he'd been holding. "So you were a member of the Eaglemen all that time you were working for the Company. All that time you and I were. . . . " A montage of memories flashed before his mind's eye, too rapidly to separate the different times, rooms, beds, precise intertwinings of bodies. . . . He became aware that he was standing over her where she sat slumped on the couch. He forced his fists to unclench and his vocal chords to function. "Why didn't you tell me, Katy? God damn it, you could have told me! You could have trusted me! I would have—"

"You would have what?" she flared. "You're telling me you would have understood? Cut the crap, Ben! I knew what you thought of the Eaglemen. You've never exactly been bashful about voicing your opinions. And the subject came up often enough, what with all the people we knew who were sympathizers or, you suspected, actual members. Even if you hadn't betrayed me—and no, I don't really think you would have—you would have been eaten away by guilt. I wasn't about to inflict that on you . . . on both of us, really, because your frustration would have eventually come out in the form of resentment of me for putting you in such a dilemma." She subsided again and spoke in a voice that was normal save for its dullness. "Anyway, after I'd started working for Svyatog I managed to get word out to Rivera that I was alive and inside, through a human employee here who was sympathetic enough to the Eaglemen to be willing to do a message drop. And yes, it was through me that the Eaglemen got the detailed plans of this place."

Roark found that he'd joined her on the couch and was facing her from a couple of feet. "Couldn't you have used the same methods to get word to Havelock? After all, you'd been working for both him and the Eaglemen before."

"But no more! Even with Lokaron medical treatments, wounds like mine took a lot of convalescing. So I had time to do some thinking. And I narrowed down the possibilities of who could have set us up, until there was only one left." She shot a challenging gaze at Roark, who didn't meet it. Then she nodded grimly. "I see you've reached the same conclusion. So you understand how I felt. I'd always suspected that Havelock was a consummate son of a bitch, but finally I knew it. So I was perfectly content to let him go on thinking I was dead." She gave Roark a look that made him wince. "I can't believe you went on working for him."

"I didn't! I quit the Company and . . . sort of went to pieces for a while. I signed back on for this job because I wanted revenge."

"Revenge? You mean against the Lokaron? For . . . ?" For a while there was silence, because no words were needed. Finally she spoke with the briskness of embarrassment. "Well, anyway, I went to work for Svyatog. Partly it was simple gratitude for saving my life. Partly it was . . . Well, I felt I was in a unique position to help humanity by helping him understand our species. You see, he's the top representative here on Earth—the `factor,' I suppose you'd have to call him—of Hov-Korth, the biggest hovah in Gev-Harath, which as I mentioned is the most powerful gevah. In short, the fate of the human race is pretty much in his hands. And no, I don't like that any more than you do. But my likes and dislikes don't change the facts. All I can do is give thanks that he's a fundamentally decent individual, and do my best to make sure his decisions are based on an accurate assessment of human behavior. Any misunderstandings could be fatal—for us! And it's not easy to convey an understanding of us to a Lokaron; underneath the superficialities, they're more alien than you imagine. To take just one example, they have no conception of the male-female duality that's so basic to human psychology."

"What? But I always assumed . . . well, I never really knew . . . "

"Of course not. The sex lives of the Lokaron are nobody else's business. But the fact is, they have three genders. The `primary males' function pretty much like our males, except that they impregnate what I think of as the `transmitter,' which produces the eggs. But the transmitter doesn't give birth. It just carries the fertilized egg for a while, after which the egg dies unless it's implanted in the third gender—the `female,' as I think of it because it does give birth, although that's really a fallacy. The transmitter does the implanting using something similar to the male sex organ." She looked uncomfortable.

Roark goggled. "I'm trying to visualize this. Let's see: the transmitter is Lucky Pierre . . . "

Katy's glare stopped him. She resumed with emphatic seriousness. "Svyatog is, of course, a transmitter—"

"Huh? Why `of course'? And you've been referring to Svyatog as `he.' "

"I suppose it isn't really `of course' in this day and age—I was just falling into Lokaron gender stereotypes. And my use of `he' for the transmitters as well as the primary males is part of my own leftover stereotypes. Also, it's the convention the translator software uses. You see, the transmitters are the large, strong, aggressive ones. In primitive Lokaron societies, the traditional pattern was a transmitter sultan with two harems. And a solid wall between them! The primary males can . . . well, perform with the females directly. Lokaron religions have always inveighed against this as perversion, because it can't possibly lead to conception. But . . . " Katy's discomfort deepened. "But the primary males and the females both enjoy it. And no," she added hastily, "I don't know the details of just why they do. But I have some inkling of the tangle of guilt, hypocrisy and confusion this has led to."

"I think I'm beginning to," Roark said slowly. "Holy shit! And I thought our lives were complicated!"

"It's different now. Urbanization dissolved traditional social patterns for them much as it did for us. Nowadays, all Lokaron societies have legally abolished gender discrimination. But in practice, they haven't even gone as far in the direction of equality as we have." (A flash of bitterness, quickly suppressed.) "Transmitters like Svyatog still dominate the power elite. And he's no saint—he's completely committed to the interests of Gev-Harath in general and Hov-Korth in particular. But I think I've been able to make him understand us better, and . . . put a sympathetic face on humanity for him. Make him see that his interests and ours dovetail."

"I suppose that's why you were able to rationalize working for him while continuing to work for the Eaglemen. I imagine they'd consider you a traitor to the human race." Roark expected an explosive reaction to this calculated bit of provocation. He got a flicker of fire in her eyes that was too brief to be called a glare. Then she averted her gaze and spoke with quiet earnestness.

"I'd had doubts about the movement even before being brought here. But I still fully agreed with them that we Americans have to get rid of the damned EFP. On the strength of that, I was willing to send them the information they wanted—for a while. But then, the longer I stayed here, I came to understand certain things. First of all, it's a pipedream to think we can simply throw the Lokaron off Earth and go back to the way things were before they came. We've got to face the fact that we've joined a Lokaron universe."

"Been made to join it, you mean."

"How does that change anything? The point is, we can't turn our backs on that universe. We've got to make a place for ourselves in it."

"Will the Lokaron let anybody not of their species do that?"

"Who said anything about asking their permission? We've got to beat them at their own game. And we can! Living among the Lokaron, I've come to two conclusions about them. First of all, I've never seen an iota of evidence that they're inherently any more intelligent than we are. And secondly, their civilization has become . . . self-satisfied." She laughed shortly. "Not exactly a big surprise. It would be amazing if they didn't feel that way, considering what they've accomplished. But they've fallen into what military people call `victory disease.' Once we acquire their knowledge, we can bring a fresh viewpoint to bear on it. We'll try things their scientific establishment says are impossible . . . and make them work, because we won't know what's impossible!"

"Well, then, you ought to approve of the mission I'm on. The whole idea, as Havelock explained it to me, is to steal Lokaron technology."

"Havelock! If he said it was nighttime I'd swear the sun was shining. But even if, for once in his life, he's telling the truth . . . Don't you see? Their advanced technology isn't their secret. They wouldn't have become advanced in the first place if they didn't have a society that frees creative individuals to create and productive individuals to produce. The Eaglemen are right about that, at least: the EFP has got to go. It's that kind of state—the kind that keeps itself in power by locking as much of the population as possible into a culture of dependency—that's left humanity eating the Lokarons' dust. But the purpose of getting rid of it isn't to return to some womb of an idealized Lokaron-free past. We've got to adopt Lokaron technology and become a respected member of an interstellar society which is—let's face it—going to be predominantly Lokaron for the foreseeable future."

"Havelock might be more in agreement with that than you think," Roark suggested, recalling words spoken in the light of a burning airplane one night on Grand Cayman.

"Maybe. But his little operation seems to have been well and truly infiltrated by the Eaglemen, doesn't it?" Katy seemed about to say more, but then her face froze into an inward-looking mask of intense thought. Roark restrained his questions, and waited. When she finally turned back to him, her eyes were haunted.

"Ben, I don't know why it took me so long to think of this. But now I remember. When I was a member of the Eaglemen, we used to sit around a lot and hash out plans for attacking the Enclave. It was our favorite wet-dream . . . but that was all it ever was. All our brainstorming always led us to the same conclusion: it was hopeless without inside help. But now . . . "

"You're saying that's why they insinuated their people into Havelock's operation?"

"It's got to be! And now that they've gotten their people in here . . . Ben, they must actually plan to try it!"

"But they wouldn't dare! Hell, even if they succeeded, Earth would face retaliation from the Lokaron forces in space, which they can't touch."

"Ben, trust me. I know these people, and you don't. They've convinced themselves that if the Enclave were swept away the Lokaron would just give up on Earth as a bad job. And then the Central Committee, which agreed to the trade treaties, would be so discredited that the EFP would fall. They have the true idealist's capacity for self-deception. In reality, the only winner would be Gev-Rogov."

"Who?"

"Remember, we're dealing with several . . . nations. One of them, Gev-Rogov, is a partial exception to a lot of what I've told you about the Lokaron. The Rogovon—they're the green ones—are the closest thing among the Lokaron to genuine statists and militarists. They'd like to see an outright conquest and partition of Earth. Gev-Harath and the others don't agree. But if we provoke them too far, they may decide that the Rogovon have been right all along. Even Svyatog may be unable to argue them out of it. And if they decide to go with the military option, don't even think about Earth resisting them."

"Maybe you've been among them so long you underestimate your own race," some rebellious part of Roark argued.

Katy took a deep breath. "Ben, forget all those old bullshit science fiction movies. H. G. Wells, who invented the `alien invasion' genre, knew damned well that his `war of the worlds' wouldn't have been a war at all, but an annexation. In order to provide a happy ending, he had to cheat. His Martians, after blowing away Earth's military, were killed off by Earthly microorganisms to which they had no resistance—as if a super-scientific civilization wouldn't have foreseen that problem! No, until we modernize ourselves up to Lokaron standards, the only thing keeping us alive is that our fate is in the hands of Svyatog and others like him." She leaned forward and grasped his hands. This time he returned the pressure. "Ben, we've got to stop the Eaglemen."

"Well, is there any way you can get word out to Havelock, and let him know his organization is crawling with Eaglemen?"

"That bastard? And even if we could trust him, would he be able to stop them? Especially considering how totally they seem to have penetrated his security."

"Yeah," Roark acknowledged the point. It was, on reflection, strange. Havelock might be slime, but nobody had ever called him incompetent slime. How had the Eaglemen outfoxed him so completely?

"There's only one way," Katy said, interrupting his uncomfortable thoughts. "We'll have to deal with this ourselves, right here. Which means we'll have to go to Svyatog with it."

"Huh? To Svyatog? We?"

"Yes. I'll get you in to see him. You'll be able to tell him the details—in particular, which human employees he needs to watch closely." She eyed him narrowly, recognizing the conflict playing itself out behind those familiar features. "Yes, Ben, I know: asking you to break security is like asking a doctor to poison a patient. But is Havelock really worth your loyalty?"

"It's not Havelock. It's my own . . . honor, I suppose," he finished in an embarrassed mumble.

"I understand, Ben. But this is bigger than your personal code of behavior . . . however much I may admire that code." Their eyes met for a significant instant before she hurried on. "We're talking about the fate not just of America but of the entire human race. And the hell of it is, there are no bad guys here. As you've probably gathered, I don't hate the Lokaron; and I certainly don't hate the Eaglemen. But they're playing with forces they don't understand, and we've got to stop them before they cause a tragedy beyond their comprehension. Will you help me?"

Roark nodded slowly. "All right. I'm with you. Let's go see Svyatog."

"Not now. It's too late. But I'll have access to him tomorrow morning. You'll just have to spend the night here."

Their eyes met in silence. Roark noticed that their hands had never unclasped.

"I've . . . I've missed you," he finally said, fully aware of the inadequacy.

She nodded jerkily. "Yes. I know what you mean. I'd resigned myself to the idea that I'd never see you again. So tonight . . . I didn't know how to react."

He tentatively leaned forward. She didn't shrink from his kiss.

After a time, she took a breath. "Are you sure you won't take me up on that drink?"

"Yes, maybe I will at that . . . in a little while."

 

 

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