There's nothing on this clapped-out ball of mud for you or your family. I've got most of my grass specimens on board the ship and we'll be ready to go in a couple of days.'
'Thanks, but I'm not interested.'
'Free trip, old son. And no delays. Worth thinking about.'
Dallen repressed a pang of dislike. 'If I asked why you wanted me along, would you give me a straight answer?'
'A straight answer? What an unreasonable request!' The humorous glint faded from Renard's eyes. 'Would you believe that I just like you and want to help?'
'Try something else.'
'Carry, you shouldn't be so unbending. What if I say it's because you're the nearest thing I have to a rival? I told you before that the universe looks after me and gives me everything I want, which is fine — but it gets a bit boring. 1 mean, I know I'm going to have Silvia… I can't lose… but if you were around there'd be the illusion of competition, and it would make life more interesting for all concerned. How does that sound?'
'It sounds weird,' Dallen said. 'Are you on felicitin right now?'
Renard shook his head. Tm naturally like this — and I'm not letting you out of here until you agree that we're all going to Orbitsville together.'
'That's an infringement of my liberty.' Dallen smiled pleasantly, masking the glandular spurting which accompanied the thought of being allowed to put his hands on Renard. He had taken one step towards him when a confusion of sounds reached them from another part of the building — startled voices, V an irregular hammering, the shattering of glass. Renard r turned and walked quickly along the corridor with Dallen at his heels. A rapid increase in the noise level told them the commotion was originating in the studio section. The repeated splintering of glass gave Dallen a sick premonition.
He entered the studio at a run and had to edge through a cluster of people to see what was happening. Their attention was concentrated on Silvia. She was gripping a long metal bar and was using it, swinging from one side and then the other, to destroy her glass mosaic screen.
At each slicing impact another part of the unique creation ruptured and sagged, and brilliant motes of colour sprayed like water droplets. Galaxies and dusters of galaxies were annihilated at every stroke. Silvia laboured like an automaton, hewing and clubbing, sobbing aloud each time she overcame the inertia of the heavy bar. Her face was white, the eyes Samson-blind to the transient bright-hued fountains she was creating.
Four years' work and a third of a million pieces of glass. Dallen recited in his head in a kind of dismayed chant. Please don't erase your own life.
He wanted to dart forward and bring the destruction to an end, but was paralysed by a curious timidity, a fear of intruding on private torment. All he could do was stand and watch until Silvia's strength failed. She raised the bar high, aiming for the uppermost part of the trefoil design, but it wavered and circled in her grasp and she had to let it fall. She stood for a moment, head bowed, before turning to face the group.
'It was a memorial,' she said in a dazed, abstracted voice. 'Karal doesn't need a memorial. He isn't dead.' She stared at Dallen, breathing hard, and took a half-step in his direction.
'You're coming with me,' said Libby Ezzati as she stepped forward and put a motherly arm around Silvia's shoulders. 'You're going to lie down.'
'It's the best thing,' agreed Peter Ezzati, apparently having just arrived at the house. His rotund body was encased in a dark formal suit to which he had added a band of black crepe on one arm. He positioned himself beside Silvia to help usher her out of the studio and recoiled, comically startled, when she clawed at his armband.
'Take that bloody thing off!' Her voice was shrill and unrecognisable. 'Don't you understand? Are you too bloody stupid to understand?'
'It's all right — everything is all right,' Libby soothed and with a surprising show of strength half-lifted Silvia clear of the floor and bore her away into the main pan of the house. It seemed to Dallen that Silvia's eyes again sought out his before two other women rallied to Libby's aid, closing in on Silvia and shutting her off from his view. He stared after them until a large petal of glass belatedly detached itself from the gutted screen and crashed to the floor. The sound of it triggered a crossfire of conversation in the group of watchers.
'Spectacular, wasn't it?' Renard murmured to Dallen. 'Electra herself couldn't have put on a better show.'
Dallen, baffled by the reference, saw that Renard was cool and untouched, perhaps even amused by the monumental act of destruction he had witnessed. 'Rick, you're a real credit to the human race.'
'What are you trying to say, old son?'
'That I don't like you and I'm getting dangerously close to doing something about it.'
Renard looked gratified. 'Which one of us do you reckon it's dangerous for?'
'Have a good trip to Orbitsville.' Dallen turned to walk away and almost blundered into Peter Ezzati, who had removed his armband and was still looking flustered.
'Everything is happening at once,' Ezzati said.
'Karal dying… the experiment… Silvia… And I was late getting here because I was following the news about Orbitsville. These green lights have to mean something. Carry. I'm starting to get a bad feeling about them.'
'What green lights?' Dallen felt he had reached saturation point as far as new information was concerned, but something in Ezzati's manner prompted him to make the enquiry.
'Haven't you been following the news? They've discovered these bands of green light drifting across the shell, inside and out. At first they thought there was only going to be one, but more and more of them are showing up, getting closer together.'
'Is it some kind of ionisation effect? Something like an aurora?' Ezzati shook his head. 'The Science Commission says the bands don't register on any type of detector they've got, except photographically. You can see them if you're looking directly at the shell, but that's all.'
'Then they can’t amount for much.'
'I wish I could shrug them off like that,' Ezzati said, frowning. 'I don't like what's happening, Carry — the shell material is supposed to be totally stable.'
'It isn't going to explode, you know.' As a native of Orbitsville, one who had flown millions of kilometres over its grasslands and mountains and seas, Dallen clearly understood the sheer immutability of the vast globe. Since coming to Earth he had found that people who had never been to Orbitsville were unable to cope with its scale, and tended to think of it as something like a large metal balloon. The inadequacy of their vision was often shown in the way they spoke of people living in Orbitsville, whereas those who had first-hand experience invariably said on Orbitsville.
There could be no substitute for seeing the reality of the sphere from the direct observation area of a ship. Once was always enough. The Big O was daunting but somehow reassuring, and nobody who had ever looked on it could be quite the same person again.
Tin not suggesting it’s going to explode, it's just that…' Ezzati paused and cocked his head like a bird.
'I knew there was something else I had to tell you. With not coming into the office these days, I don't suppose you'll have heard about Gerald Mathieu.'
'Mathieu?' Dallen held his, voice steady. 'What about him?'
'He set out for the west coast this morning, but he didn't get very for — his ship went down somewhere near Montgomery.'
'Forced landing?'
'Very forced. From the analysis of the way his beacons snuffed out it looks as though he flew smack into a hill.'
The words impacted on Dallen's mind like a bowling ball hurled with pin-splintering force, scattering all his preconceptions about the immediate future. Instead of satisfaction at the idea of Mathieu meeting a violent death, he felt an immediate sense of loss. It had to be wrong for the man who had casually destroyed a family to escape so easily, so quickly, without even knowing that he had been judged and condemned, without even looking into his executioner's eyes.
'Is there any definite…?' Dallen swallowed to ease the dryness in his throat. 'Is Mathieu dead?'
'Don't let Silvia hear you use that word around here.' Ezzati smiled broadly and patted Dallen's upper arm. 'Discarnate is the accepted term. It looks as though young Mathieu is as discarnate as a dodo.'
