They had hospitably offered a woman to the spy from Earth. For Muller, it was a lesson in cultural relativity; for there were in the village two or three women who, although bulky enough, were scrawny by local standards and so approximated the norm of Muller’s own background. The Lokites did not give him any of these women, these pitiful underdeveloped hundred-kilogram wrecks, for it would have been a breach of manners to let a guest have a subpar companion. Instead they treated him to a blonde colossus with breasts like cannonballs and buttocks that were continents of quivering meat.
It was, at any rate, unforgettable.
There were so many other worlds. He had been a tireless voyager. To such men as Boardman he left the subtleties of political manipulation; Muller could be subtle enough, almost statesmanlike when he had to be, but he thought of himself more as an explorer than as a diplomat. He had shivered in methane lakes, had fried in post-Saharan deserts, had followed nomadic settlers across a purple plain in quest of their strayed arthropodic cattle. He had been shipwrecked by computer failure on airless worlds. He had seen the coppery cliffs of Damballa, ninety kilometers high. He had taken a swim in the gravity lake of Mordred. He had slept beside a multicolored brook under a sky blazing with a trio of suns, and he had walked the crystal bridges of Procyon XIV. He had few regrets.
Now, huddled at the heart of his maze, he watched the screens and waited for the stranger to find him. A weapon, small and cool, nestled in his hand.
2
The afternoon unrolled swiftly. Rawlins began to think that he would have done better to listen to Boardman and spend a night in camp before going on to seek Muller. At least three hours of deep sleep to comb his mind of tension—a quick dip under the sleep wire, always useful. Well, he hadn’t bothered. Now there was no opportunity. His sensors told him that Muller was just ahead.
Questions of morality and questions of ordinary courage suddenly troubled him.
He had never done anything significant before. He had studied, he had performed routine tasks in Boardman’s office, he had now and then handled a slightly sensitive matter. But he had always believed that his real career still was yet to open; that all this was preliminary. That sense of a future beginning was still with him, but it was time to admit that he was on the spot. This was no training simulation. Here he stood, tall and blond and young and stubborn and ambitious, at the verge of an action which—and Charles Boardman had not been altogether hypocritical about that —might well influence the course of coming history.
Ping.
He looked about. The sensors had spoken. Out of the shadows ahead emerged the figure of a man. Muller.
They faced each other across a gap of twenty meters. Rawlins had remembered Muller as a giant and was surprised to see now that they were about the same height, both of them just over two meters high. Muller was dressed in a dark glossy wrap, and in this light at this hour his face was a study in conflicting planes and jutting prominences, all peaks and valleys.
In Muller’s hand lay the apple-sized device with which he had destroyed the probe.
Boardman’s voice buzzed in Rawlins’ ear. “Get closer to him. Smile. Look shy and uncertain and friendly, and very concerned. And keep your hands where he can see them at all times.”
Rawlins obeyed. He wondered when he would begin to feel the effects of being this close to Muller. He found it hard to take his eyes from the shiny globe that rested like a grenade in Muller’s hand. When he was ten meters away he started to pick up the emanation from Muller. Yes. That must certainly be it. He decided that he would be able to tolerate it if he came no closer. Muller said, “What do you—”
The words came out as a raucous shriek. Muller stopped, cheeks flaming, and seemed to be adjusting the gears of his larynx. Rawlins chewed the corner of his lip. He felt an uncontrollable twitching in one eyelid. Harsh breathing was coming over the audio line from Boardman.
Muller began again. “What do you want from me?” he said, this time in his true voice, deep, crackling with suppressed rage.
“Just to talk. Honestly. I don’t want to cause any trouble for you, Mr. Muller.”
“You know me!”
“Of course I do. Everyone knows Richard Muller. I mean, you were the galactic hero when I was going to school. We did reports on you. Essays about you. We—”
“Get out of here!” The shriek again.
“—and Stephen Rawlins was my father. I knew you, Mr. Muller.”
The dark apple was rising. The small square window was facing him. Rawlins remembered how the relay from the drone probe had suddenly ceased.
“Stephen Rawlins?” The apple descended.
“My father.” Rawlins’ left leg seemed to be turning to water. Volatilized sweat drifted in a cloud about his shoulders. He was getting the outpouring from Muller more strongly now, as though it took a few minutes to tune to his wavelength. Now Rawlins felt the torrent of anguish, the sadness, the sense of yawning abysses sundering calm meadows. “I met you long ago,” Rawlins said. “You had just come back from—let’s see, it was 82 Eridani, I think, you were all tanned and windburned—I think I was eight years old, and you picked me up and threw me, only you weren’t used to Earthnorm gravity and you threw me too hard, and I hit the ceiling and began to cry, and you gave me something to make me stop, a little bead that changed colors—”
Muller’s hands were limp at his sides. The apple had disappeared into his garment.
He said tautly, “What was your name? Fred, Ted, Ed-that’s it. Yes. Ed. Edward Rawlins.”
“They started calling me Ned a little later on. So you remember me, then?”
“A little. I remember your father a lot better.” Muller turned away and coughed. His hand slipped into his pocket. He raised his head and the descending sun glittered weirdly against his face, staining it deep orange. He made a quick edgy gesture with one finger. “Go away, Ned. Tell your friends that I don’t want to be bothered. I’m a very sick man, and I want to be alone.”
“Sick?”
“Sick with a mysterious inward rot of the soul. Look, Ned, you’re a fine handsome boy, and I love your father dearly, if any of this is true, and I don’t want you hanging around me. You’ll regret it. I don’t mean that as a threat, just as a statement of fact. Go away. Far away.”
“Stand your ground,” Boardman told him. “Get closer. Right in, where it hurts.”
Rawlins took a wary step, thinking of the globe in Muller’s pocket and seeing from those eyes that the man was not necessarily rational. He diminished the distance between them by ten per cent. The impact of the emanation seemed to double.
He said, “Please don’t chase me away, Mr. Muller. I just want to be friendly. My father would never have forgiven me if he could have found out that I met you here, like this, and didn’t try to help you at all.”
“Would have? Could have found out? What happened to your father?”
“Dead.”
“When? Where?”
“Four years ago, Rigel XXII. He was helping to set up a tight-beam network connecting the Rigel worlds. There was an amplifier accident. The focus was inverted. He got the whole beam.”