“Well, yes. But Contact has far more applicants than it can use."
“But I thought one of the things that they considered was how much you wanted to get in, and I know nobody could have wanted
to get in as
much as I do. Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted…" The boy’s voice trailed off as they came to the seats.
Fal sat down; so did the boy. Fal
was looking at him now but not listening. She was thinking.
“Perhaps they don’t think you’re mature enough yet."
“I
am
mature!"
“Hmm. They very rarely take people so young, you know. For all I know they’re looking for a special sort of immaturity when
they do take
people your age."
“Well, that’s silly. I mean, how do you know what to do if they don’t tell you what they want. How can you prepare. I think
it’s all really unfair."
“In a way I think it’s meant to be," Jase replied. “They get so many people applying, they can’t take them all or even just
take the best
because there are so many of
them,
so they choose at random from them. You can always reapply."
“I don’t know," the boy said, sitting forward and putting his elbows on his knees and his head into his hands, staring at
the polished wood of
the deck. “Sometimes I think they just tell you that so you won’t feel bad when they reject you. I think
they do maybe take the very best. But I think
they’ve made a
mistake.
But because they won’t tell you why you’ve failed, what can you
do
about it."
… She was thinking about failure too.
Jase had congratulated her on her idea about finding the Changer. Only that morning, when they were on the ancient steam funicular
down
from the lodge, they had heard about the events at Vavatch, when the Changer called Bora Horza Gobuchul had appeared
and escaped on the
pirate ship, taking their agent Perosteck Balveda with him. Her hunch had been right, and Jase was effusive
in its praise, making the point that
it wasn’t her fault the man had got away. But she was depressed. Sometimes being right,
thinking the correct thing, predicting accurately,
depressed her.
It had all seemed so obvious to her. It hadn’t been a supernatural omen or anything silly like that when Perosteck Balveda
suddenly turned
up (on the battle-damaged but victorious GCU
Nervous Energy,
which was towing most of a captured Idiran cruiser), but it had seemed so…
so
natural
that Balveda ought to be the one to go in search of the missing Changer. By that time they’d had more information about what
had
been going on in that volume of space when that particular duel had been going on; and the reported, possible and probable
movements of
various ships had pointed (again, she thought, fairly obviously) to the privateer craft called the
Clear Air Turbulence.
There were other
possibilities, and they were followed up, too, as far as the already stretched resources of Contact’s Special
Circumstances section would
allow, but she was always certain that if any of the branching possibilities was going to bear
fruit it would be the Vavatch connection. The
captain of the
Clear Air Turbulence
was called Kraiklyn; he played Damage. Vavatch was the most obvious site for a full Damage game in
years. Therefore the most
likely place to intercept the vessel—apart from Schar’s World if the Changer already had control—was Vavatch. She
had stuck
her neck out by insisting that Vavatch was the most likely place, and that the woman agent Balveda should be one of those
to go
there, and now it had all come true and she realized it wasn’t really her neck she had stuck out at all. It was Balveda’s.
But what else could be done. The war was accelerating throughout an immense volume; there were many other urgent missions
for the few
Special Circumstances agents, and anyway Balveda was the only really good one within range. There was one young
man they’d sent in with
her, but he was only promising, not experienced. Fal had known all along that if it came to it, Balveda
would risk her own life, not the man’s, if
infiltrating the mercenaries was the only chance of getting to the Changer and
through him to the Mind. It was brave but, Fal suspected, it was
mistaken. The Changer knew Balveda; he might well recognize
her, no matter how much she’d altered her own appearance (and there hadn’t
been time for Balveda to undergo radical physical
change). If the Changer realized who she was (and Fal suspected he had), Balveda had far
less chance of completing her mission
than even the most callow and nervous but unsuspected rookie agent.
Forgive me, lady,
Fal thought to
herself.
I’ d have done better by you if I could.
…
She had tried to hate the Changer all that day, tried to imagine him and hate him because he had probably killed Balveda,
but apart from
the fact that she found it hard to imagine somebody when she had no idea what he might look like (the ship’s
captain, Kraiklyn.), for some
reason the hatred would not materialize. The Changer did not seem real.
She liked the sound of Balveda; she was brave and daring, and Fal hoped against hope that Balveda would live, that somehow
she would
survive it all and that one day, maybe, they would meet, perhaps after the war….
But that didn’t seem real, either.
She couldn’t believe in it; she couldn’t imagine it the way she had imagined, say, Balveda finding the Changer. She had seen
that in her
mind, and had willed it to happen…. In her version, of course, it was Balveda who won, not the Changer. But she
couldn’t imagine meeting
Balveda, and somehow that was frightening, as though she had started to believe in her own prescience
so much that the inability to imagine
something clearly enough meant that it would never happen. Either way, it was depressing.
What chance had the agent of living through the war. Not a good one at the moment, Fal knew that, but even supposing Balveda
did
somehow save herself this time, what were the chances she’d wind up dead anyway, later on. The longer the war went on,
the more likely it
was. Fal felt, and the general consensus of opinion among the more clued-up Minds was, that the war would
last decades rather than years.
Plus or minus a few months, of course. Fal frowned and bit her lip. She couldn’t see them getting the Mind; the Changer was
winning, and
she had all but run out of ideas. All she had thought of recently was a way—perhaps, just maybe—of putting Gobuchul
off: probably not a way of
stopping him completely, but possibly a way of making his job harder. But she wasn’t optimistic,
even if Contact’s War Command agreed to
such a dangerous, equivocal and potentially expensive plan….
“Fal." Jase said. She realized she was looking at the island without seeing it. The glass was growing warm in her hand, and
Jase and the
boy were both looking at her.
“What." she said, and drank.
“I was asking what you thought about the war," the boy said. He was frowning, looking at her with narrowed eyes, the sunlight
sharp on his
face. She looked at his broad, open face and wondered how old he was. Older than her. Younger. Did he feel like
she did—wanting to be
older, yearning to be treated as responsible.
“I don’t understand. What do you mean. Think about it in what way."
“Well," the boy said, “who’s going to win." He looked annoyed. She suspected it had been very obvious that she hadn’t been
listening. She
looked at Jase, but the old machine didn’t say anything, and with no aura field there was no way of telling
what it was thinking or how it was
feeling. Was it amused. Worried. She drank, gulping down the last of the cool drink.
“
We
are, of course," she said quickly, glancing from the boy to Jase. The boy shook his head.
“I’m not so sure," he said, rubbing his chin. “I’m not sure we have the will."
“The
will.
" Fal said.
“Yes. The desire to fight. I think the Idirans are natural fighters. We aren’t. I mean, look at us…." He smiled, as though
he was much older
and thought himself much wiser than she, and he turned his head and waved his hand lazily toward the island,
where the boats lay tilted against
the sand.
Fifty or sixty meters away Fal saw what looked like a man and woman coupling, in the shallows under a small cliff; they were
bobbing up