Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [139]
She didn’t have to ask what he meant by “your situation.” “Did Solari tell you when you had your little private conference?” she asked.
“No,” he said, “I guessed when I saw you with the artifacts. I knew that Vince wouldn’t have let you take material evidence away unless there was a quid pro quo. You couldn’t have confessed in so many words, of course, but I knew you must have given him to understand that you’d turn yourself in when you got back. So I know that you don’t mean it when you say there’s nothing down there. There’s everything down there.”
It wasn’t working, but he had to carry on. “I can’t believe you came here with the intention of not going back,” he said. “The expedition into the interior may be all that’s left to you, but is still on, still beckoning. You mustn’t let a stray moment of doubt and despair get in the way. Please.”
“Do the others know?” she asked.
“Maybe,” Matthew said. “If they’ve guessed, they’re keeping it to themselves, just as I was. If they only suspect the truth, they’re in no hurry to exchange suspicion for certainty. Bernal expected to find something down there, didn’t he? Maybe not humanoids, but something worthwhile. Serial killer anemones. NV correlated with ER. Something to tip us off as to why this world is at one and the same time so seemingly simple and so obviously weird. We really don’t know what might be down there—and it’s certainly far too soon to despair of making progress when we haven’t even stepped across the threshold.”
Dulcie didn’t turn around, and Matthew could see that her attitude was still all wrong. That line of argument was too familiar to cut through the Gordian knot of her confusion; he needed something that could catch her attention more securely: something that could draw her out of her neurotic self-absorption; something that could surprise her. It had to be true, though. Surprise was no good in itself, and no good at all unless he could startle her with the truth—or something that could pass for the truth.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything that was sure to do the trick. He was tired, and his arm hurt worse than any IT-equipped man ever expected any part of him to hurt, and he had already said most of what there was to be said about the stubborn mysteries of Tyre, alias Ararat, alias humankind’s New World.
He had to get inside her skin. He had to break into the dark bubble where she had confined herself and condemned herself to death.
“You loved him,” he said, as soon as the notion popped into his head. It arrived as if from nowhere, but he knew that wasn’t the case. Ever since he had guessed that Dulcie had killed Bernal he had been asking the question why, even if he had found the puzzle too uncomfortable to expose it to the full glare of consciousness. He had been working on it while be was asleep, and while he was spaced out, without even allowing himself to realize the fact. And he had solved it. He knew the answer. Verstehen was delivering it up to him even as he spoke. The guess spun like a hectic top, drawing a thread of certainty tightly about itself. It was the only story that made sense, even if it could not have made sense of anyone else but Dulcie Gherardesca.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she parried, not yet surprised enough.
“You were part of the same intake,” Matthew remembered. “You were frozen down at the same time as Bernal. You were with him—on the moon, if not at the spaceport. And after the moon, when you had to take the next outward jump. You were together. Both apprehensive. Both scared you might not be doing the right thing. Both scared, period. You were together.” He went on with increasing fluency, congratulating himself as he went on having rediscovered his improvisatory skills at last, wishing that there could have been a camera running to record the triumph of his genius. “But you’re wrong about what happened afterward, Dulcie. I understand how and why you made the mistake, but you’re wrong. Trust me, Dulcie, I knew him. I know what you think and why you think it, but you’re wrong. I don’t just mean