Ramsey came awake all at once, springing to his feet fully dressed and
flinging aside his cloak, which he'd used as a blanket. "Margot!" he
called.
"She's gone," the Vegan girl repeated. "When I awoke she wasn't here.
The door--"
* * * * *
Ramsey ran to the door. It was a heavy plastic irising door. It was
locked and naturally would not respond to the whorl patterns of Ramsey's
thumb.
"So now we're prisoners," Ramsey said. "I don't get it."
"At least there's food in the kitchen."
"All right. Let's eat."
There were two windows in the room, but when Ramsey looked out he saw
they were at least four stories up. They'd just have to wait for Margot
Dennison.
It took the Vegan girl some time to prepare the unfamiliar Earth-style
food with which Margot Dennison's kitchen was stocked. Ramsey used the
time to prowl around the apartment. It was furnished in Sirian-archaic,
a mode of furniture too feminine to suit Ramsey's tastes. But then, the
uni-sexual Sirians, of course, often catered to their own feminine
taste.
Ramsey found nothing in Margot Dennison's apartment which indicated she
had done any acting on Irwadi, and that surprised him, for he'd assumed
she had plied her trade here as elsewhere. He felt a little guilty about
his snooping, then changed his mind when he remembered that Margot had
locked them in.
In one of the slide compartments of what passed for a bureau in
Sirian-archaic, he found a letter. Since it was the only piece of
correspondence in the apartment, it might be important to Margot
Dennison, thought Ramsey. And if it were important to her....
Ramsey opened the letter and read it. Dated five Earth months before, it
ran:
_My darling Margot: By the time you read this I shall be dead.
Ironical, isn't it? Coming so close--with death in the form of
an incurable cancer intervening._
_As you know, Margot, I always wished for a son but never had
one. You'll have to play that role, I'm afraid, as you always
have. Here is the information I told you I would write down.
Naturally, if you intend to do anything about it, you'll guard
it with your life._
* * * * *
_Apparently the hyper-space pattern from Irwadi to Earth is the
one I was looking for. The proto-men, if I may be bold enough to
call them that, first left hyper-space at that point, perhaps a
million, perhaps five million, Earth years ago. I don't have to
tell you what this means, my child. I've already indicated it to
you previously. It suffices to remind you that, in what science
has regarded as the most amazing coincidence in the history of
the galaxy, humanoid types sprang up on some three thousand
stellar worlds simultaneously between one and five million years
ago. I say simultaneously although there is the possibility of a
four million year lag: indications are, however, that one date
would do quite well for all the worlds._
_Proto-man was tremendously ahead of us in certain sciences,
naturally. For example, each humanoid type admirably fits the
evolutionary pattern on its particular planet. The important
point, Margot, is the simultaneity of the events: it means that
proto-man left hyper-space, his birth-place, and peopled the
man-habitable worlds of the galaxy at a single absolute instance
in time. This would clearly be impossible if the thousands of
journeys involved any duration. Therefore, it can only be
concluded that they were journeys which somehow negated the
temporal dimension. In other words, instant travel across the
length and breadth of the galaxy!_
_Whoever re-discovers proto-man's secret, needless to say, will
be the most influential, the most powerful, man in the galaxy.
Margot, I thought that man would be me. It won't be now._
_But it can be you, Margot. It is my dying wish that you
continue my work. Let nothing stop you. Nothing. Remember this,
though: I cannot tell you what to expect when you reach the
original home of proto-man. In all probability the whole race
has perished, or we'd have heard of them since. But I can't be
sure of that. I can't be sure of anything. Perhaps proto-man,
like some deistic god, became disinterested in the Milky Way
Galaxy for reasons we'll never understand. Perhaps he still
exists, in hyper-space._
* * * * *
_Finally, Margot, remember this. If you presented this letter to
the evolutionary scientists on any of the worlds, they'd laugh
at you. It is as if unbelief of the proto-man legend were
ingrained in all the planetary people, perhaps somehow
fantastically carried from generation to generation in their
genes because proto-man a million years ago decided that each
stellar world must work out its own destiny independently of the
others and independent of their common heritage. But in my own
case, there are apparently two unique factors at work. In the
first place, as you know, I deciphered--after discovering it
quite by accident--what was probably a proto-man's dying message
to his children, left a million years ago in the ruins on
Arcturus II. In the second place, isn't it quite possible that
my genes have changed, that I have mutated and therefore do not
have as an essential part of my make-up the unbelief of the
proto-man legend?_
_Good luck to you, Margot. I hope you're willing to give up your
career to carry out your dying father's wish. If you do, and if
you succeed, more power will be yours than a human being has
ever before had in the galaxy. I won't presume to tell you how
to use it._
_Oh, yes. One more thing. Since Earth and Alpha Centauri are on
a direct line from Irwadi, Centauri will do quite well as your
outbound destination if for some reason you can't make Earth.
Again, good luck, my child. With all my love, Dad._
Ramsey frowned at the letter. He did not know what to make of it. As far
as he knew, there was no such thing as a proto-man myth in wide currency
around the galaxy. He had never heard of proto-man. Unless, he thought
suddenly, the dying man could have simply meant all the myths of human
creation, hypothecating a first man who, somehow, had developed
independently of the beasts of the field although he seemed to fit their
evolutionary pattern....
But what the devil would hyper-space have to do with such a myth?
Proto-man, whatever proto-man was, couldn't have lived in hyper-space.
Not in that bleak, ugly, faceless infinity....
Unless, Ramsey thought, more perplexed than ever, it was the very bleak,
ugly, faceless infinity which made proto-man leave.
"Breakfast!" the Vegan girl called. Ramsey joined her in the kitchen,
and they ate without talking. When they were drinking their coffee, an
Earth-style beverage which the Vegan girl admitted liking, the apartment
door irised and Margot Dennison came in.
Ramsey, who had replaced the letter where he'd found it, said: "Just
what the devil did you think you were doing, locking us in?"
"For your own protection, silly," Margot told him smoothly. "I always
lock my door when I go out, so I locked it today. Naturally, we won't
have a chance to apply for a new lock. Besides, why arouse suspicion?"
"Where'd you go?"
"I don't see where that's any of your business."
"Believe it or not," Ramsey said caustically, "I've seen a thousand
credits before. I've turned down a thousand credits before, in jobs I
didn't like. As for being stranded here on Irwadi, it's all the same to
me whether I'm on Irwadi or elsewhere."
"What does all that mean, Captain Ramsey?"
"It means keep us informed. It means don't get uppity."
Margot laughed and dropped a vidcast tape on the table in front of
Ramsey. He read it and did not look up. There was a description of
himself, a description of the Vegan girl, and a wanted bulletin issued
on them. For assaulting the Chief of Irwadi Security, the bulletin said.
For assaulting a drunken fool, Ramsey thought.
"Well?" Margot asked. This morning she wore a man-tailored jumper which,
Ramsey observed, clashed with the Sirian-archaic furniture. She looked
cool and completely poised and no less beautiful, if less provocatively
dressed, than last night.