A Maze of Stars Read online

“My thought exactly, Dean. So when he’d finished eating, we ran a set of physical tests.”

  The results of which ought to be available to me at once! Only they weren’t. For the moment there was no help for that. Forcing calm: “The outcome of which was—?”

  “His germ plasm contains at least three armorings not found on Shreng, nor, as far as I’ve been able to establish, on any of the worlds we have regular contact with.”

  “Hmm! Was that when you decided to contact me?” How leaned forward. Suspicion was burgeoning in his mind that Menlee might be hoping to extort some kind of reward. “Immediately,” Menlee confirmed.

  “What made you think the matter so important?”

  Boldly the young man met his gaze. “With respect, Dean, I dare to imagine that I made the same deduction as you just did.”

  “That being—?” How invited, eyes narrowing.

  “Contrary to everything we’ve always been told, it is possible to stow away aboard a starship.”

  The words hung in the air like a leisurely waft of smoke. To How they brought relief not unmingled with astonishment. Did this young man truly not realize the significance of his news? He wished he could have his own suspicion verified, but the lock prevented that. He said after a pause, “You’re astute, aren’t you? Was that the first possibility that crossed your mind?”

  “It was the only one that fitted all the facts.”

  “Did you say as much to your friend Annica?”

  “I think the same conclusion had occurred to her. She saw the data coming up, the same as me.”

  “So you’ve recorded him as a patient?”

  “At first I had no reason not to, did I? But the moment I realized, I imposed a lock. You must have noticed.”

  Is that tone patronizing? Contemptuous?

  However, such suspicions must be disguised … “Well, it sounds as though you’re not just astute but sensible. Now I’ll tell you what I want done. Oh, by the way: this stranger—does he have a name, or has he forgotten that too?”

  “Yes, but only one.”

  “That’s non-Shrengian, if you like! What is it?”

  “Volar.”

  After breaking link, the dean’s first action was to check what sort of lock was in place. It was nonstandard, presumably one Menlee had devised in his spare time, but he absolutely must gain access to the data. He ordered its demolition. After that he sat a long while, pondering the fact that in this society where knowledge did literally mean power he might be on the threshold of a secret that would ensure him yet greater influence, beyond his previous dreams. Reacting as ever to his unspoken wish, the bureau circuitry emphasized the positive, denied the negative. Not merely the images surrounding him but the air itself exuded a sense of confidence, of certainty.

  For there was another way than Menlee’s to account for the presence of this “unknown,” a way infinitely more pregnant with possibilities. As a matter of fact, there were two others, but one could be dismissed out of hand. If Volar were one of the legendary Perfect, rumors about whom had been brought by the starfarers but for whose existence there was no concrete evidence, he would scarcely have come near to collapsing from hunger. Nor, naturally, would he have let himself be examined and exposed.

  That apart, he could just possibly constitute a clue to the greatest mystery of the age.

  And if he did, Dean How was determined to make sure he and he alone possessed the information until the time was ripe to share it—at a price …

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT DEAN HOW IS UP TO!” COMPLAINED Annica Slore.

  Their duty over, she had come with Menlee to the area refectory—patronized tonight by only a couple of dozen people instead of the usual two hundred—before returning to the quarters they had now been sharing for almost half a year.

  They had more or less drifted into their relationship. Obviously, they had interests in common; moreover, they both lived too far away to spend Landing Day at home; but perhaps more to the point they somewhat resembled one another, both being slightly overweight, neither especially attractive, but both highly intelligent. Behind the girl’s dark eyes one could almost watch her mind at work as she teased and tugged at strands of tangled information.

  Finishing his food, sliding his empty dish into the recycling chute, Menlee frowned. “Nor do I,” he admitted. “I thought he’d want to confirm our findings and then confront one of the foreign missions—presumably the one that last had a delegation land here.”

  “Instead,” Annica muttered, “he’s covering up the guy’s presence. Leave the patient file locked, move Volar to his private residence, don’t say anything even to the infirmary staff who saw him while he was there … Why? Just because it’s Landing Day? It doesn’t fit! I’d have thought that if Volar’s arrival is really important, action should be taken regardless of the holiday.”

  “That’s what’s bothering me,” Menlee muttered. “Granted, you don’t find starving amnesiacs wandering about the campus every day, but it’s not the sort of thing that would cause a scandal and harm the reputation of the university. It isn’t even so extraordinary that people would gossip about it for weeks on end. Everybody says we’re terribly lucky on Shreng, and if one’s to believe the starfarers, there are whole planetsful of people who’d immigrate here tomorrow given the chance, but our society isn’t anything like perfect. There are still inade-quates, above all fools who’ve overdone it with ingestible knowledge.”

  “Sometimes,” Annica said caustically, “I think Dean How feels affronted by that fact, don’t you?” She emptied the cup beside her and tipped it too down the chute.

  “I can’t claim to know His August Eminence that well, but it wouldn’t in the least surprise me … Hmm! Do you recall the number of the autoproctor that found Volar?”

  “What in space do you want to know for?”

  Menlee was activating the bracelet on his left wrist. Its main use was to interrogate the medical data banks if he had an emergency to deal with away from the infirmary, but the autoproctors served as a kind of campus police, and it also afforded access to them.

  “I’m just curious,” he murmured. “Well, if you can’t remember the number, don’t worry. I can’t either. But that shouldn’t stop us.”

  The link set up, he whispered close to the bracelet, and waited. All that followed, though, was silence.

  Frowning, he tried again. Still no result. Annica needed no explanation. Paling, she clenched her fists.

  “There’s no record of a proctor finding Volar?”

  “None that we can get at, anyway,” Menlee said with unexpected grimness. He shut down the bracelet, staring into nowhere. “This is getting weirder and weirder!”

  Hesitantly Annica offered, “One possibility does occur to me.”

  “Go on.”

  Elbows on the table, she leaned toward him. “He may be hoping to obtain some kind of hold over one of the foreign missions without making an overt challenge. Perhaps he can access data about foreign genetic endowments which aren’t available at the infirmary. In that case—”

  “I see what you mean,” Menlee broke in. “He could—oh— claim that someone has been lying to us, that in fact a nonauthorized visitor has come aground, contrary to all the assurances we’ve been given. He might have been carrying all sorts of infections, couldn’t he? And everybody knows what might happen if an alien disease broke out here or on any colonized world. It could take years to wipe it out again. Thank goodness our checks didn’t reveal anything of the kind!”

  “That’s more or less what I had in mind,” Annica agreed. “He could threaten, say, to expel all the students from the world responsible—”

  “Irresponsible?” Menlee suggested.

  “Oh, you’re such a funny man!” Annica said, pulling a face. “I don’t know why I like you, but I suppose I do, really … Only I don’t see what How would gain by taking such a stand.”

  “Higher fees for students from the—ah—guilty planet? Or just a bit m
ore authority. He’s fond of authority.”

  “Ye-es”—doubtfully. “I’ve heard he resents the fact that we don’t have starships of our own, and he’s not the only one, but since no city has decided to invest in building them yet—”

  “And nobody in his right mind would want to leave Shreng for any of the other planets we have contact with!”

  “Now that’s pitching it a bit strong. I’d certainly like to visit another planet. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, I guess so. Out of curiosity, though, not because I want to settle anywhere else.” Menlee pushed back his chair. “Shall we head for home?”

  “Don’t you want to go anywhere this evening? We’re not on shift until noon tomorrow. Over in town they’re repeating that amazing scent show from Heglam—”

  But he seemed not to hear her. A look of astonishment had spread over his face. Startled, Annica demanded what was wrong.

  He recovered himself after a few seconds, shaking his head. “I’m all right,” he muttered. “I just almost had an idea. But it won’t come clear. Perhaps if I think about something else … Let’s walk back in the open.”

  “It’s starting to rain,” Annica objected.

  “Is it? Black holes! For some reason I wanted to look at the stars. I have the vague impression they have something to do with what I can’t get a grasp of… Well, I’m going home on the surface anyway. Getting damp won’t do me any harm. You ride the tunnel if you like.”

  “No, I’ll keep you company,” she sighed. “I want to make sense of this just as much as you do.”

  Head bent, now and then wiping away the wet as it flowed down into his eyes, Menlee pondered aloud as they traversed the campus, moving from island to little island of light under pole-mounted lamps. Next year, it was rumored, this antiquated setup was due to be replaced by a luminous-air system developed on Yellick, the planet whose starships plied to Shreng.

  “Rumors,” he muttered. “Rumors from the stars.”

  “For instance?” Annica said tartly. It was clear she had begun to regret her impulse to accompany him.

  “Don’t the starfarers talk of people who can cross space without needing a ship?”

  She came to a dead halt and stared at him.

  “My dear man, have you taken leave of your senses? You can’t possibly believe that sort of rubbish!”

  “There are too many stories to dismiss them,” Menlee said doggedly. “And it would fit, wouldn’t it? You checked the records yourself—we’ve never had a visitor, not an authorized visitor, with the gene pattern Volar exhibits.”

  “You mean he just arrived?” Walking on, more quickly now because the rain was getting heavier, Annica adopted a scoffing tone. “No, I won’t accept it.” She proceeded to recite the same objections that Dean How had reviewed in his mind, finally capping them with:

  “Teleportation is an ancient superstition without a shred of evidence! There is nothing, but nothing, in our hereditary endowment that could lead to it, any more than telepathy or telekinesis. And that’s flat!”

  “Suppose”—in a grasping-at-straws manner—“it’s not our endowment that permits it.”

  “You mean it’s something we might pick up from contact with aliens?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not!” she echoed. “Because the whole idea is ridiculous! Think how much energy it takes to project even a mass as small as a human being’s into tachyonic mode! Ah, thank goodness”—as they arrived at the entrance to their quarters. “Not a moment too soon! This isn’t just a shower. We’re in for a storm.”

  Indeed, at almost the same moment there came a flash of lightning from the direction of the spaceport, followed by rumbling thunder.

  Neither of them spoke again until they were in their apartment, stripping off their wet clothes and activating the drier. Then Menlee said, shaking his hair in its warm breeze, “Ah, I suppose you’re right. Shame, though. To be candid, I don’t really believe what I told the dean.”

  “You don’t believe Volar landed from a starship?” she riposted. “Well, I don’t believe he jumped across space under his own power! It’s a question of eliminating the impossible, isn’t it?”

  Adequately dry, Menlee turned to a chair. Dropping into it with a shrug, he completed the ancient proverb.

  “And what’s left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth … Yes, you’re right, of course. Shame, though!” Glancing around as though in search of a way to change the subject, he caught sight of a shiny red package.

  “So you didn’t remember to send off all your presents in time, after all! I thought—”

  “That’s for you tomorrow, you idiot,” Annica said, half-annoyed and half-amused.

  “Annica, you shouldn’t have!”

  “Why not? After all, it’s our first Landing Day together … Space and time! Landing Day! Why didn’t I think of that before? I was talking about it only just now!”

  Startled, Menlee stared at her. Eventually, in alarm, he forced out, “Annica, what is it?”

  It was her turn to be petrified by an inspiration. For a long moment she stood absolutely rigid. When she eventually moved, she looked dazed, and found her way to a seat facing his apparently by touch rather than sight.

  “Where you went to school,” she said slowly, “did you take history courses?”

  “Well, naturally! Doesn’t everyone?”

  “The history of how the Arm was colonized?”

  “Oh, I knew about that long before I went to school.” Impatiently: “Yes, yes, so did I, the fairy-tale version they feed young kids. But did you get the serious stuff?”

  “Well, I guess most of it. What in particular do you have in mind?”

  She fixed him with her large dark eyes.

  “It was thinking about Landing Day that put me on to it. The story goes, doesn’t it, that the Ship was supposed to come back, even though it never has? It’s been centuries, and it hasn’t visited Shreng or any other world that we’re in touch with.” Menlee’s jaw dropped. Inexorably, she went on.

  “But suppose it does come back, only it doesn’t reveal itself.”

  Baffled, Menlee said, “But what would be the point of that?”

  “Oh! Perhaps because we’re doing well enough for it not to interfere. I mean, we are doing well, aren’t we?”

  “Other worlds aren’t, and it hasn’t visited them!”

  “Maybe—”

  “Perhaps!” Menlee exploded. “Maybe! All right, assume for the sake of argument you’re right. What you’re implying is that Volar was brought here by the Ship, right?”

  “Well, there is supposed to be one ship that doesn’t need a landing grid, doesn’t clear the people it brings to ground with any local authorities, doesn’t—”

  “Doesn’t act as a passenger liner for all and sundry,” he snapped.

  “You obviously didn’t take a full course in Ship history,” Annica countered. Without waiting for his reply, she spoke an order to the air. The room obediently transformed itself into deepscreen mode, and a synthetic voice announced, “Ready.”

  “Do we have a complete record of the conditions governing the operation of the Ship?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “The Ship is known to have been self-modifying albeit within prescribed limits. Its programming must have evolved with experience.”

  Annica bit her lip. “Do we at least have a record of the conditions that applied when Shreng was settled?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t see—” Menlee began, but she cut him short.

  “I’m trying to get back to something I remember being taught about ten or twelve years ago. You said the Ship didn’t behave like a passenger liner, but I’m sure there was one exceptional situation when it was allowed to carry people … Ah. Let’s try a general heading. Say, ‘threatened failure of a colony.’ Make it visual.”

  The circuits obliged by displaying a plain-language table of relevant courses of acti
on. Annica read it in silence while Menlee grew more and more impatient. At last he burst out, “Annica, for pity’s sake—”

  “There!” she said, and snapped a quick command. A single clause emerged from the mass of verbiage and hung large and luminous in midair.

  “So the Ship was permitted to evacuate—”

  “Not what you’re thinking!” Annica blazed. “Everybody knows it was empowered to rescue the survivors of a failed colony and move them somewhere more hospitable. That was even in what I think of as the fairy-tale version. When I was a little girl, maybe six or seven, I used to get worried about the fact that we aren’t living on the world we evolved on. I even had bad dreams. And my parents used to comfort me by saying that if anything ever went terribly wrong, the Ship would come back and move us to a better planet. Didn’t you go through that kind of phase?”

  “Ah …” Menlee licked his lips. “Yes, I think I did. I think a lot of children do. But what does this have to do with—?”

  “It isn’t laid down that the evacuation has to be of the entire population.”

  Menlee’s jaw dropped. He reread the displayed text.

  “I can’t really believe it,” he muttered. “But you’re right, aren’t you? The Ship could, in principle, remove even a single person from one system to another— Ah, but this is absurd!”

  “Is my conclusion absurd?” Annica demanded.

  The circuitry hesitated in an oddly human fashion. “Not a priori,” it announced at last.

  Whereupon a different though familiar voice broke in.

  “No, indeed. Far from it. But I’d rather you didn’t mention it to anybody else.”

  And the verbal display vanished, to be replaced by a head and shoulders view of Dean How.

  “In fact,” he went on while they still sat, stunned, “I intend to make sure you can’t. I’m afraid you have both been called away unexpectedly. There will be a convincing explanation for your absence from work after the holiday. I don’t know what it will be, but the circuitry is working on it. Be so kind as to get dressed and pack what you need for what I’m afraid may be quite a long stay in protective custody. The autoproctors that have taken station outside your apartment will escort you. I assure you it would be futile to try and run away.”