“You and Leo both.” Bey was not getting the praise he had expected. You’d think that when somebody nearly killed himself to make sure an important message got out… “I guess you weren’t the information leak out of the harvesters.”
“Of course I wasn’t. But I had quite a time proving it. You made it sound as though the only ones who could be leaking information to Ransome were me or Leo—and then you ruled out Leo.”
“That’s the way it looked. It had to be somebody close to you, and it had to be someone who moved with you from one harvester to another. And Leo and Aybee were away with us on the space farm.”
“True.”
“So that means—”
But Cinnabar Baker had spun around and was heading for the door. “Figure it out,” she said over her shoulder. “Or if you can’t, Sylvia can tell you about it.”
Bey stared after her. “She is mad. I wouldn’t want to argue with her when she’s like that.”
“She’s been furious for weeks. I’ve never seen her so angry. But not at you. At Ransome. He did the unforgivable thing.”
“Worse than trying to take over the system?”
“Much worse, if you’re Cinnabar Baker.” Sylvia sat down on a long bench by the side of the water globe and patted the seat next to her. “Sit down, before you fall down. You look exhausted.”
“What did Ransome do?”
“Baker wouldn’t have minded as much if he had done it to her, personally. But Ransome’s people got hold of Turpin. They put an audiovisual tap into his head. Everything the crow saw and heard was transmitted straight to Ransome, and Baker never went anywhere without Turpin—he even slept in her bedroom. She realized what was happening when she saw the viewing angle of some of the shots. Worst of all, the tap hurt, and the feed for it made poor old Turpin nearly blind and deaf. When Baker found that out, she wanted to wring Ransom’s neck with her own hands.”
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know yet. But we’ll track him down.”
“I’m not sure of that.” Bey finally sat down next to Sylvia. He had become used to being tall, and it was disconcerting to find that his head again came only to her shoulder. His hands were feeling numb, and he rubbed them together. “Ransome was clever enough to make a bolt hole for himself. He’s still as charismatic as ever, and he’ll always be able to draw people to him.”
“I know. Paul thinks Ransome makes the Sun shine. But next time he tries anything we’ll be ready. Ransome’s finished, but he doesn’t know it yet. I almost feel sorry for him. Mary told me—”
“Where is she? I wanted to thank the two of you for saving me.”
Sylvia looked at him and put her hand gently on his shoulder. “She didn’t leave a message, Bey? She said she would.”
“I didn’t check.”
“I’m sorry. Mary left Ransome’s Hole. Yesterday, and secretly. I knew she was going to do it, and I suppose I should have tried to stop her. But I didn’t. She’s going to look for Ransome, wherever he is.”
The numb feeling was spreading from his hands through his whole body. Mary had gone. Left him again. He accepted the fact instantly. It was something he had sensed when he had entered the chamber and did not find her.
“That’s terrible.” He took a deep breath. “I thought she really loved me.”
“She does; she always will. She told me that, and she had no reason to lie.”
“But she prefers Ransome.”
“She didn’t say that. But she said that Ransome needs her more than you do.”
“How can she possibly think that?”
“The last time I talked to Mary, she told me to ask you something.”
“She seems to have told you an awful lot.”
“She did. But here’s her question. ‘Before Bey tells you his heart is broken,’ she said, ‘ask him this: Of all the things that have happened to him since he left Earth, which has been the most exciting and satisfying? And ask him to think before he answers.’ ”
“The most exciting—”
“You’re not doing what Mary asked. Think first.”
“I am thinking.”
And he was. The most exciting. Was it looking out of the ship for his first sight of a harvester… or the strange, perverse pleasure of the first meal with Sylvia… the satisfaction when he learned that the Dancing Man was not a dream of his own unstable mind… the space farm rescue… the giddy time with Andromeda Diconis, sampling the pleasure centers of a hedonistic habitat… the thrill of Mary’s voice where he had never expected it? Making love to her? Or… a memory flooded in, total and satiating. Bright yellow tracers ran again in his mind.
“It was when—” He paused, then the words were wrung out of him reluctantly, one at a time. “It was when I was looking for the reason for the wrong form-changes. And when I realized that the source of the problems must be inside the kernel shields. But I could never describe that feeling to anyone. And there’s no way that Mary could have known it.”
“Of course not. She doesn’t think that way. She didn’t know about the form-changes, and she didn’t know about the Rinis. But she sensed what sort of answer you had to give, if you were truthful. Because she understands you very well. Don’t you see it, Bey?” Sylvia put her arms around him. “Mary needs to be needed. When you needed her, she saved you—even when you were still back on Earth and didn’t know you needed her. Ransome wanted to cause chaos and stir up trouble between the Inner and Outer Systems. He knew that form-change equipment would be more sensitive than anything else to the Rini effects on information flow, so trouble would show up there first. Anyone who might understand what was happening had to be dead, insane, or converted, and it seemed easier to drive you crazy than to kill or convert you. But Mary found out what he was doing. She scrambled their signals so that the images you received were distorted and less effective.”
“They were almost too much.”
“But they weren’t. You stayed sane. She would have taken any risk for you. And Ransome needs her now, and she’ll take risks for him. You want Mary—but Ransome needs her.”
“I almost died for Mary, back on Earth.”
“Did you? Leo told me that you had the Dream Machine on a medium setting—low enough to break out of it when you decided you wanted to.”
Bey stared mindlessly into the great water globe. A small, red-throated fish had come drifting lazily toward them and was poised at the curved transparent wall. It stared goggle-eyed at the two humans, looking at the universe beyond the barrier. That had been Bey before he came out there. Tucked away in his own little fishbowl, safe and warm below a blanket of atmosphere.
Earth. Suddenly he had a great longing to be back there, to see blue sky and drifting clouds.
“I’m going back, Sylvia. My job here is finished. The Rinis are interesting, and they’re going to change our whole universe, but they will be Aybee’s lifework, not mine.”
“I know.” Sylvia was still holding Bey. “Aybee’s going to miss you. He’d never say it, but you’re his idol, you know.”
“Hard luck for Aybee.”
“He could do a lot worse. Mary told me one other thing. She said that when you met her out in the Halo you talked a lot about me. She didn’t speculate why, but I think you were trying to make her bring you here.”
“I was. It was the only way I could think of to do it. I wanted to make her jealous, so she would want to bring me along and see I preferred her to you. I don’t mean that I do prefer her to you, but…”
Sylvia was shaking her head. “Bey, when I hear you say things like that, I wonder if you know anything about women at all. If Mary had been the least jealous, or thought for a moment that you were interested in me, the last thing she’d do is encourage a meeting.”