Part 59 (1/2)

His right eye was twitching slightly and he looked nervous and worried. What his aghast companions could not know was that the worry stemmed not from Mataroreva's near charge. His nervousness came from something that screamed along his nerves and ham- mered at his brain, trying to get inside. It promised to soothe him, that voice did, to relax him and take all the burden of the past weeks and throw it bliss- fully aside.

”I didn't think you were just a biologist,” Cora said tightly. ”Though you had me believing that for a little

while.”

”I am a biologist,” Merced shot back at her.

To Cora's pleasure, it was Rachael who next spoke

249.

angrily to him. ”I saw what you did when we first landed here, back at the dock where the toglut at- tacked us!” Merced's eyes darted quickly back toward Mataroreva, who had moved as if to rise again. ”I saw the gun you didn't use then. But I trusted you.”

”And I saw,” Mataroreva said quietly, ”the hold you used on that man on Hazaribagh's s.h.i.+p, the way you fought.” He shook his head. ”You don't leam to react that way by making it a hobby. Only a pro- fessional works that smoothly.”

Rachael's voice was filled with disgust, ”To think that I've been all over you since we landed here!”

Cora gaped at her daughter.

”It's true. Mother. I thought for a while he was a pretty nice guy. You know, at first I could hardly get him to touch me, much less anything else.” Cora tried to speak, couldn't. She had suspected. But to hear it put so bluntly, from her daughter's own lips ...

”The fighting I couldn't conceal.” Merced gasped the words out, emphasizing the first syllable of each as if fighting merely to speak. He glanced at Rachael.

”As for the other, I'm sorry. Sometimes it helps to mix business with pleasure.”

Cora slumped back in her seat, overwhelmed by the double revelation of daughter and colleague. ”So you've been tied in with these thought-manipulators all along. You were in on the destruction of all the towns, even Vai'oire. Now I can see why you want to go on. Near the bottom, beyond any hope of rescue, you'll lock us in and leak the air supply or something after your friends come to save you. It will be as- sumed we were all lost. What I can't figure out is how your people managed to infiltrate Commonwealth se- curity to have you, their operative, a.s.signed to this mission.”

”No one has infiltrated Commonwealth security.”

He was trying to watch them all at once. Under the

250.

CACHALOT

CACHALOT.

251.

present circ.u.mstances, even Rachael might jump him.

He didn't want to have to shoot anyone.

Instruments protruding from the wall pressed into his back. He forced himself against them. The phys- ical pain helped override some of the mental anguish

he was battling.

”I said I was a biologist. I wasn't lying. I also hap- pen to be a Commonwealth agent. Security a.s.signed me to this to hunt for exactly the kind of infiltration you're talking about,” he explained to Cora. He looked anxiously at Hwos.h.i.+en. ”He knows that. He's temporarily forgotten. Something's making him for- get.”

The others glanced at the Commissioner. Once

secure and serene, he now appeared to be wrestling