“Gods,” Kullervo muttered, shaking his head. He looked at Gundhalinu again glancing briefly, wordlessly, at the trefoil he wore.
Gundhalinu slowed his pace as they reached the corner of a cross street. “This is her street. …”
“I’d like to come with you,” Kullervo said.
Gundhalinu hesitated. “All right.” He shrugged, and entered the side street, it became quiet and residential as they left the main thoroughfare; one-and two-story buildings, some with new, intrusively ornate balconies, rubbed shoulders along the dim-lit, empty sidewalks.
Gundhalinu turned in under the arched entryway to a familiar apartment houst He stopped before the glowing ident plate, touched the proper name, let it register their faces. Hahn’s voice answered from the air, sounding surprised, asking him to come inside. The security screen at the building entrance faded.
They went in. Gundhalinu followed the hallway back, found Hahn waiting at the open door of her flat, dressed in a long, loose tunic that might have been sleep wear Her curiosity was plain, but she gestured them inside without question; her eyes darted at Kullervo’s face, and away again.
Gundhalinu had not been inside her home in nearly two years. It looked much as he remembered it, neat and modest, like its owner. The soft, modular furniture she had purchased after he had gotten her a job at the Project still looked almost new
He set the container he had carried from the research center down on a low table in the middle of a scattering of uncollected dishes. He turned back, answering Hahn s still-unspoken question. “I’ve brought you something. For Song.” He looked again at the box, away from her eyes. He unsealed its cover and took out a globe filled with coruscating fire.
He held it out to her, seeing the small frown of consternation return, furrowing between her brows. “What is it—?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper
“That’s stardrive plasma.” The answer did not come from him, but from Kullervo. Kullervo stared, his mouth hanging open with utter disbelief. “What the hell are you doing with that?”
“Returning it to its rightful owner,” Gundhalinu answered, sounding calmer than he felt.
“You mean you just walked out of the Research Project with that; we just walked out of there with it, together?”
Gundhalinu nodded.
“How is that possible?”
Gundhalinu smiled faintly. “I am the Director of the entire Project. I gave myself permission.”
“And the security systems listened to you?” Kullervo murmured. “Just like that?”
“Of course. I programmed them. No one else here was experienced enough with the new system.”
Kullervo shook his head. “I need to sit down.” He sat.
“Song—” Hahn said suddenly, looking past Gundhalinu; not calling a name, but acknowledging a presence. Gundhalinu turned, following her gaze, as Kullervo looked up from where he sat.
Song stood in the doorway to another room, motionless, with darkness behind her. A long, shapeless sleeprobe covered the painful thinness of her body; her heavy, midnight-black hair hung about her like a shroud. She stared at Kullervo, her mouth open. Slowly she put one hand up to her mouth, pressing it; pointing at him with the other as if she saw a ghost. Or maybe she really was seeing a ghost, Gundhalinu thought. He had seen enough of them himself, at Fire Lake. But her dark eyes moved away again, distractedly, until they met his own. They filled with something that might have been recognition, rejection, hatred … or nothing at all, before her gaze fell to the globe in his hands. Her expression slowly changed until he was sure that he was seeing wonder.
She came toward him, holding out her hands uncertainly, as if she was afraid of him, or of his refusal. He put the globe into her hands. She stroked it, held it close to her body; looked up at him, her eyes suddenly gleaming with tears. She half frowned, her quizzical expression making her look momentarily like her mother.
” Yes.” He nodded, making no move to touch her or the globe. She looked down at it again, almost as if she were listening with her eyes. He remembered that look; remembered that feeling. “Do you feel it? At peace …”
He thought that perhaps she nodded, a tiny spasm of her neck; but she did not look at him again. She turned away slowly, holding the globe close, and drifted like a spirit back through the doorway. The globe’s light filled the darkness beyond it with an eerie, momentary radiance.
Gundhalinu turned back to Hahn, ignoring Kullervo’s eloquent silence. “I’m leaving for World’s End tomorrow.”
“I know,” she said. “To test Dr. Kullervo’s viral reprogramming.”
“Yes, we—” He broke off. Of course; everyone knows. “I thought … whatever happens, whether we succeed or fail … in case something should happen to me, I wanted to give you this now. That’s stardrive plasma, in the globe.”
She nodded again.
“The transformation process was successful on every sample we tested here, including this one. I thought it might help, somehow.” He looked down.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“It’s the least I can do.” He looked up at her again, seeing her lined, weary face, the trefoil tattoo visible on her throat like the one at his own: the reminder that a sibyl was a sibyl even when the pendant on a chain was not there; day and night, waking and sleeping, eating, drinking, making love … every moment of one’s life. “I wish I knew how to do something more.”
She smiled in gratitude, but he saw a world of sorrow in it.
“I’d better be going.”
She hesitated, and he wasn’t sure whether the hesitation was because she wanted him to stay, or simply didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. She turned and led them to the door. “Good night,” she said, “and thank you again.”
He said, “Good night,” in turn, and Kullervo followed him out of the building into the street.
“Explain,” Kullervo said, catching him by the sleeve as they began to walk. “You just gave away one third of all the stardrive plasma you’ve been able to collect in over two years—on a whim?”
“No….” Gundhalinu shook his head. “Hardly a whim.” He started back toward the center of town, taking Kullervo with him. “The amount of stardrive we’ve been able to contain and collect is far less than we need to make even one faster-than-light drive function. We can’t even get it to replicate. If what we do at Fire Lake is unsuccessful, that won’t change. If we are successful, it won’t matter.”
“But what’s stardrive plasma got to do with Hahn’s daughter?”
Gundhalinu was silent for a few steps more. They were nearing the corner of the street, and he gestured Kullervo into a seat at one of the tables of an outdoor tavern. Sitting outside at night had become a favorite pastime for workers from the Project, since sitting outside during the daytime was unbearable. The almost subliminal hum of the sonics employed everywhere to keep insects at bay made a soothing, white-noise counterpoint to conversation.
The tavernkeeper brought them a bowl of heavily salted carrod rinds and two beakers of water. Gundhalinu sipped at the lukewarm liquid, and thought that the tavernkeeper looked annoyed; thinking that he had no right to, since not even a beaker of water was free here—a tradition that still held from his first visit to this dismal town. It surprised him that Kullervo drank nothing stronger; but he had not seen anything that resembled a drug pass Kullervo’s lips since the night they met.
“But what’s that got to do with Hahn’s daughter?” Kullervo repeated, this time holding Gundhalinu’s gaze stubbornly. “What have they got on you?”
Gundhalinu laughed. “A hand around my heart, I suppose.” He shook his head, glancing away from the look on Kullervo’s face. “Nothing more. But the globe that contained the stardrive plasma—that’s an original, a relic. A stasis field capable of containing the stardrive harmlessly, without altering its properties, and yet it looks and feels like nothing so much as a ball of plass. I have all the specs on it—we understand it perfectly, in principle—but we have no way to manufacture anything like it … yet. Which is why we have to have the plasma’s willing cooperation. …”