"I heard that a man doesn't even need any money if he's stationed down at our headquarters," I said, and I hauled out a handful of Haldorian notes from my pocket. "Guess I wouldn't need this stuff if I was transferred down to our headquarters."
"Who needs money?" he asked. "Guys all the time trying to bribe me, Trontar. You'd be surprised. Sure glad you aren't, though, because I do hate to turn anyone in."
I put the money back in my pocket. "Speaking of turning in people," I said casually, "you ever have any trouble with the undercover boys about all this loot you've picked up?" This, I thought, would shake him—and at the same time I marvelled at how I'd changed from a simple, naive statistician to a tough and conniving combat NCO.
He yawned all over his fat face and swung his swivel chair so that he could better admire the picture beside his desk. I recognized the picture as a moderately good reproduction of a Huxtner, a minor painter of our XXVth. "No," the Assignments Trontar said, "it turns out that one of my sept brothers runs the local watch birds. He often drops in here to visit with me. But anything I can do for you, Trontar?"
"No," I said, and I fired at the only possible loophole left, "I'll just leave quietly so you can admire your Huxtner."
He swung back to me with a start. "You recognize a Huxtner? You're the first man I've ever met in the service who ever heard of Huxtner, let alone recognizing one of his masterpieces! Hey, did you know I brought this all the way from home in my hammock roll? And just look at the coloring of that figure there!"
The loophole had been blasted wide open. "You're lucky," I said, and I went on to lie about how I'd lost my own Huxtner prints in the invasion. "No one," I continued, "ever got quite that flesh tint of Huxtner's, did they?"
Huxtner, by the way, is notorious for using a yellow undercoat for his blue flesh colors, unlike every realistic painter before or after who have all used green undercoats—what else? Imagine a chrome-yellow underlaying a blue skin color. All Huxtner's figures look like two-week corpses—but Huxtner enthusiasts are unique.
The Assignments Trontar and I had a nice long chat about Huxtner, at the conclusion of which he insisted on scratching my name from the list of combat-bound men and putting me on a much smaller list of men scheduled for our guard outfit, stationed at the old Terran capital of Washington.
I had an un-Haldorian feeling of having arranged my own life after that incident. That feeling persisted even after I took over one of the guard platoons and discovered that life in a guard outfit is rather similar to Basic Fighter Course.