“You stupid, selfish bastard,” he said, hissing through his teeth. “You have ruined everything the C.R.E. was set up to do. You have set back the cause of humankind irreparably. How do you think we are ever going to hold our heads up in the galactic community now? There is nothing worse that the universe could have shown to these people than a bunch of brawling savages. You couldn’t be content with taking the Star Force down there, could you? You had to take the vormyr and the Spirellans too, just to show them how ugly humanoids can be when they’re absolutely at their worst.”
“I didn’t exactly take Amara Guur with me,” I pointed out. “He came along of his own accord. If I’d known that I had a bug in my bootheel, I would have worn overshoes. Anyway, you’re forgetting the guy who led us all on the chase. The Salamandran android. Who do you think was responsible for his being there?”
“Saul Lyndrach,” he replied, undaunted.
I shook my head.
I picked up a piece of paper from his desk, and pointed to the letterhead. There was a symbol beside the letters which spelled out Co-ordinated Research Establishment in parole.
“What’s that, Alex?” I said.
For a moment or two he simply looked annoyed and impatient, but he finally figured out that I was serious.
“It’s a pictograph in one of the Tetron languages,” he said. “It’s the symbol of our organization, as well you know. What of it?”
“It appears on all your documents, like a trademark.”
“Yes. So what?”
“That’s the symbol Myrlin drew in the air when he told me about the Salamandrans buying technics from Asgard— the technics they used to make him. The Tetrax and the upper-level cavies are both biotech-minded, remember? The Tetrax seem to have made a little bit more out of what they’ve found here than they’ve let underlings like you know about. And they’ve been selling some of it to like-minded barbarians, to use in those horrid wars that they disapprove of so strongly. If everything had gone as planned, the Co-ordinated bloody Research Establishment might just have been responsible for the extinction of the human species. Your species and mine, Alex. Who did you say was stupid and selfish? Who are the barbarians now, Alex?”
“You’re lying,” he said, hopefully. But he knew me better than that.
I shook my head.
“I didn’t know…” he said, tentatively.
“I know you didn’t,” I said. “Well, you know now.”
He thought about it for a minute, and then said: “It doesn’t affect my condemnation of what you did. I stand by everything that I believe. What happened in the lower levels is a disaster… for the human community and for mankind. And I don’t believe that the Tetron administration knew about this trade in technics, or if they did, I don’t believe that they intended them to be used in war. There are a lot of factions in the C.R.E., and it could have been any of them.”
“That’s my point,” I told him. “It could have been any of them. The whole universe is full of barbarians, Alex, and I didn’t see anything down in the bowels of Asgard to convince me that the people we tangled with were angels. The Star Force carved up Guur’s hatchet men, but it was the cavies who set it up, and the cavies who sat back with their popcorn and watched it happen. They were clever… but I didn’t see anything to make me believe that they were nice. Maybe we should be glad that they sealed themselves off. What if they do decide what to do about the universe… and decide that what they ought to do is sterilise the whole damn cosmos?”
“That’s ludicrous,” he told me with much more feeling than conviction.
“Maybe,” I agreed. “But it’s all a bit hypothetical, isn’t it? At the end of the day, we just don’t know, do we? Now, why don’t we start talking about more interesting things, like money. How much does the C.R.E. propose to pay me for my little treasure-map?”
He looked mildly surprised. “After what you’ve said about the C.R.E. selling technics to the Salamandrans, you still want to sell us the location of Lyndrach’s dropshaft?”
“It’s a crooked game,” I told him, “but it’s the only game in town.”
“You don’t think I should resign?”
“Hell, no. We need at least one human on the inside, to try to make certain it doesn’t happen again. I’d come in with you, but I don’t like organizations. I’m a loner.”
He didn’t need any further encouragement. We started talking about money. My revelations obviously hadn’t shaken him too much, because he made every possible effort to strike the meanest bargain he could. It took a long time to get the offer up to within spitting distance of my dreams of avarice.
But in the end, we closed the deal, to the mutual satisfaction of all parties.
Before the Star Force ship pulled out of orbit to start burrowing through its self-made wormhole, I got a call from my ex-commanding officer. Her image was a bit blurred on the screen, but she was looking good now that she was happy.
“I really could have made a trooper out of you,” she said. “You took care of Amara Guur pretty well.”
“I found out later that his gun was jammed,” I told her.
“When?” she asked.
“I tried it,” I said, evasively.
“You didn’t know it when you took him out,” she said, “did you?”
I admitted that I hadn’t. She smiled a wolfish smile, as if she thought she knew me better than I know myself. She didn’t.
“I am not a hero,” I told her. “I run away from giant amoebas. I only went for Amara Guur because I thought you’d shoot straight through me if I didn’t.”
“You might be right,” she told me. “I’m a real hero, and I shoot when I have to, no matter who’s in the way. You’d have saved us a lot of trouble, you know, if you’d only taken that android in when Immigration Control asked you to. Just an atom of social conscience, and you could have kept him nice and warm for us in Skychain City.”
Something about the way she said it made me very conscious of the fact that Susarma Lear was not, after all, a very nice person. Real heroes never are, I guess.
“There are thousands of people here who would have given all that they own to see what you and I saw… to go where you and I went,” I told her. “And you don’t care at all, do you? The mystery never got to you, and you really don’t give a damn what’s at the centre of it all. You have a narrow mind, Star-Captain Lear.”
“It was broad enough to let you off the hook,” she told me. “You owe me a favour. I might be back to claim it some day.”
I didn’t think I owed her any favours at all, even though I was keeping secrets from her that would make her very angry indeed if she ever found out about them.
“I hope you’ll forgive me,” I said, “if I don’t look forward to it. It’s not that I can’t stand to see women in uniform, you understand. It’s just that I prefer a quiet life.”
“There’s something not quite right about a man who wants to spend his time rooting around the frigid remains of a world that went to hell a million years ago,” she said. “It testifies to a certain aridity of the passions, and a dereliction of the soul. Try to be a hero, Rousseau, in spite of yourself. Just try.”
Motherly advice wasn’t her strong point. It didn’t move me at all.
“Goodbye,” I said.
“Au revoir,” she replied.