The Ceres Solution

Chapter Eighteen

“Fair seasons, Gretana! I must apologise for keeping you waiting,” Warden Vekrynn said with a handsome smile. “The past few days have been somewhat…unusual.”

“I quite understand, sir.” Looking at Vekrynn across the broad expanse of his desk, Gretana again realised the futility of trying to anticipate his reactions to anything. She had been certain, especially in view of the recent demands on his time, that the Warden would have been even more brusque than on the last occasion they had met. Instead, he appeared relaxed and cheerful. There was even a trace of excitement in his manner, which had the effect of making him seem humanly approachable to an unprecedented degree.

“I’m sorry, too, about the way I treated you. I was trying to deal with some very important, very urgent matters at the time, and the last thing I needed was an inquisitive Terran dumped in my lap.” Vekrynn renewed his smile. “Nobody ever did that to me before.”

“I panicked,” Gretana said, the Warden’s unexpected courtesy increasing her dread of what was to follow.

“So did I, a little, but that doesn’t excuse my mistreatment of a co-worker. I hope you understand that we have been going through a crisis. I’ve been forced to move ships and large quantities of equipment into the vicinity of Earth—all because of a missing asteroid.”

Gretana took a deep breath. “Lorrest tye Thralen was in touch with me days ago, trying to win me over to 2H. I tried to tell you, but somehow I didn’t.”

To her astonishment, Vekrynn looked unconcerned. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, young Gretana,” he said mildly.

“But he came back, and…and I had to tell him how to find the Carsewell node. I’m responsible for his escape from Earth.”

“I know—Ichmo has already given me the gist of your report. I’ll say this much for you—when you do something wrong you do it in the most spectacular manner possible.”

“I…” Gretana’s sense of unreality grew stronger. “I was afraid to tell you. I was sure you’d be…”

“Furious?” Vekrynn leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk, creating an inverted pearly image of himself on the polished surface. “Don’t get the wrong impression. What you did was a very serious infringement of regulations, and this time you’ll hardly be able to avoid some kind of punishment, but the important thing right now is that the madmen in 2H have made a fatal mistake over this Ceres affair. Their attempt to destroy Earth’s satellite has failed, and the very fact that they made it is going to bring real trouble down on their heads. The Bureau will now get all the Government backing it needs to deal with them. It doesn’t matter where Lorrest tye Thralen has slunk off to—I’ll be able to find him.”

“Perhaps I can help,” Gretana said, still bemused by the Warden’s casual acceptance of her misdeeds. “He said he was going to find Denny Hargate, and I have an odd idea that he really meant it.”

“I don’t think he would go to Cialth.”

“According to Lorrest, Hargate isn’t on Cialth.” Gretana paused, filled with an unaccountable sense of imminence, of probabilities shifting and resettling like great juddering wheels of chance. “I went back to Branie IV when I was trying to complete my report, and…I saw you leave with Hargate.”

“You saw what?” Vekrynn jumped to his feet, his face now mirroring shock and anger.

“I saw you leave with the Terran.” Gretana lowered her head, unable to withstand the ferocious pressure of Vekrynn’s gaze. “According to Lorrest, the mnemo-curve you used would have taken you into the Attatorian sector, but…”

The massive thudding sound that immediately followed her words caused Gretana to flinch. She jerked her head upright, half-convinced she had provoked Vekrynn into violence, and saw that he had fallen forward on to his desk from the standing position, supporting the upper half of his body on his hands. His head projected towards her from the gantry of his arms and shoulders, and for a long moment his face was quite unrecognisable. The mouth had been stretched into a grin, but it was the vacuous, mirthless grin of a half-wit, and the gold-needled brown eyes were staring through and beyond her into a universe she never wanted to visit. She gazed back at him in dread, unable to move, until at last his old identity emerged through the stranger’s features like a developing photographic image.

“You will stay in this room till I return,” Vekrynn said, striding to the door. “You will not communicate with anyone.” He opened the door, made an adjustment to the lock, then went into the outer corridor, slamming the door behind him. Gretana knew, without having to be told, that she was a prisoner.

What have I done? she thought, drifting her eyes around the blue-domed office she had first seen a long time earlier, in the days of her innocence. What have I done?

And to whom?