“After I get to Cialth,” he said, turning the chair, “will I be able to see Gretana?”
“It should be possible—though not often.”
The noncommittal answer reassured Hargate he was not being lured or tricked by Vekrynn into travelling with him to, say, a detention centre or worse, but it was too vague to be satisfactory. “How often?”
“As often as she wishes.”
“Do you practise being evasive?” Hargate began to drive forward. “Or is it a natural gift?”
Vekrynn, still averting his gaze, fell into step beside the slow-moving chair. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Why? What are you afraid of?”
“Afraid!” Vekrynn glanced down at Hargate, his face registering scorn as they moved on to the reddish tesserae of the circular plaza. “I can’t think of a less apposite word.”
This is incredible, Hargate thought. This man is supposed to be a diplomat who has had thousands of years to practise verbal fencing—and yet I can rattle him every time.
The only explanation suggesting itself was that his presence was placing the Mollanian under near-intolerable stress. It was possible that a member of a disease-free race, one in which physical perfection was the norm, could suffer when confronted by crippling illness—but was there more to it with Vekrynn? Was the fear of death that Hargate had sensed in him earlier so great? Could it be that Hargate, whose life expectancy could conveniently be measured in months, was a reminder to Vekrynn that he too was mortal and that the message was one the big man could not bear to contemplate? Trying to comprehend Vekrynn’s viewpoint, Hargate looked up at the resplendent figure pacing beside his chair, felt an unexpected pang of sympathy and snorted with amusement. The idea that he, of all people, should feel sorry for a man who possibly had many centuries ahead of him was more than a little ludicrous.
“Why do you laugh?” Vekrynn said.
“All us crazy people do it,” Hargate replied mildly, noting that Vekrynn had sounded both curious and piqued, like a child who felt he was being excluded from a joke. It occurred to him that he really had been presumptuous in trying to psychoanalyse a member of an alien race. All the emotions and character traits he had assigned to Vekrynn were the result of conjecture—with no allowance for the fact that the man had been justifiably angry, and in all probability also shaken and embarrassed. The real evidence was that Vekrynn could simply have vanished and left Hargate to perish in this gaudy crucible of a world, instead of which he was taking considerable pains to keep his ward alive.
They reached the centre of the radial mosaic. Hargate, now familiar with basic skording procedure, stopped his chair and extended his right hand to Vekrynn. The Mollanian advanced his own hand slowly and with obvious reluctance until the contact was made, then he closed his eyes. In spite of Hargate’s mental and physical tiredness he felt a surge of excitement at the prospect of once more making that miraculous leap across space, of achieving what no reasonable member of his race could ever have expected to achieve. He scanned his surroundings, taking in every detail of the exotic scene, trying to anticipate the instant at which everything would change. The ruined buildings shimmered in the hot air, and the forest beyond was a bedazzling amber fire which challenged the senses, and in the midst of the brilliance something seemed to move. Hargate blinked rapidly and tried to focus his eyes on what might have been a dust devil or a fragment of mirage…
The transfer took place.
It was mellow evening on a world where the air had an incredible glassy clarity.
From the hummock on which he was sitting Hargate could see streams, wooded areas, plains, lakes, and mountains which did not act as a barrier to sight, but which receded in range after range in such a way that trying to follow them with the eye induced a giddy sensation of flight. Hargate was conscious of never having seen so much at one time, of the new world crowding itself into his head, expanding his mind. He rolled his chair forward a few paces, unable to do anything but gape, then—with an abrupt narrowing of perception—realised that the ground beneath his wheels was a springy lime-green turf.
For an instant he was unable to decide why the sight of it had produced stirrings of unease, then it dawned on him that he had been expecting to find one of the radial mosaics used by the Mollanians to mark the “stations” in their transportation network. He had also been expecting to find at least some of the amenities of civilisation, and their total absence suggested that either Gretana or Vekrynn had lied to him.
Hargate turned in his seat, barely in time to see Vekrynn complete a Mollanian mnemo-curve and cease to exist.
“Come back, you…!” He rolled towards the spot where Vekrynn had been standing, momentarily unable to accept what had happened, then brought the chair to a halt and looked around him, seeing the vast, calm world in a different light. Its predominant feature now was its sheer reverberating emptiness.
“Looks like I was right about you the first time, Vekrynn,” he said aloud, and immediately resolved not to speak again. The stillness of the environment had engulfed his words, absorbing their vibrational energies, symbolically confirming his belief that he was the only human being on the entire face of the planet.
In retrospect it was obvious that Vekrynn had wanted him out of the way, permanently silenced. The Mollanian had been too squeamish to carry out a straightforward homicide, but with the fantastic powers at his disposal such physical crudities were quite unnecessary. By abandoning Hargate on an uninhabited world—presumably one which was never visited by other members of his race—he had eliminated him as effectively as a soldier could have done with a machine gun. This way would take a little longer, that was all—exactly how much longer depending on whether death came by starvation, exposure or…
How big would an animal have to be before I could spot its traces?
How big would an animal have to be to do me in?
And, while we’re at it, is there any guarantee that I could even recognise an extraterrestrial animal even if it was staring me straight in the balls?
Hargate glanced towards a group of palm-like trees a short distance away to his left and considered taking shelter among them, then came the disquieting realisation that other creatures might have had the same idea. There was even the further possibility, one he was in no position to discount, that the trees themselves could be dangerous. All he knew for certain about the nameless world on which he found himself was that his present location offered no urgent or obvious threat—therefore there was no point in moving away.
There was no point in doing anything at all, not even in feeling anger or hatred towards a man who had retreated light years beyond his reach; not even in trying to emulate the Mollanian transfer symbols, which were only a reflection of precise and subtle mental processes. Earlier he had wished for peace in which to reflect on the events of the long day, and now—like the granting of a final request—he had been absolved of every one of life’s petty obligations.