The Ceres Solution

Chapter Four

Finally, it was time for the transfer to Earth.

High Instructor Tabalth walked with Gretana to the circular courtyard at the heart of the building which had been her home for almost fifty days. The noontime heat had collected there like an invisible fluid in a dish, imparting a drowsiness to the atmosphere, causing the blue patterns of the central mosaic to ripple slightly as though under a film of water. All sounds were strangely muted. Gretana could feel the multiplicity of major skord-lines converging at the spot, interfering with the normal properties of space and time.

“As you know,” Tabalth said, his eyes fixed on her face with an unfocused quality which suggested he was not really seeing her, “we make the transfer to Earth in two stages. The first will take you to the Bureau’s Field Station 23, which is the control point for our Earth programme.

“As is usual where the subject race has shown an interest in space exploration, the station is not located in the home system. It’s only twenty light years away, however, on a planet of the G-type sun catalogued on Earth as 82 Eridani. We like 82 Eridani because it is part of a web of stable skord-lines giving us eight major nodes on Earth’s principal land masses.”

Gretana delved into her newly-implanted memories and nodded confirmation that Tabalth’s subject matter was familiar to her.

“I hope this is an auspicious day for you,” Tabalth said, sounding polite rather than sincere.

Gretana nodded. “I have the fifth planet.”

Tabalth held still for a second, attuning himself, then glanced towards the east to where the fifth planet, Nuce, was invisibly lifting above the horizon. “You are fortunate.”

“I know.” Gretana spoke without much conviction, wondering how she would be able to regulate her daily life once she had left the comforting matrix of planetary influences which permeated the home system. “The time is right.”

“In that case—fair seasons!” Tabalth stepped back, taking himself outside the perimeter of the radial mosaic design, and by implication urging Gretana to proceed to its centre.

“Fair seasons!” Not allowing herself to hesitate, she walked to the mid-point of the courtyard, already assembling Station 23’s spatial address on an imagined screen. The key equation was more complex than those she had used all her adult life, but she held it easily enough. She raised her right hand and traced the appropriate three-dimensional mnemo-curve, specifying the target’s unique relationship with her present location. Once again she felt the subtle and ineffable loosening that always preceded an internodal leap. She closed her eyes in the final transcendental instant of concentration and the bulk of the planet beneath her feet seemed to stir, just once, like some vast slumbering animal disturbed by a dream.

Gretana opened her eyes to a night-time world in which faint stars scarcely penetrated barriers of radiance thrown up by encirclements of floodlights and brilliantly illuminated buildings.

The air was cold and had a faintly acrid tang to it, and a peculiar sense of emptiness at the core of her being told Gretana she was on a world which shared its sun with no other planets. Never before having completed an interstellar transfer, she felt both awed and humbled by the magnitude of her achievement, by the powers of he Mollanian mind-science she had always taken for granted. I could have done something like this a long time ago, she thought, herfeelings now complicated by a kind of exultation, and yet it never occurred to me. Nor to any of my friends. It’s almost as if…

“Gretana ty Iltha,” said a female voice, accurately beamed at her from an invisible source, “come to the reception chamber indicated by the marker lights.”

Twin lines of tesserae began to pulse amber and white, stipplinga pathway to one of the buildings on the perimeter of the circular plaza. She set out along it on legs which tried to buckle with each step, a tendency which was enhanced by her unfamiliarity with Terran footwear. Positive that she was being scrutinised, and wishing she could at least have had the reassurance of wearing her own best clothes, she reached the building and entered it by way of an automatic door.

The square, brightly-lit chamber within was larger than she had expected and contained more than twenty desks interspersed with machines whose functions were unguessable, but which appeared to be electronic in nature. Only a few of the desks were in use. Their occupants were bored-looking men wearing the blue overalls of the Bureau of Wardens, and none of them appeared even to notice Gretana’s arrival. It was impossible for her to decide if the place’s faint air of desolation sprang merely from the fact that it was understaffed at night, or if it had been permanently run down from a higher level of activity. Unsure of what to do next, she was glancing around in the hope of seeing the woman who had spoken to her at long range when a door slid open in the nearest interior wall.

The man who appeared in the opening was tall and strongly-built, but with a pug-nosed, large-chinned face whose proportions were so far from those of the Lucent Ideal that he would almost certainly never be able to marry. For an instant Gretana reacted as her old self—with compassion compounded by a sense of reluctant kinship—then remembered that with her present surgically-altered features it was she who was the prime object of pity. The stranger, however, seemed in no way embarrassed or perturbed by her appearance or his own. He greeted her with a smile of surprising amiability and confidence.

“Fair seasons, Gretana,” he said, coming forward to give her—as only someone in his unusual occupation would have considered doing—a Terran-style handshake. “I’m Ichmo tye Railt. your section coordinator. How do you feel?”

“I…How am I supposed to feel?”

“Isn’t this your first time off-world? Beginners often get quite severe reactions—faintness, nausea, powerful urges to skord straight back home.” The coordinator mimed a hasty and ludicrously complicated mnemo-curve.

“I’m all right.” Gretana realised, with some surprise, that her legitimate awe over treading the surface of an alien world had been displaced by curiosity about how a man so unprepossessing as Ichmo could appear so relaxed and content with himself.

“Good for you,” Ichmo said. “Your assessment gives you an A2 rating, and they seem to be getting rare these days. No doubt that’s why the Warden said you were to be taken straight to his office.”

Gretana felt a cool nervous tremor, and her hands rose of their own accord to mask her face. “Now? Am I going to see him right now?”

“Yes, but as a projection.” Ichmo opened a second door and ushered her into an area of faint purple lighting. “The Warden hasn’t been able to spend much time here in recent years. We’re under increasing pressure from some non-human sectors, particularly the Attatorians. Their sensory apparatus is totally different to our own, so they won’t accept the Warden’s electronic presence—they expect him to negotiate in person.”

“I see.” Trying to conceal her disappointment, Gretana paused at a three-dimensional star map which floated in the cavernous dimness. She was able, by drawing on newly-imprinted knowledge, to identify the central region containing the 172 planetary systems where human life was known to flourish. On all sides of it, in volumes of space that had various background tints, were the non-human empires.

“You can see the Warden’s problem,” Ichmo said, pointing at a star which was surrounded by a pulsing bubble of green light. “Here’s Sol, with Earth, less than a hundred light years from the Attatorian boundary in an area that’s always been a bit of a jumble anyway. The Attatorians and some others are claiming that—because of the unique conditions on Earth—it should be declared a free zone, with unlimited right of access for scientific observers.

’We reject that viewpoint, of course—especially as the whole Terran civilisation is balanced on a knife-edge—but the Attatorians are pushing pretty hard, and the number of unauthorised atmospheric penetrations is going up every decade. You’ll probably see evidence of that yourself when you go into the field. Are you nervous about it?”

“I’m afraid so,” Gretana said. Everything would have been all right if only I could have seen Vekrynn…

“In that case, you shouldn’t spend too much time here.” Ichmo spoke with brusque sympathy. “My advice is to hear what the Old Man has to say to you, then move straight on to Earth before the witchcraft wears off. I’ll be waiting in my office.”

“Witchcraft?” Gretana was prepared to be offended on Vekrynn’s behalf. “I’m afraid I…”

“Don’t take it the wrong way,” Ichmo said, smiling his homely smile. “The Warden couldn’t have achieved a tenth of what he has done without using his own kind of magic to make people believe what he wants them to believe. He’s a monomaniac, you see, totally obsessed with the Wardenship of Earth, and the rest of us aren’t used to dealing with that type of mentality—so he wins all the battles.”

Gretana, eager to add to her scanty store of knowledge about Vekrynn, was both intrigued and disturbed by the hint that the Warden had to face his share of problems like any other human being. “But he’s the doyen.”

“So was his father, which means Vekrynn was generally expected to accept an administrative post on the High Council. Instead of that, he used the family influence to get Earth added to the list of the Hundred Worlds, and he has kept it there ever since, in spite of all the opposition.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“That’s because Vekrynn programmes all our educational imprints in person, and he likes to engender positive attitudes.”

“But you don’t.”

“Wrong! I simply prefer different methods.” Ichmo regarded her quizzically for a moment, then turned and with a wave of one hand conjured up from the dimness a simulation of Earth, minus its normal cloud cover, as viewed from a distance of several planetary diameters. “There it is—the unlucky one—in all its seething short-lived misery. As you must know, the sole purpose of the Bureau of Wardens is to study the evolution of civilisation on a nominal one hundred human worlds—the actual number is now somewhat less than a hundred—and to develop a science which will enable the Mollanian culture to survive for ever. The official term is ‘indefinitely’, but it means for ever.”

Gretana nodded. “Well?”

“We come to the delicate question of relative time scales. As a matter of policy, we have mostly chosen worlds which have had no success in extending life expectancy beyond the norm of six or seven centuries, the theory being that they conveniently telescope or condense all social and evolutionary processes and thus yield far more data. The theory isn’t generally accepted, though. Some authorities take the view that the lifespan of the individual dictates virtually all of his attitudes and consequently has a profound effect on the development of his civilisation. They claim that the data obtained from human cultures with unmodified lifespans are highly suspect, not at all applicable to Mollan. They also claim that all observations of a pitiful freak like Earth are of academic interest only. Putting it bluntly, they would like the Wardenship of Earth to be discontinued.”

“I had no idea,” Gretana breathed, her mental image of Vekrynn acquiring new dimensions of circumstance. “How does the Warden feel?”

Ichmo snorted quietly. “The Warden doesn’t feel anything. He knows that Earth has given us a uniquely valuable opportunity to chart the entire course of a human civilisation, from beginning to end, within one Mollanian lifetime.”

“Well, I accept his view.” Gretana eyed the coordinator significantly. “Even if others don’t.”

Ichmo rolled his eyes, looking humorously exasperated. “He really converted you, didn’t he?”

“Is that something to be ashamed of?” The words were out before Gretana made the guilty discovery that she was allowing her manner towards Ichmo to be influenced by his remarkable ugliness. She tightened her lips and resolved to be more considerate.

“I’m a believer in loyalty,” Ichmo said in a gentle voice, going closer to the three-dimensional projection of Earth and pointing at the North Atlantic. “When I joined Vekrynn only three ships had crossed this strip of water. That was five centuries ago.”

Gretana lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Ichmo appeared not to hear her. “Of course, Vekrynn has seen it all—ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Phoenicians and Minoans, India, China, Maya. He has taken imprints from every agent’s report in our data banks, and when I think about that I get afraid of him. It hurts me even to try visualising what he knows about that sad, sick, doomed little civilisation down there, and sometimes I wonder if they’re worth all the work he has put in.”

Gretana recalled High Instructor Tabalth’s words. “Work on his Notebook?”

Ichmo surprised her with a bark of laughter. “Never ever let the Warden hear you say that, young Gretana.”

“I didn’t mean any…”

“Analytical Notes on the Evolution of One Human Civilisation, by Warden Vekrynn tye Orltha, is a modest-sounding title for a book, but Vekrynn’s entire life has gone into it. To date it contains almost one billion words, and a Conclusion of at least ten million words will be written when Earth has finally snuffed itself out.” Ichmo paused to see if the figures he was quoting were having the intended effect.

“Up-to-date copies are stored on five widely separated planets, so that not even a supernova could endanger its existence. We’re talking about Vekrynn’s memorial, young Gretana, his bid for immortality. So take my advice—don’t refer to it as his Notebook.”

Gretana was dismayed by her gaffe. “I didn’t know what Tabalth was talking about.”

“Neither does he most of the time,” Ichmo said, “but don’t get involved with inter-departmental bickering at this time. Run along and hear what the Old Man has to say to you.”

Gretana nodded and went through a series of radiance screens into a large circular room with a domed blue ceiling. Its furnishings consisted of a desk, a conference table and high-backed chairs. Part of the wall was occupied by a holographic view of Station 23 which revealed to Gretana that the entire complex was huddled beneath a hemispherical energy lattice which contained an artificial atmosphere. Her sense of being in an outpost was suddenly intensified.

“Thank you for coming to see me, Gretana tylltha.” Vekrynn’s image, abruptly appearing at the centre of the room, spoke with the special confidential warmth she had almost forgotten. The lifelike projection of his figure, the heroic statue cast in precious metals, had almost the same emotional impact as the actual man. It brought light to the room. Gretana checked herself in the act of beginning the reply which would have gone unheard.

“It is a matter of deepest personal regret to me that I cannot be there to give you a few words of encouragement at this important moment of your life. I want you to know, Gretana, that my thoughts are with you and that I have the utmost confidence in your ability to succeed in your work for the Bureau. And you will appreciate exactly what I mean when I assure you that fair seasons really are in store.” The golden image smiled directly at Gretana, aiming itself by means of discreet sensors, then dissolved into glittering particles which swarmed and faded.

Bemused by the brevity of the recording, Gretana stared at the vanishing motes of radiance while she considered the meaning of Vekrynn’s final remark. With the unusual emphasis he had placed on two words he had been reiterating, as openly as was prudent for a public communication, all that he had secretly promised her on the afternoon of their first meeting. She was going to be fair, as fair as any Mollanian woman had ever been, and her season lay only a small number of decades away in the future. It was to be a long and idyllic season, richly rewarding, impossible to visualise in advance, but with one quintessential and dominant image—that of her and Vekrynn dancing in the spangled twilight of one of the eternal parties on Silver Island, in the Bay of Karlth, where as a small girl she had watched the distant glimmers from the shore and had dreamed a thousand hopeless dreams. That image was too romantic and too simple, a remnant of her childhood, but now—with her understanding of Vekrynn as a human being, not a symbol—she could begin to elaborate on it and bring it closer to reality. Vekrynn had problems; she, as one of the premier beauties of Mollanian society, was certain to acquire great influence, and those circumstances might one day forge a powerful and enduring link between them, a true partnership.

Against that kind of vision, her sojourn on Earth could be regarded as an irksome but mercifully brief preliminary…