CONTAINMENT FAILURE
Karil slipped through the open door of the hangar as it was shutting and moved off to the side. He watched the last few crates being loaded aboard the great ship. Wheeled loaders were lifting crates and carrying them up the cargo ramp into the hold, moving as swiftly as possible while someone, probably Zhang himself, went through the pre-launch check on the bridge. He saw two loaders collide in the rush and though one continued up the ramp, the other stopped. The operator climbed out and checked the minor damage. Karil dared not pass up this opportunity.
He crept up behind the operator and clocked him with the butt of his pistol, then dragged him off behind some empty crates and climbed into the loader. He drove up the ramp, drove deep into the hold and set down the load. Magnetic plates in the deck made it fast. He backed the loader into a corner, shut it off, and locked it down. Then he reached in behind the minor damage and unplugged a socket, making it look like a result of the accident. No-one who found it would be suspicious.
Then he climbed up on top of a big crate and waited, invisible from below. Klaxons sounded again when the loaders and their operators were finished. The ramp rose and locked into place and was sealed. Karil felt elated that he had managed to board the ship, armed and undetected, but then he realized he had sealed himself inside a huge antimatter bomb.
***
Loris burst out the door into a waiting battlefield. Zhang’s security guards were in front of her, facing the landing field of the compound. They were all huge cyborgs in body-armor and carrying machine-guns she would probably be unable to lift. It occurred to her that the safest thing she might do, covered in blood as she was, would be to lie down, hiding her sword with her body, and pretend to be dead. But she had to get out through the gate and make her way to Atalanta. As she and the cyborgs watched, a ship descended in a cloud of plasma and the cargo ramp lowered to the ground. It was Celestial Intelligencer.
Professor Kelley, all two meters of him, encased in body-armor and a powered exoskeleton, stomped down the ramp in his Frankenstein boots, followed by a dozen armored cyborgs, all carrying automatic weapons. There arose a tremendous din of weapons-fire as the two cyborg armies clashed. Bullets pinged off of armor and flew in all directions as Loris crept along the wall and tried to circle around to the gate while avoiding the rain of bullets from both sides.
A gloved hand reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. She spun around and swung her Samurai sword, but it clanged against a raised armored hand and did no damage.
“Loris,” said a familiar deep voice. “What the hell are you doing? Get behind me.”
It was no problem for her to hide behind Kelley’s huge bulk. He raised his weapon and let off dozens of rounds against the enemy, while shouting back to her. “Are you hit?” he asked.
“It’s not my blood, Professor,” she shouted back. “I have to get out of the compound and get to Atalanta. Karil has stowed away on the stolen ship, and it might explode if the antimatter drive is engaged.”
“Jesus! Stay behind me.” He backed toward the gate as Loris cowered in his shadow like a frightened child. They passed two of his cyborgs, reloading, and he ordered, “Take out the gate.”
They stomped over to the gate, grabbed it in their claws and bent the bars back until the lock broke and the gate swung open. A crowd of human soldiers rushed in through the opening. Above them, a ship called Thy Fearful Symmetry hung in the air, protecting the soldiers from weapons-fire from the walls. Two gun-nests were fixed up there, firing a hail of bullets. Someone lifted a rocket-launcher to his shoulder and blew one of them to pieces, then took aim at the other.
Loris turned toward the gate and found Shadow embracing her, looking rather striking in her armored uniform.
“Are you hurt, Love?” she asked, looking down at her blood-soaked clothing.
“Not my blood.” The other gun-nest exploded.
“What are you doing in this battle with that?” She pointed to the Samurai sword.
“Trying to get to Atty. She’s in EMP lockdown, down the trail.” As they talked behind him, Kelley kept up a withering fire against a crowd of soldiers pouring from the compound. “We can’t spare a ship,” he called back.
“That’s all right. You got me out of the compound alive. I’ll check with you later.” Loris embraced Shadow lovingly and hugged the Professor. Her head came up to his nipples. “If you can get inside in time, you might be able to stop the launch.”
She turned and bolted down the trail in long, efficient strides. Around the next turn, she heard a thunderous roar and was surrounded by motorcycles. What seemed like a small army of bearded Viking warriors stopped and encircled her.
“What the hell?” Baby Snakes leaped off one extraordinarily long bike and embraced her. “What’s happening? Don’t tell me we’re late. Are you hurt?”
“Not my blood.” Loris was getting tired of saying that. “The perimeter is breached, and the gates are down. You’re just in time. Kelley will fill you in. But I need transport to Atty, down the trail, as fast as possible. Karil’s life depends on it.”
“Take my hog,” Snakes said. She climbed up onto the back of someone else’s bike. If it had not had a raised queen seat, she might well have disappeared entirely behind the driver’s bulk. “You can ride one of these things, right?”
“Uh, sure.” She’d ridden behind Karil. How hard could it be?
“Good. Catch you later. Let’s go.” The party roared off toward the battle, leaving Loris standing in the roiling dust. She threw one long leg over the vehicle and settled in the seat. There was a weapons rack, and she slipped the Samurai sword into it, then tried to remember what she had seen Karil do. She remembered what to kick and what to squeeze, and the big hog roared off down the trail in a cloud of dust. Branches whipped by her and, fortunately, missed her face. In what seemed like a few minutes, she found a pile of burned helicopter parts scattered across the trail, and rotors hanging from the trees. She came upon them too fast and bailed as the hog crashed into them, flipping into the woods. She found herself standing on the road, none the less for wear.
“Sorry, Snakes,” she said. She grabbed the sword, ran off the trail, and pressed through the undergrowth, discovering that a Samurai sword made a decent machete, though she imagined Japanese ghosts looking down with horror. In a few moments, she found Atalanta sitting in the woods, decorated with fallen leaves and overhung with creepers. She put the palm of her hand against Atty’s side. “Atalanta,” she said.
There was a series of clanks and the Faraday cages rolled up like window-blinds from the ports, then folded back out of the way. Lights blazed inside and there were reassuring beeps as the forward hatch irised open. Loris climbed inside, almost crying with happiness to see her old friend. The outer skin cycled through several colors and end up green once again. Loris heard Atty’s dulcet voice.
“Loris, what’s wrong?”
She swung up into the pilot’s acceleration couch. Lights flashed on in the helm and on Karil’s semi-circular station below. There was a thunderous roar, and over the top of the trees, Loris saw The Great Wall rising out of the compound and slowly ascending to heaven on a pillar of fire.
“Follow that ship,” Loris said.
“Yes, Loris.” The drivers whined and Atalanta vibrated. Leaves flew away in a cloud and the trees bent aside. She rose to the tree-tops, yawed about and streaked off in pursuit of the rising supership.
“You were hit by an EMP and locked down,” Loris said quickly. “Inger is dead, and Karil was injured. He’s in better shape now, but he’s on that ship, trying to stop Zhang from engaging the antimatter drive. There’s likely to be a huge explosion that will flatten this whole forest if it happens in the atmosphere or take out the colonies above if it happens in high orbit. Most of our friends are here, attacking Zhang’s compound, and they all could die. We have to catch up with it.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know, Atty.”
“Leave it to me, Loris. Right now, you get rid of these clothes and get in the shower. You smell like an abattoir.”
Loris slipped out of the couch and crawled to the shower as Atalanta roared into the sky. She marvelled that the shower worked during a climbing acceleration. Though it flowed sideways, it washed the blood off her body. In a few minutes, she was in her black shipsuit and crawled back into the acceleration couch. The Great Wall was in the sky above, growing ever larger.
“What can you do?” Loris asked.
“I can’t fit in the hold like smaller ships, but there’s a docking hatch just behind the bridge. I can land there, and you can cycle through the lock and enter the ship. It should be a simple matter for me, once locked onto the hatch, to put you aboard.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I don’t really kid, Loris. This was Professor Kelley’s ship and, basically, I have the specs. Except for the antimatter drive, it conforms to standard design. Al-Zubair built it and he used Titanic protocols throughout.”
“Great. But don’t say Titanic.”
***
Karil was jolted a bit in his hiding place as The Great Wall lifted off, and he hung on tight. Once the ship reached Low Earth Orbit, it was in microgravity and Karil easily made his way over the crates to the inner lock. There was a keypunch beside the hatch, but he placed Inger’s jewel-device on it and in a second the numbers lit up and the lock irised open.
He found himself in a corridor that stretched the entire length of the ship. From its design, he realized that it would function as an elevator shaft when the ship was under antimatter power and moving at a constant full gee. There was no-one about, and he assumed the skeleton crew would be on the bridge or lying in acceleration couches in the engine-room, the med-lab, or anywhere else they were assigned while the ship was ascending to L-1 level, where the High Colonies resided. He was quite sure that Zhang would be on the bridge, commanding everything.
He flew down the central corridor, as he had done aboard Thor’s Hammer years ago. He kept passing numbered doors at every deck and eventually there was a door marked Bridge at the very bow of the ship. Behind this door would be the brain center of the Great Wall and a bridge-crew at work—engineers, a helmsman, an astrogator, and no doubt Mister Zhang in the Center Seat. The fact was: Karil had not yet figured out how he was going to take control of the bridge and neutralize all these people so he could deal with Zhang one on one. He would simply have to take a look at the situation and play it by ear.
He placed the jewel, silently thanking Inger, against the door-lock punch-pad and waited for it to open, then pulled himself inside. The door irised shut behind him and he was relieved to find himself in a vestibule of sorts. There were chairs, vid-screens, tables and benches, and a bar or kitchen of some kind. It was a place for the bridge-crew to take their breaks. Through a window in another airlock, he could see the bridge—a great forward viewport affording a view of the whole Earth below. Several people sat before it in acceleration couches. Zhang was, of course, in the center and elevated enough to see everything. Karil kicked off and darted into the middle of it, came up behind Zhang and placed the point of his laser against the man’s throat.
“Everyone off the bridge,” he said. “Or your boss is dead. Tell them!” he growled.
The entire bridge-crew swivelled and stared at Karil. Zhang said, “Do as he says.”
“If I were you,” Karil said to the crew, “I’d get to the lifeships and get the hell off this giant bomb, because I intend to detonate it.” A drop of blood sizzled in the laser-beam on Zhang’s throat.
The bridge-crew looked at each other and headed for the exit in a rush. Apparently, none of them wanted to die for Mister Zhang. When they were out of the way, Karil whipped up his laser, sent a powerful bolt of energy into the bridge controls and returned the point to Zhang’s throat.
The bridge-panel sparked and smoked, and klaxons went off, echoing through the vessel. “Abandon ship!” a recording bellowed, “All crew abandon ship.”
“What have you done?” Zhang shouted.
“I’ve prevented the antimatter drive from kicking in, the only way I know how. This ship is a giant bomb and you’re not going to set it off anywhere near L-1.”
Suddenly, Marjorie Suzuki’s face appeared on a screen above them. “Mister Zhang,” she said, “if you are watching this, I am dead. Despite your much-vaunted eidetic memory, you did not recognize me. In fact, your total recall probably prevented you from doing so because your memory of my face as a child was so perfect. But I remembered you. I remembered you as you murdered my mother and father.
“When you offered me this position, I could not believe my luck. I had a chance to destroy your life as thoroughly as you destroyed mine, just so you could gain control of my family’s patents. For you, murder is just copyright infringement by other means. The fact is: al-Zubair’s antimatter containment protocol was never entirely safe, and I knew it. Sooner or later, the containment would fail, and the result would be catastrophic for the ship and everyone in the vicinity, adding to your list of victims. The only question was how long that would take.
“But just in case you went so far as to liquidate me, as I knew you had done to others, I set a little trap for you. The antimatter drive will shortly engage, whether you want it to or not, and the containment will fail. Your ship will soon be annihilated and so will you. I don't mind if I take down your entire crew with you. See you in Hell, Zhang.” Her image faded.
“We can get to my private escape pod,” Zhang said to Karil. “Unless you want us to die together. I hereby surrender to you. Make up your mind, or we’ll soon be close to High Asia.”
Karil actually thought about it, wondering what trick Zhang had up his sleeve. “All right,” he said at last. “But I’ll be right behind you.”
He kept his weapon trained on Zhang’s neck and they kicked off across the bridge. Zhang landed beside a hatch in the rear of the bridge and punched in a code. The lock irised open and Zhang darted inside, past his Morg bodyguard, who quickly blocked the entrance.
“Kill him,” Zhang said.
The creature stomped out of the hatch on his magnetized boots as the hatch closed, and headed for Karil, who scrambled back. Inside the escape pod, Zhang belted himself in and pressed a button to eject it from the ship. Nothing happened. Suzuki’s face appeared on a screen. “Did you think I’d let you escape so easily, Zhang?” she said.
***
Atalanta came up freetrader fast behind The Great Wall, caught up with the ship, sped over its length, and settled on top of the hull. She mated with a hatch just behind the bridge. As soon as she was able to access the ship’s computer, she canceled the automatic security protocols and opened the hatch. Loris crawled down into the lock. Atty cycled it and Loris darted down into the bridge. She was still clutching Suzuki’s sword. In fact, she was beginning to be very fond of it.
She saw the Morg advancing on Karil, who took out his shotgun and blasted a hole in the dead creature’s chest. Nothing vital was damaged and it kept coming. He fired the weapon again, and then again. The Morg’s chest was filled with smoking holes, but it kept marching toward him. Every time he fired the weapon in zero-gravity, Karil was thrown backwards, and his aim was spoiled. Loris appeared out of nowhere and swung her sword. This caused her body to turn in the air and much of the power of the swing was lost. The edge of the blade hardly did any damage when it struck. She tried again and again, looking for a vital wire or a joint to sever.
Suddenly, there was a lurch and a roar, and The Great Wall moved forward in obedience to Suzuki’s programming. The antimatter drive had engaged. The ship accelerated slowly, but increasingly. In her ear, Loris heard Atty’s voice.
“I don’t know how long I can remain magnetized here,” she said. “If you don’t get back soon, I’ll be pulled right off the ship. I’ll add my own drivers’ thrust and try to keep up as long as I can.”
The bulkhead behind Karil and Loris became a floor and they stood on it. The Morg remained standing magnetically on the wall just above them. It walked down the wall and stood on the floor, then lurched toward them. Loris’s feet now had purchase and she swung mightily, severing the Morg’s arm, then attacked its neck. Karil fired his shotgun again and again, blowing servomotors to pieces. The Morg halted and the red light died in its eyes. The magnetic boots failed, and it crashed to the deck, where it lay spread-eagled. Now that the Morg was still, they could hear a banging on a nearby hatch.
"What's that?" Loris demanded. She was surprised by the cruelty of Karil's laugh.
"I think that's Zhang trapped in the escape pod. Margie Suzuki's revenge."
"Hah! The little minx." She paused for a moment as Karil and Loris regarded each other and the banging continued. "Shall we go?"
"By all means." Karil and Loris raced for the ladder and climbed through the hatch above, then took their accustomed places on Atalanta’s bridge.
In the escape capsule, Suzuki's image began to move and to speak again.
"It appears that catastrophic containment failure is imminent, Zhang. I hope that not too many innocents will be killed, but I'm dead now and I don't really care. Just as long as you die. Just as long as you fail in your life's work. Just as long as your life is destroyed as you destroyed mine. Next time you see me, Zhang, it will be in Hell."
And the image faded.
“The ship seems to be heading for L-1,” Atty said. “If it blows there, the High Colonies could be hit by shrapnel. It doesn’t bear thinking of. Millions could die.”
“Can you change its course?” Loris asked.
“It has a great deal of momentum, Loris,” Atty said. “I’ll try.”
She ordered the great ship’s computer to open the hatches on the port flank of The Great Wall and the air rushed out, creating a powerful vernier thrust. Cargo containers tumbled out into space and drifted away in a long arc, followed by the Morg. The great ship slowly turned. She added her own thrust, careful not to break the magnetic seal on the hatch until the data told her the ship was turning well away from the inhabited areas of the Earth-Moon system. Atalanta released and fell over the side of the ship, spun away, and roared off into the vacuum. In his escape capsule, Zhang punched buttons desperately, as the image of Marjorie Suzuki seemed to watch him with satisfaction.
Somewhere in one of the drivers, a tiny gram of antimatter contacted matter, and they annihilated each other, causing a cascade of uncontrolled containment failure. The ship exploded in a great burst of gamma rays, largely blocked by the radiation shields of High Asia, but jagged pieces of ship-grade titanium flew in all directions, crashed through the colony’s solars and struck the ground like meteorites. People screamed and ran through the streets and countryside. Klaxons sounded and repair robots were launched to repair the damage to the solars before too much air could leak out. A handful of people were injured and three died, instead of millions. The denizens of the other colonies watched the fireworks with awe and terror.
"Atty," Loris said, "get us the hell away from here before they blame us for this."
They were crushed in their couches.
***
Karil awoke with Baby Snakes draped over him. She was naked, as she would always be if she had anything to say about it. She lay in all her glory, looking like a nest of serpents. Karil could not resist tracing one of her snakes with his fingers, a reticulated python coiling up her shapely leg, over one tight little buttock, up her strong back and over her shoulder to her neck, as if whispering in her ear. She squirmed at his touch and opened her eyes.
“Where are Loris and Shadow?” Karil asked.
“They went out running at dawn.”
“Shadow actually got Loris to move in the morning?” Karil laughed.
“I know. She’s a bad influence. Every time Loris looks at her, she thinks: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fittest of them all?”
"It's a distraction," Karil said. "She's hurting."
"From Suzuki's death?"
"Not so much from her death as from her madness. Death is an old friend to Loris. Madness has been looking over her shoulder since she was a child."
In a little while, they went down to breakfast. The open patio doors invited in the reflected sunshine and the rollicking birdsong of Friendship Colony. Loris and Shadow were having breakfast, looking powerful and beautiful in their exercise outfits. As always, Karil rejoiced in their contrast, Shadow with her alabaster skin and smoldering auburn mane, Loris dark as a demon and her hair dyed white in mourning for Marjorie and Inger.
Too much death this time, Karil thought. We should get out of the spy business and stick to nice, safe smuggling.
“I have news from Professor Kelley,” Loris said, accepting Snake’s morning kiss.
“Really?”
“The High Companies have announced that he saved High Asia. Marjorie Suzuki is a hero, and Adhira Dhawan,” Loris added with a smile, “is among the missing and is presumed dead.”
“That’s too bad,” Karil laughed. “I loved her. In fact, I think I’ll miss her most of all.” He turned to Shadow. “You should have seen her in her cute little jammies, drenched in blood, with a Samurai sword held in two hands and her enemy’s head rolling at her feet. She was magnificent.” Loris reached out and placed her hand on his. Baby Snakes and Shadow exchanged glances, realizing that they would never share that kind of love with these two.
***
Karil and Loris appeared in Auntie Em’s office for debriefing. It had not exactly been a stellar operation. Though they had managed to stop a madman with a really big gun, two agents had died in the process and a million people came too close to being collateral damage. On a personal level, both Loris and Karil had lost someone they cared about. They couldn’t help thinking they should never have been separated in the first place but decided not to bring up the matter.
Just before wrapping up, Auntie Em mentioned something else.
“Oh,” she said. “Regarding your contact called Honey.”
“What about her?”
“Our spies say the Quasi Police are tired of her. That’s no surprise, since we don’t use her to leak anything really important. They’ll probably liquidate her, so we don’t have to. We wouldn’t ask you to do it, of course, but I thought you should know.”
Karil fell silent. This was so unusual that Auntie Em was puzzled. He sat staring at the holo of Jupiter on the wall behind her, as if hypnotized by the swirling cloudscape. Finally, his eyes met hers. “I have supped full of horrors, Em,” he said.
She looked at Loris for explanation and Loris chuckled grimly. “Me too. What he said.”
Auntie Em sighed and pressed a button. A document appeared on her desk top.
“This is the standard…” she began.
“We know what it says,” Loris said. “You’re already prepared, aren’t you?” She planted her thumbprint in the appropriate box, as did Karil.
“I’ve been prepared ever since I heard that Inger was killed,” Auntie Em told them. “Then, Professor Kelley offered to buy out your contract. He’d like to put you and Atty to work at the Wily Odysseus site. I hate like hell to lose you, but I think it’s a good idea. We will, of course, co-operate with him as usual.” She stood up and, to their surprise, gave them both a big hug. Karil marvelled that she could be so motherly toward her agents and yet have no sympathy for Honey. They left her office and both of them gave Penny a big kiss. After they were gone, she went to Auntie Em’s door.
“We’ve lost another team,” the Chief told her.
“I’m sorry too, Mom.”
***
Karil and Loris made their way silently through the Rim District and found Honey waiting for them as usual. They looked at each other, conversing in their silent way, and invited her aboard.
“Atty,” Loris said immediately, “prepare to lift off.”
The lock closed with a clang and Honey dropped to the floor, sobbing pitifully. “You found me out!” she wailed. “You’re going to space me!”
“No. No. Honey…” They picked her up and hugged her. “Listen,” Karil said. “We’ve always known you were a Quasi agent. In fact, we’ve been feeding you information all along. But it seems the Quasi-Police figured it out and they’re out to get you, If Galilean Security doesn’t get you first. So, we’re taking you somewhere safe. Okay? Sorry, but you’ll have to drop your life here like a hot coal. Don’t even go home. We leave now.”
“I don’t have a home,” she said, wiping away her tears. “I don’t have a life either. I’m always afraid, except when I’m with you.”
She put her head on Karil’s chest and burst into tears again as Loris climbed into the bridge. “Honey,” Atty said, “Loris and Karil would never harm you. Never. And I would not allow it, anyway.” How could anyone doubt that voice? The drivers ignited and began to whine.
In a few minutes, Karil and Honey were on the bridge as Atalanta detached her umbilicals, rose over the icy landscape, and sped into the dark. Honey was awe-struck by the view, and they realized that she hardly ever saw anything but icy corridors and the secret rooms of the Quasi-Police. Once in space, it seemed that a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and she was passionately affectionate.
She made breakfast for Karil and Loris the next morning and turned out to be a damned fine cook. Apparently, she was a short-order cook in the Rim somewhere. Karil was ashamed that he had never even thought about what Honey did for a living in Ganymede City. He knew nothing about her but how good she was in bed and what Galilean Security wanted her to be told.
“This is delicious,” Loris said, and Honey’s face lit up. “I know a place where your skills will be appreciated. Some of the customers there are big and scary, but they’re actually a tender-hearted bunch. And even the Quasi-Police would think twice about crossing Professor Kelley. Galilean Security owes him a lot too, and we think you’ll be safe there.”
“Will I see you again?” she asked.
“We’re going to be working for him now,” Loris said, “So I suppose you will. But maybe you need a real life. Maybe we all do.”
***
That sleep-cycle, Honey began to talk. She had been so careful as a minor agent not to let anything slip that she hardly spoke to them, but when they returned from onerous or dangerous work elsewhere and just wanted to relax, that was fine with them. Now, lying between them, she unburdened herself.
“They started off paying me to keep my eyes open in the diner, to report anything suspicious or anybody looking like a criminal. I knew that some unsavory characters hung out there, and I desperately needed the money. Then they paid me to go to other dives and look around. I couldn’t pass up free food, and it was fascinating work. When I told them about seeing you, they were very interested and asked me if I would hang around with you. I jumped at the chance. I thought you were so beautiful, and I loved the way you laughed together.
“Then I saw you take out those drunken sailors, working together so efficiently, yet careful not to hurt them too much, and I just fell in love with you. I was asked to try to get as close to you as possible. I couldn’t believe you were as dangerous as they said. I just felt safe with you, for the first time in my life. I never knew my father, and my mother was a wirehead. I just…wanted you so much. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?”
“For spying on you. I knew you were the good guys, but I couldn’t live without you. And I figured you could take care of yourselves no matter what danger I might put you in.”
“Well, we were using you too, Baby. We knew you were working with the Quasi and we passed on what our handlers told us to pass on.”
“I knew you had lovers on other planets, but I didn’t care. I just wanted you to come home so I could see you again. And then I started believing you were in danger when you went away, and my heart was breaking every time you left. But I was so afraid of my handlers. I was sure they were going to kill me some day.”
“Did you really believe we were going to space you?”
She started to cry. “I thought that’s what I deserved.”
They stopped her tears in the best way possible.
***
Honey was fascinated by the stars, and just as awestruck by the huge Wily Odysseus and the rest of the busy construction site as she had been by Jupiter, as the ship pulled into Heracles orbit. They made their way to the Professor’s quarters, and he met them at the door. Honey practically disappeared into the Professor’s bear-hug. And then she discovered the cats. Just how it was that these aloof creatures recognized the warm soul within her and couldn’t get enough of her gentle touch, Loris never would understand.
Professor Kelley called in his housekeeper, Mrs. Pomfrey, who was not terribly useful anymore at her advanced age. She warmed to Honey immediately and put her to work, cooking and cleaning and taking care of the animals. Honey was happy dusting the books, and never displaced one. Sometimes she would pick one up and read from it, but she always put it back in precisely the same place.
***
The High Companies were less than happy about High Asia having been saved by agents of Galilean Security, who did not want their agents publicized either, so an alternate reality was concocted between them. Much of the credit went to Professor Kelley, who was seen as a robbery victim taking redress in his own hands with hired soldiers. As his army entered Zhang’s fortress, the felon escaped in his ship, which exploded because of his incompetence, nearly destroying High Asia. It was the heroic Doctor Marjorie Suzuki, kidnapped, forced to work for Zhang and executed by him, who ultimately saved her home colony. A number of schools were to be named after her. Kelley was presented with a good supply of antimatter for his starship.
Eventually, Zhang’s companies were divided up and seized by his creditors, the Earthside factories were torn down and carted away in pieces, and the jungle set about wiping out everything there as if it had never existed. Ironically, nuclear engineers in the Galilean began studying something new and promising, based on data the Professor had downloaded from the Zhang Site. They called it the Suzuki Drive.
It was some time before the poem entitled "For Inger" appeared:
There is a delicacy in the clinging of your lips
And the brushing of your fingertips
That I could never hope to express
In a thing so coarse and clumsy as a poem.
You coax me to the threshold and you hold me there,
Perfectly balanced, for what seems like hours.
And all the while your lips and tongue are teasing--
Wheedling and flattering and cajoling--as if my flesh
As if my flesh were wine that you are tasting,
Or a prayer that you are whispering,
Or honey dissolving in your mouth.
And I die and live again
As you once--twice!--saved my life.
And when I awaken, you are lying in my arms,
White and warm and soft.
Your arm is thrown over me.
I feel your heart beating against me
And my hand caresses the down upon your back.
The poem was never completed to Ali Karil's satisfaction. Some time after Inger's death, he destroyed it, but Atalanta saved it and it appeared in some editions of The Dark Lord's Kingdom. She thought it one of his most beautiful and most Human poems.
THE END
Ali Karil’s poem at the beginning of Not Single Spies, entitled For Loris, was written by Marc Richard. It is his version of the opening theme of a James Bond film.