“Maybe this evening.” Nenda took her hand and swore a solemn vow to be off-planet by sunset. “But now I have to talk to Hans Rebka. Where is he?”
“He’s up at the engineering lab, fooling around with some stupid computer that got itself short-circuited during a dinner with Professor Merada.” Now that she had what she wanted, Glenna was perfectly willing to be gracious. “I can point out the way to you from the front door; it’s just up the hill.”
Louis was already moving. There wasn’t all that much time left until evening. The lab couldn’t be more than five minutes away — less if he ran.
At the door, just when he thought he was free, Glenna took hold of his hand again and turned him to face her. Her blue eyes were wide and the pupils were dilated. “I’ve just remembered one more thing about Darya Lang’s report on you. She said that you’ve been augmented.” Glenna shivered, and bit her lower lip. “That sounds absolutely fascinating. I’ve been wondering anyway what you have hidden under all those clothes. You’ve got to promise to show me.”
Louis didn’t recall running, but he made it to the engineering lab in two minutes. He entered, and found himself in the middle of what appeared to be a gruesome murder.
The body of E. Crimson Tally sat in a metal chair. Fiber tape around his arms and legs and torso held him tight. His skull had been cleaved horizontally just above the ears, so that the cranium was sheared off and had been turned, to dangle in front of his face by a flap of skin on the forehead.
Hans Rebka stood behind the chair. He held an object like an ice pick, but with a much thinner spike, and he was thrusting it deep into the gray ovoid of E.C. Tally’s naked brain.
Nenda moved forward to stand next to Rebka. “What happened? He blow a gasket?”
Rebka went on probing, and didn’t look up. “Sort of. He got into a closed loop at a dinner two days ago. I called the people on Miranda, and there’s a general logic fix on the way. Meanwhile, they told me how to do a cold start.”
“Why the tape?”
“Protection. Miranda says there may be transients while he’s booting. We don’t want him walking through the walls.”
Rebka had found the point he wanted, and gave a final poke. The body in the chair jerked. Rebka grasped the dangling top of the skull, turned it over, and fitted it into position. The bone lines clicked to form a neat seal, hidden by skin and hair.
“Going to take about thirty seconds of internal set-up before we see anything happen.” Rebka straightened to his full height and stared at Nenda. “What do you want? I told you everything I know last time we met.”
Nenda stretched upward too. He and Rebka were eye to eye, but still half a head shorter than anyone else on Sentinel Gate. He could feel the tension. If they had been a couple of dogs, the skin would be pulled back from their fangs and the hair along their backs would be bristling. Someday, the two of them would have a real go at each other. Rebka was as keen to try it as he was, Louis knew it. But it couldn’t happen today.
Nenda took a deep breath before he spoke. “I heard you’re heading out. Leaving Sentinel Gate.”
“What of it? I’m a free agent.”
“If you’re following Darya Lang, I want to propose a deal. Let us go with you. We have information that she’d like to have, and we want to know what she’s thinking.”
“We?”
“Me and Atvar H’sial.”
“I ought to have guessed that. Two crooks together, and both of you still trying to get Kallik and J’merlia back. Give it up, Nenda.” Rebka stepped closer. “They’re not your slaves anymore.”
The fight couldn’t be today.
It was the worst possible time.
But perhaps it would be today, anyway.
“You’re not a good liar, Rebka.” Nenda felt his nostrils flaring. “Yesterday you said you didn’t know where any of them are.”
“And I don’t. Can’t you get that into your tiny pea-brain? I don’t know where Darya Lang is, or Kallik, or J’merlia. Is that clear enough?” Rebka scowled, but there was more frustration than anger on his face. “Why the devil haven’t they called me?”
“Darya?”
“No. She hates my guts. She wouldn’t call me if I begged her to.”
“Good. I mean, that’s bad, ’cause I have to find her.”
“I was talking about Kallik and J’merlia.”
“Did you tell ’em to call you?”
“No. I told them to find Darya and go with her, but I didn’t tell them to call.”
“Then you’re even dumber than I thought. Whether you believe it or not, they still act like slaves. If you don’t tell ’em, they won’t do it. Wait a minute.” Nenda glared pop-eyed. The other part of what Rebka had said was finally sinking in. “You told them to go? You ordered my slave, and Atvar H’sial’s slave and interpreter, to go after Darya Lang?”
The fists and teeth were showing. Knees to the groin were just seconds away. Both men had moved to an open space, dropping from a taller-than-you posture into a defensive crouch. But before the first punch could be thrown, a loud sneeze came from the middle of the lab.
It was followed by a groan, a clearing of the throat, and a great belch. E.C. Tally was wriggling in his chair, tugging at the restraining tapes and peering squint-eyed around him in bafflement.
“What happened to the dinner table? And the people?”
Rebka hurried to his side. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right. But where am I?”
“In the engineering lab. I had to cold-start you. What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I was sitting at the dinner table, listening to Quintus Bloom and Darya Lang. And Professor Lang began to comment on the logical implications of Bloom’s assertion that the Builders are time travelers, humans from the future.” Tally’s eyes began to roll upward in his head. “Which implies—”
“You’re going to screw him up all over again!” Nenda jumped forward and shook the embodied computer, cutting off his speech in mid-sentence.
“God, you’re right.” Rebka held up his hand. “E.C., stop it there. I want you to steer clear of every thought to do with time travel until we hear from Miranda about a software fix for you.”
“But if the Builders are from the future—”
“Stop that! Think about something else. Anything else. Think about — what, for God’s sake? Come on, Nenda, help me. E.C., talk about space travel. Tell Nenda what you and I said we wanted to do, after we had been to Sentinel Gate.”
“You mean our plan to visit Paradox? Certainly. We will seek entry using some of my special capabilities, although as you all know, entry and successful return have never previously been accomplished. The artifact known as Paradox implies that the Builders—”
“Don’t talk about the Builders! Talk about Darya Lang. E.C., you were with Darya at dinner. Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Nenda thinks I know, but I don’t.”
“I can speculate.” E.C. Tally turned to face Louis Nenda. “I have considered the question of a next logical investigation, in great detail. Darya Lang is almost certainly exploring one of the artifacts, but which one? Before reaching Sentinel Gate I computed and stored for each artifact the probability of a fruitful new exploration. The results can be summarized as follows, in order of decreasing probability: Paradox, 0.0061; Torvil Anfract, 0.0045; Manticore, 0.0037; Reinhardt, 0.0035; Elephant, 0.0030; Flambeau, 0.0027; Cocoon, 0.0026; Lens, 0.0024; Umbilical, 0.0023; Magyar, 0.0022; Cusp, 0.0019…”