“That’s the other reason I wanted to be here when you woke up — to tell you that I was responsible for the attempt to assassinate you.”
“Tatty, you’re out of your mind. You didn’t do the bombing any more than I did. We were both victims of it. You were injured, too — I can see the scars still on your arm.”
“I didn’t do the bombing — but I caused it to be done.”
Mondrian reached out to take Tatty’s arm, pulling her back to the bedside. His grip was much stronger than she expected.
“Princess, you can’t make a wild statement like that and say nothing more. Are you saying you arranged for that bomb?”
“No.”
“So what are you saying? That you know who tried to kill us?”
“No one tried to kill us. It was Chan Dalton, and he tried to kill you. The rest of us just happened to be there.”
“Tatty, you’re gibbering. What are you getting at?”
She hesitated and evaded, but under constant prodding from Mondrian she told the whole story; of the long days on Horus, of her loneliness, of her growing despair with Chan and hatred for Mondrian; finally, of her use of Mondrian’s picture as an object for Chan to hate.
Mondrian listened quietly and sympathetically. At the conclusion he sprawled full-length on the bed and shook his head.
“Wrong, Princess. Totally wrong.”
“Prove it.”
“I can’t — but I’ll wager on it. Look at a few facts. First, whoever that waiter was, he wasn’t Chan Dalton.”
“He wasn’t a real waiter. At the restaurant they don’t know who he was.”
“Well, he was certainly dressed like the waiters at that restaurant. But waiter or not, my point is that he wasn’t Chan. Which means that Chan would have had to bribe him. Now, did you tell Chan beforehand where we were going to have dinner?”
“No. He didn’t know in advance — he says he just mindlessly followed us there.”
“So you’re telling me that Chan, who didn’t know where we were going, could in just a few minutes persuade a man dressed like a waiter to deliver a bomb to our table. That sort of thing requires careful preparation and planning. Where would Chan even find a bomb? He’s a recent arrival on Ceres, and he hardly knows anyone. He may look like a twenty-year-old, but in terms of adult contact with the world he s only a few weeks old.”
“He’s a super-fast learner now.”
“It makes no difference. Chan is a newcomer here. No matter how intelligent he is, he couldn’t get the materials and the knowledge in such a short time. You say Chan doesn’t remember what he was doing at the time of the bombing. I’ll accept that. His brain’s still sorting itself out inside his head. But amnesia isn’t a crime. I don’t believe that he had anything at all to do with the explosion.” Mondrian sat up and stared at Tatty. “Give me ten minutes to talk to him, and I guarantee that I can prove he had nothing to do with it — prove it to your satisfaction as well as mine.”
“I can’t.” Tatty looked stricken. “Can’t bring him to you, I mean.”
“Why not?”
“He s not here any more — not on Ceres.”
“Of course he is. You just have to track him down.”
“No. You don’t understand. When Chan told me about his blackout, I told him what happened at the restaurant. We talked, and we agreed. He must have done the bombing, without having control of his actions. He didn’t know what to do. So I helped him — helped him to escape.”
“But he couldn’t possibly get away from here. For one thing, he’d need a travel permit.”
“Esro, you still don’t understand. He already had a travel permit.”
“Who was insane enough to issue one to him? I’ll have their carcass.”
“You were insane enough. Remember, you issued it in advance, so it would be ready when he went off for pursuit team training and you would collect on your bet with Luther Brachis as soon as possible. All I did was ask Captain Flammarion to give Chan the rest of his tests at once. He passed them all, easily. He was ready for the next phase.”
“So where is he?”
“He’s on Barchan. As you planned. Ready to start pursuit team training.”
Tatty’s statement was not quite correct. Chan was certainly in pursuit team training, but he was not actually on Barchan. When Tatty spoke those words he was flying four thousand meters above the planet’s surface in a Security aircar, receiving his final lesson on its operation and handling.
“Don’t you forget now,” said the pilot cheerfully. “Once you drop me off you’re on your own. No collections, no deliveries, you pick your own nose and do your own laundry. And don’t bother to send a message unless you’ve destroyed the ’Fact — or given up trying.”
She laughed, as though her last suggestion was out of the question. The pilot was small and tubby, with sleepy-looking brown eyes. When she was at the controls the car seemed to glide effortlessly through the buffeting winds of Barchan. Only when Chan took over himself did he learn that Barchan’s air currents were strong and unpredictable. Level flight called for constant attention, and landing and take-off on the desert planet was always dangerous.
Chan dipped the car’s nose and started to drop off height. At a thousand meters he began to circle, making his visual search for their landing target. The updrafts were stronger here, and it took all his efforts to maintain a constant altitude.
“Has anyone ever done that?” he said. “I mean, just given up trying to destroy a Simulation of the Construct, and asked to be taken back?”
“You better believe it.” The pilot chuckled and slouched back in her seat, but her eyes missed nothing and her hands were never more than a couple of inches away from the duplicate set of controls.
“You’re the fifth pursuit team training group we’ve had in here,” she went on. “And so far we’ve had just one that graduated.”
“What happened to the others?”
“Bunches of stuff. Funny thing is, the first group that we had went dead smooth. I dropped the four of them off at the training camp, one at a time. Human, Pipe-Rilla, Tinker, Angel. They found they could work together, no problem. They organized the search for the ’Fact, found it in three days, and destroyed it. End of story, still no problem. They linked off to Dembricot for their final preparations, and last I heard they were heading off to tackle the real thing, the Construct itself.”
“That was Leah Rainbow’s team?” Chan had spotted the landing area, and he was lining up for final approach.
“Know her, do you? It sure was. Smart woman, that. Anyway, the first one went so smooth I thought all the rest would be the same and we’d slide right through like Angel sap. Was I wrong!
“Second team came in, I dropped ’em off. Didn’t hear a squeak for a week, then the Pipe-Rilla called me, solo. Asked to be picked up, she was leaving the team. No explanation. That team’s still waiting for another Pipe-Rilla to replace the first one.
“Team Three — your alignment’s fine, by the way, but you’ll land a lot smoother if you drop the speed another couple of points. That’s it. Spot on, and hold it there. Anyway, Team Three arrived all right, seemed to get on well together. They searched around and found their ’Fact. But they didn’t get it. It got them .”