Now fully alert to some unspoken danger, Furuneo said, “I acted as my orders instructed.”

“Orders!” McKee sneered.

“I’m supposed to be angry, eh?” Furuneo asked.

“I’ll be there as fast as I can get service—within eight standard hours at the most,” McKie said. “Your orders, meanwhile, are to keep that Beachball under constant observation. The observers must be hopped up on angeret. It’s their only protection.”

“Constant observation,” Furuneo said.

“If a Caleban emerges, you’re to detain it by any means possible.”

“A Caleban . . . detain it?”

“Engage it in conversation, request its cooperation, anything,” McKie said. His mental emphasis added that it was odd a Bureau agent should have to ask about throwing a monkey wrench into someone’s activities.

“Eight hours,” Furuneo said.

“And don’t forget the angeret.”

A Bureau is a life form and the Bureaucrat one of its cells. This analogy teaches us which are the more important cells, which in greatest peril, which most easily replaced, and how easy it is to be mediocre.

—Later Writings of Bildoon IV

McKie, on the honeymoon planet of Tutalsee, took an hour to complete his divorce, then returned to the float-home they had moored beside an island of love flowers. Even the nepenthe of Tutalsee had failed him, McKie thought. This marriage had been wasted effort. His ex hadn’t known enough about Mliss Abnethe despite their reported former association. But that had been on another world.

This wife had been his fifty-fourth, somewhat lighter of skin than any of the others and more than a bit of a shrew. It had not been her first marriage, and she had shown early suspicions of McKie’s secondary motives.

Reflection made McKie feel guilty. He put such feelings aside savagely. There was no time for nicety. Too much was at stake. Stupid female!

She had already vacated the float-home, and McKie could sense the living entity’s resentment. He had shattered the idyll which the float-home had been conditioned to create. The float-home would return to its former affability once he was gone. They were gentle creatures, susceptible to sentient irritation.

McKie packed, leaving his toolkit aside. He examined it: a selection of stims, plastipicks, explosives in various denominations, raygens, multigoggles, pentrates, a wad of uniflesh, solvos, miniputer, Taprisiot life monitor, holoscan blanks, rupters, comparators . . . all in order. The toolkit was a fitted wallet which he concealed in an inner pocket of his nondescript jacket.

He packed a few changes of clothing in a single bag, consigned the rest of his possessions to BuSab storage, left them for pickup in a sealpack which he stored on a couple of chairdogs. They appeared to share the float-home’s resentment. They remained immobile even when he patted them affectionately.

Ah, well. . . .

He still felt guilty.

McKie sighed, took out his S’eye key. This jump was going to cost the Bureau megacredits. Cordiality lay halfway across their universe.