Rob had not turned around. “Did you interpret all of that the same way as I did?” he asked quietly. His body seemed frozen, staring rigidly out across the face of the city. “It was murder. Murder for both of them. The fire in the lab, and the bomb in the aircraft — that very nearly got me, too. Another five minutes and I’d have been dead.” He looked down at his hands for a moment, reliving the months and years of operations. “And yet there has to be a lot more that we still haven’t heard.”
Anson nodded. “Much more. For one thing, we have no idea why it all happened. We don’t know who the Goblins were, we don’t know how they are related to Morel and Caliban. It sounded to me as though it was Morel who was responsible for the death of your parents, but we have no proof of that. We may be misinterpreting Senta’s words. I have a problem believing some of the things she said.” He rubbed morosely at his jaw. “We don’t have answers to any of this, and in some ways we have more questions than ever. I guess we have to keep digging.”
“I think you may have enough information already to help Senta. You know that she feels she has been directly involved in murders — and more than just my parents. There were a lot of other people on that aircraft. Can you use what you have to erase some of her painful memories? And maybe you can help me to delve deeper into these things, they involve me a lot more than Senta.”
Rob was beginning to understand the tie between Anson and the tormented woman in the next room. There was a mutual dependence that made simple physical attraction almost an irrelevance.
“We don’t want to involve Senta in this any more than she has been already,” he went on. “Tell me what you’ve turned up about Joseph Morel, and let me take it from there.”
“I might agree to that, for her sake. But Senta never would.” Anson turned abruptly from the window and went across to sit on the bed. “She’ll want to stay with this to the end, until she’s sure she has done everything she can to put things right. I’ll tell you all that I found out about Morel, but tying any of it to what we’ve heard from Senta just now is another matter. I can’t see the connection.”
He leaned back, head against the panelled wall, and closed his eyes. “All right, here goes. Let me try to summarize. Morel’s childhood and early career are no problem. Well-documented, and a pattern that I’ve seen a hundred times. I could show you many similar ones in our files. Strong father, pushing the child along hard from the time that he was one year old. Mother in the background, with no say in how Morel was raised. A prodigy in school, then on to the university when he was thirteen. Alienation there, from everything except his work — no wonder, a thirteen-year-old can’t make social contact with people five or six years older. So. No friends — not even your father, Rob. They were just fellow-students. As you might expect, Morel had a brilliant academic record. His first paper on longevity and rejuvenation was published before he was twenty — and it was a classic.”
Howard Anson opened his eyes again and looked at Rob. “Now for the part that’s different. With Morel’s development to this point, I would have bet money that I could have predicted the rest of it. He ought to have gone on to a career in university research, rising steadily through the ranks until he was a respected, senior authority. He would have always been a little withdrawn and reclusive, but that’s not unusual in a scientist. His friends would be other specialists in the same field of research, scattered all over the System.”
“But it’s obvious that it didn’t go like that.”
“Obviously. It might have, but another factor came along and broke the pattern. Morel met Darius Regulo.”
Anson paused as the door to his left opened and Senta entered. She was chalk-pale, even to her full lips, but her movements were steady and her mouth was firm. On impulse, Rob went over to her and took her hands in his. They were warm again, but not with the frenetic heat and tremor of the taliza high. She smiled at him, the first genuine smile that he had seen from her. It was Corrie’s smile. He realized how much the two women resembled each other, and wondered why he had not seen it at once.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked. “You shouldn’t have let us do that to you, just so I could take a look for a part of my own past.”
She shook her head, still smiling. “It’s my past, too, you know. I’m as curious as you are. Ever since I came out of it I’ve been sitting in there wondering what you found out. I’m hoping it was a lot, but I don’t remember a thing.” She licked her lips. “If we need more information, I’ll be willing to try again.”
“Not now.” Anson stepped towards her. “It would be too much for you, and I don’t think we should do anything more until we’ve looked into what we have now. You told us things that we had never heard before. Rob and I need to see where they lead, and that will take a while. But it doesn’t look pleasant.”
He gave Senta a summary of what they had heard from her while she was under the influence of the drug, quoting the words she had spoken verbatim — Rob envied him that remarkable memory. When he had finished Anson looked at Senta inquiringly.
She shook her head.
“I don’t have a conscious memory of any of it. So far as I’m concerned, it’s something I’m hearing for the first time. Thank God for small mercies. I wouldn’t want to live with that all the time. Something horrible happened back then, and it sounds as though Joseph Morel is a murderer.”
“You have no idea what he might have been trying to hide?” Rob asked. “I don’t like the man, but even he wouldn’t murder for no reason.”
“That’s logical, but I couldn’t begin to guess what he might be covering up.” Senta chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip, now returned to its natural full red. Her face was still pale, but a touch of color was creeping back into it. “Maybe he was trying to hide another murder. What are the two of you planning to do next?”
“I’ll try and follow up on this,” said Anson. “Rob is going to be off with the beanstalk, he can’t do much else for a while. It shouldn’t be rushed if we’re to do a thorough job. I suppose you could say it can wait a little longer, seeing how long it has waited already. But I don’t see it that way. I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but this thing may still be dangerous. If someone was willing to kill twenty-seven years ago to keep a secret, it’s more than likely they’d kill for the same reason now.”
“If it’s Morel, there’s no way he could hurt us here, when he’s on Atlantis.” Senta turned to Rob. “If you go back there, you must take care. He can’t know what we’ve found out, but he obviously knows that you are the son of Gregor Merlin.”
“I’ll take care, don’t worry about that. But don’t assume that you’re safe down here. There are ways that he could cause trouble even when he’s not present. People can be hired to do anything. Don’t take chances, and keep your eyes open.”
“I’ll be on the lookout, too,” Anson said. “I don’t know Morel, but I’ve been building up the picture of him and it’s not a good one. He’s very intelligent, and he has a lot of experience.”
“How old is he, anyway?” Rob recalled Morel’s expression of mingled innocence and experience.
“Sixty. He had one rejuvenation, but even so he looks younger than he ought. I think he must have been following his own techniques for life-prolongation. I saw his picture and placed him at thirty to thirty-five, but I’m quite sure of his age. I’ve seen copies of the birth record. He was twenty-three when Regulo came to see him for the first time. That was soon after he had refused a full professorship at Canberra. I don’t know what Regulo offered him, but it was enough. He went off to work in Regulo’s labs and he has been there ever since, continuously for the past thirty-seven years.”