"My pleasure, Director," I said, sitting down in the chair at the side of thedesk, deciding to pass over the fact that I hadn't had much choice in thematter. One of the other Ihmisits set my bag on the desk and started riflingthrough it; I thought about complaining, decided against it. "What's thisabout?"

"To be perfectly honest, Captain, I'm not entirely certain myself," she said, selecting a photo from the top of a stack of report files and handing it tome.

"A message has come down from my superiors to ask you about this person."

It was a picture of Arno Cameron.

"Well, he's a human," I offered helpfully. So it wasn't Brother John's cargothey wanted after all. At the moment I couldn't decide whether that was goodor bad. "Aside from that, I don't think I've ever seen him before."

"Really," Aymi-Mastr said, dropping the pitch of her voice melodramatically.

She leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers in front of her—like themelodramatic tone, an annoying habit many Ihmisits had picked up from the oldEarth movies they consumed by the truckload. "That's very interesting.

Particularly given that we heard from a witness not fifteen minutes ago whoclaims you were talking to him last night in a Vyssiluyan taverno."

A family of Kalixiri ferrets with very cold feet began running up and down myspine. "I hate to impugn the integrity of your witness," I said flatly, tossingthe photo back onto the desk. "But he's wrong."

The frog eyes narrowed. "The witness was very specific about your name."

"Your witness was either drunk or a troublemaker," I said, standing up. Thattaverno had been crowded, and after my grandstand play against the threeYavanni there would be a dozen beings who would remember me, at least half of whomwould probably also remember me talking with Cameron. I had to bluff my way out ofhere, and fast, before they started digging deeper.