Danchekker still wasn't sure if a senior directorship in the UNSA hierarchy, with all the attendant bureaucratic chores and deference to academic convention, really suited him. In his quieter moments, when he relaxed in his apartment to the music of Mahler or Berlioz, or sat contemplating the trees by some secluded tributary of the Potomac, his mind still soared with the Jupiter mission ships to the icy wastes of Ganymede and saw again the pale green, orange-streaked skies of Jevlen above the towering alien cityscapes. Across the vast tract of worlds that the Thuriens had spread to, there dwelt more strange and wondrous forms of life than could be so much as glimpsed in the remainder of a lifetime. On Crayses there was a creature that was both animal and plant, rooting itself in the ground when conditions were agreeable, moving on when they changed. Yaborian Two had somehow produced a reversed planetwide chemistry in which oxy-carbon based life flourished in a reducing atmosphere of methane.
He realized that he had drifted away into musings again when Sandy Holmes, his technical assistant, stuck her head in from the lab area outside the office. Divisional director or not, Danchekker wouldn't let administrative matters prevent him from keeping his practical hand in. Taking care of them was what staff were for. He refused to accept calls while he was working.
"Excuse me, Professor?"
"Hm? What?… Oh." Danchekker returned reluctantly to planet Earth. He sighed and gestured at the papers lying in front of him. "It appears that much of what we considered to be unquestionable may have to be rethought from basics, Sandy. The development of organisms is much more closely coupled with the environment than existing theory can account for. You need to read this… Anyway, what is it?"
"Mildred is downstairs in reception. You're due to have lunch with her, remember?"
"Ah, yes." Normally, Danchekker blanched at the mention of the name. His cousin from Austria had been camped in the Washington, DC, area for a couple of months while researching her latest book, which was on Thurien culture and sociology. She had latched onto Danchekker as her prime reference and research source. But today he was actually looking forward to seeing her. "Can you organize an aircab to the front door for us, Sandy?"
"It's on its way. I told them, the Olive Tree. Is that okay?"
"That will do splendidly."
"And Ms. Mulling asked me to remind you that you're meeting Vic Hunt and Gregg Caldwell at the Carnarvon at six-thirty tonight." Ms. Mulling was Danchekker's personal secretary, whom he thankfully left to take command of administrative and fiscal matters from her domain on the far side of the top floor, from whence she ruled the building. She had come with his appointment as director in the UNSA reorganizational shuffle and was the main reason for his refusing to take calls when immersed in the things that interested him. Her name was usually sufficient to evoke a reflex grimace too, but on this occasion Danchekker merely nodded matter-of-factly as he slipped off his lab coat and draped it on the stand inside the door. "You seem in great spirits today, Professor," Sandy remarked as she walked with him back across the lab area to where she had been working with a technician preparing microscope slides.
"It looks as if our devious scheme is about to pay off," Danchekker replied breezily. "A week from now, our persistent and pestering authoress will be on her way to distant reaches of the Galaxy, and peace will return to the realm."
"You've heard back from Frenua?"
"Earlier this morning. It's as good as arranged. You know how informal the Thuriens are. I shall convey the joyous tidings forthwith, over lunch, and I have no doubt that cousin Mildred will be suitably thrilled."
"I'm glad it worked out. Enjoy your lunch."
"Oh, indubitably."
Danchekker hummed to himself in the elevator all the way down, oblivious of the clerk carrying a sheaf of papers who got in at the eighth floor and left at the fifth. When the doors opened on the ground level, he sailed out with a broad, toothy smile to greet his cousin, waiting in the lobby area beyond. Mildred was momentarily taken aback but recovered quickly.
"Christian, you're exactly on time! You look quite on top of the world today."
"And why not? I might ask. We should not let the chores of our humdrum lives mar the splendor of such a heaven-sent day. I can see more shades of green from my window on the top floor than would grace a legion of leprechauns." Danchekker held the main door aside graciously to usher Mildred through. She looked at him uncertainly.
"Are you all right?"
"Never better. And you look radiant too-a fitting tribute to spring."
In fact, Danchekker thought she looked mildly ridiculous in one of those floppy, wide-brimmed hats with flowers that even he knew had been out of style for years, a floral dress that was doubtless practical but seemed grannyish, and a pair of equally practical lightweight boots that might have done service on the Appalachian Trail. But beyond that, she talked.
The cab was waiting in the forecourt of the building when they emerged. As soon as it lifted off, Mildred was back to the subject of Thurien political society. "I know they don't bother very much about labels and formal organizations and that kind of thing, but when you get down to analyzing the way their system works, it really is a model of the socialist ideal, Christian. And you could hardly ask for better vindication than a culture that travels between stars as a matter of routine and didn't have a word for 'war' until they met us, could you? I know we've made a lot of progress since all the mess at the end of the last century, but you have to agree that too much of the world's thinking is still shaped by insecurity and the compulsion to pointless antagonism. I mean, it's all such an adolescently arrested mind-set: the striving for wealth and power-which is just another way of saying fixation on possessions and getting one's own way regardless of the consequences to others. That's hardly what we'd normally perceive as the sign of individual maturity, is it? All this emphasis on competition. We're far more cooperative by nature as a species. It makes the Thuriens seems so adult by contrast; more… more spiritual. You know what I mean? They're so far past the stage where material gratification means anything. They can think of the longer term. What collapsed in Russia back at the end of the eighties wasn't socialism. What Lenin and Stalin created had about as much to do with socialism as the Inquisition and the witch burnings had to do with Christianity. What collapsed was coercion and the attempt to impose a system by force. But then it always will in the end. People don't like seeing being afraid to express an opinion and seeing their neighbors dragged away to prison camps. You'd think that would be obvious enough, wouldn't you? But governments-here, anyway-have always seemed unable grasp it. That's what happens when you can't see further than short-term expediency. Don't you think so?"
"You could be right," Danchekker agreed.
By the time she was squinting at the menu, after rummaging in her purse for a pair of oval spectacles with purple butterfly frames, she had switched to news of the European branch of the family. "Emma-you remember her? You wouldn't recognize her if you saw her today-tall and raven haired like her grandmother was. She took up with a Ukrainian artist of some kind, and they're living like Bohemians in a converted barn in Croatia. Martha-that's her mother-is so put out about it. Stefan says he's going to disinherit her if she doesn't come to her senses. He's doing well, by the way. You really could try and stay in touch a bit more, you know, Christian. His firm has just opened a new office in Vienna. They've got a new line on some kind of self-repairing material for spacecraft and things that there was a lot of interest in. But he's worried now that the Thuriens might start importing something superior that would upset everything. I don't think they would, though, do you? I know they don't have an economic system as we know it, or very much in the way of restrictions. But they're just not the kind who would go barging in thoughtlessly and destabilize another culture like that… Seafood Alfredo sounds good. What are you having?"