The Currents of Space (25 page)

Steen! The traitor! Afraid to meet his eyes!

The Townman! To look at him was most difficult of all. He was the native who had dishonored his daughter with his touch yet who could remain safe and untouchable behind the walls of the Trantorian Embassy. He would have been glad to grind his teeth and pound his desk if he had been alone. As it was, not a muscle of his face must move though it tore beneath the strain.

If Samia had not . . . He dropped that. His own negligence had cultivated her willfulness and he could not blame her for it now. She had not tried to excuse herself or soften her own guilt. She had told him all the truth of her private attempts to
play the interstellar spy and how horribly it had ended. She had relied completely, in her shame and bitterness, on his understanding, and she would have that much. She would have that much, if it meant the ruin of me structure he had been building.

He said, “This conference has been forced upon me. I see no point in saying anything. I’m here to listen.”

Abel said, “I believe Steen would like to have his say first.”

Fife’s eyes filled with contempt that stung Steen.

Steen yelled his answer. “You made me turn to Trantor, Fife. You violated the principle of autonomy. You couldn’t expect me to stand for that. Really.”

Fife said nothing and Abel said, not without a little contempt of his own, “Get to your point, Steen. You said you had something to say. Say it.”

Steen’s sallow cheekbones reddened without benefit of rouge. “I will, and right now. Of course I don’t claim to be the detective that the Squire of Fife represents himself to be, but I can think. Really! And I’ve
been
thinking. Fife had a story to tell yesterday, all about a mysterious traitor he called X. I could see it was just a lot of talk so that he could declare an emergency. I wasn’t fooled a minute.”

“There’s no X?” asked Fife quietly. Then why did
you
run? A man who runs needs no other accusation.”

“Is that so? Really?” cried Steen. “Well, I would run out of a burning building even if I had not set the fire myself.”

“Go on, Steen,” said Abel.

Steen licked his lips and turned to a minute consideration of his fingernails. He smoothed them gently as he spoke. “But then I thought, why make up that particular story with all its complications and things? It’s not his way. Really! It’s not Fife’s way. I know him. We all know him. He has no imagination at all, Your Excellency. A brute of a man! Almost as bad as Bort.”

Fife scowled. “Is he saying something, Abel, or is he babbling?”

“Go on, Steen,” said Abel.

“I will, if you’ll let me talk. My goodness! Whose side are
you on? I said to myself (this was after dinner), I said, Why would a man like Fife make up a story like that? There was only one answer. He couldn’t make it up. Not with
his
mind. So it was true. It must be true. And, of course, patrollers
had
been killed, though Fife is quite capable of arranging to have that happen.”

Fife shrugged his shoulders.

Steen drove on. “Only who is X? It isn’t L Really! I know it isn’t I! And I’ll admit it could only have been a Great Squire. But what Great Squire knew most about it, anyway? What Great Squire has been trying to use the story of the Spatio-analyst for a year now to frighten the others into some sort of what he calls ‘united effort’ and what I call surrender to a Fife dictatorship?

“I’ll tell you who X is.” Steen stood up, the top of his head brushing the edge of the receptor-cube and flattening as the uppermost inch sliced off into nothingness. He pointed a trembling finger. “
He’s
X. The Squire of Fife. He found this Spatio-analyst. He put him out of the way, when he saw the rest of us weren’t impressed with his silly remarks at our first conference, and then he brought him out again after he had already arranged a military coup.”

Fife turned wearily to Abel. “Is he through? If so, remove him. He is an unbearable offense to any decent man.”

Abel said, “Have you any comment to make on what he says?”

“Of course not. It isn’t worth comment. The man is desperate. He’ll say anything.”

“You can’t just brush it off, Fife,” called Steen. He looked about at the rest. His eyes narrowed and the skin at his nostrils was white with tension. He remained standing. “Listen. He said his investigators found records in a doctor’s office. He said the doctor had died by accident after diagnosing the Spatio-analyst as the victim of psycho-probing. He said it was murder by X to keep the identity of the Spatio-analyst secret. That’s what he said. Ask him. Ask him if that isn’t what he said.”

“And if I did?” asked Fife.

“Then ask him how he could get the records from the office
of a doctor who was dead and buried for months unless he had them all along. Really!”

Fife said, “This is foolish. We can waste time indefinitely this way. Another doctor took over the dead man’s practice and his records as well. Do any of you think medical records are destroyed along with a physician?”

Abel said, “No, of course not.”

Steen stuttered, then sat down.

Fife said, “What’s next? Have any of you more to say? More accusations? More anything?” His voice was low. Bitterness showed through.

Abel said, “Why, that was Steen’s say, and we’ll let it pass. Now Junz and I, we’re here on another kind of business. We would like to see the Spatio-analyst.”

Fife’s hands had been resting upon the desk top. They lifted now and came down to clutch the edge of the desk. His black eyebrows drew together.

He said, “We have in custody a man of subnormal mentality who claims to be a Spatio-analyst. I’ll have him brought in!”

Valona March had never, never in her life dreamed such impossibilities could exist. For over a day now, ever since she had landed on this planet of Sark, there had been a touch of wonder about everything. Even the prison cells in which she and Rik had been separately placed seemed to have an unreal quality of magnificence about them. Water came out of a hole in a pipe when you pressed a button. Heat came out of the wall, although the air outside had been colder than she had thought air could possibly get. And everyone who spoke to her wore such beautiful clothes.

She had been in rooms in which were all sorts of things she had never seen before. This one now was larger than any yet but it was almost bare. It had more people in it, though. There was a stern-looking man behind a desk, and a much older, very wrinkled man in a chair, and three others . . .

One was the Townman!

She jumped up and ran to him. “Townman! Townman!”

But he wasn’t there!

He had gotten up and waved at her. “Stay back, Lona. Stay back!”

And she passed right through him. She had reached out to seize his sleeve, he moved it away. She lunged, half stumbling, and passed right through him. For a moment the breath went out of her body. The Townman had turned, was facing her again, but she could only stare down at her legs.

Both of them were thrusting through the heavy arm of the chair in which the Townman had been sitting. She could see it plainly, in all its color and solidity. It encircled her legs but she did not feel it. She put out a trembling hand and her fingers sank an inch deep into upholstery they could not feel either. Her fingers remained visible.

She shrieked and fell, her last sensation being that of the Townman’s arms reaching automatically for her and herself falling through their circle as though they were pieces of flesh-tinted air.

She was in a chair again, Rik holding one hand tightly and the old, wrinkled man leaning over her.

He was saying, “Don’t be frightened, my dear. It’s just a picture. A photograph, you know.”

Valona looked about. The Townman was still sitting there. He wasn’t looking at her.

She pointed a finger. “Isn’t he there?”

Rik said suddenly, “It’s a trimensic personification, Lona. He’s somewhere else, but we can see him from here.”

Valona shook her head. If Rik said so, it was all right. But she lowered her eyes. She dared not look at people who were there and not there at the same time.

Abel said to Rik, “So you know what trimensic personification is, young man?”

“Yes, sir.” It had been a tremendous day for Rik, too, but where Valona was increasingly dazzled, he had found things increasingly familiar and comprehensible.

“Where did you learn that?”

“I don’t know. I knew it before—before I forgot.”

Fife had not moved from his seat behind the desk during the wild plunge of Valona March toward the Townman.

He said acidly, “I am sorry to have to disturb this meeting by bringing in a hysterical native woman. The so-called Spatio-analyst required her presence.”

“It’s all right,” said Abel. “But I notice that your Florinian of subnormal mentality seems to be acquainted with trimensic personification.”

“He has been well drilled, I imagine,” said Fife.

Abel said, “Has he been questioned since arriving on Sark?”

“He certainly has.”

“With what result?”

“No new information.”

Abel turned to Rik. “What’s your name?”

“Rik is the only name I remember,” said Rik calmly.

“Do you know anyone here?”

Rik looked from face to face without fear. He said, “Only the Townman. And Lona, of course.”

“This,” said Abel, gesturing toward Fife, “is the greatest Squire that ever lived. He owns the whole world. What do you think of him?”

Rik said boldly, “I’m an Earthman. He doesn’t own
me
.”

Abel said in an aside to Fife, “I don’t think an adult native Florinian could be trained into that sort of defiance.”

“Even with a psycho-probe?” returned Fife scornfully.

“Do you know this gentleman?” asked Abel, returning to Rik.

“No, sir.”

“This is Dr. Selim Junz. He’s an important official at the Interstellar Spatio-analytic Bureau.”

Rik looked at him intently. “Then he’d be one of my chiefs.
But,” with disappointment, “I don’t know him. Or maybe I just don’t remember.”

Junz shook his head gloomily. “I’ve never seen him, Abel.”

“That’s something for the record,” muttered Fife.

“Now listen, Rik,” said Abel, “I’m going to tell you a story. I want you to listen with all your mind and think. Think and think! Do you understand me?”

Rik nodded.

Abel talked slowly. His voice was the only sound in the room for long minutes. As he went on, Rik’s eyelids closed and screwed themselves tight shut. His lips drew back, his fists moved up to his chest, and his head bent forward. He had the look of a man in agony.

Abel talked on, passing back and forth across the reconstruction of events as they had originally been presented by the Squire of Fife. He talked of the original message of disaster, of its interception, of the meeting between Rik and X, of the psycho-probing, of how Rik had been found and brought up on Florina, of the doctor who diagnosed him and then died, of his returning memory.

He said, “That’s the whole story, Rik. I’ve told you all of it. Does anything sound familiar to you?”

Slowly, painfully, Rik said, “I remember the last parts. You know, the last few days. I remember something further back, too. Maybe it was the doctor, when I first started talking. It’s very dim. . . . But that’s all.”

Abel said, “But you
do
remember further back. You remember danger to Florina.”

“Yes. Yes. That was the first thing I remembered.”

“Then can’t you remember after that? You landed on Sark and met a man.”

Rik moaned, “I can’t I can’t remember.”

“Try! Try!”

Rik looked up. His white face was wet with perspiration. “I remember a word.”

“What word, Rik?”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Tell us anyway.”

“It goes along with a table. Long, long ago. Very dim. I was sitting. I think, maybe, someone else was sitting. Then he was standing, looking down at me. And there’s a word.”

Abel was patient. “What word?”

Rik clenched his fists and whispered, “Fife!”

Every man but Fife rose to his feet. Steen shrieked, “I told you,” and burst into a high-pitched bubbling cackle.

Fife said with tightly controlled passion, “Let us end this farce.”

He had waited before speaking, his eyes hard and his face expressionless, until in sheer anticlimax the rest were forced to take their seats again. Rik had bent his head, eyes screwed painfully shut, probing his own aching mind. Valona pulled him toward herself, trying hard to cradle his head on her shoulder, stroking his cheek softly.

Abel said shakily, “Why do you say this is a farce?”

Fife said, “Isn’t it? I agreed to this meeting in the first place only because of a particular threat you held over me. I would have refused even so if I had known the conference was intended to be a trial of myself with renegades and murderers acting as both prosecutors and jury.”

Abel frowned and said with chilling formality, “This is not a trial, Squire. Dr. Junz is here in order to recover the person of a member of the I.S.B., as is his right and duty. I am here to protect the interests of Trantor in a troubled time. There is no doubt in my mind that this man, Rik, is the missing Spatio-analyst. We can end this part of the conference immediately if you will agree to turn over the man to Dr. Junz for further examination, including a check of physical characteristics. We would naturally require your further help in finding the guilty psycho-prober
and in setting up safeguards against a future repetition of such acts against what is, after all, an interstellar agency which has consistently held itself above regional politics.”

Fife said, “Quite a speech! But the obvious remains obvious and your plans are quite transparent. What would happen if I gave up this man? I rather think that the I.S.B. will manage to find out exactly what it wants to find out. It claims to be an interstellar agency with no regional ties, but it’s a fact, isn’t it, that Trantor contributes two thirds of its annual budget? I doubt that any reasonable observer would consider it really neutral in the Galaxy of today. Its findings with regard to this man will surely suit Trantor’s imperial interests.