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"Oh, very well." Tisiphone was suddenly fully back within Alicia's skull, her mental voice glowing with vitality as it always did after one of her jaunts through the ship's computers. She'd discovered roundabout routes to the most unlikely places, and she'd been studying the transport's Fasset drive when Alicia interrupted her. "We could avoid these interruptions if you would lock your door," she pointed out, not for the first time.
"And then they'd wonder what we—or I, rather— was doing in here."
"With the sensors they have trained on you at all times? I doubt that, Little One."
"Humor me," Alicia replied, blinking again and letting her eyes drift back into focus. It was Ben Belkassem, and she wondered why he'd sought her out as she gestured politely to the cabin's only other chair.
The Justice man sat, studying her openly but inoffensively. She was a striking woman, he reflected as her blank expression vanished. Tall for his taste—he liked to make eye contact without getting a crick in his neck— and slender, yet broad-shouldered. She moved with hard- trained, disciplined grace, and one forgot she was merely pretty when her face came alive with intelligence and humor, but there was something more under that. A cool, cat-like something and an amused tolerance, rather like what looked out of his own mirror at him, but with a peculiar compassion ... and a capacity for violence he knew he could never match. This was a dangerous woman, he thought, yet so utterly self-possessed it was almost impossible to think of her as "mad."
"Forgive me," he began. "I didn't mean to burst in on you, but the hatch opened on its own."
"I know." Her contralto voice had a soft, furry edge, and her smile was wry. "Uncle Arthur's been kind enough to allow me free run of the ship, but given the, um, concern for my stability, I thought it would be a bad idea to go all secretive on him when I don't actually need privacy.
He nodded and leaned back, crossing his legs, then cocked his head. "I noticed you were interfacing," he observed, and her eyes twinkled.
"And here you thought Uncle Arthur had deactivated all my receptors." She disengaged her hand from the headset and wiggled her stiff fingers.
"Something like that, yes."
"Well, he left my Beta receptor open," she told him, opening her hand. She flexed her wrist, stretching her palm, and he saw the slight angularity of a receptor node against the taut skin. "I have three, you know, and this is the most harmless of them."
"I knew you had more than one," he murmured, "but don't three get a bit confusing?"
"Sometimes." She raised her arms and stretched like a cat. "They feed separate subsystems, but one of the requirements for the job is the ability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time—sort of like being able to play chess on a roof in a driving rain and carry on a conversation about subatomic physics while you replace the bad shingles between moves."
"Sounds exhausting," he remarked, and she smiled again.
"Mildly. This—" she touched her temple "—is my Alpha node. It's the one co
Her smile turned into an urchin-like grin at his expression, and she opened her right hand to show him its palm. "This is my Gamma node. We use it to interface with our combat armor, unlike Marines, who keep their armor link here." She tapped her temple again. "I could run my own armor through the Alpha link, but I'd have to shut down a lot of other functions. The Gamma link is sort of a secondary, load-sharing system. And this—" she opened her left palm again "—is dedicated to remote sensors and sensory data. It's got some limited ability to take over for the Gamma node if I lose my other hand or something equally drastic, but it's not the most efficient one for computer linkages by a long shot. That's why Uncle Arthur chose to leave it open when he closed the others down."
"I see." He studied her for a moment. "You don't seem particularly angry, I must say." She shrugged, but he persisted. "I understood the reason most drop commandos who survive retire to colony worlds is because they resent the Core World requirement that their augmentation be deactivated."
"That's only partly true. Oh, it's a good part of it, but we're not exactly the sort who find ultra- civilization to our taste, and we can be damned useful on the out-worlds. Most of them are glad to get us. But if you're asking if I resent being closed down this way, the answer is that I do. There's no particular point getting angry over it, though. If I were Uncle Arthur, I'd do precisely the same thing with any Cadreman I thought had ... questionable contact with reality."
Her tone was edged yet glittered with a trace of true humor, and it was his turn to grin. But his smile faded as he leaned forward, hands clasping his right ankle where it lay atop his left knee, and spoke softly.
"True. But I can't help wondering, Captain DeVries, if your contact with reality is quite as questionable as everyone seems to think."
Her eyes stilled for just a moment, all humor banished, and then she shook herself with a laugh.
"Careful, Inspector! A remark like mat could get you checked into the room next to mine."
"Only if someone heard it," he murmured, and her eyes rounded as he reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, compact, and highly illegal device. "I'm sure you recognize this," he said, and she nodded slowly. She'd never seen one quite that tiny, but she'd used military models. It was an anti-surveillance device, known in the trade as a "mirror box."
"At the moment," Ben Belkassem slid the mirror box back into his pocket, "Major Gateau's sensors are watching a loop of the five or six minutes before I rang your doorbell. I hadn't hoped that you'd be using your neural link. No doubt you've been sitting right there concentrating with minimal movement for quite some time, so the chance of anyone noticing my interference is lower than I'd expected, but I still have to cut this fairly short."
"Cut what short?" she asked quietly.
"Our conversation. You see, I don't quite share the opinion of your fellow Cadremen. I'm not sure what really happened or exactly what you're up to, and I'm certainly no psych specialist, but something Sir Arthur said about your personality rubbed up against something Major Gateau said about a desire on your part to go after whoever's behind these raids."
"And?"
"And it occurred to me that under certain circumstances being considered mad might be very useful to you, so I thought I'd just drop by to share a little secret of my own. You see, everyone out here thinks I'm with Intelligence Branch. That's what I wanted them to think, though I never actually said I was with Intelligence. I'm an inspector, all right—but with O Branch."
Alicia's lips pursed in a silent, involuntary whistle. O Branch—Operations Branch of the Ministry of Justice— was as specialized, and feared, as the Cadre itself. It consisted of handpicked troubleshooters selected for initiative, flexibility, and pragmatism, and its members were charged with solving problems any way they had to. It was also very, very small. While "inspector" was a fairly junior rank in the other branches of the Ministry of Justice, it was the highest field rank available in O Branch.
"You're the only person out here who knows that, Captain DeVries," the inspector said, levering himself out of his chair.
"But ... why tell me?"
"It seemed like a good idea." He gave her a crooked smile and straightened his crimson tunic fastidiously. "I know how you feel about spooks, after all." He walked calmly to the closed hatch, then half turned to her once more. "If you decide you have anything you want to tell me, or if there's anything I can do for you, please feel free to let me know. I assure you it will remain completely confidential, even from your kindly physicians."
He gave her a graceful, elegant bow and punched the hatch burton. It opened, then whispered shut behind him.