But my way was blocked. My moment of transfixed staring at Donal Graeme had tripped me up. Just coming up the stairs and reaching the balcony as I turned to leave was Lisa Kant,
Chapter 7
''Tam!'' she said. ''Wait! Don't go!''
I could not, without crowding past her. She blocked the narrow stairway. I stopped, irresolute, glancing over at the far entrance through which Bright and his aide had already disappeared. At once it became plain to me that I was already too late. The two of them had been moving fast. By the time I could get downstairs and across the crowded room, they would have already reached their transportation outside the establishment and been gone.
Possibly, if I had moved the second I saw Bright turn to leave - But probably, catching him, even then, would have been a lost cause. Not Lisa's arrival, but my own moment of wandered attention, on seeing the unusual eyes of Donal Graeme, had cost me my chance to obtain Bright's signature on Dave's pass.
I looked back at Lisa. Oddly, now that she had actually caught up with me and we were face to face once more, I was glad of it, though I still had that fear which I mentioned earlier, that she would somehow render me ineffective.
"How'd you know I was here?" I demanded.
"Padma said you'd be trying to avoid me," she said. "You couldn't very well avoid me down on the main floor there. You had to be out of the way someplace, and there weren't any out-of-the-way places but these balconies. I saw you standing at the railing of this one just now, looking down."
She was a little out of breath from hurrying up the stairs, and her words came out in a rush.
"All right," I said. "You've found me. What do you want?"
She was getting her breath back now, but the flush of effort from her run up the stairs still colored her cheeks. Seen like this, she was beautiful, and I could not ignore the fact. But I was still afraid of her.
"Tam!" she said. "Mark Torre has to talk to you!"
My fear of her whined sharply upward in me, like the mounting siren of an alarm signal. I saw the source of her darngerousness to me in that moment. Either instinct or knowledge had armed her. Anyone else would have worked up to that demand slowly. But an instinctive wisdom in her knew the danger of giving me time to assess a situation, so that I could twist it to my own ends.
But I could be direct, too. I started to go around her, without answering. She stepped in my way, and I had to stop.
"What about?" I said harshly.
"He didn't tell me."
I saw a way of handling her attack then. I started laughing at her. She stared at me for a second, then flushed again and began to look very angry indeed.
"I'm sorry." I throttled down on the laughter; and at the same time, secretly, I was in fact truly sorry. For all I was forced to fight her off, I liked Lisa Kant too well to laugh so at her. "But what else could we talk about except the old business of my taking over on the Final Encyclopedia again? Don't you remember? Padma said you couldn't use me. I was all oriented toward" - I tasted the word, as it went out of my mouth - "destruction."
"We'll just have to take our chance on that." She looked stubborn. "Besides, it isn't Padma who decides for the Encyclopedia. It's Mark Torre, and he's getting old. He knows better than anyone else how dangerous it would be if he dropped the reins and there was no one there quickly to pick them up. In a year, in six months, the Project could founder. Or be wrecked by people outside it. Do you think your uncle was the only person on Earth who felt about Earth and the younger worlds' people the way he did?"
I stiffened, and a cold feeling came into my mind. She had made a mistake, mentioning Mathias. My face must have changed, too; because I saw her own face change, looking at me.
"What've you been doing?" Fury burst out in me all of a sudden. "Studying up on me? Putting tracers on my comings and goings?" I took a step forward and she backed instinctively. I caught her by the arm and held her from moving further. "Why chase me down now, after five years? How'd you know I was going to be here anyway?"
She stopped trying to pull away and stood still, with dignity.
"Let go of me," she said quietly. I did and she stepped back. "Padma told me you'd be here. He said that it was my last chance at you - he calculated it. You remember, he told you about ontogenetics."
I stared at her for a second, then snorted with harsh laughter.
"Come on, now!" I said. "I'm willing to swallow a lot about your Exotics. But don't tell me they can calculate exactly where anyone in the sixteen worlds is going to be ahead of time!"
"Not anyone!" she answered angrily. "You. You and a few like you - because you're a maker, not a made part of the pattern. The influences operating on someone who's moved about by the pattern are too far reaching, and too complicated to calculate. But you aren't at the mercy of outside influences. You have choice, overriding the pressures people and events bring to bear on you. Padma told you that five years ago!"
"And that makes me easier to predict instead of harder? Let's hear another joke."
"Oh, Tam!" she said, exasperated. "Of course it makes you easier. It doesn't take ontogenetics, hardly. You can almost do it yourself. You've been working for five years now to get Membership in the Newsman's Guild, haven't you? Do you suppose that hasn't been obvious?"
Of course, she was right. I had made no secret of my ambitions. There had been no reason to keep them secret. She read the admission in my expression.
"All right," she went on. "So now you've worked your way up to Apprentice. Next, what's the quickest and surest way for an Apprentice to win his way into full Guild membership? To make a habit of being where the most interesting news is breaking, isn't that right? And what's the most interesting - if not important - news on the sixteen worlds right now? The war between the North and South Partitions on New Earth. News of a war is always dramatic. So you were bound to arrange to get yourself assigned to cover this one, if you could. And you seem to be able to get most things you want."
I looked at her closely. All that she said was true and reasonable. But, if so, why hadn't it occurred to me before this that I could be so predictable? It was like finding myself suddenly under observation by someone with high-powered binoculars, someone whose spying I had not even slightly suspected. Then I realized something.
"But you've only explained why I'd be on New Earth," I said slowly. "Why would I be here, though, at this particular party on Freiland?"
For the first time she faltered. She no longer seemed sure in her knowledge.
"Padma . . ." she said, and hesitated. "Padma says this place and moment is a locus. And, being what you are you can perceive, and are drawn to, loci - by your own desire to use them for your own purposes."
I stared at her, slowly absorbing this. And then, as suddenly as a sheet of flame across my mind leaped the connection between what she had just said and what I had heard earlier.
"Locus - yes!" I said tightly, taking a step toward her again in my excitement. "Padma said it was a locus here. For Graeme - but for me, too! Why? What does it mean for me?"
"I . . ." she hesitated. "I don't know exactly, Tam. I don't think even Padma knows."
"But something about it, and me, brought you here! Isn't that right?" I almost shouted at her. My mind was closing on the truth like a fox on a winded rabbit. "Why did you come hunting me now then? At this particular place and moment, as you call it! Tell me!"
"Padma ..." she faltered. I saw then with the almost blinding light of my sudden understanding that she would have liked to lie about this, but something in her would not let her.." Padma... only found out everything he knows now because of the way the Encyclopedia's grown able to help him. It has given him extra data to use in his calculations. And recently, when he used that data, the results showed everything up as more complex - and important. The Encyclopedia's more important, to the whole human race, than he thought five years ago. And the danger of the Encyclopedia's never being finished is greater. And your own power of destruction . . ."