Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 (139 page)

That
she
had
been
mistreated,
hurt,
was
obvious.
He
had
seen images
of
her,
taken
soon
after
she
arrived
on
Old
Earth;
even
then she
had
seemed
thin
and
fragile—the
result,
he
was
sure,
of
her
imprisonment
in
Barbage's
cells.

She
still
looked
thin,
and
he
thought
it
was
obvious
she
had
been
wounded—wounded
badly.
She
seemed
almost
to
be
made
of
some glasslike
substance
that
would
break
at
a
loud
noise.
But
her
voice, low
and
vibrant,
demanded
attention,
convincing
anyone
who
listened
that
this
woman
carried
special
truths
in
her
frail
body.

"I
am
sorry
to
have
caused
you
grief,"
she
said
softly.
"I
have been
told
that
many
of
you
believed
me
dead
or
at
least
badly
hurt in
recent
days;
and
because
you
believed
this,
you
grieved.
But
you should
not
grieve
for
me,
ever.

"Grieve
instead
for
those
things
more
important
under
Heaven. For
any
who
may
have
shared
their
lives
with
you
and
now
suffer
or lack.
For
your
angers
which
wound,
your
indifference
which
hurts or
kills,
more
than
any
outright
anger
or
cruelty
does.

"Grieve
that
you
live
in
yourself,
walled
and
apart
from
your
fellow
women
and
men.
Grieve
for
your
failures
in
courage,
in
faith,
in kindness
to
all.

"But,
grieving,
know
that
it
is
not
necessary
to
grieve,
for
you need
not
have
done
or
been
that
which
causes
you
to
grieve.

".
.
.
For
there
is
a
great
meaning
to
life,
which
each
of
you
controls
utterly
for
yourself;
and
which
no
one
else
can
bar
you
from without
your
consent.
.
.."

She
spoke
on;
and
within
moments
Bleys,
stunned,
found
himself
listening
as
she
read
to
the
people
of
Old
Earth
his
own
letter, that
he
had
so
recently
sent
out
to
be
released
to
the
people
of
the Younger
Worlds.

"How
can
she
have
that
letter?"
Toni
asked,
voicing
Bleys'
own thoughts
from
behind
him.
"It
can't
possibly
have
gotten
to
New Earth,
been
released,
and
been
reported
back
here!"

"But
it
has
been,"
he
said.
He
shook
his
head.
"We
developed
our own
method
of
sending
messages
faster
than
everybody
thought
possible,"
he
went
on.
"It
shouldn't
surprise
us
that
Hal
Mayne
tried
to arrange
faster
communications,
too."

"But
even
if
he's
set
up
a
chain
of
ships—"
she
began.

"It
got
here
too
fast
for
that,"
he
said.
"He's
got
something
else."

"Instructions
are
coming
in
from
Jeamus
Walters,"
she
said.
She listened
in
on
the
circuit
from
the
communications
room
for
a
moment.

"This
is
going
to
be
dangerous,"
she
said.
"They
say
they'll
open a
tunnel
in
the
shield-wall,
that
you
can
enter
from
outside
the
wall; and
that
Hal
Mayne
will
meet
you
inside
it."

"You're
right,
that
does
sound
dangerous,"
he
said.
"Get
the
details,
and
we'll
go
right
away."
He
smiled,
and
saw
that
although
her face
retained
its
expression
of
concern,
her
eyes
smiled
back
at
him.

CHAP
TER
45

As
the
atmosphere
bled
out
of
the
airlock,
Bleys
could
feel
slight pressures
and
movements
at
odd
places
around
his
body.
He
knew it
was
the
air
inside
his
vacuum
suit
pushing
the
suit
away
from
his body
in
response
to
the
increase
in
the
pressure
differential.
He
had never
been
in
a
vacuum
before,
but
he
had
read
about
it.

He
was
excited
about
being
outside
the
ship,
with
nothing
but the
transparent
suit,
and
light-years
of
nothingness,
separating
him from
the
stars.
The
reaction
pleased
him,
because
he
knew
he
had been
depressed
since
the
shield-wall
around
Old
Earth
went
up, and
he
had
been
a
little
uneasy
about
how
objective
his
decisions would
be.

Beside
him,
Captain
Broadus
touched
another
control,
and
the panel
at
the
end
of
the
lock
seemed
to
pop
outward
a
little,
soundlessly,
to
slide
to
the
side
and
out
of
sight,
while
a
ramp
telescoped out
of
the
airlock
floor,
creating
a
ten-meter-long
bridge
that
had
no anchor
for
its
other
end.
The
hatchway
now
framed
a
field
of
stars
as bright
as
he
had
ever
seen
them.

"Are
you
all
right,
Great
Teacher?"
the
captain
asked.
Her
voice was
solicitous,
even
beyond
her
normal
deference
toward
her
employer;
she
was
aware
he
had
no
free-fall
experience,
and
she
had insisted
on
seeing
him
safely
to
the
iris
in
the
shield-wall
that
would take
him
to
his
meeting
with
Hal
Mayne.

Taking
no
chances,
the
captain
had
also
insisted
on
tethering
herself
to
him
even
before
the
lock
was
voided;
and
now
she
followed him
along
the
gravity-augmented
ramp,
until
at
last
they
stood
at
its end,
looking
across
an
expanse
of
crystal-clear
nothing
at
a
translucent
grayness
so
large
it
could
not
be
thought
of
as
a
wall.

Bleys
wondered
if
the
light
in
this
vacuum
played
tricks
with
human
eyes.
Everything—the
ramp,
the
captain,
even
his
hands— seemed
sharply
focused
as
he
looked
at
them,
but
at
the
same
time he
felt
unsure
about
his
perceptions
of
distance;
he
could
not
depend
on
his
eyes
to
tell
him
how
far
they
were
from
the
shield-wall, although
it
had
been
determined
that
Favored of God
would
keep station
a
good
two
hundred
meters
out.

The
captain
had
been
listening
as
the
Final
Encyclopedia's
Chief Engineer,
Jeamus
Walters,
described
the
dangers
of
coming
into contact
with
that
wall.
Like
the
walls
that
shielded
the
Encyclopedia
itself,
it
was
an
application
of
the
same
phase
physics
that
made interstellar
travel
feasible—but
this
wall,
once
it
scattered
a
physical object's
component
particles
across
the
Universe,
would
not
bring them
back
together.

Knowing
that,
the
captain
had
made
no
bones
about
the
fact
that she
intended
to
personally
convey
Bleys
to
the
iris,
which
from
here could
be
seen
as
a
glowing
dot
on
the
grayness.
But
Bleys
had
insisted
that
the
captain
was
not
to
enter
the
tunnel
itself.

The
captain
was
still
unhappy;
in
her
opinion,
it
was
all
too
possible
for
Bleys,
inexperienced
as
he
was,
to
make
any
of
a
number
of
fatal
mistakes.

Now
she
insisted
on
briefing
him
once
more
on
the
entire
procedure;
but
before
long
Bleys
found
himself
falling
through
space
toward
the
gray
wall.
Although
he
had
read
about
the
experience
of free-fall
before,
he
still
found
it
unsettling
to
face
the
actual
decision
to
step
off
the
ramp
into
nothingness.

The
captain
was
strapped
directly
behind
him,
where
she
could best
control
their
combined
center
of
gravity
by
means
of
her
suit's power
belt—Bleys
was
under
the
strictest
orders
to
leave
his
own belt
alone.

When
the
glowing
dot
that
was
their
target
had
resolved
itself into
a
coin-size
disk,
Bleys'
body
suddenly
realized
it
was
falling into
that
disk,
that
it
was
a
hole
and
he
was
dropping
to
it
much
too quickly—

He
closed
his
eyes,
going
into
breath-control
exercises;
and
the panic
reaction
cased
off,
to
lodge
somewhere
behind
his
breastbone. After
a
couple
of
minutes
he
felt
relaxed
enough
to
be
able
to
open his
eyes
once
more—and
found
they
were
unexpectedly
close!