The strains of ancient music wafted up the stairs, seeping under the door of a small, green-painted room. Hamilton and another man— he'd given his name as "Caruthers"—sat at a wooden table covered by a checked tablecloth. Between them sat a bottle of Irish whiskey, two glasses, and a small metallic box the size and shape of a pack of cigarettes.
"All clear," announced a metallic voice, emanating from the small box.
Caruthers, a deliberately nondescript, middle-aged black man, with a receding hairline and clothed lightly against the city's oppressive late spring; He said, "It had best be all clear, Atkinson, or you will be canned. By that I mean—"
"—that I will be ground up, melted down, and stamped out into cat food cans. Yes, sir, I know. The room
Hamilton raised one eyebrow. "I've never before met a machine with personality. Atkinson?"
Caruthers chuckled slightly and said, "Atkinson was an intelligence warrant and the stupidest human being I've ever met, so I named the machine for him. It doesn't have a personality, but then neither did the real Atkinson. I programmed a certain number of smart-ass answers into the thing because, frankly, my job permits me minimal human interaction. And since the original Atkinson was barely human, and a smart ass, it sort of fits."
"Even recruiting," Caruthers continued, "isn't really human interaction. To me you're just a file, Lieutenant Hamilton, a block to check. Don't take that personally; if I allowed myself to think of my recruits as human it might bother me when they fail to return from a job."
Caruthers said, "Atkinson, you moron, pull up Lieutenant Hamilton's file." Immediately a hologram mimicking a brown file appeared above the table. Caruthers didn't pretend to study it, nor even order the machine to open it.
"You were well regarded in your battalion, I see," the recruiter said.
Hamilton pursed his lips and shook his head slightly. "I think they felt sorry for me."
"Yes, perhaps," Caruthers agreed. "A pity about young Lieutenant Hodge; we always have openings for husband-wife teams. They draw much less suspicion and are about three times more effective— synergy, don't you know; that and teamwork—than two single operatives or artificial couples. Never mind that; we see you as more the lone operative at this point.
"Atkinson, you dolt: linguistic scores."
The holographic file opened to an equally insubstantial sheet documenting, among other things, Hamilton's Defense Language Aptitude Test, or DLAT, which was used not only by the military, but by State and OSI as well.
"We could teach you any language or combination of languages," Caruthers said, admiringly. "This would make you useful anywhere. Do you already speak any languages beyond English, Spanish, and French?"
"A little German, and I picked up fairly decent Tagalog in the PI campaign."
"Not much use for that anymore,
"I don't want to be any kind of general," Hamilton answered. "I don't think I ever did."
Caruthers shrugged. "If you join us, of course, you won't be."
"What
"That I am not sure of, though the way we do business now I will be your handler, if you join and are accepted for field work. Several of my colleagues have looked over your file and suggested you might be best used for direct action, 'wet work,' as we sometimes say. That, however, is all speculation. Your exact training track will not be determined until you are well into the BIOC, the Basic Intelligence Operatives Course."
"I get to be a shavetail again, do I?" Hamilton asked, noticing the similarity between the letters BIOC and IOBC.
"Not exactly," Caruthers said. "For one thing,
Kitznen, Affrankon, 24 Jumadah II, 1533 AH
(25 May, 2109)
It was still early morning, though the sun was full up. Besma was at school, Ishmael having escorted her. Most of the other servants were off at their various tasks. Inside the house of Abdul Mohsem were only Petra, al Khalifa, her son, and two of her son's friends.
