He looked up from it at the stars again, and the view was warped and distorted by something in his eyes, which at first he thought was rain.
… No, not quite the end.
There’s still me. I know I’ve been naughty, not revealing my identity, but then, maybe you’ve guessed; and who am I to deprive you of the satisfaction of working it out for yourself? Who am I, indeed?
Yes, I was there, all the time. Well, more or less all the time. I watched, I listened, I thought and sensed and waited, and did as I was told (or asked, to maintain the proprieties). I was there all right, in person or in the shape of one of my representatives, my little spies.
To be honest; I don’t know whether I’d have liked old Gurgeh to have found out the truth or not; still undecided on that one, I must confess. I — we — left it to chance, in the end.
For example; just supposing Chiark Hub had told our hero the exact shape of the cavity in the husk that had been Mawhrin-Skel, or Gurgeh had somehow opened that lifeless casing and seen for himself… would he have thought that little, disk-shaped hole a mere coincidence?
Or would he have started to suspect?
We’ll never know; if you’re reading this he’s long dead; had his appointment with the displacement drone and been zapped to the very livid heart of the system, corpse blasted to plasma in the vast erupting core of Chiark’s sun, his sundered atoms rising and falling in the raging fluid thermals of the mighty star, each pulverised particle migrating over the millennia to that planet-swallowing surface of blinding, storm-swept fire, to boil off there, and so add their own little parcels of meaningless illumination to the encompassing night… Ah well, getting a bit flowery there.
Still; an old drone should be allowed such indulgences, now and again, don’t you think?
Let me recapitulate.
This is a true story. I was there. When I wasn’t, and when I didn’t know exactly what was going on — inside Gurgeh’s mind, for example — I admit that I have not hesitated to make it up.
But it’s still a true story.
Would I lie to you?
As ever,
Sprant Flere-Imsaho Wu-Handrahen Xato Trabiti
('Mawhrin-Skel')
END