Mirelly-Lyra snarled something. The box translated: "Are you mocking me?"
Corbell waved the cane under her nose. "Suppose I am?"
She came at him with her fingernails. He didn't bother with the trigger. He rapped her on the head with the cane, twice, before she backed out of range.
Gording had found the button on the post. He pushed it.
Corbell shouted, "Heeeyaa!" The other booth danced with drifting dust motes.
Gording opened the door and said, "Nothing happened."
"Not quite true," said Corbel. To Mirelly-Lyra he said, "You don't have to if you don't want to. You can trust me or not." Gloat, gloat, he mocked himself, and was a little ashamed. But he'd fought for this!
She swallowed whatever words were on her tongue. She was truly desperate. As she entered the booth Corbell caught Gording's eye and pointed to the booth with no door.
The dust floating in the booth suddenly thickened. Gording smiled and said, "Ah."
The Norn had caught it too, but she didn't understand... and Corbell was bubbling with it. "Inert molecules from your cells! Chemical medicines won't reach that stuff, but the 'phone booth' does. It takes just those dead molecules and does the instant-elsewhere trick with them. Just the stuff that builds up over ninety years of life. See it now?"
"I don't feel any different," she said uncertainly.
"You should. I did. It was like I'd caught my second wind. Of course I was moving at a dead run. It's nothing obvious. What did you expect? In a couple of days you'll find dark roots in your hair."
"Red," she said. "Fiery red."
"Where's the helmet?"
She smiled. She still looked like an old woman; but was there something malicious in that smile?
Chapter NINE: PEERSSA FOR THE STATE
I
The cat-tail sprang from the desk as they entered Mirelly-Lyra's office. Its grey-and-white face watched them mistrustfully from the safety of a ceiling light fixture.
Corbel's pressure suit sat limp in one of the guest chairs. Gording and Mirelly-Lyra watched him detach the helmet and set it on his head. He cleared his throat and said, "This is Corbell for himself calling Peerssa for the State. Come in, Peerssa."
Nothing, nothing, nothing... "He's got to be in range by now. Peerssa, dammit, answer!"
Gording pushed the suit aside and took the chair. The silver cane remained fixed on the old woman. She didn't notice. Malice and victory! She gave Corbell the shivers.
Corbell jumped when the cat-tail abruptly dropped from the ceiling into the old woman's lap. It landed soft as a snowflake and coiled there, ears up, watching Corbell make a fool of himself.
Nothing, nothing, nothing, n- The voice came faintly, fading in spots. "Peerssa for the State, Peerssa for the State calling Jaybee Corbell. Please allow for a delay of sixty-seven seconds in transmission. Corbel, I have a great deal to tell you."
"Yeah, you do! I've got a great deal to tell you, too! I can tell you most of the history of the solar system. Tell me first, have you taken control of the planet Uranus? If so, what do you plan to do with it?" To Gording he said, "I'm asking him now. We'll know in a minute."
"What takes so long?"
"Speed of light. Uranus must be thirty-three and a half light-seconds away."
Gording nodded. He was not impatient. Even his handling of the cane seemed negligent... but it never left the old woman. Good. Because she still had that look.
When Peerssa spoke he was irritatingly placid. "Yes, I am guiding a planet I believe to be Uranus. You were right in guessing that this is the solar system. After losing contact with you I flew to investigate the most easily available anomaly, the new planet between Jupiter and Saturn. I found a satellite with control systems which would respond to-"
"I know all about the motor! The question-" He bit it off. The delay was going to drive him nuts. Peerssa was still talking: "-my broadcasts. I was able to probe the fail-safe programs first. Otherwise I might have damaged something. Eventually I found an object in the planet's upper atmosphere radiating strongly in the infrared. I found a tremendous motor, a fusion pulse drive clearly intended to move the entire planet. Oh, you know about the motor. All right. I've already started the braking sequence. In twenty-two days Uranus will be inserted into orbit two million miles ahead of the Earth. I'm going to move the Earth further from Jupiter. We'll cool it down to normal."
"Don't do it!" Corbell barked. He remembered uneasily that he had never been sure of Peerssa's motives. "Listen, life on Earth has been adjusting to this situation for a million years or more. If you screw it up now most of the biosphere will die, including what passes for humanity these days."
The old woman already looked younger, if only in a tightening of the muscles in her face, a smoothing of the pouchy look. Corbell looked away from the malicious cat-smile. He lifted the helmet and said in Boyish, "We were right. No coincidence at all. Peerssa dropped me here, then went to look Uranus over. He's going to put everything back the way it was when he left Earth."
Gording stared. "But the ice! The ice would cover-"
"Bear with me a little longer, will you?" He lowered the helmet on Gording's answer.
Peerssa's delayed reply came. "I do not take your orders, Corbel. I take orders from Mirelly-Lyra Zeelashisthar, who was once a citizen of the State."
He should have known better, but it took him by surprise. He screamed, "You traitor!"
Mirelly-Lyra threw back her head and laughed.
Corbell laid the helmet on the desk. It took him a moment to find his voice. "No wonder you were smirking. What happened?"
She was thoroughly enjoying herself. "I tried to call your autopilot. No luck. A few days ago I tried again. It may have helped that my translator uses your voice. Peerssa and I talked for many hours about the State, and the world, and you-"
She broke off because Peerssa's reply had arrived. "My loyalty has never wavered, Corbell. Was there ever a time when you could say the same?"
"Drop dead," Corbell told the helmet. "Stand by. Mirelly-Lyra is with us now. We'll try to talk her into changing your orders." To Gording he said, "She rules my autopilot. She rules Uranus. I'm tired."
"You must persuade her not to let it carry out its mission. This is urgent, Corbel."
"I thought of that." Corbell closed his eyes and leaned back.
He could watch it happen. As long as he could survive at all, he would be young. He could watch glaciers cover Antarctica until the ice was a mile thick. He and Mirelly-Lyra could watch the dwarf buffalo and the nude polar bears and the Boys and the dikta flee north until they froze in snowstorms or starved in land baked bare of life or died for lack of the vitamin D in kathope seed.
Maybe that was an angle. Did the old retread want the Earth all for herself? Or would she prefer company? But she'd fled the Boys once, and lived alone... hmmm. Where did she get her food? Was there anything she couldn't stand to see extinct?
He opened his eyes. Gording was looking concerned for him. Oddly, so was the old woman.
"Nothing hurts," Gording said. "I was used to things hurting. Sometimes my breath would come short. Always my joints and tendons and muscles ached. Corbell, you've found it. We're young again."
"Yeah. Good."
"Play on her gratitude. I can't talk to her. It has to be you. You're capable. The fate of the world is on your shoulders."
"That's all I need." He closed his eyes for a moment... just for a moment... and then he asked Mirelly-Lyra, "How do you feel?"