The Ceres Solution

Chapter Twelve

The domed blue ceiling of Vekrynn’s office was like an empty sky, and the sparse furnishings—devoid of individuality—were a reminder that the room’s nominal occupant viewed the material world with an Olympian perspective. There was a lack of warmth which had nothing to do with the air temperature, rather a sense of coldness seeping backwards from the end of time.

Intimidating though the ambience was, Gretana was unable to look anywhere but at Vekrynn tye Orltha himself. Years on Earth had insensibly accustomed her to the proportions of Terran males, with the result that the Warden seemed more than ever like a titanic statue moulded in all the noble metals. The gilt helmet of closely waved hair, the platinum of the embroidered tunic, the brown eyes needled with gold—all had the effect of irradiating the surrounding space. As she approached him she felt a sudden faith that his resources were more than enough to render her problems insignificant.

“Fair seasons, Warden,” she said, with more confidence than she would have thought possible an hour earlier.

“You,” Vekrynn replied, ignoring the greeting, “are even more stupid than you are ugly—and, believe me, that means stupid.”

“Sir, I…” The insult roiled through Gretana’s mind, demoralising her with its crudity, and all at once it was as though she had never been to Earth. She was the Gretana ty Iltha who had lived a sequestered life in a Karlth suburb long ago—pathetic, unlovely and vulnerable.

“I’d like to know what you thought you were doing. What made you bring that object here?”

“There was no time to…” Gretana, who had been unconsciously drawing herself up into her old mirror-watching attitude, was jarred by the word which Vekrynn had applied to Denny Hargate. She dredged up the self-control to make her shoulder muscles relax, to stave off the prickling that had begun to blur her vision.

“He isn’t an object,” she said quietly, numbed by her temerity in challenging the Warden. “He’s a human being, and he was dying.”

Vekrynn came towards her, looming. “Is that supposed to be something new on Earth?”

“It’s new for each person it happens to,” she said, willing herself not to back down in response to the overwhelming psychic pressure being exerted by the Warden.

“This is incredible,” Vekrynn half-whispered, drawing near. “I never thought that you, of all the observers I’ve recruited, would have the…” His eyes hunted over her face, speculative and oddly cautious, then he turned and walked back to his desk. He sat down in the high-backed chair and when he looked towards Gretana again she was surprised to see that he was smiling.

“You made me lose my temper, Gretana ty Iltha, and that is quite an achievement,” he said. “Now, let’s see if you can distinguish yourself even further by correctly divining why I got angry.”

Gretana was disconcerted. “I broke the law. I disobeyed a prime directive, but there was no…” Her voice faded as she saw that Vekrynn, still smiling, had begun to shake his head.

“Laws. Directives. Regulations. They’re very important to us, but at the same time they are only abstractions, which means they are quite unimportant compared to some other things—for example, a human life. I know you acted on impulse, but what’s going to happen to this poor creature Hargate now? He can’t be sent back to Earth, knowing what he does, and there is no place for him in our society.” Vekrynn waited for his words to take effect.

“From what I’ve been told, Hargate is a very sick person, in all probability one whose intellect and experience are severely limited, even by Terran standards. I can arrange to have him institutionalised, of course, but the severity of the culture shock that would involve is inconceivable. In your attempt to be kind you have condemned him to end his days in isolation from everybody and everything he knows and cares about, in total confusion and bewilderment.”

“I didn’t think of it like that,” Gretana said, aware that she was being truthful on two separate levels. In skording with Hargate to Station 23 she had acted with absolutely no thought for the future—nor could she, now that she knew him, imagine the acid-tongued and quick-tempered Terran being intimidated by alien surroundings. He would possibly be afraid, but—another fragment remembered from conversation with Lorrest—it was the Mollanians entrusted with his welfare who were likely to experience culture shock. Thoughts of Lorrest reminded Gretana she had not yet told Vekrynn the reason for her unscheduled return. It should have been the first thing to be discussed, but the Warden had been too busy telling her she was stupid and ugly…

“Let’s go on with the guessing game,” Vekrynn said. “Give me two more reasons for being angry with you.”

Gretana, still unable to gauge the Warden’s mood, shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“One of them is the harm you’ve done your own career—I’m supposed to return to you to Mollan for arraignment—the other is the fact that you have involved me. You see, I have no intention of surrendering a member of my team, and that means I must commit certain infringements and do a lot of talking and go to a lot of trouble that I wouldn’t otherwise have had.” Vekrynn took time to produce a wintry smile. “I’m a busy man, young Gretana, and I would have been happy to forego all this.”

“I’m quite prepared to return to Mollan and accept the…”

“Nonsense! You’re going back to Earth, where you can be of some service to the Bureau, and the Terran is going with me.”

“Where to?” Gretana said, having difficulty in keeping up with the pace of the exchange.

“I have a private estate—a retreat, you might call it—on Cialth. It’s a very pleasant world and I have permanent staff there, so the Terran will be well looked after. He will be my private guest for as long as it takes for him to…for the time remaining to him.”

The resentment caused by Vekrynn’s opening remark began to fade from Gretana’s mind as she strove to modify her attitudes towards him. She had hoped for clemency and understanding, but it had never occurred to her that a man in the Warden’s position would personally shoulder the responsibility for her ill-considered actions.

“Don’t stand there dreaming,” Vekrynn snapped. “Go back to the Terran, put him into his conveyance and bring him out to the node. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

“But I…”

“Do it now!” Vekrynn’s eyes projected ancient and overwhelming authority.

Gretana nodded and almost at once found herself hurrying through the long ante-chamber where three-dimensional star maps floated in the dimness. The corridors and offices of the station were unnaturally deserted, and she wondered if people were keeping out of Vekrynn’s way or if he had ordered a general clearance for reasons of his own. She entered the room which had been set aside for Hargate’s improvised treatment. He was still asleep, lying exactly as she had left him, looking too ill and broken to be alive. The incongruity of his Earth-style clothing was an indictment to Gretana. She worked both hands under the slight figure and, once again daunted by his lack of body mass, placed him in the wheelchair which had been parked in a corner. Hargate grunted noisily during the process, and by the time she had arranged his legs in positions of apparent comfort he was wide awake and alert.

“If you’ve finished taking liberties with my person,” he said, “would you mind telling me what’s happening?”

Gretana copied his tone, sparing herself explanations. “You’re going on a wonderful vacation to a planet called Cialth. You’re going to be very happy there.”

“How about you?”

“I’m going back to Earth.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of this.”

“I don’t think either of us has any choice in the matter,” Gretana said firmly, grasping the handles on the back of the chair and propelling it into the corridor.

“What’s all this crap about me going on a vacation?” Hargate demanded, twisting to look up at her. “What’s going on here anyway?”

“The Warden is taking you to one of his private residences.”

“Why should he do that? I don’t want to go with him.”

Closing her ears to his protests, Gretana wheeled Hargate at speed along the corridor, through the square outermost chamber and out into the permanent floodlighting of the central plaza. Hargate lapsed into stillness as he saw the herculean figure of the Warden of Earth waiting at the focus of the nodal mosaic. It was as though Vekrynn’s psychic energies had reached across the intervening space and swamped all activity in the little Terran’s nervous system, imposing complete paralysis. Gretana, in spite of comparative familiarity, felt that she was breasting concentric rings of numinous power as she went towards Vekrynn, and she could only guess at the effect on Hargate. It occurred to her that it would be almost impossible to find two men who were more dissimilar in every circumstance of their existences, and hers was the responsibility for bringing them together.

“This is the man I brought from Earth,” she said, using English for Hargate’s benefit. “Sir, this is Dennis Hargate.”

Vekrynn glanced down at Hargate, turned away immediately and spoke in Mollanian. “It has occurred to me that we may be under observation here. I want to create the impression that I am personally escorting you to one of the Bureau’s administrative centres, but the subterfuge won’t work if we are seen using different mnemo-curves for different destinations. It embarrasses me to behave like a conspirator, but you have managed to limit my options.

“The three of us will transfer together to a disused site, one I can reach without using a physical mnemonic. When we get there I’ll give you the address of your assigned node on Earth. You will go directly to Earth and resume your duties, and I will transfer the Terran to Cialth with me. Is that clearly understood?”

“It’s quite clear,” Gretana said, still using English, “but shouldn’t we explain what we’re doing so that…?”

“I am breaking certain laws on your behalf,” Vekrynn interrupted. “In return I expect your discretion. I also expect you to understand, if it doesn’t place too great a strain on your intellect, that explaining my actions to an inhabitant of Earth hardly constitutes discretion. You will therefore speak nothing but Mollanian until we part company—an event I hope will take place in the very near future.”

“I’m sorry,” Gretana said, her thoughts thrown into disarray by Vekrynn’s reversion to open insult. No subtlety at all—in case I miss the point, she told herself. That kind of insult is an insult. The implication was that Vekrynn’s famed diplomacy was a myth, or that the current situation was placing him under a far greater strain than she had imagined. She turned to Hargate and saw that he was staring up at the Warden with a curious intensity, his eyes reflecting the surrounding lights as miniature diadems.

“Are you ready to go?” Vekrynn took Gretana’s left hand in his right.

“Of course.” Gretana caught one of Hargate’s hands and tried to raise it into the tripartite clasp which was usual when three people were skording together, but before the union could occur Vekrynn drew back with sudden force.

“You hold the Terran,” he said, and something in his expression told her that he had already begun to formulate the address of their destination in his mind. She had time for one upward glance to where the brightest stars penetrated the canopy of radiance, for one pang of wonderment over the realisation that they were about to vault across the sky, then there was the familiar sense of loosening.

Gretana gasped aloud as yellow-and-orange brilliance washed over her in a silently explosive dazzle. They were at the centre of a nodal mosaic which differed from any that she had seen before in that it was composed of reddish tesserae and was overgrown with honey-coloured moss. At the perimeter were ruins of buildings which might once have been part of a Bureau station, and beyond there was a fantastic forest of transparent amber trees whose branches appeared almost to burn with refracted and mirrored sunlight. The sun itself was gold fire in an awning of gold, and its heat probed immediately at every opening in Gretana’s tweed suit.

“Move away from the Terran,” Vekrynn said, releasing her hand. She did as instructed, trying to ignore Hargate’s spasmodic twitch of alarm as he divined what was happening.

“This world is more than two hundred light years from Earth, but it is linked by a major skord line to your Carsewell node, so you will have no difficulty in returning there in one step.” Vekrynn’s uniform and hair shimmered as he recited the relevant Mollanian transfer equation. He concluded by ordering her to leave immediately.

Gretana hesitated. “May I have a minute to say goodbye to…?”

Vekrynn seemed to grow taller. “Go…now!”

“You can’t leave me.” Hargate’s twanging voice was urgent, and he was leaning forward in his chair as though trying to launch himself towards her. “For Christ’s sake, you can’t leave me here with…”

His words were lost to Gretana as, with the new equation still fresh in her mind, she raised her right hand and curved it down through the bright air.

The transfer, the guaranteed miracle of Mollanian mind-science, took place.

It was late afternoon in the state of New York, and the approach of dusk had been accelerated by the snowfall which was general throughout the area. The snow was in the form of small and quite solid particles which descended vertically with no tendency to float. Gretana could actually hear it sifting downwards like salt through the trees which screened the nodal point on Cotter’s Edge. She remained perfectly still, numbed by the knowledge that she had stood on three widely separated worlds in little more than a single minute, and tried to adjust to this latest version of reality. The little clearing was permeated with a chill grey sadness which was accentuated by the stray gleams of light visible on the tree-fragmented horizon to the east. On the ground beside her, now stippled with white, was the plaid travel rug which Denny Hargate had discarded when she had seen him…How long ago?

Gretana looked at the calendar display on her watch and her bemusement increased as she confirmed that the incredible sequence of events had begun on the morning of the same day. So much had happened since then that she could scarcely remember her reasons for returning to Station 23 in the first place…

Lorrest!

The abrupt recollection of the renegade’s name was accompanied by the almost painful realisation that she had actually been in Vekrynn’s presence without telling him why she was there. One explanation was that she had allowed herself to be swamped by fears, worries and distractions; another—doubtless to be preferred by Vekrynn—was that she had been stupid. His opinion of her intelligence was low, but what would he say on hearing that she had travelled twenty light years to deliver an important report, incidentally committing the monumental blunder of taking a native Terran with her, and in the end had returned to Earth without passing on the vital information?

In spite of the winter temperature, a tingling warmth ascended Gretana’s face as she visualised the Warden’s all-too-likely reaction. Elongated seconds, each one bringing nightfall a finite step nearer, dragged by while she stood—alone and undecided—in the twilight, listening to the furtive whispers of the falling snow.