“It should be safe enough, I’ll buy that.” Brachis was visibly weakening, while Godiva was frowning at Mondrian. “But we’ve got the blockade in position, which means once you go there you can’t come back. It would mean a one-way trip until a pursuit team finishes off the Construct. Suppose that takes years? Go to Travancore, and you could be stuck on the Q-ship until you die of boredom.”
“There are worse fates.” Mondrian surveyed the other man’s battered body. “Stay here, and it’s certainly not boredom you’ll be dying of. In any case, I don’t think the action on Travancore will take long, otherwise I wouldn’t be going out there myself. My original plan was to take Captain Flammarion with me, while you stayed in charge at Anabasis Headquarters. But after what just happened here, it makes sense to switch that, and leave Kubo on Ceres. I assume you trust him?”
“He’s your man, and that won’t change. Other than that, he’s a rock. But I’m a devil of a lot better in a crisis.”
“Which we certainly have at Travancore. But Kubo can stay here, give information to nobody, and send us anything that we need through the Link.
“What about Godiva?”
“Whatever you like. With you out of the way, I don’t really think she’ll be in danger anywhere.”
“It makes no difference. Godiva spoke for the first time since her return. “Where Luther goes, I go.”
“And I won’t go without you.” Brachis tried to smile, and produced only a pained grimace as the artificial skin on his face stretched in unfamiliar directions. “All right, so we both go. And the sooner the better. I’m tired of being chipped away, bit by bit.”
“Very good.” Mondrian stood up. “I will notify Captain Flammarion. We’ll leave as soon as you are physically able to do so.”
“I’m able now. I was planning another trip out to the Sargasso Dump, but that can wait awhile. We’ll be ready tomorrow morning.”
“I won’t approve that. You will not be sufficiently recovered.”
“Esro, you don’t need to approve. You seem to forget, you don’t outrank me any more in the Anabasis.”
“Don’t think I am unaware of that. Sometime you must tell me what you promised Lotos, to work that deal. But for the moment” — Mondrian stared at Brachis, and saw new pallor around his eyes — “Godiva, he needs a doctor even if he doesn’t want one. Luther, if you tried to stand up you would fall over.”
“Would I? Just watch me, then.” Brachis swayed to his feet, shaking his head when Godiva tried to help him. “No doctors.” He hobbled away to the bathroom. “Tomorrow morning, Esro. We’ll be ready.”
Godiva sighed, and sat down again opposite Mondrian “Stubborn! But what happened to you, Esro? You look nearly as bad as Luther. “I’m fine.”
“You are not.” She leaned close and peered into his eyes. “Are you taking Tatty with you to Travancore?”
“No.’’ Then Mondrian’s own control failed, and he had to ask the question. “Godiva, what made you suddenly ask about Tatty? I didn’t even mention her name.”
“I know. You didn’t need to.” Godiva gave him a satisfied smile. “Esro, if I understand anything in the whole universe, it’s men’s emotions. Luther couldn’t see it, but I can. You’re radiating misery. Have you two been fighting?”
“That’s too dignified a word for it.” He smiled, but his eyes were bleak. “There was no fight. We were down in her apartment on Earth, and I wanted her to come back to Ceres with me. She said no. Then she dumped me, simple as that. She says she never wants to see me again, after what I did to her.”
Godiva took Mondrian’s hands in hers. He felt a flow like electricity along his forearms — a tingle that Tatty said could be felt only by men, and had termed “The Godiva Effect.”
“I’m sorry, Esro.” Godiva squeezed his hands. “Maybe she’ll change her mind. I’ll talk to her. But right now I’d better go and see what’s keeping Luther. I think he needs more help than he’ll admit.
She stood up and went across to the bathroom without looking again at Mondrian. Decency demanded that such pain and misery be permitted at least privacy.
Chapter 34
Pulling information out of Vayvay was almost impossible. The Coromar seemed to have only two interests in life: finding food, and eating it. Chan had sat in on three weary hours of Angel’s careful questioning and re-questioning, then he had given up. He lacked Angel’s infinite patience. He wandered out to the lip of the tent, where S’greela and Shikari were basking in the mid-morning sunlight.
“How can Angel stand it?” he said. “Every question has to be repeated ten times, and still there’s nothing to show at the end.”
“Talking to Vayvay?” S’greela nudged Shikari with one hind-limb. As usual, the Tinker was trying to creep up into a lumpy heap around their legs. “I admit, Vayvay is not easily mistaken for a genius. In fact, I myself asked Angel the same question, how was it possible to be so patient with such an idiot?”
“But Angel did not answer you.”
“Indeed, yes. Angel indicated that communication with humans provided a sufficient base of prior experience.”
Chan glared, and decided not to react. He had noticed a strange phenomenon. S’greela, and even Angel, seemed to be picking up the Tinker’s perverse sense of humor. In fact, they were all beginning to sound more and more like each other. It was harder all the time to tell who made a remark simply from its content, or the way in which it was phrased. Was he starting to sound like the rest of them, too?
Chan thought not. In some ways, he was the outsider of the group. When he had rushed back yesterday to tell them what had happened to him in the tunnels, they had listened quietly enough; but he knew that they rejected what he said, almost without considering it.
That idea was full of disturbing possibilities. Angel insisted that the Construct had not moved from its original putative location, far from them. And Mondrian had told Chan that Nimrod’s powers for mental disturbance were short-range. Close contact would be needed for it to have any effect. So if Chan’s bewildering encounter had not been with Nimrod, there was only one other clear possibility: he was going crazy.
Chan had other evidence for that. After his arrival back at the camp the previous night, he had almost no memory of the rest of the evening. He recalled sitting in a close, compact group, listening to Angel talk to the Coromar. And that was all that he remembered, until he had awakened today under the outspread mantle of the Tinker Composite.
Suppose that fears and confusion were affecting his judgement? Then he had to discover the source of those delusions, before he put the others in danger. And that urgency made him want to proceed too fast with the hunt for Nimrod. Festina lente — hasten slowly. But it was hard to do, when the others were so in favor of rapid action.
This morning they were raring to go. Angel was now sure that the task of stalking Nimrod through Travancore’s vertical forest could be simplified. “There is, as you conjectured, a grid of horizontal tunnels.” Angel had finally emerged from the long dialogue with Vayvay. “It becomes denser and more continuous, down close to the true surface of the planet. But it is not so well maintained as the tunnels higher up. The Coromar look after the high tunnels much better, because they are their primary feeding grounds. However, the lower network will be adequate for our needs. We can use it to move close to Nimrod, and still minimize the chance of our detection.”