Chapter IV

Two weeks later, very late at "night", Perat lay stretched gloomily on his sleeping couch. On the other side of the room Evelyn was curled luxuriously on her own damasked lounge, her head propped high. She was scanning some of the miniature stereop reels that Perat had brought from his far-distant home planet.

"Those green trees and hedges ... so far away," she mused. "Do you ever think about seeing them again?"

"Of late, I've been thinking about them quite a bit."

What did he mean by that?

"I understood it would be months before the field crews cut us loose from the Terran ship," she said.

"Indeed?"

"Well? Won't it?"

Perat turned his moody face toward her. "No, it won't. The field crews have been moving at breakneck speed, on account of some unfounded rumor or other that the Terran ship is going to explode. On orders from our High Command, we pull out of here by the end of the working day tomorrow. Within twenty metrons from now, our ship parts company with the enemy globe."

The scar on her forehead was throbbing violently. There was no time now to send the false orders to the field crew she had selected. She must think a bit.

"It seems then, this is our last night together."

"It is."

She rose from her couch and walked the room like a caged beast.

"You could hardly take me, a commoner, back with you...."

With growing shock she realized that she was more than half sincere in her request.

"It is not done. It is unlike you to suggest it."

"Well, that's that, I suppose." She stopped and toyed idly with a box of chessmen on his table. "Would you care for a game of Terran chess? I'll try to play very intelligently, so that you won't be too terribly bored."

"If you like. But there are more interesting...."

"Do you think," she interrupted quickly, "that you could beat me without sight of the board or pieces?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I just thought it would be more interesting for you. I'll take the board over to my bed, and you call out your moves and I'll tell you my replies. I'll see the board, but you won't."

"A curious variant."

"But you must promise to keep out of my mind; otherwise you would know my plans."

He smiled. "Set up the pieces. What color do you want?"

"I'll defend. Give me black."

She loosed her waist-purse, took a handkerchief from it, and set the purse on the deep carpet in the shadow of her table. She unfolded the chessboard in front of her on the couch and quickly placed the pieces. "I'm ready," she announced.

Indeed, everything was in readiness now except that she didn't know where the cat was. She regretted bitterly not having killed that innocent mouser weeks ago.

"Pawn to king four," announced Perat, gazing idly at the ceiling.

She made the move and replied, "Pawn to king three."

From the unlaced purse hidden on the floor a tiny head thrust itself out, followed soon by a pair of minuscule shoulders.

"Have you studied this Terran game?" queried Perat curiously, "or don't you know enough to seize the center on your first move?"

"Have I made an error already? Was that the wrong move?"

"It's the first move in a complete defensive system, but few people outside of Terrans understand it. Pawn to queen four."

She had blundered in attempting the French Defense, but it was not too late to convert to something that could be expected of a Scythian woman beginner. "Pawn to queen three."

The grey doll was out of the purse, sidling through the shadows to the door, which stood slightly ajar.

"So you don't know the book moves, after all. You would really have astonished me if you had moved your queen pawn two squares. I'll play pawn to king bishop four. Will you have some _terif_?"

He spun around upright and reached for the decanter, looking full at the door ... and the tiny figure.

Evelyn was up at once, cutting off his line of vision. "Yes, I think I will have one."

Telepathically she ordered the little creature to dash through the crack in the doorway. She heard the faint rustle behind her as she picked up the glass Perat poured.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, "for a moment I thought I saw your little doll...."

She looked at him dubiously. "Really, Perat? It's in my purse."

He stepped lithely to the door and flung it open. Far down the hall there was the faintest suggestion of a scuffle.

"A mouse, I guess." He returned to his bed, but it was plain that he was unsatisfied.

* * * * *

The game wore on for half a metron. Perat's combinations were met with almost sufficient counter-combinations, so that the issue hung in doubt for move after move.

"You've improved considerably since yesterday," he admitted grudgingly.

"Not at all. It's your playing 'blind' that makes us even. No cheating! Keep out of my mind! It isn't fair to know what I'm planning."

Oh, by the merciful god of Galaxus, if he'll stay out of mind and the cat out of the communications room for another five minutes!

"All right, all right. I'll win anyway," he muttered, as he concluded a combination that netted him the black queen. "You could gracefully resign right now."

Evelyn studied the position carefully. She had made a grave miscalculation--the queen loss had definitely not been a part of the plan. She must contrive a delaying action that would invoke an oral argument.

"Bishop to queen rook eight," she murmured. Her telepathic probe, focussed on the bit of nervous tissue that the mentors had cut from her frontal lobe and given to her mannikin as a brain, continued its tight control. In Gorph's office, far down the wing, the little creature was hopping painstakingly from one key to another of the dispatch printing machine.

"... _takes priority over all other pending projects_...."

"Your game is hopeless," scowled Perat. "I'm a queen and the exchange up on you."

"I always play the game out," replied Evelyn easily. "You never know what might happen. Your move."

"... _five horizontal columns of metallic trans-scythium nine hundred xedars long will be found in a Terran storeroom, our area code_...."

"All right, then. Queen takes pawn."

"Pawn to queen knight seven," replied Evelyn. It was her sole remaining pawn, and she hoped to use it in an odd way.

Perat checked with his queen at queen bishop four, and Evelyn's king slid to safety at queen knight eight. Perat moved his rook from queen knight five to queen five.

"Do you intend to mate with rook to queen's square next move?" asked Evelyn demurely.

"... _under the strictest secrecy. Therefore you are ordered not to communicate_...."

"Nothing can prevent it," observed the Viscount of Tharn somberly. He had already lost all interest in the game and was contemplating the ceiling tapestries. With a lurch she brought her telepathic probe to rest, ready to prepare a false front for his searching mind. She must keep him out a moment longer, or all was lost.

"But it's my move, and I have no move," she objected, focussing her probe again.

"... _signed, Perat, Viscount of Tharn, Commandant, Occupation Zone One_."

Through that distant fragment of her mind she sensed that something was watching the doll with feral interest.

The cat.

"So? No move? Then you lose," replied Perat.

"But my king isn't in check. You told me yourself that when my king was not in check, and I had no legal move, that I was stalemated, and the game was a draw."

In that other room, her telepathic contact guided the little figure down the table leg. Slowly now, don't excite the cat into pouncing. She had only seconds left, but it should suffice to place the dispatch in Gorph's incoming box. The pompous little supervisor would send it by the first jet messenger without doubt or question, and the field crew would proceed to draw the five columns.

Pain daggered into her right leg!

* * * * *

The cat had seized her homunculus by the thigh; she knew the tiny bone had been crushed. She caught fleet, dizzy impressions of the animal striding off proudly with the little creature between its jaws. The letter lay where it had fallen, under the dispatch machine, almost invisible.

The doll ceased her blind writing and drew a tiny black cylinder from her belt. The cat's right eye loomed huge above her.

Mentally, Perat studied the chessboard position with growing interest.

"Idiotic Terran game," he growled. "Only a Terran would conceive of the idea of calling a crushing defeat a drawn battle. I'm sorry I taught you the game. It's really quite--_what was that?_"

"Sounded like the cat, didn't it?" responded Evelyn.

Her tiny alter ego had dropped from those destructive jaws and was dragging itself slowly back to the dispatch. It found the message and picked it up.

"Do you think something could have hurt it?" asked Evelyn.

The doll struggled toward Gorph's desk, leaving behind a thin red trail.

Then several things happened. Hot swords sizzled in Evelyn's back, and she knew the enraged feline had broken the spinal column of the doll. With throbbing intuition she collapsed her telepathic tentacle.

Too late.

Perat's probe was already in her mind, and she knew that he had caught the full impact of her swift telepathic return. She lay there limply. Her rib, now almost healed, began to ache dully.

The man continued to lie motionless, staring heavy-lidded at the ceiling. Gradually, his mind withdrew itself from hers.

"So you're high-born," he mused aloud. "I should have known, but then, you concealed it very adroitly, didn't you?"

She sat up against the wall. Her heart was pounding almost audibly.

He was relentless. "No Scythian would play chess the way you did. Only a Terran would play for a draw after total defeat."

"I play chess well, so I am a Terran?" she whispered through a dry throat.

Perat turned his handsome grey eyes from the ceiling and smiled at her. His mouth lifted venomously as he watched her begin to tremble.

"Pour me a _terif_," he ordered.

She arose, feeling that she must certainly collapse the next instant. She forced her legs to move, step by step, to the table by his couch. There she picked up the _terif_ decanter and tipped it to fill his glass. The dry clatter of bottle on glass betrayed her shaking hands.

"One for you, too, my dear Lyn."

She held the decanter several inches above her glass to avoid that horrible clatter, and managed to spill quite a bit on the table.

Perat held his glass up to touch hers. "A toast," he smiled, "to a mysterious and beautiful lady!"

He drank prone, she standing. She knew she would spill her drink if she tried to recross to her couch.

"So you're a Terran? Then why did you kill the Terran officer on the balcony?"

She was so relieved that she sank limply to the floor beside him.

"Why should I tell you? You wouldn't believe anything I told you now, or that you found in my mind." She smiled up at him.

"True, true. Quite a dilemma. Should I shoot you now and possibly bring the rage of a noble Scythian house down about my ears, or should I submit you to mechanical telepathic analysis?"

"I am yours, viscount," she laughed. "Shoot me. Analyze me. Whatever you wish."

She knew her gaiety was forced, and that it had struck a false note. The iron gate of doubt had clanged shut between them. From now on he would contain her mind in the mental prison of his own. The dispatch beside Gorph's desk could have no further aid from her. Anyway, the cat had undoubtedly carried off the doll.

"What a strange woman you are," he murmured. A brief shadow crossed his face. "With you, for a little while, I have been happy. But in a few metrons, of course, you will depart under close arrest for the psych center, and I'll be on my way back to the Tharn suns."

Within half a metron the office force would begin straggling into the Administration offices and her letter would be found and given to a puzzled Gorph, who would then query Perat as to whether it should not be in the incoming box for urgent matters. But what would Gorph do if his superior refused to communicate with him or anyone else for a full metron? The first messenger jet left very soon, and there was no other for four metrons. Would Gorph send it on the first jet, or would he wait? It was a chance she'd have to take.

She got up from the floor and sat down on the couch beside the Viscount of Tharn. "Perat," she began hesitantly, "I know you must send me away. I'm sorry, because I don't want to leave you so soon, and you do not want me to leave you until the last moment, either. Anything else that I would tell you, you might doubt, so I say nothing more. I would like to dance for you. When I dance, I tell the truth."

"Yes, dance, but take care of your rib," assented the man moodily.

She filled his glass again with a sure hand and replaced it on the table. Then she unloosed the combs in her hair and let it fall in a profusion of curls about her shoulders, where it scintillated in a myriad sparkling semicircles in the soft light of the table luminar.

She shook her shoulders to scatter her hair, and unhurriedly released the clasp of her outer lounging gown. The heavy robe fell about her feet, leaving her clad only in a thin, flowing under-garment, which she smoothed languidly while she kicked off her slippers. Her mouth was now half-parted, her eyelids drooping and slumbrous. Perat was still staring at the ceiling, but she knew his mind was flowing unceasingly over her body.

"I must have music," she whispered. The man made no protest when she pressed the controls on his communications box to receive the slow and haunting dance music from the officers' club in the next zone.

The main avenue of access to Perat was now cut. And Gorph was a bolder man than she thought if he dared knock on the door of his chief while she was inside.

She began to sway and to chant. "_The Song of Karos, the Great God of Scythe, Father of Tharn folk, Dweller in Darkness_...."

Perat's glass halted, then proceeded slowly to his lips. Of course, no educated nobleman admitted a belief in the ancient religion of the Scythes, but how good it was to hear it sung and danced again? Not since his boyhood, when his mother had dragged him to the temple by main force.... He placed one palm behind his head and continued to sip and to think, as this strange, lovely woman unraveled with undulant body and husky voice the long, satisfying story of his god.

As she postured sinuously, Evelyn breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the dead mentors who had crammed her to bursting with Scythe folklore.

The luminous metron dial revolved with infinite slowness.