shouldn’t go back with me,” she said. “It will be best if they don’t know that we’ve met.”
“Have we met? I don’t even know who you are.”
“Ann Cory. Officially, Gurnil B627.”
“All right, Gurnil B627. What do you do in Team B?”
“Among other things, I’m a music teacher in Kurra, which is the capital city of Kurr. I give music lessons to the talented and not-so-talented daughters of the elite.”
“How large is Team B?”
“About two hundred.”
“Two—hundred? I had no idea there were so many agents in Kurr. All of them masquerading as natives, I suppose.”
“Members of a Bureau team don’t masquerade,” she said coldly. “We are natives—when we’re in Kurr.”
“I see. Two hundred. Spread over the whole country that probably isn’t very many.”
“Didn’t the coordinator brief you?”
“Wheeler gave me a manual, which I immediately gave back to him. He told me a little about the situation. I gather that the people of Kurr are perfectly satisfied with things as they are, or IPR wouldn’t have labored in vain for four hundred years. Also that their King Rovva stubbornly refuses to take any action that would make them dissatisfied. My own ideas have a Cultural Survey bias and will probably sound treasonable to you, but it seems to me that if a people are satisfied and happy—and these Kurrians are, I can tell from the art they create—the IPR Bureau has no business contriving the overthrow of their government.”
“One of the things you must see in Kurr,” she said softly, “are the one-hand villages. There are several of them, populated exclusively by men and women who have displeased the king and had their left arm severed at the elbow. It’s a pleasant little diversion the king indulges in to amuse himself and his court. The attendant who sneezes when the king has ordained silence, or who drops a serving tray—but no one is immune, not even the king’s high ministers. There are good kings and bad kings, and we in the Bureau sometimes find ourselves working to depose a king who is a kind, benevolent monarch and whom we personally like and admire. It’s the system that’s evil. The ideal monarch may have a monster for a successor.”
“Very well. The system is evil and must be changed, but by the people themselves. Democracy imposed from without—”
He paused. Her gown rustled softly as she shifted her feet, but she remained tantalizingly invisible. “I’m working on the language,” he said. “I’ll have it down pretty well in another day, and I’ll be fluent in two. It’s an easy language—much easier than learning to walk in the dratted priest’s costume that your people picked out for me. I keep stumbling over it. I don’t care much for that ghastly artificial nose, either, but if Kurrians are cursed with monumental snouts I suppose I’d be rather conspicuous without one.”
He did not presume to say it, but the one aspect of his assignment that he most dreaded was seeing Ann Cory wearing a disfiguring Kurrian nose.
“What priest’s costume?” she asked.
Forzon sighed. “I’m to be a sort of wandering holy man. Rastadt says they’re quite common in Kurr, and it’s an absolutely safe role because no native would dare to look twice at me, much less speak. But I suppose you know all about them.”
“Not really. They’re not often seen in Kurra.”
“That’s right. They avoid cities, which they consider cesspools of the unfaithful. Before I can go to Kurra I’ll need an alternate identity. Do you have an alternate identity?”
“Of course. Every Team B agent has several identities.”
“That’s encouraging. Eventually I’ll be rid of that dratted robe, though I suppose I’ll be stuck with the nose as long as I’m in Kurr.”
“I’d like to sample your linguistic ability,” she said.
He gave her a colloquial greeting, “Hail, citizen,” and rambled on at length about the weather, the coming harvest, and how soon the province tax collector might be expected. She made no comment when he finished.
“What’s the matter,” he asked. “Is my accent bad?”
“No. Your accent is very good. Remarkable, considering the short time you’ve had to practice. My suggestion is that you wait three days, and then ask to be taken to Kurr.”
“Why three days?”
“Just a precaution. It’ll give us time to get ready for you.”
“Team B knows that I’m coming. I’m to be put down at a remote station where there are no Holy Places that might require me to perform a religious function and very few natives for me to bless even if I feel benevolently inclined, which I won’t. I can’t start work until my forms are ready, but no doubt I’ll be able to pick up background information more quickly on the scene than I can here at base.”
“What forms?” she asked.
“The forms for my cultural survey.”
Again there was silence, broken only by the soft rustle of her gown. “Wait three days,” she said finally. “Don’t tell anyone that you’ve talked with me. I’ll see you in Kurr.”
She was gone. He did not even hear the door close after her.
“It has been wisely written,” Forzon murmured, “that if one pursues an enigma far enough, inevitably one must come either to the beginning or to the end. Unfortunately the sage doesn’t specify whether he means the end of the enigma or the end of the pursuer. I don’t like this. It’s bad enough to have the feeling that one is being used. It’s insufferable not to know by whom, or to what purpose.”
He remained in his quarters the next day, concentrating furiously on the language. At intervals a uniformed young lady would thrust a heavily laden tray at him and depart with an unseemly haste that could only have been born of a fear that he might devour her instead of the food.
The following morning he strolled down to the administration section. The receptionist eyed him suspiciously; Forzon ignored her. He was becoming accustomed to suspicious glances. He went directly to the coordinator’s office, where the secretary icily informed him that the coordinator was indisposed.
“Assistant-Coordinator Wheeler?” Forzon suggested.
“He’s in the field today.”
“Team A or Team B?”
She shrugged; he wasn’t interested enough to pursue the subject. He went to the room marked Team B Headquarters, opened the door, looked in. The drab bindings of official records stood in solid ranks that filled the walls from floor to ceiling. Circular filing cabinets crammed the floor space; boxes were piled high on top of them. The place was a sepulcher for the desiccated remains of four centuries of failure.
Resolutely Forzon stepped back and closed the door. Just as he had no intention of investing years in the study of the IPR field manual, neither would he waste time in exhuming the futilities of Team B’s past.
In the reception room he thoughtfully contemplated the paintings. They, too, were old, and had it not been for the filtered air and controlled humidity of the building he might be commencing his work on Gurnil with a tedious restoration of the IPR art collection.
“How long have these paintings been here?” he asked the receptionist.
She gazed at him blankly. “I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“What’s the point of maintaining this base if its personnel know so little about Gurnil and care less?” Forzon demanded.
“The base serves as a supply depot and record depository,” the receptionist said primly.
“That’s interesting,”