The Avatar by Poul Anderson Read Free Book Online Page B

but from it breathed a slight chill, like a sense of the darkness beyond.
    “You won’t be here, then,” she foreknew.
    He fumbled after pipe and tobacco. “‘Fraid not, honey. We can’t let the bastards ream us out, can we? Judas priest, the whole future of human spacefaring! Besides—have you forgotten?—the mate aboard
Emissary
is Carlos Rueda Suárez, my friend, Toni’s cousin. I don’t write family off.”
    “Also Joelle Ky, if she’s alive,” Lis said quietly.
    He winced from the pain he saw on her. “Yeah, well, an old friend too.”
    “More than a friend.” Lis raised a palm. “No, don’t bother pretending. I’ve never objected to your little flings, have I? I’d like to meet Joelle myself. She must be rather special, to mean this much to you. You’ve never mentioned her to me as casually as you imagined you did.”
    “You win,” he said, fiery-faced. “Not that we got romantic, understand. She’s too… strange for that. But—Anyway, themain point is, I don’t see how the cabal can ever let
Emissary
go. The publicity would wreck their whole aim, and their personal careers to boot. At the same time, it’s dangerous maintaining prisoners. They may decide on a massacre.”
    “If they are that villainous. If there is a cabal.”
    He nodded. “The chance I take, that I’m mistaken.”
    “As well as chances with your life, Dan.”
    “Not too bad. Honest. I value my hide. It’s the only one I’ve got.”
    “What do you want to do, essentially?”
    “Go to Earth. Investigate. Act. Mainly, I suppose, alert the Rueda clan. At most, they’ll’ve heard vague rumors. I haven’t written to them directly, as you know, because I wasn’t that sure of my facts; and then when I was, I trustingly asked Aurie to push her queries harder, and then today she dumped this crockful over me. Our mail is bound to be intercepted, stopped if it says anything inconvenient. Nobody that I know on Demeter whom I might somehow pass the word to, nobody knows his way around Earth or has the connections I do there. No, I must get to Lima in person and talk to the Señor.”
    “How?”
    He paused in stuffing his pipe to give her a lopsided grin. “Lis, that plain and practical a question alone, right in this hour, would make me love you.”
    He had not seen her blush and drop her glance in a long time. She squeezed his thigh. “We’re partners, remember?” she whispered.
    “I’m not about to forget.” He set his smoking apparatus down to lay a hand over hers. “Okay, we haven’t a truck load of time, we’d better conspire onward.
    “I don’t yet have an exact plan. Mainly, I figure it’s needful I bust free, out of reach. And immediately. If nothing is seen or heard of me for the next two-three days, I think Aurie’ll take for granted I’m sulking in my tent. After that, however, it’d seem funny if I didn’t at least make an occasional phone call. So I’ll skite off tonight.”
    She didn’t require details. None but the two of them knew about their tunnel. A few years past, he’d rented a burrower to add a wine cellar to their storm shelter. While he was at it, he excavated a crawlway to the middle of the woods north of their land, reinforcing with spraycrete. That was during the bitter dispute, on and around Earth, regarding jurisdiction andproperty rights among the asteroids, when for a while it looked as if the Iliadic League would secede. If that federation of orbital and Lunar colonies left the Union—and the Union probably resorted to arms to bring it back—God knew what would happen, also on Demeter. The crisis faded away in grumbling compromise, but Brodersen still jawed himself for not having provided a secret exit from the house before then. He’d seen enough disasters, most of them due to governments, that he should have taken out that insurance at the start.
    From the woods he could hike five kilometers to a lonely airbus stop, fly to a distant town, and rent a car. He had