VI

Hours had gone when he left the house. He had eaten there, but sheer weariness dragged at him. He swam quite slowly back to the Commander's rock. When he stood on it, he rested for a while, looking over the sea.

Loa was up, Luna-sized, nearly full, but with several times the albedo of Earth's moon. High in a clear blackness, it drowned most of the alien constellations. The marker lights about every rock, color-coded for depth so that all Jairnovaunt was one great jewelbox, grew pallid in the moon-dazzle off the ocean.

Flandry took out a cigarette. It was enough to be alone with that light: at least, it helped.

Imperial agents ought to have some kind of conscience-ectomy performed ... He drew smoke into his lungs.

"Can you nay rest, Captain?" The low woman-voice brought him bounding around. When he saw the moonlight gleam off Tessa Hoorn, he put back his gun, sheepishly.

"You seem a wee bit wakeful yourself," he answered. "Unless you are sleep-walking, or sleep-diving or whatever people do here. But no, surely I am the one asleep. Don't rouse me."

The moon turned her into darknesses and lithe witcheries, with great marching waters to swirl beneath her feet. She had been swimming-Loa glistened off a million cool drops, her only garment. He remembered how they had talked and laughed and traded songs and recollections and even hopes, under tall skies or moonlit sails. His heart stumbled, and glibness died.

"Aye. My net would nay hold fast to sleep this night." She stood before him, eyes lowered. It was the first time she had not met his gaze. In the streaming unreal light, he saw how a pulse fluttered in her throat. "So I wended from my bunk and-" The tones faded. "Why did you come here again?" he asked. "Oh ... it was a place to steer for. Or perchance ... Nay!" Her lips tried to smile, but were not quite steady. "Where were you this evening, sith we are so curious?"

"I spoke to Old John," he said, because so far truth would serve his purpose. "It wasn't easy."

"Aye. I wouldn't give your work to an enemy, Dominic. Why do you do it?"

He shrugged. "It's all I really know how to do."

"Nay!" she protested. "To aid a brute of a governor or a null of a resident-you're too much a man. You could come ... here, even-Nay, the sun wouldn't allow it for long ... "

"It's not quite for nothing," he said. "The Empire is-" he grinned forlornly-"less perfect than myself. True. But what would replace it is a great deal worse."

"Are you so sure, Dominic?"

"No," he said in bitterness.

"You could dwell on a frontier world and do work you are sure is worth yourself. I ... even I have thought, there is more in this universe than Nyanza ... if such a planet had oceans, I could-"

Flandry said frantically: "Didn't you mention having a child, Tessa?"

"Aye, a Commander-child, but sith I'm unwed as yet the boy was adopted out." He looked his puzzlement and she explained, as glad as he to be impersonal: "The Commander must not wed, but lies with whom he will. It's a high honor, and if she be husbandless the woman gets a great dowry from him. The offspring of these unions are raised by the mothers' kin; when they are all old enough, the councillors elect the best-seeming son heir apparent."

Somewhere in his rocking brain, Flandry thought that the Terran Emperors could learn a good deal from Nyanza. He forced a chuckle and said: "Why, that makes you the perfect catch, Tessa-titled, rich, and the mother of a potential chieftain. How did you escape so far?"

"There was nay the right man," she whispered. "Inyanduma himself is so much a man, see you, for all his years. Only Derek Umbolu-how you unlock me, Terran!-and him too proud to wed 'bove his station." She caught her breath and blurted desperately: "But I'm nay more a maid, and I will nay wait until Full Entropy to be again a woman."

Flandry could have mumbled something and gotten the devil out of there. But he remembered through a brawling in his blood that he was an Imperial agent and that something had been done by this girl in southern waters which they kept secret from him.

He kissed her.

She responded shyly at first, and then with a hunger that tore at him. They sat for a long while under the moon, needing no words, until Flandry felt with dim surprise that the tide was licking his feet.

Tessa rose. "Come to my house," she said.

It was the moment when he must be a reptile-blooded scoundrel ... or perhaps a parfait gentile knight, he was desolately uncertain which. He remained seated, looking up at her, where she stood crowned with stars, and said:

"I'm sorry. It wouldn't do."

"Fear me naught," she said with a small catch of laughter, very close to a sob. "You can leave when you will. I'd nay have a man who wouldn't stay freely. But I'll do my best to keep you, Dominic, dearest."

He fumbled after another cigarette. "Do you think I'd like anything better?" he said. "But there's a monster loose on this planet, I'm all but sure of it I will not give you just a few hours with half my mind on my work. Afterward-" He left it unfinished.

She stood quiet for a time that stretched.

"It's for Nyanza too," he pleaded. "If this goes on un-reined, it could be the end of your people."

"Aye," she said in a flat tone.

"You could help me. When this mission is finished-"

"Well ... what would you know?" She twisted her face away from his eyes.

He got the cigarette lighted and squinted through the smoke. "What were you doing in The Kraal?"

"I'm nay so sure now that I do love you, Dominic."

"Will you tell me, so I'll know what I have to face?"

She sighed. "Rossala is arming. They are making warcraft, guns, torpedoes-none nuclear, sith we have nay facilities for it, but more than the Terran law allows us. I don't know why, though rumor speaks of sunken Uhunhu. The Sheikh guards his secrets. But there are whispers of freedom. It may or may not be sooth. We'll nay make trouble with the Imperium for fellow Nyanzans, but ... we arm ourselves, too, in case Rossala should start again the old wars. I arranged an alliance with The Kraal."

"And if Rossala should not attack you, but revolt against Terra?" asked Flandry. "What would your own re-armed alliance do?"

"I know naught 'bout that. I am but one Nyanzan. Have you nay gained enough?"

She slammed down her 'lung helmet and dove off the edge. He did not see her come up again.