by Gunn, James
"Hello, Laurie," I said, blinking into the light.
She pulled her hands out of the gauntlets and lifted the cap from her head and turned to look at me. The breath caught in my throat.
"Thanks for providing the miracle," I said. "You seem to make a habit of rescuing me."
She smiled wryly. "This time you didn't leave us much choice."
She was dressed modestly in a blue tunic and skirt that fit loosely and concealingly, but I remembered too well. My hands hung awkwardly at my sides, remembering, too—remembering how they had held her. If I had owned pockets I would have pushed my hands into them, but there aren't any pockets in a robe.
My eyes twisted away. "That was my intention. Where is the Archbishop?"
"You can't see him today. He's resting. He hasn't been well. Maybe tomorrow or the day after."
"It doesn't matter." I looked around the room curiously. It was a small room. The floor was rubbery under my feet, and the walls were metal, and the low ceiling overhead was metal. There were other machines in the room; I recognized about half of them.
"It's the Archbishop's ship, of course," Laurie said. "He's on one of his periodic inspection trips. That's his excuse. We're in an orbit too high to threaten Brancusi and too high to be in any danger from orbital rockets. That also made it very difficult to get a fix on the courtroom. We almost didn't get you, you know. Even when I pulled, I wasn't certain I had you or that you would reach here alive."
"You didn't have to," I said. "You could have left me there."
"And let you reveal the secret of the pebble? We couldn't do that." Her smile was crooked.
"You haven't read it then?"
She shook her head. "It was an awful chance you took. You couldn't be sure that the Archbishop was involved or that he had the power to save you."
"No, I couldn't be sure. But I was the next thing to it. I knew that the Archbishop was near Brancusi. Siller told me, and Sabatini mentioned him to the Abbot, but I forgot until I tried to figure out which force was acting anonymously. When I crossed out all the others, there was only one left—the Church. You had to be working for the Archbishop and you had to have this power, because you might have sneaked into the old castle where Sabatini was holding me, but you couldn't have got me out after I collapsed without something like this." I pointed to the machine. "And the note you sent to Falescu. I didn't see the significance of the circle over the 'I' for a long time. Then I realized that it was the symbol of the Church, your way of authenticating the message."
"Still, it was a terrible risk." She was frowning. "You might have been wrong, or the Archbishop might have decided not to interfere. He almost didn't, you know. It went against all his principles and policies to meddle openly and reveal the Church's power."
"That's why I set it up as I did. I had to do it openly and crucially, or he would never have interfered. I had to make it a question of me or the pebble. I wasn't risking much. The life I was leading was only worthwhile when I didn't have the answers."
"Did you read the pebble, really or were you just bluffing?"
"Both," I said. "I could have told the Emperor everything I knew about it, and it wouldn't have helped him. It won't help the Archbishop, either, not in the way he's expecting. All the torment and the death were wasted."
"Oh, Will!" she said. Her eyes darkened.
I wanted to run to her, to take her in my arms, and hold her so tight that sadness could never reach her again. But I didn't have the right, and I was afraid, and consciousness of what had passed between us was like a wall around me. I couldn't move.
Instead I studied the mechanism which was almost identical with the one in the control room of the Cathedral. "Strange," I said, "that it should have so much greater range."
"The Archbishop has his choice of skilled men and machines from a thousand worlds. The power was increased; defective parts were replaced. This was the way the machine was supposed to work—we think. Your Cathedral machine was only using a small part of its potential."
I nodded. "And all these others?"
"They work, too. The Archbishop is the head of the Church, the guardian of its miracles. The miracles he can work are strange and wonderful."
"And he can't help a torn, bleeding galaxy."
"That isn't his duty," Laurie said quietly. "His duty is to guard mankind's inheritance until he comes of age. He can't give these things away like toys to children. They're much too deadly. Think of these in the hands of a man like Sabatini or Siller or the Emperor of Brancusi."
"Perhaps," I said, shrugging. "Perhaps. I'll speak of these things to the Archbishop when I see him."
She started to say something and stopped. I watched her and my heart ached inside me.
"Laurie," I said. "Laurie—"
She looked up quickly, almost eagerly. "Yes?"
"Nothing," I said.
We were silent.
"What is the pebble?" Laurie said finally. "Will you tell me?"
"For a price."
She studied my face for a moment. "What is it?"
"I'll tell the Archbishop when I see him. It won't hurt anybody or involve anyone else. It requires only a little effort. But I won't name it until I see him."
She was thoughtful. "Don't ask for anything like life or freedom, Will. He's a very kind man. He'll give you those anyway. But will you tell me about the pebble, now?"
I hesitated, knowing that I was endangering the one thing I wanted—the one thing I had a chance of getting, now. And I said, "If you promise not to tell it to anyone, not even the Archbishop, especially not the Archbishop, until I've bargained with him."
She held her head high, well back. I could see the fine white arch of her throat, and she said, "I promise."
"I won't tell you," I said. Her face fell. "I'll let you see for yourself. Get the pebble."
She turned and went out through a metal door, and I was left alone. I inspected the room again. This time I noticed the metal shields against each wall. I went to one and studied it, and unscrewed the clamp and let the shield fall away. It was a shutter. I looked through a clear window into a field of velvet black studded with jewel-fires, sparkling with innumerable colors. It wasn't immense and frightening. It was a picture; there was no feeling of depth and distance. Space was there, close at hand, and the jewels with them, and behind the jewels a vast sweep of cloudy, white brilliance, like a giant bridge across the galaxy, waiting for the touch of a giant's foot. But the giants were gone now, gone long ago, and only pygmies crawled between the stars.
And the stars were so close that I could have reached out to pick one for Laurie, and it wouldn't have shone as brightly as her eyes. My throat ached with the beauty of it.
I closed the shutter and screwed it down tight and walked across the room to the other shield. After a moment it slid away, and I fell screaming through the long night.
Slowly my shaking stopped. Slowly my whitened hands relaxed from the handholds on the wall, and I forced myself to look again. Brancusi swam below, a blue-green sphere floating in a black sea, and the sunlight glinted off the great oceans and the little lakes and blazed from the polar icecap. Part of the sphere was in shadow, a crescent of night around the eastern rim, and there I could see a dim radiance from a city rising in a misty half-globe above it. I wondered, as it slipped away, if it was the Imperial City.
The sphere was beautiful, too, once I had conquered the illusion that I was falling. It was a fairy world, not like the other which was beauty but a different kind of beauty, cold and eternal. This was warm and living and miniature. This was a home, and life was born on it, suckled on it, lived on it, died on it, and never saw it as it really was. And so they marred it, too.
For a moment I saw it as men had made it, a fortress, cold and gray and massive, with a few men sitting in the top rooms where the sun warmed them, and the rest of humanity huddled below in the damp and the chill, squirming together like white worms. It wasn't surprising that they were poor and ignoran
t and unfeeling.
Some day, I knew, the fortress would fall. Some day the gray walls would topple and crumble and melt away, and the sun would reach down into the lowest dungeons and cleanse the foulness. Before very long I would do what I could to bring that day closer.
"Will," Laurie said.
I turned, startled. I hadn't heard her come back. She was standing in the middle of the room, the pebble in her hand held out to me, her eyes watching my face. I turned back to the shutter, swung it into place, screwed it down, and turned toward Laurie again.
"Put it down on the machine, there."
She set it down gently. It lay there on its side, innocent, transparent, egg-shaped. We stared at it and looked up together, into each other's eyes.
I love you, Laurie, I thought. I love you. I love you. But the thought was bitter and hopeless.
Laurie flushed and looked down.
"You knew what I was thinking," I said. "You can hear thoughts."
"Sometimes," she said. "When the mind is open."
"Like just now."
"Yes."
"Try it on the pebble. Push your mind out to it. Ask it to speak to you."
She looked at the pebble again, stared at it hard. Her eyebrows drew together. She frowned. But finally she sighed and looked away, puzzled.
"What did you hear?"
"Nothing," she said. "Or maybe something like a distant murmuring, like bees a long way off. Was that it, Will? Is that all it is?"
I let out a long breath. That hope was gone, too.
"Put on the skullcap and try it again."
She fitted the cap to her head and flipped the switch on and looked down at the pebble and looked away a moment later, her eyes wide, and I knew how instantaneous the message was.
"Oh, Will," she said breathlessly. "How sad. How wonderful and sad."
"The saddest thing about it is that their children are still unborn."
"Maybe it isn't so long now," Laurie said hopefully. "I can read thoughts a little, and you—"
I shook my head.
"You can," Laurie insisted. "Once or twice"—she blushed—"I felt your mind touching mine. And you have other gifts. You can tell when people are speaking the truth; that's why I never tried to lie to you. And you can sense their emotions when the emotions are strong. Maybe you can even locate people by them."
"Yes," I said, thinking about the fight with Sabatini. "But I thought everybody could do that."
She shook her head. "I've been to a great many places and known a great many people and none of them could do what I can or what you can." She was silent for a moment as her enthusiasm ebbed. "But it isn't any good, is it?" She motioned toward the pebble. "It can't help us."
"Not directly," I said. "Tell me, Laurie, did you know who I was the first time you saw me?"
"No," she said. She was telling the truth. I was glad of that much.
"And then you found out," I said. "And you rescued me from Sabatini with the help of this." I motioned to the machine.
She nodded. "We were looking for Frieda, you understand, but we found her too late. But you were there, and we had discovered who you were, and it was important that you be rescued. I offered to go."
"Frieda was working for you?"
"Yes. The Citizens thought she was one of their agents, but she was working for us. She was going to bring the pebble to me, but she was trapped before she could get that far. And you were brought into it."
"You were the contact," I said. She nodded. "That was why you sang those songs, the main reason. Anyone who wanted to pass along any information or get instructions would go from tavern to tavern until he heard someone singing those songs."
"Yes," she said. Her eyes were steady.
"Falescu," I said. "He was working for you, too."
"Yes. He would have brought you here to the ship or seen that you got here. But the Emperor's Agents picked him up for questioning. They didn't learn anything; he has been released. Come. You're probably tired. I'll show you where you can sleep."
I followed her along narrow corridors toward what I guessed to be the rear of the ship. We passed a few spacemen in silver and black who nodded respectfully to Laurie and curtly to me. Laurie stopped in front of a door and slid it open. Inside was a small cubicle with a bunk in it, a chair, a washstand, and little else.
"We're short of living space," Laurie said apologetically. "Will—"
"Yes?" I said.
"Is Sabatini really dead? I've thought about it, and I can't imagine him dead."
"He's dead," I said, sighing. I told her what had happened, and the way he had died.
She was thoughtful. "That terrible, unhappy man," she said. "But why did you lure him to the warehouse? You didn't tell me that, and I know you didn't do it for revenge."
"I went back to your apartment and found you gone. I thought he had captured you," I said. There was no point in trying to lie.
"Oh," she said. She started to turn away.
"Laurie," I said.
"Yes?"
I hesitated. "Did you come after me when I was in the dungeon, just because of the pebble?"
"No," she said. She turned a little more.
"Laurie," I said.
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry about the note. It wasn't necessary."
"No," she said.
"Will you forgive me for that?" I asked humbly. I was too close to her.
She smiled wryly. "I forgave you a long time ago."
"Laurie," I said, in a rush, to get it all out before I could change my mind, "why did you do it? Why did you get mixed up in it?"
"Because I wanted to," she said slowly. "Because it was my duty."
"Duty to whom?" I asked. It was almost a groan.
"To people. And to the Archbishop."
"You shouldn't have done it."
"It wasn't much. Frieda did much more."
"But—" I began, and stopped. Words were hopeless. I love you, Laurie.
I love you, Will. It rang clear and bell-like in my mind; my heart was painful in my chest. There were no walls between us; the fortresses were down. And yet as I studied her face, I saw that she was pale and unhappy.
"It's terrible, isn't it?" she said softly.
"It doesn't have to be," I said. "It could be the most wonderful thing in the world. We two, with what we have, could be happier than anyone has ever been before, except maybe for those long ago who spoke to us through the pebble, across the ages and the light years."
"Yes," she said.
"Tell me, Laurie," I said with difficulty, "tell me that it was all a mistake. Tell me that you were just playing a part—"
But she was shaking her head, her eyes sad and old and full of pity and maybe something else that was wistfulness. "I couldn't have pretended, Will. You know that. And it wouldn't do any good to lie to you. There's no other place for a woman down there, or on any world. I did what was necessary. Sometimes it wasn't pleasant, but other people have done unpleasant things and things that were far worse. I learned things I couldn't have learned in any other way. I learned, for instance, that the Emperor's mercenaries hadn't captured you when you went for the pebble. I'm not sorry for myself. I'm only sorry for you. It makes a difference, doesn't it?"
"Yes," I said dully.
She stood looking at me for a moment, sad-eyed and silent. "Good-night, Will."
I didn't say anything. The walls were back between us, stronger than ever. We had torn them down with love and built them up again with words.
I lay down on the bunk and turned my face to the wall, but it was a long time before I went to sleep.
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Chapter Twenty-one
…and as I lay there, remembering how the pebble was gone and how fear first entered my world with Frieda, not knowing whether it was night or morning, Laurie came for me.
She knocked at the door, and I knew it was Laurie. I got up and opened the door. I hadn't undressed when I lay down after
she left me.
"The Archbishop will see you," she said. She didn't look at my face. Maybe it was just as well. It was unshaven and haggard with sleeplessness.
She led me back down the corridors, and I thought of the three things I had to do, one for humanity and two for myself, before the game would be over.
"Why did he hate you so much?" Laurie said.
"Who?" I asked.
"The Abbot."
"He's an ambitious man," I said. "And he said he was—I believe he is—my father."
She turned her head and shot a swift glance at me over her shoulder and looked back to the front. "The poor man," she said softly.
I knew what she meant. "Yes," I said.
She stopped in front of a door and knocked gently.
"Come in," said a soft voice from within the cabin.
Laurie slid the door back, and we entered the room. It was not much bigger than the cubicle I had slept in. In the center of the room sat an old man in a chair. He was pale and his hair was pure white, and I realized after a moment that he was crippled. He couldn't walk. And I knew, too, that he wasn't as old as I had thought. Disease and pain and sorrow had eaten away at him. They had etched lines in his face and scooped out hollows for his eyes to sleep in.
And his eyes were wise and his eyes were kind and I knew that I could trust him.
"So," he said gently, "we meet at last, my son."
"At last?"
"I've been interested in what has happened to you and what you have done."
I bowed my head and said nothing.
"Sit down," he said.
We pulled out chairs from against the wall and sat down, I opposite him and Laurie beside him. She took one of his thin hands in hers and held it. I realized that they were ranged against me.
"And the pebble turned out to be useless and worthless," he said.
I turned toward Laurie. "You told him!" I said accusingly.
She raised her head defiantly. "Yes," she said. "I couldn't let you bargain with him. You might ask for something it would hurt him to give."