Part 35 (1/2)
”No,” she answered weakly. Of course there were innumerable code names that she had never heard.
She was trying to imagine what kind of weapons system might have her eleven-year-old plugged into it.
Frank's child too, of course, and she could well imagine a boy of unusual ability. The whole idea still seemed insane to her, which did not mean that desperate men and women, Frank Marcus one of their number, were not going to come up with something like it for their next effort in the war. Elly's imagination presented her a picture of her child, amputated somehow to fit a set of Frank-like boxes, and fired off into the void. . . .
”From what we know of Lancelot it is a horror,” Stal was saying. ”And we intend to save Michel from it.
Michel, that is what his adoptive parents named him. Here, Elly, I have a picture.”
Metal-steady in Stal's wiry fingers, there appeared a photograph that had been taken somewhere out of doors. On a second-story porch on the front of a log building, a young boy stood gazing upward toward the camera. His hands, large and square-looking like a workman's, were on the railing and he squinted into a wind that pulled at his long, fair hair. Above his head the roof was steep and Elly, thinkingAlpine, knew a chill of beginning conviction.
The clarity of the boy's face had been somehow enhanced, at the expense of peripheral details. He was good-looking, Elly thought, in a rather sharp-featured way, and in his forehead and in his eyes she involuntarily discovered something of herself. What there might be of Frank Marcus was not so easy to discover.
Both men were obviously waiting for her reaction. ”Michel what?” she finally asked them.
”Geulincx,” said Stal. ”An eminent Alpine family you may have heard of. Folk art. Woodcarving.”
”I haven't been paying much attention to art of any kind.” At last she had produced a sentiment for which Mabuchi's face could register approval. ”I still don't understand-except that you must think this kid is the Savior. And you think I am his mother. If so, is this the way you honor me?”
The men exchanged glances, after which Mabuchi went out, evidently controlling struggling emotions with a great effort.
”I expect you will be of great help to us,” Stal explained then. ”When we have Michel on board here, and when both you and he have truly grasped the situation. What happens when we liberate him from the badlife may very well be traumatic. Therefore-Savior or not-a mother's care may be important.”
”You expect to simply land this s.h.i.+p at the proving grounds somewhere and load him on board, a.s.suming he's really there? Without-”
”Without resistance from the badlife? No, lady, I do not expect that. But provisions have been made.”
His stiff lips moved a trifle, almost smiling.
”Are you the captain of this s.h.i.+p, Stal?”
”I? No.”
”I demand to see the captain, then.”
”Your chance will come.”
”Now.”
”I have no orders to arrange such a meeting. But perhaps in this case I should use initiative.” After staring at Elly a thoughtful moment longer, Stal suddenly bent and reached under her berth. His hand emerged holding a heavy metal case, and she was reminded at once of the thing she remembered seeing him carry in the Temple. There, to the degree that she had thought of it at all, she must have a.s.sumed that it was some kind of holography equipment, a common piece of tourist baggage.
Stal swung the empty berth opposite down from the wall. Then, with the care of one handling a valued object, he hoisted the case up into the berth, securing it there deftly with the common acceleration restraints. Then there was a click, as Stal opened a small door on the front of the case-or perhaps the door had opened automatically, Elly was not sure. Something very thin and snakily metallic drew itself out of the case, almost like a line sketched in the air. It reached across the s.p.a.ce between berths for one of Elly's almost immobilized fingers, and stung her briefly.
”What-?”
The sinuous limb withdrew. Then, just above the place where the arm had disappeared, a new opening in the case revealed what looked like the subtle vibration of a broad-spectrum liquid lens. Elly had the uncomfortable impression that her whole form was being scanned intently.
”Just a little blood test, I should imagine,” Stal said, in a voice that was possibly intended to be soothing.
”The Co-ordinator will wish to make absolutely sure that you are who we think you are. And perhaps to confirm some details of Michel's genetic inheritance.”
”You-imagine?” Elly had never before seen a robot medic that looked very much like- From the small case issued words. They came in a ridiculously squeaky voice, which under other circ.u.mstances might possibly have offered her at least momentary amus.e.m.e.nt. The voice said sharply: ”You will tell this life-unit nothing more without further orders.”
Stal bowed at once. Stammering, he made humble acknowledgement of the Co-ordinator's command.
But Elly could no longer see or hear him.
EIGHT.
Some ten standard years ago, operations headquarters for the new proving grounds had been established on the surface of the Uranian satellite Miranda. Under one dome the structure offered room for a hundred humans to work and live; some of the quarters could be called luxurious, and all were at least reasonably comfortable. At the order of the President of Earth provision had also been made for housing members of any of the very few known non-Earthly intelligent races. So far none of these had ever appeared as guests.
”Told 'em when they built it that we'd never see a Carmpan here.” This from Tupelov, who today was conducting a grand tour of the facility for one lone and probably lonely guest. Walking normally in the augmented gravity, he led Carmen Geulincx from the lobby of the living quarters out into the central operations room. Here one tall wall was made up almost entirely of viewing ports, all of them at the moment cleared.
”Oh!” said Carmen. Then she added, quite unnecessarily, ”That's Ura.n.u.s itself.”
The solar system of her homeworld contained no sight at all like this. Her hand on Tupelov's arm, they walked right up to the ports. The blue-green gas giant, a great scimitar of its surface in direct sunlight at the moment, seemed to be almost leaning right against the outer surface of the heavy gla.s.s. What could be seen of Miranda's own slaggy skin, just underneath and outside the port, was bathed by reflection from the planet, producing an eerie underwater glow.
Carmen hung back for a moment, and the Secretary tugged his arm forward, so that she came with him rather than let go. Standing just inside a port, he pointed out to her the moons Oberon and Ariel, each turning toward the distant Sun a bright miniature of Ura.n.u.s' own crescent. The satellites were moving perceptibly, in the plane of the monster's spinbulging equator, and the same aquamarine light that lay on the Mirandan landscape tinged also the dull, scarred flanks that the two other visible moons turned toward their primary.
”t.i.tania and Umbriel are evidently hiding behind Daddy at the moment,” said Tupelov.
”And the rings . . .” breathed Carmen. ”Ahh, beautiful.”
”Sometimes you can't see them at all, even from here.” But sometimes, as now, the great circlets, like ghosts of the rings of Saturn, worked like giant diffraction gratings, shredding cold sunlight into a nebulous multicolored spectrum, and sending a sample of it in through the ports. Tupelov tried a new metaphor: ”A rainbow ballet skirt for a fat, dancing planet.”
Carmen, perhaps through kindness, made no comment on that effort. ”Where's Earth?” she asked at last.
He had to get right up against the gla.s.s and squint into the incoming Sunlight. ”There. The bluish star.”
Carmen moved up close beside him and it felt natural to rest a pointing forearm on her shoulder; she was as tall as he.
”It looks so near Sol,” she said tritely. Even at this alt.i.tude in the System there was no doubt which star lay at its center.
”It is. Very near. Out here we're nineteen times as far away. That's Mars, see, looking red, right beside the Earth.”
”Yes. And I think I can recognize Venus now. Inward, looking brighter.”
”Right you are.”
”And beyond. That's Orion, isn't it?-you pointed it out to me from Moonbase. It doesn't look any different at all.”
To Tupelov it looked bigger. They had left a village and climbed a little hill, and now looking back past the village they saw a distant mountain practically unchanged. In angular measurement a little shrunken, but in subjective vision magnified, because of the vast shrinkage of the houses and the streets that they had left behind.
For a human mind connected to Lancelot's well-nigh supernatural vision-what would the effect be like?