Proteus Unbound (32 page)

"I know. Paul thinks Ransome makes the Sun shine. But next time he tries anything we'll be ready. Ransome's finished, but he doesn't know it yet. I almost feel sorry for him. Mary told me—"

"Where is she? I wanted to thank the two of you for saving me."

Sylvia looked at him and put her hand gently on his shoulder. "She didn't leave a message, Bey? She said she would."

"I didn't check."

"I'm sorry. Mary left Ransome's Hole. Yesterday, and secretly. I knew she was going to do it, and I suppose I should have tried to stop her. But I didn't. She's going to look for Ransome, wherever he is."

The numb feeling was spreading from his hands through his whole body. Mary had gone. Left him again. He accepted the fact instantly. It was something he had sensed when he had entered the chamber and did not find her.

"That's terrible." He took a deep breath. "I thought she really loved me."

"She does; she always will. She told me that, and she had no reason to lie."

"But she prefers Ransome."

"She didn't say that. But she said that Ransome needs her more than you do."

"How can she possibly think that?"

"The last time I talked to Mary, she told me to ask you something."

"She seems to have told you an awful lot."

"She did. But here's her question. 'Before Bey tells you his heart is broken,' she said, 'ask him this: Of all the things that have happened to him since he left Earth, which has been the most exciting and satisfying? And ask him to
think
before he answers.' "

"The most exciting—"

"You're not doing what Mary asked. Think first."

"I
am
thinking."

And he was.
The most exciting.
Was it looking out of the ship for his first sight of a harvester . . . or the strange, perverse pleasure of the first meal with Sylvia . . . the satisfaction when he learned that the Dancing Man was not a dream of his own unstable mind . . . the space farm rescue . . . the giddy time with Andromeda Diconis, sampling the pleasure centers of a hedonistic habitat . . . the thrill of Mary's voice where he had never expected it? Making love to her? Or . . . a memory flooded in, total and satiating. Bright yellow tracers ran again in his mind.

"It was when—" He paused, then the words were wrung out of him reluctantly, one at a time. "It was when I was looking for the reason for the wrong form-changes. And when I realized that the source of the problems must be inside the kernel shields. But I could never describe that feeling to anyone. And there's no way that Mary could have known it."

"Of course not. She doesn't think that way. She didn't know about the form-changes, and she didn't know about the Rinis. But she sensed what
sort
of answer you had to give, if you were truthful. Because she understands you very well. Don't you see it, Bey?" Sylvia put her arms around him. "Mary needs to be needed. When
you
needed her, she saved you—even when you were still back on Earth and didn't
know
you needed her. Ransome wanted to cause chaos and stir up trouble between the Inner and Outer Systems. He knew that form-change equipment would be more sensitive than anything else to the Rini effects on information flow, so trouble would show up there first. Anyone who might understand what was happening had to be dead, insane, or converted, and it seemed easier to drive you crazy than to kill or convert you. But Mary found out what he was doing. She scrambled their signals so that the images you received were distorted and less effective."

"They were almost too much."

"But they weren't. You stayed sane. She would have taken any risk for you. And Ransome needs her now, and she'll take risks for him. You
want
Mary—but Ransome
needs
her."

"I almost died for Mary, back on Earth."

"Did you? Leo told me that you had the Dream Machine on a medium setting—low enough to break out of it when you decided you wanted to."

Bey stared mindlessly into the great water globe. A small, red-throated fish had come drifting lazily toward them and was poised at the curved transparent wall. It stared goggle-eyed at the two humans, looking at the universe beyond the barrier. That had been Bey before he came out there. Tucked away in his own little fishbowl, safe and warm below a blanket of atmosphere.

Earth.
Suddenly he had a great longing to be back there, to see blue sky and drifting clouds.

"I'm going back, Sylvia. My job here is finished. The Rinis are interesting, and they're going to change our whole universe, but they will be Aybee's lifework, not mine."

"I know." Sylvia was still holding Bey. "Aybee's going to miss you. He'd never say it, but you're his idol, you know."

"Hard luck for Aybee."

"He could do a lot worse. Mary told me one other thing. She said that when you met her out in the Halo you talked a lot about me. She didn't speculate why, but I think you were trying to make her bring you here."

"I was. It was the only way I could think of to do it. I wanted to make her jealous, so she would want to bring me along and see I preferred her to you. I don't mean that I
do
prefer her to you, but . . ."

Sylvia was shaking her head. "Bey, when I hear you say things like that, I wonder if you know anything about women at all. If Mary had been the least jealous, or thought for a moment that you were interested in me, the last thing she'd do is encourage a meeting."

"But that's exactly what she did."

"Do you need it written out for you? You didn't talk Mary into bringing you with her to Ransome's Hole—she was intending to do that all along!"

"But you said there was no way she would—"

"Not so you could see if you liked Mary better than me." Sylvia's voice was warm. "You hairy, self-centered little ape. Mary did it for
her
purposes, not yours. She wanted to see if she liked you better than Ransome. But after she heard you talk about me, she said she felt less guilty about leaving to follow him."

Bey sat for a few seconds in silence, staring into the blue-green depths of the water. He was feeling tired but not the slightest bit heartbroken. Even the revelation of Mary's motives did not upset him.

"I'm a total idiot, you know," he said at last.

"We're all idiots."

"I'm the worst. I thought I was being so clever with Mary. I'm going back, Sylvia. Back to Earth, back to something I'm good at. To the Office of Form Control again, if they'll have me. But I'm really going to miss you and Aybee and Leo. I'm even going to miss Cinnabar and old Turpin, but I'll miss you most of all. Would you come and visit me—see the Inner System for yourself?"

"Among all those little hairy Sunhuggers?" He knew she was laughing at him. "What do you think I am?"

"I think you're a big, heartless skeleton that pretends to be a woman. Earth's not as bad as you think. I think you'd like it. Will you do it? Come and visit?"

"I'm not sure." She ran her finger along the hair on his wrist and refused to look at him. "No promises. But we'll see."

Bey nodded. It was all the answer he could expect, but it was enough.

He looked again into the water globe. The little red-throated fish was up against the wall, and it was still staring out at him. It had no eyelids, but Bey felt sure that it was trying to wink.

THE END