Porsupah gave a loud screech and scrambled behind the circular couch. “Kai-sung, you are irrevocably, utterly, spiritually indecent!”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in four days.”

The Tolian recited several rapid and extremely potent native curses under his breath before he tried again.

“Major Orvenalix had to cancel a scheduled meeting between the three of us and Governor Washburn. At last word he was waiting in his office, steaming at the joints. I strongly suggest haste to arrange yourself properly so that we may be off before he sends the local constabulary to fetch us!”

“Oh, pooh!” She tumbled off the couch, thumbed a drink from the portabar. “I can handle the Major. Want something?”

“As you are well aware, none of the effects alcohol has on the Tolian system are in the least pleasurable. Fermented Ropus lymph, now—”

“Okay, have some of that, disgusting as it sounds.”

“I will not imbibe when late for assignment.”

“Foo. You’re worse than impossible. And stop worrying about Orvy-Dorvy. We’re old friends.”

“That may well be. The Major has an eye for a well-turned ovipositor. However, if I may so delicately point out, you are decidedly deficient in that area, however well compensated you may be in others. And I want to hear you call him ‘Orvy-Dorvy’.”

“Thanks . . . I think.” She sipped the pink and yellow liquid the machine had prepared. “Still, there’s a way of caressing the soft spot where thorax and b-thorax meet that—”

“Aghhhh!” The Tolian covered his eyes. “Disgusting, obscene, profane! No morals. No morality at all! If it were possible you would consider intercourse with a rock!”

“All right, all right, calm down! Listen, Pors, I’ve seen you with a few under your pouch, you sly tail-tickler, and you—”

“No more! Desist! Cease!”

“And stop throwing your fuzzy carcass all over the furniture or you’ll build up a charge that’ll shock the first diplomat you shake hands with two meters sunward! If you insist on throwing a fit, throw a stationary one.”

Porsupah tried a new tack. He ignored her while he rehearsed the explanation he would have to present to the Major. Ideas did not come rapidly to mind.

He was finally making some progress when his thoughts were scattered by a shrill, protesting voice from the nether depths of the bathroom.

“And I do so have morals!”

Outwardly a quiet, intense person, Major Orvenalix, the commander of Repler’s tiny military force, was capable of violent displays of emotion. These he kept private. It wouldn’t do for the members of Repler’s governing council to know to what extremes their stubbornness could push him. They also did not know that the peaceful commandant held an equal and much more impressive rank in the intelligence arm of the United Church.

Repler warranted an intelligence operative of Orvenalix’s stature because of the AAnn Imperial Enclave, several hundred kilometers to the south across open seas. The Enclave was the vestigial remnant of early altercations between the Commonwealth and the Empire over planetary claims. The AAnn hadn’t really wanted Repler, but it was a matter of self-respect that they dispute all territorial claims by other races.