I

 

 

            I was a birch tree, white slenderness in the middle of a meadow, but had no name for what I was. My leaves drank of the sunlight that streamed through them and set their green aglow, my leaves danced in the wind, which made a harp of my branches, but I did not see or hear. Waning days turned me brittle golden, frost stripped me bare, snow blew about me during my long drowse, then Orion hunted his quarry beyond this heaven and the sun swung north to blaze me awake, but none of this did I sense.

            And yet I marked it all, for I lived. Each cell within me felt in a secret way how the sky first shone aloud and afterward grew quiet, air gusted or whooped or lay dreaming, rain flung chill and laughter, water and worms did their work for my reaching roots, nestlings piped where I sheltered them and soughed, grass and dandelions enfolded me in richness, the earth stirred as the Earth turned among stars. Each year that departed left a ring in me for remembrance. Though I was not aware, I was still in Creation and of it; thought I did not understand, I knew. I was Tree.

 

 

            II

 

 

            When Emissary passed through the gate and Phoebus again shone upon her, half of the dozen crew folk who survived were gathered in her common room, together with the passenger from Beta. After their long time away, they wanted to witness this return on the biggest view screens they had and share a ceremony, raising goblets of the last wine aboard to the hope of a good homecoming. Those on duty added voices over the intercom. "Salud. Proost. Skol. Banzai. Sa de. Zdoroviye. Prosit. Mazel tov. Sante. Viva. Aloha" each spoke of a very special place.

            From her post at the linkage computer, Joelle Ky whispered, on behalf of those who had stayed behind forever, "Zivio" for Alexander Vlantis, "Kan bei" for Yuan Chichao, "Cheers" for Christine Burns. She added nothing of her own, thought what a sentimental old fool she was, and trusted that nobody had heard. Her gaze drifted to a small screen supposed to provide her with visual data should any be needed. Amidst the meters, controls, input and output equipment which crowded the cabin, it seemed like a window on the world.

            "World," though, meant "universe." Amplification was set at one, revealing simply what the naked eye would have seen. Yet stars shone so many and bright, unyielding diamond, sapphire, topaz, ruby, that the blackness around and beyond was but a chalice for them. Even in the Solar System, Joelle could have picked no constellations out of such a throng. However, the shape of the Milky Way was little changed from nights above North America. With that chill brilliance for a guide, she found an elvenglow which was M3, and it had looked the same at Beta, too, for it is sister to our whole galaxy.

            Nonetheless she suddenly wanted a more familiar sight. The need for the comfort it would give surprised her.  She, the holothete, to whom everything visible was merely a veil that reality wore. The past eight Earth-years must have drunk deeper of her than she knew. Unwilling to wait the hours, maybe days until she could see Sol again, she ran fingers across the keyboard before her, directing the scanner to bring in Phoebus. At least she had glimpsed it when outbound, and countless pictures of it throughout her life.

            The helmet was already on her head, the linkage to computer, memory bank, and ship's instruments already complete. The instant after she desired that particular celestial location, she had calculated it. To her the operation felt everyday: felt like knowing where to move her hand to pick up a tool or knowing which way a sound was coming from. There was nothing numinous about it.

            The scene switched to a different sector. A disc appeared, slightly larger than Sol observed from Earth or Luna, a trifle yellower, type G5. Photospheric luminance, ten percent above what Earth got, had been automatically stopped down to avoid blinding her. Lesser splendors remained undimmed. Thus she made out spots on the surface, flares along the limb, nacre of corona, slim wings of zodiacal light. Yes, she thought, Phoebus has the same kind of beauty as my sun. Centrum does not, and only now do I feel how lonely was that lack.

            Her touch ranged onward, calling for a sight of Demeter. This problem her unaided brain could have solved. Having newly made transit, Emissary floated near the gate; and it held a Lagrange 4 position with respect to the planet, in the same orbit though sixty degrees ahead. The scanner must merely course along the ecliptic to find what she wished.

 

            At a distance of 0.81 astronomical units, unmagnified, Demeter resembled the stars about it, stronger than most and bluer than any. Are you still yonder, Dan Brodersen? Joelle wondered, and then, oh, yes, you must be. I've been gone for eight years, but a bare few of your months have passed.

            How many, exactly? I don't know. Fidelio isn't quite sure.

            Captain Langendijk's general announcement interrupted her reverie. "Attention, please. We've registered two vessels on our radars. One is obviously the official watchcraft, and is signalling for tight-beam communication. I'll put that over the intercom, but kindly do not interrupt the talk, or make any unnecessary noise. Best they don't know you are listening."

            For a moment Joelle was puzzled. Why should he take precautions, as if Emissary's return might not be the occasion for mankind-wide rejoicing? What put the note of strain into his tone? The answer struck inward. She had been indifferent to partisan matters, they scarcely existed for her, but once recruited into this crew, she couldn't help hearing talk of strife and intrigue. Brodersen had rather grimly explained the facts to her, and they had often been a subject of conversation at Beta. A considerable coalition within humanity had never wanted the expedition and would not be happy at its success.

            Two vessels, both presumably in orbit around the T machine. The second must be Dan's.

            "Thomas Archer, commanding World Union watchship Faraday, speaking," said a man's voice. His Spanish was accented like hers. "Identify yourself."

            "Willem Langendijk, commanding exploratory ship Emissary Spanish Emisario," replied her captain. "We're passing through on our way back to the Solar System. May we commence maneuvers?"

            "What- but-" Archer obviously struggled with amazement. "Well, you do seem like- But everybody expected you'd be gone for years!"

            "We were."

            "No. I witnessed your transit. That was, uh, five months ago, no more."

            "Ah-ha. Give me the present date and time, please."

            "But- you-"

            "If you please." Joelle could well imagine how Langendijk's lean face tautened to match his sternness.

            Archer blurted the figures off a chronometer. She summoned from the memory bank the exact clock reading when she and her fellows had finished tracing out the guidepath here and twisted through space-time to their unknown goal. Subtraction yielded an interval of twenty weeks and three days. She could as readily have told how many seconds, or microseconds, had passed out of Archer's lifespan, but he had only given information to the nearest minute.

            "Thank you," Langendijk said. "For us, approximately eight Terrestrial years have passed. It turns out that the T machine is indeed a time machine of sorts, as well as a space transporter. The Betans -the beings whom we followed-calculated our course to bring us out near the date when we left."

            Silence hummed. Joelle noticed she was aware of her environment with more than usual intensity. Free falling, the ship kept her weightless in a loosened safety harness. The sensation was pleasant, recalling flying dreams of long ago when she was young. (Afterward her dreams had changed with her mind and soul, as she grew into being a holothete.) Air from a ventilator murmured and stroked her cheeks. It bore a slight greenwood odor of recycling chemicals and, at its present stage of the variability necessary for health, coolness and a subliminal pungency of ions. Her heart knocked loud in her ears. And, yes, twinges in her left wrist had turned into a steady ache, she was overdue for an arthritis booster, time went, time went. Probably the Others themselves could not change that.

            "Well," Archer said in English. "Well, I'll be God damned. Uh, welcome back. How are you?"

            Langendijk switched to the same language, in which he felt a touch more at ease and which was in fact used aboard Emissary about as often as Spanish. "We lost three people. But otherwise, Captain, believe me, the news we bear is all wonderful. Besides being anxious to get home-you will understand that-we can hardly wait to spread our story through the Union."

            "Did you-" Archer paused, as if half afraid to utter the rest. Quite possibly he was. Joelle heard him draw breath before he plunged: "Did you find the Others?"

            "No. What we did find was an advanced civilization, nonhuman but friendly, in contact with scores of inhabited worlds. They're eager to establish close relations with us, too; they offer what my crew and I think are some fantastically good deals. No, they know nothing more about the Others than we do, except for the additional gates they've learned how to use. But we, the next several generations of man will have as much as we can do to assimilate what the Betans will give.

            "Now I'm sorry, Captain, I realize you'd love to hear everything, but that would take days, and anyhow, we have orders not to linger. The Council of the World Union commissioned us and requires we report first to it. That is reasonable, no? Accordingly, we request clearance to proceed straight on to the Solar System."

            Again Archer was mute a while. Was something more than surprise at work in him? On impulse, Joelle called on the ship's exoinstrumental circuits. An immediate inrush of data lured her. It wasn't a full perception, but still, as far as possible, how easy and how blessed to comprehend yonder cosmos as a whole and become one with it! Resisting, she concentrated solely on radar and navigational information. In a split pulsebeat, she calculated how to bring Faraday onto her viewscreen.

            There was no particular reason for that. She knew what the watchcraft looked like: a tapered gray cylinder so as to be capable of planetfall, missile launcher and ray projector recessed into the sleekness-wholly foreign to the huge, equipment-bristling, fragile sphere which was Emissary. When the picture changed, she didn't magnify and amplify to make the vessel visible across a thousand kilometers. Instead, the sight of two dully glowing globes, red and green, coming into the scanner field, against the stars, snatched at her. Those were markers around the T machine. The Others had placed them. Her augmented senses told her that a third likewise happened to be visible on the receiver; it was colored ultraviolet.

            Vaguely she heard Archer: "-quarantine?" and Langendijk: `Well, if they insist, but we walked on Beta, again and again for eight years, and we have a Betan native with us, and nobody's caught any diseases. Pinski and de Carvalho, our biologists, studied the subject and tell me cross-infection is impossible. Biochemistries are too unlike."

            Caught up in the beacons, she quite stopped listening. Oh, surely someday, she, holothete, could speak mind to mind with their makers, if ever she found them.

            Though what would they make of her, perhaps in more than one meaning of the phrase? Even physical appearance might conceivably not be altogether irrelevant to them. It was an odd thing to do in these circumstances, but for the first time in almost a decade Joelle Ky briefly considered her body as flesh, not machinery.

            At fifty-eight Earth-years of age, her hundred and seventy-five centimeters remained slim, verging on gaunt, her skin clear and pale and only lightly lined. In that and the high cheekbones her genes kept a bit of the history, which her name also remembered.  She had been born in North America, in what was left of the old United States before it federated with Canada. Her features were delicate, her eyes large and dark. Hair once sable, bobbed immediately below the ears, was the hue of iron. Clad now in the working uniform of the ship, a coverall with abundant pockets and snaploops, she seldom wore anything very much more stylish at home.

            A smile flickered. How silly can I get? If one thing is certain about the Others, it is that none of them will come courting me! Could it be the thought of Dan, yonder on Demeter? Additional nonsense. Why, at Beta I became eight years his senior.

            Somehow that raised Eric Stranathan for her, the first and last man with whom she fell wholly in love. Across a quarter century-plus the time she had been gone on this mission-he came back, seated opposite her in a canoe on Lake Louise, among mountains, in piney air, under a night sky nearly as vast as what lay around Emissary; and staring upward, she whispered, "How do the Others see that? What is it to them?"

            `What are they?" he answered. "Animals evolved beyond us; machines that think; angels dwelling by the throne of God; beings, or a being, of a kind we've never imagined and never can; or what? Humans have been wondering for more than a hundred years now."

            She mustered pride. "We'll come to know."

            "Though holothetics?" he asked.

            "Maybe. Else through-who can tell? But I do believe we will. I have to believe that."

            "We might not want to. I've got an idea we'd never be the same again, and that price might be too high."

            She shivered. "You mean we'd forsake all we have here?"

            "And all we are. Yes, it's possible." His dear lanky form stirred, rocking the boat. "And I wouldn't, myself. I'm so happy where I am, this moment."

            That was the night they became lovers.

            Joelle shook herself. Stop. Be sensible. I'm obsessive about the Others, I know. Seeing their handiwork again serving not aliens but humans must have uncapped a wellspring in me. But Willem's right. The Betans should be enough for many generations of my race. Do the Others know that? Did they foresee it?

            She was faintly shocked to note that her attention had drifted from the intercom for minutes. She wasn't given to introspection or daydreaming. Maybe it had happened because she was computer-linked. At such times, an operator became a greater mathematician and logician, by orders of magnitude, than had ever lived on Earth before the conjunction was developed. But the operator remained a mortal, full of mortal foolishness.  I suppose my habit of close concentration while I'm in this state took over in me. Since I'm not used to dealing with emotions, the habit got out of hand.

            She knew peripherally that an argument had been going on. Hearkening, she heard Archer state: "Very well, Captain Langendijk, nobody foresaw you'd return this early-if ever, to be frank-and therefore I don't have specific orders regarding you. But my superiors did brief me and issue a general directive."

            "Ah?" replied the skipper of Emissary. "And what does that say?"

            "Well, uh, well, certain highly placed people worry about more than your bringing a strange bug to Earth. The idea is, they don't know what you might bring back. Look, I'm not saying a monster has taken over your ship and is pretending to be you, anything paranoid like that."

            "I should hope not! As a matter of fact, sir, the Betans -the name we gave them, of course -the Betans are not just friendly, they are anxious to know us well. That is why they will trade with us on terms that would else be unbelievably favorable. They stand to gain even more."

            Wariness responded: "What?"

            "It would take long to explain. There is something vital they hope to learn from us."

            It twisted in Joelle, something that I have never yet really learned myself, nor ever likely will.

            Archer's voice jarred the thought out of her. "Well, maybe. Though I think that reinforces the point, that nobody can tell what the effect might be. . . on us. And the World Union is none too stable, you know. You plan to report straight to the Council-"

            "Yes," Langendijk said. "We'll proceed to the neighborhood of Earth, call Lima, and request instructions. What's wrong with that?"

            "Too public!" Archer exclaimed. After a few seconds: "Look, I'm not at liberty to say much. But. . . the officials I mentioned want to, uh, debrief you in strict privacy, examine your materials, that sort of thing, before they issue any news release. Do you see?"

            "M-m-m, I had my suspicions," Langendijk rumbled. "Go on."

            "Well, under the circumstances, et cetera, I'm going to interpret my orders as follows. We'll accompany you through the gate, to the Solar System. Radio interlock of our autopilots, of course, to make sure the ships come out at the other end simultaneously. You'll have no communication with anybody but us, on a tight beam-we'll handle everything outside-until you hear differently. Is that clear?"

            "Rather too clear."

            "Please, Captain, no offense intended, nothing like that. You must understand what a tremendous business this is. People who, uh, who're responsible for billions of human lives, they're bound to be cautious. Including, for a start, me."

            "Yes, I agree you are doing your duty as you see it, Captain Archer. Besides, you have the power." Emissary bore a couple of guns, but almost as an afterthought; her fire control officers doubled as pilots of her launch. Though she could build up huge velocities if given time, her top acceleration with payload and reaction mass on hand was under two gravities; and her gyros or lateral jets could turn her about only ponderously. No one had imagined her as a warcraft, a lone vessel setting off into what might be a whole galaxy. Faraday was designed for battle. (The occasion had never arisen, but who knew what might someday emerge from a gate? Besides, her high maneuverability fitted her for rescue work and for conveying exploratory teams.)

            "I'm trying to do our best for our government, sir."

            "I wish you would tell me who in the government."

            "I'm sorry, but I'm only an astronautical officer. It wouldn't be proper for me to discuss politics. Uh, you do see, don't you, you've nothing to worry about? This is an extra precaution, no more."

            "Yes, yes," Langendijk sighed. "Let us get on with it." Talk went into technicalities.

            Signoff followed. Langendijk addressed his crew: "You heard, of course. Questions? Comments?"

            A burst of indignation and dismay responded; loudest came Frieda von Moltke's "Hollenfeuer und Teufelscheiss!" First Engineer Dairoku Mitsukuri was milder: "This is perhaps highhanded, but we ought not to be detained long. The fact of our arrival will generate enormous public pressure for our release."

            Carlos Francisco Rueda Suarez, the mate, added in his haughtiest tone, "Furthermore, my family will have a good deal to say about the matter."

            A dread she had hoped was ridiculous lifted in Joelle, chilled her flesh and harshened her contralto. "You're supposing they will know," she said.

            "Good Lord, you can't mean that," Second Engineer Torsten Sverdrup protested. "The Ruedas kept in ignorance-that's impossible."

            "I fear it is not," Joelle answered. "We're completely at the mercy of yonder watchship, you realize. And her captain isn't acting like a man who only wants to play safe. Is he? I don't pretend to be very sensitive where people are concerned, but I have had some exposure to cliques and cabals on high political levels. Also, the last time we talked on Earth, Dan Brodersen warned me we might return not simply to hostility from some factions, but to trouble."

            "Brodersen?" asked Sam Kalahele, von Moltke's fellow gunner.

            "The owner of Chehalis Enterprises on Demeter," said Marie Feuillet, chemist. "You must allow for him exaggerating. He is a free-swinging capitalist, therefore overly suspicious of the government, perhaps of the Union itself."

            "We have to commence acceleration soon," Langendijk declared. "All hands to flight posts."

            "Please!" Joelle cried. "Skipper, listen a minute! I'm not going to debate, I admit I'm hopelessly naive about many things, but Dan -Captain Brodersen did tell me he'd keep a robot near the gate, programmed to look out for us, just in case of trouble. He foresaw the possibility-the likelihood, he called it-that we'd return on a date soon after departure. Well, what else can that second craft be, orbiting far off-we have a radar pickup of it, you remember-what else can it be but his observer?"

            Rueda's voice rang. "Holy Virgin, Joelle, in all these years, why did you never mention it?"

            "Oh, he felt we shouldn't be worried about something that might never happen. He told me because, well, we're friends, knowing I'd shunt the information off in my own mind. I put it on my summary tape, for the rest of you to play back if I should die."

            "But in that case, there is no problem," Rueda said happily. "We cannot be held incommunicado, if that's what you fear. Once the robot reports to him, he'll tell the world. I might have expected this of him. You may have heard he's my kinsman by his first marriage."

            Joelle shook her head. The cables into the bowl-shaped helmet were flexible and allowed that, though the added mass forced a noticeable effort and, in weightlessness, caused her torso to countertwist slightly.

            "No," she answered. "Notice how distant it is. No optical system man has yet built has the resolution to tell Emissary apart from -seven, is it?- similar ships, at such a remove. She's simply a modified Reina -class transport, after all."

            "Then what's the use of parking an observer out here?" snapped Quartermaster Bruno Benedetti.

            "Isn't it obvious what's happened?" retorted planetologist Olga Razumovski. "But tell us, Joelle."

            The holothete drew breath. "Here's what Brodersen planned to do," she said. "He'd dispatch the robot ostensibly to study the T machine over a period of years in hopes of gaining a few clues as to how it works. The watchships don't really carry on a very satisfactory program, so the project could hardly be forbidden. Besides, he wouldn't do it in his own name. He'd get the Demetrian Research Foundation to front for him. He's been generous enough with donations there. Anyway, the craft would be carrying out bona fide observations.

            "Then why is so valuable an instrumentality forced to stay more than a million kilometers from the thing it's supposed to be investigating? I daresay the authorities made some excuse about safety, possible collision if a ship came through with the wrong vectors. I make the probability of that happening to be on the order of one in ten to the tenth. But they could enforce the regulation if they were determined to.

            "So the fact they have done it, doesn't that show their true motive? They don't want to lose control over news about the gate -another Betan ship appearing, maybe, or us returning, or anything marvelous. They want to exercise censorship.

            "Will they censor us? There is a powerful antistellar element on Earth, in more than one national government. They could have gotten hold of the right levers in the Union hierarchy. They could have plans that they've not consulted their colleagues about."

            Curses, growls, a couple of objections grated from the intercom. Lonely among them went Fidelio's fluting sound of bewilderment. What is the trouble? the Betan sang. Why are you no longer glad?

            Langendijk silenced the noise. "As captain of a watchcraft, Archer has authority over me," he said. "Prepare to obey his instructions."

            "Willem, listen," belle pleaded. "I can pinpoint a beam to the robot so they'll not detect a whisper aboard Faraday, and give Brodersen the truth-"

            Langendijk cut her off: "We will follow our orders. That's a direct command of my own, which I'll enter in the log." His tone gentled. "Let's not quarrel, after we've come such a long, hard way together. Calm down. Think how large the chances are that some of you are overwrought, building a haunted house on a grain of sand. Archer communicates secretly, with the secret connivance of the watchship captain in the Solar System- communicates secretly with his secret masters, who tell him to take us to a secret place? Isn't that a little melodramatic?" Earnestly: "Think, too- the law of space is above politics. It has to be. Without it, man doesn't go to the stars, he dies. Every one of us has given a solemn oath to uphold it." After a pause, during which only the ventilator wind had utterance: "Take your flight stations. We will accelerate in ten minutes."

            Belle slumped. Hopelessness overwhelmed her. She could in fact have sent the uninterceptable message she spoke of, if her computer linkage were extended to the outercom system; but the switches for that were not in this chamber.

            And Willem does have a point about the law. He could well be right, likewise, about this whole idea of a plot against us being a sick fantasy. Who am I to judge? I've been too remote from common humanity for too many years to have much feel for how it works.

            Ultimate reality is easier to understand, yes, to be a part of, than we are, we flickers across the Noumenon.

            "Are you ready, Joelle?" Langendijk asked mildly, well-nigh contritely.

            "Oh!" She started. "Oh, yes. Any time."

            "I've signalled Faraday our intent to start blasting at one gee at fifteen thirty-five hours, and they concur. They'll pace us; they are maneuvering for that right now. Interlock of autopilots will be made at one hundred kilometers from Beacon Charlie. Do you have assembled the information you need? . . . Ach, you're bound to, I'm a forgetful idiot to ask."

            Herself wishful of reconciliation, Joelle smiled a smile he couldn't see and answered, "It's easy for you to forget, Willem. I'm holding down Christine's job" -Christine Burns, regular computerman, who died in Joelle's arms a bare few months before Emissary started home.

            "Navigation is yours, then," Langendijk said formally. "Proceed upon signal."

            "Aye."

            Joelle got busy. Information flooded her, location vectors, velocity vectors, momentum, thrusts, gravitational field strengths, the time and space derivatives of these, continuously changing, smooth and mighty. It came out of instruments, transformed into digital numbers; and meanwhile the memory bank supplied her not only what specific past facts and natural constants she required, but the entire magnificent analytical structure of celestial mechanics and stress tensors. She had at her instant beck the physical knowledge of centuries and of this unique point in spacetime where he was.

            The data passed from their sources through a unit that translated them, in nanoseconds, into the proper signals. Thence they went to her brain. The connection was not through wires stuck in her skull or any such crudity; electromagnetic induction sufficed. She, in turn, called on the powerful computer to which she was also linked, as problems arose moment by moment.

            The rapport was total. She had added to her nervous system the immense input, storage capacity, and retrieval speed of the electronic assembly, together with the immense mathematico-logical capacity for volume and speed of operations which belonged to its other half. For her part, she contributed a human ability to perceive the unexpected, to think creatively, to change her mind. She was the software for the whole system; a program which continuously rewrote itself; conductor of a huge mute orchestra which might have to start playing jazz with no warning, or compose an entire new symphony.

            The numbers and manipulations did not stream before her as individual things. (Nor did she plan out the countless kinesthetic decisions her body made whenever it walked.) She felt them, but as a deep obligator, a sense of ongoing rightness, function. Her awareness went over and beyond mechanical symbol-shuffling; it shaped the ongoing general pattern, as a sculptor shapes clay with hands that know of themselves what to do.

            Artist, scientist, athlete, at the brief pinnacle of achievement thus had linkage felt to Christine Burns.

            It did not to Joelle. Christine had been an ordinary linker. Joelle was a holothete who had transcended that experience. Perhaps the difference resembled that between a devout Catholic layman at prayer and St. John on the Cross.

            Besides, this present work was routine, she had merely to direct, by her thoughts, equipment which sent the ship along a standard set of curves through a known set of configurations. The unaided computer could have done as well, had it been worth the trouble of readjusting several circuits. Brodersen's robot performed the same kind of task.

            Christine, the linker had been signed on because Emissary was heading into the totally unknown, where survival might turn on a flash decision that could never have been foreseen and programmed for. She herself, had she lived, would have found this maneuvering easy.

            Joelle found it soothing. She leaned back in her chair, conscious of regained weight, and enjoyed her oneness with the vessel. She could not hear and feel, but she could sense how the drive whispered. Migma cells were generating gigawatts of fusion power, to split water, ionize its atoms, hurl the plasma out through the jet focuser at a speed close to that of light itself. But the efficiency was superb, a triumph as great as the cathedral at Chartres; nothing appeared but the dimmest glow streaming aft for a few kilometers, and the onward motion of the hull.

            Motion-it would last for several hours, at ever-changing orientations and configurations, as Emissary wove her way through the star gate between Phoebus and Sol. However, at present there was only a straight-forward boost toward the first of the beacons. Joelle stirred and scowled. With less than half her attention engaged, she could not for long dismiss her fear of imprisonment ahead.

            But then the viewscreen happened to catch the T machine itself, and she was lifted off into a miracle which never dulled.

            At its distance, the cylinder was a tiny streak among hosts and clouds of stars. She magnified and the shape grew clear, though the dimensions remained an abstraction: length about a thousand kilometers, diameter slightly more than two. It spun around its long axis so fast that a point on the rim traveled at three-fourths the speed of light. Nothing on its silvery-brilliant surface told that to the unaided eye, yet somehow an endless, barely perceptible shimmer of changeable colors conveyed a maelstrom sense of the energy locked within. Humans believed that that gleam came from force-fields which held together matter compressed to ultimate densities. There were moons which had less mass than yonder engine for opening star gates.

            In the background glowed two more of the beacons which surrounded it, a purple and a gold; and through the instruments, Joelle spied a third, whose color was radio.

            This thing the Others had forged and set circling around Phoebus, as they had set one at Sol and one at Centrum and one at. . . who dared guess how many stars, across how many lightyears and years? What number of sentient races had found them in space, gotten the same impersonal leave to use them, and hungered ever afterward to know who the builders truly were?

            Out of those, what portion have crippled themselves the way we're doing? Joelle questioned in an upsurge of bitterness. Oh Dan, Dan, it's gone for nothing, your trying to get the word that could set us free- and then, like a sunburst, she saw what must have come to him early on.  He was bound to have thought of it; she remembered him drawling, "Every fox has two holes for his burrow." Hope kindled within her. She didn't stop to see how feeble it was, how easily blown out again. For now, the spark was enough.

 

 

            III

 

 

            Daniel Brodersen was born in what was still called the state of Washington and had, indeed, not broken from the USA during the civil wars, as several regions attempted and the Holy Western Republic succeeded in doing. However, for three generations before him, the family chief had borne the title Captain General of the Olympic Domain and exercised a leadership over that peninsula, including the city of Tacoma, which was real while the claims of the federal government were words.

            Those barons had not considered themselves nobility. Mike was a fisherman with a Quinault Indian wife, who had invested his money in several boats. When the Troubles reached America, he and his men became the nucleus of a group which restored order in the neighborhood, mainly to protect their households. As things worsened, he got appeals to help an ever-growing circle of farms and small towns, until rather to his surprise he was lord of many mountains, forests, vales, and strands, with all the folk therein. Any of them could always bend his ear; he put on no airs.

            He fell in battle against bandits. His eldest son Bob avenged him in terrifying fashion, annexed the lawless territory to prevent a repetition, and set himself to giving defense and rough justice to his land, so that people could get on with their work. Bob felt loyal to the United States and twice raised volunteer regiments to fight for its integrity. He lost two boys of his own that way, and died while defending Seattle against a fleet which the Holies had sent north.

            During his lifetime, similar developments went on in British Columbia. American and Canadian nationalism meant much less than the need for local cooperation. Bob married John, his remaining son, to Barbara, daughter of the Captain General of the Fraser Valley. That alliance ripened into close friendship between the families. After Bob's death, a special election overwhelmingly gave his office to John. "We've done okay with the Brodersens, haven't we?" went the word from wharfs and docks, huts and houses, orchards, fields, timber camps, workshops, taverns, from Cape Flattery to Puget Sound and from Tatoosh to Hoquiam.

            John's early years in charge were turbulent, but this was due to events outside the Olympic Peninsula and gradually those too lost their violence. With peace came prosperity and a reheightening of civilization. The barons had always been fairly well educated, but men of raw action. John endowed schools, imported scholars, listened to them, and read books in what spare time he could find.

            Thus he came to understand, better even than native shrewdness allowed, that the feudal period was waning. First the federal military command brought the entire USA under control, as General McDonough had done in Canada. Then piece by piece it established a new civil administration, reached agreement of sorts with the Holy Western Republic and the Mexican Empire, and opened negotiations for amalgamation with its northern neighbor. Meanwhile the World Union created by the Covenant of Lima was spreading. The North American Federation joined within three years of being proclaimed, according to a promise made beforehand. This example brought in the last holdout nations, and limited government over the entire human race was a reality-for a time, at least.

            At the start of these events, John decided that his call was to preserve for his people enough home rule that they could continue to live more or less according to their traditions and desires. Over the years he gave way to centralization, step by step, bargaining for every point, and did achieve his wish. In the end he was nominally a squire, holding considerable property, entitled to various honors and perquisites, but a common citizen. In practice he was among the magnates, drawing strength from the respect and affection of the entire Pacific Northwest.

            Daniel was his third son, who would inherit little wealth and no rank. This suited Daniel quite well. He enjoyed his boyhood- woods, uplands, wild rivers, the sea, horses, cars, watercraft, aircraft, firearms, friends, ceremonies of the guard, rude splendor of the manor until it became a mansion, visits to his mother's relatives and to cities nearer by where both pleasure and culture grew steadily more complicated-but restlessness was in him, the legacy of a fighting house, and in his teens he often got into brawls, when he wasn't carousing with low-life buddies or tumbling servant girls. Finally he enlisted in the Emergency Corps of the World Union Peace Command. That was very soon after its formation. The Union itself was still an infant that many wanted to strangle. A Corpsman hopped from place to place around the globe -later, off it as well- and most of them were full of weapons seeing brisk use. For Brodersen, here began a series of careers which eventually landed him on Demeter.

            His latter-day acquaintances assumed that that youth was far behind him in space and perhaps, at fifty Earth-years of age, farther yet in time. He himself seldom thought about it. He kept too busy.

            Settling his bulk into a chair, he drew forth pipe and tobacco pouch. "Damn the torpedoes," he rumbled. "Full speed ahead."

            The Governor General of Demeter blinked at him across her desk. "What?"

            "A saying of my dad's," Brodersen told her. "Means you asked me to come to your office in person, because you didn't want us gabbing about whatever `tis over the phone; and now you're tiptoeing around the subject as if `twere a cowbarn that hadn't been cleaned lately." He grinned to show he meant no harm. Actually, he suspected it, he did. "Let's not keep me here, mixing up my figures of speech, longer'n we must. Lis expects me home for dinner, and she's unforgiving if I cause the roast to be overdone."

            Aurelia Hancock frowned. She was a sizeable woman, rather overweight, with blunt features and short gray hair. A cigarette smoldered between yellow-stained fingers; smoking had hoarsened her voice, and rumor was that she took an uncommon lot of cancer booster shots. As usual, she wore clothes which were Earthmodish but conservative, a green tunic with a silver-trimmed open collar above bell-bottomed slacks and gilt sandals. "I was trying to be pleasant," she said.

            Brodersen's thumb tamped the bowl of his briar. "Thanks," he replied, "but I'm afraid that no how can this be a nice subject."

            She bridled. "How do you know what I want to talk about?"

            "Aw, come down off that ungainly platform, Aurie. What else'd it be but Emissary?"

            Hancock dragged on her cigarette, lowered it, and said: "All right! Dan, you have got to stop spreading those tales about the ship returning. They simply are not true. My staff and I have our hands full as is, without adding unfounded suspicions that the Council itself is lying to the people."

            Brodersen raised his shaggy brows. "Who says I've been telling stories out of school? I haven't made an appearance on any broadcast, or mounted a box and orated in Goddard Park, have I? Four or five weeks ago, I asked if you'd heard about Emissary, and I've asked you a couple of times since, and you've answered no. That's all."

 

            "It isn't. You've been talking-"

            "To friends, sure. Since when have your cops been monitoring conversations?"

            "Cops? I suppose you mean police detectives. No, Dan, certainly not. What do you take me for? Why would I want to, even, with only half a million people in Eopolis and the way they gossip? Word gets to me automatically."

            Brodersen regarded her with fresh respect. She was a political appointee-prominent in the Action Party of the North American Federation, helper and protégé of Ira Quick-but by and large, she hadn't been doing a bad job on Demeter, mediating between the Union Council and a diverse lot of increasingly disaffected colonists. (A tinge of pity: Her husband had been a high-powered lawyer on Earth, but there was little demand for his services here, and in spite of his putting on a good show, everybody knew he was far gone into alcoholism, without wanting to be cured of it. If anything, though, that made Aurelia Hancock the more formidable.) He'd better play close to his vest.

            "I did speak to you first," he said.

            "Yes, and I told you I'd surely have heard if-"

            "You never convinced me my evidence was faulty."

            "I tried to. You wouldn't listen. But think. At its distance, how could your robot possibly tell whether that was Emissary passing through?" Hancock frowned again. "Your deception of the Astronautical Control Board about the true purpose of that vessel could affect the continuance of your licenses, you know."

            Brodersen had awaited that line of attack. "Aurie," he sighed elaborately, "let me just rehearse for you exactly what happened."

            He struck fire to his pipe and got it under weigh. His glance roved. The room and furniture were to his taste, little of synth about them, mostly handmade of what materials were handy some seventy years ago, when the settlement on Demeter was about a generation old. (That'd be half an Earth century, flitted across his mind. I really have soaked this planet up into me, haven't I?) Creamy, whorl-grained daphne wainscoting set off a vase of sunbloom on the desk and, on a shelf behind, a stunning hologram of Mount Lorn with both moons full above its snows. On his right, two windows stood open on a garden. There Terrestrial rosebeds and grass reached to a wrought iron fence; but a huge old thunder oak remained from the vanished forest, its bluish-green leaves breathing forth a slight gingery odor, and slingplant grew jubilantly over the metal. Ordinary traffic moved along the street, pedestrians, cyclists, bubble of a car and snake of a freighter whirring on their air cushions. Across the way, a modem house lifted its pastel trapezoid. Yet overhead the sky arched deeper blue than anywhere on Earth, and Phoebus in afternoon had a mellowness akin to Sol at evening. For a half second he recalled that barometric pressure was lower and so was gravity (eighty percent), but his body was too habituated to feel either any longer.

            He drew on the pipe, savored a bite across tongue and nostrils, and continued: "I never kept my opinion secret. Theory says a T machine can scoot you to anywhere in space-time within its range which means space and time. Emissary was on the track of an alien ship that'd been observed using a gate in this system, obviously to pass between a couple of points we knew nothing about. I figured the crew and owners `ud be friendly. Why shouldn't they be? At a minimum, they'd help Emissary return after her mission was completed. And in that case, why not send them home close to the same date as they left?"

            "I've heard your argument," Hancock said, "but only after you began agitating. If you felt it was that plausible, that important, why didn't you file a report beforehand with the appropriate bureau?"

            Brodersen shrugged. "Why should I? The idea wasn't absolutely unique to me. Besides, I'm a private citizen."

            She gave him a narrow look. "The wealthiest man on Demeter is not altogether a private citizen."

            "I'm small potatoes next to the rich on Earth," he replied blandly.

            "Like the Rueda clan in Peth -with whom you have a business as well as family relationship. No, you are not entirely a private citizen."

            Still she stared at him. He sat back, cradling the warmth of his pipe bowl, and let her. Not that he had illusions about his handsomeness. He was a big man, a hundred and eighty-eight centimeters tall and thickboned, muscular, broad in the shoulders, deep in the chest; but of late years he had added girth till he appeared stocky. His head was likewise massive, mesocephalic, squarefaced, with heavy jaw and mouth, jutting Roman nose, eyes gray, wideset, downward-slanted, crow's-footed, skin weathered and furrowed. Like most men on Demeter, he went clean-shaven and cropped his hair above the ears; it was straight, coarse, black with some white streaks, a last inheritance from his great-grandmother. For this meeting, as for most occasions, he wore casual colonial male garb: bolero of orosaur leather above a loose blouse, baggy pants tucked into soft halfboots, wide belt holding assorted small tools and instruments in its loops plus a sheath knife.

            "Regardless," he said, keeping his amicable tone, "I don't know of any laws I've broken, nor bent unrepairably far out of shape."

            "Don't be too cocksure about that," she warned.

            "Hm, maybe we'd better run through the story from the beginning, and see if you can point out where I went illegal. Otherwise, relax and enjoy."

            Brodersen took a breath before he continued: "I thought, and mentioned to miscellaneous people, that Emissary might come back early. Few paid me much heed. Yes, as you've guessed, I did sponsor that robot observer the Foundation sent to study the T machine-but it was mainly doing legitimate scientific work, and I've yet to get a satisfactory explanation of why it was required to take up such a distant orbit.

            "Hold, if you will. Let me rant for a minute longer." Though his eyelids crinkled, belying the imperious note, his voice tramped on. "Space regs don't demand that research plans be explained in detail. And what harm in keeping a lens cocked for Emissary, anyway? You accuse me of deception? Blazes, Aurie, `twas the other way around!

            "Just the same, after a few months the observer did return, and beamed a message to the station it was supposed to, under certain circumstances. I called you and asked-sort of tactfully, I think- if you knew anything about the matter. You said no. I checked with Earth, and everybody I contacted there said no too. Now I'd hate to call them all liars. Especially you, Aurie. Nevertheless, today you invited me down for a confidential discussion, which seems to be about gagging me."

            She straightened in her chair, gripped her desktop, and defied him: "You were jumping to conclusions from the start. Absurd conclusions."

            "Must I run barefoot through the cowbarn for you?" His note of patience was not spontaneous; he had planned his tactics en route to this house. "Directly or indirectly, you've got to have heard my reasoning before. But okay, here `tis again."

            She pulled smoke into her lungs and waited. He thought fleetingly how much human discourse was like this, barren repetition if not mere tom-tom beat, and wondered if the Others were free of the necessity, if they could speak straight to a meaningful point.

            "The robot spotted a Reina-class transport popping out of a gate," he said. "Sure, it was too far off to identify the ship, but we humans have built nothing bigger and the shape was right. Either that was a Reina or it was a nonhuman vessel of the same general kind. The robot then tracked Faraday closing in on the newcomer, and then tracked them both as they followed the Phoebus-to-Sol guidepath. That was enough for its program to decide it should come home and report.

            "Stuff it, Aurie, I didn't swan-dive whooping off the deep end. I began by having my agents on Earth learn exactly where every other Reina was at that time. It turned out none of them could've been what my observer saw; all were accounted for, in the Solar System or this one.

            "Meanwhile Faraday returned to Phoebus and resumed her duties. I had a Foundation director beam Captain Archer a polite inquiry as to what had happened. He answered that there had been nothing unusual, a freighter had developed some trouble in transit from Sol and he escorted her back as a precaution, and no, she was not a Reina but a Princesa and if our robot claimed otherwise, we'd better have its instruments overhauled.

            "Now look, Aurie, I know that observer is in perfect shape. So what the devil do you want me to think? Either that was a nonhuman ship, or she was Emissary, which I imagine you'll agree is more likely by a whisker or three. Whichever, `ifs the biggest story since. . . take your choice. . . and nobody in authority has a bloody damn thing to say about it!"

            Brodersen leaned forward. His pipestem jabbed the air. "I give you, probably most of those I've queried, or my agents have, are honest," he said. "They really had no information. In a couple of cases they took the trouble to send off inquiries of their own, and got back a negative. It's understandable that they didn't then dig further. They consider their time valuable, and I've got the reputation of being a troublemaker. Why should they assume my data were valid? Doubtless several of them decided I was lying for some obscure purpose.

            "Well, you've been on Demeter long enough to know me better than that, no? And for my part, when I first contacted you about this and you said you'd heard nothing, I believed. When I asked again later and you said you were investigating, I believed also. Since then, however-frankly, I've grown more and more skeptical.

            "So why have you summoned me today?"

            Hancock tossed the stub of her cigarette down an ashtaker, took another from a box, and struck it alight in a savage motion. "You mentioned my wanting to gag you," she said. "Call it what you please. It's what I mean to do."

            Not quite a surprise. Brodersen willed his belly muscles to untighten, his response to be soft: "For what reason and by what right?"

            She met his gaze square on. "I've received an answer to my communications about this affair from an extremely high quarter. The public interest demands that for an indefinite time there be no release of news. That includes the allegations you've been making."

            "Public interest, eh?"

            "Yes. I wish-" The hand that brought the cigarette to Hancock's lips was less than steady. "Dan," she said almost sadly, "we've been at loggerheads before. I realize how much you oppose certain policies of the Union and how you're becoming a spokesman for that attitude among Demetrians. Nevertheless, I've esteemed you and dared hope you believed I also wanted the best for this planet. We've worked together, even, haven't we? Like when I talked the Council into making the extra appropriation for the University you wanted, or you lobbied your stiff-necked colonial parliament into approving the Ecological Authority that I'd persuaded you had become a necessity. May I ask today for a bit more of your trust?"

            "Sure," he said, "if you tell me the reasons."

            She shook her head. "I can't. You see, I haven't been given the details myself. It's that crucial. But those who've requested my help, I trust them."

            "Notably Ira Quick." Brodersen couldn't neutralize the acid in his reply.

            She stiffened. "As you like. He is the Minister of Research and Development."

            "And a drive wheel in the Action Party, which leads all those factions on Earth that'd rather not see us go out into the galaxy." Brodersen curbed his temper. "Let's not argue politics. What are you free to tell me? I presume you can give me some argument, some reason to dog my hatch."

            Hancock streamed smoke while she stared at the glowing butt she held on the desktop. "They suggested a hypothetical case to me. Imagine you're right, that Emissary has in fact returned, but she was bearing something terrible."

            "A plague? A swami of vampires? For Pete's sake, Aurie! And Paul's, Matt's, Mark's, Luke's, and Jack's."

            "It could simply be bad news. We've taken a lot of things for granted. For instance, that every civilization technologically advanced beyond us must be peaceful, else they couldn't have lasted. Which is a logical non sequitur, actually. Suppose Emissary discovered a conquering race of interstellar Huns."

            "If nothing else, I doubt the Others would sit still for that. However, supposing it, why, I'd want to alert my species so we could ready our defenses."

            Hancock gave Brodersen a pale smile. "That was my own offhand example. I admit it's not very plausible."

            "Then feed me one that is."

            She winced. "All right. Since you mentioned the Others-~-suppose there are none."

            "Huh? Somebody built the T machines and lets us use them."

            "Robots. When the first explorers reached the machine in the Solar System, the thing that spoke to them did not hide that it was only a robot. We've built up our whole concept of the Others from nothing more than what it said. Which is awfully little, Dan, if you stop to think. Suppose Emissary has brought back proof that we're wrong. That the Others are extinct. Or never existed. Or are basically evil. Or whatever you can imagine. You're a born heretic. You don't find any of this unthinkable, do you?"

            "N-no. I do find it extremely unlikely. But supposing it for the sake of argument, what then?"

            "You could keep your sanity. But you're an exceptional sort. Could humankind as a whole?"

            "What're you getting at?"

            Once more Hancock raised her tormented head to confront him. "You like to read history," she said, "and as an entrepreneur, you're a kind of practical politician. Must I spell out for you what it would mean, the shattering of our image of the Others?"

            Brodersen's pipe had died. He resurrected it. "Maybe you must."

            "Well, look, man." (He was oddly moved by the Americanism. They shared that background, though she came from the Midwest. And belle was born in Pennsylvania, he remembered. Where are you now, belle?) "When they found out what that strange object was, an actual T machine, and heard what the robot had to tell them, it may have been the greatest shock the human race has ever undergone-the whole human race. You had to take Jesus or Buddha on faith, and the faith spread slowly. But here, overnight, was direct proof that beings exist superior to us. Not merely in science and technology -no, what the Voice said indicated they were beyond us in their own selves. Angels, gods, whatever name you care to give. And seemingly benign but indifferent. We were told how to get from Sol to Phoebus and back; we were free to settle Demeter if we chose; the rest was left to us, including how to go onward from here."

            "Yeah, sure," he encouraged her.

            "Probably that was a large part of the shock: the indifference. Suddenly humans realized for a fact that they aren't anything special in the universe. But at the same time, there is something to aspire to. No wonder a million cults, theories, self assertions, outright lunacies sprang up. No wonder that after a while, Earth exploded."

            "M-m-m, I wouldn't blame the Troubles entirely on the revelation," Brodersen said. "The balance that'd been reached earlier was almighty precarious. If anything, I think the idea of the Others helped keep everybody from running amuck-helped keep the real planet killer weapons from seeing over-much use-so Earth is still habitable."

            "As you like," Hancock replied. "The point is, that idea has made a tremendous difference, maybe more than any traditional religion ever did."

            She braced herself to go on: "Okay. Suppose the Emissary expedition learned it's a false idea. As I suggested, maybe the Others are dead, or moved elsewhere, or less than we think, or worse than we think. Let that news out with no forewarning, let hysterical commentators knock the foundations loose from under hundreds of millions of people, and what happens? The Union isn't firmly enough grounded that it can survive worldwide mania. And next time around, the planet-killers might well get unleashed.

            "Dan," she begged, "do you see why we have to keep silence for a while?"

            He puffed his pipe. "I'm afraid I'll need the details," he answered.

            "But-"

            "You admitted this was hypothetical, didn't you? Well, I don't buy the hypothesis. If the Others were monsters, we wouldn't be sitting here; we'd be wiped out, or we'd be domestic animals of theirs, or whatever. If they're extinct- hun, tell me how a species capable of building T machines is going to let itself become extinct. Nor do I imagine they're not better than us; with that kind of technology, wouldn't you improve your own race, supposing evolution had not already done it for you? And as for them collectively going off to live in some kind of parallel universe-why should they, when this one we've got is loaded with more fun than anybody can use up before the last star burns out?"

            "I didn't claim any of those was the case," Hancock said. "I was only giving you some examples."

            "Uh-huh. Ever heard of Occam's razor? I've shaved with it from time to time."

            "Choose the simplest explanation for the facts."

            "Right. And in this case, what is the simplest? I propose that Emissary did return; that the story she brought was of how we might go beyond these two planetary systems we have; that certain politicians on Earth don't like that possibility and want to suppress it; and that you, Aurie, have now gotten your marching orders. I imagine you agree in principle anyway. You belong to the Action Party."

            Brodersen barked it forth. He might as well, his back to the wall of a decision already made; and perhaps he could provoke a little truth out of her who had become his enemy.

           Yet he was jarred when she said in her coldest manner: "I consider that an insult, Captain Brodersen. But never mind. If you won't cooperate freely, we'll have to apply duress. You are not going to continue talking as you have been."

            Chill rammed through him. He had come expecting that she would lay heavy pressure on him, but not a grabclaw. "Ever read the Covenant?" he asked low. "I mean the free speech clause."

            "Have you read the provision for emergencies and the laws enacted under it?" she retorted, though he could see her hurting.

            "Yeah. So?"

            "I declare an emergency. Come back in five years and take the matter to court." Hancock reached for a fresh cigarette. "Dan," she stated unhappily, "I've got the cops, as you call them. Until we can agree about this business, you're under arrest."

            She meant he would be confined to his home, his mail and phone monitored. Maybe she was sincere in her promise that her surveillance men would only activate their electronic eavesdroppers when he had visitors. He could conduct his business as usual from the house-these days, it mostly ran itself anyway- and could give whatever reason he chose, such as a prolonged attack of the galloping collywobbles, for not leaving the place. If he said it was on her orders, though, she'd tell the news media that he was being held while his company was investigated on suspicion of fraud.

            She thought she could probably let him go in a month or two. That would depend on what she heard from Earth.

            He didn't waste energy roaring. "You're being a government, Aurie," he remarked. When she gave him an inquiring glance, he explained: "The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants."

            He could have gone on to admit that he was oversimplifying, since she was obviously acting on behalf of a group whose own behavior might well be unlawful; but he didn't think it was worth his while.

 

 

            IV

 

 

            Two courteous plainclothes policemen escorted Brodersen from the governor's house and rode home with him in his car. By then, Demeter was completing another day, ten percent shorter than Earth's. The sun was hidden behind Anvil Hill, which loomed blue gray at the end of Pioneer Avenue with the dome of the Capitol shining gold on its brow. Right and left the city reached, an uncluttered view of intermingled dwellings, small factories, stores, service enterprises, most buildings surrounded by lawns and flowers. At his back, the Europa River gleamed broad on its way to Apollo Bay and thence the Hephaestian Sea. The opposite shore was farmland, fields of wheat and corn vividly green at this season against a few remaining bluish stands of mariflora and raincatch. A moon stood high at half phase, wan and mottled amidst cloudless azure. Wings cruised up there, frailies and bucearos seeking their nests, starlarks rising to hunt through the dusk. The air blew cool and bore wild scents from the hinterland eastward.

            How beautiful this is, passed through him as he came outdoors, together with a few lines from his favorite poet, penned more than two centuries ago:

 

            God gave all men all earth to love,

But, since our hearts are small,

            Ordained for each one spot should prove

Beloved over all;

 

-and at the same time: No, damnation, it isn't enough! We have a whole universe to live in, if we can break past the powermongers.

            Sharply to him came the memories-Earth seen from space, tiny, gorgeously beswirled, infinitely precious; Lunar craters beneath a blaze of stars; a Martian dawn, red, red, red over sands and boulders and colors; the mighty sight of many-banded Jupiter; his first glimpse of Phoebus athwart new constellations. What else had Joelle witnessed? What else could he?

            "Nice weather," said one of the officers. "Looks like we won't get the summer storms till Hektos or Hebdomos this year."

            "Yeah," Brodersen responded like a machine. A part of him noted that the young men beside him had been born here. They used the Demetrian calendar automatically. Few were the atoms in them that had come from Earth. What did they individually think about the prospect of humankind getting the freedom of the cosmos? Doubtless they'd say that was a great idea . . . until some neo-collectivist gave them an estimate of the social cost. What then? He forbore to ask.

            Instead he steered for the Eglise de St. Michel suburb. (Traffic was not so thick in Eopolis that autopilots were mandatory.) Hidden Mountain Road lay gold at evening, houses and gardens widely separated, native meadows and woodlands in between. His own dwelling was designed for the climate, a Hawaiian-style bungalow in half a hectare of lodix lawn and Terrestrial flowers. "How do you fellows plan to get back?" he asked as he pulled into the carport.

            "We'll be around here till we're relieved, sir," was the answer.

            "M-m-m. . . inn. Want to stop in for a cup of coffee?"

            "We'd better not, sir. Thanks anyway."

            Brodersen grinned at his passengers' embarrassment, which very slightly eased the anger in him, and got out. They moved off the property and vanished behind a tall davisia hedge, doubtless to take stations watchful of both his front and rear entrances.

            After patting his German shepherd hello, he went on into the house. The living room was long and high, paneled like the office where he had been, a stone fireplace that he had built himself standing archaic opposite a broad window showing the patio. It was full of fragrances from the blooms his wife had brought in.  She had music going, some of her cherished Sibelius, but softly, while she sat in a lounger, the cat on her lap, and studied an engineering report. (After he hired her, he soon found she rated rapid promotion; after they were married, he made her his full partner. These days Elisabet Leino occupied much of her time with matters outside of Chehalis Enterprises-civic, theatrical, horticultural, not to mention two lively youngsters-but the company still could not have managed well without her.)

            "Hi," she said, laid the papers down and rose, expecting to kiss him. She was a rangy woman, ivory-skinned, brown-haired, husky-voiced, today clad in a dress whose shortness did justice to her legs. Sharp, almost Classical features lost their look of gladness. "You've got a faceful of riptides. It went badly, didn't it?"

            "I want beer," he growled, and hauled a bottle from a cooler cabinet behind a small bar. His manners came back to him. "Uh, you too?"

            She walked across to embrace him lightly. "I'll wait for cocktail hour. What happened, darling?"

            "Plenty, and all ungood." He poured into a silver mug from a set he'd brought back from his last trip to Earth, baggage charges be damned, for their ninth wedding anniversary this Demetrian year. The feel of it in his fist and the chill pungency in his mouth were comforting.

            She studied him. "You've made up your mind what to do," she said.

            "I'm working on it. You're involved, of course, starting as chief consultant."

            "Then tell me." She took his hand and led him toward the couch.

            He let her sit down while he paced and talked, gulping between harsh passages. At the end, he summarized: "Seems obvious to me. A bunch of antistellar types have formed a cabal. They must have members in several national governments, plus doubtless the Union Council, the bureaucracy, and the space corps. Quite likely they took more seriously than they let on, the notion that Emissary might return earlier than expected, and kept sort of on the ready. So she's being held incommunicado while they decide how to handle her. Meanwhile I've been getting too noisy. So Hancock got word to muzzle me. I doubt she was ever in on any conspiracy, but she is loyal to the Action Party in general and her political sponsors in particular. If they tell her it's her duty to enforce silence, she'll accept that without asking inconvenient questions." He shrugged. "I suppose I should give thanks she isn't the type to take stronger measures than she has."

            Lis let silence fall for a moment, together with twilight, before she murmured, "I don't suppose there is any possibility that they may be right?"

            "What do you think?"

            "Oh, we've been over this territory often enough, and you know I agree with you. I simply wondered. One does hate to imagine corruption in high levels of the Union -the Union!- doesn't one?

            What do you plan to do?"

            He stopped, stared down at her, and said, What can I, except be a good boy? And you be a good girl.  Hancock understood I'd tell you how things are, but warned me you'd be in Dutch too if you talked. We'll let out that I'm-um-m, 'indisposed' for weeks isn't believable. . . . I've turned hermit in order to work on a new idea for the business, which has to stay secret till it's ready. You take over in the office for me."

            "What?" She was astounded. "You, Dan, that tamely?"

            He shook his head and laid a finger across his lips. "What choice have we got? I could be worse off than taking an enforced vacation. Might read some of those books you're always urging me to. Now look, sweetheart, I'm tired and grumped and won't appreciate your dinner unless I can relax first. Okay?"

            Her gaze upon him grew knowing. "Okay," she said.

            Accordingly, for the next while, they went through their family routine. After a second beer he took the children to the rec room for the half hour-plus with Daddy which was theirs by right. Mike, going on three (two, Earth calendar), was content to stump around laughing, get jounced on an ankle, and join wordlessly in some songs. He came closer to carrying the tunes than his father did, though that wasn't saying much. Barbara, at seven, demanded as well that he draw a picture and tell her the latest installment of his saga of Slewfoot the orosaur. (In his childhood, Captain General John had told him about Slewfoot the bear, but that was on Earth.) He ended the current adventure rather abruptly, with a safe return to Queets Castle.

            She sensed his haste. "Are you goin' away again?" she asked.

            "I'm not sure, darling," he said. It twisted within him. "I may have to." How warm she sat between his hands.

            "For long?"

            "I certainly hope not. You know how I've got to make trips sometimes to find money. If I must go, well, I'll come home as soon as may be, with a load of presents and a lot of new stories." Hugging her: "You'll help Mother same as before, right? That's my lassie." She cast her arms about his neck.

            He supposed that eavesdroppers, who might be using pickups in spite of Hancock's promise, wouldn't attach any importance to such an exchange. Nevertheless, after the kids were back in the nursery and he had settled down for a drink with Lis, he took the precaution of remarking, "About my confinement to quarters, I do wonder if I can't get leave to visit Chinook. There are several things that need my personal attention. Even Barbara could feel I'm anxious to take care of `em. They can send a couple of their damn guards along to make sure I don't blurt."

            "Well, you can try," she answered.

            "In a few days I might, when tempers have cooled."

            As aware of his mood as their daughter, she changed the subject. They always had plenty to talk about. The business itself was endlessly varied. Chehalis held most spacecraft in the Phoebean System and conducted most undertakings off Demeter, on its own or under contract-transport, prospecting, mining, manufacturing, exploration, pure research.- This inevitably involved it in widespread aspects of the colony's economy and politics, and increasingly with Earth. Beyond that, without having ambitions for public office, they both took a close interest in public affairs; they went sailing or on wilderness trips together, skied, figure skated, played tennis and slapdash chess and Machiavellian poker, worked on their house and grounds; they often strolled out to watch the stars and wonder what dwelt yonder. This evening they got onto some recent discoveries, about an odd relationship between the dominant hypersauroids and the primitive theroids along the lonian Gulf littoral, and almost forgot their troubles. Afterward the children made dinner enjoyable.

            But when man and wife alone were awake, Brodersen said, "I feel restless. Think don't you come along and help?"

            Such projects were not among Lis' hobbies, but she caught his meaning and replied, "Sure."

            They sought his workshop. In half an hour he had cobbled together the apparatus he wanted from an ample supply of spare parts and activated it. A whine filled the equipment-crowded chamber. He clicked his tongue. "Dear me. Inefficient."

            "Is that to cover our voices?" she inquired.

            She had realized what worried him. People spoke Finnish on her parents' farm in the Trollberg region, and he had acquired a few extra languages in the years when he knocked about Earth. But all he and she had in common were English-their everyday tongue-and Spanish, both of which would be known to any detective.

            "No," he explained. "Sonics wouldn't work, at least not without a lot of fancy heterodyning gear. This is no more'n a high-powered wide-band radio noise generator, which ought to jam electronic communications within a couple hundred meters, and seem accidental. I'm assuming the opposition has planted bugs along our walls, to pick up speech inside and buck in on to a receiver. Easy to do. Those things are small. You could lob `em into the shrubbery with a slingshot."

            Dread touched her. "Do you really believe Aurie Hancock would order that, or the police would obey? Demeter's supposed to be a free society."

            "Supposed to be. It's actually a set of societies, you know, and a lot of mother countries aren't exactly libertarian. If I were governor, I'd keep a few men on the force whose background doesn't include scruples about privacy. Might need `em someday to deal with criminals who were finding this planet a happy hunting ground." Brodersen hitched himself onto the workbench and sat swinging his legs. "Anyway, Lis, I don't believe we're bugged, I'm assuming it. This matter's too big for optimism. Tomorrow you have Mamoru Saigo come around with a detector and check for spy gadgets. If he finds any, bin, I'd suggest you destroy them, but first speak a sharp message that if this happens again, you'll go to court and the news media both."

            She was mute among the tools while her gaze searched him. The window behind her was closed and blinded, but from it breathed a slight chill, like a sense of darkness beyond.

            "You won't be here, then," she foreknew.

            He fumbled after pipe and tobacco. "Fraid not, honey. We can't let the bastards ream us out, can we? Judas priest, the whole future of human spacefaring! Besides-have you forgotten?-the mate aboard Emissary is Carlos Rueda Suarez, my friend, Toni's cousin. I don't write family off."

            "Also Joelle Ky, if she's alive," Lis said quietly.

            He winced from the pain he saw on her. "Yeah, well, an old friend too."

            "More than a friend." Lis raised a palm. "No, don't bother pretending. I've never objected to your little flings, have I? I'd like to meet Joelle myself. She must be rather special, to mean this much to you. You've never mentioned her to me as casually as you imagined you did."

            "You win," he said, fiery-faced. "Not that we got romantic, understand. She's too. . . strange for that. But-Anyway, the main point is, I don't see how the cabal can ever let Emissary go. The publicity would wreck their whole aim, and their personal careers to boot. At the same time, it's dangerous maintaining prisoners. They may decide on a massacre."

            "If they are that villainous. If there is a cabal."

            He nodded. "The chance I take, that I'm mistaken."

            "As well as chances with your life, Dan."

            "Not too bad. Honest. I value my hide. It's the only one I've got."

            "What do you want to do, essentially?"

            "Go to Earth. Investigate. Act. Mainly, I suppose, alert the Rueda clan. At most, they'll've heard vague rumors. I haven't written to them directly, as you know, because I wasn't that sure of my facts; and then when I was, I trustingly asked Aurie to push her queries harder, and then today she dumped this crockful over me. Our mail is bound to be intercepted, stopped if it says anything inconvenient. Nobody that I know on Demeter whom I might somehow pass the word to, nobody knows his way around Earth or has the connections I do there. No, I must get to Lima in person and talk to the Señor."

            "How?"

            He paused in stuffing his pipe to give her a lopsided grin. "Lis, that plain and practical a question alone, right in this hour, would make me love you."

            He bad not seen her blush and drop her glance in a long time. She squeezed his thigh. "We're partners, remember?" she whispered.

            "I'm not about to forget." He set his smoking apparatus down to lay a hand over hers. "Okay, we haven't a truckload of time, we'd better conspire onward.

            "I don't yet have an exact plan. Mainly, I figure it's needful I bust free, out of reach. And immediately. If nothing is seen or heard of me for the next two-three days, I think Aurie'll take for granted I'm sulking in my tent. After that, however, it'd seem funny if I didn't at least make an occasional phone call. So I'll skitter off tonight."

            She didn't require details. None but the two of them knew about their tunnel. A few years past, he'd rented a burrower to add a wine cellar to their storm shelter. While he was at it, he excavated a crawlway to the middle of the woods north of their land, reinforcing with spraycrete. That was during the bitter dispute, on and around Earth, regarding jurisdiction and property rights among the asteroids, when for a while, it looked as if the Iliadic League would secede. If that federation of orbital and Lunar colonies left the Union-and the Union probably resorted to arms to bring it back -God knew what would happen, also on Demeter. The crisis faded away in grumbling compromise, but Brodersen still jawed himself for not having provided a secret exit from the house before then. He'd seen enough disasters, most of them due to governments, that he should have taken out that insurance at the start.

            From the woods he could hike five kilometers to a lonely airbus stop, fly to a distant town, and rent a car. He had established a couple of fake identities, complete with excellent credit ratings, to protect privacy when he and his traveled. In the pond that was Demeter, population less than three million, he'd become a bigger frog than he liked.

            "What next?" Lis asked.

            "Let's think," he said, kindling tobacco and drinking smoke. "Obviously I'll need transportation to Sol, transportation that'll do me some good after I get there. Chinook-what else?-the crew she can carry, the supplies aboard, the auxiliary boat. Besides, Williwaw is practically designed for jobs like snatching me unbeknownst from wherever I am on this planet."

            "How do you hope you'll get Chinook through the gate, past the watchship?"

            He chuckled. The prospect of operating, instead of being operated on, cheered him immensely. Not that he welcomed the present mess. Yet in recent years his days had gotten too predictable for his taste. "We'll figure that out. If you can't handle the negotiations, dear, we'd better both report to the gero clinic. Off hand hm. . . well, Aventureros" -the parent company of Chehalis-"certainly could use another big freighter within the Solar System; and with no prospect now of Chinook going starward, why, we might as well put her on charter there." He snapped his fingers. "Hey, yes, that'd give her the perfect official reason to contact the Ruedas." Leaning forward, going earnest: "Yes, let's count on that. Tomorrow you buzz the crewfolk. Speak about a possible trip to Sol on short notice, and invite them here for a conference about it. La Hancock did tell me quite frankly we'd be bugged whenever we had visitors, and jamming at that time would look too suspicious. But you can prepare written summaries to hand out, and all the real talk can be in writing, while harmless things are spoken that you can also have written out beforehand. They're bright people I picked, quick studies. They'll put on a convincing show."

            Lis frowned. "Will they necessarily go along with such a risky venture?"

            "Well, some may be too law-abiding or something. However, I feel sure that if any refuse, they'll still be loyal enough that they won't run off and blab. I didn't choose them to be my crew on a possible voyage to new planets without getting to know each one of them pretty well."

            "Even so, Aurelia is no fool. If she learns that Chinook is about to leave, she may slap on a hold, on whatever pretext she can think of, just to play safe."

            "Need she know? The Governor General's office doesn't usually keep track of spaceship comings and goings. I've little doubt you can hit on an arrangement."

            Brodersen hesitated before adding: "Uh, in due course she will grow certain I've vamoosed, and quite likely speculate that I was smuggled aboard. You'll be in for considerable static, I'm afraid."

            "I can give as good as I get," she assured him.

            He smiled. "Yeah. How well I know. I don't see how she can make really serious trouble for you without tipping her hand, which she mustn't. What can she legally prove, except maybe that you helped your husband break out of a dubiously legal custody? And if that came to trial, wow!"

            "She might trump up something worse," Lis said. "Not that I think she'd want to. She's not basically a cominissar. But she might be ordered to."

            "Our lawyers can drag out any court case for months," he reminded her. "By that time, I should've gotten the whole stinking business busted to finders." He frowned. "Of course, if I fail-"

            "Don't worry about me," she interrupted. "You know I'll manage."

            Again she grew quiet, standing beside him. "I'll be afraid on your account," she said at last.

            "Don't be." He shifted his pipe and laid an arm around her shoulders.

            "Well, since you are bound to go, let's plan things carefully. For openers, how do we keep in touch?"

            "Through Abner Croft," he proposed. That was among his fictitious personalities. Abner Croft owned a cabin on Lake Artemis, a hundred kilometers hence. His phone possessed more than a scrambler. It had a military gadget Brodersen had learned about on Earth and re-created for himself, as an extra precaution during the Iliadic crisis. A tap on the line would register a banal prerecorded conversation. He and Us had had fun creating several such, using disguises and voder-altered voices. He could get in circuit from any third instrument by requesting a conference call; the switching machinery didn't care.

            "M-hm," she said. "Where do you expect you'll actually be?"

            "In the Uplands. Logical area, no?"

            She paused. "With Caitlin?"

            Taken aback because she spoke so gravely, he floundered, "Well, um, that's where she is this time of year. Everybody local'll know how to find her, and think it quite natural that an outside visitor would want to hear a few songs of hers. And who else could better keep me concealed, or tell what's a safe rendezvous in those parts, or. . . or whatever?"

            He puffed hard. Lis touched him anew, and now she did not let go. "Forgive me that I asked," she said low. "I'm not protesting. You're right, she's a fine bet to help us. But you see-no, I'm not jealous, but I might never see you again alter tonight, and she means a great deal more to you than Joelle, doesn't she?"

            "Aw, sweetheart." He laid his pipe aside, to slide from the bench and stand holding her.

            Head on his breast, fingers tight against his back, she let the words tumble forth, though she kept them soft. "Dan, dearest, understand, I know you love me. And I, after that wretched marriage of mine broke up, when I met you- Everything you've been says you love me. But you, your first wife, you were never happier than when you had Antonia, were you?"

            "No," he confessed around a thickness. "Except you've given me-"

            "Hush. I've made it clear to you I don't mind -enough to matter- if you wander a bit once in a while. You meet a lot of assorted people, and I don't usually go along on your business trips to Earth, and you're a mighty attractive bull, did I ever tell you? No, shut up, darling, let me finish. I don't worry about Joelle. From what little you've said, there's a kind of witchcraft about her -a holothete and- But you didn't ever invent excuses to go back to her. Caitlin, though-"

            "Her either-" he tried.

            "You haven't told me she was anything but a friend and occasional playmate. Well, you haven't told me that, openly, about anyone. You're a private person in your way, Dan. But I've come to know you regardless. I've watched you two when she came visiting. Caitlin is quite a bit like Toni, isn't she?"

            He could only grip her to him for reply.

            "You said I didn't have to be a monogamist myself," Lis blurted. "And maybe I won't always." She gulped a giggle. "What a pair of anachronisms we are, knowing what 'monogamy' means!

            But since we got married, Dan, nobody's been worth the trouble. And nobody will be while you're away this trip and I don't know if you'll get back."

            "I will," he vowed, "I will, to you."

            "You'll do your damnedest, sure. Which is one blazing hell of a damnedest." She raised her face to his. He saw tears, and felt and tasted them. "I'm sorry," she got forth. "I shouldn't have mentioned Caitlin. Except. . . give her my love, please."

            "I, I said earlier, your practical question reminded me what kind of people you are," he stammered. "Then, uh, this- You're flat-out unbelievably good."

            Lis disengaged, stepped back, flowed her hands from his ribs to his hips, and said far down in her throat: "Thanks, chum. Now look, this'll be a short night-you'll want to catch your bus when the passengers are sleepy-and we've got a lot of plotting to do yet. First, however. . . m-m-m-m?"

            Warmth rose in him. "M-m-m-m," he returned.

 

 

            V

 

 

            Three hundred kilometers east of the Hephaestian Sea, two thousand north of Eopolis, the Uplands rose. There a number of immigrants from northern Europe had settled during the past century's inflow. Like most colonists, once it became possible to survive beyond the original town and its technological support, they tended to clump together with their own kind. Farmers, herders, lumberjacks, hunters, they lived in primitive fashion for lack of machinery; freight costs from Earth were enormous. Later, when Demetrian industry began to grow, they acquired some modern equipment-but not much, because in the meantime they bad developed ways well suited to coping with their particular country. Moreover, most of them didn't care to become dependent on outsiders. They or their ancestors had moved here to be free of governments, corporations, unions, and other monopolies. That spirit endured.

            The folk who bore it had evolved a whole ethos. In their homes, many of them continued to speak the original languages; but given that variety, English was the common tongue, in a new dialect. Traditions blended together, mutated, or sprang spontaneously into being. For instance, at winter solstice -cold, murk, snow, in this part of the continent which humans called lonia -they celebrated Yule (not Christmas, which still went by the Terrestrial calendar) with feasting, mirth, decorations, gifts, and reunions. Hallway around the Demetrian year they found a different occasion for gatherings, more frankly bacchanalian. Then bonfire signalled to bonfire across rugged distances, while around them went dancing-drinking, eating, singing, japing, gaming, sporting, lovemaking-from sundown to sunrise.

            For the past three years, Caitlin Margaret Muiryan had given music at that season to those who met on Trollberg, when she wasn't busy with associated pleasures. She was again on her way, afoot along a dirt road, since the journey was part of the fun. As she went, she practiced the latest song she had made for the festival, skipping to its waltz time while her clear soprano lifted.

 

            In silver-blue, the dew lies bright.

The midsummer night

Is a brim with light.

            Come take each other by the hand,

For music has wakened

All over the land.

 

Fingers bounced across the control board of the sonador she held in the crook of her left arm. Programmed to imitate a flute, though louder, the mahogany-colored box piped beneath her chorus.

 

            Go gladly up and gladly down.

The dancing flies outward like laughter

            From blossom field to mountain crown.

Rejoice in the joy that comes after!

 

            Dust puffed from under her shoes. Around her, the heights dreamed beneath the amber glow of a Phoebus declining westward, close to its northernmost point in a sky where a few clouds drifted white. The road followed the Astrid River, which rippled and gurgled, green with glacial flour, on her right, downward bound to Aguabranca where it would enter the mighty Europa. Beyond the stream lay untouched native ground, steeply falling into a dale already full of dusk, clothed in bluish-green growth wherever boulders did not thrust forth-lodix like a kind of trilobate grass or clover, gemmed with petals of arrowhead and sunbloom, between coppices of tall redlance and supple daphne. Insectoids swarmed, gorgeously hued flamewings, leaping hopshrubs, multitudinous humbugs. A bright-plumed frailie cruised among them, a minstrel warbled from a bough, a couple of bucearos swooped overhead, and a draque hovered lean, far

Above -not birds, these, but hypersauroids, like every well developed vertebrate which Demeter had brought forth. Pungencies that roused memories of resin and cinnamon drifted on a south breeze which was rapidly cooling off the afternoon.

            On Caitlin's left ran a rail fence. Somewhat level, till it met a scarp three or four kilometers off, the soil thus demarked had been converted to pasture for Terrestrial livestock and, further on, barley fields for humans. To the invaders from space, Demetrian meat and vegetation were often edible, occasionally delicious; she had been plucking moonberries, pearl apples, and dulcifruct ever since she got off the bus at Freidorp. But they lacked the whole complement of vitamins and amino acids, while containing several that were useless. The imported plants were intensely verdant, the cattle that grazed them fantastically red.

            Behind her, the road twisted out of sight around a hill. Ahead, it climbed like a snake. Beyond the next ridge she could see Trollberg, wooded and meadowed to its top. Ghost-faint at its back floated the Phaeacian snowpeaks, Mount Lorn their lord.

 

            The music sparkles fleet and sweet.

She sways there before him

On eager feet,

            So lithe and blithe, and garlanded

With roses and starshine

Around her dear head.

            Go gladly up and gladly down.

           The dancing flies outward like laughter- Caitlin halted. From a wilderness thicket had appeared a garm.  Gray-furred, round-snouted, bob-tailed, tiger-sized, it flowed along in a gracefulness that brought a gasp of admiration from her. Neither need fear. Demetrian carnivores didn't like the scent of Terrestrial animals and never attacked them. For their part, human hunters tried to preserve the balance of a nature which provided them skins for the market, and the upland Folkmeet had declared garms a protected species.

            The beast stopped too, and stared back at her. It saw a young woman. (Her exact age was thirty-four, though being Earth-born she thought of it as twenty-five.) Of medium height, full-bosomed, withy-slender, long in the legs, she bore aloft a curly, bronzebrown mane which fell to her shoulders. Her face was wide in the brow, high in the cheekbones, tapering to the chin; but her mouth was broad and full. Beneath arching dark brows were emerald eyes and a short, tilted nose. Weather had turned a fair skin tawny and added a dusting of freckles. Her tunic and trousers had seen rough use. A crios belt, gaudy rainbow sash, encircled them. A backpack carried changes of clothing, sleeping bag, a little dried food, the poems of Yeats, and other travel gear.

            "Glory be to Creation," she breathed, "you're beautiful, me bucko!"

            The garm vanished back onto its domain. Caitlin sighed and continued along her route.

 

            He spurns the turf that once he paced.

His arm throws a glowing

Around her waist,

            And whirled across the world, she sees

Him light as the wind and

More tall than the trees.

Go gladly up- She broke off. A man had stepped into sight, rounding a huge

rock behind the fence ahead of her. Equally surprised, after an instant he raised a hand and cried a greeting. Caitlin jogged toward him. He was young, too, she saw, stocky, blond. Clad in coveralls, he bore a horn made from a tordener's tusk wherewith to call his cows home.

            "Good day, my girl," he said in his lilting accent when she reached him. Hereabouts that was courteous. "How goes it for you?"

            "Very well. I thank you, sir, and wish the top of the day to you," she replied in the soft English of her homeland, which long since had taken unto itself the speech of its conquerors and made that its own.

"Can I ask where you fare?"

"To Trollberg for Midsummer."

            His eyes widened. "Ah. That I guessed. You are Cathleen, true? I'd call you `Miz' like a gentleman ought, but ken not your last name. Nobody seems to use it."

            She tolerated his pronunciation. Few Sassenachs or squareheads knew any better. "Aye, for I'm only here at the turning of the sun, when all the province is one great shebeen. It's a fine country you have, and dear people, but there's too much else of the planet to be traveling in. Who might you be, now?" -

            "Elias Daukantas. Of Vilnyus Farm." He jerked a thumb backward. Above a windbreak of poplars rose what must be chimney smoke. Shyly: "I've heard much about you, and wish Trollberg was in my neighborhood. Or, leastwise, that I'd had hap to see you come by afore. Uh. . . walk you always?"

            She nodded. "What for would I be driving, and never knowing through what I passed?"

            "But where stay you the nights over? I've heard nil talk of your visiting our scant inns, though more than two landlords tell how they'd pay you well for an evening's entertainment."

            She smiled to show she took no offense as she replied, "Bards sing not for gain, Freeholder Daukantas, and a bard I reckon myself to be, if scarcely any Brian Merriman. We may receive gifts, but we sing for love or hospitality. I stay where they give me welcome, else spread my sack on the lodix."

            In his awkwardness he exclaimed, "But what live you on?" and then burned in the cheeks at his gaucherie.

            "Are you embarrassed, now?" she said cheerfully, with a pat for his hand where it clenched the rail. "Why, they all ask me that." She shifted on purpose into flat Eopolitan. "I'm medically trained, though no physician. Winters, I work in the city and its hinterland, out of St. Enoch Hospital. The doctor shortage pretty well lets me set whatever terms I want. Of course, were I a decent person, I'd work full time. But when my lifespan won't reach to exploring Demeter-" She tautened. "And when I have to see people hurting-" She broke off, shivered the tension out, and laughed. "Mercy alive, but I've talked about myself, right enough! Shall we be speaking of you?"

            "There's naught to tell, my lady. This is my father's stead, and I his third son."

            She cocked her head. "You're a bachelor, then?"

           He nodded. "Tja, you know our custom in the uplands. When I am married, we can stay in the big house as partners, or we can get help to clear land and raise a dwelling for ourselves. I, I think I'll pick that. The new start."

            "And you've no girl to tell you her wishes in the matter?"

          "No. Someday-But this is a scoopful about me, uh, uh, Cathleen," he said in a rush. "Will you spend the night with us? I promise the whole gang will be delighted."

            She glanced west. Though shadows were getting long and the mountains turning purple, Phoebus had an hour or better before the horizon captured it. "I thank you and I thank your kin," she answered. "But I should be at Trollberg inside three days, and my plan was for keeping on past sunset, since Persephone will be rising full, big and bright as Luna over Earth." Erion, half that apparent size, was already up, its curve ivory upon indigo.

           "I'll  drive you tomorrow, as far as you like," he offered. Her expression betokened reluctance. He grew clever. "Yes, you want to be near the land. Well, here's a family in it you've nay met. Our home, our manners, they should interest you, they're unusual, I swear; we're no Swedes or British or-Please! You'd make us hurrah. We'd never forget."

            "We-eu. . . ." She eased, smiled, moved closer, fluttered her lashes the least bit. "It's too kind you are, Elias Daukantas, and sure I'd be of a good evening, stayed I there. So if you are certain that himself will not object-"

            A whirr loudened. Turning, they saw a small car approach. Its air cushion threw dust right and left like the foam at the bow of a speeding boat. It reached them and braked in a roar. Tripods slammed down. The bubble top dilated. A big man tumbled out. "Caitlin!" he bawled.

            She dropped her sonador. "Dan, oh, Dan!" She sped to him.

            They grabbed each other. After a while his mouth left hers and sought her ear. "Listen, macushla," he whispered. "I'm on the run. Hunted. My name is Dan Smith. Okay?"

            "Okay," she breathed back. He felt the elastic slimness of her, smelled sunlit odors of hair and warmer odors of flesh. "What is your wish, my heart?"

            "Get the devil out of here, to some safe hiding place. Then we'll talk." Brodersen had all he could do to stay wary, rather than cast her down and him above.

            The same effort shuddered in her, stronger than his. She pulled free, wrenched herself around, and said waveringly to the gaping farmer: "Elias, dear, it's a grand surprise I've had. Here is my own fianc‚, Daniel Smith. We'd looked not to meet before the festival; he's been upon the road. But since the gods are so kind- Can you pardon me at all, at all? I'll be back, the Powers willing, and then I'll sing for you."

            He and she shook hands and uttered clumsy politeness. Caitlin snatched up her instrument and tugged on Brodersen's sleeve. He and she scrambled into the car. It leaped onward. Daukantas stood for a long while staring the way it had gone, before he raised his horn and summoned the cattle.

 

            A moon and a half shining, Phoebus not far out of sight, the sky was violet more than black and showed few stars. Of the constellations, only Medea and Ariadne appeared complete. Aphrodite and Zeus, sister planets, stood candle-bright. Three small clouds glowed. Silver washed across treetops and splashed on the ground beneath, which lay in a translucent dusk. Through a break in the forest shimmered Mount Lorn. Torchflies flitted about like tiny lanterns. Choristers trilled in their tens of thousands, calling from among stalks and leaves for their mates; a starlark chanted; near the cave, a spring flowed forth in crystalline clinking.

           Caitlin had guided Brodersen here, down a game trail after he parked the car. He had brought outdoor kit of his own, including a fuel-cell heater which gave the shelter a welcome warmth. Sleeping bags on moffite pads made the floor comfortable. But they two did not sleep. After a while, amidst tender jesting, they cooked and ate dinner. When that was done, they did not sleep either.

            Toward dawn, she raised herself on an elbow, the better to regard him. The cave faced west, and Persephone's beams were now streaming straight in, so eerily bright that against the whiteness of her he thought he could see how rosy were her nipples. He reached up to cup a heavy softness; it pressed itself around his hand as she leaned down to kiss him, a kiss which lingered.

            "My love, my darling, my life," she nearly sang, "had I words to tell the wonder of you, humans would remember me when Sappho and Catullus lie forgotten. But not Bngit herself commands that magic."

            "Oh, Christ, how I love you," he said, hoarse from the power of it. "How long for us? Three years?"

            "A snippet more. I count months as well, from when first I knew what you were doing to my soul, till the chance came for me to be seizing you."

            "And I thought it was only another romp. How fast you proved me wrong! You, not just a delicious body and hell on wheels in bed, but everything that's you."

            "Were it not trouble that brought you on my trail, I would be in isotopically pure bliss, Dan, my Dan. And as is, I praise your enemies for that much while scheming how to cut the guts out of them. I'd had no idea I'd see you before fall."

            "If you stayed in Eopolis-"

            The lustrous locks moved, shadowing her features, as she shook her head. "No." She became altogether serious. "Haven't we worn this question bare yet? It would not be fair to Lis. Or you. You love her too, as well you should. I do myself, and would never cause her more sorrow than I must, and hope the friendship she gives me is not from duty alone-for sure it is she knows what's between us, though she's never spoken aloud of it to me."

            Caitlin sat straight, hugging her knees, looking over him to the argent wilderness. "Also, because I lack her gift for figures and organization, I couldn't share in the adventure of your enterprises," she said. "I'll not be a parasite. And a steady, safe job in a single place would soon have me daft. A bird of passage have I been since the hour I was born."

            Mirth crowed from her: "Och, I'm moonstruck! How would a bird get born?"

            He hoisted himself to sit cross-legged beside her. "The same way an idea gets hatched," he suggested.

            "Aye," she responded quickly, "see, Einstein brooded long over his-they had to bring him his food and tobacco where he sat- until one fine day the egg went crack and a little principle of special relativity peeped forth, all wet and naked, and then the poor man must scurry to and fro fetching long wiggly equations to stuff down its beak, but at last it was grown to be a grand big cock of a general relativity theory and the quantum mechanics came to build a proper perch for it."

            "Ye-es." He laid an arm around her. "As for launching a project, I see it lying on the greased ways, and you come and break a bottle of champagne across the director-he's the figurehead, of course-"

            Their foolishness went on. Her merriment was an indivisible part of what he held dear about her.

            "Hey," he remarked eventually, "you haven't told me how you found this cave. Not that I wasted time asking. But since we're taking a rest, how did you?"  She grinned. "How do you think?"

            "The handsomest hunter last year. . . Do you know, my treasure, I could almost wish -almost- you'd set out a single day later? I was developing designs on that lad when you came by. Ah, well, no doubt he can bide for a bit."

            He tried not to stiffen. She felt it, embraced him, and said, "I'm sorry. Have I hurt you? I mourn."

            "Well, naturally I can't expect you to stay celibate months on end," he made himself reply. "You've got too much life in you."

            "You are him I love, Daniel. True, there've been past loves, and they flamed too, but none like this. Your strength, your knowledge, the skill in your darling hands, och, you are wholly a man, and yet you are kind and generous and caring. You I will love till they close my eyes. The rest. . . some few turn out bad, most are good, none have been dull, but frolic is all they really ever are. Or, at most, a making of closer comradeship."

            "Yeah, sure," he said. "I'm not exactly a monogamist either."

            She tried to get past the barrier in him: "I've told you, my heart, Fm no she-cat. An impulse now and again, aye, but mainly I must think well of him first, and after that reckon I would not be the harm of anybody else, before I will give more than a kiss. It's no vast number of lovers I've had. A score, maybe, since I turned sixteen on Earth?"

            "And me, I've not always been choosy," Brodersen admitted.

            He caught her to him and held her there a minute. "Forgive me," he said thereafter, shakenly. "I didn't mean to react like that to a little teasing. But-"

            "But?" she urged, seconds later.

            "I think what did it was your kidding me that I might've left home today instead of yesterday. Suddenly I remembered that I did leave home, and why."

            "And you stepped back into jealousy because the real thought pained you too much. my beloved." She knelt before him, stroked his face, regarded him through tears.

            "Could be," he said. "I'm not in any habit of probing my psyche." He pulled his lips upward. "As long as the damn thing runs, not rattling a lot, I'll simply give it an occasional change of oil. Okay, let's drop this subject with a dull, sickening thud."

            She remained grave. "No, Dan. You are in danger, and everything you care about is, Lis and the children foremost. How could I deserve being your mistress if you must shelter me from your griefs? Tell me."

            "I did while we drove here."

            "You laid out a skeleton for me. Breathe on it now, that it may rise alive."

            "I, uh, I don't know what to say Pegeen." That was a name for her which they had private between them.

            "Let me lead you, then." She settled beside him afresh; they touched, arm to arm and flank to flank, while they gazed outward at torchflies, trees, and fugitive stars. Save for the springwater, the night was growing still as it grew old. "Why are you in rebellion?" she asked. "Sure, and I hunger to explore yonder suns myself. But you have Chinook, that you got remodeled and crewed for the same purpose."

            "Yeah, after the alien ship passed through the Phoebean gate. Have you forgotten, though? Only a watchship was around, to see what precise guidepath she followed-which, actually, only a couple of specialist officers did. Damn them, they didn't release the information except to their high command, and the Union government promptly declared it super top secret. Don Pedro himself- the Señor, the head of the Rueda clan and combine-he's never managed to pry the data loose. If the rest of the crew hadn't babbled, maybe you and I would still not know that an outworld vessel ever did come by.

            "Oh, yes," Brodersen went on, out of the acridness in his gullet, "I could see the reasoning. Why, I could agree, sort of, would you believe? We'd no idea what kind of beings were at the far end of that gate. We couldn't let any random team charge through, to raise any possible kind of havoc. That had to include me and my company. When I commissioned Chinook, I did it on sheer hope, that the official expedition would come back bearing good news, so the government could freely let responsible private parties go. Or else, if the expedition did not come back, the Union Council would some year let me make a second attempt. At that, I kept her fully stocked, so I could take off too fast for a politician or bureaucrat to get my clearance cancelled.

            "And God damn it, Emissary did return! And they're suppressing the fact! They want to kill our chance for going, ever-"

            He slumped. "Hell and damnation," he said, "you've heard me drone on, over and over, about what's common knowledge. Last time we met, you heard me talk about my earliest suspicions. Today you heard me rant about what's happened since. Why do you put up with my repeating like this?"

            She laid her head against his shoulder. "Because you have the need, my dear, my dear," she answered. After a moment: "But tell me next, what was the need in you to charge forward like O'Shaughnessy's bull? You steer yourself well. Why could you not be patient and cunning, till at last you held the truth gathered between your fingers for a noose to do hangman's justice?"

            More than the words, her tone calmed him. "Well," he said, "I'd already compromised myself to a degree. Then I trusted Amelia Hancock too much, and look what happened."

            "You could have out waited that. How many years, or millions of years, blew by while the Others were growing into the galaxy and we abiding blind on our single globe? Would a few more matter?"

            "They will to the Emissary crew," he grated. "You know that the mate, if he's alive, is family to me. And another is a, a good friend of mine. Not to mention the rest. They have their rights too."

            "Aye. Yet against this you surely set the welfare of Lis and Barbara and Mike, to say naught of hundreds who get their livelihood from Chehalis." Caitlin gripped his nearest hand. "Dan, dearest, something beyond is driving you. What might that be? Yes, many a time you've told me how marvelous it would be for humans to have the freedom of the stars, more than fire or writing or the end of disease. And have I differed with you? But why this terrible haste, at whatever cost? We'll die, darling, old and wicked if I have my desire, before we've known all there is to know here on Demeter by herself."

            He knotted his fists while his mind groped for clarity. "Pegeen, on Earth I saw too much of what big, passionate convictions do to people, especially when governments have them. Then I started reading history, and found what horrors they've brought in the past. That made me swear I'd stay objective. If nothing else, I figured I could keep from orating at everybody in sight.

            "Except. . . I guess when we get right down to bedrock, I can no more set my strongest beliefs on a shelf to wait for a convenient moment than anyone else can."

            Briefly, a part of him wondered if she noticed the mixed metaphor. Probably. But she kissed him and requested, "Tell me them. How I wish you had earlier."

            He heard how strained his voice was but couldn't amend that:

            "This is what I'm afraid of. If the human race doesn't take off soon for the stars, it dies.

            "The Union is in bad trouble. I thought, when I quit the Peace Command as a young fellow, that we'd pretty well worked ourselves out of a job. Earth looked orderly and sane. Well, I was wrong. Too many two-legged animals are jammed onto the planet. More and more lunacies keep boiling up. Religions like Transdeism. Heresies like New Islam. Political faiths like Asianism. Nations where mobs, or cabinet ministers, scream for secession if they can't get what they want when they want, no matter if it's feasible. And the worst is, a lot of those grudges against the Union are legitimate. More and more, the world government is trying to run everything-everything-from the center. As if an Oceanian mariculturist, a Himalayan knight, a businessman in Nairobi, and a spaceman working out of an Iliadic base didn't know best what their special problems are and what to do about them. Judas priest, are you aware that dead-serious talk is going on in the Council about resurrecting Keynesian fiscal policies?

            "I suppose you've been spared the knowledge of what those were.

            "The point is, whenever I visit Earth, I see it more sick. A lot of sociologists claim that the revelation about the Others, a completely superior race of beings, had considerable to do with bringing on the nuttiness that led to the Troubles. I dunno. Maybe. But if that's correct, then the Covenant didn't buy us anything except a breathing spell. We haven't yet come to terms with the fact of the Others. We never will, either, unless we can get out there. No, I'm sure that the way things are going, Earth will explode pretty soon. The best result of that would be a kind of Caesar; and the Caesars weren't really very durable. The worst that can happen- the worst doesn't bear thinking about, Caitlin.

            "And don't suppose we can safely sit out the disaster here. My  personal experience, these past several weeks, says different. Demeter may be two hundred and twenty light-years from Earth-the latest estimate I've seen from the astronomers-but that's just a skip through the gate for a ship armed with fusion missiles.

            "Oh, yes," he ended, "maybe I am being too apocalyptic. I said I try to steer clear of fanaticism. Maybe they'll muddle through somehow. But I know for certain, if I know nothing else, that Earth won't get any new ideas except from the stars, and meanwhile the old ideas are killing people. Same as they killed my first wife."

            He stopped, exhausted.

            "Dan, you bleed," she half wept, and cradled him as best she was able.

            At last: "You've never really told me what happened with Antonia. You loved her, and married her, and she died a bad death. Would you tell me the whole story this night?"

            He stared before him. "Why saddle you with it?"

            "So I can understand, my most dear. Understand you and what is in you; for sure it has become to me that this is your great wound and the reason why you could not stay quiet about Emissary."

            "Perhaps," he mumbled. "You see, it was a political assassination, and the politics wouldn't have existed if we weren't stuck in these two miserable planetary systems."

            "Speak, Dan. About your Antonia, I'd make a song in honor of her memory, if you would like that."

            "I would. I would."

            "Then first I must know."

            He was merely average articulate, and full of grief; he groped and croaked:

            "Okay, to start, how we met. After my discharge from the Peace Command, I wanted to go into spatial engineering, and had the luck to be accepted for the academy that the Andean Confederacy runs. When I'd graduated, I went to work for Aventureros Planetarios -the big corporation, you know, that the Rueda clan dominates. I did pretty well, got invited to some parties they threw, and there was Toni.

            "She herself said she'd be damned if we sucked the timocracy's Ut. She was into astrography, and good at it, too. We wangled locations for us both at Nueva Cribola. That's an Iliadic satellite, you may recall, but an office of Aventureros is there, and so is Arp Observatory.

            "Six Earth years. . . I traveled a lot, necessarily, as far afield as Jupiter; but you know, Pegeen, though women were usually along on our jobs, through that whole time I really was a monogamist. Not that Toni'd have disowned me; but she was, and that settled the matter."

            He fell mute, while Caitlin held him.

            "At last we decided to start a family," he resumed. "She loved children. And animals and. . . everything alive. She wanted to have the baby at home, in the Rueda mansion, for the sake of her grandparents. They were too frail to leave Earth, but it'd mean a cosmos to them to see the next generation arrive.

            "Why not? I had an assignment ahead of me on Luna, wbich'd keep me away for several weeks. She might as well return to the clan at once and enjoy them. They're grand folk. I expected I'd finish before birthtime, take leave of absence, and join her.

            "Well- Quite soon after she landed, the residencia got bombed, by terrorists. They issued an anonymous announcement that they were protesting the Ruedas' hogging the benefits of space development from the masses. It was an incident in a wave of revolutionary violence going through South America.

            "That's faded out. Temporarily. It's rising again. The Ruedas are still targets. Yes, of course they're rich, because their ancestors had the wit to invite private space enterprise to Peth. But hogging the wealth? Why, suppose that money was divided equally among the oprimidos. What sum would each person get? And where'd the capital come from for the next investment? Pegeen, Pegeen, when will these world savior types learn some elementary economics?

            "Anyway. . . this bomb didn't do much. Destroyed a wing of the house, and three servants who'd been around for most of their lives-and, aye, aye, Toni and her baby.

            "She didn't die immediately. They rushed her to a hospital. She asked if she could see the Moon in the sky-the last thing she asked-but the phase wasn't right. And I was off on Farside in a lunatrac, and a solar flare lousing up communications- "Well. That's the story. I went on the bum for a year, but the Ruedas bore with me, and helped me straighten out, and staked me when I decided to go to Demeter and start a business like theirs. You see why I worry about Carlos aboard Emissary?"

            Brodersen and Caitlin sat silent together. The night waned.

            Finally he said, "Toni was a lot like you."

            Being a bard, she knew when not to speak. She only gave him whatever was hers to give. At first he was passive, then he tried to respond and she let him understand that that was not needful, then slowly he realized with his whole being that the past was gone but she was here.