Operation Isis. E. Hoffmann Price

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      “My cruiser was one of the flotilla that killed a Marxist division of armor. She was disguised with sheet metal that gave her a freighter silhouette.”

      “Then what?”

      “The fool in command fired a warning shot across our bow. I wagged my forefinger, and the officer on watch cut loose with gunnery that had never been tested on Terra. That illegal command to stand by got total destruction. Cruiser and crew left no debris in space. They were vapor, waiting for a comet to join.”

      Felix exhaled a long-locked breath.

      “The total disappearance of a patrol ship without a general quarters call to Lunar Headquarters confirmed the validity of the security leak,” the Old Man said. “Son of a bitch, a man can never win!”

      “Dumb bastards learned that Garvin is poison.”

      “They always knew that, but they are dedicated.”

      The Old Man was doing nicely. The new problem was to live up to the image developed over the years: the skill, the cunning, the experience of twenty boys and a third the energy of one. And then Garvin learned that he was fatally vulnerable, that he had defenses he was not able to use.

      “You brought the Imitation Empress back home for burial.”

      “Yes. Mission accomplished.”

      “And you didn’t have time to detour to France and see Mom and me.”

      However this had gnawed at Garvin, year after year, this was the ultimate thrust. Facts at the time of happening had been Garvin’s consolation. These, now history, were old and toothless, as weary as he himself had become. Events could justify him. Explanations would be futile.

      Felix was on his feet. Glancing at his watch, he fixed the Old Man with the eye of decision. “There is a get-together banquet in Biarritz. Pelota sharks and novices and professionals, and fans, and a tournament series. Mind telling Madame the Old Lady that I forgot to mention this appointment? Got to haul ass out, right now.”

      He extended his hand. “Maybe I’ll lose out in the preliminaries and be back before you board the Semiramis.”

      It was an awkward but resolute dismissal. Garvin took the extended hand. “Tell your mother that on my way back to Maritania, I’ll be stopping in Bayonne.”

      Chapter 6

      Garvin’s meeting with Felix left him groping. Flora had not even grazed the subject with which that boy had nailed the Old Man, dead center. It was all too clear in retrospect how the Old Man’s bypassing France after he had convoyed the pseudo-Imperatrix to her funeral had deeply wounded the youngster, leaving the almost grown man with an unhealed psychic injury. Flora apparently had taken an adult view and, after having digested rumors concerning the Imitation Empress, realized that Garvin’s mission had not been as simple as surmise had made it. Furthermore, there had been circumstances sufficiently odd about the death of the retired Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Honorable Harry Offendorf, to indicate one of Garvin’s off-the-record capers, which likely would have necessitated his immediate return to Maritania.

      He decided not to mention the subject to Flora. The rule was: Don’t fix it if it’s working—and the honeymoon was. Having started with cocktails and dinner at four-nineteen in the morning, they breakfasted late. Parachuting to sea level occasionally, they eventually arrived at the conventional time for “Happy Hour.” And while the chatelaine was busy with cosmetics and selecting a dress appropriate to her mood, Garvin prowled the shops of rue Pont Neuf. Some of his purchases went into the trunk of Flora’s “darling” acacia yellow Guiletta Veloce. No woman has greater love than she who lets a husband drive such a gran turisimo treasure. Others of the goodies that Monsieur Chevigny sold were for delivery to the Semiramis, to be locked in the Garvin stateroom: a lot of cognac and several cases of Hungarian Tokaija, not remotely akin to North American Tokay.

      Two doors from Chevigny’s on the river side was a camera shop where Garvin bought a Swiss-made single lens reflex Alfa, thirty-five millimeter, with a hand-finished optical system far superior to the best that German or Japanese makers produced. He wondered at Flora’s sudden passion for photography, but instead of asking questions such as why had she never bothered with pictures during their Martian years, he settled down to scooping up the best.

      Before he had finished studying the owner’s manual for a minicamera that cost about as much as a moderately good compact car, Garvin learned that it was for something they had totally overlooked. Before he could ask where in Bayonne one could get a Chinese Pillow Book, Flora explained: “We have not taken a honeymoon trip.”

      She shushed Garvin’s quips about getting a sign painter to put the French equivalent of “Just Married” on the trunk and picking the his-and-hers shoes to hang on the bumper. “We’ll drive to Pau,” Flora elaborated, “and have someone take our pictures at the door of King Henry IV palace. And then, in Lourdes, in front of the Grotto, a picture.”

      “You going to be Bernadette Soubirous or the Holy Mother?”

      “You sacrilegious bastard! We’ll face the camera.”

      “Mmm...turn our hind ends to the Grotto. Madame—”

      “And it’s not far,” Flora continued, “looping about, and homeward, to something you’d really love. Where the first Armagnac brandy was distilled, in the thirteenth century.”

      “Uh. That’s near the town of Condom, in the Gers Departement. That’d be educational. And then?”

      “There’s Domaine de la Mothe, where cognac brandy was first distilled in 1470. You’d love that, you old sot!”

      “Starting with the unholy mother—then king, kondom, kognac. Grand honeymoon tour.”

      And it was, with a detour to Tarbes, the town founded by Tarbis, Queen of Ethiopia, who quit her realm when Moses would not marry her and, instead, herded the Children of Israel into the Promised Land.

      Garvin was beginning to suspect that Flora was trying to sell him something, and at times it seemed that it would be very good indeed to leave space to the young and unwary and have Azadeh, and even Aljai, just for old time’s sake, join him and Flora in this marvelous corner of France. His entire life, had it not been such a stern reality, would have been fantasy. For Azadeh and for Flora, at least, it must have been the same, in their feminine terms.

      Retiring in France could be a pleasant opium dream, except that Azadeh, loathing North Americans, included all Terrestrians in her tabulation of the Damned and the Forgotten of the Goddess of Far Faring.

      And here they were again, back in Bayonne; and here she was again, Flora shed of her seductive peignoir and glowing through one of the gowns she had herself designed. For many women, dresses do things. Flora was otherwise: She did things for the garments she designed. Whenever she flipped one over the foot of her bed, its magic was gone, for it no longer contained Flora.

      Now they came to the balcony of their villa overlooking Lycée de Maracq, which had begun in the early 1700s as the home of an exiled Queen of Spain, and later, after having been gutted by fire, had been resurrected as a school where Felix might resume education. It was quite too early for dinner but never too late for the absinthe and Amer Picon wagon.

      However much they had discussed their camera work and photos in general, there was not a word relating СКАЧАТЬ