Operation Isis. E. Hoffmann Price

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      “I meant the directory.” Diane smiled drowsily, contentedly. She murmured something that might have been, “A bientôt!”

      He drew the sheet and blanket to her chin.

      Ever since early childhood, Felix had heard of those fabulous women who could drink a platoon of armor under the table. Clearly, this was not one of those wonder girls.

      Steady as an adjutant on parade, the young master found desk and phone. He did not find the directory, which was obscured by several paperback books that Diane had not gotten around to having fitted with custom hardcovers, as she probably intended. They were classics.

      Being sure that he’d find no taxi service phone numbers in Flaubert’s Tentation de St. Antoine, nor in Bourget’s La psychologic de L’amour moderne, nor the worn and stained Guide fratique de Lyon, he poked about in pigeonholes and shelf stacks of the desk’s upper structure. The center drawer yielded nothing. Finally, starting over from a different angle, he got a glimpse of a color photo, used as if for a book marker, ten by fifteen centimeters, professional work, critically sharp, not the typical murky blurred blob. What had baited his curiosity was the space officer’s uniform with kilometers of gold braid, hectares of medals, decorations, and orders, and epaulettes the size of wastebaskets.

      That the man portrayed was Roderick David Garvin made it very much the son’s business. That Flora had a much larger print in which the domes of Mars showed in the background was standard stuff. What piqued Felix was that Flora’s copy, considerably larger, did not include the very good-looking old lady, an aristocrat wearing a formal gown with bodice of sequins all aglitter with highlights that danced as she breathed.

      The Admiral’s probably enjoying a standing ovation, and that two-teated brunette is proud of the old devil, he thought. Must be Azadeh—my honorary stepmother, or my halfway aunt?

      With her makeup just right, Flora was more spectacular than Azadeh, and this left Felix wondering why Mommie had cropped an oversize blowup of that scene. Thanks to the enchantment built into every drop of cognac, the answer came to him: Though his mother was Number One Wife, she was not the First Lady of Mars.

      But this particular picture was hardly unusual: There were Garvin fans all over the globe, and other groups who loved to hang Garvin in effigy and often did so.

      Maybe, Felix surmised, Diane just got this picture and hasn’t had time to frame it. Or she’s waiting to have him autograph it. He frowned, then shook his head. That’s off the beam, too. Odd as balls on a bay mare! If she’d been a fan, she’d have asked all kinds of really damn fool questions.

      Then he found the phone directory and finally figured that he could be halfway home before anyone answered a phone, assuming that someone was on duty. At this hour there was little chance of an unpleasant encounter. It was too late for hopheads and trouble-hunting drunks. By now they had either gotten their fix or been knocked off in the attempt. Anyway, he had learned a promising kung fu trick. If the other fellow survived, as he probably would, he would not know his own name for the next two or three days.

      Taking off his shoes, he tiptoed to the stairs.

      Chapter 4

      Arriving in Paris, Garvin went to the North American embassy to take care of some confidential paperwork. While waiting for the official mill to grind out papers to accord with his new identity—Pierre d’Artois of Buffalo, New York—he phoned Flora.

      “I don’t know how long this processing is going to take,” he told his Number One Wife. “There’s more than just a passport and identification accessories for the village police. I’ve got to get a wad of French currency and a permit to take as much of it away with me as I please.”

      “Sounds more and more cloak and sword, beginning with your radiogram from the Lunar Depot, of all places!”

      “Before I forget it, be sure your housekeeper and staff are on vacation with pay.”

      “I took care of that when you radioed. But how about this new identity?”

      “No problem. The Governor-General is delayed at the Lunar Depot. Pierre d’Artois is your distant cousin. He is likely to be checking out before Garvin arrives. Pierre is taking the Madrid Express with a stopover in Bayonne and then heading on into Spain—what are you laughing about?”

      “I was thinking that if the embassy is bugged and someone is recording all this, he’ll be caught in no time.”

      “How come?”

      “He’ll be perched in a high tree, screaming like an eagle!”

      “Anyway, you didn’t lose time putting the menials on furlough.”

      “Pierre! Mon dieu! I have nothing to wear. With household help, one is a slave round the clock. Honeymoon spirit and a wardrobe down to zero!”

      “Whatever you’ve bought or made, throw it away or give it to the poor!”

      “Are you crazy?”

      “No, you are, darling. The stuff will be out of style before you get a chance to put any of it on.”

      Garvin was not going to fly to Bayonne. This first look at his native world was going to be from the surface. When the Sud Express, strictly deluxe and with only first-class coaches, pulled out of Gare d’Orsai, the brand new Pierre d’Artois felt like a high school punk on his way to pick up his first date.

      Bordeaux, where Gallienus, Emperor of Rome, had built an amphitheater that was recently restored to look good as new, and the Landes—”Nothing but goddamn pine forest!”—he dismissed in favor of a magnificent prospect: Meeting the son he had never seen was a fine start, with Flora, a peak in any man’s life, included as an extra dividend. She personified his history, from a cross between space tramp and freighter in Sinkiang to the man who had made Maritania a Terrestrial suburb. In all these things Flora had played a part, sharing the beginnings, and now she was about to sit with him and look back at it all. Each had spent a lot of time wondering whether the tempestuous marriage had been one of those major mistakes, despite the best of intentions on each side.

      The answer was now quite clear: All that counted was the much good they had shared. And, furthermore, the letdowns and dark spots were part of the package, and so, a sharing.

      His happy vision was interrupted at Dax, still lumber and turpentine country. There he learned that someone or something had fouled up in Paris.

      “Monsieur, c’est vrai! Vous avez raison! Yes, this is the train deluxe. But she makes, what you call it, the bypass. She does not go to Bayonne. From here she goes to Pau, to Puyoo!”

      “Gangway! Shove Pau and Puyoo, I’m getting off!”

      “Monsieur, the refund—”

      “Shove that, too! I’ve got a date in Bayonne.”

      Now that his luggage was sitting on the platform, the deluxe train resumed its way to Pau and other stations. Garvin’s phrase book French, blended with profane Americanese cursing and swearing, diluted with Instant Uighur Turki and Arabic While You Fly, confused the stationmaster.

      A cab driver picked up when Garvin and the station-master paused for a fresh start. “The train you thought СКАЧАТЬ