Griffith tried to calm his own rapid heartbeat, but his usual control deserted him. He anticipated what Cherenkov would say. The cosmonaut would accept this chance to work against the people who had overwhelmed his country and sentenced him to death. He would speak to the meeting; he would bring everyone together in an agreement to evacuate the starship without resistance.
Cherenkov and his wisdom and his patriotism would give Griffith a spectacularly successful completion to his task.
"What your governments have told you is a lie," Cherenkov said. "Whether it is deliberate falsehood or ignorance, I will not speculate. But I tell you that outside the Mideast Sweep, nothing anyone can do will help anyone within it."
Griffith clenched his fingers around the edge of the stone bench. He was shaking.
"The changes are coming," Cherenkov said- "But they must come from within, they must evolve- Evolution requires patience. The changes gather slowly, until they reach a level that cannot be held back. I tell you that if the rulers perceive danger from outside, they will find scapegoats within their own territory. You will only visit more death and more pain
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upon innocents. The changes will be eliminated and the evolution will cease."
He waited to be questioned. No one spoke.
"Thank you for permitting a guest to speak," he said. He slowly climbed the stairs. When he reached Griffith, he stopped.
Griffith gazed up at him, stunned and confused. The expression on Cherenkov's face, full of memories and grief, broke his heart.
"Come with me, Marion," Kolya said. "Neither of us has a place in this decision."
Griffith had to push himself to his feet. Kolya took his elbow and helped him. They walked out of the tunnel. The darkness closed in around Griffith like an attack.
Griffith swung toward Cherenkov, his shoulders hunched and his fists clenched.
"How could you say that? I thought you, at least, would understand!" He fought to keep his voice steady. "Do you want to go on the expedition so much that you can throw away your patriotism? Is your brain so bumed by cosmic rays that you've forgotten what the Sweep did to you back there, what they did to your family—" "I do not permit anyone to speak of my family," Cheren-kov said in a quiet voice that stopped Griffith short. "And my memory of what happened to me is clear."
"I'm sorry," Griffith said. He could not recall the last time he had apologized to someone and meant it. "But this is a chance to stop them!"
"It is not. I said what 1 said because it is true."
"But—"
"Why are you so concerned, Marion, if you are nothing but an accountant?"
"I—" At the last moment he caught himself and kept himself from admitting his purpose. He turned away. "I admire you," he whispered. "I thought you'd want this to happen."
"No," Cherenkov said gently. "There's too much blood already, on the land I came from. Blood is too expensive to use as fertilizer."
Griffith glanced back at him. Cherenkov smiled, but it was a strained and shaky smile, and after a moment it vanished.
216 vonda N. Mcintyre
"But freedom—"
Cherenkov made a noise of pure despair. "You cannot get freedom by shedding more blood in my country! You can only get more blood!"
"Then what should we do?"
"I told you. You should do nothing." He took Griffith by the shoulders. "Your meddling helped create the problem in the first place. So did our own. We cannot pretend otherwise. We cannot continue to meddle, as if we never did any damage." His fingers tightened, as if he wanted to shake Griffith hard. Instead, he let him go. "I am wrong, of course. You can still do that."
Griffith felt as if he had plunged into an icy sea. He shook from the inside out, with a deep, cold tremble. He knew that if he tried to speak, he would be breathless.
"You have always done that," Kolya said. "You probably always will do that."
He walked away.
Cherenkov departed. Everyone understood the effort it had taken for the cosmonaut to speak. Beside Victoria, Stephen Thomas sat slumped with his elbows on his knees, no longer sprawling relaxed and cheerful on the amphitheater bench.
He had watched Kolya closely, and Victoria recognized the intensely focused expression: Stephen Thomas sought his aura. Though Victoria did not believe in auras, she knew that Stephen Thomas could be pretematurally sensitive to other
people's feelings, that he could imagine and experience Kolya's grief and desperation.
Victoria felt the chill of frightening truth: what happened to the expedition, to Slarfarer, would affect far more than the people on board.
She searched the meeting for Iphigenie DuPre- She found her. The sailmaker was watching her. Iphigenie inclined her head slowly, carefully, down, then up.
"Crimson Ng." The small, compact artist leaned forward and gestured toward Victoria. Red river-valley clay was ground permanently into the knuckles of her delicate hands. "What did you mean when you said we ought to go on as if nothing had happened? How far do you think we should take it?*'
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Victoria spoke carefully, deliberately. "I think," she said, "that we should take it as far as it can go."
She imagined that she could feel the stream of tension and excitement, anger and fear, coalescing into a powerful tide of resolution.
"We now have even more reason to continue the expedition as if nothing had happened."
"That's easy to say, Victoria, but it's hardly a plan of action. How do you propose to continue if we're put under martial law and under guard? We're risking that already just by meeting."
"We were already at risk of that. We mustn't let it happen."
"Have you joined Satoshi and Infinity in wanting to fight?"
"I never said I wanted to fight," Satoshi said. "I said I was afraid we might have no alternative."
"Satoshi is right," Infinity said. "We'll have no choice, and what we want doesn't matter."
' "We do have a choice," Victoria said. "We can choose not to be here if they try to take over."
"Great. So, we abandon ship? How is that going to—"
Crimson cut her words short. "That isn't what you mean, is it?"
"No. I mean move Starfarer. Use a different approach to the cosmic string. A much closer one. One that takes us to transition tomorrow night."
J.D. gasped-
The meeting's order slipped abruptly into chaos.
Despite the confusion, Victoria felt the meeting flow in the direction she had chosen. She felt opinions and decisions gather together like the individual streams of a watershed, from a state of unfocused, chaotic indecision and rage, toward a cohesive opinion flowing like a river.
She waited until her voice could be heard.
"The expedition members must agree to the change," she said. "There will be time—not much, but enough—for anyone who wants to return to earth to leave by the last transport."
"We aren't fully provisioned," Thanthavong said. "Half our equipment hasn't arrived—"
218 vonda N. Mdntyre
"And half our faculty and staff has left! I can't help it. If we want the expedition to exist, this is our only chance."
"We'd be trying to outrun a—a cheetah with an elephant."
"The elephant has a big head start," Victoria said drily, keeping up her bravado. The others were less successful; their response was a feeble, frightened laugh.
"Christ on a mongoose, Victoria," Stephen Thomas said.
"You want to steal the starship."
Stephen Thomas's comment, thoughtless and casual, threw Victoria off center and broke her influence. The gathering's flow toward agreement, toward decision, splashed up against a dam of doubt and fear.
"I can't believe you said that," Satoshi muttered.