“I had no idea,” Gretana breathed, her mental image of Vekrynn acquiring new dimensions of circumstance. “How does the Warden feel?”
Ichmo snorted quietly. “The Warden doesn’t feel anything. He knows that Earth has given us a uniquely valuable opportunity to chart the entire course of a human civilisation, from beginning to end, within one Mollanian lifetime.”
“Well, I accept his view.” Gretana eyed the coordinator significantly. “Even if others don’t.”
Ichmo rolled his eyes, looking humorously exasperated. “He really converted you, didn’t he?”
“Is that something to be ashamed of?” The words were out before Gretana made the guilty discovery that she was allowing her manner towards Ichmo to be influenced by his remarkable ugliness. She tightened her lips and resolved to be more considerate.
“I’m a believer in loyalty,” Ichmo said in a gentle voice, going closer to the three-dimensional projection of Earth and pointing at the North Atlantic. “When I joined Vekrynn only three ships had crossed this strip of water. That was five centuries ago.”
Gretana lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Ichmo appeared not to hear her. “Of course, Vekrynn has seen it all—ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Phoenicians and Minoans, India, China, Maya. He has taken imprints from every agent’s report in our data banks, and when I think about that I get afraid of him. It hurts me even to try visualising what he knows about that sad, sick, doomed little civilisation down there, and sometimes I wonder if they’re worth all the work he has put in.”
Gretana recalled High Instructor Tabalth’s words. “Work on his Notebook?”
Ichmo surprised her with a bark of laughter. “Never ever let the Warden hear you say that, young Gretana.”
“I didn’t mean any…”
“Analytical Notes on the Evolution of One Human Civilisation, by Warden Vekrynn tye Orltha, is a modest-sounding title for a book, but Vekrynn’s entire life has gone into it. To date it contains almost one billion words, and a Conclusion of at least ten million words will be written when Earth has finally snuffed itself out.” Ichmo paused to see if the figures he was quoting were having the intended effect.
“Up-to-date copies are stored on five widely separated planets, so that not even a supernova could endanger its existence. We’re talking about Vekrynn’s memorial, young Gretana, his bid for immortality. So take my advice—don’t refer to it as his Notebook.”
Gretana was dismayed by her gaffe. “I didn’t know what Tabalth was talking about.”
“Neither does he most of the time,” Ichmo said, “but don’t get involved with inter-departmental bickering at this time. Run along and hear what the Old Man has to say to you.”
Gretana nodded and went through a series of radiance screens into a large circular room with a domed blue ceiling. Its furnishings consisted of a desk, a conference table and high-backed chairs. Part of the wall was occupied by a holographic view of Station 23 which revealed to Gretana that the entire complex was huddled beneath a hemispherical energy lattice which contained an artificial atmosphere. Her sense of being in an outpost was suddenly intensified.
“Thank you for coming to see me, Gretana tylltha.” Vekrynn’s image, abruptly appearing at the centre of the room, spoke with the special confidential warmth she had almost forgotten. The lifelike projection of his figure, the heroic statue cast in precious metals, had almost the same emotional impact as the actual man. It brought light to the room. Gretana checked herself in the act of beginning the reply which would have gone unheard.
“It is a matter of deepest personal regret to me that I cannot be there to give you a few words of encouragement at this important moment of your life. I want you to know, Gretana, that my thoughts are with you and that I have the utmost confidence in your ability to succeed in your work for the Bureau. And you will appreciate exactly what I mean when I assure you that fair seasons really are in store.” The golden image smiled directly at Gretana, aiming itself by means of discreet sensors, then dissolved into glittering particles which swarmed and faded.
Bemused by the brevity of the recording, Gretana stared at the vanishing motes of radiance while she considered the meaning of Vekrynn’s final remark. With the unusual emphasis he had placed on two words he had been reiterating, as openly as was prudent for a public communication, all that he had secretly promised her on the afternoon of their first meeting. She was going to be fair, as fair as any Mollanian woman had ever been, and her season lay only a small number of decades away in the future. It was to be a long and idyllic season, richly rewarding, impossible to visualise in advance, but with one quintessential and dominant image—that of her and Vekrynn dancing in the spangled twilight of one of the eternal parties on Silver Island, in the Bay of Karlth, where as a small girl she had watched the distant glimmers from the shore and had dreamed a thousand hopeless dreams. That image was too romantic and too simple, a remnant of her childhood, but now—with her understanding of Vekrynn as a human being, not a symbol—she could begin to elaborate on it and bring it closer to reality. Vekrynn had problems; she, as one of the premier beauties of Mollanian society, was certain to acquire great influence, and those circumstances might one day forge a powerful and enduring link between them, a true partnership.
Against that kind of vision, her sojourn on Earth could be regarded as an irksome but mercifully brief preliminary…
Chapter Five
Standing at the centre of the radial mosaic, at an invisible crossroads, Gretana composed an equation and knew its shape to be correct. She raised her right hand and traced a unique quintic curvature in the air, replacing the equation’s generalities with the specific values of the target address. For a barely perceptible instant there was a sense of resistance, of vast inertias being overcome, then the continuum yielded to her will.
The transfer took place.
And she gave an involuntary moan of dismay.
In spite of all her training and preparation, the onslaught of the Earth’s Moon upon her senses nearly brought Gretana to her knees. It glowered, loomed, dominated. She could feel it hanging nearby in space, only thirty diameters of the planet away, an enormous generator and reflector of chaotic third-order forces which stormed and sleeted through her being, obliterating her finer senses. Panic spumed behind her eyes.
I’m blind, she thought as she tried vainly to skry the major influence line connecting her present position to Station 23. I’m trapped! I’ll be here for ever!
Gradually, however, and with agonising slowness, she became aware that a tuning process was taking place in her mind. It was as though the roar of a giant waterfall was being faded into the background to enable her to pick out the sharper notes of individual rivulets. She waited, hardly breathing, for her sensory balance to be restored. The planet known as Mars was the first to exert an identifiable tug, then came the two giant worlds of the local system, closely followed by Venus and Mercury. At that point, having oriented herself in the matrix of planetary influences, Gretana opened her eyes.
She was standing in a quiet, tree-screened hollow. A spring murmured introspectively a few paces away from her to the right, and on the other side was a low shelf of mossy rock which formed a atural chair. Gretana nodded and, despite the slow-subsiding inner turmoil, almost smiled. The place had the feeling of rightness she always associated with a major permanent nodal point. It was as though Nature had been coaxed and guided by timeless forces into arranging the topography just so, into providing shelter and water and a place for the traveller to rest, as an affirmation of the Mollanian belief that life and matter were both synergistic and interactive. The fact that neither buildings nor ornamentation marked the spot was an indication that she had entered a blind world. She transferred the small suitcase, which had been provided by Ichmo, into her right hand and moved away through the copse in the direction of the nearby community of Carsewell.