Between the Strokes of Night

“Suppose you’re right,” said Elissa. “And you have me fairly well persuaded. What can we do about it?”

Peron hugged her close to him, sharing their warmth; but when he spoke his voice was as cold as the wind. “Love, I’m tired of being manipulated, and I’m tired of blind guesswork. We must go back to orbit now. We must stop allowing ourselves to be fobbed off with sweet reasonableness and bland answers, from Olivia, or Jan de Vries, or anyone else. And we have to push as hard as we can for the real answers about S-space civilization: who, how, and why?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

At Elissa’s insistence, they set a meeting with Sy as their first priority on returning to orbit and to S-space. Elissa agreed with Peron’s ideas, but she wanted Sy’s unique perspective on them.

Their journey back up the Beanstalk took place in a totally different atmosphere from the trip down. The cable car was as crowded as ever, but the travellers were subdued, the mood somber. After a few days on the surface, everyone had sensed at some deep level that Earth was now alien, a world so affected by wars and changing climate that permanent return there was unthinkable. Humanity had left its original home. There would be no going back. The travellers looked down at the planet’s glittering clouds and snow cover, and said their mental farewells.

Olivia Ferranti had mentioned that few people made more than one visit to Earth. Now Peron and Elissa knew why.

When they arrived at the set of stations that formed the upper debarkation point of the Beanstalk, Elissa queried the information system for Sy’s location. While she did so, Peron prepared to transfer them back to S-space. It proved surprisingly easy. Since almost everyone returning from a visit to Earth moved at once back to S-space, the procedure had been streamlined to become completely routine. Peron gave their ID codes, and was quickly offered access to a pair of suspense tanks.

“Ready?” he said to Elissa.

She was still sitting at the information terminal. She shook her head and looked puzzled. “No. Not ready at all. Hold off on booking us into the tanks.” “What’s the problem? Can’t you find Sy.”

“I found him — but he isn’t in S-space any more. He moved to normal space even before we did.”

“You mean he went down to Earth, too?”

“Not according to the information service. He’s been here all the time we were on Earth. And he left S-space a quarter of an S-hour before we did — so that means he’s been in normal space for over twenty days!”

“What’s he been doing?”

Elissa shook her head again. “Lord knows. That information isn’t in the computer bank. But he was last reported on one of the stations here in the synchronous complex. If we want to get our heads together with his, there’s no point in going to S-space yet.”

Peron cancelled the suspense tank request. “Come on then. I don’t know how to do it, but we have to discover some way to track him down.”

That task proved easier than Peron had imagined. Sy had made no attempt to conceal his whereabouts. He had lived in one room for the whole time, with an almost continuous link to the orbiting data banks and central computer network. He was sitting quietly at a terminal when Elissa and Peron slid open his door. He took his eyes away from the screen for a second and nodded to them casually. “I’ve been expecting you for a few days now. Give me a moment to finish what I’m doing.”

Elissa looked curiously around the small room. It was a one-fifth gee chamber, with few material signs of Sy’s presence. The service robots had cleared away all food and dishes, and there were no luxury or entertainment items. The bed looked unused, and the small desk top was completely empty. Sy was neatly groomed, clean-shaven and dressed in tight-fitting dark clothes.

“No hurry,” she said. She sat herself down calmly on the bed.

“Got a message from Kallen,” said Sy, without taking his eyes off the screen. “Lum and Rosanne are delayed, won’t be here as soon as they thought. How was Earth?”

“Thought-provoking.” Peron seated himself next to Elissa, and waited until Sy had completed data storage, signed off, and swung to face them. “You ought to make a trip there, Sy. It’s something you’d never forget.”

“I thought of it,” said Sy. “Then I decided I had higher priorities. Plenty of time for Earth later — it won’t go away.”

“But what are you doing here, in normal space?” asked Elissa. “According to the information service, you’ve been here forever.”