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“In what way?” Marisea asked.
“Managing to survive a plummet to our deaths for the second time in a single
trip?”

“That too, I suppose,” Park
chuckled. “I meant that this might be the tallest waterfall on Earth in this
epoch. It would have been on the top ten list back in the Twenty-first Century.
I’m surprised this place hasn’t shown up in the Exploration Corps reports, or
has it?”

“I don’t think so, Park,” Marisea
shook her head, “but keep in mind you’ve been sending teams out into the
uninhabited lands. Technically, this is Atackack territory so it is not
uninhabited.”

“But not well-explored except to
the Atackack,” Park noted. “Maybe I need to recruit Atackacks into the Corps.”

“Perhaps I can help,” Kractitoc
offered. “I’ve been just about everywhere in this part of the world. What sort
of reports are you looking for?”

“Would that be in keeping with
your job as a teller?” Park asked.

Kractitoc made a strange
click-clacking noise and Park realized with a start that the Atackack was
laughing. He had often thought the mystic, Okactack, was smiling, but none of
the Atackacks had seemed to have a sense of humor. In general they were a
serious people, or at least seemed to be from Park’s standpoint. Now he
wondered if, perhaps, there was something lost in translation. “That is just
the sort of thing my job is,” the teller explained. “I do not just repeat old
stories and songs. I bring news from far-off lands, describe strange sights and
happenings, deliver messages and so forth. Telling you about my journeys fits
right in.”

Park and Kractitoc discussed the
matter all the way to Takikata and by their
 
arrival, had come to an agreement. “I’ll arrange for office space in the
trade-town of your choice,” Park promised and will have it stocked with
whatever you require.”

“No need, Parker Holman,”
Kractitoc laughed again. “You forget I have a torc. I can call in my reports
from anywhere I go. What would I do with an office?”

“Good point,” Park agreed. He
went on to give Kractitoc Karen Mizumi’s name and communicator code. “Call your
reports into her. Oh, and plenty of pictures. With their geographic
coordinates, of course.”

“I have a lot to learn about the
way you measure the world,” the teller admitted. “I generally measure progress
in paces or days of journey. I am told my torc knows where it is at all times.
Is that the case?”

Park nodded, “Essentially, yes.
Your position can be tracked using it.”

“Then if I report in from the
location about which I am reporting, it can tell Karen Mizumi where I am,”
Kractitoc concluded.

“That works,” Park agreed.
“Welcome to the Corps.”

Takikita was certainly the
busiest trade-town they had visited so far and the first one in which they
found any non-Atackack. Park knew there had been several scientists from the
Alliance studying the Atackack and that they had visited other trade-towns, but
Takikita was the first place they found any of them.

There were also over a dozen
traders from various Mer business concerns in town, several of which had permanent
offices there, giving the town a very odd look with traditional Atackack mound
structures and huts competing for space with Mer buildings of several
architectural styles most of which reminded Park of twisted Art Deco with
tinted windows.

“Maybe the Exploration Corps
needs an office here anyway,” Park considered. “It’s not a bad place to base
expeditions around southern Pangaea and Australis from.” He looked around and
realized that he and Iris were alone. “Where did everyone go?”

“Marisea and Taodore are talking
to the Mer traders,” Iris explained. “They have a council of sorts here to
handle the occasional interspecies problems that come up. Dannet and Sartena
are talking to a trio of culturologists from the Alliance, and Kractitoc is
talking to the Atackack traders… no, here he comes now.”

The teller was easily spotted in
his rainbow-colored robes as he weaved his way between Atackack traders on his
way up the street. “We found one!” the teller announced as he drew near. “We
found a Premm spy.”

Karactitoc led Park and Iris
across the street and then out of the town’s neutral zone to where the Geck
tribal traders did business with each other. The building they entered looked
like a large adobe hut that had been allowed to partially melt in the rainy
season. Inside, they had to walk down several steps to the first floor

“It’s amazingly cooler in here,”
Park noted. “I was not aware the Atackack had air conditioning.”

“It is because our floors are
below ground level,” Kractitoc replied. “These buildings are also warmer in
cold weather for the same reason.” They stopped at a tall counter behind which
three Atackack traders stood. The markings on their scarves indicated they were
both young and inexperienced. Kractitoc chittered at them in Atackack and they
replied. “This way,” the teller spoke to the humans. “The others have already
arrived.”

“What others?” Iris asked, but
she did not have long to wait for an answer.

They only stepped a few paces
down the hallway top the first door. “We would not allow an enemy very far
within our nests,” Tractitoc told them seriously as he opened the door.

Inside, Marisea and Taodore were
already observing Sartena and Dannet as they interrogated the man, the Atackack
had identified as a Premm. “I am not a Premm,” the man denied hotly.

“You aren’t a Pirate either,”
Dannet told him coldly.

The unknown man looked up as Park
and Iris entered. “Parker!” he greeted hopefully. “You know me!”

“Can’t say that I do,” Park told
him.

“We used to play Poker back in
the old days,” the man tried.

“Really?” Park raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t recall ever playing Poker, and there’s not a person in Van Winkletown
who calls me Parker. Want to try another story?”

The spy shut up at that and for a
moment the only sound in the room came from Cousin who sat in Marisea’s arms,
growling at the Premm. “Cousin doesn’t seem to like him any better than we do,”
Taodore observed.

“Do you think she could be used
to detect Premm agents?” Marisea asked curiously.

“Maybe,” Park allowed, “but it’s
just as likely she’s only mirroring what you are feeling and how you are
reacting.” He turned back to the Premm. “So come clean, who the hell are you
and what are you doing here?”

The Premm remained silent. “Has
he been searched?” Iris asked.

“Our Atackack friends were quite
thorough,” Sartena advised her. “They found, not only a bomb disguised as a
belt, but a suicide pill in a hollow tooth.”

“Good,” Iris nodded. “Park, by
all means question this man, but we all know there are more like him on Earth.
We have to finish warning the Atackack, so if he is not forthcoming, put him on
the next flight to Van Winkle and let Arn’s people have a go.”

“That means we’ll have to take
him with us to a Mer city,” Park replied. “Sanatis is my guess. There is no
airport here.”

“I don’t like the idea of having
him in the buggy,” Iris commented. “It’s only a normal car, not meant for
transporting prisoners. Too many things could go wrong.”

“Leave him with us,” Kractitoc
advised. “We can hold him here until your people come for him, and perhaps ask
a few questions of our own while waiting.”

“Stay away from me, you filthy
savage!” the Premm agent spoke for the first time since Park arrived. “I am
Premm, I am the True!”

“Funny, you don’t look Truish,”
Park snapped at him. “And that’s not your most persuasive argument.” He
attempted to get answers out of the man, but after a while, Park had to admit
interrogation was not his strong suit. He knew that a good interviewer would
attempt to establish a rapport with his subject and pretend to have something in
common, but even as pretense, Park did not have the stomach try to put the
agent at ease. After a while, he told Kractitoc, “I’ll leave him with you. If
you can find out about his mission, fine, but I doubt we would be able to
believe him. We’ll have someone here to pick him up in a day or two.”

“You do not like to question an
enemy, Parker Holman,” Kractitoc observed.

“To me it smacks of either
torture or deceit,” Park admitted. “I do not deny that such interrogations are
sometimes necessary, but I think in more linear terms than a good interrogator
does. I can ask questions, but my sorts of questions work best when the person
answering them is not hostile to me. I do not enjoy or even like to think about
what it takes to get answers from someone like this one.” He pointed at the
Premm agent.

“Among the Atackack we have
certain smells that will cause an enemy to relax enough to tell us willingly
what we want to know,” Tractitoc told him.

“And the Mer have drugs that do
pretty much the same thing,” Park replied. Keeping in mind the Premm would be
subjected to those drugs, Park decided not to mention that they did not always
work as well as one might like. “I will let the experts handle that, however,
unless True-boy here cares to open up as you why he’s here.” He turned toward
the Premm,

“The time of the Prophecy is
coming,” the Premm told him fervently. “And the Earth shall be cleansed!”

“Yeah, we ordered a cleansing for
next month,” Park told him sarcastically. “It’ll take that long just to do the
laundry and have you ever tried to dry-clean a super-continent? Well, folks I
think we’ve found a new ‘special’ friend.”

“Laugh if you want, abomination,”
the Premm told him sternly. “It is ordained that you will live to see the
deaths of all you hold dear before we allow you to die.”

“You had better hope you’re wrong,
special friend,” Park rounded on him, all trace of humor leaving abruptly, “or
I’ll make sure you have a ringside seat for what happens next.”

“And what is that?” the Premm
sneered.

“Let’s just say I’ll leave you
for last,” Park growled.

The threats made no impression on
the prisoner and Iris had no trouble convincing Park that he was wasting his
time. “Leave that one to the professionals,” she advised as they climbed the
ramp up and out of the Atackack building.

“Professionals?” Park laughed.
“Arn is planning to question any captured Premm himself. An Air Force colonel
he might have been, but to the best of my knowledge, he was never in
Intelligence or the Air Force Office of Special Investigations or had any other
experience that might have applied. Heck! I met him when he was one of the
teachers in my university ROTC.”

“So he knew how to intimidate
rowdy cadets then?” Iris smiled.

“We weren’t a rowdy bunch,” Park
shook his head. “We had to be upright and disciplined, especially when Major
Arnsley was around.”

“And when you went out drinking?”
Dannet prompted him. “I’ve seen how cadets and other military men can be on
their time off.”

“So I’ve heard,” Park laughed,
“but not on Arn’s watch. He made examples of anyone who slipped up even during
our off-hours. If we looked bad, we made our fellows look bad by extension and
that made him look bad. Arn was a strict taskmaster but we all made sure we
behaved. He didn’t have a lot of forgiveness in him for cadets who screwed up,
whether by getting drunk or doing poorly in class.”

“He doesn’t seem that strict
now,” Marisea commented. “I mean…”

“I know what you mean,” Park told
her when she paused to search for the right words. “He’s loosened up quite a
bit over the years. I finished my term in the ROTC, but I wasn’t on scholarship
and so was not obligated to serve in the Air Force after college. By then I
decided that not only was a military career not for me, but I would not be
right for the military either. It was a sort of amicable divorce.

“By the time I ran into Arn
again, he was a lieutenant colonel and in charge of a project out in Nevada
where they were working on new air and space craft designs,” Park continued.

“Was that Area 51?” Iris
wondered.

“No,” Park chuckled. “By that
time, the so-called Area 51 had been decommissioned and taken over by several
civilian companies. Ronnie Sheetz used to work there.”

“I know,” Iris nodded. “I
wondered if you had run into her before Project Van Winkle.”

“Not that I recall,” Park shook
his head. “The first time I saw her was the night we woke up here in Pangaea
when she was arguing with Arn over the prospect of repopulating the Earth. I
recall that you pointed her out to me.”

“So I did,” Iris admitted. “I
knew her at MIT. Also, if I recall correctly, the next time you ran into Arn it
was because of that bird’s nest in one of the tracking antennae.”

“That was it,” Park admitted.
“Even then he had lost a lot of the stiff martinet. I think once he got away
from the students he found he could relax a bit. Anyway, so far as I know he
was always either a teacher or an administrator of scientific projects. Of
course there’s always a chance he has a natural talent for interrogation, but
the odds are he’ll read an old article on the subject in the Van Winkle data
banks and run with it.”

“There are professional
interrogators among the Mer police forces,” Taodore pointed out. “I was under
the impression Governor Theoday would be working with some of them.”

“I think he said the same thing
to me,” Park allowed, “but just in case, I think I’ll remind him that he has
people to call on when we get back to the buggy. That reminds me, though; do we
have anything else to do here now that the locals have been informed and have
also shown themselves possibly more capable of finding a Premm than we are?”

“It’s getting close to dinner,”
Marisea pointed out, “and it’s a three hour flight to Porgantis.”

“But only one hour to Sanatis,”
her father pointed out. “The food for humans and Mers in these trade towns are
nutritious, but rarely appetizing. Up until now we have eaten the food on board
the buggy since the all-Atackack towns would not have food fit for humans and
Mers. Park, old man, do we need to push on to Porgantis this evening? It seems
to me we will be better off if we stop in Sanatis and then we can go directly
to the trade-towns in the Bidachik lands in the morning. So far as I can see,
we do not really need to go to Porgantis at all.”