Clarey felt the blood surge up. “My thoughts are my own concern. You haven’t the right to use them to taunt me.”
“But I think you’re attractive,” she protested. “Honestly I do. In a different way. Just go to a good tailor, put on a little weight, dye your hair, and—”
“And I wouldn’t be different any more,” Clarey finished. That wasn’t true; he would always be different. Not that he was deformed, just unappealing. He was below average height and his eyes and hair and skin were too light. In the past, he knew, there had been pale races and dark races on Earth. With the discovery of other intelligent life-forms to discriminate against together, the different races had fused into a swarthy unity. Of course he could hide his etiolation with dye and cosmetics, but those of really good quality cost more than he could afford, and cheap maquillage was worse than none. Besides, why should his appearance mean anything to anybody but himself? He’d had enough beating around the bush! “Would you mind telling me exactly what the job is?”
“Intelligence agent,” said Spano.
“Isn’t it exciting?” she put in. “Aren’t you thrilled?”
Clarey bounced angrily from his chair. “I won’t sit here and be ridiculed!”
“Why ridiculed?” Spano asked. “Don’t you consider yourself an intelligent man?”
“Being an intelligence agent has nothing to do with intelligence!” Clarey said furiously. “The whole thing’s silly, straight out of the tri-dis.”
“What do you have against the tri-dis, Sub-Archivist?” Spano’s voice was very quiet.
“Don’t you like any of them?” the girl said. “I just adore Sentries of the Sky!” Her enthusiasm was tinged, obscurely, with warning.
“Well, I enjoy it, too,” Clarey said, sinking back to the stool. “It’s very entertaining, but I’m sure it isn’t meant to be taken seriously.”
“Oh, but it is, Sub-Archivist Clarey,” Spano said. “Sentries of the Sky happens to be produced by my bureau. We want the public to know all about our operations—or as much as it’s good for them to know—and they find it more palatable in fictionalized form.”
“Documentaries always get low ratings,” the girl said. “And you can’t really blame the public—documentaries are dull. Myself, I like a love interest.” Her eyes rested lingeringly on Clarey’s.
They must think I’m a fool, Clarey thought; yet why would they bother to fool me? “But I am given to understand,” he said to Spano, “even by the tri-dis, that an intelligence agent needs special training, special qualifications.”
“In this case, the special qualifications outweigh the training. And you have the qualifications we need for Damorlan.”
“According to the machines, all I’m qualified for is human filing cabinet. Is that what you want?”
Spano was growing impatient. “Look, Clarey, the machines have decided that you are not a Musician. Do you want to remain a Sub-Archivist for the rest of your days or will you take this other road? Once you’re on a U-E level, you can fight the machines; tape your own music if you like.”
Clarey said nothing, but his initial hostility was ebbing slowly away.
“I wanted to be a writer,” Spano said. “The machines said no. So I became a soldier, rose to the top. Now—this is in strictest confidence—I write most of the episodes of Sentries of the Sky myself. There’s always another route for the man with guts and vision, and, above all, faith. Why don’t we continue the discussion over lunch?”
It was almost unthinkable for L-E and U-E to eat together. For Clarey this was an honor—too great an honor—and there was no way out of it. Spano and the girl put on their masks; the general touched a section of the wall and it slid back. There was a car waiting for them outside. It skimmed over the delicately wrought, immensely strong bridges that, together with the tunnels, linked the great glittering metropolis into a vast efficient whole.
Spano was not really broadminded. Although they went to the Aurora Borealis, it was through a side door, and they were served in a private dining room. Clarey was glad and nettled at the same time.
The first few mouthfuls of the food tasted ambrosial; then it cloyed and Clarey had to force it down with a thin, almost astringent pale blue liquid. In itself, the liquor had only a mild, slightly pungent taste, but it made everything else increasingly delightful—the warm, luxurious little room, the perfume that wafted from the air-conditioning ducts, Han Vollard.
“Martian mountain wine,” she warned him. “Rather overwhelming if you’re not used to it, and sometimes even if you are....” Her eyes rested on the general.
“But there are no mountains on Mars,” Clarey said, startled.
“That’s it!” Spano chortled. “When you’ve drunk it, you see mountains!” And he filled his glass again.
While they ate, he told Clarey about Damorlan—its beautiful climate, light gravity, intelligent and civilized natives. Though the planet had been known for two decades, no one from Earth had ever been there except a few selected government officials, and, of course, the regular staff posted there.
“You mean it hasn’t been colonized yet?” Clarey was relieved, because he felt he should, as an Archivist, have known more about the planet than its name and coordinates. “Why? It sounds like a splendid place for a colony.”
“The natives,” Spano said.
“There were natives on a lot of the planets we colonized. You disposed of them somehow.”
“By co-existence in most cases, Sub-Archivist,” Spano said drily. “We’ve found it best for Terrans and natives to live side by side in harmony. We dispose of a race only when it’s necessary for the greatest good. And we would especially dislike having to dispose of the Damorlanti.”
“What’s wrong with them?” Clarey asked, pushing away his half-finished crême brulée a la Betelgeuse with a sigh. “Are they excessively belligerent, then?”
“No more belligerent than any intelligent life-form which has pulled itself up by its bootstraps.”
“Rigid?” Clarey suggested. “Unadaptable? Intolerant? Indolent? Personally offensive?”
Spano smiled. He leaned back with half-shut eyes, as if this were a guessing game. “None of those.”
“Then why consider disposing of them?” Clarey asked. “They sound pretty decent for natives. Don’t wipe them out; even an ilf has a right to live.”
“Clarey,” the girl said, “you’re drunk.”
“I’m in full command of my faculties,” he assured her. “My wits are all about me, moving me to ask how you could possibly expect to use a secret agent on Damorlan if there are no colonists. What would he disguise himself as—a touring Earth official?” He laughed with modest triumph.
Spano smiled. “He could disguise himself as one of them. They’re humanoid.”
“That humanoid?”
“That humanoid. So there you have the problem in a nutshell.”
But Clarey still couldn’t see that there was a problem. “I thought we—the human race, that is—were supposed to be the very apotheosis of life species.”
“So we are. And that’s the impression we’ve conveyed to such other intelligent life-forms as we’ve taken under our aegis. What we’re afraid of is that the other ilfs might become ... confused when they see the Damorlanti, think they’re the ruling