Operation Isis. E. Hoffmann Price

in Paris, Garvin went to the North American embassy to take care of some confidential paperwork. While waiting for the official mill to grind out papers to accord with his new identity—Pierre d’Artois of Buffalo, New York—he phoned Flora.

      “I don’t know how long this processing is going to take,” he told his Number One Wife. “There’s more than just a passport and identification accessories for the village police. I’ve got to get a wad of French currency and a permit to take as much of it away with me as I please.”

      “Sounds more and more cloak and sword, beginning with your radiogram from the Lunar Depot, of all places!”

      “Before I forget it, be sure your housekeeper and staff are on vacation with pay.”

      “I took care of that when you radioed. But how about this new identity?”

      “No problem. The Governor-General is delayed at the Lunar Depot. Pierre d’Artois is your distant cousin. He is likely to be checking out before Garvin arrives. Pierre is taking the Madrid Express with a stopover in Bayonne and then heading on into Spain—what are you laughing about?”

      “I was thinking that if the embassy is bugged and someone is recording all this, he’ll be caught in no time.”

      “How come?”

      “He’ll be perched in a high tree, screaming like an eagle!”

      “Anyway, you didn’t lose time putting the menials on furlough.”

      “Pierre! Mon dieu! I have nothing to wear. With household help, one is a slave round the clock. Honeymoon spirit and a wardrobe down to zero!”

      “Whatever you’ve bought or made, throw it away or give it to the poor!”

      “Are you crazy?”

      “No, you are, darling. The stuff will be out of style before you get a chance to put any of it on.”

      Garvin was not going to fly to Bayonne. This first look at his native world was going to be from the surface. When the Sud Express, strictly deluxe and with only first-class coaches, pulled out of Gare d’Orsai, the brand new Pierre d’Artois felt like a high school punk on his way to pick up his first date.

      Bordeaux, where Gallienus, Emperor of Rome, had built an amphitheater that was recently restored to look good as new, and the Landes—”Nothing but goddamn pine forest!”—he dismissed in favor of a magnificent prospect: Meeting the son he had never seen was a fine start, with Flora, a peak in any man’s life, included as an extra dividend. She personified his history, from a cross between space tramp and freighter in Sinkiang to the man who had made Maritania a Terrestrial suburb. In all these things Flora had played a part, sharing the beginnings, and now she was about to sit with him and look back at it all. Each had spent a lot of time wondering whether the tempestuous marriage had been one of those major mistakes, despite the best of intentions on each side.

      The answer was now quite clear: All that counted was the much good they had shared. And, furthermore, the letdowns and dark spots were part of the package, and so, a sharing.

      His happy vision was interrupted at Dax, still lumber and turpentine country. There he learned that someone or something had fouled up in Paris.

      “Monsieur, c’est vrai! Vous avez raison! Yes, this is the train deluxe. But she makes, what you call it, the bypass. She does not go to Bayonne. From here she goes to Pau, to Puyoo!”

      “Gangway! Shove Pau and Puyoo, I’m getting off!”

      “Monsieur, the refund—”

      “Shove that, too! I’ve got a date in Bayonne.”

      Now that his luggage was sitting on the platform, the deluxe train resumed its way to Pau and other stations. Garvin’s phrase book French, blended with profane Americanese cursing and swearing, diluted with Instant Uighur Turki and Arabic While You Fly, confused the stationmaster.

      A cab driver picked up when Garvin and the station-master paused for a fresh start. “The train you thought you were boarding will not be stopping in Dax.”

      The stationmaster added, “The ticket is not for the Madrid Express. Alors, I cannot flag the train when it comes through.”

      “Death and damnation! Do I sit in this asshole of a village till the next train?”

      Stationmaster and taxi man cogitated. “Monsieur,” the latter said. “There is no problem. Let me explain.” The Good Samaritan was distressed when the belated traveler was not interested in sleeping with the very nice girl who worked at the bathhouse of the hot spring. There was further dismay when Garvin made clear that he was not interested in a room at the Hotel des Thermes, with or without a girl. When he explained that he had a date with a girl in Bayonne, the natives realized that he was entirely sane.

      Having failed as pimp or hotel runner, the taxi man was happy when Garvin snapped at the first bid for the thirty-mile drive to Bayonne. But first, he had to eat.

      Garvin phoned Flora to say that he was in Dax and might be a bit late. “Just leave the front door lights on—the driver might have problems. Well, I looked at a map, I’ll see he doesn’t get lost.”

      Then they ran out of essence and had to walk to a filling station.

      There was time-out for a tire change.

      Following the Adour downstream was confusing.

      There were ambiguous road forks, especially deceptive by night. A number of times the driver, once he got a few kilometers beyond the corporate limits of Dax, took the wrong one and followed it to a dead end at some logging installation.

      Garvin finally relaxed and found it amusing.

      Reminiscence kept him company. When Lani and I started to shack up in Khatmandu, it took a split second of computer foulup to get us started on what was programmed as a one-way trip to Mars. Lucky they didn’t fire up the computer in Dax or that girl and I would be spending the next six years in the mud bath at Hotel des Thermes...but you cannot beat the game...there was no computer that got me and Lani back to Terra just in time to keep Flora from becoming Imperatrix instead of Lani.

      The events following Alexander’s death in battle left Garvin conducting a silent, solo debate: Should Flora and Lani have cursed fate and Garvin, or given thanks?

      North America revisited might give an answer.

      Far too many hours after departing Dax they came to the confluence of the Adour and the Nive, and the St. Esprit Bridge, beyond which the spires of Ste. Marie’s cathedral reached into moonlight. Triumphantly, the cabby pointed.

      “Voila! Bayonne! Now what is it that one does?”

      Having studied his Guide to Southern France, English edition, while waiting for the wrong train to leave Gare d’Orsai, Garvin gave the answer: “You don’t have to wait for daylight to find the Lycée de Marracq. Cross both bridges, turn right and follow the river to Allees Paulmy to the Lycée, and from there it’s easy. She’ll have the lights on.”

      Although he arrived at four-nineteen in the morning instead of about five in the afternoon, Happy Hour began at once. He need feel no qualms about disturbing Felix, Flora assured him. “He has his own quarters, topside of the garage.”

      She had wasted no time when phone calls briefed her: The one from Paris started major shopping, and the one from Dax gave her time for last-minute frills of drink and delicacies. Starting with canned pheasant from the quaint, costly little shop on rue Pont Neuf, with Pommery Brut from her cellar, she later added a list terminating in cherry tomatoes stuffed with caviar, tropical palm hearts lined with Brie cheese, and quail eggs in piquante sauce. Before it was quite too late for messenger delivery service, she called for smoked albacore and aquavit, which would soon be chilled in the deep freeze. For good measure, there was a bottle of sherry that Monsieur Chevigny recommended: an unusually stern and manly Palo Cortado.

      To relieve the tensions that built up during pauses devoted to clock-watching,