Charles Sheffield: The Web Between the Worlds

“We’ll be there. Any other instructions?”

“None. One question, though. I was watching Merlin closely just before he left you. Something seemed to have him worried for a moment, or surprised. I wasn’t watching what you were doing, but I wondered if you had done something we didn’t catch over the cameras.”

“I didn’t notice any odd reaction from him.” She was pensive for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t recall doing anything peculiar or out of place.”

“Keep thinking about it.” The voice was reflective. “He’s a very sharp young man. Be careful what you say to him. And I see what you meant about his eyes. He’s twenty-seven, but his eyes could be those of a six-year-old. You know, Caliban says we shouldn’t consider using Merlin at all — at least, we think he says that. You know how hard it is to interpret anything that he transmits to us.”

“So why am I here?”

“I have decided to over-ride Caliban’s input in this case, despite Joseph’s objections to such an action. But we will have to deal with Merlin very carefully. Remember that when you talk to him. I’ll be waiting for you here, eight hours from now.”

From a distance there was no way of judging the size of Regulo’s space station. Corrie had told Rob that it was no more than a temporary home, where Regulo was waiting for his meeting with them. That suggested a small structure. It was only when they were near enough to see the entry lock and use it to provide a sense of scale that Rob realized again that Regulo thought big. The whole cylindrical assembly must be more than a hundred meters long, and at least fifty across.

“He doesn’t believe in stinting himself,” he said to Corrie, as they sat side-by-side in the passenger section of the Tug.

“Why should he? But this is nothing, just a home for a few days. His real base is about a million kilometers from here at the moment. He’s itching to get back there. I told you, Regulo put himself to a lot of trouble to meet with you. His first idea was that I should bring you to home base, but after I’d talked to him for a while he agreed that was too much to expect without some real incentive.”

As she spoke, the Tug was drifting gently in for a docking with the central lock of the cylindrical station, adjusting position and velocity with tiny bursts of the control jets. When they finally docked there was no bump, just a smooth and brief acceleration as the ship achieved final position and was coupled electromagnetically to the central station cavity. The electronic checks were completed in a few more seconds and the locks opened silently to the interior of the big station. At the hub the effective gravity was almost zero. Corrie led the way confidently towards the outer sections, with Rob floating after her. His experience of low-gee environments was small, and despite the drugs for vestibular correction he felt some lack of orientation. There was no sign of any other person as they moved steadily outward, to the point where the centrifugal acceleration had increased to almost a quarter of a gee. Rob’s discomfort dwindled as the sense of weight returned.

Corrie had kept a sympathetic eye on him as they moved outward.

“You’ll feel all right in a few minutes,” she said. “And next time out you won’t feel nearly as bad. It’s something you have to adjust to, and everybody goes through it.”

They came at last to a big sliding door. Corrie opened it without knocking and led the way inside. The room they entered had been furnished as a study, with data terminals along one wall, displays along the opposite one, and a big desk and control console in the middle. The lighting level was so low that it was difficult to make out the details of many of the fittings. The smooth curve of the cylindrical floor was covered by a soft, dense carpet, deep red in color, that seemed to glow softly with a ruby light. The top of the desk was made of pink veined material, like a fine marble, that also seemed to add light to the room rather than absorbing it. Rob took in those features with just a brief glance. His eyes were on the man seated behind the great desk.

Darius Regulo was tall and thin, with long, skeletal hands and a stooped posture. The hair on his big head was sparse and white, hanging in an uncombed lock over his high forehead. Clearly, if there had ever been rejuvenation treatments, another was long overdue. Rob had never seen a man or woman who looked so old, so frail. Then he looked at Regulo’s face and skin, and the other factors became irrelevant. The eyes were still bright and alert, frosty blue with pale gray rims, but they looked forth from a face that was a mockery of humanity. Regulo’s features seemed to have run and melted. The skin that covered them was like furnace slag, grey, granular and withered. Suddenly it was easy to guess at the reason for the low level of illumination in the big room. Rob forced himself to keep his gaze steadily on Regulo, without looking aside or flinching.

“Come on in, Merlin.” The deep voice sounded granular and worn also, as though it had suffered the same fate as Regulo’s face. The voiced consonants grated forth as though from a throat full of rough sand. “I’m sorry my condition prevented a meeting with you on Earth. Please sit down in the chair there.”

He turned to Corrie. “Well done, my dear. Merlin and I will need some time together, and I don’t think you would find our conversation of great interest. Might I suggest that you should go and visit Joseph and receive an update on his progress? He thinks he has some new results for us.”

Corrie grimaced. “You know I don’t like to be with him, especially when you’re not there.”

“I know.” Regulo chuckled. “But I also know that you are as interested as I am in following his projects. Don’t deny it, my dear, I could cite you fifty incidents that support my statement. We’ll contact you as soon as we are finished. And I’m keeping the Tug on stand-by so that you two will be able to go back down to the surface later in the day.”

He turned again to Merlin, as Corrie left the study. “So, you’re the man who invented the Spider, eh.” His voice, despite its harsh tone, sounded warm and interested. “If you don’t mind my asking you, how long did it take you to do it?”

Rob was startled by the question. It was an unexpected beginning to the conversation. “It took about a year. But most of that time went on programming and fabrication.”

“One year.” Regulo whistled softly to himself and shook his head. “I don’t want to make you conceited, but do you know my staff put in over fifty man-years of reverse engineering, trying to figure out how the damned thing works — and we still don’t know? It proves what I’ve always said, work without ideas is worse than no work at all.” He sniffed. “There’s a trick, right?”

“There is.” Rob smiled. “And before you ask, let me point out that’s not for sale.”

“I thought not.” Regulo was watching Rob closely with those crackling blue eyes. “But it’s available for hire, in the Spiders, right? Oh, you don’t need to tell me, I know you’re not in need of money. That last contract on the Taiwan Bridge must have made you billions. What was the main span on it, a hundred and twenty kilometers?”

“A bit more than that. More like a hundred and forty. Maybe even one forty-five.”

“Fair enough.” Regulo had an amused expression on his battered face. “It’s hard to keep things straight on the small jobs, eh? You handled the extrusion of all the support cables?”

Rob had kept his face expressionless at the mention of “small jobs.” The Taiwan Bridge was one of the biggest in the world — so where was Regulo heading? “All the extrusion, and all the fabrication,” he replied. “The Spider lets you start right from the basic raw materials and makes a cable that’s all dislocation-free monofilaments.”