The Proserpinan ship lingered for a bit—Guthrie could imagine the tigerish defiantness aboard—but only for a bit. A camera captured a moving spot of light and magnified, as the ship's optics doubtless also did. Though of lesser size, the oncoming vessel was under field drive and carried unmistakable missile launchers. Another dot appeared among the background stars. The Proserpinans swung about and accelerated away.
The screen blanked.
"A bitter choice their obedience was," Luaine said.
Guthrie saw no defeat upon her. The green eyes blazed at him. "Have you and your friends wondered what else you might try?" he asked softly.
She nodded. Her locks tumbled in the air like flames. "Most surely we have. But we saw no way . . . hitherto."
His memory went back to rough-and-tumble days in his first incarnation, his first youth, knocking about odd corners of Earth. It ranged on through centuries that had also known strife, danger, and scheming. Morality slipped aside for the moment. This situation was too interesting as a problem.p>
"Hm," he murmured. "On the evidence, if that machine wasn't lying, and I don't think it was—on the evidence, the cybercosm's got boats patrolling those spaces. Radar and other kinds of detectors would alert them a monstrous ways off to somebody who was bound in a suspicious direction. But by the same token, those boats must be awfully dispersed. I'd guess that only two or three, at most, could intercept a given bandit, if the bandit had field-drive legs. A properly outfitted raider might hope to get through."
"Nay," she said, "the warders cannot reasonably await any such." Her manner was less that of a person arguing against him than of one listing an item for the sake of completeness.
"True," Guthrie agreed. "A ship that could evade or outfight them would need a sophotect, an electrophotonic brain, at the controls. No human reacts or calculates fast enough. A robot can, but it doesn't have adequate judgment—imagination, trickiness. And you Proserpinans want no part of any sophotect with any real wits."
"If we built one, would we dare trust it?"
“Maybe not, even discounting your paranoia. It might reason its way to fellow feeling for its fellow machines— or, anyhow, to the logic of what and why they are—and decide to throw in with them. Moot point. Proserpina hasn't got the means or the technicians to make any and educate them right. It'd take you a generation, at least, to become able."
She threw back her head and laughed aloud. "No need, Captain Guthrie. You are that machine!"
He had seen it coming, but pretended astonishment. "Huh? Wait a minute, my lady—"
Her body quivered, her words leaped. "You have the intelligence, skill, cunning. Linked with the computer-effector system of this your ship, you will have the precision and speed of reaction. And you are armed."
“I—supposing I wanted to try it, when I got in range of that field and it turned on, I'd burn out like those poor robots, and so would Dagny if I was inside. No, thanks."
“You can lie to, safely distant, while a human makes entry."
"You know somebody that dement?"
Laughter slashed anew. "I cannot count how many would vie for the part."
"Well, yes, Lunarians," he conceded. "Wild by nature. Plus having your Proserpinan grudges."
"It would be easy to modify a spacesuit and its gear so that the field does not disable it. I have had my engineers draw up the specifications."
Optimistic, weren't you? he thought. "Once this burglar has landed, what then?"
"My folk have prepared a briefing for him." She took out another datacard and thrust it into his hands. "The information is all here. Play it. Study it. Then ask me what questions you like, but I think they will be few. The plans of the lenses, their programs, everything about them was made public when they were first built. There is no sign of any important alterations afterward, save in the defense and the encryption of the transmissions. Nor would the cybercosm have cause to order any, now that it has mounted guard on them. The observations they sent before the silence fell gives abundance of clues to how they operate—and how to take their truth-hoards out of them. The operation is, in fact, simple."
"M-m, maybe. But look, the-maneuvers to dodge or fight the interceptors would almost certainly involve heavy accelerations. I doubt a Lunarian could take them and arrive in shape to steal a beetle from a kitten."
"We will solve that too," she snapped. "I have given it thought."
He lifted a palm. "Wait a minute. 'We' will solve it? You're taking for granted I'll buy into your escapade?"
"That is why I bargained, conspired, and strove to get you your fuel," she answered sharply.
"Yes, I understand, and please don't think me ungrateful. However, I made no promises except that I won't turn on you Proserpinans and do something that'd harm your interests. I haven't said I'd be with you."
Her voice, her whole manner, warmed. She smiled, reached as if to touch him, and purred, "Yet you will be, nay? Ever was Anson Guthrie a man of daring."
Middle-aged though she was, in his flesh he would have been hard put to resist. In the event, he could reply dryly, "Never was Anson Guthrie a man who'd draw to an inside straight."
She didn't catch the ancient Anglo reference. "It is for your own cause also."
"I'm not at all sure about that. My mission is to find out the facts. A hostile act like this against the Synesis— which hasn't done my folk any harm that I know of—would make interviews with its officers kind of awkward."
She stiffened. "Is the withholding of vital data a friendly act on its part?"
"I don't know. Maybe I should go ask."
Her mask cracked apart. Wide-eyed, open-mouthed, she stared at him and gasped, "You cannot be serious!"
"Oh, I can be as serious as a parson on Sunday," he drawled. "Not that I'll walk right into the Teramind's parlor. But neither will I rush into what may prove to be a socialism-sized blunder. My job is to learn what's what, and it takes priority." He paused. "Sorry."
"You would—"
"I'll go sniff around in the inner System for a while. Then we'll see."
Her eyes narrowed. "We will see whether you may depart," she said, dangerously quiet. "Armed craft of mine are nigh."
The face in his turret smiled. "So are armed craft of Velir, who, I regret to say, doesn't trust you very much, and Catoul, who thinks it would be a good idea to investigate current affairs on Earth and that I may be the best one to do it. Before joining you today, my lady, I had some interesting talks with them and a few other gents."
Luaine shuddered, once, relaxed, and laughed again, low, almost merrily. "You win this trial, lord. My fault. I should have studied the history of Fireball more closely. Now I see, too late, how the living Anson Guthrie wrought what he wrought."
20
THE HOUSE ABOVE Crommelin admitted Fenn.-He entered the living room and stopped. For a moment, there where.mathematical patterns wove their slow dance, he loomed over the little man who had risen to meet him. Silence filled the air like a presence. Then Chuan bowed and said, "Greetings," in Anglo. "You are early, but not the less welcome."
"I came straight from the spaceport, after I found your message waiting for me," Fenn replied. His tone was as stiff as his posture.
"Really, that was not necessary. You could have gone to your lodgings and had a night's rest first. I sent you an invitation, not a summons."
Fenn raised his brows. What was the difference? he implied.
Chuan continued, unruffled, "I meant, also, that you are early in a more basic sense. We had not looked for you before next year. Your friends on Mars will be pleased."
"They know, same as you knew in advance, I was coming, and why." Fenn's intention had been quite open on Earth—he could hardly have kept it secret if he had wanted to—and his call to the Ronays had not been confidential.
The messages between him and Kinna had been encrypted. They might now have been tapped and decoded. When he thought about that possibility, fury rose in him. Calm down, bo
y, he told himself. If ever you needed a clear head, you do today.
"Yes," Chuan said, turned grave. "You and your people felt you must promptly have more knowledge of the situation on this planet and how the arrival of a ship from Alpha Centauri will affect it. This was the more so because the Synesis did not release the information until it had reached you indirectly, and you were getting excited about it, even though our instruments must have detected it many months ago. You wonder what the reasons for that delay were, and how they may affect your plans."
"Isn't that natural? Wouldn't you have?"
Chuan recovered his smile. "Come, please be seated and we will talk. Will you take refreshment?"
Fenn hesitated.
"I am not your enemy, you know," Chuan said.
"Yes, sure, I know," answered Fenn, caught off balance. Do I? he wondered. And: Better lighten up a bit. "All right, gracias, I will drink your beer."
Chuan chuckled. "And nibble my salted canapes, no?"
They settled into the sensuously self-molding chairs. Fenn's glance strayed out the broad viewport. Autumn had faded the flower garden, but it was going into winter phase, deep purple and black. The sky was dark for noontide, rose rather than salmon, and a few ice-clouds trailed their streamers past the sun. The upward reaching of towers and masts in the city was a somehow forlorn gallantry.
The servitor brought a tray. Chuan raised his goblet of wine. Had he chosen that, rather than tea as before, to seem friendlier? "Your well-being," he proposed.
"Clear orbits," Fenn responded.
The one-time toast of Terran wayfarers was not lost on the synnoiont, who regarded him for a second or two before saying, "It would be conventional for me to inquire whether you had a pleasant voyage. But it would be a trifle ridiculous, would it not? You realized your lifelong dream."
"No," Fenn told him.
"I am sorry. May I ask why?"
"I wasn't flying free. I was just being carried. And the news that came was no fun at all."
"Ah," said Chuan most quietly. "The hideous news. You received it en route?"
Fenn nodded. "And acquired more while closing in on Mars. Not enough, though. Not a fraction enough. It alone would have brought me here at this time." He thumped his beer mug onto the table beside him and hunched forward. "Yes, I'm being rude, consider me apologizing, but can we get down to business? Why did you want to see me so soon?"
“In aid of your mission. You seek to gather facts. Very well, I would like to offer you information you cannot readily obtain elsewhere, and try to answer any questions that occur to you."
"Getting in ahead of everybody who might have different opinions?" Fenn retorted on impulse. Immediately he realized he was verging on insolence, but decided not to beg pardon. He did shape a smile of sorts.
"Please. I will not insult your intelligence by going over ground we have already covered at wearisome length. At least I will try not to repeat those arguments more than seems required to put matters in context."
"Gracias," was the only thing Fenn could think to say.
"Please realize as well, I am not privy to your councils in the Lahui Kuikawa. There has been no spying, no interception."
Again Fenn wondered. Kinna and her parents called Chuan an honorable man, but honor is subject to interpretation.
"However, neither have you people made any special attempt at secrecy, am I correct?" the synnoiont continued. "From what is said and done, one may draw conclusions. Events of the past few years have inevitably raised concerns among you. You have felt increasingly uneasy as word and rumor spread about Proserpina, Alpha Centauri, what is going on in space. As I said, you want to know how this will affect you and your ambitions. Authoritative voices in the Synesis have frankly tried to persuade you to drop them. Could we, those whom I represent, be plotting actions more drastic? The turbulence among the Martians themselves is another cause of unease on your part. Between them, the Republic's occupation of the Threedom and the Synesis' reticence about the Centaurian ship decided you Lahui on a special investigation. You are the one who is to conduct it. The incident at Pavonis Mons has heightened your worry and—if I may say what I suspect—your anger." He shook his head. "I cannot promise to ease your mind entirely. But I do sincerely want to prove that I, speaking for the cybercosm and, humbly, for the Teramind, I am your well-wisher."
"Gracias," Fenn repeated. He believed what he had heard. Maybe that was the truly damnable part. "Go ahead ... sir."
"The Synesis has explained why it did not immediately make known to everyone that a vessel approaching from beyond the Solar System had been detected. The explanation is as true as it is simple. Nothing more than the bare fact was known. The outsider was clearly bound for Proserpina and had made no effort to communicate with us or respond to our transmissions. Nor did the Proserpinans reply to our inquiries. We still have not learned more. In view of the tensions, instabilities, and falsehoods that have become so prevalent, the judgment was that an announcement at this stage would be premature and might well have unfortunate consequences. This may have been a mistake. When the news escaped regardless, it heightened unfounded suspicions of the whole social-guidance system."
"Like your secrecy about the solar lenses."
Chuan frowned. "That is not the same thing at all."
"Maybe not. It's provoked something worse than the ship has or ever could."
Chuan's tone flattened. "To say an action was provoked is to imply it had some justice, some degree of validity. What brought on the tragedy at Pavonis Mons was a cynical manipulation."
"That's one of the things I'm supposed to find out about."
"I can show you scenes. You will not enjoy them."
"I wouldn't expect to."
"They were taken unobtrusively or invisibly, not by humans, but by impersonal machines and sensors."
Yes, Fenn thought, telemonitors, monitors hidden or disguised, monitors too small to be seen without a microscope. How many of them, throughout the Solar System and even beyond? He quelled an inward shiver.
"They have been edited, merely for clarity," Chuan said. "If you doubt that unbiased reporting is possible, let me point out that the mind behind those observers and this editing is not human. It may have missed something significant, on that account or by chance, but it has no more misrepresented or suppressed data than any other scientist would."
Unsure how to argue with that, Fenn waited.
"Let us proceed chronologically," Chuan proposed. "Before coming to the terrible event, you should have a little of the background, of what led up to it." He took a control pad from beneath his robe and fingered a command. A service table relied in bearing a multiceiver. "Audiovisual should suffice for the present. You can have full vivifer later if you wish, and many more recordings. Here are only a few typical occurrences in the Threedom and its hinterlands."
The screen came awake with a Lunarian town—dusty pavement, buildings of rough-hewn stone rising gaunt to observation balconies and high, steep roofs, airlocks marked with the emblems of phyles and seldom opened to outsiders. Fenn recognized Daunan; Kinna had shown him images. A troop of constabulary passed through, newly arrived, vehicles rolling along at a bare six kilometers per hour, skinsuited men flanking them with weapons ready, everyone Terran. Everyone. The streets were empty of inhabitants; the occupiers moved as if among tombs. Whoever watched from the houses, in rage as cold as the oncoming night, gave no sign of themselves.
Afterward, life perforce resumed. A pair of young constables with some free time ventured into the market hall, where most everyday business took place. Arcades lined the interior with graceful pillars and doorways. The ceiling displayed animations of flying things, fantastical birds, dragons, comets, flowers that used their petals for wings. People moved about, buying, selling, eating, drinking, gambling, creating, a changeable human spectrum. When the Terrans appeared, faces froze for an instant. Then, one by one, the Lunarians recommenced what they had been at. It was if no newcomer
s existed. When they tried to purchase an object or two, souvenirs, the shopkeepers stared through them and made no reply. But the background music had changed from a lilt to a throbbing and snarling. The young men.soon gave up and left.
"This treatment has been virtually unanimous—and spontaneous, from the outset," Chuan remarked. "It could not have happened quite like this with our race."
"What about Lunarians elsewhere?" Fenn asked.
"None who are in the constabulary were ordered to join the occupation force, and none volunteered. Nevertheless, you probably know Mars is in no danger of civil war. The ordinary Lunarian has no special ties to anyone in the Threedom and is not greatly concerned, except for an innate suspiciousness about the Republic in general. S/he is much less tribal by nature" than the average Terran. Some, including a sufficient number in the House of Ethnoi, agreed that the occupation had become an unfortunate necessity. They are more wary of that unknown quantity, Proserpina.
"But the dwellers in the Threedom are without mercy."
The view moved to a car lying wrecked in the desert. Out on patrol through country unfamiliar to them, the two men aboard had not recognized the hillside down which they started for what it was. Dust below a solid-seeming thin layer of rock and packed sand abruptly avalanched. Smashed open, the car barely stuck out of a new red dune. The Terrans had of course been skinsuited and helmeted, but one was unconscious and his comrade, who had dragged him clear, had broken a leg. A Lunarian on a groundcycle had seen from a distance. He approached. The constable waved to him. He drove off. The constable screamed.
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