Bob Shaw - The Ceres Solution

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 l oosening .

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.

The bet was not all that sizeable—six bottles of a good malt were involved—but it had been placed with great solemnity, and Hector Mellish was genuinely excited over the outcome. His fingers had a distinct tendency to tremble as he worked to align his twenty-centimetre refracting telescope in accordance with the given coordinates, and he suspected the unsteadiness had nothing to do with the cold inside his small observatory. He paused to check the time and to take a sip of neat whisky from a shot glass.

“Better go easy on that stuff,” Parker Smith advised, stirring slightly in the companionable darkness. “Don’t forget I’ll be taking most of your supply home with me.”

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” Mellish said, smiling at his friend’s presumption. Their lives in Asheville, North Carolina, seemed to have been spared the degradations that were so common throughout the world, and sometimes Mellish felt that he was not sufficiently appreciative. The two men had shared an interest in amateur astronomy for more than ten years, with Mellish doing most of the practical observation and Smith largely concerning himself with stellar physics. Smith was a computer expert, but he prided himself on his classical mathematical skills, and that had been the origin of the bet.