‘Nonsense! They're going to let me go and I'm over fifty right now.’
‘You're a special case. It's your ship.’
‘You're a special case, too, since I will insist on you. Besides, they won't find it so easy to get qualified people to go on the Superluminal. It will be all we can do to persuade anyone to volunteer. And they'll have to volunteer; we can't risk placing the trip into the hands of unwilling and frightened draftees.’
‘Why wouldn't they volunteer?’
‘Because they're Earthmen, my good Crile, and to almost all Earthmen, space is a horror. Hyperspace is a greater horror still and they're going to hang back. There is going to be you and me, and we're going to need three more volunteers and I tell you we'll have trouble getting them. I've sounded out many, and I have two good people with a halfway promise: Chao-Li Wu and Henry Jarlow. I haven't got my third yet. And even if, against all likelihood, there are as many as a dozen volunteers, they're not going to cut you out in favor of anyone else, for I will insist on your going with me as my ambassador to the Rotorians - if that becomes necessary. And if even that is not enough, I promise you that the ship will take off before you're fifty.’
And now Fisher smiled with honest relief and said, ‘Tessa, I love you. You know, I really do.’
‘No,’ said Wendel, ‘I don't know that you really do, especially when you say it in that tone of voice, as though the admission has caught you by surprise. It's very odd, Crile, but in the almost eight years we've known each other, and lived together, and made love to each other, you've never once said that.’
‘Haven't I?’
‘Believe me, I've listened. Do you know what else is odd? I've never said that I loved you, and yet, I love you. It didn't start that way. What do you suppose happened?’
Fisher said in a low voice, ‘It may be that we've fallen in love with each other so gradually that we never noticed. That may happen sometimes, don't you think?’
And they smiled at each other shyly, as though wondering what they ought to do about it.
25. Surface
Eugenia Insigna was apprehensive. More than that.
‘I tell you, Siever, I haven't had a good night's sleep since you took her out in the aircraft.’ Her voice degenerated into what, in a woman of less firm character, might almost have been described as a whine. ‘Wasn't the flight through air - off to the ocean and back, and coming back after nightfall, too - wasn't that enough for her? Why don't you stop her?’
‘Why don't I stop her?’ said Siever Genarr slowly, as though he were tasting the question. ‘Why don't I stop her? Eugenia, we have gotten past the stage of being able to stop Marlene.’
‘That's ridiculous, Siever. It's almost cowardly. You're hiding behind her, pretending she's all-powerful.’
‘Isn't she? You're her mother. Order her to stay in the Dome.’
Insigna's lips compressed. ‘She's fifteen. I don't like to be tyrannical.’
‘On the contrary. You would love to be tyrannical. But if you try, she'll look at you out of those clear extraordinary eyes of hers and say something like, “Mother, you feel guilty of having deprived me of my father, so you feel that the Universe is conspiring to deprive you of me as punishment, and that's a silly superstition.” ’
Insigna frowned. ‘Siever, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I don't feel any such thing, and couldn't possibly.’
‘Of course you don't. I was just making something up. But Marlene won't be. She'll know, from the twitching of your thumb or the movement of your shoulder blade or something, just what is bothering you, and she'll tell you, and it will be so true, and so shameful, I suppose, that you will be too busy looking for ways to defend yourself, and you'll give in to her rather than have her keep peeling away the outer layers of your psyche.’
‘Don't tell me that's what's happened to you.’
‘Not much because she's fond of me, and I've tried to be very diplomatic with her. But if I cross her, I shudder to think what a shambles she'll make of me. Look, I've managed to delay her. Give me credit for that. She wanted to go out immediately after the plane trip. And I held her off to the end of the month.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘Pure sophistry, I assure you. It's December. I told her that, in three weeks, the New Year would begin, at least if we go by Earth Standard time, and how best to celebrate the beginning of 2237, I asked her, than to begin the new era of the exploration and settlement of Erythro? You know, she views her own penetration of the planet in that light - as the beginning of a new age. Which makes it worse.’
‘Why worse?’
‘Because she doesn't view it as a personal caprice, but as something of vital importance to Rotor, or even to humanity, perhaps. There's nothing like satisfying your personal pleasure and calling it a noble contribution to the general welfare. It excuses everything. I've done it myself, so have you, so has everyone. Pitt, more than anyone else whom I know, does it. He has probably convinced himself that he breathes only to contribute carbon dioxide to the plant life of Rotor.’
‘So, by playing on her megalomania, you had her wait.’
‘Yes, and it still gives us one more week to see if anything will stop her. I might say, though, that my plea didn't fool her. She agreed to wait, but she said, “You think that if you delay me, you will win your way at least a little bit into the affections of my mother, don't you, Uncle Siever? There's nothing about you that indicates you consider the coming of the new year of the slightest importance.” ’
‘How unbearably rude, Siever.’
‘Merely unbearably correct, Eugenia. Same thing, perhaps.’
Insigna looked away. ‘My affections? What can I say-’
Genarr said quickly, ‘Why say anything? I've told you I loved you in the past, and I find that getting old - or getting older - hasn't much changed it. But that's my problem. You've never treated me unfairly. You never gave me reason to hope. And if I'm fool enough not to be able to take no for an answer, what concern is that of yours?’
‘It concerns me that you're unhappy for any reason.’
‘That counts for a lot right there.’ Genarr managed a smile. ‘It's infinitely better than nothing.’
Insigna looked away and, with obvious deliberation, returned to the topic of Marlene. ‘But, Siever, if Marlene saw your motivation, why did she agree to the delay?’
‘You won't like this, but I'd better tell you the truth. Marlene said, “I'll wait till the New Year, Uncle Siever, because perhaps that will please Mother, and I'm on your side.” ’
‘She said that?’
‘Please don't hold it against her. I have obviously fascinated her with my wit and charm and she thinks she's doing you a favor.’
‘She's a matchmaker,’ said Insigna, obviously caught between annoyance and amusement.
‘It did occur to me that if you could bring yourself to show an interest in me, we could use that to persuade her into all sorts of things that she would think would further encourage the interest - except that it would have to be real or she would see through it. And if it were real, she wouldn't feel it necessary to make sacrifices to bring about what was already so. Do you understand?’
‘I understand,’ said Insigna, ‘that if it weren't for Marlene's perceptiveness, you would be positively Machiavellian in your approach to me.’
‘You've got me dead to rights, Eugenia.’
‘Well, why not do the obvious thing? Lock her up and, eventually, carry her on to the rocket back to Rotor.’
‘Bound hand and foot, I suppose. Aside from not thinking we could do such a thing, I've managed to catch Marlene's vision. I'm beginning to think of colonizing Erythro - a whole world for the taking.’
‘And breathing their alien bacteria, getting them into our food and water.’ Insigna's face curled into a grimace.