Bob Shaw - The Ceres Solution

“Yes, except that it works by locally modifying a few geometries. I don’t know if I could explain it to you.”

“That’s all right—I’ve crammed enough new stuff into my brain already. But if that sort of machine is so good, why doesn’t Vekrynn use one to pull Ceres really off course?”

Lorrest gestured with a beer can. “No anchorage. Any ship the machine was mounted in would simply be drawn towards Ceres—not the other way round.”

“I see.” Hargate’s thoughts returned to the basic issue, the one he found hardest to incorporate into his world picture. “But will pulverising the Moon really make any difference? Gretana told me something about how these second-and third-order forces of yours affect living matter, but…Our bodies are two-thirds water, so I can visualise a slight tidal effect, perhaps, but what else?”

Lorrest’s manner became didactic. “Don’t dismiss water so quickly, my friend. Mollanian science is a long way ahead of Earth’s—and we’re still arguing about the structure of water. The hydrogen-to-oxygen bond is so weak that a glass of water, no matter how simple and stable it may look, is like a single giant molecule constantly reforming and rebuilding itself. Even in warm water there are short-lived regions of ice crystals that form and melt millions of times every second. Water is uniquely flexible and fragile, which makes it the perfect trigger substance for biological processes, and—believe me—both the structure of water and the chemical reactions taking place in it are affected by cosmic influences.”

“I suppose forces that you, as an adult, can actually feel must be able to affect us,” Hargate conceded. “What’s it like, being able to sense skord lines and the movements of planets and such?”

“I hate using cliches, but how do you explain sight to the…?” Lorrest paused to stare at Hargate. “But that’s not exactly the case, is it? As a boy you found the Bureau’s Carsewell nodal point by yourself, and you knew the place was special. How did that feel?”

Hargate considered the impossibility of describing in full the emotional experience of a childhood visit to Cotter’s Edge. “I didn’t feel any planets tugging at me.”

“It isn’t like that. It’s…Look, the world we’re on now has no moons and there are no other planets in the system. Do you feel any difference?”

Hargate tried to turn his senses inwards, to locate a special reservoir of tranquillity. “Perhaps,” he said, unwilling to acknowledge his failure. “Do you think I could learn to skord?”

“That’s something I’d dearly love to know.” Lorrest’s face, in one of its rapid changes of expression, showed a hint of anger. “We on Mollan are the only one of the known human cultures who use sympathetic congruency for interstellar travel. The ability is almost certain to be present or latent in all the others, but a cornerstone of our Government’s policy is that we don’t make contact, don’t spread the knowledge. It would result in outsiders arriving on Mollan, you see, bringing new ideas and attitudes, disturbing the peace of the long Sunday afternoon. A man like Vekrynn would rather die than face up to change and growth and uncertainty.”

“I don’t think he’d rather die.” Hargate went on to talk about his intuitive belief that Warden Vekrynn had a pathological fear of death.

“I know he wants to be immortal, but that leaves a lot still to be explained.” Lorrest made a sweeping gesture which took in the surrounding vistas of plains and mountains, lakes and seas. “For instance, what are we doing here , two hundred light years inside a non-human sector? Nobody else on Mollan even knows about this world, and I wouldn’t have found out if Gretana hadn’t backtracked on herself and seen Vekrynn’s mnemo-curve. Why does he come here?”

“Perhaps he just keeps the place in reserve, for losing troublemakers.”

“Perhaps, but I doubt it.” Lorrest stood up, signalling an end to the strange picnic, and looked around with sky-mirrored eyes. “Have a look at that stream over there.”

Hargate concentrated his gaze on a ribbon of silvered water about a hundred metres from the hummock upon which they had eaten. “What about it?”

“Do those stones in it look like stepping stones to you?”

Hargate swore as he realised that in all his hours of surveying the same scene he had overlooked the clear evidence of human interference with the environment. “Stepping stones to what?”

“There’s only one way to find out. Come on.” Without hesitation, Lorrest grasped the back of Hargate’s chair with his right hand and began to push. Hargate fully expected Lorrest to leave him at the side of the stream and cross it alone, but on reaching the bank the tall Mollanian moved to his side, threw his right arm across the chair and lifted it clear of the ground. Four long steps took the two men and the machine to the other side of the stream in as many seconds.

Impressed by the display of strength, Hargate said, “Next time you might have the manners to ask my permission.”

“Next time I might throw you in.” Lorrest got behind the chair again and urged it in the direction of a wooded area which lay about a kilometre ahead.

“What are you hoping to find anyway?”

“I’ve no idea,” Lorrest replied. “All we can deduce is that when old man Vekrynn came here he had one thing in mind. Secrecy. Concealment. And those trees make the best hiding place in this area.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Hargate sneered. He repeated the statement more than once as the wheelchair bounced and rocked on the uneven ground, and in between times he swore volubly and slapped at tiny winged creatures which rose up from the disturbed grass.

“I’m glad to see somebody else doesn’t like bugs,” Lorrest said, inconsequentially. “We don’t have them on Mollan, you know. Most of the pollination is done by birds. Our flowers are all white, like our birds, and they imitate birdsongs to attract business. It’s quite an experience for a Mollanian when he sees the kind of flowers you have on Earth.”

“Shove the botany lecture—I’m not interested.” Hargate made an ineffectual attempt to halt the chair by applying the brakes. “If you want to blunder around in those trees and risk getting your ass chewed off by monsters that’s all right with me, but I demand to be left out in the open where at least I can see what’s…”

His voice failed as shiftings of parallax caused by the chair’s rapid progress suddenly opened an avenue deep into the trees to where something large and apparently with a surface of polished gold reflected the sunlight. The object’s curvatures shone with a buttery lustre. Before Hargate could announce what he had seen Lorrest, now breathing hard from his exertions, gave a satisfied grunt.

“Vekrynn always had a weakness for shiny things,” he said. “It wouldn’t even occur to him to camouflage an aircraft.”

“What makes you so sure it’s an aircraft?”

“This is bad submarine country, mon ami . We’ll take a closer look.”

On being propelled into the vicinity of the machine, Hargate was able to confirm that it had been designed for flying, although the centrally positioned wings seemed too small for the fuselage and no control surfaces were in evidence. It appeared to have the capacity of a rail carriage and, now that he could examine it closely, Hargate realised that the aircraft was old. The golden skin, which had appeared immaculate from a distance, was dulled in some places and was peeling away from an underlying grey metal in others. On the side of the fuselage was a painted inscription in blocky characters which Hargate took to be Mollanian.