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“Proud? You must be off your head! I’ve given up pride.”

  “When?”

  “I know exactly when! The moment I realised all I had to be proud of was how good I am at being used by other people.”

  “When was that?”

  “Haven’t I already told you? When I tried to answer Lancaster Long’s question, and saw Uskia with a speaker plugged into her navel so her unborn child could eavesdrop on what was happening. And I thought: here I am working like a slave, sweating over everything from petty details to grand policies, standing father to other people’s decisions and pretending they’re my own, taking the blame if they turn out to be wrong… And do I do this for my own sake? No I don’t! I do it for superstitious, knuckle-headed, potbellied morons like Uskia! I’m to be proud of that?”

  “Do you think this is what drove Saxena to kill himself?”

  It was the question Thorkild had been bracing himself for. He turned away, muttering, “Should I know? Ask Alida!”

  “Haven’t you asked her?”

  Thorkild grunted and drained his wine-glass.

  “You haven’t asked her, have you? Because she has refused all forms of intimacy with you, right? And your subconscious has regarded this as defining you inferior to Saxena—”

  “For pity’s sake, I worked all that kind of superficial nonsense out of my system ages ago! And by myself!”

  “That,” Lorenzo said judiciously, “I am well prepared to believe. A man who can be Director of the Bridge System has no need of minor perquisites like that. He automatically possesses enough other goals to—”

  “Goals?” Thorkild yawned hugely. “You could say the same of—of a speck of fungus-spawn shot out by a puffball. It doesn’t know where it’s going, but it comforts itself with the promise that there’s something beyond this patch of leafmould. Well, we’re past our first patch, and what have we found? More of the same! Result: we’re reduced to action for action’s sake, growth for the sake of growth.”

  “And all this was made clear by a few words from Lancaster Long?”

  “I guess”—reluctantly—“you could say his question brought it into focus.”

  “I see.” Lorenzo turned this way, then that, pacing back and forth as he continued. “Tell me something else, please—which I can’t find on your records, because unspoken thoughts don’t appear to the machines you seem to hate so much. Did you ever consider taking time out to raise a family?”

  “But parenthood is a full-time commitment! Twenty years minimum!”

  “I know, I know! Which is why, all too often, people like you leave it to the common folk, as though twenty per cent of a modern active lifetime were too great a tax on—”

  “Shut up!” Thorkild hissed.

  Lorenzo almost complied, but reserved the right to enter yet another subvocalised comment on the hospital files. Just before Thorkild’s temper betrayed him, he went on, “Very well, you have an effective zero rating as regards parenthood. You’re quite unlike Uskia, for example. You—”

  “What are you bleating about?”

  “It’s all a matter of hypotheses”—placatingly.

  “You and your hypotheses ought to come up against Lancaster Long, then! If there are more people like him where he comes from, they’ll jolt the rest of us when they tie into the System!”

  Lorenzo looked suddenly much older. His voice was low and brittle when he said, “They decided not to.”

  “What?”

  “Decided not to.” Lorenzo forced a wan smile. “You might care to reflect on some of the probable consequences. I already asked my computers to work them out, and as soon as you’re willing to show interest in the universe again I’ll run them for you. But do you know what the name of Long’s planet means?”

  Thorkild stood statue-still.

  “Azrael is the legendary name of the Angel of Death!” Lorenzo barked. “And it looks as though it wasn’t picked at random! If you’re so sick of life, why don’t you copy Saxena’s example instead of taking up my time when I’m sure of a thousand cases worse than yours by tomorrow morning?”

  He spun on his heel and stalked away. It was long before the look of shock with which Thorkild watched him go changed to something a little nearer to the human.

  X

  “But this is wrong” Alida said suddenly. “We aren’t being courteous by waiting on him, are we? He’s treating us like beggars!”

  On comfortable padded chairs in the entrance hall of the house which had been allotted to the Azrael delegation during its stay on Earth, she sat with Moses van Heemskirk and a score of other officials. Laverne should have been among them; he had sent to say he would be delayed, because Uskia planned to return to Ipewell as soon as possible and some minor snags had cropped up in the Bridge contract for her planet.

  Many off-world strangers had used this handsome building. Usually the negotiation period had been long enough to allow some stamp of the occupants’ personalities—some hint of the character of their home world—to imprint on the place. No trace of Long or his companions could be detected here; there was not even the faint smell of alien cookery which in the past had so often permeated its air. Only now and then someone could be heard issuing a curt order, or crossed the hallway on soft shoes with the swish of a long dark robe.

  Moses van Heemskirk gave Alida a bitter smile which did not seem proper to his round face. He said, “One obstinate man! And we hang on his decision as though on a rope, by the neck!”

  “Are we wrong?” she wondered emptily.

  “How could he be right?” van Heemskirk countered, turning the question deftly and making it somehow far more dangerously valid.

  There was a sound of doors opening, and they rose in excitement. People were emerging from the room into which Minister Shrigg had vanished an hour ago.

  “Why do we have to rely on him?” someone murmured, barely above a whisper. But all those nearby could hear, and most of them nodded agreement.

  Then Shrigg came out, his face set in a stormy glower, flushed to the limits of his bald pate. He scythed through the crowd to the main door and out, dragging his yes-men and attendants in his wake like rubbish whirling in the wake of a fast vehicle. All eyes followed him reflexively. It was not until he was out of sight that Alida—and in the same moment the rest of the watchers—noticed Lancaster Long standing in the open doorway Shrigg had come from.

  His face was a mask of cold contempt.

  “We were fools to rely on Shrigg!” Alida mourned.

  “Could you have done better?” van Heemskirk rasped, and marched towards Long one second before the latter raised his arm to beckon him imperiously. That much of one’s pride could still be salvaged.

  But to think a single man could hold such power! Merely by calling in question the value of what Earth most prized, he had indeed triggered off the wave of suicides which had been feared. Also there had been riots and other commotion. Anti-Earth parties on a score of other worlds had hailed the news of Azrael’s refusal and some of their more hot-headed adherents were openly talking of sabotage.

  The heritage of the stars, which humanity had dreamed of since the cave-days, and here was one man setting it at naught!

  Did he realise how much he was going to be hated? Probably. But more than likely he would relish it.

  He was saying, “I shall return to Azrael forth-with—I and those who came with me. You will instruct Captain Inkoos to lift her ship off my planet as soon as possible. I’ve had enough of you and your decadent Earth!”

  Unconsciously he rubbed his left forearm with the fingertips of his other hand; Alida realised he was touching the spot where the rattlesnake’s fangs had sunk in.

  “Oh, we shall certainly do as you say,” van Heemskirk declared, defiantly staring up at the beaked face so far above his own. “Until you decide differently. But Earth is old and very patient. There’s no hurry.”

  Alida felt a stir of admiration. His contempt was almost equal to Long’s own, but tinged with pa
tronism—as it were: you’ll grow up, you’ll learn better one day.

  Long seemed not to have heard him, though. He said, “I’ve explained to Minister Shrigg, but he’s a wooden-headed booby. I suspect you at least have an inkling of what I’m talking about. I want someone here to recognise the reason why I spurn your gilded bait, why we of Azrael will have no truck with your elaborate toys.”

  Hans had predicted this, Alida remembered. But it was not good to think of Hans. He too was elusive, the end of a rainbow. She had touched and held him, yet she knew she had never come near him, nor could she ever do so. But his insight was amazing! And the courage which had taken him to the world where Chen had died—where, even now, he was facing the same odds…!

  “Why waste the time?” van Heemskirk said with superbly affected boredom. “Even machines can diagnose petty jealousy. A child may persuade himself that what adults regard as a tool is nothing more than a toy, to be played around with and, come to that, broken for fear another child may also enjoy it.”

  “Your gibes don’t touch me,” Long said. “They come from where you live, in a world remote from reality. It must be for the same reason that what I say cannot touch any of you,”

  “Must be?” van Heemskirk echoed with irony. “Well, there are degrees of necessity, in my view… But hear me out, won’t you?”

  “I’ve had enough of your babbling,” Long snapped.

  “Nonetheless, I advise…” van Heemskirk said delicately, and did not end his sentence. But a wave of tension passed among those listening. Alida found herself pressing closer. It seemed as though the fat politician might be going to say something unexpected. Important? Salvation?

  But how?

  “Well?” Long demanded.

  Conscious that he had reestablished domination, van Heemskirk took his time. He spoke slowly, savouring the words.

  “You have made your position perfectly clear by endless repetition. Consequently it will be gratifying for you to learn that immediately you told Minister Shrigg that you absolutely, totally and unqualifiedly abominated the idea of an Azrael Bridge—”

  That must be a quotation, Alida realised, for Long bridled: how could you know my very words? And van Heemskirk responded by tilting his head, so that light caught on a silvery thread leading from his ear to his vocal cords and then down under his collar: a micro-communicator. Alida wanted to clap her hands. She had not thought of equipping herself with one of those for this crucial meeting, and she was annoyed at her oversight. Meantime the politician was continuing:

  “—we took the action you desired. The scoutship Hunting Dog, Captain Lucy Inkoos commanding, lifted for space on my authority before Minister Shrigg crossed this hallway. By now she is in ten-thousand-kilometre orbit, and will not return to the surface of the planet, though she will remain in the system until further orders.”

  It was as though the sun came out on a dull day. Smiles exploded on every face except Long’s own.

  And Alida’s. She stood quite frozen.

  “But—” Long said after a confused pause, and had to swallow hard. It was a pleasure to see him at a loss.

  “But,” he went on eventually, “what about me? And my entourage?”

  “Oh, what you do is entirely your own affair. We respect the freedom of the individual, here on Earth. But since you are no longer a negotiating team engaged in discussions for a Bridge to your home world, we must require you to vacate this house within twenty-four hours. It is official property and reserved for official guests. Good afternoon.”

  He cocked one eyebrow impudently at the taller man, turned on his heel, and stomped towards the door. Behind him someone started to chuckle; then it was open laughter, and everyone was joining in. Again, except Long himself, and Alida.

  For Hans was on Azrael. Had they allowed him time to leave?

  “Return us to your scoutship, then!” Long was shouting. “One of our own ships can rendezvous with her and—”

  On the threshold van Heemskirk halted and swung around. “But you abominate the idea of travelling by Bridge,” he said in a voice like the edge of a knife.

  “And we will not inflict it upon someone who is opposed by reason of conscience. Fend for yourselves, therefore. Goodbye!”

  “Whose idea do you think it was?” van Heemskirk said bitterly. “I wasn’t so clever.”

  “You mean Hans is still on Azrael!” Alida cried.

  For a moment or two van Heemskirk concentrated on the old-fashioned luxury of the car they were riding in; it was a rare experience in the modern world to enjoy the leisurely progress of a private wheeled vehicle, the sight of building-fronts sliding by, the human scale of a mere hundred k.p.h. instead of what in space or even the upper air had for centuries been taken for granted.

  At last he gave a nod.

  “You left him there!” Alida accused. “Abandoned him!”

  “Oh, no. He chose it. He talked about fighting a sort of duel.” His voice was uncharacteristically edgy. “That was his actual phrase: him on Azrael, Long here. To the victor the spoils.”

  “But if he wins, he loses,” Alida said.

  “I know,” van Heemskirk answered with unusual gentleness. “Alida, I do realise that because, as a career politician, I depend on my popularity, my voters, to keep me in office, people like you tend to dump me in the same mental category as Shrigg and others of his stamp. But you’ve known me a long time now. Is there not a little difference between him and me?”

  She forced a nod.

  “I’m relieved! You see, I don’t mind being what I am, because I think of myself as the sort of person who has to oil the wheels of the social machine. Who more concerned than me when someone throws a bucketful of sand into it… ? You’ve fallen in love with Hans Demetrios, haven’t you?”

  “Is it so obvious?” she replied dispiritedly.

  “It does show a little. And I’m not surprised. I see a faint resemblance to Saxena in him. I hope you don’t mind people talking about Saxena now. There was a time, I recall, when you found it unbearable.”

  “He’s dead,” Alida sighed.

  “Except in your mind, and Jorgen’s. It’s about time he died there, too. In fact I think in Jorgen’s he is now dying. I spoke to Lorenzo yesterday, and he was cautiously optimistic about a breakthrough on that level.”

  Rubbing his plump hands together as though washing them without water, he added, “I gather it had been some while since you yourself inquired after Jorgen.”

  At the implied reproach Alida found she was flushing like a teenager. She said, “There’d been no change—no change—no change…”

  “So you decided you might as well write him off, hmm? It isn’t good to dwell on the possibility of failure, whether Lorenzo’s or Jorgen’s own. Isn’t that the long and short of it? And isn’t that one of the reasons why, as the centuries pass, fewer and fewer among us—the élite, for want of a better word—dare commit ourselves to parenthood? Making ourselves answerable for a whole other human being, let alone several as they used to, is so fraught with the possibility of failure that we shy away from it. Yet failure, surely, is indispensable. How can success feel three-dimensional without failure to contrast it with?”

  “I thought you wanted to talk about Hans!” Alida cut in.

  “I do.”

  She was shaken. What van Heemskirk said reminded her so much of Hans’s dry: “I haven’t changed the subject.”

  She said dully, “Very well. Go on.”

  “Somehow we’ve become trapped by shame at the risk of failure. We’re obsessed by it. In that state you can’t face someone whose avowed intention is to make your handiwork seem worthless. More subtly, you can’t accept a job that someone else took on before you, and couldn’t cope with. Not unless you believe in your heart of hearts that you’re better than he was. And that gets harder and harder because every generation since the year dot has selected for the very best among us.”

  “Are you talking about Jorgen?”

>   “In a sense. Why did Saxena kill himself, Alida? I never dared ask you before. But if anybody knows, you must.”

  “I’m surprised you’re interested,” she said wearily. “But I’m obliged to disappoint you, anyway. He never told me. He never let slip a single hint before he did it.”

  “Perhaps it would help him to die in your mind if you did work out an explanation. Let me make a suggestion which I personally find useful when I’m more than ordinarily frustrated. Like it or not, there’s a tiny handful of people on Earth—come to that, on any inhabited planet—bearing an awesome burden of responsibility. We constitute, we can’t avoid constituting, the parent group of the family of humanity. What happens to parents? People look up to them until they in turn become parents. But so few of us actually accept the demands of raising children now… All the natural responses which should work themselves out in direct, person-to-person relationships, in our case remain abstract, with infinitely more power to cause psychological damage when things go wrong. Even with you beside him—and I trust you’ll take it as a compliment when I say that you’re a motherly person, because if you weren’t you couldn’t have handled your job so well for so long—even with your support, then, Saxena could not face the strain of being a member of the parent group. It wasn’t you that let him down, which is what I suspect you feel afraid of. It was the other way around. And, given what has happened to Jorgen, it may simply turn out that the post of Director of the Bridge System is the one role in all of history which no single person can endure. It wouldn’t be surprising, would it? Through-out the centuries we’ve imposed more and more demands on fewer individuals. So—” He concluded with a wave of one plump hand.

  She was very pale, but she had been nodding more and more often as he talked. Now she said, “Thank you, Moses. That’s a credible insight. I think I shall find it useful. It explains a lot about my attraction to Hans, too.”

  “As the person brave enough to take over where Chen had failed, yes. In fact I mentioned my theory to him, and he found he was in broad agreement. This was at the meeting when he told me what to do if our best efforts to persuade Long to recant didn’t pay off.”