“You have the look of a fugitive,” the man continued. “I wondered why it never occurred to you to parley honestly, instead of foolishly trying to ambush an armed man. Perhaps I should immolate you now, before you reverse the opportunity.”
The man was toying with his quarry. He could not suspect Aton’s true situation, since no one outside the prison knew its location. No one except Aton himself. If this man had suspected it, he would have shot Aton immediately.
Or would he? He was watching Aton now, those frighteningly capable hands caressing the polished stock of his rifle. Did he suspect that Chthon had an outlet here? Did he know the nature of the innocent cave that led into the bowels of the planet, but lack the ultimate proof—proof that would kill him long before he could return to the surface? Did he search now not for stocked animals, but for the one creature that could tell him the secret of that unimaginable wealth, and lead him safely into Chthon?
With what interminable patience had he prowled this forest, year after year, searching for—Aton?
This man would have to die.
“Yes, I see you understand,” the hunter said. “You and I will go to the cave, and you will prove your origin there—or die. Will it be necessary to demonstrate my ability to make you perform?”
“You have no ability,” Aton said, not bothering to deny what the man seemed to know. “You cannot trust me, and you would be at my mercy—there.”
The man smiled, and even Aton felt cold. “You do not know me well enough.”
Only once had Aton met defeat in combat, and seldom had he known fear, but he was afraid of this man now. He put a hand to his mouth and spat out a garnet.
The other person’s eyes narrowed appreciatively. “I might reconsider, in the face of your argument. You have more?”
Aton nodded.
“Hidden in the forest?”
Another nod.
“Your stones may bring me down after all, since those are what I came for. Do you know what a coded ship is?”
Aton knew. It meant that no one could handle the ship except the registered owner. All mechanisms locked automatically unless manipulated by the touch of the coded individual. He could not take the ship.
“I want more than the few garnets you may have brought,” the man said. “I want the mines. All I needed immediately was the proof that you can lead me to them, and you have given it. You and I will be partners—rather wealthy ones, in time.”
“What shall I call you, partner?” Aton asked. The little ship was spaceborne, the clouded ball of Chthon’s planet diminishing gently behind. Seeing it in the screen, Aton was reminded of the seeming incongruity of accelerating to escape velocity, only to decelerate to galactic norm once free of the planet. But this was necessary in order to phase in the § drive. Three hours ago they had traveled at a single mile per hour, relative to the normal motion of this portion of the galaxy, and actually appeared to be falling back into the independently orbiting planet. Now their speed was a thousand times that, and soon would surpass anything possible through chemical means. The § drive could not be used on the surface of a planet, of course, since the initial motion was erratic and wrong.
The man’s eyes clouded at Aton’s question, betraying polarized contact lenses. “That will do nicely,” he said.
“ ‘Partner’? As you wish. I am Aton Five. You must understand that no power can send me back to Chthon until my business outside is finished. Show me that you can help me in that, before you trust me to cooperate with your designs.” What a pompous snot I seem—but this principle of mutual distrust is unreliable, he thought.
“Understood. By the time you know what I offer, you will be eager to join me. There is time, and I am at your service.” But the grim mystery of the man remained. Aton had no interest in the wealth of Chthon, and had no intention of returning, but could risk neither killing nor deserting Partner until he learned more of the man’s capabilities. Meanwhile, business should be conducted on an innocuous level.
“I’ll buy a planet from you,” Aton said, meaning that he would turn over another garnet for information about its location, and transportation there.
Partner reached for the Sector Index, a volume about the size and texture of Aton’s lost LOE. This covers most of the human sector—two million stars or so. I never charge for public information.”
Aton took the book but did not open it. “I can’t use this.”
“You don’t know Galactic Coordinates? I thought you were a spaceman. That system is pre-§. Centuries old. But there are always the maps.”
“I know the system. But I don’t think the planet I want is listed here.”
“Of course not. These are stars. You have to use the subsector ephemerides for the planetary orbits. But why bother? They’ll message the information to you when you pull into the system.”
“This is a proscribed planet,” Aton said sourly.
Partner looked at him again, pupils momentarily colorless as the lenses shifted. “You do have a problem. You know where we’ll have to go first.”
Aton knew.
Eleven
Earth: home of humanity and of its legends for ten thousand times the time that race had been in space, and more; whose population thrust forth a hundred million human bodies to space in each sidereal year, and did not diminish—until the catastrophic chill imposed de facto quarantine upon the mother world. One month—to wipe out forty per cent of all its inhabitants, to bring the fusion bombs necessary to cremate the mountainous offal in the wake of that brief siege. Even so, Earth retained a population more massive than the rest of its empire combined, and still her lands and seas and atmosphere were crowded with carpets of living flesh.
Not even the chill could solve this problem.
But Earth had power. She was the irrevocable queen of a billion cubic parsecs of space, not through military, economic, or moral force, but through her surpassing knowledge. Here was technology beyond the rustic imagination of the colony worlds. Here was accumulated information of such detail and range that storage and referencing alone usurped the facilities of a small continent. Here was the Sector Library.
Computers organized and sorted the unthinkable complex, delivering any information known to man, to any party, in moments. A man had only to enter a booth and make known his desire.
Unless it was proscribed.
But there were the “stacks”—comprehensive files of printed documentation, of interest to hardly one seeker in a thousand, but sustained by ancient custom in the face of rising opposition. Some year the renewed pressure of population would abolish this monstrous relic. Meanwhile, it endured. Dedicated ancients maintained the archives in leisurely exactitude, and interest was the sole criterion for admission. Earth was after all free, and upheld the right of every person to search for knowledge and to discover as much as determination and ingenuity could provide. And the information was there, all of it—if the seeker could find it. The very awkwardness of the stacks created this advantage: the archives were far too cumbersome to purge selectively. They could not be expurgated.
The stacks occupied cubic miles of space. Never had Aton encountered an enclosure of such dimension: two hundred tiers of long, low hallways, each lined from floor to ceiling on either side with thick volumes, each extending so far into the distance that the walls seemed to meet. At regular intervals right-angled crosswalks cut off segments, making intermittent alternate passages whose staccato lengths also pressed into distant closure. Aton imagined that he could see the ponderous curve of the planet in the level flooring, and that it was the horizon that terminated the halls.