“Coasting on ninety-five,” Groton remarked. Ivo realized that the man had never had occasion to watch this particular maneuver before.
“We’re not exactly coasting. Faster this way than computing the exact coordinates of the camp. I wouldn’t try it on a distant target, though.” Something nagged him about Groton’s remark, but he was too preoccupied to place it.
Then they were in the dome. He slowed, feeling his way into the pyramid, and on toward the laboratory. There was a flash of Beatryx sitting nervously in the kitchen, and Groton grunted. He does love her, Ivo thought, finding that a revelation though he knew it had always been obvious.
At last he closed on Afra’s laboratory and brought the entire room into reasonably clear perspective. She was there, lying on a bunk; she had not yet started her… project. “We’re in time,” he said. “I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”
“Good I can appreciate. Why bad?”
“Because we’re too far away to do anything if there’s trouble — and I guess there will be. All we can do from here is watch.”
Groton nodded thoughtfully. “You’re in love with her.”
The observation did not seem impertinent or out of place, now. “Since I saw her first. Brad introduced her — ‘Afra Glynn Summerfield’ — and I was — well, that was it.”
“Why would Brad do that?”
“Do what? It was our first meeting.”
“Make up a name. Didn’t you know?”
“You mean her name isn’t Afra? Or Summerfield? I don’t understand.”
“Isn’t Glynn. I don’t know what her middle name is, but it isn’t that. I believe it is a family designation, Jones or Smith or something.”
Ivo sat stricken. “Brad! He did it on purpose!”
“Did what?”
“The name, don’t you see? He set it up for me.”
“You’ve lost me, Ivo. You didn’t fall in love with a name, did you?”
Ivo’s gaze was anchored to Afra where she lay. He remembered the time she had lain in his hammock, tormented and lovely, so soon after the destroyer disaster. “You didn’t hear about me and Sidney Lanier? I told Beatryx, and you made that horoscope—”
“My wife is circumspect about personal information. She must have felt that the details were confidential. All she mentioned was that you admired Lanier’s poetry. Unfortunately I’m not familiar with his actual writings.”
“Oh. Well, I have this thing about the poet. I’ve studied his life and works, and anything that relates to him, and I react automatically to any reference—”
“Oh-oh. That key sentence I fed you, back at the dawn of time. That was—”
“A quotation from Lanier’s The Symphony — perhaps his greatest piece. The moment I heard that, I knew Brad wanted me, and that he was serious. There’s a special kind of — uh, brotherhood, between members of the project — peer-group compulsion, it’s called. It’s extremely strong, irresistible, maybe. I couldn’t question such a call.”
“Oh, yes — the children of the kibbutzim have that, too. And that name, what was it — ?”
“Glynn. From another major poem, The Marshes of Glynn.”
Groton strained to remember. “Didn’t we drive by — ?”
“The marshes of Glynn. In Georgia. Yes. The same ones Lanier drew his inspiration from. His poem was published anonymously at first, but it received such acclaim — anyway, that’s why I was in the area, instead of looking for some high-paying Northern position, the way many of the others did. I spent years running down his historic travels.”
“Like that, eh?”
“Like that, yes. And Brad understood that perfectly.”
“So he wasn’t just playing a game with names. He wanted you to fix on Afra. She’s even Georgian, like your marshes.”
“Lanier was Georgian. He fought in the War of the Rebellion — civil war, to you — Confederate.”
“I don’t understand Brad’s motivation. Afra says she and Brad were engaged to be married. Why would he want to stir up trouble like that?”
“Maybe because he wanted Schön that bad. He knew I wouldn’t walk out while Afra was around, and she wouldn’t walk out while he was around. He even — he even threw us together, just to make sure the virus took hold. Having her show me around the station… It doesn’t take much, with a girl like her. And I never caught on!”
“Love is blind.”
“Good and blind. It was all so obvious! Insurance, in case he lost out to the destroyer. Ivo pinned to Afra’s sleeve — and the only way I could get off it was to turn Schön loose.”
“You can call up Schön? When you decide?”
“I can. But I can’t put him down again, once I do.”
“And Schön wouldn’t give a damn about Afra?”
“Not a damn. Schön might be intrigued by someone on his own level, but Afra—”
“A moron. I can see why he got bored at the age of five. No one in the world he could — say! ‘My pawn is pinned!’ — could that have meant you and Afra? You can’t let go because then you’d lose her?”
Ivo thought about it. “It could. But I think that’s incidental. Love is nothing to Schön.”
“And not much to Brad, methinks. That’s as sinister a piece of handiwork as I’ve come across. Using his own fiancé—”
“That wasn’t the way he described their relation,” Ivo said dryly. “Still, that’s another reason I hesitate to uncork Schön. He’s totally unscrupulous. He could probably solve our problem with the alien signal, but—”
“But you can’t be sure which color the queen might see herself? I appreciate your caution more and more.”
Ivo appreciated the appreciation, after having kept his secret so long. His initial impression of Groton had been so negative — and so wrong. He had seen a fat white slob, when he should have seen his own prejudice. Now the man — not fat at all! — was his closest ally. In similar fashion he had come to appreciate the individual qualities of Beatryx, who demonstrated so plainly and in such contrast to Afra that there were other things besides intelligence and beauty. Afra—
Afra still slept or rested, her breathing even. “I guess it wasn’t as late as we thought. Maybe we should take turns watching, until something happens.”
“Good idea. I’ll snooze for a couple hours, then you can.” And Groton pushed off and floated in the air as though it were a mattress, utterly relaxed.
Ivo watched the laboratory. He felt a twinge of guilt for his snooping, but he was afraid to do otherwise. He did not want anything to happen to her. Brad’s trick had been obvious — in retrospect — but devastatingly effective. Afra had indeed captured Ivo’s imagination, and he felt a thrill every time he looked at her or thought about her. She was an impressive woman and she was from Georgia, whatever her faults might be. Call it foolishness, call it prejudice: he was committed for the duration.
Had Brad really been in love with her, or even, as he had put it, infatuated? Ivo doubted it now. He had allowed himself to forget how cynical Brad could be about human relations. Many of those raised in the project were like that. They tended to be strong on capability and weak on conscience, especially when dealing with the outside world, with Schön the logical extreme. They were independent, morally as well as intellectually and financially. To Brad the challenge had always been more important than the individual. Afra might simply have been the handiest entertainment available for off-hours at the station, intriguing as a classic WASP — and useful for special purposes, such as the tethering of Schön’s pawn. A Georgia girl for the Georgia historian.