The Ambassador Part 4

"Then you must know someone tried to kill me early this morning when I came back from Natchez."

Nina's eyes narrowed alarmingly under the gla.s.ses that covered them. She said, "Why didn't you report it?" She sounded like a commander-in-chief questioning a junior aide for faulty judgment.

"I won," Lindsay said simply. "There was no danger."

"Who was it?" she asked. And, when he hesitated, "I'm not going to shout it from the housetops, boss."

"It was Pat O'Ryan."

"_You_ handled _Pat_?" she asked, apparently astonished. Something in her tone told him Nina knew his would-be a.s.sa.s.sin.

"Why not?" he countered. "It wasn't much of a brawl."

"But Pat...." she began, and hesitated. Then, all business again, "We'd better get at some of this. You have a date to be psyched by Dr. Craven at two o'clock."

"What for?" he asked, startled.

"Routine," she told him. "Everyone connected with UW has to go through it. But cheer up, boss, it doesn't hurt--much."

"Okay," he said resignedly. "Let's get to work."

While he dictated Lindsay found himself wondering just who was paying Nina's real salary. If she were a spy for the same group that had sent O'Ryan to kill him, his position was delicate, to put it mildly. But for some reason he doubted it. There were too many groups working at once to make any such simple solution probable.

When she departed briefly to superintend a minor matter out of the office, he found himself staring at the wastebasket by his tilt-chair. A heart-shaped jewel-box of transparent crystoplastic lay within it.

Curious, Lindsay plucked it out. It had evidently held some sort of necklace and bore the mark of Zoffany's, the Capital's costliest jeweler. Within it was a note that read: _For Nina, who lost last night--as ever...._ The signature was an indecipherable scrawl.

Lindsay stuck the card in his wallet, returned the box to the wastebasket. Who in h.e.l.l, he wondered, would be sending this sort of gift to his slatternly thick-bodied secretary. The answer seemed obvious. The sender was her real boss, paying her off in a personal way that would obviate suspicion. Lindsay wondered exactly what Nina had lost.

He was not surprised when she said she would come along to the psychiatrist's with him after an office lunch of veal pralines, soya buns and coffee. He suggested she might be tired, might want the day off.

She said, "Night soil, boss! Between the Sec-Gen's daughter and things like Pat O'Ryan I'm going to keep an eye on you."

As if on signal the vidar-screen lit up and Maria's face appeared on it.

She had not donned harmopan or gla.s.ses and looked quite as lovely as she had the night before. She said, "Zalen, I've got to see you tonight.

Something has come up."

Lindsay nodded. He figured out his schedule, suggested, "I'm going to the match in the Colosseum. Why not take it in with me?"

She shook her head, told him, "I'm tangled up at a banquet for the Egypto-Ethiopian delegation. I can meet you afterward though. How about the Pelican?"

"That's not very private," he protested.

"All the more reason," she announced. "This is _important_!"

"And seeing me in private isn't?" Despite himself a trace of wounded male entered his tone.

Maria laughed softly, her dark eyes dancing. "Perhaps later," she said softly. "You'll understand when I talk to you." She clicked off and the screen was empty.

"d.a.m.ned cat!" said Nina through a haze of cigarette-smoke. "Watch out for her, boss--she's a cannibal."

"And I'm a bit tough and stringy," he told her.

Nina said, "Night soil!" again under her breath and led the way out of the office. Lindsay wondered if she were jealous.

Dr. Craven received them in a comfortable chamber, the north wall of which was all gla.s.s brick, the south wall a solid bank of screens and dials. He was a soft-faced man who wore lozenge-shaped light blue spectacles and seemed afflicted with a slight chin rash. He caught Lindsay's regard, rubbed his chin in mild embarra.s.sment, said, "I've a mild allergy to paranoids."

Lindsay looked at Nina distrustfully but she nodded and said, "Go ahead--he won't break your arm. I'll wait outside."

The psychiatrist closed his office door. After settling him in a comfortable contour couch, Dr. Craven opened up with, "I don't want you to have any worries about this test, Amba.s.sador. If anybody's crazy here it's me. According to very sound current theory all psychiatrists are insane. If we weren't we wouldn't be so concerned with sanity in others."

Lindsay asked, "Why in h.e.l.l am I being tested anyway?"

Craven replied, "President Giovannini himself came in for a voluntary checkup just last week." As if that were an answer.

Lindsay suppressed a desire to ask if the North American president had all his marbles. He had an idea any levity he displayed would register against him. Dr. Craven asked him a number of apparently routine questions which Lindsay answered via a recorder. How old he was, whether he liked flowers, how often he had fought with his schoolmates as a boy, what sort of food he preferred.

"Good," the doctor said, pushing aside the microphone on his desk and motioning Lindsay to do likewise. He rose, wheeled a device like an old-fashioned beautician's hair-drier close to the couch, adjusted the helmet to Lindsay's head. "Now," he added, "I want you to think as clearly as you can of your mother. Keep your eyes on the screen and give me as clear a picture as you can."

He pressed a b.u.t.ton and the whir of a camera, also focussed on the screen, sounded from the wall behind Lindsay. When Dr. Craven nodded, he concentrated and, to his amazement, watched a fuzzy likeness of his maternal parent take form on the screen.

This was something new, he decided, and said so. Dr. Craven replied, "Yes--the psychopic is brand new. But concentrate on the picture, please. You're losing it."

It had faded to almost nothing. Lindsay concentrated again, this time brought his maternal parent into clear focus. He felt a little like a man who has never wielded a brush in his life and has suddenly discovered he could paint a perfect portrait.

Dr. Craven said nothing for a moment. Then, "Will you try to visualize your mother without the blemish at her temple?"

Lindsay tried, and all but lost the picture entirely. He brought it back again, blemish and all, felt a sudden tug of nostalgia for the firm kindly features of the woman who had brought him into the world. A minute or so later Dr. Craven pressed another b.u.t.ton and the screen went blank. "That will do very nicely," he said. "You may wait for the psycho-computer verdict outside if you wish."

He found Nina sprawled in an anteroom chair with her long legs stuck out before her, contemplating a flashing diamond-and-emerald necklace. He said, before she looked up and saw him, "Business good, Miss Beckwith?"

To his amazement Nina began to snivel. And when he asked her what he had done to cause it she snapped angrily, "You big pig, you haven't the sensitivity to understand. Don't ever speak of it as business again. Now I'll have to bathe my eyes when I get home or they will be all swollen and horrible."

She removed her gla.s.ses and they _were_ swollen. Lindsay had seen too much of allergic reactions since reaching Earth not to know he was looking at another. He was relieved when she put her gla.s.ses back on.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

"I know it," she replied, "but you did."

"Perhaps, if you told me--" he began. Dr. Craven chose that moment to emerge from his office.

"If you'll come back inside," he said. "There are just a few more questions I'd like to ask, Amba.s.sador."

"Ask them here," said Lindsay. He had no desire to go back under the drier.

Dr. Craven hesitated and rubbed his chin, which was bright red again. He said finally, "Mr. Lindsay, you didn't kill your mother before you were seventeen, did you?"

"My mother died last year," said Lindsay, unbelieving.