At the end of the seventeenth day he opened the door and left the room. Lofta, who had been his monitor for three years, a man grown heavy and gray in the service of the Center, saw Amro within the hour.
Amro still wore the sagging face of Morr though his body had leaned and hardened. He stood at the prescribed position until Lofta motioned him to be seated.
Amro felt the blunt thrust of Lofta’s mind and there was a sudden reaction of anger. Surely by this time Lofta knew better than to violate his mental privacy as though he were dealing with a recruit!
He yielded before the probing, putting up token resistance only, then dropped all defense, accepting the pain in order to slash back, catching Lofta completely off balance. The older man grunted with the shock, recovered himself on the very verge of fainting, smiled grimly. “You grow, Amro,” he said.
“I am obedient but I have pride.”
Lofta sighed. “We shall not be angry with each other. What have you learned along with the language you were given?”
“Am I to describe the race?”
“Of course not! Surely you found something odd in the entire problem.”
“It refutes certain accepted rules of the sciences, particularly of the statistical branches. A similar race and a similar planet should not exist.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“Then you overlooked another seeming coincidence merely because it was too evident. Their day and night corresponds to ours and their climate. This indicates a similar rotation of the planet on its axis and a probable similar distance from their sun. If you have made conjectures about this state of affairs you may report them.”
Amro frowned. “It has been proven, Lofta, that one hundred and fifty thousand of our years ago the Stradai had a greater civilization than we have now. We found evidence in the legends of the Kalla and the Shen that our remote ancestors had visited them. No one knows what happened.
“The Stradai went back to barbarian-ism and we have come back up the long road. Now you have given me evidence of this other civilization. I have heard of no report by the exploration cruises. Therefore the planet must be very remote. I would guess that before our previous civilization collapsed Stradai were placed on this very similar planet.
“Granting the existence of an almost infinite number of planets it would be possible to find one, maybe, very like Strada. It could even be possible that some of the Stradai emigrated to that planet called Earth when they saw the signs of collapse here. They too lost their science, possibly from the same unknown cause. We have grown again and we have surpassed them. To think of Earth as a lost colony accounts for the unexplained similarities.”
“Excellent, Amro. Excellent.”
“I am right?”
“You said that the planet is very remote. We do not have a ship which can reach it.”
Amro started in surprise. “The longest possible trip is six billion light years, Lofta. Beyond that point there is no way to avoid returning eventually to the starting point. Even if there were a second universe placed somehow beyond this one, it has been proven impossible to ‘break through’ the enfolding of space.”
“I do not speak of a second universe beyond this one, Amro. I merely said that no ship can reach this Earth of which we speak — yet.”
“Then why do I waste time with their language. You speak in riddles.”
“Now you are angry again. Do I speak in riddles? We have no ship that can reach that planet, yet it is intended that you shall reach it, Amro — you and others of the Center. You may think about this.
“You are dismissed. Faven and Massio have learned the language. Others are learning. You will find them in room A-Two Hundred Thirteen point Nine. Join them there and practise this language. Within a short time we will have the subjects for substitution.”
Amro went to the door. “I would like a young one.”
“You are in no position to make a request.”
Amro shrugged and left.
Faven and Massio were laughing when he walked in. He had once worked with Faven and their dislike was mutual. She was tall for a woman with a deep coldness and a watchfulness about her that never failed to remind him of the furred animals tamed by the Kalla. She wore the face of her last substitution, a face he had not seen before, snub-nosed and gay, with flame hair and a wide mouth. Massio he had never met. The man was younger and slighter than Amro.
Faven had a nasty trick of plunging without warning a rapier of inquiry into the minds of her equals and inferiors, a darting stinging thing, agile as quicksilver. She indulged her hates and her lusts with equal ferocity. Amro had tried and failed to root out of himself the small feeling of fear that she gave him.
She was the only thing under the sun of Strada that he did fear.
She introduced them in a mocking way, using the new tongue. Massio and Amro responded in kind.
“Where are we going?” Faven asked. “That seems to be the question. Lofta was self-consciously vague.” She stretched luxuriously, again reminding him of one of the furred beasts, lay back on the couch and pouted at them.
“Wherever it is important,” Amro said. “I am no longer used on unimportant missions nor are you, Faven. And Massio, here, has been honored for the work he did on Caenia with the subsection of the Center there. To put three of us on the same mission implies that it is of the highest importance to the Center.”
“Or the highest importance to the League,” Faven said lazily.
“We are growing weaker,” Massio said, his voice heavy.
“Damn the League,” Amro said. He paced restlessly. “When is this pretense of friendship going to stop? When are the agents of the Center and the agents of the League coming out from underground for honest warfare?”
“I like it the way it is,” Faven said. “I like stealth and darkness. You know what will happen when it comes out in the open. We know too much. We can nova a sun, explode a planet, blast a sea into steam in a tenth of a second. What good is an individual under those circumstances? No, let us stay quietly nibbling at each other’s throats. At that game I can be of some use.”
“If we could strike first we could get it over with,” Amro insisted. “What if after we have won there are only a handful of planets? They’ll be Center planets, won’t they? Ultimate victory?”
“And if no planets are left?” Massio asked. “Just a few manned ships in the wilderness of space?”
“Then,” Amro said, “those ships can find suitable planets and they will carry the seed of our science.”
“You talk rot,” Faven said irritably. “The Center and the League are, as far as two trillion peaceful citizens are concerned, big chummy organizations working hand in glove for the betterment of all. It was set up as a check and balance system with the League responsible for all administration and government, the Center responsible for all research and scientific advances.
“When it was set up the smart ones didn’t realize that the League, holding the purse strings, would try to emasculate the Center and take over little by little the research end, fattening their own pockets, turning themselves into a happy little monopoly of everything.”
Massio said bitterly, “So the Center struck back by setting up secret research projects, taking over administration and government on outlying planet groups. I wonder if those peaceful citizens you speak about, Faven, ever wonder about the high mortality rate among the surface staff of the Center and the League.”
“Two conflicting basic ideas of social structure cannot exist side by side,” Amro said. “Either we become a useless appendage to the League, or we take over the reins the way we should. It’s that simple.”