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accordingly.”
“You assume wrongly, Magda. Yes, on the books, it’s true; but in actual practice - and this is classified information I’m giving you - on the occasions, and incidentally they are very rare, when a woman goes over the wall - classified practice is to deactivate her intelligence rating immediately. The reasons given for this are numerous, but they all boil down to the same thing. Official Intelligence policy assumes that a man can maintain an objective detachment from his wife and children, more easily than you or I could, because of - Magda, remember I’m quoting, this isn’t my personal belief - because of her deeper involvement. Presumably, a husband can detach himself from a wife easier than vice versa, and the children are, again supposedly, closer to the woman who bore them than they are to the man who fathered them.”
Magda swore. “I should have expected something like this. Do I have to tell you what I think of the reish ?” The Darkovan word was a childish vulgarity, which meant literally stable-sweepings , but her face twisted in real anger as she said it.
“Of course you don’t. What you think of it and what I think of it are very much the same, but what either of us thinks, is completely beside the point. I’m talking about official policy. I was supposed to accept your resignation the first time you handed it in.”
“I suppose it’s also in those extremely confidential and classified private files that I am reputed to be a lover of women?” Magda asked with a wry twist of her mouth. “I know the classified policy regarding lovers of men, among Terrans - legally they’re protected by official policies of non-discrimination. Practically, you know and I know that they’re hassled on any pretext anyone can find.”
“You’re wrong,” Cholayna said, “or at least it’s not true in every case. There’s a legal loophole: a man who is living with a wife and children, no matter what his private preference, cannot officially be classified homosexual. In practice, he’s covered, and can fight any such action. You covered yourself against any such action when your child was born, Magda. Nobody really cares whether you married the father or not. But by immunizing yourself from that kind of persecution, you invoked the other one: now it’s assumed that you are completely unsuited to Intelligence work because your loyalty would be to your child or children, and to the man who fathered them. I should, according to the Code, have accepted your resignation the first time you handed it in.”
“I would have been perfectly agreeable to that,” said Magda.
“I know. Goodness knows, you’ve given me opportunities enough,” Cholayna said. “You’ve handed it in so regularly every season that I’ve wondered if it’s just your way of celebrating Midsummer and Midwinter! But I still think I’m seeing a little farther than you do. We can’t afford to lose qualified women this way.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“By way of explaining to you why this request is unofficial, and why, just the same, you have to listen to me, and help me. Magda, you have the ultimate weapon over me; you can tell me where to go and what to do when I get there, and according to regulations I have no recourse at all. The legal situation is, you’ve gone over the wall, and I have no right to call you in. But I’m bucking regulations because you are the one person who might be able to make sense of what’s happening now.”
“And so, finally, we come around to it,” Magda said, “the reason you hauled me out on a rainy night - “
“All nights here are rainy, but that’s beside the point, too.”
“Lexie Anders?”
“Ten minutes or so before her plane went down, she transmitted a message via satellite; she was approaching the Wall Around the World, and was preparing to turn back. Her final message said she’d spotted something, like a city, which she had not found on the radar map. She was