"I could see the situation. My New Zealand representative"Äthe first I had ever heard of one!Ä"obtained for me the business address of your S-group's senior husband, Brian Davidson. He was more polite and somewhat more helpful. From him we learned what shuttle you had taken from Christchurch and that led us to the passenger list of the semibaliistic you took from Auckland to Winnipeg. There we lost you briefly, until my agent there established that you had left the port in the company of the skipper of the semiballistic. When we reached himÄCaptain TormeyÄhe was helpful, but you had left. I am pleased to be able to tell you that we were able to return the favor to Captain Tormey. An inside source enabled us to let him know that he and his wife were about to be picked up by the local police."

"Fer Gossake! What for?"

"The nominal charge is harboring an enemy alien and harboring an unregistered Imperium subject during a declared emergency. In fact the Winnipeg office of the provincial police are not interested in you or in Dr. Perreault; that is an excuse to pull in the Tormeys. They are wanted on a much more serious charge that has not been filed. A Lieutenant Melvin Dickey is missing. The last trace of him is an oral statement made by him as he left police HQ that he was going to Captain Tormey's home to pick up Dr. Perreault. Foul play is suspected."

"But that's not evidence against Jan and Ian! The Tormeys."

"No, it is not. That is why the provincial police intend to hold them on a lesser charge. There is more. Lieutenant Dickey's APV crashed near Fargo in the Imperium. It was unoccupied. The police are very anxious to check that wreck for fingerprints. Possibly they are doing so at this very moment as, about one hour ago, a news bulletin reported that the common border between the Chicago Imperium and British Canada had been reopened."

"Oh, my God!"

"Compose yourself. On the controls of that APV there were indeed fingerprints that were not Lieutenant Dickey's. They matched Captain Tormey's prints on file with ANZAC Skyways. Note the tense I used; there were such prints; there no longer are. Friday, although I found it prudent to move our seat of operations out of the Imperium, after many years I am not without contacts there. And agents. And past favors I can collect. No prints matching those of Captain Tormey are now in that wreckage but there are prints on it from many sources living and dead."

"Boss, may I kiss your feet?"

"Hold your tongue. I did not do this to frustrate the British Canadian police. My field agent in Winnipeg is a clinical psychologist as well as having our usual training. It is his professional opinion that either Captain Tormey or his wife could kill in self-defense but that it would take extreme conditions indeed to cause either of them to kill a policeman. Dr. Perreault is described as being even less disposed toward violent solutions."

"I killed him."

"So I assumed. No other explanation fitted the data. Do you wish to discuss it? Is it any of my business?"

"Uh, perhaps not. Except that you made it your business when you got rid of those damning fingerprints. I killed him because he was threatening Janet, Janet Tormey, with a gun. I could have simply disabled him; I had time to pull my punch. But I meant to kill him and I did."

"I would beÄand will beÄmuch disappointed in you if you ever simply injure a policeman. A wounded policeman is more dangerous than a wounded lion. I had reconstructed it much as you described save that I had assumed that you were protecting Dr. Perreault... since you seemed to find him an acceptable surrogate husband."

"He's that, all right. But it was that crazy fool threatening Janet's life that made me go spung! Boss, until this happened I didn't know that I loved Janet. Didn't know I could love a woman that intensely. You know more than I do about how I was designed, or so you have hinted. Are my glands mixed up?"

"I know quite a lot about your design but I shan't discuss it with

you; you have no need to know. Your glands are no more mixed up than those of any healthy humanÄspecifically, you do not have a redundant Y chromosome. All normal human beings have soi-disant mixed-up glands. The race is divided into two parts: those who know this and those who do not. Stop the stupid talk; it ill befits a genius."

"Oh, so I'm a genius now. Hully gee, Boss."

"Don't be pert. You are a supergenius but you are a long way from realizing your potential. Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers. Let us return to our muttons. Is it possible that this body will be found?"

"I would bet long odds against it."

"Any point in discussing it with me?"

"Uh, I don't think so."

"Then I have no need to know and will assume that the Tormeys can safely return home as soon as the police conclude that they cannot establish corpus delicti. While corpus delicti does not require a corpse, it is enormously more difficult to make a charge of murder stand up without one. If arrested, a good lawyer would have the Tormeys out in five minutesÄand they would have a very good lawyer, I assure you. You may be pleased to know that you helped them to escape from the country."

"I did?"

"You and Dr. Perreault. By leaving British Canada as Captain and Mrs. Tormey, and by using their credit cards and by filling out tourist-card applications in their names. You two left a trail that `proved' that the Tormeys fled the country immediately after Lieutenant Dickey disappeared. This worked so well that the police wasted several days trying to trace down the suspects in the California ConfederacyÄand blaming inefficiency of their colleagues in the Confederacy for their lack of success. But I'm somewhat surprised that the Tormeys were not arrested in their own home as my agent had no great difficulty interviewing them there."

(I'm not. If a cop shows upÄzip! down the Hole. If it's not a cop and he satisfies Ian that he is okayÄ) "Boss, did your Winnipeg agent mention my name? My `Marjorie Baldwin' name, I mean."

"Yes. Without that name and a picture of you, Mrs. Tormey

would never have let him in. Without the Tormeys I would have lacked necessary data for picking up your rather elusive trail. We benefitted each other. They helped you to escape; we helped them to escape, after I told themÄafter my agent told themÄthat they were being actively sought. A pleasant ending."

"How did you get them out?"

"Friday, do you wish to know?"

"Urn, no." (When will I learn? Had Boss wished to disclose the method, he would have told me. "Careless slips sink ships." Not around Boss.)

Boss came out from behind his desk... and shocked me. Ordinarily he does not move around much and in his old office his ubiquitous tea service was within his reach at his desk. Now he rolled out. No canes. A powered wheelchair. He guided it to a side table, started fiddling with tea things.

I stood up. "May I pour?"

"Thank you, Friday. Yes." He left the service table, rolled back to his place behind his desk. I took over, which let me stand with my back to himÄthat was what I needed right then.

There is no reason to feel shock when a cripple decides to substitute a powered wheelchair for canesÄit is simply efficiency. Except that this was Boss. If the Egyptians at Giza woke up some morning and found the Pyramids switched around and the Sphinx with a new nose, they would not be more shocked than was I. Some thingsÄand some peopleÄare not supposed to change.

After I had served his teaÄwarm milk, two lumpsÄand had poured mine, I sat back down, my composure restored. Boss uses the very latest technology and quite old-fashioned customs; I have never known him to ask a woman to wait on him but if a woman is present and offers to pour tea, it is a certainty that he will accept graciously and turn the incident into a minor ceremony.