Proteus Unbound

Chapter 26

Live with a man for years—and then discover that you know nothing at all about him!

Sylvia had been convinced that at the very least Paul would listen to what she had to say. She had clung to that thought, all through the long journey and the docking at Ransome’s Hole, and then on through a maze of corridors and slideways that took her and her Roguards deep into the habitat interior. And finally, face to face with him, she realized her mistake.

“It was very foolish for you to come here.” His expression was cold, and he stared through her as though she did not exist. He was wearing the same drab uniform as all the others she had seen in Ransome’s Hole.

“Paul, I had to. Terrible things have been happening in the Cloud. Thousands of people have died, and all the time—”

“A mistake, and a total waste of time.” He turned to the machines standing beside her. “Take her to living quarters K-1-25, level 4.”

“Paul!”

But he was already turning, refusing to look her way. “You had your chance to work with us,” he said coldly as he walked out. “Ransome is a once-in-a-millennium genius, the best hope for the Solar System. You wouldn’t help when we needed it. Why should anyone listen to you now, when we don’t need help?”

And then he was gone. Sylvia tried to run after him and found the Roguards blocking her way. She pushed at them angrily, taking out her frustration on the resilient plastic. Endless weeks of travel to seek Paul Chu’s ear—and then dismissed in one minute, without any sign that the two of them had once been lovers and close friends!

It was such an anticlimax, Sylvia was ready to burst with frustration. The machines were moving her back the way they had come, holding her lightly with their jointed arms. She fought them at first, but it was pointless. The gentle touch disguised their strength, but they could apply many tons of force with each flexible limb.

After ten more minutes of slideway travel they brought her to an open door and guided her through it. As it slid closed behind her, she spun around and cursed the silent machines.

“Helps your feelings,” said a familiar and cynical voice from behind her. “Don’t do much good, though. Better save your breath.”

She turned. “Aybee! How in Eden did you get here?”

“Long tale—a long and sad tale, as old Lewie C. puts it. Turns out Ransome doesn’t trust me quite as much as I thought.” Aybee Smith was sitting cross-legged across a high table, long limbs dangling to each side. “Wait just a minute. I already did this two days ago, but let’s make sure nothing has changed.” He hopped off the table and circled the room, peering at ventilator grilles and under and on all free surfaces. Finally he nodded. “I’m pretty sure we’re safe to talk. No monitoring—or if there is, I can’t find it.”

He pointed to a chair and returned to sit again on the table. “All right, Sylv, let’s play catch up. Who first?”

His scowling face had made Sylvia feel better already. She described everything that had happened since she left the ruined space farm, then heard of Aybee’s own zigzag passage from there to Ransome’s Hole.

“At least you had no choice,” she said. “I’m the stupid one—I set out looking for trouble. And now the whole system’s ready to be blown apart, and neither of us can do a thing.”

“Not right now. But every day I’m here, I learn more about what makes this place tick.” Aybee was prowling the perimeter of the chamber. “They shouldn’t have put us together, and they ought to be monitoring us. Ransome is overconfident.”

“Overconfident! Right, and with plenty to be overconfident about. We’re in a mess. I don’t know why you’re looking so pleased with yourself.”

“Because we finally have a chance to learn what’s screwing up the Solar System.” Aybee squatted down and wrapped his arms around his crossed legs. “I’ll tell you one good thing your friend the Wolfman told me when we were on the space farm. He says you solve problems by getting into the middle of ’em. When we were out on the harvesters, we were sitting on the outside edge of things. We only felt Black Ransome’s effect at third hand. Now we’re right at the heart of his power.”

“And we’re totally powerless! Aybee, even if we got out of these rooms, I’m not sure we could do anything. Ransome controls everything. We couldn’t get a message to Bey Wolf or Cinnabar Baker.”

“We might get one to the Wolfman, but it wouldn’t help. Last time I saw Ransome he told me Wolf is here, too. He pointed out how convenient it was, all three of us coming to him.”

“Bey’s in Ransome’s Hole? However did he find his way?”

“Same as you and me, I’ll bet—a little bad luck and a big lump of stupidity. He came here on one of the superfast ships, same as I did. Ransome is hoping to make Wolf a convert to his cause, like he’s trying to convert me. You, too, if you let him.”

“Then Baker’s our only hope. Aybee, you’re the smart one. You have to find a way to let her know where we are.”

He was shaking his head. “Sorry, Sylv. It’s worse than that. When you said Ransome controls everything, you were closer than you realized. He controls Cinnabar Baker.”

“Never! The Cloud is her whole life. She’d never sell out to Ransome.”

“That’s what I’d have said two weeks ago. But Ransome showed me. When you get to meet with him he’ll show you, too. He has direct transmissions of meetings from inside Baker’s personal quarters. Secret papers and interviews, too, from the Opik and Marsden Harvesters. She must be running a portable recorder during her important meetings and transmitting ’em here by sealed hyperbeam.”

“Aybee, I think you’re crazy. But if you happen to be right it’s an absolute disaster. You tell me that, and still you don’t think that Ransome has everything under his control?”

“Maybe he does—for the moment. But he can’t have corrupted every person in the Outer System. And he’s been winning for too long. It’s time for our run of luck.”

“Aybee, if I said anything like that you’d tell me it’s statistical gibberish. According to Paul Chu—damn that man—Ransome has been winning because he’s a genius. Are you going to disagree with that, too?”

“Funny you should say that.” Aybee stood up and stretched. “I do disagree. I came to Ransome’s Hole in a hell of a ship, too advanced to be believed. New drive, new nav system, new technology all over it. First thing I asked when I got here: Who’s the genius? Ransome, everybody says. All the ideas come from him. He’s the one.”

“But you think not?” Sylvia knew Aybee’s weaknesses, and evaluating the abilities of others was not one of them.

“Hell, I know not. Ransome can snow most people here with physics, maybe all of them. He knows a lot, and he talks a great line. But he’s not the real thing.”

“How do you know that?”

Aybee gave her a sinister smile. “Because, Sylv, I am the real thing. Take it from one who knows; Black Ransome didn’t invent that new drive and that new ship. He says he’s the Negentropic Man, and something’s sure feeding bad information to the Cloud’s control system. But Ransome’s not the genius who dreamed up the entropy reduction and signal-generation system. No way.”

“Then who is the inventor? Are you saying Ransome has some supergenius working for him here? And how does the entropy reduction system work?”

“I was afraid you’d ask me that.” Aybee smiled more horribly than ever. “You see, Sylv, I don’t have the answers. But let me loose for a day or two in this place and I’ll get ’em.”

“Oh, Aybee.” Sylvia slumped down on the chair. “I don’t believe in giving up, but be a realist. We’ll never get out of here. Black Ransome may not be your supergenius, but he’s certainly smart enough not to trust us.”

“Speak of the devil.” Aybee gestured behind Sylvia. The door had opened, and standing there was Ransome himself, as cold-eyed and commanding as he had been when Sylvia saw that first video message for Paul Chu. He was unarmed and wearing a simple black tunic. His face was pale and showed signs of some unusual strain.

Ransome nodded to Aybee and Sylvia. Behind him stood two of the Roguards. For twenty seconds no one moved.

“You will come with me,” Ransome said at last. And then, to the machines, he said, “These two people are now in my personal custody. You are relieved of guard duties until I return them here.”

“Where are you taking us?” Sylvia did not like the tone in Ransome’s voice. There was a strident edge to it that suggested a man under enormous pressure.

“Wait and see.” Ransome lifted his arm and pointed to Aybee. “You first, in front of her. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Sure.” Aybee stepped easily through the door, with a nod at the waiting machines. “Don’t wait up for us, we might be back late. Where do you want me to walk, Ransome? You’re the one who knows where we are going.”

“Follow the gravity vector. Always up.”

They started along the left-hand corridor, heading away from the nearest kernels. In forty yards they had reached the first branch and passed a group of armed humans. Everyone nodded respectfully at Ransome and moved to allow the trio to pass on to another segment of passageway. Aybee walked on until he came to a spherical chamber and another fork in the path.

He paused and turned again to Ransome. “I don’t know which one of these leads outward. Take your pick.”

“Left. Keep going.” The voice was gruff, and Aybee could see beads of sweat on the man’s face. They moved slowly forward, to a curved part of the corridor screened both ahead of and behind them. An open door leading to an empty maintenance chamber stood on the right-hand side.

“Through there.” Ransome nodded his head. “Both of you.”

Aybee tensed himself as he went through. Sylvia was between him and Ransome. If he turned to grapple with him, would she be able to get out of the way fast enough?

He had to try. He was spinning around, reaching out his long arms, when the man behind him groaned and sagged forward against the inner wall of the room.

“Aybee! Get him!” Aybee heard Sylvia’s shout, but Ransome had fallen forward. His torso flexed itself, then straightened in a painful stretching movement that dropped it to the floor and jerked it two meters into the room.

“Close the door. Keep watch for people,” an agonized voice said. “I can’t hold any longer.”

Then Ransome was twitching on the smooth floor while Aybee and Sylvia looked on in astonishment.

“Ransome. Are you all right?” Sylvia was crouching down next to him.

“Ransome may be fine.” The voice was down to a whisper. “But I’m Bey Wolf. Help me, Sylvia. I need five minutes clear.”

The body was jerking into violent spasm. The contorted face that looked up at Sylvia was still Black Ransome’s, but at the back of the pained eyes she saw something else. “Bey! Is it really you? What’s happening?”

The body had uncurled to full extension. It looked nine inches longer than before. The torso shivered. “I did what I told—my classes at Office of Form Control—never to do. Most stupid and dangerous thing in the world. Accelerated form-change, badly defined end-form—programmed from scratch—no chance to do parametric variations. I’m outside—region of stability. Size reduction through muscular contraction. Only have partial muscle control.” Ransome’s face worked to a twisted smile. “Five minutes more.”

“Hey, Wolfman, take your time.” Aybee looked out along the corridor, and then he slid the door closed. “We’re safe here. I’ll watch this. Sylv, see if you can help.”

“Don’t touch me. I’m getting there.” An internal crisis had passed, and the twists and jerks in Wolf/Ransome’s body were easing. “Aybee, you seem to know your way—around this place. How far—from the main communications center?”

“Half a kilometer. Back along the corridor, and then head out toward the periphery. The place will be guarded, though, and it’s not far from Ransome’s own quarters. Ransome might be there.”

“I don’t think so—I think he’s been off-habitat. Anyway, we have to take the risk. I have maybe—one hour, before I have to get back to a tank. This form’s a disaster.” Wolf was grunting with pain and effort, forcing his body back to the shorter, more compact shape of Black Ransome. “We should be able to get into the com center. No one here argues with Ransome—not even the Roguards. They told me how to find you without a question. Help me up, Sylvia.”

“You look terrible. Take more time.”

“We don’t have time. We’ve got to get to the communications center and send a message to the Cloud, saying where we are, before Ransome shows up again. Or someone does a random chromosomal check on me. Or I fall apart. Once the coordinates of this place are known, it doesn’t matter so much if we’re captured again. Right. Any time.”

The tics and twitches were subsiding, and the face had again smoothed to the pale, decisive countenance of Black Ransome. With Aybee leading the way and Sylvia ready to support Wolf if he needed it, they walked quietly on through the habitat and then made a turn outward. The twisting corridors were deserted, allowing Wolf to pause and rest along the way. During the final fifty yards Sylvia felt her face tighten with anticipation and tension and was sure she would be noticed. But the guards at the entrance to the communications facility merely stiffened to attention, stepped back a pace, and saluted as the three passed. Wolf/Ransome stood on the threshold and looked around. The center was empty. He nodded back casually to the guards and closed the door.

“That’s the most dangerous part over, at least for the moment.” Bey sighed and moved across to the hyperbeam unit. “I knew just what Ransome looked like, even how he moved and sounded—I saw more than enough of the Negentropic Man—but I didn’t know his speech patterns or the way he greets people.”

“Bey, we got troubles you don’t even know about.” Aybee held out a hand to prevent Wolf from touching the hyperbeam communication console. “It’s not safe to send a message to the Cloud—Ransome has Cinnabar Baker in his pocket. I’ve seen messages from her.”

Wolf shook his head and turned on the communications set. “It’s not news to me; I suspected as much. I didn’t like the idea when I had it myself, but I knew there was a leak—and I didn’t see how it could be anybody but Baker.”

“But if we can’t trust her, who can we trust?” Sylvia asked, “We don’t trust anyone. We send the message everywhere, spray it across the Inner and Outer Systems. Aybee, can you take over all the communications channels?”

“For a general broadcast?” Aybee glared at the panel for a few seconds, then slowly nodded. “Guess so. Takes a few minutes to set it up—and if I grab ’em all, we’ll be noticed. I’ll have to push a hundred other users right off the system. Everyone in Ransome’s Hole will head this way.”

“That’s a different worry. Get the com system ready. Sylvia and I will work on the message.”

“Give me five. Make me a formatted data set, all ready to send.” Aybee bent over the panel and began to work. After a few minutes he swore and looked up. “Problem. System’s not set up for general broadcast.”

“Can’t you jury-rig?” Bey could hear the sound of his own voice changing, and his hands were starting to tremble. He did not have long to get to a form-change tank.

“I can. But I’ll have to sit here and baby it. It’s a low data rate, too—I’m going to need half an hour’s transmission. But as soon as we start, this whole habitat will start to buzz.”

“Agreed.” Bey stood up. “Sylvia, you can finish the message. We want everyone in the system to know that Ransome is the cause of control and communications breakdown. Tell them the location data for Ransome’s Hole, what he’s been doing, all you know about him. Ask help from anyone who can give it. Say we need a hundred ships or a thousand, from anywhere in the system, and while you’re at it add a note saying that there’s a leak in Cinnabar Baker’s office. If it’s Baker herself, that takes care of it. If not, she’ll do something fast. And you, Aybee, as soon as you’re ready, grab the outgoing circuits and send the message.”

“What about you?” Sylvia had stood up when Bey did, supporting him as he swayed to his feet.

“I’ve got to guarantee Aybee his thirty minutes. Hold the fort here. Don’t try to leave, even if you finish sending the message. Just he low until I get back.”

“Bey, you look terrible.” Sylvia could feel his arm trembling. “I ought to come with you.”

“No. You couldn’t help me, and sending that message is top priority. Get it ready, then help Aybee send it.”

“What are you going to do?”

Bey gave her a wan smile. “I wish I knew. Don’t worry, I’ll think of something. Aybee, take a ten-second break and tell me how to get to Ransome’s personal quarters. Maybe I can cut off our trouble there, right at the top.”

Aybee nodded, paused for a moment, then rattled off a series of directions. Then he bent back to his control panel. It was Sylvia who watched unhappily as Bey blundered toward the door. He still resembled Ransome in general appearance, but his body language was subtly wrong. His movements had become jerky, with violent and random twitches of muscle in his arms and legs.

Sylvia kept silent and forced herself to watch him go. Bey thought he had another half hour before he was forced to find a form-change tank. She suspected that was irrelevant. Long before that, Bey would be unable to pass as Black Ransome to anyone with eyes or ears.

Chapter 27

There was silence in the communications center for five minutes after Bey left. Sylvia quickly completed the formatted message and defined a directory reference for it, but then she was reluctant to speak and break Aybee’s concentration. He was setting up the master sequence that would take over in one swoop every outgoing message circuit in Ransome’s Hole, and it was important to provide no hint of that intention until the moment came for override.

Finally he glanced across to Sylvia and nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be. Where’s the message?”

“I put it into a restricted access bank for safety—so no one can take a peek by accident.”

“Right idea. Password?”

“ ‘LUCKY.’ ”

“Yeah. Let’s hope.” Aybee entered the final call sequence and sat back in his chair. There was a moment’s pause, then a flicker of lights across the full display. He nodded. “Okay. We’re in business. Now the fun starts—people are being bounced off com circuits all over the habitat.”

“Will they know the command came from here?”

“Dunno. Probably. I couldn’t see any way to stop it, but I did my best to make ’em freeze. I slapped Ransome’s name on everything, so it looks like he’s the one grabbing circuits.” He stood up. “Keep your eye on that readout. If it goes to zero, yell. It means I’ll have to take over. We’ll be all done when it hits two eighty. Then we can release the channels.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Still don’t know. Bey said lie low, but we don’t want to just sit here. We need to be useful.” Aybee went to the door, opened it a fraction, and peered out. At once he drew back and allowed the door to close.

“What’s wrong?”

“Guys outside. Four of ’em.”

“Heading this way?”

“No. Not even looking. Just standing there. Bey’s doing, for a bet. He sent ’em here to stop anybody getting in. But it means we’re stuck.” Aybee stared around the communications center, then walked across to a horizontal trapdoor set in the curved floor. He lifted it and peered through.

“That won’t help.” Sylvia had followed his actions. “There’s only a kernel down there. The door just gives access to the outside of the shields. You won’t be able to get out that way.”

“I know. I just want to take a look. I’ve been itching to get close to a live kernel ever since I arrived here.” He paused with the trapdoor half-open. “How’s that counter?”

“Up to one seventy.”

“Going smooth. Let me take a little peek here.” Aybee lay down with his head through the opening of the trapdoor. “It’s a live one, all right. Whopping cable for the sensors. Big junction box, too—just like it was on the space farm’s kernel.” He craned farther into the opening, wriggling his body forward across the floor until only his hips and legs were visible to Sylvia. “And its own computer console.” His voice was muffled. “Seems like there’s a direct link from the kernel sensors to the habitat’s central computer. Now, why do that, unless…” Another eighteen inches of Aybee disappeared through the trapdoor.

The count in front of Sylvia had been climbing steadily. It finally reached 280 and froze there, lights blinking softly. A message complete indicator flashed on. She released all the com circuits and walked across to the trapdoor. She tapped Aybee on the thigh.

“What’s up?” His body twisted around so he could look at her.

“Nothing bad, but we’re all done with the message. If you want to go down there, you’ll find it easier feet first.” She waited as he turned, then followed him down the narrow ladder until they were both standing on the outer shield of a kernel. Sylvia stared down at the black, polished surface.

“How do you know this is an active kernel?”

Aybee pointed. “There’s the control unit for angular momentum. I’ve checked a bunch of ’em these last couple of weeks. Most of them aren’t connected to spin-up/spin-down systems, so they’re not ready as energy sources or energy storage. Matter of fact, I’m not sure just what they are doing.” He paused. “This is a live one, though. Hooked up and active and ready to roll.”

The kernel’s control panel was a compact unit sitting on the curved shield surface. Aybee squatted down by it. “So far, so good. Want first crack at it?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start. But if you know a way to tell what’s inside the shields, you can check what Bey suggested to me when we were working on the message. He thinks there’s some new form-change product in there, something that can survive near a kernel. He tried to scan the shield interior back on the Marsden Harvester, looking for something unusual, but he didn’t find a thing. He wasn’t sure he was doing it right, though. Leo Manx told him to ask you, because this is your line of work. But you were off having fun on the space farm.”

“Yeah. Had a great time there. Real pleasure trip.” Aybee was already at the control panel, staring vacantly at its complicated console. “This layout’s a strange one for a power kernel console. Too many functions. And it’s directly linked with the habitat’s central computer.”

“Can you scan the interior?”

“Dunno.” Aybee listed the control function menu and studied it for a few seconds. “Guess I can. Only thing inside the kernel shield—apart from the kernel—should be the radiation monitors. I’ll use them to do an interior scan and output it to the screen. We’ll pick up an image of anything inside the shields. But I’ll bet my butt that we don’t find anything in there.”

He turned on the display and set the interior monitors to perform a slow scan within the innermost kernel shield. The kernel itself, pouring out gigawatts of radiation and particles, appeared as a tiny, intense point of light on the monitor. The triple shields, reflecting back that sleet of energy, showed on the same monitor as a softer continuous glow.

They both stared at the screen, waiting in vain for any anomalous pattern. When the scan had finished, Sylvia shook her head. “That does Bey in. He was sure there had to be something inside. What now?”

“We gotta use pure logic.” Aybee was back at the controls. “One: There’s an information source inside the kernel shields. Two: There’s nothing inside the shield but the kernel. Therefore—nice clean syllogism—the kernel must be the information source. I’ve been skirting that for weeks, wondering if I’m off my head—but no one would let me get near a kernel and find out!”

“Aybee, let’s not get too ridiculous. A kernel is a power source. It isn’t an information source. And how can there be anything inside a kernel? It’s only billionths of a centimeter across. And even if there were anything inside, it couldn’t ever get a message out. A kernel is a black hole!”

Aybee was shaking his head and changing the scale on the output display. He had zoomed in to the area around the kernel itself. “Come off it, Sylv. Black holes stopped being black in the 1970s, two hundred and fifty years ago! Hell, you know that—why else do you need shields? You know black holes pump out particles and radiation. Every kernel has its own radiation temperature and its own entropy. Maybe its own signal.”

“But it’s too small! You couldn’t possibly pack a signal generator in such a tiny volume.”

“We don’t know how much space there is inside, or what the inside of a kernel is like—no idea at all. The interior has its own geometry, its own space-time signature, probably its own physical laws. Hell, people have been saying for centuries that the inside of a black hole is a ‘separate universe,’ but we never bother to think through the implication of that. If the inside of each kernel is a separate universe, anything could be in there—including somebody capable of communication.”

“Somebody? You mean something alive? How did it get in there?”

“Hey, you’d better define life for me. If you mean something capable of generating nonrandom signals, then, yeah, I mean alive. As for how it got there—it’s been in there all along.”

“But how? And what could something inside a kernel possibly want to say?”

“One question at a time, Sylv. Do you want to find out what’s going on, or do you want to run a debate? Remember, thermodynamics only tells what’s happening on average for a kernel’s radiation. It doesn’t say what gets emitted at any particular moment—so let’s take a look at this.” Aybee turned on a second screen. “We don’t see a thing when we just monitor the total radiation output of the kernel, because the average level is so high. But I can display the time variation of the radiation—the deviation from the average. See that fluctuation? Now, it could be a signal. Information, coming from the kernel—from nowhere. Just what Bey was looking for, as bad inputs to the form-change process. And I’ll bet this could be responsible for breakdown of communications all through the system. Don’t forget there are active kernels in all the important places, everywhere from the harvesters to the space farms. It could be the cause of the snake wrapped around the Kernel Ring, the giant woman walking across the space farm collector, flaming blue swords, giant red space hounds—you name it.”

Sylvia was studying the rise and fall of the radiation pattern. “But it doesn’t look like a signal. It’s like pure noise.”

“A perfectly efficient signal looks like noise—until you know the rules.” Aybee was tracing the circuits leading from the kernel monitors. “Before the signal can be interpreted, it needs to be decoded. And that’s where the computer systems must come in. See, this signal is fed as an input data stream to the computer—the central computer for Ransome’s Hole. Let’s have a look at what the computer thinks it is seeing. It starts by—uh oh.” He was staring at a new signal on the screen.

“What’s wrong?”

“Bad news for Bey.” The alert signal vanished and was replaced by a flashing message. “While I was playing with the com system, I took a precaution. I set up a priority interrupt for information about Ransome.” Aybee was frowning at the screen. “According to this, Ransome is in two places at once on the habitat. I asked for positional fixes, but all I get as an answer is ‘No Defined Location.’ Bey might run into the real Ransome.”

“Can you do anything about it?”

“Not one thing. We don’t even know where he is.”

“Then we have to keep going.” Sylvia was more intrigued than she had realized. “Let’s find out what we’ve got here. What’s the next step?”

Aybee did not answer for a minute or two, then marked a point on the screen with the cursor. “See that trace? It says there’s a program on the main computer system, one designed as an interface with this kernel. It ought to be the code/decode algorithm. We can try it. You stay right here, Sylv, and tell me what happens. I’ll go to the upper console and execute that module.”

Aybee scampered back up the ladder, leaving Sylvia to wonder what they were hoping to accomplish. It was difficult to see how fiddling with kernels could help them escape from Ransome’s Hole. But it was hard to stop Aybee when he had the bit between his teeth—and she did not want to stop any more than he did.

The lighting in the kernel shield chamber was poor, and Sylvia was forced to lean close to see the miniature control display. For another minute or two there was nothing to claim her attention. Then she noticed that the spin-up/spin-down mechanism on the kernel had suddenly been brought into action. It was adding and subtracting tiny bursts of angular momentum, far too little to make sense as power supplies.

“Are you doing that?” she called out.

“Doing what?” Aybee’s head appeared at the trapdoor.

“Spin up and spin down. But just little changes. Now it’s stopped.”

“I’ve been entering a question about kernel operation. But it shouldn’t cause kernel spin change.” Aybee was suddenly gone again. “How about that?” his voice called from above.

“Yes. It’s doing it again. And now I’m seeing a change in the kernel radiation pattern. What’s causing it?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ve got ideas. Hey!” His voice rose half an octave. “Did you just poke something down there? Touch the sensor leads, maybe?”

“I’m nowhere near them.”

“Well, I’m getting something wild on the display here. Come up and look at this.”

Sylvia hurried up the stairs and went across to Aybee at the console. The display was flickering with random lights. While they watched, it moved suddenly to a distorted pattern of letters. Sylvia gaped as the screen steadied and an intelligible message began to scroll in.

“Ready,” Aybee said. He added softly to Sylvia, “Let’s hope we are.”

Aybee blinked and stared at the panel. After a moment he shrugged. “My name is Aybee Smith.” His voice was suddenly husky and uncertain, and there was a moment’s pause before the vocoder could make the adaptation and a transcript of his words appeared on the display screen. “I am special assistant to Cinnabar Baker, general coordinator of the Outer System. I have with me Sylvia Fernald, responsible for control systems in the Cloud. Hey, more to the point. Query: Who the hell are YOU?”

Chapter 28

The interior of Ransome’s Hole rerninded Bey of a great cluttered warehouse. Scattered through it, seemingly at random, were hundreds of kernels, each enough to power a structure twice the total size. The minute singularities were distributed through the whole structure, held in position by electromagnetic harnesses and floating within their triple spherical shields.

With no other masses to provide gravity, the kernels defined the whole internal field of the habitat. Corridors curled and twisted, following the local horizontal; free-hanging cables snaked their anfractuous and eye-disturbing paths across open spaces, bending to follow invisible equipotentials. The floor of a corridor could veer through a right angle in a hundred feet and still provide a constant-gravity environment.

In Bey’s condition, the journey through the interior was one episode in a surrealistic nightmare. The spiraling geometry around him matched perfectly the reeling condition inside his head. He concentrated his attention on following Aybee’s instructions and staggered forward. Fortunately, the interior tunnels were almost deserted. He was beginning to hope that he would reach Ransome’s quarters unseen when he saw ahead of him an armed group of four security officers. Two of them were facing his way. There was no way he could avoid their attention, and in any case he knew no other way to his destination.

Bey put all his strength into standing upright and walking smoothly forward. When he was five paces from the group, he gave them a curt nod. “Busy?”

“No, sir.” The reply was prompt and respectful. “Not particularly.”

“Good. There’s an important message going out from Com Central, and I don’t want anything to disturb it. I want you to go there and make sure there are no interruptions until I return.”

It sounded feeble—he sounded feeble. But all he saw was a deferential nodding of heads. As the men moved past him, Bey risked his luck one more time. He reached out to take the hand weapon from the last man’s belt. “Let me borrow this. I’ll return it to you.”

He had gone too far—he was sure of it. But the man did no more than nod, say, “Yes, sir,” and hurry along after the others.

Bey stood without moving until they were all out of sight, then allowed himself to sag against the wall of the corridor. Standing erect and talking had been an enormous drain on his energy. He took one step forward and felt in midpace a shock go through his whole body. It was an internal vibration, a tremor of catabolism from every muscle and every nerve. Some inner barrier to destructive change had suddenly crumbled.

He set his mind on the turn in the corridor, twenty meters farther on, and thought of nothing beyond that point. He took one step. His body responded reluctantly and imprecisely to his will—but it moved. Another. One more. One more…

He was at the turn. How long had it taken? The next goal was… what? A change in color of the corridor, thirty paces away. He had to get to that; there was nothing beyond that. Another step, and then another.

He guided himself along the wall with one outstretched hand. There at last. His eyes sought out and recorded the next objective.

One more effort—twenty steps. Surely he could do that much?

And then one more. Don’t think, just move.

On the final approach to Ransome’s personal quarters, Bey caught sight of his own reflection in a silvered wall panel. He thought at first that he was facing a distorting mirror. His limbs hung stiff and awkward from his body, his eyes started bloodshot from their sockets, and there was a gray, pasty look to his face. He tried Ransome’s confident and commanding smile, and it was a madman’s leer.

He stepped closer to the shining surface. It was perfectly smooth and flat, producing no hint of distortion. And the closer he came, the less he looked anything like Black Ransome. He stretched his arms wide and flexed his shoulders. There was the click and crack of frozen joints. His muscles were on fire, and every sign of mobility was leaving him. More and more, he was a poorly made, ungainly scarecrow hung on a misshapen frame. He staggered on.

He had been prepared to bluff, lie, or fight his way into Ransome’s quarters. Now he was sure that he had passed the point where he had the strength to do any of those things. Fortunately, they were unnecessary. Perhaps Ransome was so confident of his own power to command loyalty that he scorned protection, or perhaps the area was protected only when Ransome was there; whatever the reason, Bey was able to pass unchallenged through the entrance.

Aybee had told him about the rococo style of the first chamber, with its great water globe filled with exotic fish. Otherwise, Bey would have added that to his growing list of hallucinations. He went on toward the inner suite of rooms. He had no idea how much time had gone by since he had left Sylvia and Aybee. They needed every minute he could give them. In the back of his mind he still held an unvoiced hope: If somehow he could capture or neutralize Ransome himself, the chance of escape from Ransome’s Hole still existed. He knew they could not wait for reinforcements. That would take weeks, even with an instant response to Aybee’s signal from the fastest ships of the Inner or Outer System.

At the door of the inner chambers he hesitated for a moment. Surely the message would have been completed. In any case, he dared not wait. He could feel the changes coursing through every part of his body. His long training allowed him to compensate for some of them, but he was close to the limits.

The weapon he was holding was set at the lethal level. He raised it, opened the door, and stepped through—and saw, no more than twenty feet from him, not Ransome but Mary.

Typically, she had ignored the standard dress code of Ransome’s Hole. She was wearing a dress of russet velvet with puffed shoulders and a choke collar, and on her head she wore a broad-brimmed green hat. She turned slowly at the sound of the sliding door, an imperious look on her face.

Mary was certainly playing a part—but which one? None that Bey recognized. He lowered the gun so that it was no longer trained on her midriff. Mary ignored it, anyway. She moved right in front of him and reached out to put her hands on his chest.

“Bey!” So much for the idea that he still resembled Ransome. “My poor sweet, what happened to you.”

“Where is Ransome?” His voice was failing, curdled in his throat.

“Bey, what are you doing here? I wanted to come and see you last week, but I was told you were no longer on the habitat. When did you get back?”

“I never left. Where is Ransome?”

“My poor love.” Mary was holding him away from her and inspecting him closely, touching beneath his eyes with a gentle finger. Bey realized for the first time that he was crying. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing to yourself, but I know what you have to do next. You look so sick. We’ve got to get you to a form-change tank—right this minute.”

“Soon. Not yet. Where’s Ransome?”

“Bey, you shouldn’t even be thinking of Ransome in your condition.” She was supporting him, holding him close. “You’re shivering all over. I have to look after you.”

“Where is Ransome?”

“I don’t—” Mary began. She was interrupted.

“If you are so interested in my whereabouts, Mr. Wolf, you might at least look at me.” The casual voice came from Bey’s left, from a shadowed part of the room. He jerked to face that direction. Ransome was standing there. As Bey raised the gun, the black-clad figure took two steps forward.

“No closer,” Bey said. “This is on maximum setting.”

“So it is. How very unfriendly.” Ransome sounded as calm and rational as ever. “Come now, Mr. Wolf, can we not dispense with these posturings of violence? We are both civilized men, and we have much to talk about.”

“Not true. You’re a murderer. We have nothing to talk about.”

“Let me persuade you otherwise. Do you realize, Mr. Wolf, that this is the third time that I have underestimated you? Really unforgivable on my part. But it makes me more convinced than ever of your value to my operations. You could do wonders for our security systems.”

“I’ll do nothing for you.” Bey waved the gun at Ransome. He was feeling increasingly dizzy and unable to talk. “Move back.”

“You will feel differently once you understand my mission.” Ransome moved another step closer to Wolf. “You regard the two of us somehow as ‘enemies,’ people on opposing sides of an argument. But we are not. You will surely admit that you owe no allegiance to the Inner System—they dismissed you after a lifetime’s work. As for the Outer System, those people have nothing in common with you. You and I can work together very well. So why not be practical? The old order of the Solar System no longer applies. It will soon be gone forever. Put away that gun and sit down. It is more dangerous to you than it is to me. And you and I must talk.”

“I’m past talking.”

“No, listen to him, Bey.” Mary clutched his arm, but she did not try to interfere with his aim. “He’s right. I’ve followed the reports from the Inner System. It’s a total mess there.”

“Sure. Because he—” Bey tried to gesture at Ransome and found his arm taking on a spastic movement of its own. “—has been doing his best to make it a mess. Can’t you see, Mary? He’s the cause of all the trouble.” Bey waved his arm again at Ransome. “I don’t have the time or taste for talking to you. Get back up against that wall.”

“Don’t be silly, Mr. Wolf.” Ransome advanced another step. “You escaped from your quarters. An unusual achievement, and one that I am quite willing to recognize. But beyond that you are powerless to influence events. You are in desperate physical shape, and you do not seem to understand reality. I can have a hundred people here to overpower you in a few minutes. So put away that gun.”

“Get back! Last warning.”

But Ransome was still coming forward, still smiling. And Bey was at the end of his strength.

It was now or never. With shaking hands he pointed the gun squarely at Ransome’s head, groaned, and fired.

There was the usual dazzling flash of blue. Bey sagged against the wall. Ransome had given him no choice—too many lives depended on stopping the man—but Bey was sick at what he had done. Would Mary forgive him, understand that he had had to do it?

As the Cherenkov radiation pattern died away, Bey raised his head. Unbelievably, Ransome was still moving. He had walked right through a high-intensity beam. That was totally impossible!

Cherenkov fringes appeared. As Bey watched, Ransome’s face turned yellow and began to bubble. The skin evaporated in bursting pockets of light, exposing the wall behind as their color swirls faded.

The bubbles of Ransome’s face were bursting in Bey’s own brain. He dropped the gun and sagged against Mary. “Field interference effects—a holograph!”

“Of course.” The image of Ransome was beginning to fade, and only his voice seemed to hover clear in the air. “How else could I appear to you when I am far away? And what a simpleton you must be, Wolf, if you imagine that I would not have taken precautions against both death and discovery!”

Ransome’s uniform was becoming transparent. His smile showed a black mouth, black teeth, as he turned to face Mary. “Leave this idiot now. He deserves to die. And from the look of it he hasn’t long to wait.”

He glared at Wolf and shook his head rebukingly, his face filled with contempt.

“I’m afraid I sadly overestimated you, Wolf. You’re a fool, no more intelligent than any of the others. Did you seriously believe that I would expose myself to possible death when my life’s work is unfinished? If you had agreed to cooperate, I could have saved you. But you tried to kill me—and that means your own death. Your life is finished. For me, and what I am going to do, it is just beginning.”

“No.” Bey’s throat was tightening. He had little time for more words. “You’re crazy, Ransome. You’re the one who doesn’t know reality. You are finished. A message was sent from here a few minutes ago. All circuits, to the Inner and Outer Systems. People know where you are, what you are, how many your actions have killed. You’re done for, Ransome, even if you don’t admit it. No matter where you run to, where you hide, you’ll be found and caught and brought to trial.”

The distorted image of Ransome’s face flared with anger and astonishment. “That was a truly intolerable act. And quite a futile one. I am not finished—I have scarcely started! And I have tools available to me beyond your imagining. I would say wait and see, but you will not live long enough for that. Die now, Wolf. Your time is over.”

Was it true? Did Ransome have more secret fortresses, other resources? Bey did not know, and he could no longer attempt analysis. If there were to be new battles with Ransome, others would have to fight them.

Black Ransome, Bey thought distantly. The air around Ransome was turning black. Or was it Bey’s own failing consciousness?

“Leave this ignorant fool, Mary, and follow me,” a curt voice said. And then even the dark shadow was gone.

Bey struggled to stand upright, to lean away from Mary. She was staring at him, holding him, her eyes wide and her face close to his.

“Bey! Can you hear me?”

Grim, grinning king. Ransome is gone, Ransome is gone. The words drifted through Bey’s mind. Ransome’s head was dissolved, faded to black. Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget… Bey tried to nod, failed, and felt his legs lose all their strength.

“Bey!” The voice was Mary, his Mary, infinitely sorrowful and far away. “I’m here.” He could no longer see her. He tried to grip her hand, but as he did so, all feelings withered from his fingertips.

Mary, dressed in white and strewing flowers. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. As he watched, she grew, thinned, paled, became Sylvia, frowned at him in disapproval. Too little, Bey Wolf, too hairy. Hideous. Without warning her features flowed and became those of Andromeda Diconis. Her lower lip was full, her face flushed with passion, her red hair—red hair? Mary’s hair, Mary’s husky voice saying, “There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned,” a pale face beneath flowing dark hair and an elaborate headdress. He had seen that costume before, many times.

Bey’s mind was a chaos of quantum states, transitions without warning or control, words and fragmented images intertwined.

I am dying, Egypt, dying; only I here importune death awhile, until of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips. In his mind be heard Mary speaking, saw again the cotton robe, the dark coiled hair, the tall headdress, and he fought against her grasp. But you’re not, Mary. I’m the one that’s dying. I have a rendezvous with death, at midnight on some flaming hill. But that’s not quite right, I’m remembering wrong. And this isn’t Earth. I’m dying here, far from Earth. Far from eve and morning, and yon twelve-winded sky.

I was always sure that I would die on Earth. In the evening, at the end of some perfect summer’s day. Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me.

He felt Mary’s arms tightening around him, holding him in the world. Then that sensation too was going. In the end there was nothing left, nothing to hold on to. The whole universe was blinking out of existence.

Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall And universal darkness buries all.

Bey was gone.

Chapter 29

Bey had fought hard against it, but the pressure was at last irresistible. He was driven up, reluctantly up—up to life, up to consciousness, up to discomfort, up as firmly and finally as a cork in a tidal wave.

He washed ashore to wakefulness, and for a while he lay with his eyes closed, rejecting the world. But he could not block out the sounds. Close to him was a clogged, asthmatic wheeze, the rattling breath of a human being close to death.

After two minutes Bey could stand it no longer. He allowed his eyes to open and at once came fully awake.

Perched on the open door of the form-change tank, no more than six inches from his face, stood Turpin. The crow’s head was tilted to one side, and its beady black eyes glared unblinkingly at Bey. It again produced a dreadful groaning wheeze and followed it with a gurgling cough.

That was echoed by a more distant throat clearing. Ten feet beyond Turpin sat Leo Manx, his face angry and reproachful. When he saw that Bey’s eyes were open, he nodded. “At last. Good. I will inform the others.”

He stood up and hurried out before Bey could ask the first of his dozens of questions.

Perhaps it was just as well. Bey could not speak. He leaned forward in the tank and coughed his lungs clear of dark, clotted phlegm as Turpin shuffled out of the way with a squawk of rage.

By the time he could breathe, Manx was back with Aybee.

Aybee stared at the spotted floor in front of Bey. “You got me here to see that? Gross, Leo. Extremely gross.”

Bey ended a final coughing fit. “How long?” he asked. “How long was I—” He ran out of air.

But he already had some idea of the answer. A trip from the Outer System took weeks. If he and Leo were in the same room, a long time had passed. Even before he saw Leo, Bey knew that he had been in the tank for an extended session. He could feel it in the mutability of every cell.

“Thirty-six days.” Aybee looked accusingly at Bey. “Sleeping your head off, Wolfman. And you missed all the fun.”

“You were in desperate shape,” Manx said. “The form-change that you did… unmonitored… most ill advised—”

“I know. I’m supposed to be dead. You caught Ransome?”

“No.” Leo Manx was still looking annoyed. “He got clear away. We have no idea where he went, where he is, what he’s doing. Naturally, we’re still looking.”

“Mary?” Bey’s wind had gone again, and he was wheezing. He suddenly realized where Turpin had found the inspiration for that tortured breathing.

“She’s here.” Aybee paused, then caught the next question in Bey’s look. “On Ransome’s Hole, I mean. We’re still on the habitat.” He grinned. “Us and more people than I ever wanted to see in my life. Everybody you ever heard of is here.”

“Answering our message?”

“Yeah, and another one I sent a bit later. That one pulled ’em here in droves. Sylvia’s about ready to go into hiding. Hey, can you walk better than you talk? If so, you can see for yourself why things are running wild.”

“I can walk.” Bey considered the prospect. “Maybe.”

“Then let’s do it. You have to see this for yourself.”

Bey stood up, almost toppled over, and realized as he did so that he was back in his old Earth shape. “How the devil…”

“Mary Walton,” Aybee said. “She didn’t really know how to do it, but when you collapsed, she grabbed and stuffed you any-old-how into a form-change tank. Set you up short and hairy—the way she knew best. Just in time, too. Sylvia saw the monitors when she got there. Five more minutes, you’d have been fertilizer.”

“That’s what I feel like.” Bey slowly followed Aybee out of the room, allowing his body to drift along in the low gravity. So Mary was there, and so was Sylvia. Between them they had dragged him back from the edge.

He was glad to be alive. But no one else seemed too pleased. “What’s making Leo so angry?”

“He was locked up for a week. He blames you.” Aybee was leading the way into the central communications area. “Cinnabar’s even madder. Sit down there.”

Bey looked slowly around. He had sat in this chair before. He remembered coming here with Sylvia and Aybee—just. He must have been far gone.

“Why are they mad?”

“They’ll tell you.” Aybee was not listening. He was at the console, his long body tight with excitement. “Lock in and hold on to your skull. We’re going on-line.” He spoke into the vocoder. “RINI connect. Identification: Apollo Belvedere Smith. Reference: Anomalous signal generation, defined in session 302. Query: What is status?”

He turned to Bey. “Takes a few seconds. Far as I can see, that’s for encoding and decoding at this end. Their replies are instantaneous. Someday we’ll know how.”

“Whose replies?”

Before Bey could get an answer the screen was filling. The words on it echoed through the lock into Bey’s ears.

“Computer still can’t translate times,” Aybee said to Bey. “That’s what ‘no equivalent’ probably means. I’m wondering if the Rinis have times in our sense. If not, this next bit won’t mean much to them, either.” He said to the vocoder, “All angular momentum changes for identified kernels will cease in three more days. Query: Can you confirm we have complete list?”

“We will provide. Request that the following message be sent to access point 073. Transfer message begins. ‘Cinnabar Baker leaving Ransome’s Hole in four hours. Expect arrival at Brouwer Harvester nine days from now.’ Transfer message ends.”

“We will provide all the general data banks.” Aybee grimaced at Bey. “Want to say anything? No. All right, let’s cut it. Request: Session end.”

“Off-line.” Aybee turned away from the vocoder, grinning with mad satisfaction.

“What the hell was that all about?” Bey was feeling angry, but he recognized it as one of the mood swings that accompanied emergence from the tanks. “I assume you’re willing to tell me.”

“Sure. Just a minute.” Aybee set up a control sequence. “Got to give them the data—they want the general system data bank sent through. It’s a hell of a job. Going to take months.” He leaned back. “You had it half-right, you see. The source of spurious information that was screwing up form-change and everything else is inside the kernel shields.”

“But not a changed form, the way I thought it had to be?”

“No. It’s something inside the kernels themselves. It—or they—sends out the standard radiation stream, but it’s modulated to carry messages. It’s your source of negative entropy.”

Aybee spoke casually, but he could not hide his excitement. From anyone else, Bey would not even have listened. With Aybee, he had to take it seriously. “You know that what you’re saying sounds impossible.”

“Sure does. That’s why it’s so interesting. Wolfman, I keep telling the coordinators, but they still can’t grasp the importance of this. Nor could Ransome. Even though he was using the Rinis for his own purposes, he missed the real point.”

“He was the one who discovered this.”

“Not proven. Somebody in the Kernel Ring stumbled across it, but I’ll bet it wasn’t Ransome himself. They were spinning up and spinning down kernels. Routine stuff, the usual energy storage and extraction. But the things inside one of the kernels could detect the change in angular momentum. They hated it—it affected their inertial reference frames. But they’re smart. They figured out the cause and modulated the radiation emission in reply—sent a signal, in effect. After that it was a straight programming job at this end, signal encode and decode. The trick was to spot first that it was a signal.”

“Inside the kernel.” Bey stared down at the floor. A billion-ton kernel had an event horizon only a few billionths of a nanometer across. The ultimate hidden signal source. “They call themselves Rinis?”

“No. They don’t call themselves anything at all, far as I can tell. That’s the code name I gave them. The computer answer to anything I asked at first seemed to be R.I.N.I.—’Received Information Not Interpretable’—so I stuck ’em with it. I’m getting better at questions now, though.”

“Who are they, Aybee?”

“Can’t give you one answer. Everybody asks me, but I say it’s too early for that sort of question. Intelligent, sure. Smarter than us, could be. A species, maybe. But it’s more like they’re a new universe. A whole cosmos. I’m not ready to worry that. I’m still getting my head around a bit of their science. They gave Ransome a bundle of things—new drives, new communications—but there’s a lot more than he realized. We’re going to get some wild theories out of this.”

“They’re more advanced than we are?”

“Yeah.” Aybee paused. “Or maybe I mean maybe. I don’t know how to compare. If I wanted to talk fancy like Leo, I’d say it’s like their science is orthogonal to ours. They move along a completely different axis of understanding. It’s easy to use their ideas, and hell to understand ’em. I’m still having trouble with the basics. Like, are the Rinis a single entity or a finite—or an infinite—number of entities? That sounds weird, but from what I can see of their counting it’s based on nondenumerable sets instead of integers.”

“They can’t be a single entity. There has to be at least three of them.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve seen that many kernels putting out false form-change information.”

“That would be true if each kernel were totally separate. We used to think that. Now I’m sure it’s wrong. The kernels—at least the kernels involving the Rinis—”

“Isn’t that all of them?”

“No. That’s why Ransome had to switch kernels on the space farm. He wanted to get one of his special kernels out when it had done its job. But the Rini kernels are connected somehow. What’s known by one is known by all of them. At once, no matter how far away. That’s what brought so many ships here. I sent a message saying I might have a system for instantaneous communication, across any distance.”

“But if they all connect, they’re only one object.”

“Not to us. We think they’re separate objects. But to them, their space could still be singly connected. It’s like Flatland. To a being living in two dimensions, on a flat floor, each leg of a chair meets the floor separately and must be a separate object. That’s the way the kernels seem to us. But in a higher-dimensional world—their world—they are all connected, all parts of one chair.”

“But then you shouldn’t be able to supply energy and angular momentum to each kernel separately.”

“Why not? You can paint one leg of a chair.” Aybee turned to Bey. “Hey, I’m glad you’re back in circulation. I’ve been wanting talks like this for weeks, but nobody seems to care. Cinnabar and Leo and the rest of ’em are all too busy running around talking politics and stopping wars, and there’s all this really good stuff needs looking at. Do you know how the drive the Rinis gave Ransome works?”

“No. But it can wait until tomorrow.” Bey stood up. “I’m tired now. Don’t bother to get up. I can make it out of here on my own.”

He was being sarcastic. Aybee had shown no sign of moving. In fact, as soon as Bey had said he was leaving, Aybee bad nodded and turned the computer on again.

Bey’s feelings were more complicated. Everything that Aybee had said was fascinating, but Bey was getting tired. More than that, he was restless, to the point where sleep was out of the question. Without any conscious plan he set out to follow a familiar path, drifting along the corridors that led from the communications center to Ransome’s private quarters.

When he opened the door, he thought that the outer chamber was unoccupied. Then he noticed Sylvia Fernald standing around by the side of the great water globe, staring in at the fish. Next to her was Cinnabar Baker, even thinner than when Bey had last seen her.

They had their backs turned, but Baker somehow sensed his approach and swung around. When she recognized him, she produced a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “At last. I’ve waited a month to be rude to you.”

“You and Leo both.” Bey was not getting the praise he had expected. You’d think that when somebody nearly killed himself to make sure an important message got out… “I guess you weren’t the information leak out of the harvesters.”

“Of course I wasn’t. But I had quite a time proving it. You made it sound as though the only ones who could be leaking information to Ransome were me or Leo—and then you ruled out Leo.”

“That’s the way it looked. It had to be somebody close to you, and it had to be someone who moved with you from one harvester to another. And Leo and Aybee were away with us on the space farm.”

“True.”

“So that means—”

But Cinnabar Baker had spun around and was heading for the door. “Figure it out,” she said over her shoulder. “Or if you can’t, Sylvia can tell you about it.”

Bey stared after her. “She is mad. I wouldn’t want to argue with her when she’s like that.”

“She’s been furious for weeks. I’ve never seen her so angry. But not at you. At Ransome. He did the unforgivable thing.”

“Worse than trying to take over the system?”

“Much worse, if you’re Cinnabar Baker.” Sylvia sat down on a long bench by the side of the water globe and patted the seat next to her. “Sit down, before you fall down. You look exhausted.”

“What did Ransome do?”

“Baker wouldn’t have minded as much if he had done it to her, personally. But Ransome’s people got hold of Turpin. They put an audiovisual tap into his head. Everything the crow saw and heard was transmitted straight to Ransome, and Baker never went anywhere without Turpin—he even slept in her bedroom. She realized what was happening when she saw the viewing angle of some of the shots. Worst of all, the tap hurt, and the feed for it made poor old Turpin nearly blind and deaf. When Baker found that out, she wanted to wring Ransom’s neck with her own hands.”

“Where is he?”

“We don’t know yet. But we’ll track him down.”

“I’m not sure of that.” Bey finally sat down next to Sylvia. He had become used to being tall, and it was disconcerting to find that his head again came only to her shoulder. His hands were feeling numb, and he rubbed them together. “Ransome was clever enough to make a bolt hole for himself. He’s still as charismatic as ever, and he’ll always be able to draw people to him.”

“I know. Paul thinks Ransome makes the Sun shine. But next time he tries anything we’ll be ready. Ransome’s finished, but he doesn’t know it yet. I almost feel sorry for him. Mary told me—”

“Where is she? I wanted to thank the two of you for saving me.”

Sylvia looked at him and put her hand gently on his shoulder. “She didn’t leave a message, Bey? She said she would.”

“I didn’t check.”

“I’m sorry. Mary left Ransome’s Hole. Yesterday, and secretly. I knew she was going to do it, and I suppose I should have tried to stop her. But I didn’t. She’s going to look for Ransome, wherever he is.”

The numb feeling was spreading from his hands through his whole body. Mary had gone. Left him again. He accepted the fact instantly. It was something he had sensed when he had entered the chamber and did not find her.

“That’s terrible.” He took a deep breath. “I thought she really loved me.”

“She does; she always will. She told me that, and she had no reason to lie.”

“But she prefers Ransome.”

“She didn’t say that. But she said that Ransome needs her more than you do.”

“How can she possibly think that?”

“The last time I talked to Mary, she told me to ask you something.”

“She seems to have told you an awful lot.”

“She did. But here’s her question. ‘Before Bey tells you his heart is broken,’ she said, ‘ask him this: Of all the things that have happened to him since he left Earth, which has been the most exciting and satisfying? And ask him to think before he answers.’ ”

“The most exciting—”

“You’re not doing what Mary asked. Think first.”

“I am thinking.”

And he was. The most exciting. Was it looking out of the ship for his first sight of a harvester… or the strange, perverse pleasure of the first meal with Sylvia… the satisfaction when he learned that the Dancing Man was not a dream of his own unstable mind… the space farm rescue… the giddy time with Andromeda Diconis, sampling the pleasure centers of a hedonistic habitat… the thrill of Mary’s voice where he had never expected it? Making love to her? Or… a memory flooded in, total and satiating. Bright yellow tracers ran again in his mind.

“It was when—” He paused, then the words were wrung out of him reluctantly, one at a time. “It was when I was looking for the reason for the wrong form-changes. And when I realized that the source of the problems must be inside the kernel shields. But I could never describe that feeling to anyone. And there’s no way that Mary could have known it.”

“Of course not. She doesn’t think that way. She didn’t know about the form-changes, and she didn’t know about the Rinis. But she sensed what sort of answer you had to give, if you were truthful. Because she understands you very well. Don’t you see it, Bey?” Sylvia put her arms around him. “Mary needs to be needed. When you needed her, she saved you—even when you were still back on Earth and didn’t know you needed her. Ransome wanted to cause chaos and stir up trouble between the Inner and Outer Systems. He knew that form-change equipment would be more sensitive than anything else to the Rini effects on information flow, so trouble would show up there first. Anyone who might understand what was happening had to be dead, insane, or converted, and it seemed easier to drive you crazy than to kill or convert you. But Mary found out what he was doing. She scrambled their signals so that the images you received were distorted and less effective.”

“They were almost too much.”

“But they weren’t. You stayed sane. She would have taken any risk for you. And Ransome needs her now, and she’ll take risks for him. You want Mary—but Ransome needs her.”

“I almost died for Mary, back on Earth.”

“Did you? Leo told me that you had the Dream Machine on a medium setting—low enough to break out of it when you decided you wanted to.”

Bey stared mindlessly into the great water globe. A small, red-throated fish had come drifting lazily toward them and was poised at the curved transparent wall. It stared goggle-eyed at the two humans, looking at the universe beyond the barrier. That had been Bey before he came out there. Tucked away in his own little fishbowl, safe and warm below a blanket of atmosphere.

Earth. Suddenly he had a great longing to be back there, to see blue sky and drifting clouds.

“I’m going back, Sylvia. My job here is finished. The Rinis are interesting, and they’re going to change our whole universe, but they will be Aybee’s lifework, not mine.”

“I know.” Sylvia was still holding Bey. “Aybee’s going to miss you. He’d never say it, but you’re his idol, you know.”

“Hard luck for Aybee.”

“He could do a lot worse. Mary told me one other thing. She said that when you met her out in the Halo you talked a lot about me. She didn’t speculate why, but I think you were trying to make her bring you here.”

“I was. It was the only way I could think of to do it. I wanted to make her jealous, so she would want to bring me along and see I preferred her to you. I don’t mean that I do prefer her to you, but…”

Sylvia was shaking her head. “Bey, when I hear you say things like that, I wonder if you know anything about women at all. If Mary had been the least jealous, or thought for a moment that you were interested in me, the last thing she’d do is encourage a meeting.”

“But that’s exactly what she did.”

“Do you need it written out for you? You didn’t talk Mary into bringing you with her to Ransome’s Hole—she was intending to do that all along!”

“But you said there was no way she would—”

“Not so you could see if you liked Mary better than me.” Sylvia’s voice was warm. “You hairy, self-centered little ape. Mary did it for her purposes, not yours. She wanted to see if she liked you better than Ransome. But after she heard you talk about me, she said she felt less guilty about leaving to follow him.”

Bey sat for a few seconds in silence, staring into the blue-green depths of the water. He was feeling tired but not the slightest bit heartbroken. Even the revelation of Mary’s motives did not upset him.

“I’m a total idiot, you know,” he said at last.

“We’re all idiots.”

“I’m the worst. I thought I was being so clever with Mary. I’m going back, Sylvia. Back to Earth, back to something I’m good at. To the Office of Form Control again, if they’ll have me. But I’m really going to miss you and Aybee and Leo. I’m even going to miss Cinnabar and old Turpin, but I’ll miss you most of all. Would you come and visit me—see the Inner System for yourself?”

“Among all those little hairy Sunhuggers?” He knew she was laughing at him. “What do you think I am?”

“I think you’re a big, heartless skeleton that pretends to be a woman. Earth’s not as bad as you think. I think you’d like it. Will you do it? Come and visit?”

“I’m not sure.” She ran her finger along the hair on his wrist and refused to look at him. “No promises. But we’ll see.”

Bey nodded. It was all the answer he could expect, but it was enough.

He looked again into the water globe. The little red-throated fish was up against the wall, and it was still staring out at him. It had no eyelids, but Bey felt sure that it was trying to wink.