Proteus Unbound (26 page)

"That's not true." Bey half agreed with Mary, but he felt the perverse need to defend Sylvia. "We have lots in common. She's educated. She saved my life—twice. We get on well together, and she's a—a nice, kind woman," he ended lamely.

" 'Be she meeker, kinder than, Turtle-dove or pelican, If she be not so to me, What care I how kind she be?' They used to be
your
lines, Bey. Have you changed that much?"

"I came here to find her, Mary."

"I know. And I came here to stop you searching anymore. I know where she is, and she's safe enough. But you don't want to go looking for her. It might put you in danger."

"From whom?"

Mary shook her head. Bey knew exactly what she meant. She would not lie, but she would refuse to speak. They had slipped into the old relationship, just as though Mary had left Earth—and Wolf—no more than an hour before.

"I won't stop looking," he went on. "There's more at stake here than me or Sylvia. The whole system is coming unglued. That has to be stopped."

She turned her head and looked up into his face. "The same old Bey. Saving the world. You ought to know better. You worked half your life for that stupid Office of Form Control, and what reward did you get at the end? They threw you out, with never even a thank you."

"They had a good reason."

"You haven't changed at all, have you? Still honor and glory and once-more-unto-the-breach, dear friends." She rubbed her hand across his chest. "Bey, if only you could stop living in the past and the future, and live in the present for a little bit, you'd have so much more fun."

If anyone in the universe lived in the present, it was Mary. The signal was clear and tempting. Bey heard all his internal voices shouting at once to justify the action: 'A few hours delay can't make any difference' . . . 'Mary will become your ally, and she can take you straight to Sylvia' . . . 'Mary scorned now would be your bitterest enemy'. . . . 'You've been away from each other far too long'. . . . 'All the time you thought she had forgotten you, she was
protecting
you' . . . 'Live in the present . . .'

Bey turned and leaned down toward Mary's waiting face. Her eyes had closed.

'But where has Mary been all this time? And what has she been doing?' Amid all the clamor of emotions, that single questioning whisper in Bey's mind was drowned out completely. It did not stand a chance.

* * *

A few hours had stretched into a day, and then into two and three. It was a long time before Bey saw a possible approach to the problem.

Mary was immune to all forms of logic. He had known that for years. It was maddening, but it was also part of her charm, and it meant that she would be unmoved by any rational reason for taking Bey back with her to the Kernel Ring and, ultimately, to Black Ransome. Kernel demons and form-change anomalies and Systemwide hallucinations meant nothing to her. Another motive was needed, something that went deeper than logic; Bey had lain awake for hours trying to think of one and had returned again and again to a single question. Why had Mary come to meet him, secretly? She was apparently not trying to capture him, and she had made it clear that she did not intend him to stay with her permanently.

He thought he had the answer. Mary had come for personal reassurance. She knew he had traveled a vast distance in pursuit of Sylvia Fernald. Mary hated to give up any man. The idea that she had been superseded by Sylvia, so that she could no longer move Bey at her whim, was intolerable. She wanted to show that she still owned him and could still control him.

Bey looked at the sleeping form stretched out next to him. So far the demonstration must have been to her satisfaction. Now he had to make use of the same fact.

The most difficult thing was to be casual and convincing enough. Mary did not lie, but she had a sixth sense that told her when others were doing it to her. The best way was to make her feel that any decision was her idea.

Bey dropped the first word while Mary was showing him around the elaborate new gardens that the machines had built under her direction in a single day. It was in answer to Mary's complaint that he was too bony to lie next to in comfort, and it took the form of a vague comment on his part that the standards of beauty for women were very different in the Inner and Outer Systems.

"For the Cloudlanders, curves are out," he added. "And yet that doesn't mean that a Cloudlander will be unattractive to somebody from the Inner System—or that a Sunhugger disgusts somebody from the Cloud."

Mary had not reacted to the comment, but Bey knew she had registered it. He waited. It was hard to keep his own mental processes under control. Emotion and real affection for Mary were competing with his long-term logical plan, and Bey knew from experience that logic could lose.

Later in the day Mary was studying a recording of one of her own old performances, as Polly Peachum in
The Beggar's Opera.
She remarked how good she had looked as a redhead.

Bey agreed enthusiastically. "My favorite hair color. As a matter of fact, naturally red hair—" He paused and went silent. Mary also said nothing. Sylvia had red hair.

They watched the performance together. When Macheath was looking at Polly and Lucy Lockit and singing, "How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away," Bey knew that Mary was watching him from the corner of her eye.

She was preoccupied for the rest of the day. Late in the evening she suddenly asked him if he and Sylvia Fernald had been lovers.

"Of course not!" Bey sat up. "You've seen her, you know how tall and gawky and strange she is. And she has a longtime partner of her own, back in the Cloud, so she wouldn't look at anyone else. And did you know when I arrived at the Opik Harvester, she said that I looked like a hairy little monkey? To her, I'm totally hideous . . ."

Bey went on with his protests just a little too long. He did not need to point out to Mary that his own appearance had changed considerably since the arrival at the harvester, to a form much more pleasing to Sylvia Fernald's tastes. On matters like this, Mary's instincts reached a conclusion ten times as fast as any logic.

The next morning Mary was very quiet. At midday she casually announced that she would be returning to the Kernel Ring. If Bey wanted to take the risk, he could accompany her. Did he want to go? If he did, he ought to get ready.

Bey, equally casual, accepted. However, he did not feel satisfied with the way the conversation had gone. He had achieved his objective, but his little inside voice would not keep quiet. Too easy, it said, much too easy. When a difficult goal is achieved with no effort, it's time to be suspicious. You want to get to the Kernel Ring? Sure—and maybe someone else wants you there, too.

CHAPTER 25

"In Ransome's Hole you'll lose your soul
(We won't come to find you).
With Ransome's breath you'll meet your death
(The Dancing Man's behind you).
Ransome takes one,
Ransome breaks one,
Out—goes—you."
—crèche song of the Marsden Harvester

Bey had been wrong. He might be the only person who would ever know it, but still he hated the idea.

Back on the Sagdeyev space farm he and Aybee Smith had agreed to differ. Aybee felt that a life without surprises was no fun. Bey agreed, but he pointed out that ninety-nine of any hundred conceivable surprises were unpleasant ones. That was why he tried to analyze
all
outcomes of a situation rather than just the one he liked best. Aybee agreed—in principle—but he pointed out in turn that complete prediction was impossible in anything but abstract theory; the cussedness of the real world promised that the actual outcome would be unanticipated. Bey agreed, but he suggested that
any
chance of successful prediction was better than no chance. Aybee nodded. Honor was satisfied, and they moved on to other subjects.

Bey truly believed what he had told Aybee. When he had set out to follow Sylvia Fernald into the depths of the Halo, he had foreseen and analyzed four scenarios. One, the search might reach a dead end, and he would return to the harvester. Two, he might find Sylvia, but she would have discovered nothing useful and would already be at her own point of frustration, so they would
both
go back. Three, Bey might be captured and detained before he found Sylvia or reached Ransome's Hole. Fourth, he might be captured after he reached the Kernel Ring.

The idea that he would find
Mary
rather than Sylvia at that first location was so preposterous that it had not been in his thoughts at all.

So Aybee had been right. Bey allowed himself the luxury of a moment's irritation, then he inspected the ship that Mary had arrived in.

His reaction to it was not so strong as Aybee's. He had done little space travel, and although he knew that the ship was radically different in appearance from the ones he was used to, he did not realize how much new science had to be in it. He also had many other things on his mind. With Mary at her sunniest, most affectionate, and most demanding, he had little time to worry about spacecraft. She was in a holiday mood. If she thought for a moment that she was taking Bey toward danger, it did not show in her manner.

She complained only at the end, when the ship neared its destination in the central annulus of the Kernel Ring. "We're
crawling.
Why do we always have to go so
slow
when we're nearly there?"

"Safety requirement," replied the hollow voice of the ship's main computer. "Proceed with caution. Danger zone."

The computer was treating the region with great respect. They were picking their way through the maze of debris, unshielded kernels, and high-density fragments that littered the central part of the Kernel Ring. Those shards were the relics of a catastrophe four billion years earlier, when a toroidal region of space-time had suffered gravitational collapse and spewed high-mass elements toward the Sun. Life on Earth owed its existence to the event, but that was of no interest to the computer. Like Mary, it too lived in the present. Currently this location housed the freaks of the Solar System: collapsed objects invisible to deep radar and massive enough to destroy a ship, side by side with corotating kernel pairs whose signals played havoc with navigation systems.

Bey had never been here before, but he knew the place's reputation. The Kernel Ring had been left undeveloped for a good reason. A thousand ships had been lost in the early days, before transit vessels to the Outer System learned to fly high above the ecliptic.

Danger,
the small voice in his ear said.
Danger.
Ninety-nine of any hundred conceivable surprises are unpleasant ones. But the shiver in Bey's spine was not fear. It was excitement. Ransome's Hole was visible; or, rather, it was invisible, a dark occulting disk against the continuous starfield. And it was
big,
big enough to contain anything: armies, weapons, factories, cities, monsters and treasures and mysteries unguessed at. Bey stared at nothing and was stirred by emotions he had not felt for years. He was in the past again, pursuing illegal serpent forms into the black depths of Old City. He was eager to begin, wondering if and how he would survive. The same ineffable force was quickening his pulse, drawing him on and tugging him down into danger.

While he was watching, brief flashes of blue-white fire sparked on the black disk. He recognized them. Short-range drive units. Five small vessels were heading out toward them.

Bey glanced at Mary. She frowned and shook her head. "Not my doing." But she did not seem too surprised.

Within a couple of minutes the five had been joined by others. Surrounded by an escort of a dozen pinnaces, the ship drifted to a docking and attached to a lock. The hatch swung wide, and Bey followed Mary out.

A dozen armed soldiers were waiting, their weapons raised and ready. Two paces to their rear stood a short, black-clad man with folded arms. His face was thin, with prominent bones, a sharp nose, and a trace of a self-confident smile. Bey stared at those piercing eyes, and after a few seconds the unmoving features before him seemed to shift and flow, reassembling themselves like an optical illusion to a different and familiar pattern.

The Dancing Man—the
Negentropic
Man, without the clownlike scarlet suit and black filed teeth but unmistakably the same in face, body, and movement. Bey shivered. The face and burning eyes brought frightening memories from the edge of death and madness.

"Full house," the Negentropic Man said. He stepped forward, still flanked by his guards, and nodded approvingly at Wolf. "I am Ransome. I have been curious to meet you for a long time, Mr. Wolf. When a man or woman refuses to commit suicide or to become insane, no matter what the external pressure, that person is of interest to me. And here you are, in my home." He turned, and his wave took in the whole habitat. "You see how obliging the universe can be. If I had originally set out to lure you here, I might well have failed. But by allowing you to sail freely with the winds of space, you arrive even before I am ready for you."

Ransome placed his arm possessively around Mary's waist. She did not resist, but she gave Bey a strange, uncertain look.

"So you have me. What happens now?" said Bey. He had seen eyes like that three times before in a human head, but none of their owners was living.

"For the moment, nothing." Ransome was disconcertingly at ease. "I have unfinished business with two of your friends, and then a couple of other things to take care of. You will have to bear with your own company for a little while. Later you and I must talk. I feel sure that we are going to be working together." Ransome gave Bey a dismissive, self-confident little nod and turned to go. Mary followed without a word.

"Mary!" Bey called after her as the guards moved to separate him from them. He received a brief glance in return from lowered brows, then he was being hustled away. The guards escorted him deep into the habitat's interior and finally stopped at an oval door. They ushered him through without comment and left at once, but as they went a bulky machine took up guard position at the entrance.