He had her attention now. Blade began pressing the switch to transmit the letters of the recognition code. Each letter was a sequence of dots and dashes.
B-U-K-E
— and then the numbers:
1-5-9-7
Blade went through the sequence twice. He was starting it a third time when Rilla suddenly raised her hands and pressed both palms against the sides of her neck. That was the acknowledgment signal. Then she began to reply with the agreed-upon sequence of hand signals, keeping her hands in front of her body so that Blade and no one else could see their movements.
She went through her reply twice. Then she made the signal-hands folded across the stomach-that there was more to come. After that she pointed along the southern edge of the cove, clenched her fist twice, and repeated that sequence as well. Blade flashed the code for «acknowledged and understood,» then put the binoculars away. Rilla stepped into the water, waded out until it was up to her waist, then plunged forward.
Blade sprang to his feet, picked up his gear, and began to move, keeping Rilla in sight as much as possible. Sometimes trees or bushes cut off his view of her, but each time he saw her again she was still swimming strongly. Her steady movements gave him the impression she could go on swimming like that for hours or even the whole day if she had to.
At last Blade broke out into the open and saw what must have been Rilla's intended rendezvous just ahead of him. A spur of bare gray rock curved out into the lake from the shore. Rilla was swimming strongly for the sheltered patch of water between the spur and the shore. There she and Blade would be completely invisible. No one watching from any other part of the cove would see anything more suspicious than Rilla swimming along the shore, disappearing briefly, then swimming back the way she came.
Blade crawled forward on his hands and knees, taking advantage of every rock, bush, and fold in the ground. He reached the water's edge to find the surface before him blank and empty. He was just beginning to worry about this when. Rilla's water-sleek head popped up from the surface like a seal's.
She grinned. «It is good to know that you are real. I was beginning to wonder.» The grin faded. «It is not a good situation at the resort.» Her English was almost unaccented, but so precise that no one would mistake her for a native speaker.
«How is it not good?» said Blade.
«They have six uniformed Security men in since three days ago, instead of only two.»
That was not as bad as Blade had feared. Six Security men-one section-could not do a very good job of covering a resort area that spread over a mile of shore and several miles of forest. On the other hand, there was no way to know how many more Security people had come in disguised as dishwashers, masseurs, or truck drivers.
«Do they seem to be investigating anything in particular? Or are they just wandering around waiting for something to turn up?»
Rilla took so long to answer that question that Blade began to wonder if she hadn't understood. When she did answer, he realized she'd merely been trying to give as precise an answer as she could. Nude, treading the cold waters of the lake, and confronting an Imperial secret agent, she was still determined to give a scientist's precise answer to any question. Blade's respect for her went up another notch.
«They go nowhere in particular,» she said. «They have not spent enough time in any one place to see very much.» She frowned. «I am almost certain they do not suspect me, yet.»
«Good,» said Blade. «Can you be ready to escape tonight?»
«Tonight?»
«If you can, take what you'll need,» Blade added.
She nodded. «I have the essential material of my research on film, everything that is not common knowledge. I have no hiking gear, though. I do not think it would be wise for me to try to get it.»
She was probably right. «Do you at least have good shoes? That's the one thing you're certain to need. We've got at least a twenty-five-mile walk ahead of us, possibly twice that much.»
Another nod. «Oh yes, I have that. It will not be hard for me to get out of my cottage at night, either. Where do I meet you?»
Blade disliked the idea of using the same place twice. On the other hand, where they were now offered the best concealment of any place along the whole shore of the cove. Anywhere else, even a casual passerby might catch a glimpse of them. Security men were close at hand, so that casual passerby might feel more willing than usual to tell them what he'd seen, to prove his loyalty to the Red Flames.
Blade made a gesture that took in the water and the land around them. «Here, at midnight or as soon after that as you can come. Dress as warmly as you can, and try to bring some food.»
Rilla smiled. It was obvious that she would have laughed out loud if there'd been no danger of being overheard. «My friend, I grew up in the North Country of Russland. There the woods stretch for ten days' fast walking from one village to another, and it does not go above freezing from September to May. Give me advice about things I do not know so well as traveling in forests.»
Blade smiled back. «When the time comes, I will.» He gave her the recognition code for the night rendezvous, then lay still while she swam back out into the cove and back toward the beach. Again she swam with a strong and sturdy grace of movement. Blade was half tempted to wait and watch her climb out of the water again. He would not at all mind seeing her body gleaming naked in the sun again.
But it was never wise to spend a single unnecessary second in any place that might be dangerous. Before Rilla was halfway to the beach Blade was crawling back up the slope again. Long before she climbed out of the water he was back in the forest, heading for his hiding place and the few hours of sleep he would need before the night's work began.
Chapter 14
Blade returned to the cove that night, grimly prepared to have any number of things go wrong. Much to his surprise and delight, nothing at all out of the ordinary happened.
He reached the shore at 11:30 and lay under cover in the forest until midnight. Then he crawled along the shore and out onto the little rock spur, far enough to be well hidden. Then he lay down again to wait. Half of any field mission was always waiting for things to happen, to him or to others.
Rilla Haran came slipping along the shore just before one o'clock in the morning. A half-moon gave Blade enough light to see her clearly without the infrared viewer. She was carrying a small sack over one shoulder and a walking stick cut from a fallen branch in one hand. She was also quite obviously having to work hard to keep her nerves under control.
Blade didn't blame her. Her long training and brilliant scientific mind were no real preparation for tonight or anything that might come after tonight. Before tonight she'd been in comparatively little danger. The Security Administration might suspect her, but scientists like her were seldom bothered without very good reason. They were too valuable to the Red Flames' war effort.
After tonight, though, Security would have all the reasons they could need to arrest her, torture her, and stand her up against a wall. She had made her final break with the Red Flames. After tonight she would be out in the open, exposed, vulnerable, and protected only by men whose abilities she had no way of knowing. This would last until she reached Englor.
So Rilla had plenty of reasons to be even more nervous than she seemed.
At the edge of the forest she stopped, crouched down, and gave the recognition signal three times. Then she slid back under a bush, waiting and watching. Blade crept out of cover and returned her signal. Then he crawled along the shore until he was safely hidden behind the same clump of bushes that sheltered Rilla.