“If we do well, it is because of you, sir. You make us want to. You make it possible.”

Guthrie shook his head. “Not me. Never think that. Those who believe in an indispensable man don’t survive long, nor ought to.” He grinned, tossed off a considerable draught, and added, “Mind you, I’m not modest. I do a braw job where I am. But that’s in an outfit which is sound because its members are.”

“And they are because it is.”

Dagny nodded to herself. She had watched mutuality grow and strengthen, year by year. This new, fast-spreading, altogether spontaneous practice of swearing troth to the company, which in the person of an officer pledged faith of its own—

“You started Fireball, Uncans,” she said softly. “You kept it going through every terrible trouble.”

“Juliana more than me,” Guthrie answered, low in his throat.

Her eyes stung. “We all miss her. You—“ She leaned over to lay her hand briefly upon his.

“Don’t worry about me,” he growled. “I soldier on.”

“She would have wanted you to,” Edmond said.

“It’s your nature,” Dagny murmured.

Guthrie shook his heavy shoulders. “Hey, this is in danger of turning serious,” he protested.

Dagny saw how he wanted to veer from the intimate. But when would another chance come to talk quietly? “Please bear with us a little while longer,” she appealed. “We’ve so been wanting to hear your thoughts, your knowledge. Earth is in such a bad way, and Fireball seems to be almost the only strong force for good that’s left.”

“Hoo-ha, lass!” he exclaimed. “Jesus Christ couldn’t live up to that kind of billing. You know better. You could name as well as me plenty who haven’t let power short circuit their wits.”

“Yes, they keep progress alive, at least in science and technology,” Edmond said. “Foremost, those of the super-rich who are enlightened, like you. The ‘Savant Barons.’“

“And a few in government, much though I hate to admit it.”

“But what of the populace? What of the vast majority, in every land, who can find no real place in this high-technology universe you have created?”

“Yeah. The High World versus the Low World. It’s more than a journalistic duck-billed platitude. Count yourselves lucky. Everybody in space is High World. Not as a pun. Necessarily.”

Dagny felt her brows draw together. “That may be why we have trouble making sense of what’s going on on Earth,” she ventured.

“Sense there is mighty thin on the ground, honey. Day by day, scarcer and scarcer, in spite of the best efforts of us whom you want to canonize.”

“Newscasts, analyses, books, personal communications—here on the Moon, it all seems ... abstract? Surreal?” Dagny forced herself: “Is there really going to be a war?”

“Wars are popping already, around the planet,” Guthrie replied somberly. “We call ‘em disorders or revolutions or whatever, but wars is what they amount to. And, yes, I’m afraid the big one is on the way.”

“The Jihad?” Edmond’s tone went hoarse. “Those preachers—But it is not Islam against the infidels, not truly, is it? Nothing so simple.”

“No, sure not. I’d call it the last full-scale revolt of the Low World against an order of things it doesn’t understand and reels forever left put of. The High World will have its share of Muslim allies, and the Mahdis will have theirs of every creed and none.”

“What will come of it?” Dagny whispered,

“Not a general blowup,” Guthrie assured her. “I expect nukes will get fired in anger, but not many nor high-yield. The whole hooraw is too complicated, changeable, scrambled geographically and ethnically and economically and you-name-it—too much for any clear-cut showdown. My guess is we’ll see years of fighting, minor in some areas, a blood tsunami in others. The High World countries will end on top, but they’ll be so shaken that things can’t go back to the same for them either.” He paused, then finished: “I doubt there ever was or ever will be a war that was worth what it cost, when you figure in the costs to everybody concerned, including generations unborn. But what comes out of this might be better in a few respects than what we’ve got now. For instance, I don’t see how that rattlebone, patchgut Renewal can survive the strain.

“On the whole, though, be glad you’re on the Moon, you and yours, with nothing worse to worry about than vacuum, radiation, meteoroids, life-support failure, and bureaucrats.”

“Most glad for our children,” Dagny said.

“Of course.”

Now they all wanted to change the subject. “Where are the youngsters, anyway?” Guthrie inquired.

Dagny seized on the relief, the lightness. “That question has more answers than kids.”

Edmond nodded. “They scamper about, when they do not—vont a la derobee—go very quietly, like the cat. And they have their private things we know little about.” He sighed. “Less and less, the more they grow.”

“Yes, I’ve gotten that from Dagny,” Guthrie said. Once, after she thus confided in him, his return message spoke of a mother hen he’d seen when he was a boy, given duck eggs to brood and the hatchlings to raise, helplessly watching them swim off across a pond. “But where are they at the moment?”

“Well, Brandir’s in Port Bowen,” she told him. “He aims to be a structural engineer, you may remember, and I arranged for h.im to work a few weeks on a new cargo launch catapult they’re building, hands-on experience. He’s eager to meet you, but unless you can stay longer than you said, or seek him out, it’ll have to be by phone. Verdea’s at a friend’s, probably trying out a composition on her. Kaino’s wingflight stunt team—”

“Hold on, por favor. Brandir, Verdea, Kaino? You’ve described this fad among the Lunarian youngsters for taking invented names and insisting onthem—so have the journalists—but I can’t recall which of yours is which.”

“It is more than a fad,” Edmond said. “They are totally serious about it. In fact, they are developing a whole new language for themselves. Not slang, not an argot, a language.”

“They don’t reject us,” Dagny said. “Not really.” She had to believe that. And they did remain amicable toward their parents, in their individual ways, and if an aloofness dwelt beneath it, was the pain this gave her more than she had given to hers? “It’s just that they are—different, more different than anybody foresaw. They’re trying to learn what their natures are, and, and we can’t help them much.”

Guthrie rubbed his chin. “Not simply adolescent rebellion, then, eh? Though Lord knows, looking at Earth and Earth’s officials on Luna, they have a fair amount of justification.” He knocked back his beer. Edmond took the mug and the shot glass for refills. “Graciasr amigo. Can you sort of fill me in on them?”

Dagny put recent sequences onto the screen, in succession, and found a few words about each.

Brandir. Anson. Sixteen. Two meters tall, wide-shouldered, supple; ash-blond hair, silver-blue eyes, marmoreal skin on which no beard would ever grow. His face was not purely Lunarian, it bore traces of his mother’s. He often clashed with his father, but not too seriously, and she thought he stayed emotionally closer to her than his siblings did or could. It didn’t stop him from cutting a swath among Earth-gene girls. As-for females of his kind, what happened was their choice as much as his. They appeared to have parallel interests of their own, an independence taken so for granted that they didn’t bother to assert it. Whatever had become of school-age sweethearts?

Verdea. Gabrielle. Fourteen. Almost Earthlike in looks, of medium height, buxom, round snub-nosed countenance, brown eyes, brown curls bobbed short. Quiet, studious, and, when she wanted something, steely determined about it. A literary gift, expressed in poems and prose sketches that baffled Dagny. (Starstone freedom: Achilles/Odysseus—) While a couple of other young geniuses had written the program that constructed the basic Lunarian language, she seemed to be among the leading contributors to its expanding and ever more subtle vocabulary. Dagny had cause to wonder whether she was sexually active, but what did a mother know? Lunarian children kept their doings to themselves, and Verdea scorned Earth-gene boys.

Kaino. Sigurd. Twelve. Big for his years, strong, redhaired, blue-eyed, features sharing much of his father’s ruggedness. The athlete of the bunch, the loudest, impulsive, sometimes wildly reckless. In sibling rivalry with Brandir, but it seldom manifested itself in quarrels. They would stalk by one another for daycycles on end, unspeaking, and then abruptly, for a while, be the closest of comrades. Kaino’s all-dream was to pilot spacecraft. He would not, could not accept that the heredity which made Lunar weight normal for him likewise made high accelerations a death barrier.

Temerir. Francis. Going on ten. Slight, platinum-blond, gray eyes oblique and enormous in a visage ascetic save for the full red lips. Even more than Verdea was he a reader, a student, soft-spoken, asocial. He showed great scientific talent.

Fia. Helen. Seven and a half. Still entirely a child, though you saw that she would be beautiful, black hair, umber eyes, face a feminine version of Brandir Y Already almost as reserved as Temerir. She might be highly musical, but it was hard to tell, and she disliked most of what she heard. Maybe she’d create the first truly Lunarian music.

Jinann. Carla. Four. A little redhead, as her mother had been, vivacious and affectionate. Her Lunarian name she had from her siblings, and often forgot to use it. But who could say what she would become?

“Are the youngest at home?” Guthrie asked.

“In the playroom, I suppose,” Edmond answered.“You will meet them soon, when Clementine has made them presentable.”

“They demand that,” Dagny explained. “They’re excited about your visit, but none of them likes ... outsiders . .”.to see them at a disadvantage.”

Guthrie raised his brows. “You’ve found an actual nurse for them? My impression was the servant problem on Luna is so intractable nobody remembers what the word means. An au pair, maybe?”

“No, no. Clementine’s what we call their robot.”

“A robot nurse? Housekeepers are tough enough to program.”

“This is a new model, lately developed by a small company in the city,” Edmond said. “We consented to test it. To date it goes fairly well.”

“Huh! I hadn’t heard a thing. Ah, hell, who can keep up?”—when computer models and nanolevel experiments compress former years’ worth of R & D into hours. The obstacle that progress must overcome wasn’t innovation, Dagny understood; it was capital investment and market acceptance. “Isn’t this a tad dicey?”

“We’ve got plenty of fail-safes, never fear,” she said. “Besides, it’s just a guardian, a d6er of simple chores, and an entertainer. That is, it has a repertory of song and story elements to combine. We aren’t making it a substitute for us, only a helper. We wouldn’t want more.”

“You’d scarcely get more anyway. This much surprises me.”

“Is advancement in artificial intelligence slowing to a halt?” wondered Edmond. “I have seen it claimed, but the man who had Clementine built, he does not agree.”

“Oh, we’re getting remarkable machines, amazing programs. You know from your field trips what the top-chop robots are capable of these days, and better are in the works. Yeah. Including a kind of—what you might call thought, creativity. But that’s still basically stochastic, no different in principle from your nanny’s kaleidoscope method of plotting new stories. Real thought, consciousness, mind, whatever you dub it— the way I read the accounts and reports that’ve come to me, we’re as far from that as ever.”

“Strange,” Dagny mused.

“Could it be the fundamental approach is mistaken?” Edmond speculated.

“I suspect those thinkers are right who say it is,” Guthrie replied. “You may remember, according to their school of thought, the mind is not completely algorithmic. If that’s true, then the ultimate Omega that fellow Xuan has been touting, it’ll never come to be. Not by that route, anyhow.”

“Are you sure?” Dagny asked. “You don’t believe in a disembodied soul or anything like that.”

Guthrie laughed. “To be exact, I have a bare smidgen more faith in the supernatural than I do in the wisdom and beneficence of governments.”

Dagny frowned, intent. She had long puzzled over this. “Then the mind does have a material basis. In which case, we should be able to produce it artificially.”

“I s’pose. However, the job may be trickier than the algorithm school imagines. For openers, ‘material’ is a concept full of weirdities. Read your quantum mechanics.”

“What about downloading?”

“You mean scanning a brain and mapping its contents into a neural, network designed for the purpose? Well, again judging by what reports I’ve seen, that does look promising. Though I’m not sure it’s a promise I’ll like to see kept.”

“Then we would have a machine with consciousness.”

“Sort of, I reckon.” Guthrie drank beer while he assembled words. “But you see, if my guess is right, we wouldn’t have created that mind ourselves. It’d be something that came from, that was a functioning of, a live body and everything that body ever experienced. The whole critter, not an isolated brain. If wecan someday impose its ‘.. molecular encoding ... on an electronic or photonic matrix, maybe that’ll help us figure out what a mind really is, and maybe then we can generate one from scratch. I dunno.” He grimaced. “Me, I’d mainly feel sorry for the downloaded personality, what shadow of it there was in the machine. No belly, no balls, no nothing.”

“It would have sensors and effectors,” Edmond pointed out. “And it need never grow old.”

‘Til settle for what nature gave me, thank you.”

“Plus antisenescents, ongoing cellular repairs, and the rest of the medical program,” Dagny gibed gently.

“Okay, I admit I’d rather not spend my last ten or twenty years doddering,” Guthrie conceded. “And a download of me might find existence interesting after all. But I think I’d be glad it wasn’t me.”

Dagny glanced at her watch. “Not to interrupt—“ she began.

“Do,” Guthrie urged. “As Antony said to Cleopatra, I am not prone to argue. I came here to relax for a bit in good company.”

“An intelligent argument, that is among the high pleasures in life,” Edmond reminded him.

“So is a proper meal,” Dagny said, “and this will be on the table very shortly.”

“It is her cooking,” Edmond told Guthrie. “Let us finish our aperitifs. I state as a Frenchman, you have a treat in store.” Seen from the air, Los Angeles was a monstrous wasteland, kilometer after kilometer of ruins sprawling eastward until it scattered itself against summer-brown mountains and dull-hued desert. Things leaped out of the jumble into Kenmuir’s notice: hummocks that had been houses, bits of glass agleam, timbers thrusting up parched and warped; snags of larger buildings; others almost whole, but raddled and empty; a freeway interchange, partly collapsed in some past earthquake; a water conduit, choked with rubble, dry as the sources on which the city once battened; overhead, a cloudless sky softening with evening, crossed by the meteor trail of a transoceanic.

Hitherto he had just glimpsed this on documentary shows, and seldom. The reality shocked him more than he would have expected. He twisted the scan control of his viewscreen, searching for life. It was there, he knew. The slow abandonment had never been total, and eventually, bit by bit, people crept back in, squatters, entrepreneurs, outlandish little groups of the special. Yes, a cleared space, palm trees, grass, ringed by homes mostly built from salvage, not unattractive. And another settlement, in a very different style, its center a pyramid—a religious community? And a third, a single big edifice suggestive of a fortress. And in the offing, fanciful shapes that marked Xibalba ... Probably the colonies were as many as the desalinization plant at Santa Monica could supply. Few; but then, the olden population pressure was gone.

Nevertheless he wondered why no reclamation was under way. Flying down from the north, he had seen a flourishing biome in the Central Valley, suited to its aridity, although habitation was almost as sparse as here. Did nature in these parts not deserve restoration too?

A matter of cost-benefit and priorities, he supposed. No doubt the regional parliament had once discussed it, in cursory fashion, and accepted the recommendations of the appropriate commissioners. The commissioners in their turn would have relied on the findings of a cyberstudy, conducted by everything from nano-robots permeating the soil to climatological monitors in orbit, and on an analysis of the data conducted by a mind superior to theirs.

If that mind saw things in a larger context, andfound reasons beyond ecology for leaving this area forsaken, would it have explained? Quite possibly no human being could have understood.

Kenmuir shoved the question aside. His flyer was slanting downward.

Santa Monica perched neat above the ocean, several hundred three- or four-story viviendas ringing their cloister parks, intermingled with bubblehouses, red-tiled Spanish Revival casas, and occasional eccentrics. He had heard of it as mildly prosperous, a place of small-time entertainers and other professionals, retirees who had accumulated funds to supplement basic credit, and the people who provided them their live services, NOW he spied boats at a marina, the sands of Malibu Beach across the Bay and the gardens behind them, a bioinspector’s snaky form broaching in a welter of foam. Westward the sea rippled silver and turquoise. Light blazed along it, out of a sun that smoldered as it sank.

Public transport to these parts had been discontinued since Kenmuir was last on Earth, ground as well as air. One by one, faster and faster, it was happening to minor communities, and some that maybe were not so minor. Insufficient demand, he was told. It was more efficient to use one’s own vehicle or engage one or, oftenest, simply communicate. He had wondered whether this would make for community spirit and whether that might be the underlying purpose. On the field below, three volants were parked. They must belong to transients like him, or be hired by them. Those of residents would be in the big garage.

His set down. He unsnapped, rose, stretched. After the faint noise of the flight, silence rang in his ears.

Better get going. He’d overlingered a bit on Vancouver Island today, enjoying Guthrie House and its memories, water and woods and Kestrel forever ready to leap back at the stars. Rendezvous at 2100 hours, was the word from Lilisaire’s agent in San Francisco Bay Integrate. (The number she had given him revealed that that was the location, but nothing more specific, and the reply from there was pictureless.) He didn’t know exactly how long it would take him to get from here to Xibalba.

Nor did he know the person he would meet there. Or what they would speak of. Or where he would spend the night. He’d better leave his luggage behind.

Although he was properly clad, in an inconspicuous gray unisuit and soft boots, he felt naked as he stepped forth.

Nonsense. The air lay soft, barely stirring. He thought he sensed fragrance in it. Jasmine, growing somewhere nearby? His hearing captured a murmur. Gentle waves, gentle traffic, or maintenance machinery at work throughout the town? Sunset gilded field and walls.

But what was he bound for?

Why was he?

He squared his shoulders and marched.

Had the terminal been of any size, its stillness and emptiness would have ratcheted the tension in him. A single woman was leaving. She cast him a half-curious glance. Unthinkingly, he gave it back. Brown-complexioned caucasoid, middle-aged, well-dressed, doubtless a local person who’d landed a few minutes before he did. To what contentments was she returning? A door made way and she disappeared from. Kenmuir’s sight forever.

He went to the service panel. “A cab, please, uh, por favor,” he said, automatically courteous, as if he were addressing an awareness.

“Where to?” asked the operations robot.

“Xibalba.”

“Post number five, senor.”

He went out. The designated spot was about four meters to the right. Very soon, a car slid up to the curb. He’d had lengthier waits. Maybe population here was declining rather fast, or maybe the residence had the political energy to get a large fleet assigned them.

The car was intended for this region, chassismounted on tracks rather than wheels and with a ground-effect motor in case of major obstacles. It opened itself and extruded a gangway. He got in, sat down, set the informant on his wrist to give an account number and touched it to the debit scan. “Xibalba district,” he said. “Uh, the Asilo.”

The car purred into motion. A screen displayed a map, on which a red dot crawled to show his position. “Advisory,” said a voice. “The Asilo is a gathering house frequented by metamorphs, numbers of whom live in the vicinity. Unpleasant incidents involving outsiders have occurred. On 3 August last year, a patron of standard genome was badly beaten in a fight before police could arrive. For favor, think about this.”

Evidently the robot was programmed to refer questionable destinations and the like to a central intelligence. Kenmuir’s pulse quickened. Nevertheless, “Thank you, but I should be all right,” he said. He wasn’t the sort to go looking for trouble—on the contrary—and if it sought him out, well, at worst he had his martial arts to fall back on. In friendly contests he didn’t do badly.

“As you wish, seftor.”

Dusk thickened into night. The ride became slow and lumpy, on lightless pavement cracked, potholed, littered with debris. Twice the car lifted above a heap of wreckage. The glow from riding lamps glanced off remnant walls, then dropped them back into shadow. When he passed through a village, shining windows made the dark beyond seem deeper yet.

It seeped into Kenmuir. What business did he really have here? He had been Lilisaire’s emissary to the Rydberg, and gained nothing. What more did he owe her? What had she given him, what would she in future? His career among the planets, yes; but always the stars taunted him, always Alpha Centauri gleamed out of reach. Her presence, yes, embraces like no other woman’s whom he had known or imagined or even met in quivira dreams; but he did not delude himself that she loved him, and never could he have a child by her. The salvation of her race? So she said; but did she say rightly, did she say truthfully? And was it a claim on him? If somehow he gave her the means of forbidding the Habitat, might that deny his kind its last chance to get back and abide in the outer universe?

Guthrie’s colony didn’t count, he thought. In a few more centuries, Demeter would be shattered. Although transmissions across the light-years swore that folk yonder had not given up hope, neither did they know any means of saving their descendants. Would they ever?

Lights glared ahead. Buildings clustered together, a longhouse on four arches, an octagon white below an iridescent cupola, a corkscrew spire. A measure of heart came back. He straightened in his seat. Let him at least hear out this Irene Norton who was to meet him.

The cab stopped. “The Asilo, sefior,” it said. “Will you want further service at a particular time?”

“N-no.” He got out. The cab departed.

The street, narrow but clear and clean, had scant traffic, pedestrian or vehicular. The bistro occupied part of the ground floor of a square masonry structure; the rest might be apartments, or might have uses more peculiar. A light sign danced surrealistically above the door. He went in.

The chamber beyond was broad and long. Tables and chairs filled a splintery wooden floor. At the rear were a bar and cuisinier. The air lay blue-hazed. Among the reeks Kenmuir recognized tobacco and marijuana, guessed at opium and sniph. Customers sat at about half the tables, by themselves or in small groups. Synthesized music, at the moment tinkling not unlike a pi pa, wove beneath a buzz of talk. A live waiter bore a tray of drinks. Kenmuir hadn’t seen a dive like this in years. Downright medieval.

He tapped his informant for the time. 2032. Half an hour to go, if Norton was punctual. He took a place offto one side but not so obscure that she’d have to search for him. The agent in San Francisco would have recorded his eidophone image and played it for her.

The waiter delivered his order and came over. He was a metamorph himself, a Titan, his shaggy head 250 centimeters up into the smoke, the body and limbs bole-thick to support his weight. Upon such a mass, shabby tunic and trousers were somehow pathetic. One had better not pity him, though, Kenmuir thought; he could pluck an ordinary man apart. Had the management lately engaged him to stop violence, or had he stood by while that fellow was beaten last year? “What’s for you?” he rumbled.

“Uh, beer,” Kenmuir said. “Sun Brew, if you have it.” Most establishments did, and it was drinkable.

“Cash.”

“What? Oh, uh, yes,” Kenmuir fumbled in his pouch and brought out a ten-ucu note. It had lain there for quite a while, but the fabric still showed startlingly clean against this tabletop. The waiter nodded and went off. The floor creaked to his tread.

Kenmuir looked around. Although he wasn’t the sole standard human here, this certainly was a hangout for metamorphs. Several Tinies chattered shrilly. A party of Drylanders held likewise to themselves. A Chemo talked with two Aquatics, who huddled unhappily in garments that the water tanks on their backs kept moist. Why had they come so far from the sea? Was the Chemo, easily breathing this tainted atmosphere, taking advantage of their discomfort to work some swindle? ... The impression of poverty was not universal. It was surprising how sumptuously dressed four Chimpos were, and what a meal they were tucking into. Yet they didn’t seem joyous either. . , . The saddest sight was perhaps a bulge-headed Intellect, playing a game of heisenberg against a computer. He’d have had to make it employ a low enough level of competence that he stood a chance.

“Hola, amigo.” The throaty trill brought Kenmuir’s attention around. Another metamorph had come to his table, a female Exotic. Otter-slim save for hips and breasts, attired in a string of beads and her sleek brown fur, she smiled at him with great yellow eyes and sharp teeth. Her plumy tail arched up above the delicate features and tumbling black mane, seductively sinuous. “Are you lonesome?” she murmured. “I am Rrienna.”

“No, thank you,” he said clumsily.

“No-o-o? A handsome man like you shouldn’t sit all alone. You must have come here for something.”

“Well, I—”

“I don’t think you’d care to meet a Priapic. It could be arranged if you want, but—“ She leaned close. Through the smoke he scented her musk.

“No! I’m, I’m waiting for somebody.”

She straightened. “Muy bien, I only thought I’d ask.”

“I’m sorry.” How lame that sounded. “Good luck.”

She undulated off. He caught a snatch of what she sang under her breath, “Gin a body meet a body Coming through the rye—and then she was out of earshot, half lost again in the haze.

Ruination, he was sorry. These poor creatures, living fossils, victims of regimes long since down in ‘the dust with Caligula, Tamerlane, Tchaka, Stalin, Zeyd—genomes modified for purposes of science, industry, war, pleasure—why did they go on, begetting generation after hopeless generation?

Lunarians were metamorphs too.

Why did Terrans go on, when sophotects did everything better?

Except being human.

He had wondered if those opposing presences and examples might be the underlying reason why few of

his species had ever made radical changes in themselves. Technologically it was quite possible. A person might almost casually shift body form, sex, temperament, anything. But no real demand existed, and therefore the means did not, and whoever did wish for transformation must do without. Could the sheer blind instinct for survival make people, metamorphs included, hold fast to the identities they had? Societies had likewise never become as different from what the past had known as he could imagine them having done. Were they also both driven and bound by a biological heritage that went back to the prehuman?

The waiter interrupted his reverie by bringing his beer. He paid and gulped it.

“Buenas tardes, Captain Kenmuir.”

He looked up. The heart thuttered between his ribs.

“I am Irene Norton,” the woman said in a musical, young-sounding contralto. Otherwise she was undistinguished, pale face, shoulder-length brown hair. Of average height, she muffled her shape in a slit poncho and wide-bottomed slacks. That wasn’t uncommon, but he didn’t suppose she intended stylishness.

He half rose. She waved him back. “May I join you?” she asked. When she took a chair, the motion was lithe.

“D-do you care for a drink?” he stammered.

She gave a steady look out of a visage held expressionless. “No, gracias. This is simply a, a convenient place to meet.”

“No eavesdroppers?” What an idiotic question.

She shook her head. “And I know the neighborhood and those who live in it, a little. Let’s not waste time. We’ll have to go somewhere else for serious talking, but first—“ She leaned forward. Her arms-came out of the poncho to rest on the table. “Has anything unusual, anything at all, happened to you on this expedition?”

“Why, uh, well—“ He barked a laugh. “The whole business is unusual, isn’t it?”

“I mean, have you noticed something that could suggest, oh, you’re being watched?”

It came to him with a start. He should have seen earlier, when she first gestured. The hands and wrists before him were well-formed, strong, and ... golden-brown. That was a life mask on her head.

She should have been more thorough about her disguise, or more careful in her movements. And she spoke almost as hesitantly as he. No professional, then. Another amateur, maybe just as bewildered and anxious? What was driving her?

The sense of equal responsibility braced him. He saw what a funk he had been in, and how much it was due to feeling like a pawn—he who had taken a boat , down through a gravel storm, on his own decision, to rescue five men stranded on a cometary nucleus.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Let me think.” He did, aloud, while he stared into his beer mug or sipped from it. “If Lilisaire is under suspicion and monitored, they could know she called me back from space. Have you been told about that? And of course they’d know I visited her at the castle. I took the regular shuttle from Port Bowen to Kenyatta. Somebody could have ridden with me or called ahead and had somebody else waiting to trail me. But—I’m no expert at this, you understand. However, she and I had discussed my procedure at length. When I rented a volant at Kenyatta, I debited the account of an Earthside agent of hers. I left it in a part of Scotland I know, with instructions to return home next day, and went on foot about thirty kilometers across uninhabited Highland preserve to where another volant was waiting for me. That had been arranged by messenger or quantum-coded transmission, I’m not sure which, but in either case it ought to have been secure. I saw no sign of anyone else, and cloud cover—which had been forecast—hampered satellite surveillance, if they were zealous enough to order that. In Lake Superior Hub I changed vehicles again, and proceeded to aresort community on Vancouver Island, where I made a local call to Guthrie House and arranged an appointment with the Rydberg. I phoned San Francisco from there. The Rydberg told me it was safe, and I do believe it would take a special operation to tap that line. Today, according to the orders I got, I flew here without incident.”

He raised his glance. His grin was wry. “I should think,” he said, “if they considered making the kind of effort needed to track me through all that, they’d have done better to arrest me on suspicion and interrogate. Simpler and cheaper.”

The life mask barely frowned. She wasn’t practiced in using one. “I think,” she said, “that they may be more clever. Lilisaire’s agent warned me a very high-powered agent had come to see her, Lilisaire, in person.”

“Yes, she told—”

Urgency cut across his words: “Search your memory. Has anything happened, no matter how trivial it seems, anything you can’t quite explain?”

A slight shudder passed through him. He pushed his mind back into time. Nothing, nothing ... , Wait.

“Not really, but—Well, when I first landed on the Moon and her man met me, our flight was delayed about an hour because of an accident in orbit.”

“What happened?” Beneath the poncho, she crouched.

“Nothing. We were taken to the executive lounge and given a drink while we waited. Then we were let

go.”

“A drink. And you never mentioned this to Lilisaire?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe, maybe not. With everything else to talk about—”

“Pele!” She sprang to her feet, “Come on!”

“What?”

“Awiwi!” She grabbed his hand and tugged. “I could be wrong, b-but I’m afraid I’m not. Come on!” Numbly, he obeyed. They threaded among the tables, rearward. The waiter loomed in front of them.. Norton gave him a few rapid words in a language Kenmuir didn’t recognize. His massive countenance turning grim, he stepped aside and waved them to go ahead.

“I picked this place to meet because I know it,” Norton said in a voice slurred by haste. “I picked a time after dark because we might need darkness. Now, if we hurry, if we’re lucky^ we may—Here.”

They had passed through a hinged door to a storeroom. She swung another such door aside. A stairway descended into murk. She touched a switchplate, feeble fluorescence glimmered forth, she drew Ken-• muir along and shut the door behind them. They started downward.

But he was no criminal, he protested silently, wildly. He had done nothing unlawful, nothing to make him a fugitive. Why was he in flight? Only this morning he’d been conversing with Matthias over breakfast. The lodgemaster had admitted, grudgingly, that Lunarians might after all be the best hope of humans for getting to the stars, or even of humans becoming less than totally dependent on sophotectic intelligences—if that was desirable ... It seemed impossibly long ago, another age, well-nigh as lost to him as the lifetime of the first Rydberg. T

Homebound from Jupiter, the Caroline Herschel passed within naked-eye range of 1^5. Nevertheless the gigantic cylinder gleamed tiny athwart space, half in light, half in darkness, its tapered ends pointed at the stars, jewel-exquisite. Firefly sparks flitted about it, spacecraft, machines. Earth and Luna were crescents to sunward, large and small, opalescent and ashen.

“We should have arrived a few months later,” Eva Jannicki said. “We might have inaugurated the dock and drunk liters of free champagne.” Though the orbital colony was an East Asian, mainly Japanese project, Fireball was inevitably a full partner and would dominate its commerce.

“I think our people will always gather mostly on Luna, when they do not on Earth,” Lars Rydberg replied. “That is where our traditions have struck root.”

“Oh, you!” The little full-figured woman gave the tall rawboned man a look of comic despair. Blue eyes returned her glance, from beneath cropped yellow hair and above jutting nose and lantern jaw. “That was a joke. I hoped you might know. Three times in these past four months I saw you smile. Once I distinctly heard you laugh. I thought my efforts were finally bearing fruit.”

“You exaggerate, my dear, as usual.” Rydberg’s tips turned upward, ruefully. “But maybe not much. I fear we Swedes are like the English of legend. If you want to make us happy in our old age, tell us^a funny story when we are young.”

“There, you see, you can, if you try. Besides, you told me you aren’t Swedish by ancestry.”

He looked from her, out the port to the sky. His tone harshened. “That was a mistake. I should not have. Could you please forget it?”

Silence fell, making the ventilators sound loud. The two who manned Herschel floated adrift in it, weightless, while the ship moved on trajectory toward the point where final maneuvers were to commence. At this point in its cycle, air renewal had increased the ozone; there was a slight odor as of thunderstorm.

Jannicki reached to touch Rydberg’s sleeve. “I’m sorry,” she said low. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Especially now, of all times.” He faced her anew. “You did not,” he replied with some difficulty. “I should apologize for snapping at you. You touched a nerve, but you could not know, it was not your fault.”

“Well, you’ve never tajked much about yourself,” she agreed. “And nerves do wear thin,” during fifteen weeks with hardly anything to do but maintain health in the centrifuge, read, watch recorded shows, listen to recorded music, and pursue what other recreations are possible in free fall. “Our sheer uselessness—”

“No. We could have had an emergency, something the ship could not cope with alone. And before then—“ Outbound eagerness, study, preparation. Supplies and support borne to Himalia Base. Participation, helping explore and prospect the outer moons, sharing in the telepresence when humans directed robots through the radiation rain upon the Galileans and into the king planet itself. The knowledge that this remoteness and unknown ness required humans, were they to find and understand and someday make use of the stark wonders around them. Rydberg pondered. “Again I apologize. Memories ran away with me. It’s another bad habit of mine, repeating the obvious.”

She smiled. “I forgive you.”

“Really?”

“That has perforce become one of my habits.”

“Amazing, that you have not cut my throat.”

“Oh, I probably lack a perfection or two myself. Were you never tempted to cut mine?”

“Of course not. Quite apart from the mess and the legal consequences, what a terrible waste.”

“My feeling exactly.” She paused. The lightened mood left her. “When the new ships replace these, when it’s a few daycycles at one g to most destinations—”

“And the automation is so advanced that a single person is enough—Yes,” he sighed. “I too will often miss the long voyages. But maybe before this comes topass, we will be retired to planetside duty and living off our memories.”

“Memories indeed.”

“Indeed.”

She fluttered her eyelashes. Her voice went husky. “We can still add to them, you know. Hours yet before we’ll be wanted at the controls.”

He smiled. “Now it is you speaking the obvious.”

Together they kicked the bulkhead and soared aft.

When presently they rested at ease, harnessed against drift, otherwise in one another’s arms and warmth and breath, she said, “Yes, the psych staff took a correct compatibility profile of us.”

“I trust we will be teamed again, more than once,” he replied in his solemn wise.

“I too. And as for our leave—You haven’t told me, not really, how you plan to spend yours, aside from visiting your .,. parents ... on Earth.”

He stared before him at blank metal. “I am not sure. It depends.”

“Nor am I sure. My ties are all Fireball, you know. I’ll meet friends, doubtless make new ones, variety—“ Her tone grew wistful. “But afterward, we two, a rendezvous?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated.

Being of a size for Luna if not Earth, Herschel was just a short while in parking orbit, then descended to Port Bowen. Since discussions had gone on beforehand by radio and a quick inspection showed everything apparently in order, her crew were soon finished at the office. As customary, they took separate quarters in the Hotel Aldrin—privacy, total privacy, any time they wanted!—but she was hurt when he declined to make straight for the Fuel Tank with her. He didn’t notice. “I may join you later,” he muttered, and hurried off to his room.

Alone, he put through a call to Geneva. Business hours obtained in Europe, and he got the live contact he wished. “Hold a moment,” he said, and debited for quantum coding. “Now, please, what have you learned?”

When the detective told him, he whistled long and low and sat for a span mute, until he commanded, “This is to stay strictly confidential.”

The reply after transmission lag came stiff. “Sir, you knew the reputation of our agency when you engaged us.”

“Yes, of course.” Fireball’s were not the only people touchy about the outfits to which they belonged. Because that was where they belonged, far more than in their countries or any other part of an impersonal civilization? “No offense. You did an excellent job. Keep the file encrypted, please, till I can get to Earth and study it in detail.” Not that that would likely make any difference. “After which, I suppose, I’ll want it wiped and forgotten.”

Having switched off, Rydberg jumped to his feet and paced, not Lunar-style paces but short, jerky steps as if to make the room feel larger than it was. Finally he observed the time and swore. Late duskwatch. Aside from police and the like, nobody administrative was at work. He couldn’t very well call the Beynac home, could he?

No, wait, this might be for the best. The phone found the office number he wanted and made contact for him. An assistor responded. That wasn’t necessarily fortunate. The machine might not be programmed with the flexibility to consider his request and decide. However, this one was. It said the mayor could receive him at 1530 tomorrow. It even scanned the transport database and advised him about schedules.

Well, he’d heard that the incumbent ran things in free and easy fashion. From what he’d also heard, if his business wasn’t worth her attention, he wouldn’t last but a few minutes.

And if it was—considering what it was—he’d meet that when the hour came, and endure whatever he must.

Meanwhile he had an obligation. Honoring it wouldbe a distraction for his mind, a balm for his heart. The call to Stockholm found both Sten and Linnea Rydberg. The old couple had inquired when he was due and stayed in their place waiting. Their joy made his eyes sting. It was hard to tell them, “Nej, ack, jag vet ej—No, I’m sorry, I don’t know when I can come. I must see to something here first. I will come as soon as possible. I promise.” He meant it, though he did not know what “possible” was going to mean.

His room had become a cage. He considered the pub. Eva Jannicki was getting an uproarious welcome there. Why not he? No. Ordinarily he was happy among comrades, but tonight he’d have to force it, boosted by alcohol or cannabis or levitane. Experiments in youth had left him with a dislike of intoxication.

He went instead to the public gymnasium. Nobody else was using the springball court. That suited him well. Its robot gave him a game that left him pleasantly tired. After a shower and a light supper in a cafeteria, he slept better than he had expected.

In dawnwatch he boarded the monorail to Ty-chopblis. The system was newly completed, and in spite of regathering tension he enjoyed this, his first ride. Not simply faster than the semitrain, it was spacious and comfortable, its ports affording a sublime view. By day, when Earth was narrowed to a sickle and stars flooded out of vision, the heavens were not a sight to hold you unmoving for hours, certainly nothing comparable to what he had beheld near Mars, Jupiter, Saturn; yet his glance kept returning. The satellites he had lately betrodden had no real landscapes. They were too small; their stoniness toppled away. Here he looked across plains and up heights, here he spied energy dishes like triumphal monuments.

A fellow passenger struck up a conversation which Rydberg found himself likewise enjoying. The man was a tourist, but intelligent, an ecological engineer fresh from an aquacultural project south of Green land. Though he worried about the troubles in the Near East and Africa and hoped they wouldn’t erupt into full war, mainly he was indignant. Damned fanatics, delaying the reclamation of a continent and a half!

“Did you follow the news, out Jupiter way?” he asked.

“When we could,” Rydberg said. “We would cluster around the screen—they still do, I am sure—each time the beam brought a ‘cast, if we were on hand. We do have kinfolk and friends on Earth. But mostly we were elsewhere, or too busy. It came to seem distant, half unreal. We felt ashamed of that.”

“You needn’t have. I’d be a spacer myself if I’d had a chance when I was young. The future is here.”

Rydberg wondered. How much of humankind would ever live off Earth? Aside from science and industry, how much would it ever mean?

He reached Tychopolis in ample time to get lodging and lunch. Appetite was lacking, though. He prowled the city. Everywhere he found activity, growth, ongoing improvement. It wasn’t all government’s or Fireball’s. Three arcaded levels of businesses lined Tsiolkovsky Prospect. A doorscreen advertised that King Lear would be performed within, live. The ballet had acquired a theater of its own. Apartments in residential sections were being remodeled to suit their tenants, who often held title. Other units had evidently become places of worship, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, Gaian. A Cinco de Mayo picnic filled the bamboo grove of Kaifungfu Park with music and merriment.

Among the crowds passed the Lunarians, the new generation, in their late teens or younger, comely, graceful, and apart.

Rydberg’s hour drew nigh. He entered city hall.

Those three or four rented rooms in the Fireball Complex hardly rated the name. Municipal government had no more authority than the nations had jointly chosen to allow it, essentially the overseeing ofservices. That thought raised a brief smile on his lips. What had been delegated was most of what touched the lives of the Moon’s inhabitants.

Human workers were few. They went about their duties informally. The assistor in the mayor’s office scanned Rydberg, heard his name, and opened the inner door for him. He passed through. The chamber beyond was uncluttered. A large desk held a phone, a computer terminal, and some personal items—a picture, a chunk of deep-blue mineral, a notepad bescribbled and bedoodled. Background music lilted soft from a speaker, Rydberg recognized “Appalachian Spring.”

The woman behind the desk met his gaze steadily. He had seen her before on newscasts, her image in articles and books. The person had the force that he had awaited, but also a balance, a quie.t alertness that somehow slowed his heartbeat for him.

Dagny Beynac in her forties had put a little more flesh on the big bones, but only a little. The face, broad, curve-nosed, high in the cheeks, remained fair-skinned, slightly creased at the blue eyes and full mouth. White threads were like highlights in the red-bronze hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore a plain gray tunic and slacks, a silver-and-opal pin at her throat.

“Pilot Rydberg?” Her voice was more low than when she spoke in public, the burr more evident. “Salud. What can I do for you?”

Unconsciously, he came to attention. “I don’t know,” he said.

The ruddy brows lifted. “What do you mean by that?”

He was faintly astonished at how levelly he too spoke. “I am your son, madame.”

The elevator to the centrifuge was for the disabled or lazy. He and she used the staircase that wound around its shaft. Most of the numerous people they encountered knew and greeted her. She gave back a smile, a wave, perhaps a word, while moving onward. Rydberg didn’t see how she managed it. He’d have used up his stock of affability in the first hundred meters.

In form as well as in size, this machine was as unlike the devices in a spacecraft or on the surface of a low-g body as those two kinds were unlike one another. At the bottom of the shaft, you stepped onto a narrow band, then more in series, each rotating more rapidly than the last. Cuddlers were available to cushion acceleration shock, but an accustomed person of normal agility didn’t need them. However, when you reached the primary disc, you must get onto a pathway as it went by, and then you did well to lay hold of its right or left rail.

Silent on maglev, the great wheel endlessly turned, burnished, majestic, beneath a ceiling that was a single screen and simulated an Earth sky, clouds blowing white across blue, birds on the wing. Given such a mass, precise balancing was unnecessary. As you walked outward, centrifugal weight changed in force and direction. Spiraling, the path canted to stay under your feet, until at last you got to the flange and Earth weight. Almost perpendicular to the Lunar horizontal, it bore a wide circular roadway, payed with yielding duramoss. Folk crowded the walking lane, spaced themselves more carefully in the running lane, did stationary aerobics or weight lifting in the frequent bays. On the opposite side of the path, compartments ringed the disc. From the center you saw their continuous roof, here you saw their doors. Anybody could use the open circle at any time, but one of these you must reserve and pay for.

“I often bring somebody to a whirly booth for a private conference,” Beynac had said. “Might as well get in some g-time while making sure of no interruptions.” She laughed. “If today they notice me sequester myself with a good-looking young man, why, envieusesoit qui maty pense.”

Yet earlier, briefly, she had been more shaken than he was. He didn’t think he could have mastered hisemotions so fast, nor donned such a cheerful manner. Impassivity was his defense.

The crowd moved spinwise, to gain a little extra drag. He and she wove their way along until they came to the Number Nineteen bespoken. They went in and shut the door behind them. The interior, ventilated, lighted, held a couch, a screened-off toilet and washbasin, and a scrap of carpeted floor space.

Beynac cast herself against Rydberg and clung. He felt how she shuddered. “Oh, God, God,” she stammered at his breast. “You. I never dared dream—“ He embraced her. The realization came that this was why she had hurried him off, minutes after he arrived. It had bewildered him. Did she mean to question him, flay him open, learn whether he was an impostor and what he wanted from her? Instead, through his blouse he felt tears.

“Mother,” he said in awe.

After a while: “Have I done wrong? Maybe this hurts you, a ghost that should stay in its grave. Then I beg you forgive inc. I will leave here and never speak a word to anyone, ever.”

“No. Don’t. Please. Lars—“ She let go, stepped back a little, smiled up at him, still within his arms. The smile trembled, tears glimmered in lashes and on skin, but she cried no more and began to breathe evenly. “Lars,” she whispered. “What a pretty name. Pretty, but masculine. I’m glad they gave you it.”

“My foster parents were always good to me,” he said.

“I knew they’d be. Anson Guthrie picked them. He never told me more, though, and I f-figured he knew best, he and his wife.”

“They did. You had your life to make. I asked myself over and over if it was right I track you down. I still know not.”

“ft was. I am so happy. I thought, yes, over and over about trying to find you, but was afraid it might do harm somehow. You’ve settled it for me. Thank you, dearest.” She disengaged, ran a hand across her face, and gusted a sigh. “Smash! What a mess I must be. ‘Scuse a mo’.” She disappeared into the wash section. He stopd in his own enchantment.

She emerged neatened, self-possessed, radiant. “Hoy, don’t look that earnest,” she chided with a grin. “Sit down and let’s talk. We’ve got, what is it, twenty-six years’ worth of talking to catch up on.”

“We can hardly do that today.”

She cocked her red head at him. “Okay, Til consider you as having finished your ‘Goo-goo’ and ‘Wa-a-ahP and we’ll get straight to business. Mon Dieu, you are a sobersides, aren’t you?”

She settled at the right end of the couch. He thought she must understand how shy he felt, and took the left side, leaving a meter or more between them. She twisted about, shin under opposite knee, arm along the back, to face him. He kept both feet on the floor and leaned on his palm to regard her.

“You have the advantage of me,” she said. “I know your name and that you’re a space pilot for Fireball. And my first-born. Period.”

“You do not know that, except for my word,” he answered. “I had better prove it. I have not the evidence with me, but you can easily trace my path from what I tell.”

“Easier than that. I’ll ask Uncle Anson.” She gave Rydberg a close look. “M-m, but I see you’re anxious to establish your bona fides. Methodical type. Okay, let’s get it out of the way. How did you find me?”

To relate it brought further calm. “My foster parents are Swedish. Far—Father—he was an engineer, his wife taught school, before they retired. They were childless and middle-aged when they adopted me. They made no secret of that, but said they had me from an agency that did not tell them anything about my, my biological parents, because this is wisest. They told the truth there, I have learned, except for not mentioning that Anson Guthrie was involved. Perhaps he bribed someone in the agency.”Beynac chuckled. “Very likely. In the government too, I wouldn’t be surprised. Go on.”

“I think, now, Far and Mor suspected this but were never sure and decided they had better not inquire. He was in a firm that had several times done Earthside work for Fireball, such as enlarging the Australian spaceport, and he had met Guthrie in the course of it. A few times afterward, over the years, Guthrie paid us short visits. That was when he simply happened to be in Sweden. Or so he said. At last I began to wonder. Why should he, a mighty man in the world, countless claims on his attention, why should he remember us? He was no snob, I knew; he had friends in every walk of life; but these far-apart social calls were npt such a relationship. And ... when I applied to Fireball, I was admitted for training, although hundreds of those who were turned away must have been at least as qualified.

“Therefore, when I decided to try learning who my real parents were—I have not told Far and Mor, they would be hurt—jo, it was natural to seek a clue in Guthrie. I gave the job to a detective agency, but it was not very difficult. Most of what trouble they had was due to the chaotic conditions in North America, which was where the trail led. A public figure like Guthrie, his whereabouts are always a news item, at least potentially. Afterward the information will lie forgotten in a journalistic database for decades, no reason to wipe it. I knew my year of birth, since I was adopted out immediately, and the birthday we celebrated for me must be approximately correct. Since I was almost certainly illegitimate—Forgive me, M-mother—”

Beynac reached to pat Rydberg’s hand. “Quite all right, you wonderful bastard.”

“Uh-hm! Where was Guthrie and what did he do in the nine months previous? It turned out that six months earlier than that, the local news in a small Pacific Northwest town called Aberdeen reported that once again the community was honored by the distinguished presence of Mr. and Mrs. Anson Guthrie, who were visiting their friends Mr. and Mrs. Sigurd Ebbesen. A detective on site jogged various people’s memories, consulted the database further, and learned that Miss Dagny Ebbesen moved at that time to Quito, Ecuador, under the tutelage of the Guthries, where she was to receive a first-class education in the Fireball school before being offered employment in the company. There was no record in Ecuador of her giving birth, but it would have been easy for them to conceal, and investigation showed she did not enroll in the school until months after she left Aberdeen. The probability seemed high, and your career was a matter of public record. In fact, you are rather famous; I have long heard of you.”

The dry, rapid recital jerked to a halt. Rydberg’s glance had turned from Beynac while he spoke. He sat staring at the wall.

“Were you surprised?” she asked mildly.

“Well,” he said; “I thought ... if my mother was a protegee of the Guthries ... she would not live in poverty. Otherwise I had no idea about her.”

“Many, children fantasize about real parents who are far more glamorous and important than those they know. I’m afraid I can’t live up to that.”

His head swung back toward her. His right hand clenched on his thigh, the left grabbed at the edge of the couch. “I don’t want anything from you!” he cried. “I don’t need anything! I’m well off!”

She lifted a palm. “Easy, dear,” she said low. “I didn’t mean what you suppose. If you’re a space pilot, sure, you’re highly paid, and your share in the company is appreciating like an avalanche. Nor did I imagine for one second you’ve come sucking after preferment or special privilege. Credit me with that much insight.”

“I am sorry,” he said, contrite. “I am clumsy with words. Will you forgive me?”

“Nothing to forgive, darling. You’re pretty well ashiver. Think I’m not? What I meant was just that I’m nothing extraordinary. A wife and mother. Former engineer. They asked me to take over some administrative chores. That was faute de mieux, but gradually the administrating crowded out the engineering. It involved me in politics, because somebody had to speak up for the ordinary resident, buck the assorted governments, try to get taxes and regulations held in some relationship to reality. So now, for my sins, I’m serving a term as mayor here, and I’m afraid there’ll be another term or two before I can locate a suitable successor who can’t run fast enough. That’s all.”

“That,.. is plenty, ... I would say,”

“Your life is bound to have been much more interesting.”

“I doubt that.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And I am not a very interesting person,” he said doggedly,

“I’ll be the judge of that, if you please.” Beynac shitted position, leaned back, crossed her legs, an attitude that invited easiness.

He found his tongue moving more readily as he talked. “Well, you have heard the basic facts. I was raised as a Swede. We traveled, I saw a good deal of Earth, but I was always ... starstruck. I wanted out, as the North Americans say, and at age eighteen I was admitted to Fireball’s academy. My talent and wish were for piloting, and it has become my work. I have flown both regular and exploratory missions, and am newly back from Jupiter.”

“And you call yourself dull. Huh! How about your Earthside life? Married? I lust to start having grandkids.”

“No,” he replied harshly. “I was, for three years. It ended.”

Her tone went like a hand that stroked his hair. “Didn’t intend to pry. I won’t discuss anything you’d rather not, nor investigate it. A promise.” After a moment: “Pilots are dreadful marriage risks. Everybody knows it. She must have been a brave and loving girl.”

“She deserved better. I hope she will find it.”

“Drop that remorsefulness, will you? Switching back—again, not to pry, but—you said you were starstruck, but you must have been too smart not to know the hazards and sacrifices and miseries of space, as well as the glamour; and you’ve described a pleasant life on Earth, by no means boring. You could have gone into a career that would soon provide you the money to taste space as a tourist. I mean the kind of tourist who trains for it till he can have real experiences. Nevertheless, you say you wanted out. Why? What was wrong?”

“I—I felt, well, cramped, restricted.”

“Really? I remember Anson Guthrie remarking once that when he was young, Sweden was what he called a nanny state, but it got rid of that and nowadays people there are more free than in most countries, including North America. Which is obviously one reason why he placed you where he did.”

“True. Still, everywhere on Earth—everywhere fit to live in—you have a feeling that everything is settled, everything important has been done, anything truly new can only make us uncomfortable. And that, what is the word, that smarmy Necromantic movement, claiming to bring back traditions that for hundreds of years have existed only in books, if they ever existed at all—it made me gag. In space they are not afraid of newness and greatness. They have their customs, their genuine traditions, and those are growing, they serve a purpose, they live.”

Beynac nodded. “I realize it wasn’t anywhere near as simple as that, and probably your motives never were clear to you and never will be, but I see your drift.” With a smile: “I also see you are not a bore. I’llbet in your teens your age mates found you an intolerable, stiff-necked nonconformist.”

After a silence she went on, carefully, “I do need to ask what made you search me out. It was not idle curiosity.”

“No,” he said. “It was that same feeling of rootless-ness, of belonging to nothing and nobody. Yes, I am fond of my foster parents, but in every other way I have grown apart from them.”

“I know how they feel,” she said half under her breath.

He decided not to pursue that. “Fireball is my real family now, as for so many of us. And yet, maybe it is that I have not quite matured out of a lonely adolescence, yet there was this emptiness in me. It made no sense, but I could not fill it. At last I thought that if I could learn who my true parents were, where and what I came from, it might make healing. But I did not want to disturb them. Simply knowing who you are, meeting you this once, that is a miracle.”

“You don’t have to go away, Lars,” Beynac told him. “You won’t, if I can help it.”

After another moment she went on: “You don’t seem to have identified your biological father. His name was William Thurshaw. It was a summer’s love affair, wild and beautiful and of course impossible. I resisted having an abortion, and the Guthries saved me and you as you know. That was because—no. Maybe someday I can tell you.

“Bill was a gifted boy. That was maybe the main thing that drew me to him. He was also gallant and caring, and he went on to become the same sort of man. We never heard from each other again, but Guthrie told me this much. Now that I can tell what to look for, yes, I see a lot of Bill in you. And I think in your spirit, too.”

Her tone hardened. “He could have gotten into Fireball like me and later you, no doubt, but chose differently. Two years ago, Guthrie told me he was dead. You must know how the Renewal is getting more frantic, more ruthless, as the country goes to pieces beneath it. Bill spoke too freely in defense of freedom. He was killed ‘resisting arrest,’ the police reported.”

“I am sorry,” was all Rydberg could find to say.

Beynac’s voice gentled. “For me, he wasn’t much more than a dream I’d had. I cried a little. My husband held me close and made the world good again. I am very happily married, Lars. But you can be proud of your father.”

She took Rydberg’s hand. They sat thus for a space.

“I am glad you are happy,” he said at last. “I must not threaten it. I will go. Today has been more than enough.”

“No!” she exclaimed. “Bloody hell, no! You stay!”

“But your husband, your children—”

She regained control. “Please. I can’t just let you orbit back into the swarm and think no more about it. Not that I’ll lay any claims on you, either. Can’t we get to know each other, though?”

“At your home? I would feel like an invader.”

“Don’t.” Her laugh wavered a bit. “Oh, Edmond will be taken aback at first, but not badly, and he’ll recover fast. He’s so absolutely a man, you see.^The children will just be interested, not deeply nor for long, I’m sure; about like a cat when a visitor arrives. That’s all.

“Lars, I love those children with my whole heart, but you are the only one of mine who’s completely human.” Westward the lake sheened blue, reaching like a sea off beyond the horizon. A few last shreds of dawn-mist smoked across its quietness. A waning Moon floated pale above several islands. Eastward the shore stood boldly and the sun filled intensely green highlands with shadows. Musoma town lifted white at the mouth of its bay. Three pelicans and a heron passed overhead. The air lay cool and hushed, with an odor of fish that would become strong later in the day.

A boat drifted some distance put. Two men sat at ease in it, facing one another. Lines trailed from the rods in their hands.

“A lovely morning,” Charles Jomo said conversationally.

“Yes,” Venator agreed. His body could savor it as well as any other human’s could. Nevertheless the hunter stirred within him. “But will we ever get a

bite?”

They were speaking Anglo. Jomo wanted to practice his. Venator had not admitted to his knowledge of any languages current hereabouts. Capabilities were best kept in reserve till needed, and surprise was a potent weapon.

“Oh, yes,” Jomo said. “The fish here behave differently from the fish in the shallows. Designed for sport. You shall have your excitement, I promise you. Meanwhile, patience. We have the whole day.” He was a gray-haired, deep-brown man with a comfortable paunch. Like his companion, he wore only a tunic. Sunburn was no hazard to either of them.

Venator repeated earlier politeness: “It’s very kind of you to take this much for an outsider.” If the fellow knew what kind of outsider! he thought sardonically.

Jomo chuckled. “The professional guide you would otherwise have engaged may have a different opinion.”

Venator reckoned he should pretend a bit of concern. “I’m sorry. That didn’t occur to me.”

“Not to worry. He’s not desperate for ucus. Who is?”

“I have known some.”

“Ambitious types.” Jomo’s tone grew interested. “And wouldn’t you say—isn’t it the same in your home territory?—the hard workers are not after extra purchasing power so much as fame or personal satisfaction or something else emotional? How important are material goods and services when everyone receives basic credit?”

Good, Venator thought. He had hoped to draw his acquaintance out. Educated, philosophically inclined persons, who were active in the affairs of their societies, were apt to reveal the most. Occasional perceptions they gave him had been startling.

Not to them. Nor did he show his reaction. That would have defeated his purpose. It wasn’t just that a synnoiont was too awesome a figure for casual talk to be possible, it was that a synnoiont grew too remote from common humanity. A police officer needed to understand people, in their endless variousness as individuals and as cultures. Whenever he could escape the demands upon him and the desires within him, Venator forced himself to return incognito to his species.

Jomo hadn’t said anything extraordinary thus far. However, if nothing else, he probably typified the attitude of local residents toward many aspects of their existence. It wasn’t likely to be identical with the attitudes of Australians or Brazilians or even southern Africans.

Keep this going. “Some work hard because the kind of thing they do requires it,” Venator pointed out. “Professional athletes. Certain artists. Spacefarers,” such few as were left, mostly in Lunarian employ. “Et cetera.”

Jomo nodded. “That’s what they choose to do. What I said. Personal satisfaction, prestige, the approval of one’s peers.”

“M-m, you don’t impress me as either a lazy man or one greatly concerned with status.”

“Few of us hereabouts are lazy. It’s frowned on. But neither are we fanatic strivers. We take our leisure. For example, my mediation practice. The cases aren’t many or deadly serious. I can generally set them aside when I’ve a better way to spend a day, like this expedition.”

“Do you mean most of you have jobs? Are there enough to go around?”

“Many occupations are unpaid, private pursuits or public service.”

“Yours, if I may ask?”

“I’m on the municipal recreation committee, with emphasis on children’s activities.” Of course, Venator thought. Children were always special, as few as they were, here too, here too. “I garden. I’m studying Kikuyu, to experience the ancient compositions in the original.”

Archaism seemed popular throughout Africa, Venator” reflected. Was that precisely because most of the continent was so well adjusted to the modern world? Or did it go deeper, was it a quest for something lost, forgotten, yet inwardly felt? When tribalism, the whole primitive heritage, perished in the Dieback, it had enabled the old Protectorate to lay a firm foundation for a new and rational life—but did a rootless-ness linger and hurt after all these centuries, like ghost-pain from an amputated limb in eras before medical regeneration?

No, that was absurd, totally unscientific.

But the human mind had its own dark mathematics, which was not that of logic or causality. It was chaotic.

His task was to hold chaos at bay.

Jomo’s voice drew him from his momentary reverie. “What about you, Mr. Mthembu?” The name with which Venator was born frequently served him as an alias. He made a smile. “Currently I am on holiday, you know,” he replied. But forever observing. “And I’ve told you I do liaison work with the cybercosm.”

“That covers an extremely wide field. Your position—”

Venator sensed the buzz in his breast pocket more through his skin than his ears. Emergency? Alertness went electric along his nerves. He raised a hand. “Excuse me. I seem to have a call.”

Jomo looked with curiosity at the little disc he took out. It wasn’t the usual miniphone. Nor was it limited to the usual functions. Venator laid it against his head behind the right ear.

“Report on subject Kenmuir,” he heard by bone conduction.

Outwardly he sat relaxed, flicking his fishing rod. The float danced; quicksilver droplets arced off the water. Inside, he had become entirely hunter. Beneath the machine lucidity of consciousness, blood throbbed.

“Proceed,” he subvocalized. For added caution, he used the generated language that was a high secret of his corps.

“We have lost contact with the subject. Apparently he has been taken into a well-screened section by an opposition agent, who doubtless plans to remove him from the vicinity.”

We was a misrendition, but so would / have been. The pronoun referred to those aspects of an awareness that, mutably as occasion required, devoted themselves to this business; and the awareness itself was a changeable part of a vastly larger whole. Ripples upon waves upon an ocean.

“H’ng!” escaped Venator. Jomo gave him a quizzical glance. “Summarize for me.” He had last been in touch three days ago. It was pointless—counterproductive, in fact—to monitor an operation hour by hour when nothing untoward was happening. That

if1 was what high-level robots were for. He had plenty else, to engage him. This stop at Victoria Nyanza was only half a respite. Word still came in, sporadically, from half a dozen different, ongoing investigations.

“Kenmuir left Guthrie House today, American Pacific time, and flew to Los Angeles. It seems clear, now, that while in the house he made a call on a secure line and got further instructions.”

“Yes, yes. I rather expected that.” It was unnecessary to say, the sophotect knew it quite well-, but Venator didn’t waste energy suppressing every ape impulse in himself.

There hadn’t been time to penetrate that line. The Fireball Trothdom had had centuries in which to develop its private channels and vaults. A wariness of government that went back to Fireball Enterprises had led it to keep those defenses up to date. Venator hadn’t worried. The odds were enormous that Matthias would give Kenmuir nothing. What most plausibly mattered was what Kenmuir did next. Still, it could be worthwhile to study the Rydberg ...

Kenmuir had disappeared. That mattered. “Go on,” Venator directed.

“In Los Angeles he went to an obscure cantina. A woman using the name Irene Norton met him. Their conversation was brief before she hastily conducted him off.”

“Replay it.”

When he had heard: “Tell me about this meeting place.”

And afterward: “Obviously she suspects he’s been implanted—anticipated the possibility, and chose that rendezvous because she knew of just such a bolthole as she’s taken him into. That may give clues to her identity. She’s quick-witted and has had some experience, but didn’t sound to me like a professional at this.”

“A datascan shows that she cannot be any of the persons registered under the name Irene Norton. It is an alias. Orders?”

“Sweep-surveillance of the area. It may find them fairly soon. Kenmuir has to surface sometime. He may even turn himself in. He’s dubious about the whole affair. Meanwhile start inquiries at that Asilo den. Discreet, tactful. It doesn’t impress me as having a staff or a clientele overly friendly to us. Still, detectives may learn who this woman really is.”

“Yes, pragmatic. Further orders?”

“Inform me immediately of any new developments. I will be on my way to Central to take full charge.”

Venator pocketed the disc. Sky, water, sunlight, breeze crowded in on him.

“I hope that wasn’t bad news,” Jomo said slowly.

“Emergency,” Venator answered. “Work-related. I’m not free to say more, and I’m afraid I must leave at once.”

“Pity.” Jomo reeled in his line while his visitor did the same. “Come back again,”

“I hope to.” It was peace and sanity like this that Venator fought to preserve.

Incidentally to the main purpose, to the cosmic meaning of his life.

Jomo started the motor. The boat skimmed shoreward.

This wasn’t really a dire situation, Venator deemed. Not yet. Probably not ever. What could two fugitives do?

It was plain that Fireball knew nothing about Proserpina. Otherwise the truth would have come out long ago—irresistible, to spirits that still yearned after the stars. The arcanum on which the Rydbergs brooded so dragonlike must be some trivial piece of long-irrelevant history, if it was that much: on a par with the unpublished diary of an ancestor.

Lilisaire, intensely researching, had found indications of a mystery in deep space. She thought the object of it might, barely possibly, give her power toblock the Habitat, or actually break Luna free of the Federation.

It could do nothing of the kind, of course. It threatened far worse.

But those data that survived were well safeguarded. Venator himself had not been granted an access code—and it biological—until the cybercosm had concluded that Li lisa ire’s activities were disturbing enough that he had a need to know. How could two amateurs tell where to begin looking, let alone how to break in?

No, they were not important in themselves. They were leads to Lilisaire and her underground—clever, ‘ dangerous Lilisaire.

(Assassination? Difficult, maybe infeasible, disastrous if an attempt failed. Besides, she might well leave word behind her, and others carry on. Arrest? On what charges, with what repercussions? Wait a while. Play the game. It was good to have a really challenging opponent.)

Nonetheless, because they were walking clues, Kenmuir and Norton must be captured. And there were loose ends elsewhere, securities to make secure. For that, communication facilities here were ridiculously inadequate. He would return to Central.

To oneness. The knowledge pierced him like love.

The reasoning brain went on in its work. It was vital to take back control over events, now, before they got out of hand, before crisis led to crisis as in the distant past. The room in Port Bowen was overlarge for two persons, but Dagny Beynac appreciated the courtesy of a meeting there rather than in an office. It softened a little the fact that she had been summoned. Likewise did spaciousness, the sheer expanse of carpet. A conference table stood offside, with a console for data and communications in the adjacent wall. Of the several free armchairs, at each of the two that were in use an end table bore a cup and teapot.

The governor general for the Lunar Authority had given the chamber a personal touch as well. A big viewscreen played a recorded scene, houses on precipitous green mountainsides, the Chiangjing flowing majestic between. Opposite hung a scroll. Its black-and-white picture was of an old man in a robe, seated, probably a sage. Did its calligraphy embalm a poem?

The attendant who brought the tea bowed and left. He was young, in hard condition, his civilian clothing suggestive of a uniform, Dagny suspected he was secret service. The door slid shut behind him. For a moment she heard silence.

“Please be seated,” Zhao Haifeng said. His English came fluent, in a choppy accent and high voice. He was tall, gaunt, white-haired, austerely clad. “Does tobacco annoy you?”

“No, go ahead,” Dagny replied. She refrained from expressing a hope that his cancer shots were current. If Luna must have a proconsul, he could be worse than this former professor of sociodynamics. Or so she supposed. Today might change her opinion.

They took their seats. Zhao brought forth a cigarette, touched his lighter ring to it, inhaled, streamed smoke from his nostrils. Dagny wondered if he was as tense as she was. A hint of acridity reached her.Ventilation sensors took note and it blew away on a piny breeze.

“You were most kind to come in person,” Zhao said. “I know how busy you are.”

“Your Excellency’s ... request ... was somewhat pressing,” Dagny answered.

“Quite apart from the security of communication lines,” the governor explained, “I am archaic enough to find a holographic image an inadequate substitute for flesh-and-blood presence, when matters of grave import are to be discussed.”

Also, Dagny thought, her coming to him was a symbol, an act of submission. Did he expect it to quell her, however subtly? When she called Anson Guthrie about the demand, the jefe had grinned and said, “The lamb requires the she-wolf to visit him.” But that was a jape. Behind the Confucian facade, this was no sheep whom she faced.

“Can we do that?” she asked. “You realize I no longer have any official standing of any kind.”

Zhao lifted a palm. “Please, Madame Beynac. We are in privacy. You know full well that in some respects you have more power on Luna than I do.”

Draw him out. “How? I was the Tycho Region delegate to the Coordinating Committee. That’s all.”

“You were elected its chairman—“ Zhao inclined his head “—by which it did itself honor.” He pulled hard on his cigarette. “Let us not continue the public charade. Time is as valuable to you as to me. The Committee lives on in the hearts of the colonists. It is what saw them through the anarchic years. Most of its former members have close ties to Fireball Enterprises, which has become unhealthily dominant in space.” Dagny bridled inwardly but let that pass. “The Lunar Authority is new, unwelcomed by many, often perceived as irrelevant to their real concerns, or as a burden. My duty is to improve this situation.”

Surprised despite herself, Dagny murmured, “Your Excellency is very frank.”

Zhao smiled. “Entrenous, madame.” Since hearing from him, she had prepared her thoughts and words as best she was able. “But may I then say you exaggerate? The Committee was never more than ad hoc, formed because we were getting one emergency after another and somebody had to take charge.” Her mind completed the sentence: Take charge, when the Grand Jihad erupted across Earth, an interwoven economy collapsed in country after country, revolutions and lawlessness ripped whole societies asunder, the brittle old United Nations broke into shards, nobody on the planet had serious attention to spare for a few tens of thousands on the Moon. “Fireball helped, yes. You might even say it saved us. But it didn’t take over government. It couldn’t have.”

“At any rate,” said Zhao dryly, “it chose not to. Perhaps that was because M. Guthrie foresaw that you Selenites would perforce set aside the conflicting fragments of national authority and establish your own.”

“Senor, you know we never meant the Committee to be permanent. Didn’t we cooperate in full with you and your people after you arrived?”

“You did not resist.”

“We’re as glad to have a single law here as we are to have a World Federation and a Peace Authority on Earth.” In principle, Dagny thought. In practice, it depended on how that law read. “Anyway, to get back to the subject, you’ve dissolved the Committee.”

“I am not certain it was wise to do that so soon.” Zhao lifted his teacup. “However, such was the decision in Hiroshima.”

Dagny sipped likewise. The fluid went hot and flowery over her tongue. “I can understand their reasons. It’s hard enough settling what national autonomy is going to amount to, without adding the germ of a whole new nation.”

“And thus we come to the present exigency,” Zhao said. “You Selenites are scarcely in a position to threaten anyone else—not that I accuse you of wishing to. But if you set an example of defiance, asuccessful example, which virulent nationalists on Earth can make into a precedent, that could open the gates to new horror. Consider, for example, how many people will perish miserably if the African Protectorate is overthrown.” He sighed. “The Federation needs time to gain strength, to take firm root, before it is severely tested.”

Temptation beckoned. “Meanwhile,” Dagny snapped, “Luna’s a nice, small, comfortably distant laboratory for trying out this or that theory of international governance.”

At once she regretted her outburst. Relief brought warmth when he said merely, mildly, “Pray do not be bitter.”

“Oh, I’m not,” she made haste to answer. “Some among us are, true, but I do believe—yes, I am glad you wanted a meeting in person—I believe you mean well, senor.” She spoke sincerely, within limits. His good intentions were not necessarily identical with hers.

“Thank you. Gracias.” Zhao dropped his cigarette down the disposer in his table and reached for a replacement. “Then please help me.”

“How? I’m nothing but a private citizen, these daycycles.”

He measured out his sentences. “Your influence is global. The colonists respect you, they listen to you, as they do not my officials or me. Furthermore, you know what they want and, more important, what they need. After three years, I continue to be an outsider. Advise me. Support me—“ he inhaled twice “—to the maximum extent your conscience permits. For my part, I promise that when you disagree with me, /will listen.”

“Advise?” Dagny asked in astonishment. “Senor, anything I can tell you, you’ve heard a thousand times before.”

Her mind leaped. She was here on account of her sons. If he offered her an opening, jump through it! “What do we on Luna want and need?” she said.

“Why, it’s simple, obvious. For openers, removal of a lot of rules and restrictions left over from the former regimes. We tMought we’d gotten rid of them, but then your Lunar Authority came in and declared nearly all were back in force.”

“Those that have justification.”

Boldness, short of insolence, might well be the safest course. “Such as?”

“Taxes paid to the respective governments on Earth. Yes, you Selenites complain that you do not receive commensurate services. Perhaps adjustments should be made. Nevertheless, the fact abides that without viable nations on Earth you would have no markets and indeed would not long survive. Consider that a service.”

“We’re self-sufficient by now in air, water, food, energy. We managed during the Jihad. We’re looking spaceward:”

Zhao stayed by his argument. “Furthermore, you have an obligation to humankind at large, the civilization from which you sprang and that is still your spiritual home.”

“I don’t dispute that myself,” Dagny said with care.

“Certain people do. Above all—pardon me, I intend no offense—above all, in the younger generation, the metamorphs.”

Dagny nodded. “They’d feel less alien if—less alienated if the educational requirements laid on them were better fitted to ... their natures.”

“Again, adjustments are possible,” Zhao said. Sharply: “In fact, they are made. My office is not ignorant of what goes on in colonial households. More and more, that is where children learn their major lessons, from programs written at home and from their elders and their peers. True?”

“Yes. It’s only right and natural.”

Zhao frowned, drew on his cigarette, made a stabbing gesture with it. “Up to a point, madame. That alienation to which you admit must not evolve much further. It is taking an ugly, yes, dangerous turn.”

Dagny had known the talk would come to this. Let her play for time, though, keep him among generalities a few minutes more while she marshalled her wits and will. “Not just the young are protesting,” she said. “Many of us were doing it for years before the Jihad. The grievances are genuine, your Excellency.”

He went along with her tactics. She wondered whether that was because it suited his. “I take it you refer principally to the regulation of Lunar industry?”

“Well, that’s one thing. Enterprise feels stifled.”

He raised his brows. “You colonists do not unanimously claim that this unique, scientifically and culturally priceless environment deserves no protection.”

“Of course not.” She thought of Edmond’s rage at what might happen to various geological sites. She thought of what their son Temerir had to say about the astronomy he was newly entering; those few glacial words struck deeper than all his father’s pyrotechnic profanity. “Just the same, it’s time for some tradeoffs,” she said.

“We are not discussing a slight pollution of pristine near-vacuum, nor the damage mining can do to areas of interest, nor any other inevitabilities. What we touch on is whether they shall be kept within bounds.” Zhao’s gaze drilled at her. She forced herself to meet it. “Beyond this, we have the fundamental principle that the Solar System is the common heritage of humankind.”

It was a shopworn retort, but she could find no better: “And therefore nobody outside of Earth may own any part of space.”

“On the contrary, the concessions are generous. Perhaps too generous. Fireball has grown monstrously off much more than space transport. Many other companies and individuals have too.”

“Yes.” In her reluctant political career, Dagny had often needed to speak with more sonorousness than directness. The skill came back. “But no one among us may stand on a piece of land, even a piece of orbiting rock, and say, ‘This is mine. I made it what it is. 1 bequeath it to my children and to their children.’“

“Strange,” he murmured, “that so primitive a wish has been reborn in space.”

“Primitive, or human? We’re still the old Cr6-Magnon.” Edmond stood suddenly forth in her, waiting at home for her, hunter of the unknown, he whose folk had left their bones in the caves and valleys and up the steeps of his Dordogne since ice cliffs barred the North and mammoths walked the tundra. It was as if he spoke from her throat. “We still bear an instinct to possess our territories.”

Quietly seated, soft in his voice, Zhao lashed out: “We, madame? Is the desire of the new generation, the generation created for Luna, that simple and straightforward? Can you tell me what they in their inmost beings want? Can they themselves?”

For a hundred heartbeats there was again silence in the room. Dagny’s look strayed to the viewscreen. In the image a bird sailed past, a wisp of cloud blew across a rounded peak. It was beautiful. She wished it .were of surf and sand and driftwood.

Returning her heed to Zhao, she said: “Muy bien. Let’s get serious. You did not call me in because I’m a fairly big frog in this little dry puddle the Moon. No, I’m the mother of Brandir and Kaino.”

“Of Anson and Sigurd Beynac, technically,” he answered with the same restraint. “And of Gabrielle Beynac, who is perhaps more to be feared. I have studied Verdea’s writings.” Yes, Dagny thought, he did his homework. “They are not overtly subversive, no. Nothing so resistible. What they nourish is a new and foreign spirit.”

“Is that bad?”

Was it? Did not every small and dear person grow at last into a stranger? And yet it was Lars Rydberg, when he visited, who set aside the bleak face he turnedon the world, to give her and, yes, ‘Mond something of himself, the warmth that came from feeling you were wanted. Not her Lunarian children.

“Well, but this is not time for philosophical mus-ings,” Zhao said. “The fact on hand is that your two older sons and their associates are in grave violation of the law. My hope is that you can bring them to their senses before something irrevocable happens. You and your husband, of course. I did not invite him here today because he has avoided politics, and because, hm, a man of his temperament might have been uncomfortable.”

Might well have exploded, Dagny understood.

“Invite” was another cute word. “What exactly have they done?” she demanded.

“Madame, you know. Everyone does.”

“We’ve been in touch with them, their father and I, briefly. We did not argue rights or wrongs.” They never did any longer. “And we’ve followed the newscasts.” She must not go passive, she must keep the initiative, make Zhao respond to her. “For favor, though, brief me on what you see the issues to be. We can’t talk sense before we’ve straightened out what each of us is talking about.”

He nodded. “As you wish. I am anxious to make peace.”

“Peace hasn’t been breached, has it?”         ^

“Not yet—openly—not quite. I cannot help speculating whether their aim is to force the Authority to take the first unretraceable step.” Zhao made an understated production of drinking more tea. “Let me show you a recorded presentation. I have not permitted its release thus far, because it could prove inflammatory.”

“Good of you, your Excellency. Look, I don’t want trouble either/Nobody in their right mind does.”

His glance hinted that that might not include the young, the true Lunarians. What he said was, “Stipulated. This sequence was meant for transmission to Peace Authority headquarters on Earth, as a threedimensional account of what happened. It was prepared by order of Chief of Constabulary Levine, under the direction of the officer who had been in command of the mission. Anticipating difficulties, he had had a continuous record kept. For purposes of clarity this has been edited and commentary added, but it remains objective and unbiased.”

“Does any such thing exist where people are concerned?”

His smile flickered wry. “True, they would not interpret it in Hiroshima as your Selenites would. Therefore I have sequestered it. I have not decided whether to release it. Please try to see my dilemma.”

He rose and went to the console. Dagny got up too and took a bounding low-£ turn around the room. It darkened. The scene from China went out of the viewscreen. They moved their chairs to face that way and sat down again. She breathed deep and made her muscles ease, like undoing a row of knots.

A man’s image appeared, uniformed, standing in a Spartanly functional studio. Lip movements showed he was not speaking the English that a translator program furnished: “Mohandas V. Sundaram, colonel, Peace Authority of the World Federation, reporting on an incident—“ He went on to give date, hour, precise location, and then, in the same clipped voice, background.

“During the Grand Jihad and the chaotic period afterward, the effective government on Luna was a self-created Coordinating Committee.” Unfair, Dagny thought. Colonial officers had agreed on the necessity, but the delegates were elected. Admittedly, several Earth side governments denounced the action, though they’d been in no position to do anything about it. “This confined itself to matters of public safety and essential services.” What else could or should it have done? “Numerous colonists and associations of colonists took advantage of the situation to commence operations hitherto illegal, notably in extractive and manufacturing industries. Indeed, theCommittee turned a number of facilities over to them.” Somebody had to operate the plants. “They used these not only to produce needed goods, but to make new capabilities for themselves,” The multiplier effect, thrice powerful when you started with robotic and molecular technology.

The reflection flashed through Dagny: The Renewal had simply been an extremist faction on an Earth gone generally ideological. People everywhere had been apt to regard productivity the way the medieval Church regarded sex, as inherently sinful, destructive, to be engaged in no more than was required for the survival of the race. Anyway, such was the ideal, and ideals could also constrain the thinking of the majority who didn’t really live by them. Wherefore people on the Moon must conform. And Fireball folk, who did not accept this, grew closer, more loyal, to each other than to an unfriendly society around them ... like medieval Jews?

Her attention had wandered. She snatched it back: “—claims to ‘administration’ of large tracts were routinely franchised by the Committee. These franchises gave exclusive rights to exploitation, forbade trespass, and could be bought and sold. To all intents and purposes, they were the property rights in extraterrestrial real estate that the United Nations had enjoined. The World Federation has affirmed the prohibition. The Lunar Authority must enforce it.”

Again Dagny’s focus drifted. Her Lunarian children were not altogether sundered from her. Anson/ Brandir told of mighty works to be wrought, and for Sigurd/Kaino shipyards were among them, spaceships for him and his kind ...

“—most notorious case, in the Cordillera range. Pursuant to the governor general’s declared policy, every effort was made to reach agreement.” At least Sundaram did not cite those back-and-forth, multiply connecting calls and faxes, the pussyfooting, the bluster, the queries, the evasions, the temporizing, the thunderheads piling high with lightning in their caverns—but no, that was a wrong figure for these lands which had never known a wind ... “—at last ordered a mission to the area in dispute.”

Abruptly the scene was there, pockmarked bare hills rising toward mountains dappled and gashed by shadows. The camera, inside one of two large vans, swung about until it looked back east. Earth stood at the waning quarter just above yonder horizon. The sun blazed at mid-morning. A road, little more than regolith smoothed and roughly graded, wound up over the kilometers toward this halting place. The camera swept through a half circle and came to rest, scanning out the front of its vehicle. The road went on until lost to sight amidst ruggedness. Here, though, an arch made of native rock bestrode it, filled by a gate of steel bars, shut. Dagny well remembered that portal. Brandir had taken her and Edmond through it when he showed them his realm and what he was building there.

That was four years ago. Since then the newscasts had now and then replayed satellite pictures. Like others on Luna, the complex grew swiftly and greatly. Its inhabitants and workers said very little about their doings within. Brandir’s parents had learned not to ask him.

Four spacesuited forms stood before the gate. Slung at their shoulders, jutting above the lifepacks, were things with tubes. Behind the bars waited the car that had brought them, a moondodger, fast and agile.

The camera zoomed in on their helmeted heads. Three were unknown to Dagny. One was a man of her kind, bald, stocky, tough. Two were young, male and female, unmistakable metamorphs—Lunarians. The fourth, the leader, was her Kaino. His unruly red hair shouted against the dun rockscape.

“Greeting,” came Sundaram’s voice, machine-rendered into English. He identified himself. “I am in command of the inspection team you have been notified to expect.”

“You were detected afar.” Kaino’s own English did

POUL ANDERSON

not ordinarily bear this strong an intonation of the language his breed used among themselves. “Greeting, and may your homefaring go well.”

Another camera had been aimed at Sundaram in the control cabin of his vehicle. The presentation split in two, he on the left side of the screen, the Selenites on the right. Mostly the center of the latter was on Kaino, but sometimes it moved across his companions, as if to catch them in any sinful action. The two Lunarians poised panther-quiet, the terrestroid human shifted from foot to foot and scowled. Kaino himself gestured while he talked, as was his wont.

“Thank you,” the colonel said stiffly. “I take it you will conduct us to the settlement. Shall we proceed?”

“Nay, we have but come to warn you against continuing.”

“What?” Dagny suspected Sundaram registered more surprise than he felt.

“As you must know from highview, presently this road tunnels, dividing into several before any of them emerge. Belike you would lose the proper route.”

“Not if we follow you.”

Kaino grinned. “Ah, but you shall not. I said we came to give you a cautioning. Now we will turn about.” He shrugged in the Earth manner. “\bu can drive around this gate, yes. It is a mere boundary marker. But you cannot match our speed.”

“So you refuse to guide us?”

“We do, either to Zamok Vysoki or through it.” The castle that was arising yonder was already spectacular, but Dagny knew that it must be the iceberg-tip of underground hugenesses, and they shielded against instruments.

“This is the constabulary of the Lunar Authority.”

“And this is the domain of the lord Brandir and the lady Ivala, and I am his brother who speaks for them.”

“ ‘Domain,’” Sundaram said low. “That word tells a great deal about your attitude.”

“We are not hostile, Colonel. Nay, let me urge that you never thrust onward unguided. You know not the safe ways to fare. Satellite maps and inertial navigation reveal naught of the treacheries—rubble pits, crevasse skins, infall-broken screes that any disturbance may bring down in a landslide. For your sake, I pray that you turn about.”

“Such hazards are exaggerated in ... folklore.”

“You seem more knowledgeable about this ancient world than us its dwellers.”

“If we should come to grief, would you assist us?”

“We respect the law that makes abandonment a felony first class, but we cannot promise to be aware of your trouble or able to rescue you if we learn.”

Sundaram paused before he rapped, “You break the law as you stand there. Those are weapons you carry, are they not?”

Kaino waved a hand. “Sporting devices,” he replied airily.

“They look like none I have ever seen.”

“Nay.” Kaino donned seriousness. “Weapons are not supposed to be in space, true, save small arms for police purposes. During the troublous years, we thought it advisable to develop better models. We do not yet feel assured that those years are quite behind us. It seems well to stay practiced in arms. But never gladly will we fire upon living targets.”

“So you say.” The officer sat silent for a time. The broad forward port framed his head in blackness.

“Let me talk to your brother,” he then said. “The ... lord Brandir may be ... realistic.”

Kaino smiled. “You may call, certainly. If none respond, I will give you a code for his private quarters. I know not whether he is at the fasthold and willing to converse.”

“He knows full well we are here,” Sundaram said roughly. “How many hidden monitors do you have spotted around these parts?”

The presentation skimmed over the next few minutes. The connection had been made through a buriedrelay cable. A face appeared in the phone screen before Sundaram. In the screen that Dagny watched, it replaced the view of her son.

Ivala, who had been christened Stephana Tar-nowski, was Lunarian-beautiful, as white of hue as Brandir but with amber hair that fell to her shoulders, the big oblique eyes hazel, the countenance narrow and thinly chiseled. Iridescence played over the garment that sheathed her slenderness. Behind her a giant orchid bloomed against a crimson drape. Dagny caught her breath. This was the mother of her and Edmond’s grandson.

“Greeting,” she almost sang. “The lord Brandir is absent—“ was he? “—but he and I are as one.”

Dagny admired Sundaram’s quickly regained equilibrium. “You are the lady Ivala? My pleasure, mad-ame, I trust.” He named himself. “I am sure you realize what our mission is.”

The woman nodded. “You would inspect throughout all installations and operations at Zamok Vysoki.”

“Yes, exactly. Persons here at the gate are obstructing our passage. Please direct them to assist us.”

Ivala’s lips curved upward. “In our earlier conversations, we explicitly did not pledge collaboration.”

Sundaram stiffened. “You are now required to, by warrant of the Lunar Authority.”

“You bear a search warrant?” Laughter trilled. “Has the Authority recognized these lands as our freehold? I am delighted.”

“Kindly do not play games, madame.”

The timbre grew cold. “Then shall I, rather than use the word ‘inspect,’ say, ‘Invade, interfere, imperil?’ We assert our right to refrain from partaking.”

“That is not a claim the courts will grant.”

“Are you a judge advocate?” she gibed.

“I am an officer of the law, given a duty which I intend to carry out.” Sundaram paused again. When he spoke once more, it was evenly. “If you have nothing illegal to hide, why do you put yourselves in violation like this? Let my group conduct its survey, and we may well recommend that you receive a concession to regularize your status.”

The fluid features congealed. “Rape of privacy is a violation.”

Sundaram frowned. “I do not understand.”

“Nay, you would not, would you?”

“Do you—you people—do you positively refuse to cooperate? Would you actually resist?”

“Some questions are best left unanswered, Colonel,” Ivala said.

Kaino’s voice broke in: “Before we go further, I pray your heed. You inquired about our equipment. Wish you to see a demonstration?”

Sundaram started where he sat. “What’s this?”

“A demonstration. Maychance it will interest you, a military man.”

Sundaram made his visage a mask. “Yes,” he said without tone. “It will, very much.”

The view shifted outside. In kangaroo bounds, Kaino and his followers deployed. They unslung the things they carried and opened fire on the hillside. Silently, silently, an automatic rifle stitched pox across a bluff. Another blew chips off a boulder, set it rolling, whipped it on with slug after slug. A miniature rocket streaked forth, a flash erupted, dust fountained aloft from a new-made crater a meter wide. The fourth instrument woke and the scene dissolved in flashes and buzzes, scrambled electronics.

When it cleared and steadied, Kaino stood limned athwart the sky, gun in hand, flame-head thrown back, joyously laughing.

The view regained Sundaram and Ivala. The officer held himself expressionless. “Thank you,” he said. “That was most interesting.”

“I do not believe your service possesses anything similar,” she purred.

“No. We did not foresee a need to develop infantry weapons for space. Until now.”

“Now? Why, what you saw was naught save sport.”Sundaram gazed straight at the lovely image. “You do hot threaten us?”

“Positively not.” Her amicability went grave. “We do caution you.”

“Against what?”

“Against the unforeseeable. Too easily can events break free of all bounds. Not so? Let me suggest, Colonel, that you consult with your superiors. Thereafter, fare you well.” The face disappeared.

Zhao rose and went over to blank the screen. He did not bring back the scene from home. “The rest we need not play,” he told Dagny. “You know what passed. After some debate, the team received orders to turn back.”

She nodded.

He stood tall above her. “That was by my direct command,” he said. “I do not wish to provoke hotheads.”

She looked up at him. “I wonder if those aren’t inhumanly cool heads,” she replied. “But thank you, your Excellency. You are a wise man.”

His smile flickered. “Thank you for that. In fact, I fumble my way ahead, like everyone else.” Somber-ness: “You must agree I cannot let this defiance go ignored.”

“What can you do about it?”

“I begin by appealing to you, madame. Those are your sons. You are highly regarded everywhere on the Moon. If you make them see reason, I will see to it that no charges are brought.”

Dagny weighed out her words. “I asked, what can you do?”

“I beg pardon?”

“They’d no more hear me or my husband than grown, headstrong men ever heard their parents. Probably less.”

Zhao sat down again opposite her. “I am not convinced of that. You are you.”

“Gracias. But don’t you be convinced, either, of what I might say to them. This does involve a basic principle.” Dagny sighed. “Yes, I could wish they’d been more ... tactful, politic. But they are what they are. Don’t you see, that’s the heart of the conflict. You’re trying to make them into what they are not, what they cannot be.”

“ ‘One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression,’” Zhao recited.

Dagny gave him a questioning glance.

“Thus wrote the poet William Blake some centuries ago,” he explained. Her respect for him waxed further. “But I am lawman for the oxen,” he went on. “For poor, wounded Earth. Have you no compassion for us?”

Dagny shook herself. “You’re not that dependent— Well, never mind. No, I don’t want a showdown, let alone an armed clash. It’d be lunacy.” She intended no humor. “I’m just telling you that to avoid it, you’ll have to give more than you get. Not more than you can afford, though.”

“I fear that to yield would provoke further encroachments. What then of the future?”

“We can’t control it. The grand illusion, that human beings ever could.”

He smiled anew, a bit. “Now it is you who quote. Anson Guthrie.”

“Why not? Fireball’s a vital factor too.” She leaned forward. “Listen, please. You want me to use my good offices to make Brandir give in. Well, they aren’t worth much for that end, and if they were, I might not employ them. However, I can and will use whatever influence I have with Guthrie. You’ve doubtless heard we’re close friends. He in his turn will ... think of something. A stable Luna is in Fireball’s interest also. Besides, he wouldn’t let a fire burn people up when he could put it out.”

Zhao sat bolt upright. “Can he persuade them to obey the law?”

“I think maybe he and I between us^can get them to compromise, if you can get the Federation policy makers to,” Dagny replied. “I have in mind some2 thing like the Lunarians admitting Sundaram’s team. Afterward, maybe they’ll agree to stop two or three disapproved projects.” She didn’t mention that the inspectors might not find everything there was to find and that an undertaking halted could always be started afresh. “You, the Federation, would have to make a credible promise beforehand, of a concession giving them and others like them control of their territory.”

Zhao bit his lip. “ Their’ territory. Private property, de facto if not dejure. No, worse than that. A feudal domain. Those four at the gate were a detachment of what amounts to a private army. And what of those other Lunarians? Once the precedent is set, what will they seek?”

Dagny resisted a temptation to reach over and pat his hand. “Don’t worry so. You’ll never get uniformed Lunarian thugs parading around intimidating voters. They’re no more interested in politics as we understand it than my cats are. That is, it affects them, they react to it, but it’s not a game they really care to play.”

“Cats.” This time Zhao’s smile came easier. “I keep parakeets myself.”

Dagny smiled back. “I’d enjoy meeting them.”

“You shall be welcome.” His mouth lowered. “You, though, have cats.”

She decided to push her luck. “Bueno, what about my proposal?”

“That you consult Guthrie? Yes, do. I could not prevent you in any case. Beyond that, we must see. At best, the details to hammer out will be stubborn and countless.”

“Uh-huh. And surprises jumping up at us all along the way. Still, we can hope to build a launch pad for a peace effort, can’t we?”

“I must think.”

He was a sensible, kindly man, she thought. He would almost certainly come to admit the need for yielding ground while preserving forms. Probably he could persuade them on Earth. Of course, he’d retain his deep doubts. She did. What about those long-range consequences?

Unforeseeable. You could only deal with the future as it came at you. In a storeroom underground, Kenmuir saw another door and started for it. “No, not there,” Norton said. “That’ll take you back to the street. Here.” She pushed at a shelf loaded with containers. It must double as a switch, for a section of wall slid aside. A passage reached beyond, bare, bleakly lit, surfaced with dull-green spray plastic. He followed her in. She touched a second switch and the entrance closed behind them. Air hung chill and stagnant. It smelled dusty.

.”Come on,” she urged.

Doubt flared into rebellion. He stopped. “What is all this, anyhow?” he demanded.

“It’s our way out. If my guess is right, we have to hope they’ll assume you went the other way, screened somehow. But if we stay this close, detectors could spot us—motion, infrared, transmitted through the wall—and that’d be that. Let’s go.”

He shook his head. “I mean, what’s this all about?”

She tugged at his arm. The grip was strong. “Kahuhtt, move, you tonto! We may have only minutes.”

He resisted. “Not so fast, I say. Who are we running from? What am I being hustled into, and why?”

She released him, clenched her fists at her sides, and drew a shaky breath. The expressionless pale face turned up toward his contrasted uncannily with the intensity of her voice. “Are you afraid this is some2 thing criminal? Listen. We’re in the service of the lady Li lisa ire, aren’t we? Has anyone accused her of any wrongdoing?”

“Well, I—she—”

“You’re thinking the Peace Authority wouldn’t be investigating her without a reason, aren’t you? Bueno, of course there’s a reason. She’s told you, hasn’t she? She wants to get the Habitat project stopped. Since when has the Covenant of the Federation denied any citizen of any member republic the right to have a political opinion and work for it? Since when was it a crime to search for information? So far, at least, anything unlawful has been on the other side. Most especially if I’m right about what they’ve done to you, Kenmuir. Find out and then decide!”

“Do you mean—“ He rumbled for words. This was like a nightmare from which he could not rouse himself. “A cabal inside the government—”

“I don’t know,” sjie said starkly. “If we hang around here till they come after us, we never will know. Now, I’m on my way. Come along or stay, whichever, but don’t anchor me.”

Lilisaire. And action, almost any action was better than standing in helpless bewilderment. It might even be a civic duty to learn more and then, as opportunity offered, report to the proper people ... whoever those might be. The woman was bounding off at a vigorous jog trot. He overtook and accompanied her.

“Good,” she said. “I figured you must be the right sort, or you wouldn’t have been picked for this.”

Right sort for what?

The passage branched in a T. She took them to the left. A short distance onward, it terminated. They halted. The air went harsh through his nostrils. He felt sweat trickle rank down his ribs, more than the run warranted. “Wait here,” she ordered.

Stubbornness returned. “Why?”

She sighed. “The tunnel is screened. I asked Juan, the waiter, to call and have a screened car sent to this end. I’ll go upstairs and meet it. When it arrives, I’ll come back for you. If you make a dash, maybe you won’t be detected. Regardless, with luck we should be gone before they can get here.” She opened the exit, slipped through, and closed it on him.

He stood his ground, shivering. Questions whirled. Screens? Against what? “They?” And why chase him and not her?

She’d asked about anything unusual that happened on his journey. When he told her—Hold! He lifted his hands, as if to fend horror off. No, that couldn’t be, mustn’t be. The woman was delusionary. What nest of dements had he stumbled into, and why hadn’t they gotten themselves cured long ago? But, but Lilisaire had engaged Norton. Hadn’t she? Then Norton— Was Lilisaire above using dements for purposes no sane person would touch? No, he’d not think that, not of her. And Norton seemed competent, maybe ter-rifyingly so ...

She returned. A metallic fabric lay across one arm. Did he hear laughter seethe below the urgency of her tone? “It’s here already. And it brought this for you. Good old Iscah. Sharp as a shark’s tooth. Put it on.”

He took the object from her and shook it out. A kind of gown with a coif unfolded, made of fine mesh in which nodules glittered against the dark shimmer. “Portable screening,” Norton explained. “Nothing ought to pick you up now. And we’ll go in an ordinary car, which won’t register suspicious on any monitor. I scab’s got to have called somebody nearby who could dispatch it here pronto. He knows folks everywhere around town.” The laughter rattled out, shrill for the contralto voice. He realized what stress she too was under.

He slipped the garment over his head. It hung loose and light, halfway down his shins. Chain mail, he thought: an anachronism no more weird than the rest of this night. Norton led him into an empty basement, up a stair to an empty room lighted only by what trickled through grimy windows. Vacant house, he guessed, reserved for an occasional hideaway orbolthole—by whom? They went on into the street. The vehicle parked there resembled the cab he had taken, except for being nicked and battered in the body, dingy inside. Opposite gloomed a tenement. Two of its own windows shone, with a cold bluish brightness. Kenmuir wondered who lived there.

Three firefly glints darted to and fro above the roofs. Norton glanced at them. “The pursuit, maybe, scouting for us,” she said. “We’re none too soon.”

Would they scan Kenmuir’s outfit and drop down to check? He made haste to enter. Norton was right behind. “Ready,” she to!d the car, and it started off. He twisted his neck to look backward. The fireflies stayed aloft. At short notice, over unfamiliar territory, no matter how well equipped, a squad couldn’t instantly identify everything. It wasn’t as if the resources of the whole cybercosm were marshalled. Relief billowed through him.

Should it? he wondered. Were he seen and seized, would it actually be a rescue?

He slumped back, willing his pulse to slow down, counting again his reasons for doing what he did. Norton sat equally still beside him. Lights that they passed flickered across her pseudo-face, then left it once more in an uneasy dusk.

With an effort, he asked at last, “Where are we bound?”

“To Iscah’s laboratory, I suppose,” she answered in the same monotone. She addressed the car: “Is that right?”

“I do not have that information, nor may I speak the address,” it responded.

She shrugged, turned toward Kenmuir, and said, “AH I could tell Juan was to call Iscah and tell him this felt like ‘an emergency, that I had a party with me who might be radiating, and that we’d go to the place on Pico in hopes he could send a screened carrier.” Her head drooped. “If we’d waited there till morning and nothing came, I don’t know what Fd have done.” The head lifted, the words regained a little color. “I’d have thought of something.”

“Concealed doorways, screened tunnel, screened transport,” he said slowly. “You’re quite familiar with this, this underground, aren’t you?”

“Not really.” She regarded him a while before continuing. “I’m not in any illicit operation. Nor am I involved in a revolutionary movement or any such pupule—such nonsense. Nobody I know is. It’s just that I work with metamorphs. Not here, mostly, but the work brings me here from time to time, and it’s caused me to meet some of these people.”

She paused. When she went on, her voice had more emotion in it. “The metamorphs of Earth ... they’ve got a hard fate, you know; Prejudice, discrimination, and there’s very little the state can do to help them because in fact they don’t fit in. They can’t. Think how the Lunarians, the lucky ones, don’t.”

Again she fell silent. He waited. A spacefarer grew good at waiting.

“They form their organizations, their societies— cultures, even, or the germs of cultures,” she resumed presently. “Yes, part of what goes on is illegal, but any victims are usually other metamorphs, and often there are no victims, it’s a matter of helping each other toward a life that suits the species better. Most of the different leaders are trying to work out a ... commonalty, a way for all metamorphs to cooperate, openly and lawfully. It isn’t easy, it’s not progressed far, in the long run it may be impossible, but we have to try, don’t we? That’s what I’ve been involved in, on behalf of my people.” He wondered if she was a changeling herself, beneath the mask. What breed? If not, how closely did she identify with one of those races, and which? “It’s led me into odd byways, yes, Fve been initiated into certain secrets, because I needed the information so I could go home and suggest to my people the best courses for them to steer. Don’t ask me too much.”“I have to ask a few things,” he rasped. “You, they, were very quick, very well prepared to react against ... official actions. That doesn’t sound like legality to me.”

“I admitted some activities are covert,” she replied. “We, the leaders I’ve dealt with, we hope to phase those out, but meanwhile we’ve got to collaborate with the—you can call them gang lords if you insist, but the fact is that their ordinary, decent followers trust them.” After another stillness: “The gang wars have practically ended. And the outright persecutions and the mob attacks by straight-gene humans. But metamorph history remembers, and tells metamorphs to stay prepared.”

Also, he thought, the maintenance of protections and of a communal structure was a strong moral factor by itself, giving cohesion, hope, meaning to life. Fireball—

Norton sank back. “For favor, I’m wrung dry,” she whispered. “Can we just rest a while?”

Compassion touched him. “Surely.” His own bones seemed to go liquid.