The only way you’ll get my support, he had once told them, is by forming an escape committee.
His instinctive rationale was that allowing himself to be integrated with the community life of the Precinct would mean he was accepting his lot and in some way forfeiting his right to walk free on Earth. And that could never be countenanced—not even symbolically.
Conforden had spoken of the possibility of the general migration beginning after ten years. That estimate seemed wildly optimistic to Jerome, but it was a message of hope in that a term had been placed on his imprisonment, and it had given him a clear sense of purpose which was infinitely more sustaining than retrospection.
Working to the limits of his endurance had a valuable spin-off in that it usually enabled him to achieve sleep within minutes of lying down, but on this particular occasion the magic was proving ineffective. He knew from experience that it was disastrous to become irritated or to start pursuing sleep like a hunter. The trick was to relax and rid himself of all tensions, trusting nature to take its course. Sex was the classical antidote to insomnia—unhurried, peaceful and thorough love-making with a familiar partner—but Donna had told him she had other commitments for the night.
Jerome swore at himself for having let his thoughts turn in her direction, thus adding to his difficulties. She was reticent about her true age, but he suspected she had been perhaps sixty at the time of her transplantation. Her dedication to getting full value out of the lush young body she had inherited from a Dorrinian supertelepath seemed obsessive to him at times, but on this night he would have been happy to give her his full co-operation.
You’re going about this the wrong way, he told himself. If you can’t stop thinking, try to regard that as a benefit. Capitalize on the excess mental energy. Try to penetrate the future…
The Thabbren was due to be placed on the surface in twenty-two days’ time, and soon after that the Quicksilver would reach Mercury and manoeuvre into a polar orbit. It gave Jerome a curious poignant thrill to visualize the tiny shell of metal which at that very moment was slowly overtaking Mercury as it hurtled around the Sun.
The three men on board had taken many weeks to accomplish the journey he had completed between heartbeats, and for one of them it was actually a return trip. Astronaut Charles Baumanis, as he was known on Earth, was a Dorrinian supertelepath who had made the mental transfer twelve years ago. After touchdown, and while his two companions were concentrating their attention on the supposed fragment of an interstellar ship, he would stray a short distance to where the Thabbren was waiting and surreptitiously put it in his pocket. Few people apart from Guardians had ever seen the repository of the Four Thousand, but Jerome had been told that it resembled a small opal. It was a paradox of the Dorrinian mind that their psychic engineering talents enabled them to perform the incredible feat of storing four thousand human personalities within the molecules of a single crystal, while at the same time they turned out large-scale artifacts which could have been bettered by Henry Ford.
The lenticular jewel of the Thabbren had been set in a ring of platinum so that the Dorrinian, Rithan Tell Marmorc, would be able to transport it inconspicuously to the CryoCare base. Jerome could picture the projected train of events up to that point, but his imagination baulked at trying to encompass what would follow…
“May I come in?” The woman who spoke was standing in the doorless arch of the entrance to his room.
“Why so formal all of a sudden?” Jerome raised himself on one elbow, startled but relieved that Donna had changed her plans, then saw that the silhouette in the doorway was of a young woman in Dorrinian dress. “I…Do I know you?”
“We met before—once. My name is Avlan Fell Commelva.” The woman advanced to the side of his couch and stood looking down at him. Her face would probably have been pretty in the harsh light of the corridors, and in the subdued illumination of the bedchamber it had the inhuman beauty of an Ancient Egyptian princess. The expression was enigmatic, a blend of hunger and disdain.
“I’m afraid I don’t remember,” Jerome said, drawing himself up to a sitting position from which he could get a better look at his visitor. The ribbon blouses worn by Dorrinians of both sexes were without practical function, no covering being necessary in the hothouse conditions of Cuthtranel, and in this case the blue-grey strips had parted to reveal the woman’s breasts. Jerome felt organic switches click all through his body as he saw that her nipples were erect.
“I was in the recovery room when you transferred,” the woman said.
Jerome called up a memory image of his first moments on Mercury, again saw a woman covering her face, being led away in obvious distress. “I think I understand.”
“I’ve been avoiding you ever since.” The woman’s voice was low and intense. “I loved Orkra Blamene—and I hated you for invading his body.”
“I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
“That goes without saying. I was out of my mind.” Avian slowly extended one hand and touched Jerome’s face, tentatively, as though half-expecting her fingers to encounter nothingness. “I couldn’t bear to think about Orkra at first, then I began to feel that I would be taking part in his murder if I denied he had ever existed. I’m learning to enjoy my memories of him, and I want to enjoy them to the full—but it isn’t fair to you.”
“The honesty makes it fair,” Jerome said, lying back on the couch. “Well…more fair than anything else that has happened to me recently.”
“Thank you.” Avlan paused in the act of unfastening her skirt. “I might call you Orkra.”
Jerome thought about the wife who had been part of another and far-off existence. “That’s all right—I might get your name wrong as well.”
CHAPTER 9
“I’ve been getting quite a few reports about you, Rayner.” Pirt Sull Conforden’s face was thoughtful, the pale flawless skin glowing like eggshell in the light of the overhead globe. “I hear you don’t get on very well with your supervisors.”
Jerome sighed. “If it’s Glevdane you’re talking about—I apologize. I wasn’t trying to needle him. He’s a bit too chauvinistic.”
“It isn’t possible for a Dorrinian to be chauvinistic. By criticizing the work of the Guardians you appear to criticize the Guardians themselves—and, by inference, the Four Thousand.”
Where’s my dictionary of diplomatic answers? Jerome thought. “I’m sorry. My sole concern was with getting the Thabbren safely to Earth.” He glanced across at Zednik and Thwaite, who had assembled in the small room to replicate his original placement interview. Their faces were solemn and carefully neutral, but he could sense the animosity in Zednik.
“I’ll accept that as the truth, without going too far into your motivation,” Conforden said.
“There’s no secret about my motivation—it’s the same as yours,” Jerome replied. “I want to get away from this rattery some day.”
“You should show some respect for the Director.” Zednik scowled at Jerome as he spoke, the lines of his forehead deepening into razor slashes.
Jerome nodded to him in mock-politeness. There had been antagonism between them since their first meeting, largely because of Jerome’s refusal to recognize the older man’s mayoral authority. Zednik had been deputy sheriff of a small town in Florida at the time of his translation in the 1950s, and had spent four decades industriously playing civics in the Precinct. Jerome, refusing to treat the place as anything but a prison, had not joined the game.