Nicklin would have been interested in Hepworth’s reply, but at that moment he saw a coloured blur moving behind the translucent screen which separated Montane’s office from the next. It meant that Danea Farthing had returned from one of the field trips which took her all over the Pi area, and which kept her away from Beachhead for weeks at a time. Trying not to be obtrusive, he walked quickly to the connecting door and slid it open.
“Well?” Danea paused in the act of taking off her snow-dappled cape. She was wearing a belted suit of cobalt blue shot silk which clung expensively to her slim-hipped figure. Her heavy-lidded eyes regarded him with minimal interest, as though he were a piece of furniture.
“Very well, thanks.” he said. “And you?”
“I didn’t mean that—what do you want?”
“Who says I have to want anything?” I want you, you cold bitch, because you’re the best-looking woman in the universe—and you owe me! “I just thought I’d say hello, and welcome you back to the office.”
“Very kind of you.” Danea stood quite still, making no move to hang up her cape, obviously waiting for him to leave.
“Have you come straight from the airport?”
“Yes.”
“Long flight?”
“Yes.”
“How about relaxing with a couple of drinks and a good lunch?”
“I’ve already arranged to do that, with a friend,” Danea said, still not moving. “He’s calling for me at noon.”
“That’s nice.” Montane composed a rueful smile. “I just thought I’d ask.”
Danea made no response, so he nodded to her and backed out of the small office, sliding the door shut between them. As soon as he was screened from her sight he allowed his sad little smile to develop into the full happy hayseed grin. A casual observer would probably have said that he had been well and truly frozen out, but he had picked up two signs of what he regarded as encouragement. During the exchange Danea had stood with the cape held to her throat, unconsciously—and revealingly—shielding her body from him. That was a Freudian give-away if ever he had seen one. Also, there had been no need, no need at all, for her to disclose that her lunch appointment was with another man. You’re getting there, Jim lad, Nicklin told himself with calm satisfaction. It’s taking a hell of a long time—but you’ll get to her one fine day—and when you do…
“That didn’t last long,” Hepworth said cheerfully when Nicklin rejoined him at the window. “Take the advice of an old hand at this kind of thing and give up gracefully—it’s obvious the woman wants nothing to do with you.”
“You don’t understand,” Nicklin replied, not pleased by the comment. How could anybody with a blackhead the size of a dinner plate claim to be an expert on women?
“Did you ask her out to lunch?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“She already has a date. With a man.”
Hepworth nodded. “Probably Rowan Meeks. She met him through the books.”
Nicklin would have preferred not to talk about Danea, but the cryptic reference had aroused his curiosity. “What books?”
“The talking variety. Danea spends a lot of her spare time putting books on tape for blind people. Apparently she has a very good voice for that sort of thing.” Hepworth paused and gave Nicklin a quizzical look. “Didn’t you know?”
“How would I know?”
“There you have it!” Hepworth said triumphantly. “You’ll never get anywhere with a woman unless you’re interested in her as a complete human being. The trouble with you, Jim, is that you’re interested in only one thing—and it shows.”
I wasn’t always like that, and where did it… ? Nicklin interrupted the thought, angry at being required to defend himself. If this keeps up there’s going to be talk about the care and feeding of blackheads.
“I had an idea that blind people used reading machines,” he said, offering a conversational lure which was likely to inspire one of Hepworth’s impromptu lecturettes.
“Voice synthesisers are still no good for literary readings, and, the way things have turned out, it looks as if they never will be,” Hepworth said, happily seizing on the topic. “It’s the old Orbitsville syndrome again. It’s more than three hundred years since the first synthesisers were tried out, and you’d think they should have been perfected in all that time. But… but… where’s the motive? The great machine of science and technology has slipped a few cogs and will go on slipping cogs because we allow it to do so.
“Why? Because, on a crowded, polluted and thoroughly kneed-in-the-groin Earth, science and technology promised that one day everything would be put to rights, that one day there would be a perfect world for everybody to enjoy. That’s what attracted the funding, that’s where the motivation came from. But now the promise has been forgotten—both by the promisers and the promisees. We’ve got our perfect world. We’ve got millions of them, in fact.
“Orbitsville handed them to us on the proverbial plate, so scientific and technological progress has pretty well come to a halt. Research is only carried out by ‘eggheads’ who have a personal interest in it, and, even when they do come up with something that has a lot of practical potential, it can’t be developed because the kind of concentrated industrial base they need simply isn’t there.
“There are quite a few people,” Hepworth added portentously, “who would argue that Orbitsville hasn’t done the human race any favours.”
“You’re beginning to sound like you-know-who,” Nicklin said, nodding towards Montane, who was still busy at his desk.
“You-know-who is doing some of the right things for all the wrong reasons.”
Nicklin was surprised. “You mean you want to get away from Orbitsville before the Devil presses the button?”
“No, I just want to get away from Orbitsville,” Hepworth said placidly. “I want to see what an anti-matter planet looks like. Nobody but Corey has any intention of going to one, so I’m going to go with him.”
“But…” Nicklin shook his head in disbelief. “You’re saying that if the Tara actually manages to take off you’ll be on board?”
“Jim, why do you think I joined this preposterous outfit? It wasn’t for the miserable stipend that Corey doles out to us, I can assure you. That bajely covers my tonic water, let alone the necessary. The only reason I’m here is that, as a paid-up member of the mission, I’m guaranteed a place on the ship when the big day comes.”
A pained expression appeared on Hepworth’s face. “I wish I hadn’t mentioned drink. My thirst pangs were quite bearable until I mentioned the stuff.”
“Too bad,” Nicklin said abstractedly, still assimilating the news that Hepworth actually planned to journey off into nothingness on the Tara. He had tacitly assumed that, like him, the physicist was only hitching a ride on the Nowhere Express, standing on the footplate and preparing to jump clear in his own good time. Also, the subject of the anti-matter universe had cropped up again. To Nicklin, all the talk of Region One and Region Two universes, and of reversed time and electron-spraying isotopes, was merely a game of words- but it was transpiring that, to Hepworth, all these things were as real as his next glass of gin or the whistle trees which on a windy day mourned the passing of summer.
Not for the first time, Nicklin found himself wondering about the ingredient which perhaps had been left out of his mental make-up. For him reality had always comprised those things which directly affected his daily life and immediate well-being. Everything else was relegated to quasi-reality or total abstraction; thus he had always felt himself to be at a comfortable remove from those strange individuals who could dedicate their lives to shining principles or die for great causes. Life was complicated enough and tricky enough as it was. On a lesser scale, it had always been a matter for self-congratulation that he was immune to mysticism and superstition and religion. Scott Hepworth shared the same materialistic outlook, and yet here he was, ready to gamble his life on a desperate plunge into black emptiness, merely because he was curious about the electrical charge of sub-atomic particles. As a motive for risking death, there was not much to choose between it and Montane’s bizarre fantasising.