Bob Shaw - The Ceres Solution

“What we have here,” Lorrest said, speaking slowly, “is a copy of old man Vekrynn’s famous Notebook.”

“Is that all?”

Lorrest gave him a wry smile. “I don’t think you understand. Vekrynn is determined that his great opus, Analytical Notes on the Evolution of One Human Civilisation , will live forever, become part of the Mollanian heritage and all that stuff. He’s so afraid of the idea that it might be lost that he maintains, at his own expense, five up-dated copies of it on five different planets, and naturally he has made certain their whereabouts are known to everybody who could possibly be concerned.”

Hargate studied Lorrest’s face, trying to solve the puzzle it represented. “Is this a sixth copy that nobody knew about?”

“You’ve guessed it.”

“I still don’t see why you’re wetting yourself,” Hargate said. “From what you say, it would be in character for him to have a reserve copy.”

“ Here? On a world far outside the human sector? On a world no other human knows about?” Lorrest shook his head as the writing on the screen began to change. “No, there has to be another reason. My guess is there’s something special about this one, and I’d like to know what it is.”

Hargate chuckled. “You’re becoming obsessed, man. Vekrynn isn’t worth the time or trouble.”

“It’s no trouble, and I’ve got a little time to kill.” Lorrest settled back in the chair and the characters blazoned on the insubstantial screen hovering above the middle cabinet began to change.

“Have fun,” Hargate said drily. Anxious to conserve what little power remained in his batteries, he rolled his chair away manually and began a circuit of the oblong chamber, hoping to find something of interest he had missed at first glance. The journey was disappointing—not even a scuff mark differentiated one blank wall from another. Losing interest in the interior of the building, he propelled himself back to the entrance, opened the door and went along the short corridor to the threshold of the alien world. The sun had not quite disappeared below the horizon, but there was little diffusion in the pure air and night was already advancing down the sky in merging bands of blue-green.

He shivered luxuriously, in spite of the ambient warmth, as he made yet another attempt to accommodate the knowledge that he, Denny Hargate, who as a child had not been able to drag himself more than a few city blocks without becoming exhausted, had travelled farther from Earth than any other member of his race. It was more than he could ever have expected. His private religion, his faith in that first miracle at Cotter’s Edge, had paid off in the form of something like a trip to heaven. If he had any cause for complaint it was that providence had not granted him the travelling companion he would have chosen—Gretana was the high priestess of Cotter’s Edge, and she should have been the one to accompany him. He could almost have reconciled himself to the prospect of dying in a couple of years or less on condition that he would be able to look at that incredible face every day, to replenish and fecundate himself and thus counteract the slow withering of his soul.

It was, however, most unlikely that he would ever see Gretana again. She was many light years distant and he had no way of even guessing the direction in the darkening vault of the sky, where the unfamiliar star groupings were again beginning to emerge. Could it be that loneliness was an unavoidable by-product of total mobility? From what he had learned of the Mollanians, theirs was a cool society in which individuals—freed from all the restraints of forced physical proximity—had forfeited the ability to form close personal relationships. Gretana saw her parents as remote and uninterested figures, which fitted his thesis, but another possible explanation lay in the Mollanians’ fantastic longevity. Lorrest had mentioned the difficulty of producing inert materials which could match a Mollanian lifespan; how then could a fragile thing like human passion hope to endure when the parties concerned went on for centuries, millennia, with no sign of change? Perhaps poignancy is all , Hargate mused. Perhaps…

The deep quavering sob which came from immediately behind him almost stopped Hargate’s heart.

He flailed himself around in his chair and saw Lorrest staring down at him. The Mollanian’s face was a near-luminous mask, flowing and distorting in an interplay of emotions Hargate was unable to identify. He shrank back into his chair, suddenly afraid, as Lorrest dropped to his knees, covered his face with his hands and began to sway, all the time emitting the inarticulate whimpers which can be wrested from humans by insupportable grief.

“You’ll never forgive us,” he said, after a time, each word a separate expression of pain. “You’ll never forgive what we have done to you.”

Feeling oddly self-conscious, prompted by instinct, Hargate leaned forward and gently placed his hands on Lorrest’s bowed head. And the tableau remained unchanged for many minutes, silhouetted in amethyst radiance, while the representative of one world made his confession and the representative of the other tried to give personal absolution.

“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.”