City at World's End

Chapter 16 AT VEGA

She glanced quickly from his face to the darkened room, and then back at him, with a look of understanding. She asked, “May I come in?”

He stepped aside, reaching for the switch, and she said, “No, don’t. I like to look out, too.”

She took the chair by the window and sat for a few moments in silence, looking out, the dim starglow touching her face.

Kenniston, his immediate feeling of hostility tempered a little by puzzlement, waited for her to speak. She sat almost stiffly, a queerly prim little figure in the drab jacket and slacks, but he thought that there were lines of tiredness and strain in her clear face now.

She turned and looked at him with thoughtful blue eyes, and it came to him that Varn Allan felt ill at ease with him, that she wanted to say something that she did not quite know how to say. So she, too, was worried about this business at Vega? He thought savagely that that was fine, that it cut her down from a high-and-mighty official of the great Federation into an anxious woman, almost a girl.

She said, “I came to tell you—owing to the pressing nature of this case, the Board of Governors has granted us two hours on the day after we arrive at Vega Four.”

“Two hours!” exclaimed Kenniston. It did not seem much time in which to decide the fate of a world.

“The Governors have the problems of half a galaxy to decide. They cannot give more time than that to anyone. So perpare your case carefully. There is never a second hearing.”

He thought that she had not come only to say that, and he waited, forcing her to speak. He realized now that her tension and weariness equaled his own.

Finally, reluctantly, Varn Allan said, “As Sub-Administrator of the sector, Norden Lund will have the right to speak on this problem to the Governors.”

Kenniston hadn’t known that, but it made no difference to him and he said so.

“It may make a very great difference indeed to you and your people,” she warned him.

“In what way?”

She told him, “Lund is ambitious. He wants to be an Administrator, and later, a Governor—perhaps even Chairman. His aspirations are unbounded.”

Now, Kenniston began to understand a little. “In other words, as Gorr Holl said, Lund is after your job.”

“Yes. It would be a step up for him. And to make that step, he would quite cheerfully commit an injustice. Of that I am sure.” Varn Allan leaned forward. “He sees in the problem of Earth an unparalleled opportunity to advance himself. Your unheard-of irruption into this time from the past has created tremendous interest in you. And many worlds will be watching this coming hearing.”

In her earnestness, she had risen and was standing in front of him, speaking carefully, choosing her words to make him understand.

“If Lund can dominate this hearing, if he can offer some sensational proof that I have blundered in handling the Earth problem and that he has been right, he will have distinguished himself before the eyes of everyone.”

Kenniston was sure now that he completely understood, but he did not let his feelings show in his face or voice as he asked, “Then you’re afraid that Lund is going to spring some surprise at this hearing?”

Varn Allan nodded earnestly. “Yes—I know that he has something in mind. He has been smugly triumphant with me, ever since we took off.

But what it is, I do not know.” She looked at Kenniston worriedly, and asked, “Do you know? Is there something about your people, about this Earth problem, that Lund could use at the hearing?”

Kenniston got to his feet. He looked down into her face, and then he began to laugh. Softly, at first, and then more loudly—a bitter, angry laughter that vented all the resentment he had felt from the first. She looked up at him, startled and uncomprehending.

“This,” he said, “is very rich indeed. This is really comic. You come to Earth as the law of the Federation, as Miss High-and-Mighty, and look at us as though we were a bunch of sheep, and order us this and order us that, and can hardly bear even to talk to the poor fuzzy-witted primitives. And then, all of a sudden, when your own precious job is in danger, you come running to me to help you save it!”

Varn Allan’s face was white and incredulous, her blue eyes starting to flare, her whole slim figure rigid.

Kenniston told her savagely, “You know what? I don’t give a damn who’s administrator, you or Lund! You’re neither of you my kind. If he can take your job, more power to him—it’ll make no difference to me or mine!”

He knew by the white wrath in her face that he had thrust beneath that serious, composed exterior at last, that the competent, brilliant official had emotions like any other woman and that he had got to them.

“So you think that,” Varn Allan breathed. “So you think that I would plead for your help, to save my position?”

Her voice rose then, driven by an anger that seemed almost more than her small figure could contain. It was as though he had touched a spring that released a hot, long-pent passion.

“My position—my official rank! Do you think I am like Lund, that the power to give orders is pleasure to me? What would you, a primitive, know of a tradition of service to the Federation? Do you suppose I wanted to follow that family tradition, that I enjoyed the years of study when other girls were dancing, that my idea of a happy life is to spend it in starship cabins and on unfriendly worlds? Do you think all that is so dear to me that I would worry and plot and come pleading to a primitive, to keep it?”

She choked on her own indignation, and turned toward the door. Kenniston, startled by that violent outburst, obeyed a sudden impulse and caught her arm.

“Wait! Don’t go. I—”

She looked up at him with blazing eyes and said, “Let me go or I’ll call an orderly.”

Kenniston did not release her. He said awkwardly, “No, wait. I was out of line. I’m sorry—”

He was. He was ashamed of himself, and he did not know exactly why he should be, but something in her passion had made him so. He hated unfairness, and he felt that he had been unfair.

He said so, and Varn Allan looked up at him with eyes that were still angry, but after a moment she turned away from the door.

“Let us forget it,” she said stiffly. “I was at fault, for talking emotionally like—”

“Like a primitive,” Kenniston finished for her, and she set her small jaw and said, “Exactly. Like a primitive.”

Kenniston laughed. His hostility to her and her kind might remain, but he had lost that resentful consciousness of inferiority that had nagged him since he met her. He had lost it, when the cool, competent Federation official had revealed herself as a worried and lonely girl.

“No, no, I wasn’t laughing at you,” he said hastily. “Now tell me, why did you feel it necessary to bring up this Lund business with me?”

“It was to save my rank and position,” she said bitterly. “It was because I was afraid of losing them, of—”

“Oh, all right, I’ve apologized for that,” he said impatiently. “Christ, but you people are touchy!”

For a moment Varn Allan was silent. Then she said, “You think it will make no difference to you whether Lund or I speak at the hearing, that we’re both against your people. You are wrong, Kenniston.”

“You and he are both for evacuating us off Earth,” he reminded her,

“So what difference is there?”

“There’s a very great difference,” she said earnestly. “I may have made mistakes in dealing with your people, but my desire has been to accomplish a smooth, peaceful evacuation. Lund would like to deal with this Earth problem dramatically—that is to say, forcefully.”

“Forcefully?” Kenniston stiffened. “I told you both what it would mean if you tried force!”

“I know, and I believe you enough to want to solve this evacuation problem peacefully, even though it should involve delay. That is my idea of an Administrator’s duty. But Lund knows that due to your strange background, and due to the fact that this Earth case focuses the whole long controversy about world evacuation, all eyes will be on this hearing, and he would use it to advance himself, no matter what disastrous events he might unchain on Earth.”

Her logic was clear enough, and it squared with Kenniston’s estimate of Lund. He felt a suddenly deepened worry.

“But what could Lund bring up about the Earth problem that would be a surprise?” he wanted to know.

Varn Allan shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought maybe you might know. He has something, I’m sure.”

Kenniston said thoughtfully, “I don’t. But maybe Gorr and the others might have some idea. I’ll try to find out.”

He looked at her, and whatever his feelings about her might be he had to admit that he was convinced of her sincere attachment to her duty, and that though her ideas of justice might not jibe with his, she would not be deliberately unjust.

He said, “Thanks for telling me this. And again—I’m sorry I shot off.”

She said soberly, “I know you’re under strain, from this voyage and from anxiety. But—don’t let Gorr and the rest encourage you to hope for too much. The evacuation itself cannot be avoided; it is the way in which it is to be done that worries me.” And she added with sudden weariness,

“I wish I were a girl of your Middletown, who had never left her world and to whom the stars were just lights in the sky.”

He shook his head. “You’d still have your worries, believe me. Hurled out of your own life into this one—Carol, right now, is more upset than you’ll ever be.”

“Carol? That would be the girl I saw with you?”

He nodded. “Yes. My girl. She was raised in that old town of ours, school and picnics and parties and what hat to wear, and then suddenly—bang! She’s here in this crazy future, and may not even be allowed to stay on Earth!”

Varn Allan said, musingly, “How strange it must be, to have grown up on one little, little planet, to have lived that tiny, circumscribed routine.

In a way, I envy her. And I’m sorry for her.”

She turned to go, and Kenniston held out his hand. “No hard feelings, then?”

She was for a moment completely puzzled by his gesture, then understood and smiled and laid her hand awkwardly in his. But she took it away hastily and went out.

Kenniston stared after her. “Well, I’ll be damned if she isn’t afraid of men!”

His resentful hostility to her was gone, and while he knew she would be in there pitching against him on this evacuation that she thought so necessary, it did not worry him like the matter of Norden Lund.

The more he thought about Lund, the more he worried. Finally, he went to Gorr Holl’s cabin and told the big Capellan.

Gorr Holl instantly looked upset. “That’s bad. Lund could make nasty trouble, if he’s got hold of something. But what could it be?”

“I thought maybe you’d know.”

“Not a thing,” the Capellan denied. “Wait a minute—Piers Eglin has been a little thick with Lund lately. Maybe he’d know.”

Kenniston got up. “Piers always wants to talk to me about the old town. If he knows anything, maybe he’ll spill it.”

But it was not until the next day—the strange dawnless artifical day of starship routine—that he got a chance to talk to the little historian.

He asked Eglin bluntly, “Do you know what Lund’s got up his sleeve for this hearing?”

The question fluttered Piers Eglin badly. He fidgeted, and looked away with a hunted expression, and mumbled, “Why do you ask me? What could I know?”

Kenniston stared at him. “You’re a pretty poor liar, Piers. What do you know?”

Eglin began to babble almost incoherently. “Kenniston, listen—you mustn’t draw me into your troubles! I like you, I wish I could help you—

but I’m a historian, it’s my life, that old town of yours on Earth is like a dream come true to me, and to save it, I would do anything. Anything!”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Kenniston demanded. “What does Middletown have to do with it?”

The little historian said feverishly, “You don’t understand its import-ance. You people from the past will die away, but that city from the far past can be preserved forever, the greatest of historical treasures. I can preserve it, keep it for future study, if I have official backing—”

A light dawned on Kenniston. “And Norden Lund is going to give you that backing? In exchange for what? What have you done to help him?”

Eglin shook his head wretchedly. “I can’t say anything. Honestly, I can’t.”

He was nearly in tears, as he went away. Kenniston looked after him, mystified and deeply troubled.

He told Gorr Holl and the others. Magro looked baffled. “But what could Piers do to help Lund? I don’t get it at all.”

“Maybe he overheard some of our people making threats and wild talk, and reported it?” Kenniston said.

Gorr Holl shook his head. “Just hearsay wouldn’t be worth much. And anyway, Piers wasn’t around your people much after the first—he spent all his time in the old town.”

Lal’lor said slowly, “I do not like it. Try to find out what it is that Piers has done, Kenniston.”

Kenniston, thought, found in the following “days” that Piers Eglin very definitely was avoiding him. He did not even see the little historian again until they made their landing on Vega Four.

He had sat for hours that day in the bridge room of the Thanis, looking with unbelieving wonderment at the alien solar system shaping itself out of the void, the spinning planets sweeping in majestic curves through the brilliant circle of Vega’s light.

The ship was sweeping in toward the fourth planet. Kenniston saw the cloudy globe leap up to meet them, and again he felt the magically tempered pressure. As they hummed downward, he was stricken with a vertiginous fear that they were going to crash.

He glimpsed a vast landscape whose dominant colors were quite unearthly. Cruel, lofty mountains of purple-black rock rose grandly beyond broad blue plains. Then the rushing ship swept over a great expanse of vivid yellow—a golden ocean that flashed back Vega’s brilliance blindingly. And then a city. A white, towering continent of a city that, even viewed from the stratosphere, was enough to take Kenniston’s breath away. There was a huge starship port near it, and the Thanis was dropping smoothly through tangled shipping traffic toward it, making world-fall in its waiting dock with the softest of jars.

Vega Four. He was here. And he could not believe it, not even now.

Gorr Holl unfastened his straps. The Capellan was almost as tense as Kenniston himself.

“Jon Arnol should be here waiting for us,” he said rapidly. “His workshop is on the other side of this planet. Gome along, Kenniston!”

Jon Arnol? Kenniston had almost forgotten about him, in the grip of this strange arrival. In the shivering fascination of being here, he found it hard to keep his mind on why he was here.

He went down with Gorr Holl to the big vestibule inside the entrance port. The lock was open, and strange blue sunlight struck the metal floor, strange air, laden with faintly alien scents, drifted to his nostrils.

Lund and Varn Allan were there, and the woman said to him, “Your quarters will be in Government Center. I can take you there.”

Gorr Holl, looking out at a dark, lean man who was hurrying across the concrete apron toward the Thanis, said hastily, “No, you needn’t bother. We’ll take Kenniston along to his quarters.”

The lean, dark man was coming up the stairs to the lock. He was perhaps ten years older than Kenniston, with a worn face and the eyes of a dreamer, and the unsteady hands of a man who is laboring under great excitement.

Varn Allan’s eyes rested on him, and she said, “I see. Jon Arnol. I thought that’s what you had in mind. But it won’t succeed, Gorr.”

“Maybe it will, this time,” rumbled the Capellan.

Norden Lund, looking at Arnol as he entered, laughed, and then without saying anything went out. Varn Allan looked as though she were going to speak to Kenniston, but didn’t.

She said, “Then you are responsible for his appearance tomorrow, Gorr,” and she left.

Kenniston, looking after her, wished she had not spoken. And he wished that Lund had not laughed quite so smugly. He was worried enough as it was.

Arnol had reached them, was greeting Lal’lor as an old friend, smiling at Magro and Gorr Holl. His smile, his movements, were quick and sharp and only half finished, as though the tense nerves of the body were acting independently of the brain.

“I think we’ve got a chance this time, Lal’lor!” he said eagerly. “By God, I think we do! This Earth business may be just what we’ve waited for, the chance to ram the Arnol process down their throats whether they like it or not! It’s a lucky break!” Gorr Holl told him, “This is Kenniston, of Earth.” Jon Arnol looked a little ashamed as he turned to Kenniston. “I’m sorry if I sounded selfish. I know you’ve got your own terrible problem.

But if you knew how long I’ve sweated and waited and hoped! I’m a scientist, nothing else is important to me, and I’ve seen my whole life’s work and achievement held back by politics—”

Gorr Holl interrupted. “Now listen, this is no place to talk! Let’s get on to Government Center. We can talk in Kenniston’s quarters, and we’ve got plenty of planning to do before tomorrow!”

Kenniston went down the steps with them, onto the concrete apron, and for a moment the whole problem of Earth seemed impossibly far away.

He stood on an alien world, under an alien Sun, and all around him was the rush and clangor of the starport, where the great ships came and went across the galaxy. Somehow here, more than in space, he caught the reality of that incredible commerce that plied between the farthest Suns, that knew the shining trails among the nebulae and the deadly currents of the stardrifts, and the infinite numbers of ports on infinite name-less worlds. Something in him rose up in mingled awe and pride, remembering that men of Earth had first voyaged across the unknown seas to these star-fringed shores of the universe.

The deep bass thrumming of the great ships shook the ground beneath him and the atomic forges beat, hammering the plates for bow and keel, and the black hulls lifted majestically against the sky, scarred and pitted with the dusts and atmospheres of a galaxy, and Kenniston would have stood forever watching if Gorr Holl had not led him away with them.

Jon Arnol had a car waiting, a car that bore small relation to the ones that Kenniston had known except that it went along the ground. It was sleek and low, and he knew that it must be very swift, but speed seemed to be controlled along the incredible network of ramps and roads and flying bridges that spanned the city. They went fast, but not so fast that he could not see.

He looked at this city, splendid in the light of setting Vega, and he felt like an ignorant barbarian come down from the hills to Babylon. It was more a nation than a city, too huge and awesome to comprehend.

Already the dusk was gathering in its deep ways, soft lights were glowing forth and the traffic and the crowd flowed there in murmuring rivers. And along such a river sped their car, the others so little impressed that they were talking eagerly still of the morrow, of the hearing, of the great chance.

Kenniston looked at the thronged and glowing streets, the strange thousands who went its ways, and it was borne in upon him with crushing impact that this was the center of the galaxy, the capital of a thousand thousand worlds. Man and woman and humanoid, silken clothing and furry hides and backs humped with wings, voices human and nonhuman, alien music that jarred his nerves, throb of hidden machines, and over all the deep humming from the sky that told of more and more starships dropping down through the deepening dusk.

As though from a remote distance he heard Gorr Holl speaking to him, pointing ahead toward a range of titan buildings that rose like white Cordilleras, their tops raking the sky. It came to his numbed mind presently that that was Government Center, the place to which they were bound, the place where he must presently stand up alone and speak for faraway Earth to these strangers of the stars.