Bloom paused. He lost his smile, turned, and stared to his right along the table. The voice of a puzzled embodied computer was steadily becoming louder.
“If the Builders are not in the future, then they can’t come back and change the present so that the Builders are in the future, because they are not there to do it.” E. Crimson Tally was staring down at the table top. “But if they are in the future, then the present didn’t need the artifacts to become that future, so then the future they make if they send the artifacts back is a different future—”
He paused and froze, his eyes blank and his mouth hanging open far enough to reveal his bottom teeth.
“There!” Darya pointed accusingly at Quintus Bloom. “Now you’ve done it. You’ve put E.C. into a loop. That’ll be hell to fix. I told you it was a logical contradiction, the idea that the Builders might have come from the future.”
She seemed to be the only one who cared. Half-a-dozen conversations were starting up along the table.
Professor Merada leaned over and patted her hand. “We are all good scientists here, Professor Lang, and it is as good scientists that we must behave. We all have our cherished theories, on which we have worked for many days and months and years. Although it is hard to abandon beloved ideas, if a new and better theory comes along it is our duty as good scientists to accept it. Even to embrace it.”
Darya bristled. The man was trying to soothe her. And Carmina Gold was nodding agreement. So were half a dozen others at the table. Darya couldn’t believe it. They had been here for less than a quarter of an hour. The first course of the meal was still to arrive, and she had said only a tenth of what she had to say — and badly, at that. But minds along the table were already closing. Darya had lost the argument. Quintus Bloom had won it.
Darya stood up and blundered towards the door. She was quite sure that she was right, but without evidence she would never convince anyone. Quintus Bloom was too confident, too smooth and charismatic, too well-armed with recent facts.
Well, there was only one way to deal with that. She had to find more facts of her own. And she would not do it sitting in an office on Sentinel Gate.
Chapter Seven
Darya would need facts, but at the moment she wanted something a good deal more personal.
She had not seen Hans Rebka since the beginning of the seminar. For all she knew he had left after the first few minutes, because she had been too preoccupied to notice. However, it was easy enough to find out which guest accommodation in the institute was assigned to any visitor. Darya checked the central listing. Hans had a single-story building to himself, a bungalow that lay in a wooded area behind the main complex of the institute.
Although it was raining outside and already dark, Darya didn’t want to waste time going back for more clothing. The night was chilly, but she welcomed the brisk breeze as a force to blow away her worries. She walked slowly, face tilted up to catch the raindrops. It would be hard to know what to say to Hans without sounding like a whiner and a loser. Had he been there himself, to see and hear exactly what had happened? She didn’t know.
Darya felt a touch of guilt. Chasing down her old notes after the seminar, then losing her temper at Merada’s crazy dinner before the food even appeared — she had been too busy to give any thought to what Hans was doing. Maybe she could make up for that now.
When she was fifty yards from the bungalow, the shower quickened to a downpour. Darya sprinted for the porch and stood panting beneath it for a few moments, listening to the hiss of rain and the gurgle of runoff through gutters and downspouts.
The door was not locked, and it was — unusual for Hans — slightly ajar. The inside of the house was dark, but guest quarters were on a standard plan and Darya knew the layout well. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark. She did not turn on any light as she went quietly through the open livingroom and on into the bedroom. She could make out the bed and a white sheet covering it, with a bare foot sticking out past the end.
She gripped the big toe and tugged it gently, then ran her fingers along to the ankle. “Hans? I need to talk to you. I think I just made an ass of myself.”
There was a gasp from the other end of the bed, at the same moment as Darya realized that something was wrong. Hans Rebka had hard, bony feet. The foot and ankle she was holding were smooth and soft.
“Who’s that?” said a woman’s voice. The foot jerked free of Darya’s grasp. The pale blur of a face appeared at the other end of the bed, as the woman sat upright. “What the devil are you doing?”
A light snapped on. Darya found herself face to face with Glenna Omar. “I’m sorry. I thought these were Hans Rebka’s quarters.”
“They are.” Glenna pulled up the sheet, to cover her naked breasts and shoulders. “Didn’t you ever hear of privacy?”
“What are you doing here?” It seemed to Darya that the other woman looked more pleased than annoyed. “And where’s Hans?”
She knew the answer to the first question, even before Glenna jerked her tousled blond head to the right and said, “In there. In the bathroom.”
Darya heard the sound of running water. She had taken it for the sound of rain outside. She walked across to the bathroom door and went in.
Hans stood at the sink in profile to Darya, drying his hands on a towel. He was naked and he did not look around, but he must have heard her come in because he said, “Ten more seconds, and I’ll be there. Don’t worry, I haven’t run away.”
He turned around, with a grin that changed at once to a grimace. “Oh, no.”
“Oh yes. You bastard.” She glared at him, from his scarred, concerned face to his bony knees and over-sized feet. All signs of sexual excitement faded as she watched. “I should have known. What they say about men from the Phemus Circle is true. Callous, faithless, sex-mad — I thought you and I meant something to each other.”
“We do. Darya” — she had turned, to walk back through the bedroom, and he was ignoring Glenna to hurry after her — “where are you going?”
“Leaving. Leaving you, and this lousy institute, and this rotten planet. Don’t try to follow me. Go back to your — your strumpet in there.”
“But where are you going?” They were outside in the teeming rain. The night was turning colder, and Hans stumbled bare-footed on slippery turf and fell flat in the mud. He couldn’t see a thing. “Wait a minute, and I’ll come with you.”
“You will not. I don’t want you anywhere near me. I don’t want to be on the same world as you.”
“Who’ll look after you — who’ll keep you out of trouble?”
“I’m perfectly able to look after myself. Bug off, and leave me alone!”
Darya began to run. Hans took a couple of steps after her. This time he tripped over a bush and fell again to the ground. When he got up he couldn’t see her or even the path.
He limped back to the bungalow. The door was wide open. Had it been open when Darya came? He felt sure that he had closed and locked it. He headed through into the bedroom, rubbing a bruise on his thigh. Glenna was still snuggled down comfortably in bed, the sheet pulled up to her eyes. She giggled.
“You ought to just see yourself. Your hair is soaked, and you have mud all over your chest and arms. You look like a Phemus Circle wild man.”
“Yeah. I’m a real comedy act.” Hans sat down on the end of the bed. “Hell and damnation.”