They went forward, but the entry port swung open before they had reached it and Simon looked out. He gripped Hal's hand briefly as they came aboard, and punched the key that closed the port behind them. "We'll have to move fast," he said. "There're more Younger World ships in orbit than I've seen here before, and that courier from Earth coming out to contact me was noticed. Find your seats, strap in, and we'll lose ourselves outside Procyon's orbit as soon as possible..."
It was almost two days, after all, before they reached safely through the phase-shield and landed inside the Final Encyclopedia. Simon and Amanda had taken turns driving the ship, so that the next shift to be calculated was always being worked on even as they were making the current jump. So abrupt had been their departure that they had left with nothing but the clothes they had on - in Hal's case, some gray trousers and a light blue shirt that had been made for him at the Chantry Guild. In Amanda's case, they were her standard bush clothes for travel out of sight of the local military boots, trousers and jacket, both of khaki twill, the shirt with a number of pockets.
Rukh, who was waiting for them in the docking area at the entrance to an access corridor as they stepped out of the parked ship, showed no interest in how they were dressed. She herself was looking unusually, almost ominously formal, in a long black skirt and high-collared white blouse, with her usual lone adornment the steel neckchain with its pendant granite disk incised with a cross, showing in the collar's short opening, in front. "Hal!" she said.
She hugged him. There was still a remarkable strength in her thin arms. She had seemed made of monocellular cord and steel when he had first known her as a commander of her Resistance Group on Harmony. Now, she felt so light as to be almost weightless in his arms, but he thought now that there was part of that original strength, which had survived the attrition of the days and nights of torture in the Militia cell, and the glow of her faith, which never failed to seem to set her aglow from within. For a second, holding her, he thought he touched the reason she had been so easily able to accept Barbage, her former torturer, as now one of her most dedicated followers. It was not as if she had merely forgiven him. It was something greater than that. He understand how could have her faith allowed her get what he was then, and yet suddenly become what he was, forgiveness on her side, or so that there was no need for him to ask for it, on his. But she was striding ahead of them now, drawing away from Amanda's in spite of the fact that his legs are longer than hers. "Hurry!" she said. "We've got his quarters right next to the area, expecting you." indeed, it was only some thirty meters down the silent, green-carpeted hallway between the dark-paneled walls to the single door at the corridor's end, and she led them through into the rooms of Tam Olyn. The mechanical magic, which could shift areas around within its shell, at will, had brought Tam as near to their arrival point as possible.
They stepped into the familiar main room, which had been designed long since at Tam's order to look like a woodland glade on Old Earth, the trees barring sight of the walls surrounding giving the illusion of the outdoors on the world below - an illusion reinforced by the small stream wandering down the Center of it, among the massively overstuffed easy chairs that - mere scattered around what seemed to be the grass of a tiny meadow. Two people were already there. One was Ajela. She was seated, holding one of Tam's veined hands in both of hers, as he occupied the chair opposite.
Tam sat with the utter motionlessness of extreme old age. He was dressed as if for the day's work, in a business suit of the sort he had worn all his life. If the heavy cloak, red and white on one side and with a dark inner lining, of an interplanetary journalist had been added, there would have been no difference in his dress now from the time when he had been just such a newsman, with no plan to ever set foot in the Final Encyclopedia again, after his single early visit to it. Like Hal, he had needed to leave the Encyclopedia in order to find it again. But it had been over a century now since he had been the young man who had made that single visit, at his sister's insistence, and heard the voices as Hal and Mark Torre had done.
Only they three had heard, as they passed through the centerpoint of the globe that was the Encyclopedia, but in the case of each of them, that hearing had changed their lives.
Now Tam sat waiting, holding on to life that had become a burden rather than a pleasure, trying to endure just enough longer for Hal to reach him - and now Hal was here. For the Encyclopedia's sake, he waited for Hal. For Ajela's sake, he would wait as long as he could.
It was Ajela that caught Hal's eyes now. Physically, she had not changed since he had seen her last, but what Tam's steady and obvious weakening was doing to her was made clear in her dress. Whatever the Final Encyclopedia had automatically laid out for her to wear this day, in the program she had set up in it long since to save her time in dressing, as she had come to save time whenever possible, could not have been what she was now wearing. Her choice had clearly been dictated by an unconscious desire to rouse the dying man through his male instincts, if nothing else.
She had chosen to put on a sari-like garment that wound tightly around her waist and hips. It was a hot pink, with yellow flowers imprinted over the base color. Above the sari there was a space of bare midriff, and above that a small, short-sleeved, tight blouse of the same material, while on her arms were multiple slim bracelets and in her ears earrings made of multiple small chained pieces - all these ornaments of bronze - which chimed and jingled at her slightest movement.
But the sari was carelessly draped, and the sound of the bracelets and earrings were lonely in the room as she turned to look, with a shadow of desperate appeal on her face, at Hal and Amanda as they entered.
Clearly, on his part, Tam did not see them enter. Plainly he saw Ajela beside him, but equally plainly he no longer noticed what she wore. His eyes were fixed on something among the trees, or upon his own dreams, or perhaps upon nothing at all. It was not until Hal had walked up to stand almost before his chair, and knelt on both knees, so their faces should be on a level, that recognition came.
Even then, it came slowly, as if it was a great labor for Tam to rouse himself to what he saw before him. But it dawned in his eyes at last and the hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. His lips parted and moved, but whatever he meant to say was not voiced loudly enough for Hal, or any of the others, to hear it.
Hal reached out and took Tam's free hand between his own two, so that he held it as Ajela was holding the other one.
"I'm here, Tam," he said softly. "I'm back, and I've found now. Can you hold on just something I needed. The way's clear in a matter of hours more. It won't be long. Not long at all." Is small smile saddened. Barely perceptible, but with Tam enough to see, his head moved twice, a few centimeters from side to side. "I know, Tam," said Hal "I'm not trying to hold you here. I'll only try to work very fast, just in case you're still with us when I reach what we've been after all this time. But it's a solid promise now. The way's clear. The end is in sight. The Final Encyclopedia's at last going to be what Mark dreamed of, what you dreamed of, and I, too. Maybe it'll happen fast enough-"