Corbell wasn"t about to trust the Norn in a "phone booth." They wedged themselves into a tchiple with Mirelly-Lyra between, for a cramped ride through Four City. As the car swerved and darted through gla.s.s and concrete rubble, Corbell wondered. Should he have forced the helmet from her first?

Yes. But he couldn"t wait that long. He had to But he couldn"t wait that long. He had to know. know.

They unfolded themselves out of the car. Gording said, "I might have known it would be a hospital."

"Did your hospital have a... guarded place on the third floor?"

Mirelly-Lyra was looking up at the gla.s.s-mosaic face. "But I searched this place!"

"You were desperate, too," Corbell said smugly. "You just weren"t desperate in the right way." He led the way up the stairs. Dust puffed beneath their feet. At the third floor he found two sets of footprints to remind him of his panic flight through these halls. He glanced back; but Mirelly-Lyra seemed docile enough, and Gording was behind her with the cane.

He turned into the hallway... and was lost. "Mirelly-Lyra, where are the "phone booths"?"

"To your left at the next corner."

They found the line of prilatsil. A moment to orient himself: There was the corner where he"d been hiding when the Norn came to hunt him down. He led off... and here was the vault door, open.

Gording said, "They guarded their immortality well."

"Wouldn"t you?" Corbell pointed to the skeletons and the hole smashed high up in the wall. "But not well enough. We"re lucky they didn"t use it and then wreck it. Maybe they thought they"d be back in fifty years."

Gording looked around at the guard emplacements, the empty shelves, the computer console, the pair of "phone booths." "Where is it, if they didn"t destroy it? Not through the prilatsil, unless the destination was equally well guarded."

"Through the prilatsil. Give me the cane first."

Would Gording balk? He didn"t; he handed Corbell the weapon, then stepped forward to study the pair of gla.s.s booths. Only one had a door. He stepped inside.

Mirelly-Lyra snarled something. The box translated: "Are you mocking me?"

Corbell waved the cane under her nose. "Suppose I am?"

She came at him with her fingernails. He didn"t bother with the trigger. He rapped her on the head with the cane, twice, before she backed out of range.

Gording had found the b.u.t.ton on the post. He pushed it.

Corbell shouted, "Heeeyaa!" The other booth danced with drifting dust motes.

Gording opened the door and said, "Nothing happened."

"Not quite true," said Corbel. To Mirelly-Lyra he said, "You don"t have to if you don"t want to. You can trust me or not." Gloat, gloat Gloat, gloat, he mocked himself, and was a little ashamed. But he"d fought for this!

She swallowed whatever words were on her tongue. She was truly desperate. As she entered the booth Corbell caught Gording"s eye and pointed to the booth with no door.

The dust floating in the booth suddenly thickened. Gording smiled and said, "Ah."

The Norn had caught it too, but she didn"t understand... and Corbell was bubbling with it. "Inert molecules from your cells! Chemical medicines won"t reach that stuff, but the "phone booth" does. It takes just those dead molecules and does the instant-elsewhere trick with them. Just the stuff that builds up over ninety years of life. See it now?"

"I don"t feel any different," she said uncertainly.

"You should. I did. It was like I"d caught my second wind. Of course I was moving at a dead run. It"s nothing obvious. What did you expect? In a couple of days you"ll find dark roots in your hair."

"Red," she said. "Fiery red."

"Where"s the helmet?"

She smiled. She still looked like an old woman; but was there something malicious in that smile?

CHAPTER NINE:

PEERSSA FOR THE STATE.

I.

The cat-tail sprang from the desk as they entered Mirelly-Lyra"s office. Its grey-and-white face watched them mistrustfully from the safety of a ceiling light fixture.

Corbel"s pressure suit sat limp in one of the guest chairs. Gording and Mirelly-Lyra watched him detach the helmet and set it on his head. He cleared his throat and said, "This is Corbell for himself calling Peerssa for the State. Come in, Peerssa."

Nothing, nothing, nothing... "He"s got to be in range by now. Peerssa, dammit, answer!"

Gording pushed the suit aside and took the chair. The silver cane remained fixed on the old woman. She didn"t notice. Malice and victory! She gave Corbell the shivers.

Corbell jumped when the cat-tail abruptly dropped from the ceiling into the old woman"s lap. It landed soft as a snowflake and coiled there, ears up, watching Corbell make a fool of himself.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, n- The voice came faintly, fading in spots. "Peerssa for the State, Peerssa for the State calling Jaybee Corbell. Please allow for a delay of sixty-seven seconds in transmission. Corbel, I have a great deal to tell you."

"Yeah, you do! I"ve got a great deal to tell you, too! I can tell you most of the history of the solar system. Tell me first, have you taken control of the planet Ura.n.u.s? If so, what do you plan to do with it?" To Gording he said, "I"m asking him now. We"ll know in a minute."

"What takes so long?"

"Speed of light. Ura.n.u.s must be thirty-three and a half light-seconds away."

Gording nodded. He was not impatient. Even his handling of the cane seemed negligent... but it never left the old woman. Good. Because she still had that look. look.

When Peerssa spoke he was irritatingly placid. "Yes, I am guiding a planet I believe to be Ura.n.u.s. You were right in guessing that this is the solar system. After losing contact with you I flew to investigate the most easily available anomaly, the new planet between Jupiter and Saturn. I found a satellite with control systems which would respond to-"

"I know all about the motor! The question-" He bit it off. The delay was going to drive him nuts. Peerssa was still talking: "-my broadcasts. I was able to probe the fail-safe programs first. Otherwise I might have damaged something. Eventually I found an object in the planet"s upper atmosphere radiating strongly in the infrared. I found a tremendous motor, a fusion pulse drive clearly intended to move the entire planet. Oh, you know about the motor. All right. I"ve already started the braking sequence. In twenty-two days Ura.n.u.s will be inserted into orbit two million miles ahead of the Earth. I"m going to move the Earth further from Jupiter. We"ll cool it down to normal."

"Don"t do it!" Corbell barked. He remembered uneasily that he had never been sure of Peerssa"s motives. "Listen, life on Earth has been adjusting to this situation for a million years or more. If you screw it up now most of the biosphere will die, including what pa.s.ses for humanity these days."

The old woman already looked younger, if only in a tightening of the muscles in her face, a smoothing of the pouchy look. Corbell looked away from the malicious cat-smile. He lifted the helmet and said in Boyish, "We were right. No coincidence at all. Peerssa dropped me here, then went to look Ura.n.u.s over. He"s going to put everything back the way it was when he left Earth."

Gording stared. "But the ice! The ice would cover-"

"Bear with me a little longer, will you?" He lowered the helmet on Gording"s answer.

Peerssa"s delayed reply came. "I do not take your orders, Corbel. I take orders from Mirelly-Lyra Zeelashisthar, who was once a citizen of the State."

He should have known better, but it took him by surprise. He screamed, "You traitor!"

Mirelly-Lyra threw back her head and laughed.

Corbell laid the helmet on the desk. It took him a moment to find his voice. "No wonder you were smirking. What happened?"

She was thoroughly enjoying herself. "I tried to call your autopilot. No luck. A few days ago I tried again. It may have helped that my translator uses your voice. Peerssa and I talked for many hours about the State, and the world, and you-"

She broke off because Peerssa"s reply had arrived. "My loyalty has never wavered, Corbell. Was there ever a time when you could say the same?"

"Drop dead," Corbell told the helmet. "Stand by. Mirelly-Lyra is with us now. We"ll try to talk her into changing your orders." To Gording he said, "She rules my autopilot. She rules Ura.n.u.s. I"m tired."

"You must persuade her not to let it carry out its mission. This is urgent, Corbel."

"I thought of that." Corbell closed his eyes and leaned back.

He could watch it happen. As long as he could survive at all, he would be young. He could watch glaciers cover Antarctica until the ice was a mile thick. He and Mirelly-Lyra could watch the dwarf buffalo and the nude polar bears and the Boys and the dikta flee north until they froze in snowstorms or starved in land baked bare of life or died for lack of the vitamin D in kathope seed.

Maybe that was an angle. Did the old retread want the Earth all for herself? Or would she prefer company? But she"d fled the Boys once, and lived alone... hmmm. Where did she get her food? Was there anything she couldn"t stand stand to see extinct? to see extinct?

He opened his eyes. Gording was looking concerned for him. Oddly, so was the old woman.

"Nothing hurts," Gording said. "I was used to things hurting. Sometimes my breath would come short. Always my joints and tendons and muscles ached. Corbell, you"ve found it. We"re young again."

"Yeah. Good."

"Play on her grat.i.tude. I can"t talk to her. It has to be you. You"re capable. The fate of the world is on your shoulders."

"That"s all I need." He closed his eyes for a moment... just for a moment... and then he asked Mirelly-Lyra, "How do you feel?"

"I feel good. I feel strong. Maybe I only want to believe your lie."

"Okay. Pay attention." Corbell set the helmet between them. He talked half for Peerssa"s benefit. "The world is baked and dead everywhere except in Antarctica. What"s left alive is all tropical stuff evolved for six years of daylight and six years of night. If Antarctica gets covered by ice again everything will die. The ruling population is-" He used the Boyish word. "Boys, eleven-year-olds who live forever. There"s a minor population of adults for breeding. The men look like Gording, or younger. They"re human. There are some minor changes-" He began to describe them: the pale skin, the receding hairline...

Mirelly-Lyra regarded Gording without favor. But she must must see him as human. The biggest difference, the receding hairline, looked natural on an old man. see him as human. The biggest difference, the receding hairline, looked natural on an old man.

He hadn"t impressed her yet. He went on: "If we ever expect to get a State established again, it"ll be with the adults, the dikta. The Boys are too different. What I"m getting at is, there is a chance. Right now there are about ten women to every man, but in a hundred years it"ll be nearly one-to-one." An angle there? He definitely had her attention. "Of course, your role wouldn"t be very important at first, with that big an imbalance. But you"d be the only woman with a full head of hair. And the only redhead."

"Just a minute, Corbell. Isn"t it true that Boys rule the adults? I don"t want to be a slave. And what about the Girls?"

"The Girls are long dead."

"Ahhh." Mirelly-Lyra must have hated the Girls. Mirelly-Lyra must have hated the Girls.

"Right. It"s Boys and dikta now. We can get the dikta to move here here, because we"ve got the dikta immortality. They"ll come. I know where to find a ship."

She was shaking her head, frowning. Now Corbell knew that she"d bought half of what he was selling. Against half-bald women her great beauty would rule the men who ruled the dikta! But: "How long have the Boys ruled?"

"Ever since you brought the dikta to Antarctica as escaped convicts, whenever the h.e.l.l that was. Say a million years."

Oncoming youth put music in her laugh. "And now the dikta will break free, that suddenly? The sheep will become wolves because we offer them a sufficient bribe?"

Dammit, she did have a point. He changed languages. "Gording? Will the dikta revolt?"

"Yes."

"They never did before."

"The dangers were too great. The rewards were too small."

Maybe. Corbell switched to English. "He says they will. I believe him. Now Corbell switched to English. "He says they will. I believe him. Now just just a minute, let me tell you why. First, they have a minute, let me tell you why. First, they have not not been bred for docility. They"ve been bred to produce a better strain of Boys, and they"ve got the genes. Second-how do I put this? You know what a cringing man looks like?" been bred for docility. They"ve been bred to produce a better strain of Boys, and they"ve got the genes. Second-how do I put this? You know what a cringing man looks like?"

She grinned. She"d seen Corbell cringe, d.a.m.n her.

"Okay. They cringe. But it"s a gesture, a formality. The next second they"re walking as tall as ever. The Boys cringe to each other, too. I think the dikta haven"t revolted for a million years because the odds weren"t right. Now they are."

She sat silent, frowning.

"What did you think you"d get out of Peerssa moving the Earth?"

"I thought... We"re the last of the State, Corbell. I thought we could start the human race over."

"Adam and Eve, with Eve in charge. Mirelly-Lyra, we"d better hope we can mate with the dikta, because, frankly, I"m terrified of you. I don"t think I could get it up."

"Low s.e.x urge?"

"Yeah. Would you like to rule the dikta instead? You"ll have one thing going for you. You rule the sky. Once again a Girl rules the sky."

He saw the beginnings of a smile (Corbell forgets that I can rule men with my beauty alone!) (Corbell forgets that I can rule men with my beauty alone!) and he pushed it home. "But you"ve got to give Peerssa his orders now. He"s already started the braking sequence. Move the Earth now and it"s the end of the world." and he pushed it home. "But you"ve got to give Peerssa his orders now. He"s already started the braking sequence. Move the Earth now and it"s the end of the world."

She leered teasingly. "I should make you wait."

"Peerssa has already started the-"

"Give me the helmet."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n braking sequence. Here. Wait a minute." He didn"t let go of the helmet.

"Corbell? Isn"t this what you wanted?"

"I just had the d.a.m.ndest thought." Don"t blow this. The fate of the world- shaddup! Don"t blow this. The fate of the world- shaddup! "Give me a minute to think it through." When a man commands a djinn, he tends to be careful with his phrasing. "All right. Peerssa, I"m going to describe what I want to happen. Then you tell me if you can make the course change, and you tell me what side effects we can expect. After that we can put it up to Mirelly-Lyra. "Give me a minute to think it through." When a man commands a djinn, he tends to be careful with his phrasing. "All right. Peerssa, I"m going to describe what I want to happen. Then you tell me if you can make the course change, and you tell me what side effects we can expect. After that we can put it up to Mirelly-Lyra.

"I want Cape Horn and the region around it to be about fifteen centigrade degrees cooler."