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  If this were Olympus and I were Zeus with thunderbolts to hurl, I wouldn’t kill people. I’d just alter a few entries in the memory-banks.

  What the hell ever happened to human importance?

  Behind him the door leading on to the vantage platform hushed open. He turned, composing his face into a polite mask.

  First in view was Moses van Heemskirk, who never missed an opportunity like this. He couldn’t have been prouder of the Bridge System if he’d invented the principle himself. By this time, perhaps he thought he had.

  About sixty people followed him, in two distinct groups of roughly equal size—but that from Ipewell consisted wholly of women, whereas that from Azrael was exclusively composed of men. Both were obviously stratified within themselves: the leaders had brought their respective retinues, because they still relied on human sides and secretaries. On the rare occasions when he had had to make a formal visit to another planet, Thorkild had worn his “retinue” in a simple belt full of microcircuitry. Here within the Bridge Centre he did not even have to do that.

  It crossed his mind that the answer to his mental question of a moment ago might perhaps be sought in the fact that nowadays the Earthside èlite found it more convenient (more congenial?) to keep company with predictable machines. He himself was resentful of the need to turn out for these—these tourists. Any of a hundred people on his staff could have handled this chore with genuine enthusiasm…

  Well, having delegates from two aspirant worlds at once was unprecedented, and it was happening during his term of office. He must make the most of that.

  The vantage platform, and the impervious bubble enclosing it, had a refractive index equal to that of air. Most of the visitors hung back even when van Heemskirk marched forward, hand outstretched towards Thorkild. Two did not, and they were plainly the most important.

  “Day, Jorgen!” van Heemskirk boomed. “Let me present to you the honoured delegates of the latest worlds to aspire to membership of our interstellar community—Mother Uskia of Ipewell, and Lancaster Long of the planet Azrael! Friends, this is Director Jorgen Thorkild, whose untiring work in the service of the Bridge System puts everyone on forty planets in his debt!”

  Usually Thorkild turned van Heemskirk’s fulsome flattery with some amusing and self-depreciatory remark. Today he couldn’t think of one. He merely shrugged and bowed, earning a frown from the fat man. He knew what that was due to: the same reason that had made van Heemskirk present the delegates to him, not the other way around, although their relative status on their home worlds was probably far superior to Thorkild’s on Earth. In van Heemskirk’s eyes, Earthside prestige counted above all else. He never tired of reminding people that Earth got there first.

  Got where? To what purpose?

  Cautious, the rank and file were spreading across the vantage platform, whispering in awe at the sheer scale of the transit-hall. So might they well; it was the largest building on any human planet. But Thorkild had heard such ooh-ing and ahh-ing before. He concentrated his attention on the two he had just been introduced to.

  Mother Uskia: a flat-faced, dark woman in a tight white shirt and tighter white trousers cut to show off a bulging melon-belly. Pregnant, and proud of it. On Ipewell fertility was emblematic of social status—hence the honorific Mother before her name. Clipped to her collar was a microphone, and a thin flex led from it down the open neck of her shirt, vanishing between fat mounds of breast. Presumably she was making a sonic record of her trip to Earth, though why she should prefer a sound-only to the equally available and more informative solido version was a mystery.

  And Lancaster Long: immensely tall, a hand’s breadth more than Thorkild himself, wearing a splendid purple robe and a cylindrical hat of white fur. His complexion was rather sallow. His high-arched nose and sharp dark eyes lent him the appearance of a bird of prey.

  Being awestruck could be left to underlings. Both these leaders moved to the furthest edge of the platform and gazed down, evaluating what they saw. After a pause, Long said, “How much bigger is this place than the station on Mars that we were brought to first?”

  “In terms of handling capacity? Sixty or eighty thousand times,” Thorkild answered.

  There was a silence. Shortly van Heemskirk began to fidget. He did not easily endure inactivity. “Uh… Jorgen!” he suggested. “Tell our friends about the System. Whatever you think would interest them. After all, it’s most impressive, isn’t it?”

  What would they not already know? What could van Heemskirk imagine they did not know? They had been under instruction before they left home, then on Mars, then again since being forwarded to Earth… But Thorkild obeyed, and began to recite worn facts, parrot-style.

  “The station on Mars doesn’t have to be any larger. It’s dedicated solely to the needs of people like your-self who have to undergo quarantine and prepare themselves psychologically for a first visit to Earth. Apart from the times when we are newly in contact with an aspirant world, it’s on standby—idling, as you might say—except when someone reports a risk of epidemic disease. That’s the one thing we are constantly on guard against: the chance that some microorganism on a world we have not yet fully explored might prove to be fatal to human beings on an interstellar scale. Then volunteers present themselves and from our computer resources we construct the necessary counter-agent. We haven’t failed to do so yet, and it’s as well, because once your worlds are spliced into the Bridge System you’ll have unlimited access to it. Some idea of its scale can be gained by looking around this hall. Here we have Bridges direct to all the inhabited worlds, plus well over a hundred more which link us to the starships constantly hunting for others that we haven’t yet re-contacted. We build on a generous scale. We expect our present equipment to remain adequate for at least another hundred years.”

  His words ground to a halt. He was acutely aware of Mother Uskia’s microphone, and of her intense, suspicious manner. What could someone like that find interesting in these dry, dead-leaf words? On a planet like hers, human beings were not yet reduced to the state where they could be processed like a flow of information, faceless, averaged, present or absent merely as statistical variations. About the only thing he could say to these people which they would not already have heard was something which van Heemskirk and those above him would regard as disastrously inappropriate. He could talk about the way that humans, in the view of the machinery which actually ran the Bridge System, were so predictable that daily traffic-flow could be forecast with an accuracy of plus or minus point oh-one per cent.

  What would Mother Uskia’s reaction be if he were to come straight out with it and say that his Job, in the ultimate analysis, was to ensure that their planets also conformed to the rigid pattern?

  And how about Long? He wore an expression which defied scrutiny. Perhaps it reflected boredom. Probably it did. The notion behind bringing these delegations to the actual Bridge Centre was to drive home the physical size of the operation, but surely anyone with a normal imagination could work that out in advance, and the mere sight of this place and the people swarming through it could never be half as impressive as what had already been done to the visitors. It had been proved to them that they could cross a hundred lightyears at a single step. After that, there was nothing… was there?

  Now he was looking at Long, he found it impossible to tear his gaze away. Why? For his height? There were many Earthsiders who could overtop him by half a metre. For his leanness and his eagle nose? But anybody now might be as fat or thin as he or she chose, and wear any face that appealed to the individual’s fancy. For the subconscious associations of his garb, stretching back into classical antiquity? True, purple was the traditional princes’ colour, but one might buy garments that shifted through a thousand colours in a day and began again on the morrow without repeating.

  No, the reason was something inward. A question of personality. Long had-what to call it?—an air of presence. Yes, that was it As though he were more here than Thorkild or
van Heemskirk or Mother Uskia, certainly more here than any of the flowing molecule-people on the transit floor so far below.

  Unexpectedly Long turned his head and met Thorkild’s eyes directly. In the dark abysm of his irises, the Earthman thought, it would be possible to lose oneself as though in space.

  Beginning to be seriously alarmed, van Heemskirk spoke up again. “Jorgen, suppose you tell us about the people we can see down there—who they are, where they’re bound for. After all, it’s one thing to be shown the bald statistics, and quite another to be here and actually watch it happening!”

  Yes, of course he might do that. It hadn’t occurred to him. It hadn’t occurred to him to look away after meeting Long’s gaze, either. When he did so, he felt an unreal click—no, not a click, that was wrong, but something… He hunted memory, and located the image he was after: the sense of reluctant yielding, amounting almost to a soundless snap, when you draw apart a pair of magnets.

  Knowing the transit schedules by heart for at least a week in advance, surely he ought to be able to pick out one or two groups down there and say something about them… Ah, there was a straggling line of a hundred-odd men and women brilliant in uniform scarlet. He knew who they must be.

  Activating the distorter on the enclosing bubble so that the area in question was abruptly magnified, he said, “Well, for example, there goes the crew of the scoutship Eridanus— the relief crew, that is, returning to duty after furlough. Very probably you already know about the system we operate, having two crews for every scoutship, rotating at intervals because it’s a lonely and sometimes rather boring job to search the stars for planets like your own, cut off from the rest of the human community. Well, like yours were until recently…”

  But they must have been told this over and over! Why waste his breath?

  Badly worried now by Thorkild’s peculiar incoherence, van Heemskirk hastened to cover for him. “It’s the most remarkable achievement of our species!” he declaimed, using his public orator’s voice. “From here, invisible links reach out across the lightyears to unite planet with planet as the strong bonds of affection unite a family. Yes, precisely, for in spite of temporary separation we are one great family after all, are we not?”

  Prompt on his beginning to speak, Mother Uskia had turned, making sure her microphone was aligned to catch his words. With more discernment, Long disregarded the politician’s fit of orotundity. As soon as it was over, he addressed Thorkild.

  “It would appear to be a complex and demanding post that you hold, Director!”

  “It is!” van Heemskirk assured him. “One of the most responsible in the galaxy!”

  Long did not even shift his gaze to acknowledge the interruption; van Heemskirk registered the snub, and flushed. A stir of amusement coloured Thorkild’s grey thoughts. If Long could take van Heemskirk aback so easily, he must be a remarkable individual.

  Remembering belatedly that the original question had been aimed at himself, he gave a nod.

  “And are you satisfied?” Long pursued.

  “Satisfied?” Thorkild revolved the word in his mind. “Not yet. I guess I shan’t be until all the worlds where human beings have settled are tied into the Bridge System. And possibly not even then.”

  “As far as one can tell at present,” Long observed, “this may already have occurred, or be on the verge of doing so. I gather it has been a decade since the last new planet was, as you say, tied in. But set aside the unknowable, the possibility that the Bridge System may already have expanded to its limit. What I meant to ask you was rather whether your work is satisfying. Does that make my intention clearer?”

  It would, if I knew what satisfaction was…

  This is the nature of my job: pipe people from here to there, shove freight around in massive quantities, stand foster-father to decisions taken by a beery drunkard singing a dirty song—when what I really want is to be a father, albeit of a chance-got child. Even taking my own decisions would be a surrogate! But all of them, every last single mortal one of them, are constrained! They are forced on me! I am denied the liberty of being wrong!

  Had Saxena suffered this agony? Was this the reason he had killed himself? It wasn’t obviously the agony of being rejected by Alida…

  But aloud he said, “The work is there and because I can do it, I do do it. So far as that goes, I guess it’s satisfying.”

  “The way I understand the matter,” Long said, the corners of his mouth turning down to signal disapproval, “you are in charge of what has gradually become Earth’s prime reason for continuing. The Bridge System has repeatedly been described to us as the greatest gift the mother planet has ever offered to her children.”

  The turn of phrase he employed attracted Uskia’s complete attention; perhaps it was deliberate, perhaps casual…

  “Given that you are in overall control of this operation, it should follow that you enjoy the greatest personal fulfilment experienced by anyone in the whole of history. Yet I sensed, a moment ago, that you did not wholly concur with the way. Responsible van Heemskirk defined the Bridges—like, he said, bonds of affection that connect the human family. Well?”

  Uskia, as usual, angled her microphone to catch Thorkild’s reply. Perhaps it was the sudden irritating mannerism which provoked him into rapping out words before he had thought through what he planned to say.

  “It’s more like the groping of a barnacle, or the web of a spider,” he blurted. “If you really want to know! Or even less purposeful than that, even less rational—maybe like the stems of a climbing plant feeling around for something to latch on to and twine around, without the blindest hint of what it’s doing it for!”

  “Jorgen!” cried van Heemskirk, appalled, and started forward. He was checked by Uskia.

  “One moment!” she said. “Director Thorkild”—and it was plain from the way she twisted her mouth that she had not yet accustomed herself to speaking politely to a male—“be so kind as to explain what the things are which you compared the Bridge System to: a barnacle and a spider’s web. On Ipewell we have neither, although certain creatures in our local eco-structure are analogous.”

  “If you know that much,” Thorkild retorted, “what else can I add?”

  A scowl creased Uskia’s flat face. “I know!” she snapped. “But my daughter must know too!”

  She drew the zipper of her tight-stretched shirt down to her waist, and Thorkild saw that the flex from the microphone, held in place by adhesive tape, led to a button-size speaker plugged into her navel, turned inward to address the growing foetus.

  Thorkild tried to prevent himself from grinning, but the muscles strained in his cheeks. Activating the distorter again, he gestured at the magnified images it cast on the bubble wall.

  “See the grayish crowd? They’re emigrants, bound for Platt’s World and Kayowa. Eight thousand a day and-”

  No good. The idea of the speaker plugged into her navel! You can’t start educating them too young! Wowph!

  And the hooting hysterical laughter began and seemed it would never stop. He managed to force his eyes open three times in succession: once—van Heemskirk looking fit to burst; twice—Uskia, face contorted with rage at the insult he had offered her; thrice—Lancaster Long, looking like the dark angel after whom his planet had been named.

  Then the laughter filled his eyes with tears and blinded him.

  V

  In theory all of Earth’s business could for centuries have been conducted at a distance: solido projections could be supplemented even by pheromone synthesisers, which deluded the nose, as well as the eyes and ears, that the other party to the conversation was physically present.

  In practice some deeply-ingrained atavism rendered it, if not strictly necessary, then at any rate desirable, to hold face-to-face discussions. Possibly it was because on the subconscious level, what was to be done acquired a gloss of additional importance if one undertook a journey to discuss it. The sense of purpose during the trip reinforced attention and
concentration, even though it might also entrain tiredness.

  Alida Marquis had sometimes wondered—though strictly privately, only aloud to her most intimate friends—whether the speed and ease of travel by Bridge was what made it fundamentally unsatisfying. Few people realised, but it was thanks to her that even starship crews returning to duty had to wait on line in the single vast transit-hall which handled the off-world trade for the entire planet. Earth was rich enough to have built dozens of Bridge Centres, but in order to preserve at least: a semblance of a “real” journey people were still obliged to make their way by old-fashioned methods to their interstellar departure-point.

  Except, of course, if one happened to work in the Bridge Centre. There, forty worlds were within walking distance. How could such a marvel become a commonplace fact of daily existence? Yet it had, and there was something essentially wrong about the situation. It smelt of crisis. She had tried to explain her forebodings to Thorkild, but he had always evaded the subject, rather as though he were afraid it might compel him to continue to a discussion of Saxena’s fate. In its turn, that would inevitably lead to the question of his relationship with Alida, and she was still reluctant to talk about it To have your lover of a decade kill himself without warning, without appealing for help…

  Well, perhaps her premonitions of disaster were illusory, due to that shock.

  But she could not help feeling worried about Thorkild. Of late he had grown so—so remote… He no longer even made the routine passes at her which, on his appointment, he had indulged in not so much because he desired her—or so she felt—as because, taking over Saxena’s post, he expected the perquisites which went with the job.

  It was, admittedly, customary for professional colleagues to enjoy sexual contact, and Alida had done so with all the members of the Bridge City Planning Committee, of which she was chairman ex officio in her capacity as Supervisor of Inter-world Relations. She was nearly seventy, but she could have passed for thirty by the standards of the pre-galactic age; tall, stately, deep-voiced, with a laser-keen mind, she would ordinarily have been pleased at Thorkild’s attentions. After all, a man appointed to the Directorship at forty must be a very remarkable person.