“You’ve set the cat among the pigeons this time,” Helig boomed. “Do you know a couple of Freeborn’s men have been following me around since I filed that story of yours?”
“Please, Gene.” Snook pressed his temples. “If you’ll speak in normal conversational tones I’ll hear you all right.”
Helig switched to a penetrating whisper. “That convinced me there was something important in it. I wasn’t too sure, you know, and I’m afraid it showed through in the way I wrote the piece.”
“Thanks, anyway.”
“That’s all right.” Helig switched to his usual stentorian voice. “It’s all different now, of course, what with your ghosts having popped up in Brazil and Sumatra as well.”
“What?” Snook glanced at Ambrose for confirmation.
Ambrose nodded. “I said this would happen. It was perhaps a little sooner than I expected, but it doesn’t do to regard the Earth’s equator as a perfect circle. The whole planet is deformed slightly by tidal forces and, of course, the Earth wobbles in its orbit as it swings around the Earth-Moon barycentre. I don’t know how closely Avernus follows that movement, and there could be all kinds of libration effects which…” Ambrose stopped speaking as Prudence leaned across to him and pressed a hand to his mouth. The little public intimacy caused Snook to look quickly in another direction, racked with jealousy.
“Sorry,” Ambrose concluded. “I tend to get carried away.”
“There’s a hell of a lot of world interest now,” Helig said. “I heard Doctor Ambrose’s name mentioned a couple of times this morning on the main satellite networks.”
Prudence laughed delightedly, and gave Ambrose a playful push. “Fame at last!”
Snook, still intensely aware of Prudence and everything in her ambit, saw an unreadable expression flicker across Ambrose’s face, perhaps a mixture of wistfulness and triumph. It was gone on the instant, to be replaced by Ambrose’s customary look of humorous alertness, but Snook felt he had gained an insight into the other man’s character. The playboy scientist, it seemed, was hungry for fame. Or respect. The respect of his professional peers.
“Does that mean a lot more people will be coming here?” Quig said, arriving with Snook’s coffee.
“I doubt it.” Helig spoke with the bored concern of a colonial who has watched the antics of the natives for too many years. “The President’s office has cancelled all new visas for an indefinite period because of this spot of bother with Kenya. Besides, all the scientist johnnies have other places to go now. A hell of a sight easier to pop down to Brazil from the States than to come here, eh? Less chance of getting a panga up your backside, too.” Helig gave a thunderous laugh which reverberated in the cup from which Snook was drinking. Snook closed his eyes, concentrated on the aromatic taste of sanity, and wished Helig would leave.
“How are you getting on here, anyway?” Helig continued, planted solidly in the centre of the room. “If these ghosts really are inhabitants of another world, do you think we’ll ever find a way to talk to them?”
Ambrose spoke cautiously. “We were hoping we might have had a lead in that direction, but naturally it’s a tricky problem.”
Snook looked over the rim of his cup and his eyes met those of Ambrose and Prudence.
Helig peered at the settings of his wrist recorder. “Come on. Doctor—confession is good for the soul.”
“It’s too soon,” Snook said, reaching a decision he was unable to explain to himself. “Come back tomorrow or the day after, and we might have a good story for you.”
When Helig had gone, Ambrose followed Snook out to the kitchen where he was brewing more coffee.
“Did you mean what I thought you meant?” Ambrose said quietly.
“I guess so.” Snook busied himself with the rinsing out of cups in the sink.
“I’m grateful.” Ambrose picked up a cloth and began drying cups in an inexpert manner. “Look, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but scientific workers get paid like any other workers. Now, I know you had reasons of your own for getting involved in this thing, but I’d be happy to get “it on to a proper business footing if you…”
“There’s one thing you could do for me,” Snook interrupted.
“Name it.”
“Somewhere in Malaq there’s a Canadian passport belonging to me—and I’d like to have it back.”
“I think I can arrange that.”
“It could cost you quite a bit in what they call commission.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll get you out of Barandi somehow.” Ambrose, having dried two cups, apparently felt he had contributed enough in that direction and set his cloth aside. “Actually, tomorrow morning’s experiment will be nothing like the last one.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’ve been looking at the plans and the vertical section through the mine—and where tomorrow’s top dead centre occurs there hasn’t been any excavation. We’ll have to intercept the Avernian coming through exactly the same spot as last time. He’ll be ascending fairly quickly at that stage but, if you feel like it, there’ll be another chance when he’s on the way down again.”
Snook began drying the remaining cups. “We’re assuming he’ll be there, waiting for us…”
“It’s the smallest assumption we’ve made yet. That character was fast—no human could have responded so quickly and in such a positive manner. It’s my guess that we’re dealing with a race which is superior to our own in many ways.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me, but do you really believe I’ll get some kind of telepathic message when our brains are occupying the same space?”
Ambrose raised his shoulders. “There’s just no way to predict what will happen, Gil. The most probable result, according to our science—orthodox science, that is—is that nothing at all will happen. After all, your brain has occupied the same space as Avernian rock and you didn’t get a headache.”
“You chose an unfortunate example.” Snook pressed two fingertips delicately against a throbbing vein in his temple, as if taking his pulse.
“Why do you drink so much?”
“It helps me to sleep.”
“You’d be better with a woman,” Ambrose said. “Same result, but the side-effects are all good.”
Snook drove a painful vision from his mind, a vision of Prudence cradled in his left arm, her face turned to his. “We were talking about the telepathy experiment—you think nothing will happen?”
“I didn’t say that. The trouble is we know so little about the subject. I mean, telepathy between human beings wasn’t proved until a few years ago when they finally got round to throwing out those stupid card-guessing routines. A lot of people would say the brain structure, thought processes and language structure of an extra-terrestrial race are bound to be so incompatible with ours that no communication at all could take place, telepathically or any other way.”
“But the Avemians aren’t extra-terrestrial—they’re just the opposite.” Snook wrought with unfamiliar concepts. “If they’ve existed a few hundred kilometres under our feet for millions of years, and if telepathy really exists, the link might be already established. There might be something like resonance…you know, sympathetic resonance…the Avemians might be responsible for…”
“Common elements in religions? Plutonic mythologies? The universal idea that hell is under the ground?” Ambrose shook his head. “You’re going way beyond the scope of the investigation, Gill, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Don’t forget that, even though the Avemians do exist inside the Earth, in many respects they’re further away from us than Sirius. The most distant star you can see in the sky is at least part of our own universe.”