“I now sympathize with Vayvay,” said S’greela suddenly. She had been eating also, with fierce concentration. “If a Coromar feels hunger like this all the time; naturally there is little room for other thought. We must go back, and explain that we are safe.”
“Tomorrow,” said Shikari. “Vayvay has plenty of food, and will be more than happy to wait for us.”
“Never do tomorrow what can be done today,” said Angel. “However, in this case you are right, and an exception may be admitted. Tomorrow will suffice for Vayvay.”
The others might be able and willing to chat, but it was too much for Chan. Today had been the Tolkov Stimulator all over again; the painful expansion of mind, the blinding mental Tight that made everything that had gone before seem dim and feeble. And yet Chan yearned to be part of Almas again, to feel the enveloping warmth of the mind pool …
Angel was still talking. Chan could not listen. His thoughts went to the Q-ship, orbiting somewhere high overhead. He had to decide what they would do about that threat, or they would be condemned to spend the rest of their lives on Travancore.
But such things were no longer his worry alone — the decision would be made by Almas! Chan felt huge relief.
He fell into a profound sleep, too deep for dreams.
It was a few hours before Travancore’s slow dawn when he was awakened. A warm body slid under the sheet that covered him and snuggled close to his side. He felt a moment of tingling terror, then relaxed as fingers gently covered his mouth.
“Sshh,” breathed a voice in his ear. “It’s me. Leah. It was wonderful meeting you as Nimrod, but I wanted to meet you just as me, and reassure you. You won’t lose anything when your team forms a union. You’ll gain .”
“I know. It already happened. Together, we are Almas.”
“That’s wonderful. Tomorrow, the two mentalities can have their first meeting.” She wriggled against him. “Move over a little bit. I want to get comfortable.”
Chan tried to see Leah, but the darkness was close to total and she was nothing but a moving patch of lesser darkness. He reached out and put his arms around her. “All this time I’ve waited to see you, and still you’re invisible. I wonder if you’re anything like the Leah I used to know.”
She chuckled in the darkness. “Me! I haven’t changed one bit — you’re the one who’s so different. Don’t confuse me with Nimrod, because when we’re not in union I’m still me.” She settled comfortably in his arms, fitting her body to his. “It was wonderful with you when I was Nimrod, and everything was shared. But tonight I decided that isn’t enough. I want you for myself, too. This time, it’s going to be just us. Ah, my sweet Chan. You feel wonderful.”
Their lovemaking was gentle and slow, lacking any urgency. It was the culmination of twenty years of deep affection. Even Chan’s climax carried no stress, only love and fulfillment. Afterwards Leah fell asleep quickly, nestled close to his chest, but Chan remained awake.
A new worry began to gnaw at him. Leah was still Leah, quite sure of her own identity and not worried about being lost within the union of Nimrod.
But three months ago, Chan had been no one. And ever since that hour of revelation on Horus, he had puzzled over the question of his own identity. Who was he, what was he? He did not have Leah’s strong, well-defined personality, the identity that easily survived mind pooling and dissolution. Despite Leah s reassurances, he wondered if the still-developing entity who was Chan Dalton would survive.
Am I going to become nothing more than one piece of a union, as undefined as one of Shikari’s components? I hate that idea. 1 want to he me, I don’t want to be absorbed. I hope this isn’t going to be my last night as Chan Dalton.
His thoughts were drifting in long, lazy lines. How long have I lived? Obituary: Chan Dalton, born at twenty years and three months, dead at twenty years and six months. What counts more, mental life span or physical?
I’m afraid to go to sleep, knowing that tomorrow the real me may disappear.
He felt Leah stir in the darkness. Her arm moved, to lie protectively across his chest as though she was reading his mind.
It’s all right. Leah will take care of me. She always has.
And with that thought, Chan went peacefully to sleep.
Far above the sleeping figures in the tent, the brooding hulk of the Q-ship floated in space. Power on board had been damped, to minimize instrument interference. All sensors were trained on the night side of Travancore. All weapons were primed.
Within the Q-ship’s central control room sat Esro Mondrian and Luther Brachis. They were busy with a curious late-night ritual. Each of them was quietly entering a sequence of digits into a recording block. As soon as both were finished they exchanged records and examined the other’s notations.
“Looks all right to me,” said Brachis. His face was still a patchwork of synthetic skin, but his color was good. “I’m going to call it a day.”
Mondrian reached out and took both recording blocks.
“We’re going to carry this sequence in our heads, you know, until the day we die. But it has to be done. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here any more than you do.”
“I could tell Godiva the sequence, as a safety precaution.”
“No.” Mondrian shook his head. “You, me, and Flammarion, and nothing as a written record. If we in Security don’t handle this right, who does? We play it by the book until we’re absolutely sure that down there” — he nodded towards Travancore’s dark disk — “there’s nothing too dangerous for us to handle.”
“The Team Ruby reports have been looking good.”
“So did the ones from Team Alpha and look what happened to them. I hope Dalton’s team will dispose of Nimrod for us, but we have to be sure. We’re dealing with an alien form down there. I don’t want to take any risks.”
“Nor do I. But you know how I feel. We ought to fly lower, turn up the firepower in the region where Nimrod is lurking, and roast it to hell and gone. If we did that, we could get this over with in a hurry.”
“And destroy the only Morgan Construct there is, the only one there will ever be? No. We go slow, and we make sure that we win.”
Brachis shrugged and went out. Godiva was waiting. He didn’t care to waste time arguing.
Mondrian made a check of the incoming messages. Nothing from Kubo. Another complaint from Dougal MacDougal about the energy cost of keeping open the Anabasis-Travancore Link. A confirmation from the Stellar Group ambassadors that no matter what happened, there could be no return from Travancore until the Morgan Construct was destroyed or rendered totally harmless. A query from Phoebe Willard, asking when Luther Brachis would return.
If we knew that, we would be happy to tell you.
Mondrian erased the lengthy string of digits on each recording block. The only written evidence of the Link sequence needed to return the Q-ship to a known region of space vanished.
Once again, Mondrian, Luther Brachis, and Godiva Lomberd sat alone in space, a six-hundred-year journey away from home.
In the folded, multiply-connected mapping provided by the Mattin Link, space lacks both metric and affine connections. There is only the point-to-point Link transformation, with its own discontinuous topology. So long as the Link is maintained between two locations, they remain neighbors in Link-space.
The Q-ship in orbit around Travancore and the control room of Anabasis Headquarters were close, an infinitesimal Link-space distance apart. The Link itself could provide the minute (but hugely energetic) nudge to move matter or messages across that tiny gap.