"There are no people more experienced with Bilbeis IV than the two of us," Magda said. "Me directly?hell, now I'm the only person in the Federacy who's ever been there?and you because you've been through our report until you probably know it better than I do. And so?" She took her anger out on the phone buttons.
A well-scrubbed young man's face appeared on the screen. "Noninterference Foundation."
"We're Kodaly and Monemvasios. Put us through to Dr. O'Brien right now. If he doesn't feel like talking to us?and he probably won't?tell him his other choice is listening to us on the newsnets later, and that he'll like that even less."
"Remind me not to let you get angry at me," Stavros whispered when the screen went momentarily black. "I think I'd sooner just stand in front of a shuttle and get everything over with at once."
Magda managed a grim chuckle. "I'll take that for a compliment. You know what we're going to hit him with?"
"A hammer, by choice," Stavros growled. His temper was not as quick as Magda's, but she had already found he was impossible to move from a position once he dug in his heels. He squeezed her hand, saying, "I think so. I'm with you all the way. I?"
He broke off abruptly, because Peter O'Brien's image replaced that of the Foundation underling. O'Brien eyed Magda with a singular lack of warmth. "What's this all about?" he demanded.
"I think you know," Magda said. She smiled a little when Stavros wordlessly held up the form letter; sure enough, he knew what she was up to.
"I am sorry." O'Brien did not sound sorry. "You must understand that we have to involve only the most qualified people on a project of the importance of this one. There is nothing personal involved."
"For one thing, I don't believe you. For another, where will you find anybody else who's met Queen Sabium, the undying goddess a whole planet worships? For a third, where would you be without Stavros and me? You owe us slots, and you will pay off, or I'm sure the newsnet people?and the whole Federacy?will be fascinated to hear how the high and mighty Noninterference Foundation shoved us to one side the minute we weren't useful to you anymore."
"Do you think you can blackmail me?" O'Brien snapped.
"Damn right I do," Magda said gleefully. "Fix it and fix it now, or we'll have other calls to make. Remember, the more you look like Purists, the less reason people will have to believe your side of the story. And kicking us off your crew will make you look an awful lot like a Purist to an awful lot of people. Me, I'm one of 'em."
"I'm another," Stavros added.
"Now," Magda said with a sweet smile, "shall we ring off and start getting hold of the newsnets?"
"I can't permit that," O'Brien said. "It would be?"
"Can't?" Stavros broke in. "Can't? How do you propose stopping us? The same way the Survey Service stopped Professor Fogelman and Andrea and the J?ng Ho's crew? Do we ask for protection from you next?"
"No, of course not." O'Brien made a pushing-away gesture, as if to put distance between himself and Stavros's suggestion. For the first time, he seemed flustered. "We would never do, never think of such a thing. Of course you are free to do as you wish. It would hurt your cause as well as ours, though. Please think of that, please don't do anything you might come to regret?"
"You know what we want," Magda said implacably.
"Let me get back to you," O'Brien pleaded. "This is too big a decision for me to make on my own."
"We'll wait until tonight, no longer," Stavros told him.
"Tonight?" Now O'Brien looked horrified. "That's much too soon. Some of the people with whom I have to consult are offplanet, and?"
"Tonight." Stavros switched off the phone in the middle of O'Brien's protest. When it chimed again a moment later, he hit the refuse button. The noise cut off. He grinned a small-boy grin at Magda.
She hugged him. "You couldn't have backed me better! Nothing makes the Foundation angrier than being compared to the Service."
"I meant it." Stavros was still serious. "The minute any power group sees an edge, it grabs, and anybody in the way had better look out. And we aren't the kind of friends Purists feel comfortable with. That show you did with O'Brien must have made him sure of that."
"I don't want any Purists feeling comfortable with me," Magda snorted. "All they want to do is set every social science there is back a couple of thousand years. And speaking of setting back, you just cost the Foundation a nice tidy sum there."
"Yes, I know. If O'Brien does have to confer offworld?and he probably does?he'll need to use the FTL links, and those aren't cheap. But I figured that setting a deadline he'll have to scramble to meet would show him we weren't fooling."
"Smart." Magda was still discovering just how good an ally Stavros made. He was unprepossessing, especially at the moment?he was regrowing the beard he'd shaved off when he escaped from Hyperion. Unlike her, he was given to hesitating before taking something on. But once he committed, himself, he did not back away, and the rein he held on his temper let him keep getting in telling shots after she was reduced to outraged incoherence.
His single-mindedness could also be irritating. Once O'Brien was no longer an immediate concern, he went back to what he had been doing when the Foundation's letter arrived: poring over the report on Bilbeis IV. Magda draped herself against his back. "Shall we kill some time until they call us again?"
Without looking away from the screen, Stavros said, "Let's wait until we know whether we have anything to celebrate." She angrily strode away and had very little to say to him the rest of the afternoon. She would have got more satisfaction from her silence had he noticed it.
But they both dashed for the phone when O'Brien called back not long before sunset. "You win," he growled, and switched off himself.
"Probably making sure you didn't beat him to the?" Magda began.
Stavros found a very effective way to interrupt her. She never did finish the sentence. Sometimes, she thought a good deal later, single-mindedness was an advantage.
Survey Service crews normally departed with no more fanfare than anyone else going off to do a job. The takeoff of the Hanno was different. It drew Assemblymen, Noninterference Foundation bigwigs, the Chairman of the Survey Service, and enough newsnet people to fill a luxury liner past takeoff weight.
Magda preferred the usual way. Everybody wanted to make a speech, and everybody's speech was running long. The only thing she was grateful for was that the crew got to sit down. A camera woman, on her feet for hours, had already passed out.
A black Assemblyman named Valleix was just finishing putting five minutes' worth of idea into a twenty-minute speech. Listening with one ear, Magda gathered that he was against the Survey Service and everything it stood for; he did not seem clear on what that was. The Foundation honchos up on the platform with him applauded lustily. Gritting her teeth at having to work with such people, Magda only wished he would shut up and go away.
Stavros might have been reading her mind. He leaned over and whispered, "I'd sooner be meeting interesting people instead of going through all this nonsense."
"Me, too." The crew of the Hanno, at least the half of the contingent that the Noninterference Foundation had chosen, was a high-powered group. Magda knew several members' work.
Paulina Koch was coming to the podium. Magda's feelings about the Chairman were still mixed; it was hard to think of her longtime boss, the head of the organization in which she had wanted to spend her whole career, as the enemy. At least Paulina Koch was not long-winded. She would say what she had to say and then quit. Magda turned and said as much to Stavros.