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9

 

Nauc, April 7

ALTHOUGH THERE WERE other urban complexes she preferred—Nipurb, for example—Alya was no stranger to Nauc. Quite apart from many brief social visits and shopping trips, she had lived on campus at New Columbia for a course on crisis ecology. She had even been trapped for two weeks in Knoxville, of all places, during the Florida Panic, when every vehicle capable of moving had been enlisted to help with the evacuations.

She had been dreading the usual bureaucratic trip wires that ensnared travelers at every port. She was pleasantly surprised. An army of red-uniformed, gun-bearing Institute guards boarded the super before anyone could leave, shouldering aside all protest. Alya and her companions were escorted out with no delays at all, and zipped away in an armored Honda the size of a small cafe.

The leader of the force was a woman named North Brenda. Remembering to think in English, Alya supposed she must be a female bull, except that English was usually a very logical language about gender. North was solid and foursquare, with a face as expressive as tree stumps. Jathro was being alternately obsequious and officious to her; neither approach seemed to produce any special reaction. He did not introduce Alya, but likely that was standard security procedure.

She sat in a corner with her teeth clenched, trying to straighten out a very muddled and unhappy brain. She was certainly jet-lagged—dizzy and displaced, seeing the world muffled and blurred by reflections as though she were living in a glass box. That was normal; she had felt like that before. Her head throbbed, but it had been doing so for almost three days now. The ancestral mutterings had faded when she left Banzarak, seeming fairly content as long as she concentrated on thoughts of Cainsville. The sight of Jathro's river list had aroused them again, but only briefly. Now she could feel another satori stirring—somehow she did not think it was the same one, although the buddhi was never specific. A sense of imminent danger began to grip her.

She was doing something wrong. Ambush? Could it be an ambush?

The Honda had passed three checkpoints and was slowing down again. That felt wrong, very wrong.

She turned to the North woman to insist that they change course. " . . . knew that the lady would wish to proceed straight to Cainsville," the bull was saying, "but, if you prefer to remain here when we see her off on the lev—"

That was what was wrong!

"No!" Alya said. "I do not wish to proceed straight to Cainsville!"

Jathro blinked at her in surprise.

"Very well, ma'am," North Brenda said, frowning. "I should have asked. Driver . . . the east gate." The Honda picked up speed again and swept by the entrance to the lev station.

Alya relaxed, feeling better.

Jathro looked puzzled and distrusting.

 

Alya was surprised. The suite to which she was shown was large, but it was drably functional. Even an average sort of hotel would have seemed cleaner and newer. She had expected something more ostentatious, more in keeping with the riches 4-I should have piled up after thirty years' monopoly on stellar power. Of course, the Institute's secret activities must be incredibly costly.

She refused Moala's offers of help, insisting that she could turn her own taps. She settled herself thankfully into a hot tub, assuming that the others were all doing the same. She lay back, prepared to enjoy long, warm decadence.

For the first time in her experience, hot water failed to soothe away the jangles of travel. Definitely, her satori had changed—Cainsville was not the answer. As the minutes ticked away, her sense of urgency rose, and rose very steeply. She found she was fighting down a sense of panic that she had never felt in her life before. What in Heaven's name could be wrong?

Angry and feeling cheated, she abandoned the bathtub. Bed? No—standing in the middle of her bedroom, still half wet, still toweling, she was seized by a claustrophic need to escape, at once. The walls seemed to lean in and glare at her. She had felt a little like that before a minor earthquake in Djakarta. Hastily wrapping herself in a loose robe, with her hair hanging limp down her back, she went swooping out into the central lounge of the guest suite.

The threat eased. No earthquake, then. Alya stopped, struggling to consider the new problem rationally—not that anyone ever had managed to explain the buddhi rationally. There was nothing seriously amiss with the lounge. Flanked by six bedrooms, it would have housed twelve typical Banzaraki families. It was more dowdy and shabby than she had expected, but that barely mattered—she could be perfectly happy in a student hovel for weeks on end. The roof was not going to fall. The need was not that.

Jathro was still chatting with the security woman, leaning close and staring intently into her eyes. North was short, but solid as a wrestler. Her face was grimly dutiful, denying awareness that Jathro possessed any special charm at all.

Alya told herself not to be catty. The man was merely being polite. He probably always spoke to women that way—all women. And if he seemed pompous, he was entitled to. He bore great responsibility. He had a great future. She shivered.

Now, though, he was starting to grow surly. "Then you have no idea at all when the director will see me?"

North shook her head. She looked less movable than a continent. "I was told to offer you any hospitality within the limits of Zone One, Excellency, and ask you to wait until after the conference."

Alya frowned. Her headache had been there so long that she hardly noticed it anymore—and perhaps it was not a sharp enough pain to qualify as a real headache, just a misery—but now it rapped hard on the inside of her forehead to attract her attention. "What conference?" she asked loudly.

North and Jathro turned surprised faces toward her.

"Director Hubbard has called a press conference, ma'am," North replied.

"Is that usual?"

North shook her head, her placid face showing just a whisper of a smile. "It has never happened in living memory."

Quivers ran up Alya's spine and then down the undersides of her arms . . . curious sensation! She looked at Jathro, who was frowning uncertainly. "Then what is the occasion?"

"No one knows, ma'am." If North had her suspicions, she would clearly not reveal them under penalty of flogging.

Could Alya herself be the occasion?

The same idea had occurred to Jathro. His frown darkened to a scowl, then he shook his head. "I cannot believe that it has anything to do with us." He glanced hesitantly at North, before cautiously telling Alya, "None of the other plantings was ever published."

Not even a funeral announcement . . .

"No, it cannot concern us," he repeated.

But it did, it did!

"I wish to attend," Alya said. The headache retreated a pace or two in approval.

North Brenda pursed her lips in doubt and looked at Jathro, who shook his head.

"I must attend," Alya said, and felt even better. "I'll change at once—how long until it starts?" Not long, obviously, or she would not have felt that urgency.

Jathro walked over to intercept her, and for a moment she thought he was going to take hold of her. She stopped, glaring.

"I prefer not to reveal your presence here," he said.

"Then I am leaving!"

"No. You are wearied by the journey. Take some rest—and don't worry about the negotiations. I will handle everything."

Alya attempted a royal manner and aimed it at North, who was being craggily inscrutable. "Please arrange transportation to the port. I am returning to Banzarak."

"You are not," Jathro said, and turned away.

At that, Alya no longer had to feign anger. "I certainly am—unless I am permitted to attend that press conference."

"You can watch it on the holo. I'm sure it'll be on the holo."

"No. I must be there."

"It will be in English. Do you understand English well enough?"

For the first time in her life, Alya discovered that it was truly possible to see red. "Understand . . . What do you think I am? Yes, I understand English. I have studied many things under many English-speaking teachers."

Jathro blinked, and suddenly she realized that he had not done his homework—he probably knew nothing about her except her name and rank.

"Political science," she said, with grim satisfaction, "under Bozeman Charles. Economics with Stavely Wills. Superstring theory in Ankara, under Gutelman—in English and Russian. Genetics in Sydney, mycology in Neururb-U.K. . . . Yes, I speak English, Dr. Jar. My accent is much better than yours. And I am going to that press conference."

"Why is that necessary?"

"Why?" Alya echoed, stunned. "Why?" Fists clenched, she roared at him. "You have the audacity to ask me why? To ask me why?"

Jathro fell back before her fury. She followed him, screaming at him, wanting to pound on him. Her headache had dissolved and an icy joy surged through her. Here was action! Here was something she could do at last! "You ask me why, you dockside fart, you bastard son of an alcoholic fish gutter, you sleazy, sermonizing, rabble-scratching eel shitter? Me?"

The urgency and the agony of her buddhi had not gone, but they had faded before this immediate task. She had no doubt whatsoever that her duty—her need, her destiny—was to go to that press conference. It was essential, and that slimy tub-thumping turd was not going to stand in her way. And she told him so, in three languages at the top of her voice. She repeated it in two others.

Jathro was backed into a corner, and Alya could barely keep her nails from his eyes. "My ancestors for a hundred generations have seen their children die for this. You dare doubt the verdict of two thousand years? You will question me?"

A century of democracy collapsed before millennia of autocracy. The peasant cowered before the princess. Jathro gasped and shook his head. "No, Your Highness!"

"Oh?" Taken aback by his sudden surrender, Alya awoke to the horror of crooked fingers she was waving in his face. She lowered them quickly and turned away. Moala, enormous in a pink bathrobe and wearing a towel around her hair, was peering out to see what was wrong.

North was not quite suppressing a grim smile. "You have ten minutes before it is scheduled to start, ma'am. But I doubt that Director Hubbard will be on time."

Alya clasped her hands in her armpits to hide their shaking. "Five should be plenty." She headed for her room without another glance at Jathro.

Fingernails? She had threatened him with fingernails?

After all those karate lessons?

 

With Moala's well-meaning help, Alya was ready in nine minutes, feeling suave in the gold silk jump suit she had acquired on her last trip to Nipurb, in January. Had that been foresight, perhaps? It was so tight that a bad attack of goose bumps would split it in shreds, and it did astonishing things to men's eyeballs. Silver sandals, silver belt, a slender silver band around her head, her hair hanging loose over Moala's entreaties, and Alya strode out into the lounge, feeling ready to take on the whole of Nauc.

Jathro had changed also and was ready, damn him, and his smile seemed to go right through her outfit and find satisfaction. He was wearing tan corduroy and looking good in it. For his age. Damn him.

North threw open the door and went out to inspect the corridor. Then she beckoned. Just for a moment Alya was amused—guarding her was like waterproofing a fish.

Jathro was close at her side as they set off along the hallway. "Dr. North, would it be possible to preserve our anonymity at this gathering? Can you provide false identities? I am reluctant—"

Never! Alya knew at once that he was wrong.

"I could, Mr. Minister, but it would be an error." North was marching a little in front of her two charges, speaking over her shoulder. "They will run ID checks on you. If either of you has ever been identified in a media holo, even if it was never shown, then you will be memoed in minutes. Deception merely attracts suspicion, believe me."

Jathro scowled. Honesty would be foreign to his nature. "Then how do we explain our presence here?"

My presence, Alya thought. "I met Devlin Grant a couple of years ago," she said on impulse. "We are here as his guests."

North glanced around at her. "That will be adequate, and I can advise him of the story you are using. Between ourselves, though, ma'am, it will do your reputation no good."

"My reputation will not matter very long," Alya said bitterly. "I will use my own name."

Jathro glared. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"I certainly do not."

That would worry him, and of course it was perfectly true. But she knew that her arrogant assumption of authority was wearing thin. This second surrender would be his last.

She had only one bargaining chip left. Of course, she could again threaten to return to Banzarak, but that thought was so nauseating that she was sure her face would betray her. No, her strength lay in that list Jathro had shown her—seven names in pencil and another writ in fire. Only she could see the difference.

There was her value. They needed her buddhi to find the silken string among the seven cobras.

 

The media representatives had brought their own armies. Honored guests or not, Alya and Jathro were searched a dozen times before being allowed to pass through the anteroom. The male guards seemed especially distrustful of Alya, enjoying the journey as they ran their scanners over her golden silk. Eventually North Brenda lost patience. Roaring like a rock crusher, she forced a way through by sheer power of personality and then stood aside and glowered defiance as her charges entered the auditorium.

After all the functional dullness that Alya had seen so far, the splendor of the auditorium was a pleasant surprise. It was a salon, large and bright, vaguely reminiscent of Florence, or what Venice must have been. It glowed with the brazen opulence she had anticipated in 4-I's HQ.

The media had great power, and their representatives expected to be royally treated. Perhaps a hundred men and women lounged on the antique furniture, or stood around on priceless rugs between works of art. Live waiters were circulating with trays of champagne, which seemed surprising. Should not the celebration come after? But no. After the announcement, the reporters and other holostars would have to rush off and tell the world what it should be thinking.

Already Alya had begun recognizing faces. For every holostar personality, though, there would be at least two holographers, commonly known as "owls" because of their two-lensed cameras. Once those had been carried on trucks, but now they were no larger than jewelry and could be worn on a headband. Yet holo work was still more art than science; an owl could make or break a clip, and the good ones were rewarded accordingly. A semicircle of men and women stood strategically poised by the door. They turned, displaying the twin cameras sitting on their foreheads like unwanted sunglasses.

A girl could feel flattered when a crowded room fell silent at her entrance.

Jathro stepped to her side. "Her Highness, Princess Alya," he explained smoothly. "Sister of His Majesty Kassan'assan IV, the Sultan of Banzarak." As always beyond the shores of Borneo, mention of Banzarak produced only blank stares.

Men rose from chairs and couches. A general drift toward Alya became apparent, each star being tracked by an attendant owl. A beautiful princess was a rarity in the twenty-first century, even if no one had ever heard of her homeland, and a pretty girl was always good copy.

"And you?" someone asked.

Oozing modesty, Jathro introduced himself: Banzarak's Minister for Refugee Affairs, but present that day only as aide-decamp to Her Highness.

"And what brings Your Highness to Director Hubbard's press conference?"

Jathro opened his mouth again, but Alya spoke first. "Pure nosiness! We happened to be in the complex on a social visit, guests of Deputy Director Devlin. We heard that there was to be an important announcement and came to hear what it might be."

She just wanted to be left alone. Alya had no fear of crowds, no sense of stage fright, for eyes had followed her all her life, but at the moment she was beginning to doubt the hunch that had brought her. The sense of urgency had vanished, so she was on the right track, but she truly did not know why she was there. As Jathro had said, her brothers and sisters had never drawn attention to their missions in such a way. Unease tingled her skin like a rash. Had she made a stupendous error? She had a sense of something missing, and she desperately wanted to hide in a corner and just watch, unseen and unnoticed, until she could work out what it was.

Small hope! But at least her rank and youth gained her respect—beautiful girls were not bullied in public—and the six or seven personages who chose to be recorded talking with her were all polite and considerate. One by one they stepped forward to ask much the same questions. She gave the same answers and gradually convinced them that she had no knowledge of what was to be announced and was certainly not personally concerned. Then little Wok Lee of Singapore Witness mischievously asked her a question in Malay. She replied in kind and found herself admitting that she spoke five languages fluently and could get by in several others. That stupid indiscretion revived the interest and prolonged her ordeal.

She thought ruefully of Kas and how horrified he would be if he turned on his holo and saw this appalling publicity. He would think she had gone mad. Perhaps she had.

As a born schemer, Jathro had seen that any interference by him would only arouse more suspicion. He had stepped aside, wrapping himself in silence and a thin, sour smile.

She was rescued at last by Quentin Peter of 5CBC, who liked to think of himself as the dean of the world press corps, even if no one else did. Courtly, white-haired, and wistfully lecherous, he gave her his arm and led her into the center of the room. There the most important personages were trading lies on a horseshoe of soft, chintzy couches amid a sparkle of wit, jewelry, and champagne. Prominent people met so seldom in the flesh that this must be a notable experience for them. With no visible direction, a group of owls cut Jathro off when he tried to follow.

Alya knew that every word she spoke was still being recorded, every eyelash scanned. She knew that every man and woman in the group was trying to calculate how this interesting character could be used to further his or her career by some minute amount, but at least she could sit in comfort and pretend she was merely attending a meeting of the Banzarak Ladies' Refugee Assistance League. But that could never have been so interesting.

She realized with sudden astonishment that she had started to enjoy herself. The Dom Perignon tickled her nose with the audacity of a celebrated vintage, and even a princess could relish being treated as a celebrity sometimes. She was scenting the ozone of excitement that filled the hall, the tingle of suspense. So large an attendance of world-famous faces spoke wonders for the importance of the occasion. A million hectos' worth of tailoring glimmered under the chandeliers.

Her gold jump suit was too bright. Pastels and earth tints were the correct thing, subtle and soft. Probably the gold would have been fine when she bought it, but that had been three months earlier. These were the beautiful people, the ever-young gods of transient fame, and they measured the progress of fashion to the minute. Many of them looked as though they could hardly breathe, so tightly was uplift being impressed upon female bosom and washboarding on male abdomen. Some of the costumes were triumphs of concealed engineering—she watched Goodson Jason lift a champagne glass and saw his biceps bulge as though he were hefting an anvil.

The inner circle to which she had been admitted was composed of the biggest names. Lesser organizations hungered outside the horseshoe; nonentities and the massed owls flanked them.

Non-English media like Pravda and Beijing Voice were present in the persons of their Nauc stringers, but English was Alya's favorite language for news broadcasts. It just seemed to be the best for the purpose, like Italian for opera or Japanese for poetry. She favored English-speaking channels, and thus she had no trouble recognizing the solid sky-blue pomposity of Frazer Franklin of WSHB. He was older than she had expected, and even a fortune in sartorial cunning could not conceal the breadth of his hips.

Next to him was the deliberate crudity of Crozer Bill, displaying a matted chest above a neckline that plunged halfway back to Australia.

And perched nearby like a resting angel, Eccles Pandora Pendor was the unquestioned belle of the hall in silvery-pale rose. She looked younger and lovelier than ever—and very tense, which seemed odd. WSHB liked to play up the friendly rivalry between her and Frankie. Alya had always been skeptical of that as a mere gimmick, but perhaps it was no less than the truth. They were certainly showing no signs of friendship at present.

And Eccles Pandora, lisping in baby-doll innocence, kept working around Alya like a knife thrower. Had she spoken to Devlin Grant that day? Was he in Nauc, or up at Cainsville? When had Alya arrived? Where had she met him?

Alya dodged the fast-flung queries as well as she could with the minimum amount of lying, while wondering at that curious interest in Devlin Grant—whom she had met for three minutes at a cocktail party in Mecca two years before. She also wondered why Eccles Pandora fidgeted so much; why her voice seemed shriller than it should.

Frazer Frankie, on the other hand, was expansive and jovial.

Then, as Director Hubbard's tardiness was being remarked on and condemned for the fortieth time, the door opened. The gracious, dignified Quentin Peter said, "Keerist!" and lunged off the couch with an agility that Alya would not have expected. The whole room followed.

The old man was easy. No one in the room had trouble identifying the craggy dried-leather face, the hatchet-blade nose, and the bat-wing ears. His hair was gray and thin, his back bowed by age, but he smiled the famous ironic smile and raised a hand in greeting as he shuffled toward the center of the room, the lectern in the middle of the horseshoe. He towered over them all, both literally and figuratively: Hastings Willoughby, Secretary General for a generation, political giant of the century.

The room shimmered as excitement crystallized into a sense of history in the making.

"Sentience!" The whisper came from somewhere behind Alya. "It has to be First Contact!"

"Or a Class One," someone retorted stubbornly.

The Institute reported to the U.N., and thus in a legal sense Hastings was Hubbard's boss. His presence at the present gathering was like calling God the Father to witness.

But the young man beside him? He was even taller. Hardly a man—a boy. His hair was a disaster, far too long and standing up in tufts of disarray, and his suit was a sick joke, a ghastly luminous green that screamed at all the pastels and pearly tints. He was as thin as wire rope, and he had a sickly nervous smile on his face as he tried to keep close to Hastings.

Who had let him out? Out of where?

But Alya's heart was racing. She felt the electrifying touch of a satori. That was what had been missing—that gawking adolescent beanpole. That boy. Who was he?

What the hell did he have to do with Alya?

He burned. Like that one word on Jathro's paper, he glowed for her. She could imagine a fiery aura around him. He had not even seen her and could not know that she existed, but she was certain. He was why she had come to the meeting. Centuries of agonized death had led her there, to that awkward, overgrown juvenile.

The Secretary General had reached the lectern, although he merely came to a halt at one side of it and rested a hand on it for a moment. Alya had been almost pushed back down on her couch by the throng as stars and owls crowded in. She squeezed out of the way and moved to where she could see.

Hastings glanced around and was granted instant silence.

"So you are all real!"

Laughter.

"I've always suspected that most of you were computer constructs."

He was old, but he was still good. The room was as quiet as a closed grave. Alya wondered what he had been like in his prime.

"Now, I did not come here to steal Director Hubbard's thunder. She'll be here very shortly, and she'll make her announcement then." A long finger wagged to forestall argument. "And I'm not going to answer any questions on politics, either. I might say something that would upstage her. This is her day."

The calculated pause . . . "I will say this: To accuse women of being unpunctual is rank prejudice and sexism—but I've always found that if you do it promptly, they're never around to hear you!"

Laughter, babble . . . and again the hand. "No questions! But I will accept a glass of champagne—and if you all want to go off the record . . . "

"Who's your friend, sir?"

Alya thought he had been waiting for that—she certainly had. "Who?" Hastings turned and peered up at his companion, whose rich flush was visible to everyone in the room. "Him?" The awshucks manner grew more obvious. "Well, now, ladies and gentlemen of the press, I'll be proud to introduce you all. This is my grandson, Hubbard Cedric Dickson."

There was a beat of silence, and then a roar, as every throat in the room seemed to speak at once. Apparently Alya was not alone in finding him interesting.

Hastings raised a hand, and the peace returned—his control was astonishing. "Seems like they got some questions for you, lad. You want to answer some questions?"

Horrified, the youth shook his head so vigorously that his ochre comb flapped. Hastings led the laughter.

Alya elbowed her way between two groups, squirmed around to another couch, and almost threw herself over the back. She was sitting demurely upright, with her hair back in place, when the crowd opened to allow the Secretary General to find a seat, and he arrived at that same couch. Of course—it was easy.

Alya made to rise, but he signed to her to remain seated, and his shrewd old eyes twinkled at her with no sign of surprise.

He knew!

"Princess Alya!" He bowed over her hand. "At last! You have turned out even lovelier than I predicted. How's that bush-bearded brother of yours?" He was showing off to impress the press—but he knew. He had known of her arrival, and he knew why she had come. But of course he would. Hubbard Agnes could hardly have masterminded history's greatest conspiracy for so long without Hastings Willoughby knowing about it.

The Secretary General settled at Alya's side. If she had placed herself to meet his grandson, though, then she had failed. Young Cedric, unable to see a vacant seat nearby, unabashedly settled on the floor at his grandfather's feet like an oversize child. Completely unaware of Alya behind his shoulder, he crossed his grasshopper legs and seemed to go into a trance, staring boggle-eyed at Eccles Pandora.

Alya hardly minded. The mere fact that he was close seemed to have eased her headache and satisfied her sense of something missing. She would not have known what to say to him anyway—but why him?

"I didn't know you had a grandson, sir," Quentin remarked.

Hastings glanced at him over the lip of his glass and then around the company. "We're off the record?"

With sour expressions the media of the world agreed that they were off the record. The owls pointedly turned aside or removed their headbands.

"Well . . . " Hastings paused dramatically and took a deep breath. "Why should you have known?"

Everyone except Quentin enjoyed that. He raised a shaggy white eyebrow and regarded the youth. "How old are you, Cedric?"

The boy dragged his eyes away from Pandora. "Nineteen, sir."

Alya was surprised—her own age. She had thought him younger than that, in spite of his height.

"You're the son of Hubbard John Hastings?"

"Yes, sir."

Of course, he must be Agnes's grandson, also! That explained why the reporters had found him so interesting, even if it did not explain why he rang Alya's alarms. Whatever she was seeing in him was certainly not physical—he was immature and awkward and apparently not very bright. Certainly not her type. Why that invisible aura?

The rest of the company were leaving the interview to Quentin but watching the Secretary General's reaction.

When no other question followed, Cedric turned back to gaze adoringly at Eccles again. As though that had been a signal, Quentin spoke. "Your parents were lost through a broken string incident?"

"Yes, sir."

"A world called 'Oak'? That was its code name—Oak?"

"You remember it?"

Quentin shook his head impatiently. "No, lad. You're on file."

North had warned Jathro about just this. Cedric had been researched already, 5CBC would undoubtedly have a library second to none, and Quentin would have an earpatch.

"They had been overnighting?"

Alya recognized the cross-examination technique, but apparently Cedric did not, and he continued to agree blithely as detail after detail was cautiously added.

"So—they were overnighting on a Class Two world, code name 'Oak,' a party of six, and the next window failed to appear. Contact was never reestablished?"

Belatedly Cedric reached for caution. "So I've been told, sir."

Quentin sprang his trap. "And what was an agricultural worker doing on a Type Two world?"

"Agri—my father was a ranger!"

Quentin shook his head. "Not according to the files."

Cedric's head swung around so fast it seemed his skinny neck would snap. "Grandfather?"

Willoughby was toying with his now-empty glass, twiddling the stem in his fingers. "He was a ranger trainee." Then the old man chuckled, eyeing Quentin inscrutably. "These youngsters won't remember what it was like, Peter, but you should. The transmensor was very new then. So was the Institute. There was no big corps of professional rangers in those days. First planetfall was only made in 'twenty-two, remember, and we were not as skilled at zapping from one to the other as we are now—as Agnes's minions are, I should say."

He glanced around the group. Cedric was nodding, and so were some of the others. "We kept finding all these juicy little worlds, and every one was always going to be the Second Earth. You hotshots used to announce them on the news programs! When's the last time you mentioned a Class Two world, Peter, huh?"

He had them grasping at every word—true mastery! "So all sorts of people got involved that wouldn't nowadays. My son was a rodeo cowboy, as a matter of fact—not an unbroken bone in his body. Nor in his head. But Oak had big grassy prairies that we thought should be looked at, and some horse-type beasts." He paused, then added quietly, "It also had lethal concentrations of antimony everywhere. We didn't find that out until too late, after the string broke."

Quentin stayed with easier prey. "But you, Cedric—you don't remember any of this?"

"No, sir. I was only a baby."

"Were you, though? The Oak disaster was in 2026. That's twenty-four years ago, sonny."

Some of the listeners seemed surprised, but most of them had obviously been waiting for it. Again Cedric's head flashed around to look at his grandfather . . . who was accepting a refill of champagne. And sipping it.

"That's right, Peter, now that I think about it," the old man replied. "It happened while the second South African thing was on—2026."

"But, Grandfather—"

Hastings stopped him with an uplifted palm. "This is no time for a lecture on the birds and the beasts, Cedric. Ask your grandmother—she's better on that technical stuff, anyway."

Cedric recoiled, staring, amid the laughter.

Cruel! Alya thought. How could the old man treat his own grandson like that?

Who else could he be?

There was a resemblance, certainly, yet not as much as she would have expected if Cedric was what the media people obviously suspected he might be. Illicit cloning was a major crime, and greatly condemned, since only the very rich could afford it. There would be an enormous scandal. Hastings would fall, and he might well drag down the whole fragile structure of U.N. hegemony.

The old man had put this off the record. He could hardly put Cedric himself off the record, not now.

So the boy could not be a clone—but he might not know that, for he had gone very pale.

Then pompous, balding Frazer Franklin intervened. "You seem to be a bit of a mystery, lad." Cedric turned toward him, much more warily now. "Since we are off the record—where have you been all these years?"

The question fetched a few angry mutters, but Cedric did not seem to notice. "A place called Meadowdale, sir. Out west, in the mountains."

Frazer nodded meaningfully. "What state?"

"I don't know. They wouldn't tell us."

There were a few smiles at that, and again they were lost on the youth. He looked to Eccles Pandora, and Alya saw a dreamy expression soften his bony profile. "I know Glenda, of course, Dr. Eccles. How is she?"

Eccles Pandora dropped a canapé. Mild confusion upset the conversation for a few minutes while a waiter arrived with a napkin and Pandora twittered about how careless she was. Then order was restored. "I just cannot stand this suspense!" she proclaimed. "The excitement is—"

"Answer Dr. Hubbard's question, Panda dear," Frazer said loudly. It was the first time he had spoken to her, so far as Alya knew.

"What?" Pandora seemed to flutter feathers. "But I want to ask the Secretary—"

"Cedric asked you a question." Franklin's voice was louder. "About someone called—Glenda, was it?"

Cedric nodded, his coxcomb waving. "Garfield Glenda, Dr. Eccles's cousin. We were close . . . we were friends." He blushed scarlet and gazed hopefully at Pandora.

Pandora had turned pale. The room was very still.

If the youth had begun to sense the tension, he was merely puzzled by it. "She left about six months ago. She sent word the next day that she was going on a world cruise." Abruptly his voice went very small. "How . . . is . . . she?"

Pandora was chalky white. Faint pink scars showed on her neck.

Franklin took a celebratory sip of champagne. "Six months ago? Is that where you disappeared to, Panda? I knew you'd been on vacation somewhere. We all thought it did you good. You came back looking like a new woman."

In the awful silence, Pandora raised shaking fingers to her cheek, and surely did not know she was doing so. Alya felt sick. Cedric had also gone pale—very pale.

"Oh . . . oh God," he whispered. "God God God organage! That's what it means . . . "

Had he gazed into those eyes? Alya wondered. Had he kissed those lips?

He made a choking noise, as though he were going to throw up.

Only Frazer Franklin was smiling.

And at that moment the door opened to admit Hubbard Agnes.

 

The director's powder-blue suit was not as clinging as most in the room, but it was snug enough to show that she had kept her figure. Her complexion was beyond reproach, and her coiffure might have been freshly crafted on a silversmith's bench. Age showed only in a certain cautious rigidity, and perhaps in the rrogantly upright way she held her head. Hubbard had Presence, and the company rose to acknowledge it. Alya had seen fanatic Banzaraki royalists fall on their faces for her brother, and yet she was impressed by that unrehearsed compliment from an antagonistic, hard-headed group.

Cedric had farther to go than anyone, but he sprang from the floor in a whirl of ungainly green limbs and crossed to the lectern in four enormous strides like an alarmed giraffe, starting to speak almost before he had turned.

"Honored guests ladies and gentlemen Director Hubbard!"

He flashed his grandmother a shaky smile and began to move. Stepping forward, she stopped him with a magical gesture like a witch in a children's holo fantasy, rooting him to the floor and freezing an expression of dismay on his face.

Hubbard had no notes. If there was a prompter in the lectern, she did not seem to use it. She laid her hands there and nodded. The world's press sat down obediently to wait for enlightenment.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the media." Her voice was high-pitched but incisive. "I must begin by thanking you for coming at such short notice. It seemed appropriate to me for personal reasons to hold this meeting today, April seventh."

The only person who did not seem to be hanging on her words was Cedric. Smile discarded, he stood restlessly a couple of strides away from her, glooming anxiously at the audience and belatedly running fingers through his hair.

"To review very briefly the history of the International Institute for Interstellar Investigation—"

Someone at the back groaned, but she did not seem to hear.

" . . . although superstring theory had been developed as a branch of particle physics as early as the 1980s . . . in 2002 the work that established the theory of the transmensor . . . classic paper in Physical Reviews by Chiu Pak and Laski Jean-Marc . . . "

She swept a professionally catered smile around the room like a flashlight. Alya could hear nothing but a quiet rattle of breathing from Hastings Willoughby at her side.

"The possibility of interchanging one of the familiar four dimensions of space-time with any of the additional superspace dimensions not normally expressed . . . " She droned on. Some men at the back started coughing. She raised her chin like an archetype schoolmarm and waited until they stopped.

Once, while visiting West Africa, Alya had experienced the hot wind called the harmattan. It had brought enough static electricity to make her hair crackle. She was reminded of that now—the room was becoming charged. These people were not accustomed to being treated in so cavalier a fashion. She was convinced that Hubbard was deliberately baiting them. And so were they.

" . . . may remember the furor when the General Assembly granted our charter." She smiled briefly over heads at Hastings Willoughby. "That was in 2020, so this year marks our thirtieth anniversary. It was on June third that the resolution was ratified and I was appointed director."

She paused momentarily to relish the puzzled frowns. "But today happens to be my seventy-fifth birthday."

The applause was thin as skim milk.

"This is obviously an opportune moment to review what has been achieved; and what must be achieved in future."

No! If Hubbard was about to announce her retirement, then all Alya's future might change. She might never see what lay behind that word of fire on Jathro's paper. She might have to stay here—but then she realized that no satori had come to warn her of danger ahead. So the news—when it finally came—would not be that.

" . . . have never had a destructive accident, nor a power failure. We have grown until we supply the entire Earth through a complex of twenty-four microwave relay satellites. Our research arm, the International Institute for Interstellar Investigation, has identified over fifty thousand nonstellar bodies. As of today, 1502 of these NSBs have been found to contain some form of life, and ninety possessed surface conditions so Earthlike that we categorized them as Class Two worlds."

Somewhere a faint whisper said, "Get on with it!" But Hubbard was not to be hurried.

"Not one of those ninety proved capable of supporting human beings for any extended period. You all know the problems and disappointments we have encountered—heavy element contamination, dextroamino acids, virulent allergens. Personally, I know that time and again I have believed that I was on the point of making that long-awaited, epochal announcement, and every time some new, diabolical danger has surfaced in the lab reports."

What of Etna? Alya thought. Or Raven? What about Darwin, and Halibut?

"The world we called 'Paris,' for example, taught us about carcinogenic pollen. 'Giraffe' had a complete absence of zinc, an essental trace element. We don't know why. 'Dickens' was a world so like our dreams of Eden that it was unbelievable—and its primary was violently unstable. If you think our present UV problems are serious, you should see some of the radiation profiles we encountered there. Sol is a benevolent star compared to most.

"And our terrestrial mosquitoes are much friendlier companions than the lethal bugs on 'Beaver.'

"It has begun to seem, over the years, as though nature has been conspiring to lock us up in this one sick little world."

The listeners fidgeted slightly as she seemed to draw near to what they were waiting for. Alya heard "Class One" being whispered in several directions.

"This is also an appropriate moment," Director Hubbard proclaimed, "to pay tribute to the eighty-six courageous men and women who gave their lives in this search . . . including my own son."

She glanced around at Cedric, who nodded.

And then she took off on another slant altogether, as though all of her preceding remarks had been only a feint.

"You are aware, I am sure, that the Institute is organized in four main divisions, each having its own deputy director. Dr. Wheatland handles Personnel—our most precious resource, as you may guess. Dr. Moore, in Finance, and Dr. Fish, in Security—all these people have served long and loyally and well."

She had to raise her voice slightly, over the hiss of puzzled whispers, growing angrier and more persistent.

"Dr. Devlin Grant is a relative newcomer, but he is doing great work as deputy for Operations.

"Nevertheless, it had been suggested to me several times recently that the Institute could do more to cultivate good relations with you, ladies and gentlemen—with the information business, the media. Some unkind persons have even suggested that I myself might have given you cause for annoyance on some occasions in the past."

That fetched an ironic laugh, and Alya smiled, remembering stories that Kas had told her of the director's abrasive tongue. Hubbard Agnes beamed blissfully at the reaction.

"I invited you here today, therefore, to meet my grandson, Hubbard Cedric Dickson, whom I have just rescued from an undeserved anonymity. And I also wish to announce that in future the Institute will have five deputy directors instead of four, and I have appointed Hubbard Cedric Dickson as the first deputy for Media Relations. If you have any questions, please direct them to him.

"Thank you for your attention."

Then she turned and strode from the room.

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Framed