It was 09.63, nearly midday, in Landfall and by ship's time, too. With a long layover planned, ship's time had been gradually adjusted until it agreed with destination time, helping circadian rhythms into sync.
In the terminal, Mauen had come into the reception area from the glassed viewing deck. She'd been waiting for almost three hours, had been there early, not wanting to miss him if the Quaranth should arrive ahead of schedule. Space flights seldom missed schedule by more than minutes, but she was taking no chances.
She wore her prettiest—a new sheer yellow dress with white underlining, of party quality but wearabout cut that showed quite a bit of pretty leg. Her hair was newly coifed, and she'd taken more than usual care with her makeup.
The first man in the door was Varlik—from his eagerness to see her, she was sure. But preoccupied, he almost didn't notice as she started toward him; he had other things on his mind, and somehow it hadn't occurred to him that she'd have gotten off work to meet him. He'd planned to take a cab to the office and report in, then ring Konni. But Mauen called his name as she ran, jerking his eyes to her. Then, after the merest lag, he was running too, to set down his bags and gather her in his arms, hugging her too tightly, his mission suddenly forgotten. They kissed avidly until they became aware that people were staring.
"I can't believe how much I missed you," he breathed.
She noticed neither the underlying profundity of his words nor their surface absurdity, hearing only the love they expressed. "It seemed like forever!" she murmured back. "Half a year."
He signaled a luggageman and, with his bags being carried, walked hand in hand with her through the building and out to the cab area, where the first cabbie in line stowed Varlik's bags, then held the door for them.
"Where to, sir?" he asked.
The sight of Mauen had banished office, report, and phone call from Varlik's mind. "Media Apartments Three," he said.
Varlik came out of the bathroom belting on his robe, poured a drink, then went out onto the canopied balcony where he sat down on a chair. The afternoon sun was warm, though the season was late. Many trees were already bare; on the rest the foliage had turned—yellow, bronze, red. He sipped his drink reflectively, and a minute later Mauen joined him. When she sat, a knee peeked out at him from her robe.
"Do you feel properly welcomed?" she asked.
"That was maximum welcome. More welcome than that I could hardly handle."
"You've always had a nice body," she said. "Now you're so hard and muscular it's almost unbelievable. But I like you this way." She touched his hand. "And I'll like you just as much if you gain weight again."
They touched glasses and drank. Then he held his up to the sun, eyeing thoughtfully the gleam through amber brandy. "I'd like to make a phone call," he said. "Invite a colleague to dinner with us, to talk business. My business and hers. Yours now." He saw Mauen's smile slip at the pronoun hers. "Her name is Konni Wenter. She was on Kettle for Iryala Video," he went on, "and we ran into some strange things—evidence of a criminal conspiracy against the Confederation. We agreed to hold back what we found out until we learned more."
Mauen said nothing, asked no questions, simply waited soberly for Varlik to continue.
He got up. "Come back in," he said. "I'll show you some pictures that I haven't made available for newsfacs or videocasts. We can talk about what they mean, or seem to mean."
She followed him in and closed the doors behind them, feeling chilly now, and dialed the heat control while he activated the wall viewer and inserted a cube. Then they sat down together, and he played first his talk with Ramolu, pointing out the anomalies not only of the man's fluency in Standard but his obvious knowledge of the Confederation and technology and his general sophistication.
"So how did he get like that?" Varlik asked. "Who trained the Birds? Or probably the more correct question is who trained and educated the leaders like Ramolu, because the common Bird soldier doesn't speak Standard—or Tyspi, the language of Tyss. Probably the people who trained them are the people who armed them. Here's one of their rifles." He moved the halted sequence to the image of the rifle he'd picked up in the jungle, and pointed out its lack of serial number.
"Konni and I, after being wounded, went to Tyss for rehabilitation, and walked into town from the hospital there. We recorded this." He sat quietly, letting Mauen watch and listen to the two children who'd talked with Konni and him. Varlik stopped the sequence after each line of dialog, to translate from the Tyspi. "Are you Ertwa?" asked the little girl, and from the audio, Konni's voice answered, "I don't know what 'Ertwa' means."
"They are Splennwa," the little boy corrected his sister. "Ertwa were very long ago."
Mauen interrupted, and Varlik touched the pause key again. "What are 'Ertwa?' " she asked.
"I have no idea. The point is that he responded as if he assumed we were from Splenn. That suggests that Splennites visit Tyss often enough that people are aware of them as frequent visitors—even little children."
Then he played the audio recording of the teaching brother, Ban-Shum, their host and guide in Oldu Tez-Boag, who could speak Orlanthan. Why would a teacher on Tyss know Orlanthan?
And finally, he showed his video recording of the arsenal in the Jubat Forest and the weapons without serial numbers, then removed from a bag the T'swa-made sidearm he'd taken, also without serial number.
"How does all of this seem to you?" he asked. And realized that his body was tense, trembling slightly at some undefined stress.
"It looks . . . it looks as if it might be the T'swa who armed and trained the Orlanthans. But . . . where does Splenn fit in?"
"Splennites could have smuggled the weapons from Tyss to Kettle. Splenn has space ships, and at least in adventure fiction the Splennites are supposed to be smugglers. But I haven't told you all of it yet." He explained his theory—Konni's actually—that the T'swa had a technite mine of their own.
"And—why do you want to ask Miss Wenter over?"
"To show her what I recorded in the jungle. And she'd planned to see what she could learn here; I want to know what she's found out."
Mauen nodded. "All right. Ask her." She paused. "Why do you think there's anything to learn about this, here on Iryala?"
"The T'swa colonels wanted their regiments publicized here. Why? And more than the colonels wanted it; they'd already arranged for publicity to be channeled through the T'swa ambassador here. Besides that, apparently someone had expected both Central News and Iryala Video to have the T'swa featured." And got the king to contract personally for the regiments, Varlik added to himself; he'd never looked at that angle before. "It's as if someone here, someone in a very high place, is involved."
Mauen got up and went to her desk in their activities room, then returned with an address book. "Perhaps I have something helpful," she said. Varlik looked at her, puzzled. "I got interested in the T'swa from your reports," she went on. "Lots of people did, but especially me because I'm your wife. So I called the Royal Library for anything they might have on them. I didn't find much. But I thought there might be material that I didn't know how to access, so I called the library's consulting office. When the supervisory consultant realized I was your wife, she gave me the name and number of an expert on Tyss and the T'swa philosophy—Melsa Ostrak Gouer."
Mauen handed him the address book, open to the Gs. The name Gouer didn't mean anything specific to him, though he recognized it vaguely as belonging to an aristocratic family. But Ostrak—the Ostraks were one of the better known aristocratic families, holding certain interstellar trading rights in fief from the crown.
"Have you called this Melsa Gouer?"
"No. I hesitated to bother someone of a family like that."
"I think I will," he said. "Tomorrow. It could be that you do have something helpful here."
At least it could provide a lead to highly placed families with a prewar interest in the T'swa. He made his call to Konni and she accepted the dinner invitation. Then Varlik got dressed to report to the office. When he was ready to leave, he stopped to kiss Mauen.
"Varlik?"
"Yes?"
"Did you sleep with this Konni Wenter?"
The question startled him. "Sleep with her? No. Or anyone else since I met you. Not ever." He stepped back to arm's length. "I hope you haven't been worrying about that."
"Not until you asked to call her. And then said you'd traveled to Tyss together. Is she pretty?"
"No, she's fairly plain. Not homely, but . . ." He grinned. "She's nothing like you. Except that she's nice, too. I think you'll like her. And she'll like you. Have you ever wondered about things like that before when I've been gone?"
"Not really." She smiled a little. "A time or two, maybe. I know that women must put themselves in your way sometimes. But while you were talking, it occurred to me that you shared something with her out there that was important to you both, and that I had no part in—a mystery, a war, and friends killed."
His eyes rested on hers. "True. But now the mystery is yours, too. You've even given me a lead."
Varlik checked in with Fendel, who told him to take a week off; then he'd have a new assignment for him. Varlik told him he wasn't done with the T'swa assignment yet, that there were odds and ends of it to look into here, and that when he was finished he was going to take two weeks off.
When he left Fendel's office, Fendel stared after him. The young man had certainly changed. Independent! But he was worth a little temperament. Subscriptions had soared with his coverage of the T'swa.
Varlik stopped at his own desk before he left, to place a call to the T'swa embassy. He got an appointment with the ambassador for the next morning at 07.75.
Varlik had been right. As different as they were, Mauen and Konni hit it off.
Konni hadn't learned much of value. A week after returning to Iryala, she'd been back at work and busy. She'd read or scanned everything the library had on Splenn, though, giving special attention to Splenn's politics and interstellar trade. It had been interesting but not very helpful. But clearly the Splennites—the Splennwa, Varlik and Konni called them, using the Tyspi—had a penchant for intrigues, at least at home.
And there had been several smuggling convictions by the Confederation Tax Commission, though the Splennite reputation was worse than a few convictions would account for. Also, T'swa regiments had been hired more than once to help in power disputes on Splenn; the current dynasty of the leading state on Splenn owed its position to T'swa regiments.
Varlik in turn told them about his appointment with the T'swa ambassador. He'd call Konni afterward, he promised, and tell her what happened.
Konni left by midevening—at 17.20. It didn't seem to her like an evening to keep Varlik and Mauen up late.