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Awares to find it. Without telling me or anyone else who isn't an Aware.”
    “We're on our way,” Yon agreed. “We'll let the Vulture or Python know when we need you.”
    “Do that,” Elasa said. Then she and Bunky returned to the car. She felt elated, though she knew they had merely verified that the situation wasn't hopeless, not that they would prevail. Certainly they had accomplished a lot this day.

Chapter 4:
    Secret Agent
    There was continuing contact that Elasa stayed clear of. She let Bunky go with Vulture and Python to meet the Awares, knowing that the three animals could handle any likely situation they would encounter. Bunky and the Awares were zeroing in on whatever the path to salvation was, and Elasa needed not to know it. Nobody should know it, lest the Maggots read it in their minds and nullify it. Meanwhile she was happy loving Banner and Bela, being a family woman. Saving the world was necessary, but all she had ever wanted was to be a woman.
    Yet something significant was brewing that was bound to take her in. It might not be pretty. She picked this up from the animals. Bunky did not understand it, but she did: sexuality. She was a fembot, and her talent might have to be used. She had to warn her husband before things got dicey. “Banner, you know I learned something on Jones.”
    “And tamed a vampire plant,” he agreed.
    “That is only part of it. There is an enormous threat to Earth itself, but I can't even talk about it without putting others in danger, including you.”
    “If you tell me, you'd have to kill me,” he said, amused.
    “Something like that. I can say only that very serious business is afoot that may require something unusual of me. I am asking you to trust me.”
    “Elasa, you don't even need to ask! I love you.”
    “I might have to be with other men. No, not to leave you! I'll always love you. But I might have to seduce others.”
    He gazed at her, absorbing the import. “The way you did when we needed money to hitchhike.”
    “Yes. Only this would not be for money.”
    “Elasa, I do trust you. You do what you have to, and I won't hold it against you. I know you love me as I love you.”
    “Oh, yes!” she agreed, and swept him into her arms and on into bed.
    Two weeks later Elasa got the word: the Awares had information for her. She went quietly to the garden with Bunky, and there were Vulture and Python—and Adela, whom they had led in. It was the most private convenient meeting place.
    “There are key personnel the Maggots will target,” Adela said. “They will take them over and use them to institute the processes that will convert Earth to a slaughterhouse. We will need to stop those personnel, and not by assassination, because they would simply be replaced.”
    “If they are here, the Maggots will take them,” Elasa said.
    “There is another way. But not yet. We must get close enough to them to read an essential part of their brain coding so that the Plant will be able to change it slightly, when, with her projective telepathy. This is where we need you.”
    “Of course I want to do the necessary,” Elasa said. “But I can't afford to be obvious.”
    “Exactly. You will need to have an affair with the American Secretary of Defense.”
    “What?” This was shock rather than incomprehension.
    “You need to get close to him, and stay close to him, because he will lead you to several of the other targets. We need to have them all primed by the time the Plant arrives, because then we shall have to act immediately. The salvation of our world depends on it.”
    “How could I get close to him, let alone have an affair with him?”
    “He will need a personal secretary. You will be that, in the form of his ideal figure of a woman. The rest will follow.”
    “This is too complicated for me to handle,” Elasa said. “I would be thoroughly vetted before I ever got near such an important figure, and they'd never trust him with a robot.”
    “That is why I