“Twenty light years,” Gretana said, coming to terms with the new facts of the situation.
“So it’s 82 Eridani, assuming you go for G-type suns. Thank you. It makes me feel less helpless when I know exactly where I am, though in this case…” Hargate’s voice faded out for a moment, and when it returned he sounded almost like a child. “It was as good as a religion to me, you know…as good as magic…knowing there was a different game going on somewhere…with different rules…”
The halting words gave Gretana an intuitive and empathetic glimpse into a life other than her own, a life claustrophobically bounded by dark palisades of sickness and pain and all the wretched parameters of Earth, yet one which was lit from within by courage and imagination. And she, Gretana ty Iltha, had once regarded herself as the unluckiest creature in the universe because of a slight disproportion of her features. Shamed, prompted by a blend of curiosity and respect, she stood up and approached the bed. Hargate stared up at her for several seconds, and she saw his eyes widen in recognition.
“I thought I dreamed that part,” he said. “I saw you about twenty years ago, and you’re still twenty…It’s a bigger game than I thought, isn’t it?”
“I’m not allowed to say anything.”
“Oh? And were you allowed to kidnap me?”
Gretana had almost begun an indignant retort when she realised that Hargate was attempting to manipulate her. “The only reason I don’t seem to have aged is that my people have a much longer lifespan than the people of Earth,” she said, refusing to be ruffled. “Two decades is a very short time to us.”
“Really? And roughly how long do you manage to peg on for?”
“On average…” Gretana paused, oddly embarrassed. “Five thousand years.”
Five thou…!” Hargate raised himself up in the bed, then fell back on the pillow, smiling his one-sided smile.
“It’s a result of biological engineering,” Gretana said quickly. “The norm for a human planet is very much less.”
“You mean a mere couple of hundred years or so.”
“About seven hundred.”
“Christ!” Hargate lapsed into silence, and when he spoke again his voice was bitter, reflective. “What did we do wrong? Was it something we said?”
Gretana, uncomfortably aware of having disclosed too much, considered trying to explain that the presence of its giant, bloated Moon made Earth a seething cauldron of third-order forces which wreaked havoc on the genetic inheritance of every creature conceived within its influence; that the disruption of the sub-molecular building blocks at the most delicate phase of their existence was recipe for sickness and unreason; that conditions on Earth were so unfavourable for civilisation that it had even been theorised that an offshoot of humanity had been planted there by an ancient and malevolent experimenter. The explanation would be meaningless unless set in the entire Mollanian context, and if she provided that she would be compounding her crime against the Bureau. On the other hand, a man like Hargate was capable of deducing or guessing a great deal about the Bureau’s activities from what he already knew…
Resolving to confine herself to historical and philosophical generalities, Gretana began to expand Hargate’s mental horizons. Through much of the discourse he lay quite still, his eyes glittering and yet abstracted, like someone who was receiving a prolonged fix with a much-craved narcotic. Only when she reached the central issue was there an adverse reaction.
“You’re laying an awful lot of blame on the poor old Moon,” he said. “I can’t…I mean, it’s hard to accept that these third-order forces you talk about, forces you can’t even feel, could cause so much harm.”
“You can’t feel them—most non-Terrans would be very much aware of them.”
“But, according to what you say, you’ve been on Earth for years and they haven’t had any ill effect.”
“That’s because I’m an adult human,” Gretana explained again. “The vulnerable stage in an individual’s history is in the days following conception. I’m talking about humans now—there are many other races, differently structured, whose adult members couldn’t think of entering the Earth-Moon system for even a day. Others will risk very brief visits in specially shielded ships.”
“At least it’s an answer to the Fermi paradox—where is everybody?” Hargate frowned at the ceiling. “If two smallish bodies like the Earth and Moon set up all these bad vibes, how about binary stars?”
The point was one which Gretana recalled very clearly from an imprint. “As far as we know, no planet of a multiple star has ever evolved any kind of life.”
“I suppose it all fits. It isn’t even a pun to call us lunatics—the word directly associates the Moon with madness. It’s all so…” Hargate became silent again, his eyes sombre as he considered the history of his own world from a new vantage point.
“Perhaps you should get some sleep.”
“Sleep!” A corner of Hargate’s mouth twitched. “You know, some of our philosophers and most of our religious leaders always claimed that we had a special place in the scheme of things—but I don’t think the galactic freak show was what they had in mind.”
“It isn’t like that,” Gretana said, repressing a pang of irrational guilt. She began to outline the doctrinal reasons for Mollanian noninterference with other human worlds, then went on to the work of the Bureau of Wardens. Having started to speak, she found that apparently separate subjects were deeply interconnected. When dealing with recent events it proved difficult to avoid certain areas, and—with some prompting from Hargate—she confessed her belief that it was a Mollanian renegade who had sabotaged the Aristotle space colony. Somewhat to her surprise, Hargate’s interest in the fate of the space habitat was short-lived. He kept returning to the basics of Mollanian science and philosophy, particularly to the principles of non-cursive travel.
“Does that mean that Mollanians don’t use spacecraft at all?” he said.
She shook her head. “We use them, but mainly for bulk transport of raw materials and local travel where there aren’t any convenient nodes. They aren’t suitable for interstellar travel because of the light barrier. When it’s necessary to put a ship into another system, the components are usually skorded there separately and assembled.”
“I see.” In spite of the growing signs of tiredness, Hargate remained fascinated. “Do you think that somebody from Earth—me, for instance—could learn to skord?”
The idea was totally new to Gretana. “It might be possible—your ancestors must have had the ability.”
“What’s it like? How do you feel when you just step from star to star, world to world, and see everything change?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only travelled to Earth.”
“Huh?” Hargate stared at her with incredulous blue eyes. “You mean you could have walked the galaxy and you simply never bothered? My God, woman!”
Gretana was disturbed by an uncanny sense of having taken part in the same conversation at an earlier time, then it came to her that Hargate’s tone was exactly the same as the one Lorrest had used during their single meal together. All at once, it seemed, every man she met—hunted murderer or house-bound Terran—was assuming the right to treat her with open scorn. A surge of indignation sent her back to her chair. She had taken only two paces when she heard a flurry of movement and a low gasp. She turned and saw that Hargate, apparently having attempted to detain her, was lying askew on the bed. He was clutching his side and his eyes, opaque with pain, were locked with hers.