like that find interesting in these dry, dead-leaf words? On a planet like hers, human beings were not yet reduced to the state where they could be processed like a flow of information, faceless, averaged, present or absent merely as statistical variations. About the only thing he could say to these people which they would not already have heard was something which van Heemskirk and those above him would regard as disastrously inappropriate. He could talk about the way that humans, in the view of the machinery which actually ran the Bridge System, were so predictable that daily traffic-flow could be forecast with an accuracy of plus or minus point oh-one per cent.
What would Mother Uskia’s reaction be if he were to come straight out with it and say that his Job, in the ultimate analysis, was to ensure that their planets also conformed to the rigid pattern?
And how about Long? He wore an expression which defied scrutiny. Perhaps it reflected boredom. Probably it did. The notion behind bringing these delegations to the actual Bridge Centre was to drive home the physical size of the operation, but surely anyone with a normal imagination could work that out in advance, and the mere sight of this place and the people swarming through it could never be half as impressive as what had already been done to the visitors. It had been proved to them that they could cross a hundred lightyears at a single step. After that, there was nothing… was there?
Now he was looking at Long, he found it impossibleto tear his gaze away. Why? For his height? There were many Earthsiders who could overtop him by half a metre. For his leanness and his eagle nose? But anybody now might be as fat or thin as he or she chose, and wear any face that appealed to the individual’s fancy. For the subconscious associations of his garb, stretching back into classical antiquity? True, purple was the traditional princes’ colour, but one might buy garments that shifted through a thousand colours in a day and began again on the morrow without repeating.
No, the reason was something inward. A question of personality. Long had-what to call it?—an air of presence. Yes, that was it As though he were
more here
than Thorkild or van Heemskirk or Mother Uskia, certainly
more here
than any of the flowing molecule-people on the transit floor so far below.
Unexpectedly Long turned his head and met Thorkild’s eyes directly. In the dark abysm of his irises, the Earthman thought, it would be possible to lose oneself as though in space.
Beginning to be seriously alarmed, van Heemskirk spoke up again. “Jorgen, suppose you tell us about the people we can see down there—who they are, where they’re bound for. After all, it’s one thing to be shown the bald statistics, and quite another to be here and actually watch it happening!”
Yes, of course he might do that. It hadn’t occurred to him. It hadn’t occurred to him to look away after meeting Long’s gaze, either. When he did so, he felt an unreal click—no, not a click, that was wrong, but something… He hunted memory, and located the image he was after: the sense of reluctant yielding, amounting almost to a soundless snap, when you draw apart a pair of magnets.
Knowing the transit schedules by heart for at least aweek in advance, surely he ought to be able to pick out one or two groups down there and say something about them… Ah, there was a straggling line of a hundred-odd men and women brilliant in uniform scarlet. He knew who they must be.
Activating the distorter on the enclosing bubble so that the area in question was abruptly magnified, he said, “Well, for example, there goes the crew of the scoutship
Eridanus—
the relief crew, that is, returning to duty after furlough. Very probably you already know about the system we operate, having two crews for every scoutship, rotating at intervals because it’s a lonely and sometimes rather boring job to search the stars for planets like your own, cut
Piper Vaughn & Kenzie Cade