“So you really were going to fix me.”
“Naturally.” She met Lorrest’s gaze directly, enjoying the moment. “But there was nobody there when I arrived, and I thought I was too late. I went to have a look at your barley sugar forest while I decided what to do next, then I thought I heard voices and I turned back. I was just in time to see Vekrynn and Denny Hargate leave.”
“For Cialth?”
“Where else?”
“I don’t know.” Lorrest looked thoughtful. “What was the mnemo-curve like?”
Gretana hesitated and, employing her Mollanian talent for a special kind of mathematics, traced an exact copy of the gesture Vekrynn had made on the instant of departing with Hargate.
“It wasn’t Cialth,” Lorrest said emphatically.
“How do you know?” Gretana demanded. “You haven’t memorised every reciprocal address in the sector.”
“No, but I know the general form they take. Look.” Abandoning the attempt to put on his jacket, Lorrest set the garment down and gave her an impromptu lecture on descriptive topography as used in the Mollanian transfer system. “So you see,” he concluded, “wherever Vekrynn took your friend it wasn’t to Cialth. Show me the curve again.”
Reluctantly, feeling that once again she was being out-manoeuvred, Gretana began slowly recreating the symbol with her right hand. She had used only about a dozen skord addresses in her life and had regarded each one as being an arbitrary set of mathematical elements. Lorrest’s approach, treating all addresses as part of a unified system and being able to predict relationships between them, was so far superior to hers that it smacked of being unfair. Who decides these things? she wondered, completing the curve. Who teaches one person to enjoy using and developing his mind, whilst allowing another to…?
“It isn’t even in the human sector!” Lorrest hugged his immobilised left arm to his side and began pacing the length of the narrow kitchen. “For some reason Vekrynn has dumped your friend, your tame Terran, about…let’s see…about two hundred light years inside the Attatorian sector. There must be a Type One world there that nobody else from Mollan has even seen—but how did old man Vekrynn latch on to it in the first place? And why? Why would he…?”
“I’m glad you’ve got around to asking yourself that,” Gretana cut in. “You keep building up these fantastic accusations against the Warden, with no real evidence, and you expect me to believe them. Well, I still don’t believe them and you’re still on your way out of here. Come on!” She picked up Lorrest’s jacket and held it ready for him. Lorrest obediently slipped his arms into it and allowed her to draw it over his shoulders, an action which made him seem oddly childlike in spite of his size and physique.
“That’s a very good point about evidence, and I’m glad you made it,” he said, turning to face her. “I don’t quite know why it is, but I’m becoming obssessed with the notion of making you see reason. Maybe it’s the sheer magnitude of the challenge. Anyway, I’ve worked out how to give you all the proof you need.”
“How?”
“Through Denny Hargate, of course. I’ll go after him and fetch him back to Earth. In all probability he’s already dead, but if he’s still alive he can testify for himself. Either way you’ll have your evidence.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, exasperated. “Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“Don’t dismiss it like that,” he said quickly. “All you have to do is tell me where to find the Bureau’s east coast node, and I promise you I’ll bring him back. Why are you shaking your head?”
“E for effort,” she replied, borrowing a Terran expression, “but I’m not talking. I’ve already let Vekrynn down once and I’m not doing it again.”
“I thought we had established that your true loyalties are with Helping Hand.”
“Is that what you call yourselves? Helping Hand?”
“Yes. It doesn’t sound sinister enough for the Bureau’s propaganda, so they refer to us as 2H. But that’s what we’re doing here on Earth, Gretana—we’re giving these people the helping hand they need.”
“By sabotaging the space colony?”
“There was a good reason for that,” Lorrest said. “It was part of the plan.”
“Oh, yes. The plan you’re not allowed to divulge, but when it comes to a head everybody in the world will know about it.” Gretana smiled faintly, remembering her resolve to be coolly unconcerned. “You don’t seem to have any idea how crazy that sounds—and you’re still demanding everything and giving nothing in return.”
“Only for your own good.” Lorrest walked to the other end of the kitchen and stood for a moment facing the window, and when he turned his face was troubled and irresolute. “Can I trust you, Gretana?”
I can show Vekrynn I’m not a fool, she thought, hiding a powerful surge of excitement. The thing is not to appear too eager…
“I thought I was the specialist in corny dialogue,” she said. “Does anybody ever admit to being untrustworthy?”
“You’re learning,” Lorrest replied, and when he spoke again his voice was subdued. “We’re going to…”
“Yes?”
He made an unconvincing attempt to grin. “We’re going to destroy the Moon.”
Gretana had never acquired a taste for neat brandy, but the shock it administered to her tongue was oddly comforting, a sensual link with the humdrum world. She took repeated sips from her glass, all the while keeping her gaze on Lorrest. He had tucked his left arm inside his jacket just above the first button, improvising a sling, and now was seated at the dining table. He had taken only one drink from his glass and was flicking its rim with a fingernail, producing ringing sounds which turned the surface of the liquid into an oscilloscope of transient bright circles. His expression was one of tiredness and elation.
“We’re very lucky on Mollan, never having contracted religion,” he said, “but as a result we’re linguistically deprived. I mean, the word you’re looking for now is blasphemous—you feel that what we’re about to do is blasphemy—but, being a godless Mollanian, you don’t have access to the appropriate expression.”
“I can think of others just as appropriate,” Gretana countered. “How about wild, insane, hare-brained…?”
“You’re not doing too well—those mean more-or-less the same thing, and they don’t really express your gut-feeling that it’s terribly wrong for mere human beings to start meddling with the Grand Scheme.”
“How about impracticable? Or improbable?”
“The plan is practicable, even with 2H’s limited resources.” Lorrest’s tone was becoming surer. “There’s a minor planet in this system, name of Ceres, with a diameter of about seven hundred kilometres. I presume you’ve heard about its disappearance?”
“Yes, but…What has that to do with the Moon?”
“We put a bank of mass displacement units on Ceres and drove it out of orbit. It’s on its way to the Moon right now, accelerating all the way, and in two days from now there’s going to be one hell of a collision.”
Objections swarmed in Gretana’s mind, reinforcing her instinctive rejection of what she had heard. “I don’t understand. It said in the news that Ceres had ceased to be visible, but if has only been moved…”
“We screened it. Optically, magnetically, gravitationally—every way you could think of—to stop the Bureau using deflectors on it when they deduce what’s going on.”
“They’ll find it,” she asserted, her confidence springing from faith in Warden Vekrynn’s omnipotence rather than any appreciation of the technical problems involved.
“No doubt,” Lorrest said. “The Bureau will compute its rough position, then they’ll find some way to deactivate our screens and make the asteroid visible—but it will be close to the Moon by that time, and we’ve taken steps to make sure their deflectors won’t be effective. Fireworks night will go ahead as planned.”