The Avengers of Carrig by John Brunner

available simply bounced off her frigid armor of preconception, and even as the ship closed with its destination she was having difficulty adapting to the role.
    It had been suggested by the nearest of the surviving on-planet agents, Slee, whose own cover was the trade usually translated as “hetaira manager” but which a blunter age would have named “pander.” In the territory south of Carrig something resembling a cross between the Japanese geisha system and the acknowledged-mistress system of ancient Greece had evolved; high-class courtesans favored not less for their skill at music, dancing, and conversation than for their amorous talents were a regular part of a rich man’s retinue; and those who could not afford to keep a hetaira on a full-time basis were catered for by managers with several girls under contract This profession—a perfectly respectable one into which parents among the poorer classes were delighted to send their daughters for the sake of the upper-class manners they would acquire—was eminently suitable for present needs. Already Slee’s girls had established for him an extensive grapevine which brought him news and gossip from all parts of the continent; it was through them that he had been able to piece together an outline of events at Carrig far to the north.
    Recently, so Slee reported, it had become fashionable in Carrig also to keep or rent hetairas. What more natural than that Maddalena should be sent to Carrig as a supposed employee of his testing the possibility of opening a branch of his business there? Moreover, there was not so much contact between Carrig and the southland that she would be unable to pass off her accent and lack of familiarity with local mores as due to her southern origin.
    She had to concede the logic of the scheme eventually.But she also had to play over the psychologists’ tapes several times a day to condition her into acceptance of it.
    One thing,
Maddalena thought as she stood before the mirror in her cabin studying her disguise for flaws:
one good thing is my hair.
They had injected her scalp with trichogibberellins, and since leaving the base her hair had practically streamed back to its natural shoulder-length. Now it was tied and braided into an openwork cap of white lace. A skin-tight bodice of the same white lace and leotards of red lace—both garments oddly comfortable—clasped her body as closely as a lover; over them came a tunic and loose breeches of black embroidered with yellow and green, then a sort of cape of yellow into which a green design was woven; and for street-wear and traveling a voluminous cloak which could be caught up by a drawstring if she had to walk on muddy ground. There was a hood attached to it against rain. On her feet were red slippers, and to go with the cloak she had huge wood-and-leather overshoes lined with a sort of sponge.
    It was the acquisition of this wardrobe she had suddenly acquired which had for the first time made her
feel
—all the way down—the resources that the Corps commanded. There had been the suggestion that she pose as a visiting hetaira, made over the subspace communicator from Fourteen by Slee, whose “employee” she was going to be. The suggestion was approved. They sent to the library. In ten minutes Langenschmidt was playing over a tape labeled “ZRP 14—South Civilized Territory—Female Costume Group 3: Leisured and Non-Artisan Classes.”
    Within an hour she was trying the outfit on, and it didn’t even need alterations to make it fit her.
    She turned from the mirror to review the rest of her gear. One wooden trunk of authentic native pattern—the wood was synthetic, but the grain had been checked from another recording, this time an account of the timbers used for carpentry in Fourteen’s northern subtropical zone. It would pass the closest inspection short of advanced chemical analysis. In the trunk were five or six more costumes, cosmetics, a subspace communicator hidden under a