“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 .”
“It killed them?”
“Hell, no.” The pilot leaned back and closed her eyes all the way. The car touched down, light as a feather. “A ’Fact won’t actually kill a team — they were designed not to. But it can give you a pretty bad time. This one roughed ’em up so bad, they decided they’d had it with being a Pursuit Team. They split up. I picked ’em up one by one, and they all went home. So there we were, one out of three.”
The pilot glanced out of the window and nodded approvingly. They had come to rest at the exact center of the landing circle. “Want to hear about Team Four?”
“Of course. Maybe I can learn by their experience.”
“They were the worst of all. They got themselves organized, searched for their ’Fact, found it, and were all ready to blow it to bits. Well, that’s when the Pipe-Rilla decided it couldn’t go through with it. Couldn’t stand the idea of killing something, even if it was only an Artefact.”
“So they had to quit?”
“Not quite. The human on the team — big fat blond feller, looked like he’d not harm a fly — got so mad with the Pipe-Rilla, wasting all his time, he was all set to blow her full of holes in place of the ’Fact. Might have done it, too, if the Tinker hadn’t swarmed him.
“I got ’em all out in one piece, but the whole thing convinced the other Stellar Groups — again! — that humans are crazy killers. And if you think that didn’t create an interstellar incident and make things worse here …”
She opened the door of the car. A wave of dry heat like dragon’s breath wafted into the cabin. “Phew! Welcome to sunny Barchan. This car’s all yours now, until you get your Fact. Good hunting.”
As she started onto the steps Chan leaned out after her. “You’ve seen them all. What do you think our chances are?”
The pilot paused with the door half-closed, and the car’s air conditioner went into overdrive. “Your chances? Well, if you believe it’s a random process, past history says you’re one in four. But I don’t believe it’s that random. Mind if I ask you a question?”
“I’ve been asking you plenty.”
“Well, I’ve looked you over pretty hard these past few days. You don’t fit this job, not at all. With your face and body, you’re an entertainment natural — public, or one-on-one. There’s fifty billion women would like a piece of you. So how come you’re on a Pursuit Team, out here at the ass-end of the universe?”
Chan hesitated. Had Leah talked about him, so the pilot was just prodding for more details? The waves of arid heat coming in through the open door produced floods of sweat on his face and neck that dried the moment they appeared, but the pilot seemed oblivious to outside conditions. She was waiting patiently, and her face gave him no clues. He decided that her question reflected no more than a genuine interest.