The old man shrugged. 'I'm the only one available, Earl. I and Ragin, who was one of the youngest at the time. As I remember it Rudi asked you to go with him, Carl. For some reason you refused.'
'A moment of sanity.' Ragin looked up from his cup, scented vapor wreathing his face. 'I had a new appointment which would have been lost had I absented myself, and you know how hard it is to get a place with the Tripart. And, to be frank, I thought of the whole thing as a kind of joke. Earth-how can it exist? It's the same as Bonanza and Jackpot and Eden and all the rest. A name given to a dream of eternal happiness. You must have heard the stories, Earl. The legends. The world on which there is no pain or hurt or fear. The trees grow food of all descriptions, the rivers are wine, the very air is a perfumed caress. The sun never burns, the nights never chill, garments are made as needed from leaves and flowers.' He drank some of the tisane, frowned, added spirit from his own flask. 'The concept is intoxicating and we become drunk on wild hopes and fantastic optimism. To find Earth. To dip our hands in its inexhaustible treasure. To cure all our ills and slake all our desires. Paradise!'
Dumarest said, carefully, 'Did Rudi actually know the coordinates?'
'I don't know. I don't think so but, as I told you, he was a persuasive bastard. He could talk the leg off a dog if he wanted. He managed to convince us he knew something and we backed him to follow it through.' He glanced at the old man. 'Some of us have reason to regret it.'
'I'm not one of them.'
'Not you, perhaps, but Luccia?'
Cucciolla shrugged. 'Life is a gamble, Carl, as you must be aware. Some win and others lose, but it all evens out in the end. She doesn't regret the money she invested. Like us she wanted the results. She wanted Rudi to find Earth.'
And he had.
He had!
Dumarest looked down at his cup and saw the shimmer of light reflected from the surface of the liquid it contained. Radiance reflected from the surging tisane as it flowed in a series of mounting ripples from one side to the other. The movement amplified the quivering of his hands.
Rudi Boulaye had cheated and lied for reasons he could guess. He had found the coordinates of Earth; the essential figures which alone could guide a ship to where it hung in space. The figures which were absent from all navigational tables and almanacs. Data which had rested inches from his hand and was now irretrievably lost.
Could a copy have been made?
'He returned,' said Cucciolla. 'He was absent a year or more and he came back and we met and he told us the bad news. Earth is a lie. It is nothing but a legend. The planet simply does not and has never existed.'
'Yet you backed him to look for it.' Dumarest was sharp. 'You-all intelligent people-you believed the legend could be true.'
'It was a game,' said Ragin. 'Something to amuse us. A childish fantasy.'
'No!' Dumarest set aside the tisane and rose to pace the floor. Tiny plumes of dust rose from the carpet beneath his booted feet. 'That's what you told yourselves after Rudi had returned to report his failure. An easy way of salving your pride. But before that, when you gave him your money, you had a belief in the enterprise. A conviction that he could succeed. Why?'
Cucciolla blinked. 'Your meaning eludes me, my friend.'
Was he deliberately obtuse? Dumarest said, patiently, 'You must have had something to go on. Facts, data, items of information enhanced by considered logic. A rumor, even, which you considered to be worth investigating. For God's sake, man, think! Try to remember! Rudi went somewhere- that's why you raised the money. Where did he go? Why did he go there? What was it he went to check out?'
Talk, damn you! Die if you must, burst your heart, your brain, but talk before you go. Talk and tell me what Rudi had learned!
'Earl!' Ragin was standing before him, face close, eyes anxious. 'Steady, man! Steady!'
'I'm all right.'
'You sure? You looked like murder.'
'It's nothing.' Dumarest felt the perspiration on his face, the quiver of muscles, the raw tension in his stomach. He breathed deeply, inflating his lungs, fighting to be calm. 'It's all right,' he said. 'I just want him to remember.'
'He's an old man,' said Ragin. 'For him it isn't easy.'
'You then? Can't you remember? You must have sat in on the discussions.'
'Some, yes, but not all. I was almost a passenger and went along with the others.' Ragin frowned, thinking, throwing his mind back into the past. 'It began as a game, one of those what-would-happen-if things. What would happen if some of the old legends were true? Earth was mentioned, I forget why, and we took it from there.'
'And?'
'That's about all?' Ragin met Dumarest's eyes. 'All I remember,' he added quickly. 'It all happened years ago and things happened to blur the memory.'
The desire to eliminate a mistake, of not wanting to appear a fool even to the inward self. A defense used by sensitive minds to maintain their delusions of superiority. Forget it and it ceased to exist. Think of it if you must but only as an amusing episode or a time of good fellowship, the meetings themselves the main reason for the existence of the group.
Ragin's reaction-Cucciolla?
'He had a book,' he said. 'Rudi had a book and it gave some hints and clues. Mostly rubbish, of course, but we applied the science of logical determination to the given statements and came up with some interesting speculations. As Carl said, it began as a game and progressed from there. Without Rudi to fire our imaginations it would have died within a week.'
'The book?' A gesture told Dumarest it was useless to search. Rudi had taken it or it had been lost or destroyed. 'The hints, then? The clues you mentioned?'
'I remember the first,' said Ragin, glad to be of help. 'Something connected to a religion of some kind. The creed of a cult which worked to remain secret. The Folk?' He frowned. 'No, the People. The Original People. An item about a single home world. Ridiculous, of course, a moment's logical thought proves the inconsistency. How could so many divergent types have evolved on a single planet? How could there have been room to hold them all?' Those questions, for him, needed no answer. 'But I think there was something else. A name. What was it now?'
'Erce,' said Cucciolla. 'It was Erce.'
Erce-the name meant nothing. Dumarest looked from one to the other, at the books, the recordings. Had nothing been saved from those meetings?
'There was no need,' said Cucciolla when he asked. 'We met and talked and thrashed things out but nothing was important enough to keep. As Carl said we were swayed by Rudi and went along with him. A desperate move on the part of some, admitted, but what had they to lose? And we trusted him.'
That was a mistake, but Dumarest didn't mention it. There was no need to destroy their happiness with the past. Rudi had succumbed to greed but he hadn't been the first and wouldn't be the last.
'Erce,' he said. 'Are you certain about that?' He watched them look at each other, nod. 'Was there anything else? Think,' he urged. 'At one point in your discussion the need for Rudi to travel must have been mentioned. You simply wouldn't have given him money for no apparent reason. He wanted to book passage, right? To where? He returned, correct? From where? You'd backed him and he must have made a report. Those places would have been named, surely?'
These would be clues to work on failing all else, and Dumarest kept at it long past the time when good manners dictated he should leave. It was past dawn when he finally emerged from the building into the street and he stood with the cold wind stirring his hair as it stirred the flags high above. Early as it was the streets were busy-the three-shift system of the universities had destroyed the divisions of day and night in the city.
In a cafe he drank strong coffee while thinking, half-listening to the gossip which wafted around and over him like windblown leaves.
'Another suicide in Bolloten's class.' A girl relayed the news while chewing at a bun. 'That's the fourth this semester. One more and I hear they'll terminate his contract.'
'Someone should cut his throat.' A man scowled over a bowl of gruel. 'He pushes too hard.'
'But teaches fast. Three years' work done in two. If you can't take the heat you shouldn't stand near the
