Bob Shaw - The Ceres Solution

“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?

Hargate realised there were two courses he could follow—he could brood on what he had learned about Warden Vekrynn and quietly burn up with hatred; or he could avoid the self-punishment by concentrating his thoughts on the recent wonders that had entered his life. And, in spite of a history of indulgent bouts of negative thinking, he chose the latter option. He wheeled himself across the aircraft to where Lorrest was sitting at a side window, broodily watching the changing landscapes below. Hargate took the Mollanian travel trainer from its storage place between his right hip and the back of the chair.

“Look, I know you don’t think there’s much chance of my ever being able to skord,” he said, “but what if we forget the big stuff for the time being? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to try jumping between two minor nodes? Two that aren’t very far apart?”

Lorrest, whose face was still drawn and had a bruised look around the eyes, gave a half-smile. “You’re not going to give up on this thing, are you?”

“So I’m a stubborn little bastard. How about it?”

“Denny, I’m surprised that you even want to speak to me.”

Hargate sighed with exasperation. “Who’s got the one-track mind now? I’ve told you a dozen times—you can’t shoulder the blame for something Vekrynn did long before you were born. For God’s sake snap out of it and do something useful.”

Lorrest grimaced and pushed his hair up off his forehead. “I’ll call out made-up addresses, and you practise visualising them and setting them up. Okay?”

“Fire away, teach,” Hargate said. In the hours that followed he gave all his attention to the task of adapting his mind to Mollanian concepts of formalist maths. He found the work absorbing, and only rarely did his concentration waver enough to let him take note of the shrill and gleefully malicious voice which seemed to heterodyne with the sounds of flight. And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years…and all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years…and Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years…

It was Lorrest who tired first and asked Hargate if he wanted to break off.

“Not yet, but I think I’ve done enough on these fake addresses,” Hargate replied. “Suppose I was at home, at the Cotter’s Edge node, and I wanted to skord up to your node on the Moon. Exactly where is it?”

“I don’t think I should .

“What difference does it make? Who could I tell?”

Lorrest stared at him closely for a moment, then shrugged. “Do you know the geography of the Moon all that well?”

“Like the back of my hand.”

“All right. Try to visualise a spot about one-fifty kilometres north-east—inverted compass, by the way—of the Mayer crater.” Lorrest went on to specify a precise set of grid coordinates, and waited with a look of humorous scepticism while Hargate struggled, using his newly ingested Mollanian maths, to throw a conceptual bridge between Earth and Moon. Scowling ferociously, Hargate picked up the travel trainer and slowly—with some help from the computer in his watch—shaped its working surface into a complex curve. He was gratified to see Lorrest’s expression change.

“You did it!” the Mollanian exclaimed. “You actually got it right!”

“Do you have to sound so surprised?” Concealing his pleasure, Hargate collapsed the trainer and started the same calculation afresh, determined to improve his speed. He worked on it single-mindedly for more than thirty minutes, oblivious to his surroundings, and was taken by surprise when Lorrest suddenly gave a theatrical groan of misery.

“Denny, how long are you going to keep it up?” Lorrest said, gently pounding his own forehead. “Give me a break, will you?”

“What’s the matter? I’m being quiet.”

“You’re being quiet, but you’re creating a kind of third-order whirlpool all round yourself, and it’s driving me crazy. If you ever manage to direct that energy properly you may actually be able to skord by yourself some day.”

The words came as a revelation to Hargate. “You mean you can feel what I’m doing?”

“Feel it! This is one of the reasons we encourage Mollanian children to discard trainers as soon as they can. Anybody who’s using one tends to act like a giant radio station that’s drowning out its neighbours. Kids sometimes use the effect to play tricks on adults—shunting them off to places they didn’t want to visit.”

“This is great,” Hargate said. “I really feel as if I’m getting somewhere.” Ignoring Lorrest’s complaints, he returned to his mental exercises with the trainer and continued until when, near the end of the flight, Lorrest raised the question of his immediate future.

“In one hour and three minutes,” Lorrest said, looking at his watch, “your Moon’s going to get zapped into smithers, and I’d like to be on Earth to see it happen. The view will be just as good from Carsewell or from Valparaiso—which would you prefer? Valparaiso should be warmer, but you’ll have the problem of being an illegal immigrant.”

“Won’t you be there to get me out?”

“Hardly! The Bureau keeps a continuous watch on the few nodes discovered by 2H. I’ll be arrested as soon as I arrive.”

Hargate frowned. “In that case it isn’t worth going.”

“At that stage I’ll want to be taken back to Mollan.” Lorrest’s eyes became unfocused as he was drawn into his inner world. “With the Moon destroyed, I’ll be too famous—notorious, I should say—for Vekrynn to have me quietly put away somewhere. And people will listen to what I have to say about him. I’m looking forward to that part.”