“Has he no hyper-phone?”
“Of course—but do you really think it will do any good?”
“There is a possibility,” Magnus said.
Magnus adjourned with Matilda to the communications center of the household. Magnus, Fess’s voice said in his mind, I hope you are not planning anything unethical.
Is persuasion unethical? Magnus returned.
It can be ethical or unethical, depending on your methods.
Then observe my methods, and judge them when I am done, Magnus thought curtly. He didn’t need his resident daemon to tell him that what he was contemplating was not completely proper. He sat with the Countess in the household’s communication center. He glanced at the range of clocks above the communicator screen and noted the time in Boston, on the continent of North America. Eight o’clock in the evening—an excellent time for a family call. He glanced up at the Countess. “Will the connection be long in coming?”
“Not terribly,” Matilda answered, just as the glow of the screen broke into snow, then cleared as a pastel flower blossomed from the center outwards. Words came from the flower’s center, swelling to fill the screen. You have connected with 27-14-30-260-339977AZ.
Aunt Matilda nodded. “It is Roger’s address.” Magnus frowned. “Why does he not identify himself by name?”
Matilda glanced at him with amusement and, yes, condescension, no matter how slight. “To guard against theft.” She turned back to the screen, unaware that she had left Magnus wondering how a mere display of digits could be a charm against burglary. “Please inform Professor d’Armand that his stepmother is calling.”
Stepmother? Magnus concealed his surprise. Matilda was the Count’s second wife, then. He wondered how that affected the succession.
The display remained constant, but the music modulated into the word, “Affirmative.”
“Showy,” Matilda muttered, “but cheap.” Magnus didn’t understand a bit of it, so he kept his face impassive.
Then the flower faded from the screen, revealing the face of a middle-aged man, which hit Magnus with a shock. The second wife must have been a good twenty years younger than the first. He had thought it was illness that had made the Count look twenty years older than his wife, but now he realized it was simply time.
The professor had a long, pallid face, and a guarded manner. The resemblance to the Count was unmistakable. “Matilda! What a pleasant surprise!”
“And a pleasure to see you, Roger.” There was real warmth under the Countess’s reserve. “And let me relieve your mind before we go any further-your father is no worse, if no better.”
“Glad to hear the former, and sorry to hear the latter.” Roger glanced toward Magnus. “Would I be right to infer that this young man is therefore the reason for your expending so much money for this call?”
“He is my excuse,” Matilda admitted. “Roger, meet your Cousin Magnus—Rodney’s son.”
“Rodney! Then he still lives?” The professor turned to Magnus with a quickening of interest. “We had feared that he must have fallen prey to the hazards of his profession—a secret agent’s life, and all that. Is your father well, young man?”
“Yes, quite well.” Magnus hid the shock of hearing his father described as a secret agent—but of course, that was what he was, though it was no longer his primary occupation. “I bring his greetings to all the family—but I must convey them to you in this fashion, since I do not expect to visit Terra.” That wasn’t quite true, but he was resolved to come nowhere near anyone else bearing the name “d’Armand.”
“I regret to hear it.” The professor frowned. “You would enjoy Cambridge-it’s something of an oasis amidst the desert of the modern world.”
“Is it really? I’m afraid I know so little of Terra.” Even as he spoke, Magnus’s mind was reaching out, following the tachyon beam inward past Mars’ orbit, past Luna, seeking the mind so distant in the connection. He needed a bit more talk to have the feel of that mind, the signature, the insubstantial air that would make it distinct from all the other minds on Earth. “I gather that Cambridge is a city restricted to the pursuit of knowledge?”
“You might say that.” The professor smiled. “Though so many of our research institutions are allied with commerce now, that we might more accurately say that Cambridge is devoted to the business of knowledge.”
“What is the appearance of the town?”
“A strange wording; I gather that your native idiom differs from my own.” The professor gave him a keen look. “Well, young man, we specialize in old buildings and new postures, if that means anything to you.”
It meant more than he knew; Magnus had singled his mind out of the throng, and was letting his own consciousness filter through that of his cousin, feather-light, insubstantial, but gradually perceiving the world as the professor perceived it, soaking up his thoughts and memories. “My own world reveres the antique, Professor.” That was putting it mildly—the whole culture had been modeled on an idealized view of the European Middle Ages. “It is an attitude with which I can sympathize.”
“Then you must come to Cambridge and discover it for yourself.” The professor smiled again, still very much on his guard. “But surely you have not taken the time to contact me simply for a description of my city, young man.”
“No, but I have wished to meet you, and a discussion of the town in which you live gives me an additional sense of your personality,” Magnus answered. “I am embarked on a voyage of self-discovery, you see, and I have begun it by seeking out my roots, attempting to learn something of my father’s people.”
“It is a process with which every professor is familiar—he is exposed to it so constantly.” Roger’s features softened, his guard lowering as he gained confidence and a sense of superiority over his young caller. “What have you learned thus far?”
“That family is extremely important to all my relatives,” Magnus returned, “frequently more important than their own welfare.”
The professor frowned, not liking this view of the topic. “And do you find this attitude healthy?”
“It is certainly to the benefit of the family,” Magnus returned, “and each individual’s welfare seems to depend on that of the family. All in all, I find it conducive to the welfare of the individuals involved, yes.”
“But don’t you also find it somewhat restrictive?” There was an undertone of the defensive there—Magnus pursued, and found the guilt from which it stemmed. As he talked, his mind softened the edge of that emotion, mellowing it into a feeling of obligation. “Quite restrictive, since I was born and raised on a planet not much smaller than Terra. When you have had a whole world to wander, or at least a very large island, you come to miss the outdoors.”
Matilda looked up indignantly.
“I came to miss it before I had experienced it,” Roger said, with a smile.
“Young men are always restless,” the Countess said crisply, “and long to explore new environments. Isn’t that so, Magnus?”
“I live in witness to it.” Magnus allowed himself a slight smile, but his mind was sifting through the memories that the conversation brought up in Roger’s mind. “I cannot help but wonder what attractions there must be on your overcrowded Terra, to make you wish to stay there.”
The question brought a flood of emotions and memories, though the professor maintained a bland smile. Magnus probed delicately, following linkages of associations down to underlying attitudes. He worked very carefully; this wasn’t really his gift, but he had witnessed his mother and sister doing it, and had even been on the receiving end once or twice, when he was sunk in apathy. Yes, the professor’s dislike of Maxima was superficially due to a natural youthful wanderlust, but it endured for a deeper reason—what Magnus could only think of as an emotional claustrophobia, a feeling of suffocation under the presence and chatter of too many people in too small a space. Magnus examined more closely, and found memories of never-ending demands from the Countess, the Count, and a score of other relatives. Roger had been the one on whom everyone else had loaded the responsibility of recommending what to do with Uncle Richard; he had been the one who had had to support his father through the decline and death of his first wife. As one of the few really stable people in the family, he had always been the object of the others’ emotional demands, had been the one who kept the rest of them functioning—and this before he was out of his teens! Magnus sympathized; in two short weeks, he had already begun to feel the attachment of those emotional tendrils, the conflicting pulls of several people at once. Nonetheless, family came first—and if Cousin Roger wanted the financial benefits of d’Armand Automatons, he would have to shoulder some of the responsibility.