For the moment, Stavros was content merely to forget the captain rather than worrying about him as he usually did. Doing fieldwork for the first time, getting sand in his boots from a world outside the Federacy, was exciting enough to make him unusually charitable. He said as much out loud.

"I know what you mean." Magda nodded. "I was so thrilled to be loose on my first planet that I almost killed myself out of sheer stupidity. I swaggered into a tavern and ordered the wrong kind of drink?like an idiot, I'd managed to forget the locals got high on methanol as well as ethanol. I'm just lucky the veteran I was with stumbled against me accidentally on purpose and knocked the mug out of my hand before I swallowed any."

That thrill never wore off, not completely, not if you were meant to be a Survey Service person. But experience tempered it for Magda. So did caution, here. No matter how big a technological advantage she had on Sabium, she did not feel safe matching wits with the goddess. Sabium's edge in wisdom, Magda was uncomfortably aware, was just as great.

She said, "I only hope we're far enough into the desert to let us practice being native without any real natives spotting us. If the locals see people walking into and out of a small mesa, then we might as well not have bothered turning on the Hanno's camouflage screens."

Stavros glanced back at the ship. It looked like an outcropping of the yellow sandstone that underlay the dunes and emaciated plants thereabouts. "I think I trust the sensors that far."

"They're only as good as the people monitoring them." Magda rubbed a couple of new bites; whatever the sensors managed to pick up, they weren't worth a damn against flying pests. She scrubbed at her dyed skin with a wet finger. When she stayed gray-pink, she grunted in dubious satisfaction. "I am glad this stuff has a sunscreen in it; otherwise I'd be about ready to take out of the oven and eat."

Being darker under the makeup, Stavros was less concerned about sunburn. Still, the feeling of being stuck in a blast furnace had begun to outweigh his delight at working on a primitive planet. "I wouldn't mind some ice water."

"Or cold beer," Magda said. "Enjoy it while you can. Beer isn't the same at blood temperature." The memory of six months of such beer on the way to the Holy City made her shudder.

She gave a luxurious sigh at returning to cool, conditioned air, then sneezed several times in a row. She wiped her nose and scowled. She didn't like to be reminded of any little drawbacks of technology, not when she had just been counting on it as her big edge on Sabium.

As usual, an argument was going on in the lounge. Pierre Bochy, Magda thought, did not look good made up as a native of Bilbeis IV, not even in Survey Service coveralls. The dye turned his plump features the color of stewed pork. Which was also what the anthropologist was using for brains, Magda observed; he was blithering on again about how the local matriarchy was really no different from a good many others. "Take the Shadofa culture on Wasf II, for instance: quite similar in a large number of their beliefs and customs."

"How about historical development?" Magda broke in with a sweet, carnivorous smile. "The Shadofa hadn't made a new invention in two thousand years, never ruled more than part of one small island, and were losing ground there the last time the Service visited. Besides which, you'll forgive me for reminding you, their goddess isn't real."

"Not relevant," Bochy said blandly. "They believe in Acca without reservation; she has the same force in their lives that the eternal goddess does here." He would not speak Sabium's name.

His effrontery left Magda momentarily speechless, something not easy to accomplish. But Justin Olmstead, his opposite number from the Noninterference Foundation, returned to the attack he had been making when Magda came into the lounge. "I've urged you before, Pierre, don't refuse to face facts merely because you are a member of the organization responsible for the problem."

Olmstead's voice was deep, smooth, and mellow, his gray hair?now dyed gray-blue?perfectly in place. Even made up, he looked as though he would be more in place in front of a holo camera than in the field. From what Magda had seen of his professional work, in front of a camera was where he belonged. He was an excellent popularizer, though. More people knew his data cards and books than those of any three dozen serious researchers.

The Foundation had insisted on adding him to its contingent along with Magda and Stavros. Magda grinned to herself; she was getting to enjoy being considered unreliable. Still, she had to admit Olmstead was a shrewd choice. He would make a good talking head once the Hanno got back to the Federacy, always assuming he didn't get himself killed trying to be an anthropologist instead of just looking like one.

He did not overawe Bochy, however. "What are the facts?" The Survey Service man shrugged. "At the moment, they are in dispute; otherwise we would not be here. Have you so made up your mind that it is closed to anything new we may find?" Bochy was tenacious, Magda thought as she saw Olmstead frown; she would have reckoned him pigheaded had he come back at her that way.

Stavros broke in harshly, "How many people have died to keep these nonfacts of yours from ever coming to light? Isn't it a fact that your precious Service has been busy trying to bury the truth and the people who know it?"

Bochy shrugged again. "I know nothing of that. I was on a pre-Federacy world myself when the J?ng Ho was last here."

"Yes, I understand that," Stavros said, and surprised Magda by adding, "I apologize." After a moment he went on, "But doesn't it matter to you whether that's so?"

"Of course it matters to me. As I said, though, I had nothing to do with it." Bochy seemed to think he had made a complete answer. He turned away from Stavros; he was as eager to claw pieces out of the rich and famous Olmstead as the latter was to attack the minion of the corrupt Service. Stavros doubted that either saw the other as a human being. He wondered if Bochy saw anyone as a human being.

When, later, he said that to Magda, she shook her head. "I'm sure he's normal enough with his family and friends. But if he didn't see a Service screwup with his own eyes, it's not real for him. There was some phrase I ran across in an ancient lit class that puzzled me for years, until I joined the Service and saw the thing it pointed at. Bochy fits the type."

The ancient literature Stavros had read was mostly classical Greek. Doubting that Sophocles had been talking about Pierre Bochy, he raised a questioning eyebrow.

" 'Good German,' " Magda told him.

The investigator was very young, very neat, and very self-assured. "Surely, Madam Chairman, you remember more about the day the report on Bilbeis IV reached Survey Service Central than is yet on the record," she said. "That was FSY 2687:139, if the precise date will help you."

"I doubt it," Paulina Koch said indifferently. The investigator had done her homework if she could pull the date out of the air like that, but the Chairman refused to let such a parlor trick rattle her. She went on, "If I'd thought the day somehow special, perhaps I would have taken more care to fix it in my mind. All I can say for certain is that I was busy. I usually am. For details, you will have to refer to the printout of the log I have submitted."

The investigator nodded and fought back a sigh. Sitting across the table in her trademark gray, Paulina Koch remained sweatless and elusive. She was taking exactly the right line, instead of falling into the trap that would have snared so many detail-oriented people: that of recalling far too much about a day supposedly ordinary.