I'd completely forgotten about the water bottle and food bars I was carrying.
"Sure is," I said, feeling a twinge of admittedly selfish reluctance as Ihanded it over to him. This wasn't going to last even one person very long, let alonetwo of us. "Your daughter must be psychic," I added as he uncapped the bottleand drank deeply. "I was only planning a quick look into the small sphere, butshe still made me take a survival pack along."
There was a moment of silence as he drank. I looked around the sphere again, this time spotting his camper's mattress and catalytic waste handler half- hidden in the glare of one of the display boards.
"Bless her heart," he said when he finally came up for air. I noticed with another twinge that the bottle was now only two-thirds full. "Fortunately forus, we're not going to need it."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean we're going home," he said. He raised the bottle and had anotherdrink, a shorter one this time. "Just as soon as we can gather my things together."
"Really," I said, my tone studiously neutral. I'd never heard of anyone goinginsane between eye blinks, which implied that he must have gone round the bendbefore I even got here. "Tell me how."
"No, my mind hasn't snapped, McKell," he assured me as he lifted an arm andpointed off to my right. "Look over there."
I followed the direction of his finger and found myself looking at one of thealien displays, this one marked with yellow-and-black squares. "All right.
What is it?"
"It's the destination setting," he said. "Destination being defined as theparticular stargate you'll be traveling to if you slide down the centering armand hit the trigger. Now; do you see the display to its left?"
"Such as it is," I said. The second display was an identical array of squares, except that all of them were black.
"That one gives the identification code for the stargate you just left," hesaid. "Unfortunately, whether by design or malfunction, it only stays lit fora few minutes after transport before going blank again. That's why I couldn'tgetback by myself; by the time I realized the significance of that particulardisplay, it had long since gone black. However—"
"Wait a minute," I said, frowning. "How do you know all this? Tera told me theMeima archaeologists didn't get very far in their analysis of the thing."
He shrugged. "Well, I have been here eleven days, you know," he reminded me.
"I couldn't just sit around and do nothing. And though you probably didn't knowit, I was once a Trem'sky Scholar in Alien Studies. I did quite a fair bit ofarchaeology and alien translation back in my youth."
It was a speech clearly and carefully designed to impress and lull thegullible.
But I wasn't in the mood to be impressed, and lulling was completely out ofthe question. "That's baloney, and you know it," I said bluntly. "You had onecourse in archaeology and three in alien language, all of which focused on knownspecies and didn't have a thing to do with interpreting unknown scripts. Andthat Trem'sky Scholarship was an honorary title Kaplanin University gave youafter you donated fifty million commarks to them for a new archaeologicalresearch center."
His face had gone rigid. "You're very well informed," he said softly. "Onemightwonder how. And why."
"The how is that I have friends with good memories," I said. "The why is justas simple: I like to know who it is I'm working for. I certainly won't find thatout by taking what you say at face value."
He eyed me speculatively. "You can see for yourself why I've been secretiveabout myself and my agenda," he said, waving a hand around him. "What's yourexcuse?"
"I like my life," I told him. "Not my current circumstances, necessarily, but the basic idea of continued existence."
"And what are your current circumstances?"
"Somewhat messy," I said. "But we're getting away from the point. How do youknow so much about the stargate?"
We locked gazes for another few seconds. Then his eyes drifted away from mine, as if he was too tired to keep up his end of the nonverbal battle. "Elainadoesn't know this," he said, "but the archaeologists had already cracked muchof the alien script before my people and I arrived on Meima to build the Icarus.
With that hurdle crossed, we were able to gain considerable knowledge of theinner workings of the artifact."
His lips puckered. "Though we still thought that what we had was a newstardrive, with the destination and incoming displays having to do withnavigation."
"So where is all this knowledge?" I asked. "I presume you're not going to tryto tell me you memorized it."
His expression had gone all speculative again. "Why do you need to know?"
"In case something happens to you," I explained patiently. "I don't knowwhether you know it, but you're the very last of the Mohicans now—the rest of yourgrouphas been rounded up and are in Ihmisit hands. Possibly Patth hands by now, actually; I haven't kept up-to-date on developments. If they get you, too, that'll be it as far as the good guys are concerned."
"And if you know where the data is, you might be tempted to trade it for thatlife you want so much to keep," he pointed out. "I think it might be safer ifI kept that little secret to myself for the time being."
I snorted. "Standing tall and stalwart against the invading hordes might begoodmelodrama, but it makes lousy real-world policy," I told him flatly. "Face it, Cameron, you're in a dangerous and completely untenable position here, andyou're going to have to bite the bullet and trust someone. At the moment, that's me."
Again his eyes drifted away. "I suppose you're right," he said with a sigh.
"All right. The data is stored in code in a file on my notepad here. If somethinghappens to me, either Elaina or my executive assistant Stann Avery will beable to locate and decode it."
"Got it," I said. It wasn't the entire truth, I knew—he'd given in much tooeasily for that. But it was probably at least a partial truth, and for themoment I could live with that. "All right, then. I'll send you in some morefood and water when I get back to the Icarus. Is your little toilet system workingokay?"
"Wait a minute," he said, his face suddenly gone taut. "What do you mean, whenyou get back? We can both go—no one has to stay here to operate the device."
I shook my head. "Sorry, but I'm afraid you can't show your face yet. I didn'ttell you: We've disassembled most of the ship's interior. Makes it a lot saferfor the return trip, but it also means there's no place left where you couldhave been hiding. You suddenly pop up now and someone's going to start puttingthe pieces together."
"What about the smaller sphere?" he asked, his voice taking on an edge ofpanicked insistence. "I could have been hiding in the smaller sphere."
"Besides which, you're the one who holds the key to this bombshell," Icontinued, gesturing at his notepad. "Don't forget, we've got a murdereraboard the Icarus. The farther you and your notepad stay away from him, the better."
He wasn't happy about it—that much was evident from the play of emotionsacross his face. But he could see the logic in what I was saying, and a few extradaysof isolation didn't stack up all that badly against the possibility of beingknifed in the back. Slowly, reluctantly, he gathered control of himself andnodded. "You're right," he said with a sigh. "All right, I'll stay. Any ideahow long I'll have to be here?"
"Until we find a safe place to put down," I said. "Don't worry, I'll let youknow."
"You'd better," he warned with a game attempt at a smile. "The view in heredoesn't really have all that much to recommend it."