Wolf Among the Stars-ARC by Steve White Read Free Book Online

way about working for Earth . Aloud, Andrew asked, “And you have no idea where he vanished to after the war?”
    “No.” Was there just a slight hesitation in Svyatog’s reply? “Our last verified sighting of him was in the Kogurche system.”
    “Then, sir, it would seem that my most promising line of inquiry would be this Persath’Loven, who you say is now back in his home system of Tizath-Asor.”
    “That would seem to be the case.” Svyatog rose to his feet, indicating that the interview was at an end—yet another human gesture he had picked up. “I am sorry I was not able to be more helpful.”
    Andrew also rose. “To the contrary, sir, you’ve been most helpful, as you always have to my family. I suppose my next stop should be the Tizathon embassy, to obtain a visa.” He inclined his head—handshaking was not a Lokaron custom—and departed.

CHAPTER FIVE

    The Gev-Tizath embassy, like all the embassies of the gevahon under the new treaties, was in Washington. It made no legal sense—the Confederated Nations of Earth made its capital in Geneva. But it had just worked out that way, in the tumultuous transition period just after 2030. Nowadays, correcting matters would have been more trouble than it was worth. Geographical location meant less and less in today’s global village.
    Andrew arrived at the relatively new air-car annex of Reagan National Airport (it had been restored to that name after the overthrow of the Earth First Party) in an acute state of nerves. At some point, his failure to report in to the IID would trickle down through the bureaucracy and there would be pointed questions. For now, he was relying on the general flap over Admiral Arnstein’s death to bury relative trivialities like the tardy movement reports of a certain officer, at the bottom of what was still commonly referred to as the “in basket.”
    By the time he drove his rented ground car into the compound of the embassy, in an area of cleared former slum in the northeastern quarter of the District, he had stopped worrying about it, thereby clearing his mind for an infinitely greater worry: how he was going to justify a little side jaunt to Tizath-Asor.
    The winter storm in New York had bypassed this latitude, and it was sunny and merely chilly as he parked in a side lot that served the wing of the embassy devoted to the issuance of visas. Getting out and crossing the wide expanse, he saw no Lokaron in evidence and only a few other humans coming and going. Most were obvious business types—no surprise, as the hovahon of Gev-Tizath had many dealings here. But there was one exception: a tall, slender woman striding purposefully across the lot, clad in a sensibly warm dark-maroon business suit but for some indefinable reason seeming to be working in a different world from all the purchasing agents, lawyers, and others hurrying by.
    She was bareheaded, allowing her long dark hair to toss in the breeze. Her features were well-marked, her complexion light olive, her nose an aquiline curve, her lips somewhat full but firmly held in a straight, determined line. It was a striking face . . . and one which Andrew felt looked somehow familiar, even though he was certain he’d never met her.
    He was still wondering about it when a black, fully enclosed, quasi-military style air-car dropped out of the sky so suddenly that the displaced air almost blew him off his feet. He stumbled to one knee.
    At first it didn’t even register, thanks to its sheer unexpectedness and flagrant illegality. Air-cars were inherently more dangerous than ground cars, and anyway by the end of the previous century it had become painfully obvious to anyone who drove the highways that all too many humans lack an adequate sense of relative motion in even two dimensions, much less three. So licenses to operate air-cars were harder to obtain, leading to a revival of the occupation of chauffeur, and they were banned altogether from densely urbanized areas. He decided