Learning the World

The peril of being associated with such trash had left Orro and Darvin in seething silence.

Meanwhile, Darvin had his own research funding to worry about. He had spent two and a half years already on the blink comparator, and with nothing but the Little Bastards and the mysterious vanishing comet to show for it, he had little grounds for asking his senior to renew the grant, and small motive to. He had toyed with the thought of writing up his meagre results and abandoning the quest to some future junior astronomer with more patience and perhaps better instruments.

Too bedraggled and wearied by his damp walk to fly even the short hop to the astronomy storey, Darvin plodded up the unfamiliar staircase to the floor, and met Orro at the top. The Gevorkian returned a grim look to Darvin’s surprised greeting. Loitering behind Orro were two men, wings poised, arms folded, faces sharp and mouths closed. One of them detached himself from the wall and sauntered to where Orro stood in glum silence. From a pouch on his belt the stranger flashed a small bronze disc with an inset enamel eye. To present even an imitation of that sigil was a slashing offence; Darvin took it as seriously as Orro already had. “My office?” he said.

The Sight agent nodded. Darvin led the way. As he unlocked the door the keys rattled and jangled. He clenched his fist around them and stalked in. The second agent planted himself in front of the door as soon as it was closed; the first sat on the windowsill. Orro perched on the table, Darvin on his chair. An awkward party they made, distributed thus about the cluttered room.

“Well, officers, how can we help you?” asked Darvin.

The one on the windowsill gave his cheekbone a meditative rub with his wing wrist. “For you to say, I should think,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

The Sight man looked around the room. “Did they pay you much?”

Darvin misunderstood. “I have my stipend, various Bounty grants, some teaching fees—”

“Not what I meant.”

The one at the door made a lurch. The other warned him back with a frown.

“Your friend here, now,” he went on, “he’s a Gevorkian. All quite understandable. But you, that’s the puzzle. Hasn’t Seloh given you enough? Hence the question.”

Darvin understood at last. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

Another lurch from the door, another frown from the window. The fog swirled outside.

Orro clapped a hand to the top of his head. His ears went back. “Oh!” he said. “I remember now.”

He extended a leg to the floor, stood on it, swung the other from the table, and paced behind the blink comparator, as though its brassy bulk could afford him some protection. He looked from one agent to the other, his glance pausing only for a remorseful fraction of a second on Darvin. “I wrote to my friend Holder, in the Regnal Air Force, about our… ah… results,” he said.

“Which results?” asked Darvin.

Orro waved upward. “The comet and the green stars.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. He replied, and I discussed it further. Nothing else.”

Darvin let out a sigh of relief. He had been afraid Orro had noised abroad something about his aeronautics — which, futile though it was, might have made some unsleeping Eye prick up his ears.

“There you are, gentlemen,” he said. “No defence significance. A scientific enigma, that’s all, related to a former colleague across the water. My friend here hasn’t abused his position in the least.”

“What’s of defence significance,” said the Eye at the window, “and what’s an abuse of position, is not for you to judge. Nor me, come to that.” He combed an eyebrow tuft with a claw. “But you did sign the university charter, did you not?”

“Of course,” said Darvin.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but that does include a clause or two about having due regard for the interests of the Reach?”

Darvin tried to remember a page or eight of small-print boilerplate. “If you say so.”

“I do say so, and rightly,” said the agent. He made a sad, sucking noise through his teeth. “And, in my layman’s opinion, some unknown object hurtling out of the outer darkness straight towards us might just possibly be of some moment to the weal of the Reach.”

Darvin felt like laughing with relief. “In that case, I’ve done my duty,” he said, “and so has Orro. We’ve published a full account of it.”

“That,” said the Eye, “is your problem.” He drummed his heel-claws on the wall, then slid down to stand again on the floor. “Published. You’ve no idea the trouble you’ve given us. If you’re feeling a bit put out that it didn’t get much of a response, don’t blame your colleagues. Except, maybe, for a certain lack of fortitude about having their arms twisted.”

“The Sight did that?” said Darvin, outraged. “Suppressed discussion?”

“That and more,” said the agent. “That and more.”

He shook his head and sighed. “It’s a cold morning,” he said. “Brew us some tea, would you?”

Startled by the shift in tone, Darvin complied. As he wiped stains out of old mugs with a rag dirtier than the crockery, he tried to calm his thoughts. He was certain that nothing either he or Orro had done could count as a crime before any just tribunal, but the Sight was not reputed to be just. Nor, on the other wing, was it considered arbitrary. It did not persecute. It seldom pried. He suspected, therefore, that he and Orro were being given a shaking to see what fell out from under their wings. Or — aha, that was it — to soften them up for a softer approach.

The suspicion was soon confirmed. The agent at the door sat down on the table, the other returned to the window, and both sipped the tea with evident relaxation. The one who had spoken before spoke again.

“All right, gentlemen,” he said. “You seem to have got yourselves into some trouble. Quite i

Orro flashed Darvin a warning look; Darvin nodded, unsure of what he was being warned.

“Good,” said the Eye, taking the nod as his. He laid down his mug on the windowsill and fingered a sheaf of fine, crackling papers from the largest of his belt pouches. Darvin and Orro peered over the first sheet as he spread it on the table. The other agent stared over their bowed heads, out of the window.

The paper was squared, with two numbered axes, and marked with minute, also numbered crosses in ink. The crosses had been joined with a pencilled shallow curve.

“What do you make of that?” said the Eye.

“It’s an arc of an ellipse,” said Orro.

The Eye looked at him. “That, I could have told you,” he said. “A little more detail, if you please.”

Darvin looked closer and recognised what he saw. The axes were the familiar celestial ones, and the numbers on the crosses were dates and times that registered a series of observations — a series that reached to the day before yesterday, and began half an eight of outer-months ago in early summer, around about the time when the comet had disappeared.

“Hey!” he said, straightening up so fast that the crown of his head almost collided with the Eye’s chin. He rushed to his desk and scrabbled through the papers there, and brought out an offprint of his and Orro’s article. Flicking through the pages, he found the diagram he sought, and laid it beside the new picture. The dates overlapped, the numbers matched, and the lines—

Orro needed no more than a glance to see what Darvin had seen. “Deceleration,” he said, “followed by a free elliptical orbit — deceleration to orbit! Orbital” — he sought a word — “insertion.”

Damn’s hands shook. He reached for the paper to see what lay underneath. The Eye grabbed his wrist.