“Now really, Jay, you should know better than to suspect me of barbarism. I’m talking of something quick, and painless, and just about foolproof. I want you, Jay, to go outside for a few minutes. And Mel, you stay here with me. Don’t be afraid, all I want from you are answers to a few questions. And you, Jay, you can run away if you want to, but I wouldn’t advise it. The others of the crew don’t believe in the refined approach. Get outside now, and close the hatch. Be quick. For your sake, we want this all over and done with before anyone else gets back here.”
I looked at Mel. With her backpack and her skinny, muddied legs and short hair, she didn’t resemble any girl from Erin. I wanted to tell her, “Make him think you’re a boy! Whatever you do, don’t let him suspect that you or anyone else here is a female.”
But there was no way to say anything to her at all without Danny Shaker catching every word. I went reluctantly through the hatch and stood outside leaning on the hull of the beetle. Even with my ear pressed against it, I could not hear what was said inside.
The wait seemed endless, though I know from the changing angle of Maveen in the sky that it was no more than a few minutes until the hatch slid open and Shaker was saying, “All right, Jay, back inside.”
Mel was sitting down now. Shaker nodded his head toward her and said, “See. Good as ever. So it’s your turn, Jay. What do you have to tell me about what you learned when you were inside Paddy’s Fortune?”
It was obvious what he was doing. If Mel and I were telling the truth, we would have to be consistent with each other. But what had he asked her, and what had she told him?
I made the hardest decision of my life. To keep Danny Shaker and his crew away from the inside of this world, I had to offer something better. Doctor Eileen would have fits if she knew what I was going to do, but I had no choice.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the navigation aid. “I learned that Paddy’s Fortune isn’t Godspeed Base. But a Godspeed Base and a Godspeed Drive may still exist, at a place called the Net, which seems to be some kind of hardware storage facility. The instructions to get there are inside this.”
Danny Shaker took the aid from my hand and stared at it, with no trace of expression on his smooth face. “Did you get this from Paddy Enderton?”
“No.” It was a good thing to be able to answer him honestly, because I was never a good liar. “It’s like something that Enderton had, but I got this one here.”
“You know how to use it?”
“I do. But Mel—he knows it better than I do.” There. I had slipped in one lie after all.
“Does he now.” Shaker turned his sparkling grey eyes to Mel and inspected her closely, while I wondered if I had made another mistake. What I had just said made Mel less likely to be killed, but more likely to be taken away with Shaker from Paddy’s Fortune. But hadn’t I made it more likely that I myself would be killed, since I had just stated that Mel was better qualified to use the aid than I was? Surely we would both be useful, even if only as backups to each other.
“Outside. Both of you, this time.” Shaker spoke before I had time to consider further permutations. “I need five minutes solo thinking. Stay right by the hatch, now, or don’t hold me responsible for the consequences.”
He didn’t bother to suggest what those might be, and I didn’t choose to ask. As soon as we were outside again and the hatch was closed, I turned to Mel. We might not have much time to ourselves, and there were things that had to be said.
“Does he realize you’re a girl?”
“Huh?”
At last I had managed to surprise her. “No matter what else Danny Shaker learns, he must never know that you are a female. None of the crew must even suspect it. Ever. Understand?”
“No.”
“You will, but I’ve no time to explain now. You didn’t tell him?”
“That I’m a girl? No. It never came up. But he asked me if there were females inside Home.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth, the same as you did—except when you called me a he. I said that there are. But I didn’t say we’re all females. Look, I don’t see why you’re so terrified of lying to him. I’m not.”
“That’s because you don’t know him. He’s smart.”
“I can see that.”
“Deadly smart.”
“Then why are we standing talking, instead of running away?”
It was a question without a simple answer. Because I was convinced that Shaker would find a way to track us down? Certainly. Because I felt that Shaker was our only defense against the rest of the Cuchulain’s crew? That too. I knew it for a fact in my case, and Mel’s sex put her even more at risk. The only place we could run to was the interior of Paddy’s Fortune, and that would expose everyone in Home to the risk that we ran now.
Maybe that was the strongest reason of all, but I had no time to explain any of this to Mel, because the hatch of the beetle was sliding open again. Danny Shaker’s head poked out.
“I have a problem,” he said. “Come on in, and let me tell you about it. I think I need your help.”
Mel stared at me. He has a problem? said her look. But she climbed back in through the hatch without a word, and sat down next to me where Danny Shaker indicated.
He sat down opposite us, and began rubbing the fingers of his right hand over the top of the navaid. “First, let me clear a few things out of the way. I don’t know how to work this gadget—I don’t even see how to turn it on. But I believe that the two of you understand it, and can make it work. Second, I accept that this world is not Godspeed Base. Actually, I decided that for myself a long time ago. Paddy’s Fortune, inside or outside, does not contain a Godspeed Drive. What it does contain I’ll come to in a moment, when I tell you my problem.
“Now, the two of you were told that if we follow the directions provided by this thing I’m holding, we’ll be led to the real Godspeed Base. Fair enough. You may be right, and we may find a Godspeed Drive there. I’m not sure I believe it, though I believe you believe it. So we have the classic question: The value of the bird in the hand, this world, against the value of the bird in the bush, Godspeed Base.”
I knew what Danny Shaker was saying, but apparently Mel didn’t, because he looked at her and said, “Sorry, I’ll try to make it clearer. What I know I will find inside this world has value. What I may find if we go somewhere else in the Maze could have enormously more value—almost infinite value, you might say, because I don’t know how I would begin to put a price on it. That means there’s a calculation to be done: the value of what we have here, compared with the value of what we may find elsewhere, multiplied by the chance that it’s there when we arrive. All right?”
Mel nodded.
“Well, I’ve done that calculation, and the result isn’t even close. If it were up to me alone, I’d go for the risk and the big prize. I’d take the coordinates you two feed us, and head for a new destination and the Godspeed Base. But now let me tell you my problem.”
Shaker looked right at me, and smiled as though I was his best friend in the world. “I think Jay recognizes it already. It’s my crew. I told them at the start of all this that we were heading out to find wealth. Somehow that got twisted, so all they ever cared about was that we would find women. Wealth to women, see, and nothing I’ve been able to say has changed that. At the moment they’re as mad as hell at me, because after coming all this way there’s been not a sign of a female. They’re close to mutiny. And now I want them to buckle down to more hard work in space, heading for another unknown destination. That will be uphill work. But I might be able to do it anyway, mixing force and persuasion, so to speak—so long as they never suspect there are women to be found right here.” He pointed his index finger directly down. “No more than a few steps, right, if you head in the correct direction? The big job is to find an entry point, but once you know one exists that’s just a matter of time. If the lads knew that, they’d go mad. And I’d never get them away from here, except maybe back to Erin with their prizes. I’m quite sure we’d not be making another trip to seek Godspeed Base.