by John Brunner
“This will help,” she said, turning to open another hidden door in the bulkheads and taking from a compartment beyond a small, beautifully shaped jug and two little mugs.
She poured for him and for herself and handed him one of the mugs. Convulsively, he sucked at the liquor and found it bland in the mouth, fiery in the belly, with a sudden comforting glow spreading through his body after a few moments.
Meanwhile, Raige settled into the other chair facing him, crossed her legs with delicate precision and tucked the front of the white gown between her knees. “You’re very young, Vykor—aren’t you?” she said.
He nodded apathetically. “I’m nearly twenty,” he said in hesitant tones.
“And what has been your life up till now?”
He shrugged. “Ordinary enough. I did well in school, and when I was fifteen I was selected for local administrative training; then more or less by accident I was allotted to the spaceport staff near my home, and from there I moved on to purser’s apprentice and finally got to be a steward on liners. And it turned out that people had been watching me. I was
asked to bring some dispatches out here when the regular courier was taken sick; during the trip after that I was assigned to be your contact.”
“And that’s all? No, of course not. There are your parents waiting, and your friends—and a girl, perhaps?”
Vykor shook his head. Of course there wasn’t a girl! He hesitated on the point of saying why not, and remembered that Raige after all was twice his age, and decided that he did not dare.
But he could hint at it, as it were. He said awkwardly, “It would have had to be a girl I could—could work with and admire as well as . . . well, you know. That’s the only consolation I can think of about what’s happened.”
Raige took the tiniest sip of the liquor in her mug and nodded thoughtfully. “Yet life at Waystation need not be so bad, Vykor. I have spent nearly half my life here, except for leave at home once a year. You know that to us from Glai Waystation is far more than a possession, as Majkosi is to Cathrodyne or Alchmida to Pagr. It represents hope to us, and a shield against—against alien domination. But it also means work: night-long, day-long, life-long, without errors of judgment or lapses of attention.
“At first it was such an incredible strain I didn’t think I could stand it. Then an affair which I had organized—a little individual part of a greater scheme—passed off successfully, and I began to see what I was here for, what I was doing and what it meant to other people. You probably feel the same about the work you’ve been doing for the Majko revolutionaries, don’t you? The first sense of achievement in real life?”
Vykor nodded. That was exactly what he felt.
“Some day soon,” continued Raige meditatively, putting out one hand and stroking the luxuriously curved side of the jug she had brought from the cupboard, “which is to say in another five or six years, I shall have to build a new life, too. I shall go home to Glai, and choose my husband, and bear the children who are waiting for me—they’ve been waiting since I was first assigned to duty here.”
She looked down thoughtfully at the front of her slender body, as though picturing it in imagination as it would be when she began her family.
“One way, I shall be luckier than you. I shall have some few certainties on which to build my new life. And one way you are now luckier than I shall be. I shall have no surprises —I shall never again have that very wonderful experience when certain disaster turns into rewarding success . . .” Her voice trailed into pensive silence.
“But you, Vykor,” she said after a pause, “can hope, and rafher more than hope. I have watched and studied you since you became my courier. You haven’t become a Waystation resident as most Majkos have done before—through what one must call selfishness, or inadequacy. From the purely material point of view you will have a far better life on Waystation than you could hope for at home. But that doesn’t count with you, does it?”
“I’d rather be stranded at home, never to see Waystation or the inside of a spaceship again,” said Vykor forcefully, “and be able to go on working for what I believe in.”
“You’ll be able to do that,” said Raige. “What sort of life do you see for yourself here, now?”
“I haven’t had time to give it much thought,” said Vykor. “I suppose I could”—he hesitated, then remembered Larwik’s assurance that the Glaithes knew about this—“I could help in the dreamweed traffic to Cathrodyne. Or just take a concession in the tourist circuit and spend my life fooling with the rich holidaymakers . ..”
“Or you could become an associate member of the staff— perhaps even go to Glai some time, if you’d like to.”
Vykor could hardly believe his ears. “I . . . that would be wonderful!” he stammered. “I always wanted to go to Glai. I admire your people so much for all they’ve done for us—”
“I thought you did,” said Raige, and gave a little smile. "That message of gratitude you delivered, for instance, had a personal ring about it. Oh, we’re not angels, Vykor! Not by a long, long way. This dreamweed traffic, for example: you musn’t think we support it and help it along because it’s a tool to free your world from Cathrodyne rule. We do so because it’s in our interest to weaken both Cathrodyne and Pagr.
Similarly, we take every chance we get to humiliate one or the other of them, to remind them that Glai accepts orders from no one. Sometimes we are forced to adopt cruel tactics, which make us ashamed, simply to preserve our freedom.” She spread her hands. “But one day, Vykor, one day! We have our ambitions for the future, too, as you hope for Majkosi to be independent, and as Pagr and Cathrodyne each hopes to seize Waystation. I’m prejudiced, probably, but I believe what we hope for is better than what anyone else in the Arm wants. Maybe you’ll become convinced of that, too, and if you do, you’ll be able to be happy again.”
XII
“No, I’m afraid not,” said Raige, and gave an apologetic half smile.
“But why not?” said Ligmer insistently, leaning forward so that he could put his right hand on the desk at which Raige sat in the official administration block of her station. This was the public section of Glaithe territory; so far as outsiders knew, it corresponded to Cathrodyne or Pag territory.
Or rather: so far as most outsiders knew. Whether it was due to loss of secrecy, or merely to ingenious deduction, it seemed that these two outsiders—Ligmer and his Pag opposite number, Usri—had penetrated the disguise protecting the Glaithes’ private section of Waystation.
Raige set her face in a severe expression. “You have to admit, Ligmer,” she said primly, “that neither you Cathrodynes nor the Pags have a very good record with regard to Waystation. You have both in the past attempted to gain control of the station for yourselves. Agreed, it is good to see that you are capable of working in co-operation as well as against one another; but I have small doubt that if you were permitted access to the information you want you would each immediately start thinking of ways in which it could be turned to the advantage of your own people and the disadvantage of others.”
She uttered the speech in a lecturing tone, and was taken aback by the expression of satisfaction which crossed Usri’s face when she had finished.
“Well, that tells us one thing,” the Pag said. “We’re correct in our guesswork. If we were wrong, you’d cheerfully let us go ahead and look for knowledge you were certain we’d never find—because it wouldn’t be there. Your record isn’t entirely clean either, Captain Raige; and you cannot deny that."
“We do what is necessary to preserve the neutrality of Waystation,” said Raige stiffly.
“Including giving shelter to renegades,” said Ligmer sourly. “How neutral is that?”
Raige looked ostentatiously puzzled.
“Oh, you know what I mean!” snapped Ligmer. “There was a Majko yesterday—a steward off one of our liners. You’re too well informed not to know about him. Publicly insulted Cathrodyne by claiming that we rule Majkosi unjus
tly—”
“In that case,” interrupted Raige, “we are happy to welcome him and give him asylum here. As you well know, Ligmer, our administration of Waystation is the only thing that prevents one or the other of your two empires from annexing us also. We can hardly deny to members of your so-called ‘subject’ races a freedom we enjoy ourselves.” '
Ligmer made an indignant rejoinder; Raige ignored him and looked down at the written application form on the desk. It had reached her a few hours ago, closely followed by the two archeologists in person to demand action on it.
They requested access to the pictorial records section of the memory banks—those giant electronic recorders hidden in the very heart of Waystation, shielded by all its bulk from the interstellar noise which could confuse or distort their delicate patterns. Some of them, nonetheless, had become unusable over the millennia, and the rest the Glaithes had deciphered only with extreme difficulty and sometimes suspected inaccuracy. A single ultra-high energy cosmic ray particle could upset the balance in a thousand important circuits, garbling the information therein or even changing its sense completely.
And they had a very specific object in mind.
“Mark you,” said Usri, “it’s pretty obvious why they’re scared to release such information. If the Bringer theory is confirmed, this will imply that all the races of the Arm are in fact descended from the builders of Waystation, and should be permitted to share in it equally. This is a long way from the monopoly Glai enjoys at present.”
She spoke directly to Ligmer, giving Raige a sidelong look to make sure the words went -home.
“Scholar Usri is wrong, of course,” said Raige without raising her head. “On that count and on the previous one. I honestly do not know whether this information does exist. If it does, and if it confirms the Bringer theory, it would not change the situation at all. I repeat: Pagr and Cathrodyne have both attempted to seize monopoly control of Waystation. We at least permit people of all races to come and go freely and to live here in undisputed peace; we cannot enforce this equitable treatment outside the limits of the station, but we would if we could.”
Ligmer gave vent to a disgusted snort. “All right then!” he said sharply. “Tell us why you deny us access to the master memory banks, when we are engaged in our professional pursuit of knowledge—and yet you give permission to someone who is not even a citizen of one of the systems of the Arm at all!”
There was a long silence. At length Raige said in genuine mystification, "Who do you mean? I’ve not heard of. such a case.”
“No?” said Usri, heavy with sarcasm. “Then how was it that we saw this man Lang coming out of the memory bank halls yesterday?”
Raige shook her head. “I didn’t know about this. I will investigate if you like. It is possible that someone on our staff agreed to show him over the memory bank halls because he is a distinguished visitor, but it is perfectly certain that he would not have been allowed access to any information that has not been generally released.”
Ligmer got to his feet. “There is something rather unpleasant about you Glaithes,” he said. “Behind your facade of righteousness and impartiality you descend to some very nasty tricks.”
Usri copied him, and towered over the doll-like figure of Raige as she remained seated. “Agreed!” said the Pag, curling back her upper lip to show her one filed tooth. “Can you expect my people to abandon their belief in the Pag origin of Waystation, for instance, if you will not permit scientific assessment of the facts?”
Impassively, Raige pressed the door-catch release on the desk. “You may leave,” she said. And scowling, they did so.
When they left the office, Raige sat for a short while staring into space. Of course, it was entirely possible that Lang had been given a guided tour of the memory bank halls; it was also possible—but unlikely—that Ligmer and Usri had invented the story.
Somehow, though, she felt sure they hadn’t—she remembered that Vykor had claimed to see Lang somewhere else where he shouldn’t have been. Sighing, she contacted Indie on the internal communicator system.
“Indie, do you remember that young Majko, Vykor, who said he’d seen the man from out of eye-range in our quarters?”
“I do,” Indie answered.
“I just had a report that Lang has also been seen emerging from the memory bank halls. Did anyone give him authority to visit them?”
“No!” said Indie positively. “No one could have granted such permission without my knowing about it; I’m responsible for all visitors to that section. Do you think the report is genuine?”
“Ninety-nine per pent sure.” Raige hesitated. “Would you try and confirm it, though? Perhaps one of our staff on duty at the time saw him as well.”
“Most unlikely—they’d have reported it. And this is the first I’ve heard. However, I’ll let you know if I discover anything.”
He broke the connection, sounding worried, and Raige gave a wry smile. That would hardly be surprising under the circumstances.
For a casual visitor, Lang was causing entirely too much trouble. There was the fact that Vykor believed him to be responsible for the fit of anger which was costing him his chance of going home. There was the episode in their private quarters. There was this conversation Vykor had also reported—about the various theories of Waystation’s origin. There was ...
She checked herself. Apart from the unexplained intrusion in the Glaithe quarters, which only Vykor vouched for, there was nothing certain in any of this. Perhaps she was yielding to the intuition she had felt when Vykor’s ship came in, and imagination was strengthening her suspicions.
This joint visit from a Pag and a Cathrodyne together was a far more substantial matter to work on. It had been known for a long time that the mutual distrust of the two races was giving place bit by bit to a grudging respect, not to say admiration. The trend was assisted by the fact that both of them disliked the Glaithes as much as they detested one another.
And it had likewise been known that there were Pags like Usri who wished to see the' nonsensical propaganda which was Pagr’s official line replaced by something with a scientific foundation. So much was accountable.
What was not accountable was the story she had had from Vykor about the Cathrodyne officer called Ferenc. As Vykor had seen him on the trip out, he had appeared to be a typical intransigent diehard, so intolerant of Pags that he had nearly come to blows with the Pag officer who traveled with him.
Yet he had struck up an acquaintance with Usri in the City, apparently forgetting his previous animosity and talking in a friendly way.
This suggested two explanations. The first: Ferenc had put up a front during the trip out from Cathrodyne; it was just conceivable that he had undergone a change of heart since he had been a member of the Cathrodyne staff at Waystation some time before. Raige had never met him during his previous stay—he had been a comparatively junior officer, engaged in routine administration work. But the Glaithes painstakingly recorded every scrap of information they could glean about the foreign staffs on the station, and she had found from Ferenc’s old dossier that a change of heart was improbable if not out of the question.
That left: a definite change of Cathrodyne policy. A new soft line of approach might be planned. Genuine? Or a cover for something else? Past analogy favored the latter—Pag and Cathrodyne had for long been worse bedfellows than lamb and lion.
Besides, if Ferenc had been sent out to Waystation (she did not believe for a moment that he was really on furlough) as a result of a change of policy at home, he would also have been a man who had had a change of heart, the relaxation at the top would have produced a corresponding personality at the bottom. But Ferenc wouldn’t have felt it necessary to disguise such a change of heart by affecting intolerance during the trip out.
Raige sighed. The double-dealing complexity of work at Waystation was sometimes almost too much for her, and she found herself aching for the day when she would go back to Glai and bear those childre
n that waited in the ovum bank for her arrival.
So the Cathrodynes must be on to something important enough for them to swallow their national pride and be polite to the Pags while they followed their discovery up. They must also be sure enough of themselves to allow Pags—in the person of Usri and others—to get a partial view of it. She lifted up Ligmer’s application to get data from the memory banks. It asked for a comparative evaluation of design principles here in the structure of Waystation and in the ships that had been found fossilized in lava flows on Pagr.
Innocent enough, at first glance. But it might be deadly.
Evaluation of design principles, properly carried out, would reveal one thing right away: The maps published by the Olaithes and supposed to show Waystation accurately did in fact contain deliberately misleading information. This would indicate the existence of the heretofore concealed Glaithe private quarters—which formed a vast network all through the station, under, around and between the sections allotted to other races, so that the Glaithes could watch and be alert at all times.
Of course, that need not prove fatal; knowledge that this web of concealed cabins and corridors existed did not give a clue to the special elevator codes needed to enter it. But it might lead to the knowledge beyond, the knowledge which the Glaithes hoped desperately might remain their secret for ever, or until Pag and Cathrodyne no longer squabbled among the stars of the Arm.
The knowledge that in the heart of Waystation, yet further toward the center than the memory banks, still waited the incredible, unbelievable engines whose slumbering power had once hurled Waystation from star to star across the galaxy.
XIII
“Ligmer! I want to have a word with you!”
At the crackle of Ferenc’s voice, the archeologist halted in his tracks and swung round. He was returning to the cabin which had been allotted him in the Cathrodyne section of Waystation for the duration of his stay. His head had been full of anger at what he regarded as the arbitrary refusal by Raige of his request; he had been sure that to put it jointly in the name of himself and Usri would ensure acceptance.