Perat lay on his couch, sipping cold purple _terif_ and following the
thinly-clad dancer with narrowed eyes. Music, soft and subtle, floated
from his communications box, illegally tuned to an officer's club
somewhere. Evelyn made the rhythm part of her as she swayed slowly on
tiptoe.
For the last thirty "nights"--the hours allotted to rest and sleep--it
had been thus. By "day" she probed furtively into the minds of the
office staff, memorizing area designations, channels for official
messages, and the names and authorizations of occupational field crews.
By night she danced for Perat, who never took his eyes from her, nor
his probe from her mind. While she danced it was not too difficult to
elude the probe. There was an odd autohypnosis in dancing that blotted
out memory and knowledge.
"Enough for now," he ordered. "Careful of your rib."
When he had first seen the bandages on her bare chest, that first
night, she had been ready with a memory of dancing on a freshly waxed
floor, and of falling.
Perat seemed to be debating with himself as she sat down on her own
couch to rest. He got up, unlocked his desk, and drew out a tiny reel
of metal wire, which Evelyn recognized as being feed for an amateur
stereop projector. He placed the reel in a projector that had been
installed in the wall, flicked off the table luminar, and both of them
waited in the dark, breathing rather loudly.
Suddenly the center of the room was bright with a ball of light some
two feet in diameter, and inside the luminous sphere were an old man, a
woman, and a little boy of about four years. They were walking through
a luxurious garden, and then they stopped, looked up, and waved gaily.
Evelyn studied the trio with growing wonder. The old man and the boy
were complete strangers. _But the woman--!_
"That is Phaen, my father," said Perat quietly. "He stayed at home
because he hated war. And that is a path in our country estate on
Tharn-R-VII. The little boy I fail to recognize, beyond a general
resemblance to the Tharn line.
"But--_can you deny that you are the woman_?"
The stereop snapped off, and she sat wordless in the dark.
"There seemed to be some similarity--" she admitted. Her throat was
suddenly dry. Yet, why should she be alarmed? She really didn't know
the woman.
The table luminar was on now, and Perat was prowling hungrily about the
room, his scar twisting his otherwise handsome face into a snarling
scowl.
"Similarity! Bah! That loop of hair over her right forehead hid a scar
identical to yours. I have had the individual frames analyzed!"
Evelyn's hands knotted unconsciously. She forced her body to relax, but
her mind was racing. This introduced another variable to be controlled
in her plan for destruction. She _must_ make it a known quantity.
"Did your father send it to you?" she asked.
"The day before you arrived here. It had been en route for months, of
course."
"What did he say about it?"
"He said, 'Your widow and son send greetings. Be of good cheer, and
accept our love.' What nonsense! He knows very well I'm not married and
that--well, if I have ever fathered any children, I don't know about
them."
"Is that all he said?"
"That's all, except that he included this ring." He pulled one of the
duplicate jewels from his right middle finger and tossed it to her.
"It's identical to the one he had made for me when I entered on my
majority. For a long time it was thought that it was the only stone of
its kind on all the planets of the Tharn suns, a mineralogical freak,
but I guess he found another. But why should I want two of them?"
Evelyn crossed the room and returned the ring.
"Existence is so full of mysteries, isn't it?" murmured Perat.
"Sometimes it seems unfortunate that we must pass through a sentient
phase on our way to death. This foolish, foolish war. Maybe the old
count was right."
"You could be courtmartialed for that."
"Speaking of courtmartials, I've got to attend one tonight--an appeal
from a death sentence." He arose, smoothed his hair and clothes, and
poured another glass of _terif_. "Some fool inquisitor can't show
proper disposition of a woman prisoner."