SHAVED, SHOWERED, DRESSED, and feeling quite extraordinarily pleased with himself, Cedric set off down to the cafeteria in search of a hearty breakfast, and for the first time managed the spiralator without banging his head. He felt faintly fuzzy after three sleep-shy nights—excitement on Tuesday, terror on Wednesday, and now miracles. What miracles! Were it not for his extremely smug sense of well-being, he might have concluded that she had been only a dream.
Crazy! When he had bought all his new clothes the day before, he had forgotten underwear. At night, therefore, he had rinsed out his briefs and hung them up to dry. For the first time in his life he had gone to bed in the raw. Then the most beautiful girl in the world had come and climbed in beside him and let him make love to her. He must remember to buy some shorts, but he would certainly sleep that way from now on. It paid off!
He wished he could share that joke with—but he had decided not to think about Meadowdale.
And good guys did not tell tales, anyway.
There were a dozen or so people eating, but no one he recognized. They would all know him, after yesterday. He was not inconspicuous. Some of them, he noticed, were reading as they ate. He had not brought the magazine he had bought to practice on, and he was not going to try reading in public, anyway.
So he thought about Alya instead. He had been careful not to ask her why she had come there all the way from Banzarak, but he was beginning to guess. Last night he had done some research on the traditional ritual with the cobras. System had coughed out clips of it, because it had survived into modern times as a tourist attraction. Of course, the whole thing was a fake, the reports said, and always had been—the snake was defanged and the prince or princess was warned in advance which pot to choose, anyway.
Cedric did not think Alya would have cheated like that. Some people were born with a good musical ear, some were born to grow tall, and Alya's family all had a sort of second sight, handed down from the distant past. Everyone knew that the East held mysteries that science did not understand yet! She must have been hired by the Institute as a consultant seer. The Institute was supposed to do scientific research, and would never admit that it was using mystics. That explained why System was treating Alya as a secret.
And the previous night the hope had been to find a Class One. Devlin himself had been there with her—in the middle of the night—but the party had dispersed as soon as Rhine had turned out to be a mirror world. Everything else about it had been fine, apparently.
Obviously they had been hoping for a Class One. After thirty years of unsuccessful hunting for Class One worlds with science, his grandmother was trying with mystics, obviously. He had put that idea to System, but all he had discovered was that there must be a Grade Zero confidentiality, higher even than his own Grade One. But if he could get so close to so stunning a secret so quickly, then the media would do the same, sooner or later, and the more information they were given, then the more sooner and the less later. His grandmother would not tolerate that—she dared not. Small wonder that she did not get along with BEST! Conventional scientists would denounce her as a charlatan. That was what Alya had been hinting at on the lev, when she had warned him not to make any announcements until Gran had approved them.
Breakfast was good and there was lots of it. He would have liked a third helping, but he had an appointment with Dr. Fish to talk about the ten o'clock commeeting. In the cruel light of morning he thought he had been absurdly snotty to issue that invitation; but Gran had given him a job to do, and he must try his best.
He found a golfie and told it to go to Philby Dome, where the offices were, and he arrived right on nine.
Dr. Fish's room was small and plain and starkly tidy. Along one wall stood a row of metal cabinets, and the two drawers that were open were full of papers. Cedric wondered what sort of records could be too secret to store in System.
He liked Dr. Fish, who was short and almost plump and much less intimidating than, say, Devlin Grant or Hastings Willoughby. His hair gleamed like black plastic, heat-molded to his head, but there was no gray in it. Cedric had seen people wearing glasses in historical holodramas often enough, but never in real life. Funny things, eyeglasses—they made Dr. Fish's eyes seem as though they never blinked. The deputy for Security reached across his desk to shake hands, and of course that reminded Cedric of how he had made a fool of himself in Gran's office.
Dr. Fish had soft white hands, with extremely short fingers, and he waved his visitor to a plain, hard chair.
"Now, Deputy," he said with a smile that did not crease his pudgy face at all. "What can I do for you?" His voice was an elusive murmur; it required a listener's full attention, and it made everything sound like a secret.
Cedric laid his right ankle on his left knee. "Dr. Fish, would you please call me Cedric? I'm not very comfortable being a deputy." He paused and then decided to take a chance. "And, sir . . . why did Gran do that to me? They thought she'd gone crazy!"
"They've been thinking that for thirty years."
Silence. Apparently that was an answer.
"Oh. Well, what I need is some advice."
He outlined Gran's instructions, and what he thought the media would want, and his own idea for a one-way download. Dr. Fish listened to the whole thing without moving at all, his hands lying limply on the desk, his eyes so still that they might have been painted on the backs of his glasses. So attentive an audience was very flattering, and Cedric could feel himself relaxing. At the end he switched—left ankle on right knee—and waited for reaction.
"That would work, Cedric. Will you announce it today?"
The answer should have been yes, and Cedric was relieved that Dr. Fish had approved of his idea, but he remembered Alya's advice. Alya did not trust Gran, and Alya knew a lot more about the world than he did, even a lot more about the Institute.
So he said, "No. I think I should listen to what the media want, and then I'll call Gran before I make an announcement. Maybe she should make it, not me."
Dr. Fish pursed fat lips. "She's on her way—she'll be here by noon. But a quick resolution of the problem would enhance the viability . . . make you look good. A definitive statement of your proposed methodology would be welcomed by the press. It would do a lot to ameliorate—take the heat off the director."
"I'll see, sir. When I see what they ask for." But it was a tempting thought, to be able to help Gran so soon.
"I'm sure you've already guessed their requirements and have elicited—found the answer." Dr. Fish smiled again.
"One other thing, sir. I need some expert help! Surely there must be consultants that I could hire to advise me?"
Distaste showed on the clay-white mask. Dr. Fish curled his lip. "They might be members of BEST."
"Huh?"
The curvature increased. "Members of the Brotherhood of Engineers, Scientists, and Technicians are not allowed into Cainsville under any circumstances."
Oh! Cedric put both feet on the floor. "Well . . . thank you for your time, sir."
"There is one other matter we should discuss."
"Yes, sir?"
Fish's tiny voice crept over the desk like lurking spiders. "Dr. Eccles Pandora, of WSHB."
Cedric winced and said nothing.
"She is planning a special tonight. Normal programming has been canceled to make way for it."
Gran had foretold that it would be put off until tonight. "What sort of special, sir?"
Dr. Fish smiled more broadly than ever, and yet somehow his face held no amusement at all. "That is not quite certain, but as deputy director for Media Relations, you should be standing by to make a quick rebuttal."
Gelded with a rusty saw . . . Cedric gulped and took a couple of very deep breaths. Why did it have to be Eccles Pandora? "How can I, sir? I'm new on the job, and I don't know the truth. It would be the truth, wouldn't it? I'm not a very good liar."
"Certainly the truth. Come and see me this afternoon—I should have amassed more data by then. We can draft something up together, or perhaps even prerecord it." Dr. Fish blinked for the first time. "We might enlist some help—from Frazer Franklin, for instance."
Cedric felt confused. "He's WSHB, too! Why should Dr. Frazer help us, sir?"
"Because I can blackmail him."
Dr. Fish's face was as deadpan as ever, but Cedric knew when he was having his leg pulled. He laughed appreciatively and unfolded himself from the chair. The deputy for Security rose also. Perhaps it was because Cedric was then so very much taller than the dumpy Dr. Fish, or just because he trusted the man's gentle benevolence, that he found the courage to ask, "Is Pandora's show likely to be about Class One worlds, sir?"
The glasses gleamed up at him inscrutably. "No," Dr. Fish whispered. "No, I don't think it's about Class One worlds, Cedric. Just between ourselves, I think it's about murder."
The commeeting was not as terrible as Cedric had feared. Only about a dozen companies had bothered to participate, so System was able to arrange full-size images around one big table. Most of the representatives were very junior, chosen to show how little faith their employers had in Cedric's abilities or prospects. At least half looked no older than himself, and a couple were strikingly female into the bargain—not in the same league as Alya, of course, merely stunning. Some looked almost as scared as he felt.
But he soon realized that this was much like being back in charge of the dining hall at Meadowdale, and then he felt better. He bade them all welcome, asked their names, and told them to do the talking. He was going to listen and their words would be recorded, he said. They must assume he knew absolutely nothing, and if they wanted to call him nasty names, then that was fine by him—he was trying to broaden his vocabulary anyway. Soon they were all relaxed enough to start kidding around, and after that things went okay.
The main complaint, one he heard six or seven times, was that the Institute held back information and then edited it. The media wanted to elect their own heroes—they were tired of having Devlin Grant and a few others thrust down their throats.
And Cedric would never have guessed how much Gran was hated. The trick she had pulled the day before had been merely the last and greatest of many provocations she had used to bait the media over the years. Being a genius herself, she had no patience with stupidity in others, but there had to be more to it than that. He was certain that she had been deliberately keeping the media at bay, and if that were so, then he was wasting his time. Any proposal he came up with would go squasho.
Around eleven the meeting ended, and he found himself alone at the end of the table again, the ghosts departed. They had not seemed like ghosts, and he would have enjoyed trying to make friends with some of them, especially that slinky auburn fox from NABC.
Now what? Fish had said Gran would be arriving before noon. Likely she would have bigger balls to juggle than Cedric, but he decided he would try to stay out of her way. In the flesh she was lots more scary than she had been in the Meadowdale com. Fish himself had designs on Cedric for later, and he would rather not think about those at all.
For a moment he considered calling Meadowdale, but the thought of facing Ben or Madge was nauseating. They must have known. All the adults must have known—teachers and nurses and instructors, even the farmhands. How could they live with themselves? How did they justify their own lives when they looked in a mirror? If I don't do it, someone else will? That would cover any crime at all.
Now Cedric understood why nobody called back after leaving Meadowdale. Either they had been butchered and used for autografts, or they had discovered the truth about that and could never bear to talk to the ghouls again. And obviously they would never be allowed to talk to the kids. He shivered and tried to put it out of his mind.
Which left Alya.
"System, where is Princess Alya?"
"No such person on file," the nasal voice said sniffily.
Gran had said Cedric was to play host for Alya, so she was business. "Override."
"She is in the command room for David Thompson Dome."
"Am I allowed to go there?"
"Grade One rating allows physical access to all parts of the complex except—one: the personal offices of staff members ranking higher than Grade Three; two: those parts of the stellar . . . "
The list unrolled for a while, until Cedric told System to shut up and send him a golfie. He would try it and see.
When small, Cedric had almost killed himself a few times by putting a plastic bag over his head and pretending it was a bubble suit. Most boys did that, and some were less fortunate than he. Growing older, he had come to understand that bubble suits were not especially glamorous garments. They were not designed for real exploration; they were lab clothes, overpressured to prevent invasion by gas or dust or microbes, the last line of defense against accidental contamination. Yet they were still not much more than plastic bags, fitting closely over shoes and hands, and usually belted at the waist, but otherwise ballooning everywhere else. They were not elegant.
Nevertheless, he felt a satisfying little thrill as he was assisted into a real bubble suit for the first time. The technician who helped him muttered darkly about how old that one must be, speculating that it might not be safe after so long in storage. No demand for that size, he explained, and he insisted on testing it to well beyond the required pressure.
But the seals held, and Cedric's irresistible authority as a deputy director won his way past successive layers of sullen guards until at last he was ushered into the command room of David Thompson Dome. It was large and dim, with many people sitting around muttering at coms. Voices wove in and out of the red darkness in a basketwork of sound, while a spectators' corner of comfortable couches held Devlin Grant and the man with the turban—and Alya.
Cedric's deputy-directorship was not going to frighten anyone very much with Dr. Devlin there.
But Alya gave a shout of joy. She ran forward to meet him and threw herself into his arms. He had thought a princess would keep her love affairs secret, but apparently that was not so. Kissing through two thicknesses of crysfab would be low in satisfaction, so he just swept her off her feet and hugged her mightily. The bubble suits bulged and rippled and made little squeaky noises.
Then he took a harder look at her through the plastic. "What's wrong?" he demanded.
She laughed breathlessly and made ashamed sort of sounds. "I'm being silly, I think." She seemed to draw a deep breath. "Oh, God, but I'm glad to see you, darling." Then she hugged him again.
Darling? Much more of such royal appreciation would do terrible things to his lovable boyish humility.
"Don't start sniveling inside there," he told her. "You can't wipe your nose." And he led her over to the corner, where Dr. Devlin and the Jathro man were standing and watching blackly.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Dr. Devlin snapped.
"What the hell have you been doing to Her Highness?" Cedric countered. There was a brief silence marked by astonishment all around. Cedric himself was as surprised as any.
Devlin's moustache writhed. The day before, he had been unexpectedly friendly. Obviously that policy had been revised. "Get out of here! Operations are my turf, sonny, and you're trespassing."
Cedric could not argue with that. He looked down at Alya and decided that she was frightened about something. "We'll go, then," he said. "Come along, sweetheart."
But apparently that was not what Dr. Devlin had in mind, nor Dr. Jathro. They choked, then both tried to speak at once.
Alya grinned up rather wanly at Cedric and then turned to the others. "If Cedric can come with me, then I'll do it."
"Do what?" he asked.
Devlin looked blacker than ever in the reddish glow. "Your Highness, the director herself warned you—"
"But I already know what you're up to," Cedric said loudly. "You're looking for Class One worlds, and Alya's helping you." He felt her start, and then she hugged him comfortingly.
"I didn't tell him that," she said. "He's a lot smarter than he—than you might have expected."
Dr. Devlin made an angry growling sound.
"What's more," Alya said sternly, "if you value my opinions at all, then you must value all of them. Tiber I don't mind—I've told you what I think of that. But I'll look at the other if Cedric is with me. Else not."
"We're wasting precious time," Dr. Devlin shouted. "Would you feel happier doing Tiber first, Princess?"
She nodded quickly, and Cedric thought she looked relieved. "Good idea!" she said.
"Right! Message Baker Abel. Abel, we'll head along to de Soto and do Tiber first. Com end. Let's go!"
Back out in a main corridor, Alya urged Cedric over to a golfie and slid in beside him. Devlin and Jathro had to settle for each other as company, and neither looked very pleased. The two carts hummed off together, with the men's leading.
"Now . . . " Cedric said.
Alya chuckled and hugged him. "I was having another attack of the jimjams. I'm better if I'm with you, somehow."
"It's mutual!"
She shook her head and leaned her head against his shoulder as the golfie cornered. Obviously Devlin had ordered top speed. "Not the same, I think. Cedric darling, you do understand why I'm here, don't you?"
"You have second sight."
"Well, not quite. I have a special sort of intuition. Most of my relatives have it. It runs in the family. It warns me, that's all, warns me of danger. In English you'd call it 'intuition.' We have a couple of words we use. The gift itself we call the buddhi. That's a very old word, and a presumption. It means 'enlightenment.' Buddha was the Enlightened One. We say that so-and-so has the buddhi—not everyone in the family has it, but most do. The other word is Japanese: satori. It means much the same, a flash of understanding, but I say I've had a satori. Right? A premonition, a warning from the buddhi? That's all. In English you might call it a 'hunch.' It's not really second sight. It's just that if something is dangerous for me, I get bad vibes about doing it. That's all it is."
"It's no great secret, Alya. System has pix of it."
"The ritual isn't secret. What is secret is that it's for real."
"I expect it is. I can't see you cheating."
She glanced up at him oddly. "You don't get creepy feelings? Some people react like I was a witch or something."
"You give me lots of creepy feelings, but not that sort. You have no idea how much I want to kiss you! Do you suppose they have bubble suits for two?" He was getting all hot again, just being near her.
"Later—I promise."
He felt very creepy then. Lordie, but she was gorgeous! How could he have ever been so lucky? He remembered playing with all that hair on the bed, and the way she had trailed it over him a couple of times. Down, boy! he told himself. "And this intuition can warn you about worlds?"
She agreed with a nod as they cornered again. "Yes, it even seems to work on that. You know how many things can be wrong with a world, like too much of this element or not enough of that. People evolved here on Earth. We're very well-adjusted to this planet, and not many others will do instead."
"But the robbies and gadgets—"
"Yes, but there's so little time, ever. Windows of a few hours at most, and not very much of those, and then they're gone. The planetologists can measure everything, but it takes time, and there's always the chance that nature's found a new trick to play and they've overlooked it. My . . . hunches . . . are quicker."
The golfie slowed down to climb a long ramp.
"Of course, the scientists pull their tricks, too," Alya said. "I'm just a backup. But none of us has ever been proved wrong."
"Us?"
She winced slightly. "My brothers and sisters all had the gift also."
"But—you mean there have been—Class One worlds?"
She nodded, looking puzzled.
"You mean," Cedric said, unable to take it all in, "there really have been other Class One worlds, kept secret? I mean, I know that some people say . . . I thought that was just crazy talk. Kept secret?"
"That's right."
Incredible! "So Gran has been using you—your family—to find Class One worlds—"
"No, not quite," Alya said. "We don't find them, we just inspect. My buddhi's completely selfish. It only works for me, my own safety. Same with them."
He felt a sudden chill. "So?"
"The Earth is very sick, Cedric dear. We've poisoned it. It may be dying—at least as far as people are concerned. Life will go on, and in a million years or so everything will be back to normal again, but all the predictions now are that a big part of the human race is going to die very shortly. No one knows how many. The numbers are dropping fast already. It's snowballing, too—look at the Cancer Curve! We've even polluted our own germplasm." She stared up at him solemnly, as though doubting his comprehension. "And my family intuition tries to make us go to other worlds. That means it thinks—not thinks, really—oh, damn—it says that this world is unsafe for us!"
"Floods, famine, disease, storms—Bagshaw Barney told me."
"Right. Dangerous. But other worlds may be even worse, you see? There are some real horrors hiding out there. And that's where I come in. I can tell a world that looks like a better bet than this one."
"Oh!" Now it made sense. "Pilgrim clubs? Ecology and nutrition and—"
She smiled, he thought rather wistfully. "That's right!"
"But . . . " He thought his brain would overload. "But if it's better for one of you, then why not all? Why don't you all choose the same world?"
She squeezed him. "Clever man! It does work that way, but your grandmother made a rule: only one of us for a world. Kas—he's my brother, the king—he feels the same way I do, but she'll still only let one of us go. And the buddhi seems to know that. Only one of us gets the full satori each time. It's quite complicated, really."
"And then you inspect the world?"
"Yes, but you see, it's purely subjective. I have to be involved. I can't just say, 'Yes, that's a nice little planet you have there.' I can't just walk around for twenty minutes and put a seal of approval on it. My buddhi would only worry about those twenty minutes, and some dangers may not show up for years. I have to be going myself—to live there for the rest of my life. The gift only works if I'm in danger—me, myself."
"I want to come with you!"
The words were out before he had time to think about them, but he knew that he meant them with all his heart. He had no desire to be media flunky for Gran, with no chance of doing any good in the job. His grandfather had offered him help—but Hastings was not his grandfather. Cedric was Hastings's clone. The Secretary General might be the deadliest danger of all, and Cedric had not had time yet to think about that problem. What rights or choices did a clone have? Legally he did not even exist. He had wondered earlier if Alya might be able to give him employment—not as a lover, obviously, although he planned to be available for that as long as she wanted him, and he also hoped they could stay friends afterward—but he had hoped that perhaps she could find him a living somewhere in Banzarak. He was not qualified to do much more than rake leaves off the palace lawn—not here, in this world—but on a frontier planet . . .
Then there was an interruption, as the golfie reached a checkpoint. The concern was not over identity, but safety. Once both bubble suits had been tested for pressure again, and their air supply inspected, Cedric and Alya were waved through.
"Last night," he said, "you found my room. Was that intuition? And if it was—"
She squeezed his hand. Crysfab squeaked on crysfab. "We don't know exactly how it works. In fact, nobody has any idea. I tried to analyze it with superstring theory once—switching one of the unexpressed dimensions with time—and all I got was a headache. Two or three hundred years ago one of my ancestors fancied himself a philosopher. He said it was like a spinning a yarn. Have you ever seen a spinner at work?"
"No," he said. The golfie was slowing down for another ramp. Cedric did not care if it took forever to go where it was going. He could sit there forever very happily. Except, of course, that she had promised later . . .
"Well, think of it this way. The past is fixed, right? The future we can't tell. There's one me in the past, and lots of mes in the future. There's a me who invites Hubbard Cedric into her bed tonight. There's a me who doesn't. And a me who—"
"I like the first one much better."
"Yes, but—"
"I would make that one very happy."
"Yes! Now, stop that! I promised you—later. But all those future mes somehow become just one present me. You understand? The future has lots of mes, like all the threads that are to be spun into the string. The present is the point where they all come together. In that past, there's one me, one rope."
He nodded, thinking of the feel of her nipples against his tongue in the night.
"So what the buddhi does, this old graybeard said, is tug on the strings in the future, and pick the string that's the longest. The longest lifeline, the longest-living me. Understand?"
"I understand that I love you very, very much, and I don't care if you can turn yourself into a black cat." She had not explained how she had found his room in the night, so she obviously did not want to.
Alya smiled and squeezed his hand again. "Later, then."
She had not said she loved him, either.
The golfie rolled to a halt beside the other. Jathro was already holding a door open.
"What's the rush?" Cedric asked as Devlin handed Alya down.
And Devlin neatly cut out Cedric on the way in. "Two likely worlds, Tiber and Saskatchewan. Their windows are due at about the same time."
They stopped at a second, massive armored door, standing open. Waiting beside it were three men in ranger denims and bubble suits. The two at the back were grizzled-looking veterans holding Beretta 401 torchguns. The other was a stocky, broad-shouldered young man gabbling into his wrist mike. He looked up in surprise at the stranger.
"You're Hubbard Cedric!" He grinned, holding out a hand, studying Cedric with obvious interest. "I'm—"
"You're Baker Abel!" Cedric was thrilled. First Devlin Grant and now Baker Abel! Baker was only twenty-three, and already he had done some great exploring. "You discovered the man-eating boulders on Marigold!"
Baker laughed. "They discovered me first! We're all ready to go, Grant. Why the change of plan?"
"Her Highness will inspect both NSB's," Devlin said pompously. "But she is apprehensive of Saskatchewan."
"The name alone scares me," Alya said.
"Rightly so!" Devlin's attempts at humor were ponderous. "I must find out who picked that name, so I can can him." Apparently, jocularity was back in vogue, now that he had returned to being Alya's escort. "It should have been something easier, like Susquehanna."
"Or Syuyutliyka?" Baker remarked. "That's a river in Bulgaria." He got some irritated stares but no answer.
They filed into the airlock and the door clumped shut with satisfying finality. Cedric slid close to Alya and took her plastic-wrapped hand in his to squeeze. She seemed perfectly calm, though.
A fine decon mist fell from the ceiling, but no odor could penetrate a bubble suit.
"Activate," Baker told his wrist. "Window's open, right on spec, friends. Take her up about five hundred meters if you can, Clem."
"Why did we have to come to another dome?" Cedric asked. He knew there were several domes, although only one could be used at time. Two transmensors working at the same time would create interference, even if they were a whole world apart, it was said. Everyone knew that.
None of the men replied, so Alya said, "Special equipment. They have extra stuff standing by for this one. I've told them that this is it, that Tiber's the one."
The far door hissed, the bubble suits crackled, and Cedric's ears went dead. He swallowed to get his hearing back and noticed how his heartbeat was picking up. This was no holo show, no make-believe for the small fry on a boring afternoon too sunny to play outside. This was for real! Those guns certainly were.
"Gravity's a trace lower," Baker said, "and air's higher in oxygen. The suits'll mask that, but this'd be a great world for wild parties. This way to the promised land, lady and gentlemen." He led them out into de Soto Dome and started down the gentle slope toward the center.
"Cedric!" Alya exclaimed.
"What?"
"You're hurting me!"
Hastily Cedric eased the pressure on Alya's hand and apologized. Idiot! He had been trying too hard to seem calm and relaxed and not babble "Wow!" noises.
The sheer size of the place was overwhelming. The roof curved far overhead like a metal sky, lit by a bright glow pouring up from the central pit. Most of the dished floor was empty, curving gently down to where the pit itself was hidden by a collection of machinery ringed around it. Motors were revving and crane arms flexing; mechanical spiders rippled along high gantries and lights flickered on and off as the rangers ran through test routines one more time. All that stuff would need an army to run it—Cedric tried to count and ended with a wild guess of at least fifty operators. Clearly Alya's opinion was valued, and Tiber was going to be investigated very thoroughly.
Some of the units were small, some high, some just plain enormous. Two things like rows of houses must be SKIV-10's, which were the biggest made, despite some fanciful holodramas Cedric had seen. A hangar-size door had opened in the far wall, and another of these monsters came rumbling out, heading for its mates like a sociable condominium. The closer the watchers came, the more crushingly huge the equipment seemed.
Baker continued to lead the way, muttering into his handcom and presumably receiving replies in his earpatch. Belatedly Cedric remembered his duty again and glanced at Alya. She was holding on to him tightly, but her face glowed with happiness and an excitement as great as his own. On her other side, Jathro was watching her carefully. The guards followed, with guns at the ready.
"First scan of the robbie data's fine," Devlin announced. "No mirror-image crap this time. Trace elements are okay. Orbital parameters good. This looks very right, Princess."
"We have enough altitude to launch aerials," Baker announced. "Proceed when ready, Clem."
Mechanical things moved in the clutter around the pit. Metal arms lifted and swung. Cedric saw something rise from the far side, saw wings unfold and brighten as they caught the light, and watched it swoop down and vanish into the pit. Other aerials swung for a moment from the gantries and then dropped.
Baker knew exactly where he was going. With the others trailing in single file, and the gunmen still at the rear, he led a winding course between giant wheels and throbbing behemoths, finally attaining the edge of the pit, at a clearing where rails marked off a spectators' gallery—not that the railings would have lasted long had one of the skivs made a wrong turning.
And there was another world, floating below them, hot with sunshine and gaudy with fall colors. Copper and gold trees filled a valley floor, flashes of silver showing where a stream wound. The flanking uplands were gentle, and greener than any hills Cedric had ever seen. As though he were riding in a balloon, he watched the landscape slowly twist, drifting by in silence below him. He searched in vain for signs of animal life, wondering how he would feel if a road or a barbed-wire fence came into view.
"Bring her up!" Baker's voice said, but the result felt more as though de Soto Dome were dropping. The ground rose and began to turn more quickly. Baker shouted about that, and the twisting slowed. Then a dark shadow came crawling over the woods and Cedric's heart spasmed. No one commented, and at last he worked out that it was the shadow of the pit, the transmensor string itself, the hole between worlds. How could a hole cast a shadow?
"Get away from these damned trees!" Baker shouted into his com. The woodlands began to twitch sideways in uneven jerks, even as they continued to rise toward the viewers.
Alya squeezed Cedric's hand. "That's impossible, you know?"
"What is?" The disk of shadow was growing larger, and closer.
"It's theoretically impossible to move Contact around!" She sounded just as thrilled as Cedric was. "The 4-I people can do it—a little, they can—but theory says they shouldn't be able to. Math insists that a transmensoral string must end at a null value on the first differential of a gravity gradient, which means the surface of a planet, or some dense body. Maximum gravity will always be at the surface of the geoid, so that's why Contact is always close to sea level. The surface is sharper on a solid, which is how they tell NSB's from stars, and it's why they usually find dry land and not ocean, but there is no theoretical way they can shift around and change the location of—" She stopped and bit her lip. After a knife-twisting moment she said quietly, "Sorry, Cedric!"
"No problem," he said, and managed to smile. He thought there would have been less of a problem if she had not said "Sorry" quite so intensely. Obviously Alya was a genius. She had studied everywhere and everything. She knew real science, and all he knew was science fiction—he was ignorant. He could barely read. They had nothing in common except the physical attraction of healthy young animals. He was just a stud to her, a pleasant and conveniently malleable male, a well-equipped, clean-limbed country lad to play with. She was royalty, rich and well-traveled, probably accustomed to having a gigolo on call wherever she happened to be. She must regard him as nothing more than a mental health measure, like a masseur. He just hoped he had satisfied her—he had tried as hard as he could in the night. He thought he had been quite impressive, but of course he could not be sure. No matter. He would accept whatever she offered. Nothing as good as Alya would ever happen to him again.
"Hold it there!" Baker said. The field of view had cleared the trees and settled lower, almost to the grassy surface beyond. Pocked with low bushes, it lay only five or six meters below the watchers, almost all of it in shadow. The edge of the pit was a shallow steel bevel above a dangerous blur, a roiling hazy contact between light and dark. The wise stayed well away from the edges of strings. A man who strayed too close might find his substance spread over a billion light-years.
Contact! Two ramps roared out from the sides of the pit, just above the ill-defined edge. They touched down on the grass, not quite facing each other.
And something like a haze rose from the ground, as though at a signal. Baker yelled a warning, and the two armed rangers whipped up their weapons—but there was no target, only a mist. Cedric moved to pull Alya back from the rail as the fog streamed upward.
"Butterflies!" she cried, and Cedric stopped to stare.
The cloud of butterflies distilled, condensed into a smoke, and came whirling upward, sparkling in a million hues. They ranged in size from mere midges to beauties as large as dinner plates. Peacock blue and ruby, pearl and amethyst and chrome yellow, they spun in a multicolored helix.
"Beautiful!" Alya said. "Oh, they're lovely!"
"Don't be sure, Princess," Devlin growled. "I've seen beauty that could kill."
"It's a welcome!"
"As long as they don't drink blood or something."
But the butterflies seemingly meant no harm. They circled and danced, and gradually sank back down to their own world and dispersed. Soon they were gone. If they had been an omen, it had been a very touching one.
Now the skivs were rolling, roaring down the ramp and rocking off across the grass, raising faint dust. Some of the other vehicles were of types that Cedric did not know, although he could make easy guesses at the rocket launchers and the trailers bearing sail planes. And silence descended again. Soon the great dome was empty.
"Well, my lady?" Baker Abel wore a puckish grin on his homely face. "The string seems stable. The window will be open for hours yet. Would you care for a stroll on Tiber?"
"Yes," Alya said fervently. "Oh, yes!"
"Hold it!" Devlin boomed. "Regulations, Abel!"
Baker donned an expression of great innocence. "It's good grassland, Grant. Nothing sharp that I can see."
Devlin seemed to chew his moustache in doubt. "You understand the risk, Princess?"
"Bubble suits?" Alya said, looking woebegone.
He nodded, visibly wavering. "They're not certified for surface. One tiny puncture and you can't come back—not without a two-year quarantine!"
"I'll risk it," Alya said defiantly.
Cedric made a quick move before he could be displaced from his position as escort. Holding her hand, he led the way around the lip of the pit to the nearer of the two ramps. Together they strolled down into another world.