“Perfect,” Lorrest said, his eyes growing thoughtful. “You know, the worst thing about having to stand trial was that they wouldn’t let me come back to see Denny. I was pretty mad at him when we parted company. I had no idea…”
“He understood.”
“I’m really glad. I suppose he kept on trying to skord?”
“For a while, then he pretended it wasn’t worth the effort when I was around all the time to do it for him. It’s hard to believe, but we visited more than eighty worlds. Even at the very end—when he couldn’t move his arms and needed servo assistance to breathe—we made a trip every few days, always to a planet he’d never been on before.”
“His personal mathematics.”
“Yes.”
“I can believe it.” Lorrest pushed his drink away, almost untouched. “I’ve got to go, Gretana. I’ve got myself a brand-new job, designing educational imprints in the Hamito-Semitic languages group, and I haven’t even reported in yet. I wanted to see you first.”
“I’m pleased that you did,” Gretana said, watching Lorrest get to his feet. “Will we be seeing each other?”
“Do you want to?”
Gretana sighed impatiently. “Would I have asked?”
“Relax,” Lorrest said, his shoulders giving a preliminary heave. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
Watching him hurry away through the peachy twilight of the cafeteria, Gretana realised he was struggling to suppress one of his laughs and she found herself unable to stop smiling. She finished her drink at a leisurely pace and went out through the building and down the bowed steps of the Embassy’s main entrance.
The darkness of the park was split into many wedge-shaped sections by the glowing paths which converged on the floodlit nodal point at its centre. Because of the high density of the traffic between Star City and the other worlds in the new Federation, it had been necessary to clear away the maples and other vegetation that had once screened the node. Gretana gazed at the spot for a moment, newly-awakened memories causing her to wish that at least one tree could have been preserved, then she recalled that Denny Hargate had never had any use for symbolism.
Concentrate on the real thing while you have the chance, he would have said.
She nodded once, no longer smiling, and walked away in the direction of the future.
Observe!
The planet falls away beneath us, then its sun, then the other stars in that part of an undistinguished galaxy. Now we see the star clouds shrinking, condensing into a spiral of light, and other island universes crowd into our field of view.
Let us consider important questions.
Have we—whose lifespans compare to those of Mollanians as those of Terrans do to their mayflies—learned anything from the example of Denny Hargate?
Have we profited from the association?
If not, let us hope that we will fare better on the million worlds we must visit before childhood ends.
Let us hope!