“Man, you can amortize that debt over two thousand years. Forget it. Now, where are we going first?”
“We maintain a small hideaway in the Himalayas: nothing palatial, our tastes are humble, but securely hidden. I must render a report to my chiefs on Earth, get their approval of the plan, and prepare documents for the Cygni office. It will only take a little while.”
Langley went off to the ship’s sick bay. He’d taken a nasty gash in his leg, but treatment was routine these days: a clamp to hold the edges of the wound together, a shot of artificial enzymes to stimulate regeneration. In a few hours, the most radical surgery could be completely and scarlessly healed.
He remarked on that to Valti as they sat over dinner. The ship was taking a wide ellipse through space before returning to Earth, to avoid possible detection. “I’m a little at sea about the notion of progress,” he confessed. “Offhand, it looks as if man hasn’t improved a bit; and then I see advances like you have in medicine, and think what a tremendous change for the better was made by innovations like agriculture and the machine. Maybe it’s just that I’m too impatient; maybe, given a few more millennia, man will do something about himself, change his own mind from animal to human.”
Valti took a noisy slurp of beer. “I cannot share your optimism, my friend,” he answered. “I was born more than six hundred years ago, by skipping across space and time I have seen much history, and it seems to me that civilization—any civilization, on any planet—is subject to a law of mortality. No matter how clever we get, we will never create mass-energy, grow nothing, never make heat flow of itself from a colder to a warmer body. There are limitations set by natural law. As ships and buildings are made bigger, more of their volume must go into passageways, until you reach a limit. You could not have an immortal man; even if biochemistry permitted, he has only so much brain space, so many cells which can record his experiences. Why, then, an immortal civilization, or a civilization embracing the entire universe?”
“And so there’ll always be rise, and decay, and fall -always war and suffering?”
“Either that, or the sort of thing the Technon wants: death disguised by a mechanical semblance of life. I think you look at it from the wrong angle. Is not this very change, this anguished toppling into doom, the stuff of life? There is a unity in the cosmos which is more important than any one world, any one race. I think life arose because the universe needs it, needs just those characteristics which hurt the living individual. No... I don’t believe in Father. There is no consciousness except in organic life. And yet an inanimate universe brought forth life and all its variety, because that was a necessary step in the evolution from a great cloud of gas to the final clinkered vacuum.” Valti wiped his nose and chuckled. “Pardon me. I meander in my old age. But if you had traveled across light-years all your days, you’d know that there is something operating which can’t be reduced to physical theory. I think the Society will last because of being divorced from space and time; but only it, and even its span is not eternal.”
He got up. “Excuse me. We’ll be landing soon.”
Langley found Marin in the amidships saloon. He sat down beside her and took her hand. “It won’t be long now,” he said. “I think we’ve done what’s best—removed Saris” power from the place where it could only cause destruction. Best thing for Sol, too. And now we’re bound on our own way.”
“Yes.” She didn’t look at him. Her face was white, and there was a strained expression on it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked anxiously. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
“I... I don’t know, Edwy. Everything seems so odd, somehow, as if this were a dream.” She stared cloudily before her. “Is it? Am I sleeping somewhere and—”
“No. What is the trouble? Can’t you describe it?”
She shook her head. “It’s as if someone else were sharing my brain, sitting there and waiting. It came on me all of a sudden. The strain, I suppose. I’ll be all right.”
Langley scowled. Worry gnawed at him. If she took sick- Just why was she so important to him? Was he falling for her? It would be very easy to do. Quite apart from her looks, she was brave and intelligent and witty; he could see himself spending a contented lifetime with her.
Peggy, Jim, Bob—No, not her, too. Not again!
There was a small jarring shock, and the engine drone died. Saris Hronna stuck his whiskered snout through the door. “We iss landed,” he announced. “Come out.”
The ship lay cradled in a brightly-lit cave; behind her was a huge concrete door which must lead to the mountain slope. It would be a high, wild land, there were probably snowfields and glaciers left here on the roof of the world -cold, windy, empty, a place where men could hide for years.
“Have you any defenses?” asked Langley as Valti led the way past the hull.
“No. Why should we? They would only add more metal to be detected from above. As it is, every possible thing here is made of plastic or stone. I am a peaceful man, captain. I rely more on my cerebral cortex than my guns. In five decades, this lair has been unsuspected.”
They entered a hall off which several doors opened. Langley saw what must be a radio room, presumably for emergency use only. Valti’s men wandered off toward their own quarters; they spoke little, the Society people seemed to frown on idle chatter between themselves, but they seemed quite relaxed. Why not? They were safe now. The fight was over.
Marin jerked, and her eyes widened. “What’s the matter?” asked Langley. His voice sounded hoarse and cracked.
“I... I don’t know.” She was trying not to cry. “I feel so strange.” Her eyes were unfocused, he saw, and she moved like a sleepwalker.
“Valti! What’s wrong with her?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know, captain. Probably just reaction; it’s been a trying time for a person not used to conflict and suspense. Let’s put her to bed and I’ll get the ship’s doctor to take a look at her.”
That officer admitted to puzzlement. “Psychology is out of my field,” he explained. “Society personnel rarely have trouble with their minds, so we have no good psychiatrists among us. I gave her a sedative. If she isn’t better tomorrow, we can get a specialist.” He smiled sourly. “Too much knowledge. Too damn much knowledge. One head can’t hold it all. I can set a broken bone or cure a germ-caused disease, but when the mind goes out of kilter all I can do is mutter a few half-forgotten technical terms.”
Langley’s victory crumbled in his hands.
“Come, captain,” said Valti, taking his arm, “let’s go make up Saris Hronna’s vitamin pills, and after that you could probably use some sleep yourself. In twenty-four hours you’ll be out of the Solar System. Think of that.”
They were working in the laboratory when Saris stiffened. “She goess by,” he said. “She iss walking been around and her mind feelss wery strange.”
Langley ran out into the corridor. Marin stood looking at him with clearing eyes. “Where am I?” she said weakly.
“Come on,” he answered. “Back to bed with you.”
“I feel better,” she told him. “There was a pressing in my brain, everything went dark, and now I am standing here —but I feel like myself again.”
The drugged glass stood untouched by her bunk. “Get that down,” said Langley. She obeyed, smiled at him, and went to sleep. He resisted a desire to kiss her.
Returning, he found Saris putting a flask of pills into a pouch hung about his neck. Valti had gone to do his paperwork, they were alone among the machines.
“I feeled her mind clearing ewen ass I... listened,” said Saris. “Hass your race often such failingss?”
“Now and then,” said Langley. “Gears slip. I’m afraid we aren’t as carefully designed as your people.”