service of Path, Ltd.,” I said, to fill in time while I thought. Hard.
A slight pause. “What is the planet of your residence?”
“Ravenal,” I lied. “You probably won’t know the coordinates. But let’s discuss this for a—”
I stopped right there, because my boards were showing me that I had changed location. I thought I knew where I’d come to.
“Folla?” I said.
No reply.
“Folla, damn it?”
No reply.
I punched up my locator again, and queried it.
It told me I was in close orbit around Ravenal.
I didn’t believe it for a second. But I punched for Approach Control on-planet anyhow, made some adjustments, and got myself into an approach path.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ravenal is the hard-science center of the galaxy, as far as human beings are concerned—which is putting it mildly. I’ve spent time there on a small variety of occasions, and I have some friends there. It is not my planet of residence, but it was, very definitely, the place I wanted to go. If you need dependable answers, Ravenal is the first place to go and look for them, and some of the people I know there are the first ones to ask.
What had happened to me out there in the unknown had no explanation I could come up with, and no ancestors I could think of; I had never heard of such a thing happening to anybody, anywhere. People do hear voices, of course, but not quite like that.
There is the old joke, for instance. Psychologist to patient: “Do you ever hear voices, and you don’t know whose voices they are, or where they’re coming from?”
Patient. “Yes.”
Psychologist: “Aha. And when does this happen?”
Patient: “When I answer the telephone.”
And there are, of course, people who really do hear voices from the unknown. Some of these people have become heroes of one religion or another, and some of them have become patients in facilities for the helpless, and a very few of them have become respected poets.
These were not, on the whole, groups I was comfortable about belonging to. And the experience I’d had hadn’t quite been theirs: my voice had told me that something absolutely impossible was going to happen, and it had then, and very quickly, happened. Even the voices that had come to religious heroes hadn’t been quite that efficient.
I had traveled about sixteen thousand light years in either zero time, or a time interval small enough to measure in eyeblinks. I couldn’t tell which, because I was not sure either that I’d noticed what my boards had told me at the precise millisecond they’d begun to tell me—I’d been just a little distracted—or that the boards had responded instantaneously to my change in location.
It didn’t, as far as I could see, make much difference; either was impossible, Space-four doesn’t work like that; trip time is a fairly large number of minutes, at a minimum, and is usually measured in days. There are studies that seem to have established that the minimum theoretical trip time through space-four is just over eighteen minutes—no trip whatever, from anywhere to anywhere, can ever be shorter than that.
Mine had been—by something over eighteen minutes.
The voice I’d heard, obviously, knew some different theories.
And they’d worked out, in the real world. I got my signals from Tower for Ravenal’s City Two, punched in the course, braking and so on, and was on the ground in ninety minutes; even the landing people on Ravenal are efficient, and there is very little fuzz or delay to the process.
The fuzz and delay happened after I’d left and sealed my ship, of course, and is known everywhere as Customs. I bore up under the various idiocies and indignities gamely, and, a couple of hours later, by now late at night by my body clock, found that a hotel I remembered visiting during my last visit—with the typical Ravenal lack of any literary imagination at all, it was called City Two Rooms and Services—was happy to board me. I settled in, and then, even before I began any serious unpacking, I reached for the phone.
The rasp that answered gave me the feeling that some things never change. “Who?” Master Higsbee said, in a voice like an unoiled camshaft with attitude.
“Gerald Knave, Master,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. “Gerald. I am glad to hear your voice. It has been too long—nearly eight months Standard. Where are you, and why do you call? It is not, surely, to cheer an old blind man.”
“Well,” I said, trying not to sound either sympathetic or irritated, “any cheering I can do, you’re welcome to. But something strange has happened. Very strange. I’m right here on Ravenal, and I’ve got a story I don’t think you’ve heard before.”
“Indeed,” he said. “You have come to ask me questions, Gerald? It should not be necessary; you have the wit to provide your own answers.”
I sighed. “Not this time, I don’t,” I said. “You may not have any answers either.”
He said it again: “Indeed.” And then: “It is nearly time for my dinner, Gerald. I will come to your hotel, if I may.”
“City Two Rooms and Services,” I said, not bothering about the fairly obvious deduction that I was in a hotel. “We’ll find a restaurant.”
“Room Service will be sufficient for an old and helpless man,” he said. “If you are serious about your story, Gerald, we shall want no distractions.”
An old and helpless man. Oh, God. But though being around the Master meant you had to put up with a lot—you also had to put up with being called Gerald, for instance—it was worth it; he was, after all, the Master.
“I’ll look for you,” I said.
“Do that. Look for a blind and lamed old man, Gerald.”
“Lamed?”
“It is unimportant,” he said. “A small accident, and I am assured temporary. Finished.”
Click. The Master wasted no phone time whatever.
He has been blind for thirty years and more, but I had never seen him with a cane before. He didn’t lean on it unduly and he didn’t flourish it; he used it, with as little waste motion as possible. He stalked into the hotel lobby, a big barrel-shaped man with a large, Roman head and a crown of fine white hair, moving a little slowly but not with a noticeable limp—and when he got to the middle of it he stopped and cocked his big head. The place was full of bustle and movement, for City Two— which, while a full city, is not as crowded as City One, where the bureaucracy lives—but when I said: “Over here,” he heard me without effort. He stalked toward me. People in his path got out of his path.
I think the Master has memorized the entire ground plan of any place on Ravenal he’s at all likely to be; he’s never used a cane for location that I know of. He came within two inches or so of a pillar, on the way to me, but no closer. When he got to me, he said: “I thought you might come down to meet me, Gerald.”
“Of course I would,” I said. “And not because you have difficulties—”
“Blind,” he said. “Not because I am blind. Periphrasis does not become you, Gerald.”
“At any rate,” I said uncomfortably, “simple politeness. What happened to your leg?”
“The room,” he said. “I dislike to chat in large open spaces.”
“Sorry,” I said, and headed for the elevators. He followed me without trouble. A couple of large men walking across the lobby and arguing with each other nearly bumped into him, but they did see him at the last second, and turned aside just enough. A little more than just enough. He affected not to