Ilse stood at the open door, watching him. Kortha realized she had been standing there for minutes, as he had thought. He scowled, and muttered, "Get me to the magnifone. I'll speak to Guantra."
Following Ilse to the lift, Kortha brooded at her.
Zut, but she was lovely! If only she were not the wanton he knew her for. And yet—always that ... and yet! And yet, there was nothing of the wanton about her. The perfume from her fur bolero floated around them in the lift. It reminded him of things, that perfume: of memories that were stored so deeply in his subconscious that he had completely forgotten them. Kisses over the canals in a drifting 'coptondola. An Academy dance with Ilse wearing a black, filmy thing that made the blue of her eyes and the silver hair weirdly beautiful. And those nights when they had eaten cold fruit and drank of iced bessa-mead in the palace gardens near colored-water fountains, before he had—before the guard had crippled Hurlgut.
He could not square remembered happiness with other memories. There was a leak somewhere. He had to learn more—
"Ilse," he said.
The lift was opening and the girl was going down the corridor. Kortha shrugged and followed her. He was probably mistaken. Those memories were the overflow from a forgotten dream.
In the big control room he stood watching Ilse punch buttons. A beam-man stared at him from a corner panel-slot. Let him look. The name of Kortha was legendary on Mars. He heard Ilse saying, "Guantra. Guantra!" into a fine-meshed magnifone.
The screen above the panelling came alive with the Premier's sneering, point-bearded face; and his voice was harsh, cold.
"So. You got to Kortha before me, Ilse. It is too bad. I would like to know whether—let me speak to him."
Kortha stared up at Guantra's scowling face. The man was worried. The way his tongue licked unceasingly at his thin lips, the hands tugging at the crested metal buckle of his belt, the creases around his narrowed eyes: they were signal flares pointing his anxiety. There was something bothering Guantra, too, even as it bothered him.