"No. Of course not. We old men send you young men out to do our dirty work, and we teach you not to think. Start thinking now! Is there any way to turn the weapons carrier back? Any way to stop this abomination?"
Griffith shook his head. The interaction dizzied him. He flinched down, cursing, and closed his eyes till his balance steadied.
"No," he said. "It's out of my control. If I were back on earth they might listen to me. Probably not, though. This is what they want to do. I just helped find a way to do it. If I changed my mind, they'd think you'd found a way to force me."
"And here I believed," Cherenkov said wryly, "that you were not permitted any weaknesses we might make use of."
"I'm not a robot!" Griffith glared at him. "I'm getting married next month! But when I'm . . . working ... I don't let myself think ... "
"Yes. That is the problem, isn't it?"
"That isn't what I meant, either, and you know it! What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry? I am, for all the good it will do!"
Cherenkov's expression was mild. "I didn't think you could surprise me, Marion, but you have." He sat on the wall of the balcony and let himself lean back over the ten-meter drop. "Several times over."
"Don't do that," Griffith said.
After a few moments, Cherenkov pushed himself forward again. He sat slumped, his hands hanging limp. His heavy, streaky hair shadowed his face.
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"Have you any idea," he said, "how the leaders of the Sweep will react to Starfarer looming over them, after you have supplied it with nuclear missiles?"
Infinity entered his dim front room and brushed his fingertips through the commeal in the small pot by the door. He tossed his blanket toward a chair.
"Oh!"
"Florrie!** Infinity hurried forward lo take the blanket from her tap where it had fallen. "I didn't see you, I'm sorry. What are you doing here? What's the matter?"
She wore her multilayered black clothes and the shells and beads in the long patches of her hair. Her gray eyes looked very pale within their circles of dark kohl. Infinity wondered if the administrators had really thought they could bully her into wearing regulation clothing.
"I've been trying and trying to get you," she said.
"Why didn't you call me on the direct web? You could have said it was urgent."
"I don't know, I didn't want to, 1 thought you might be asleep.''
He guessed that all her contradictions meant that she, like a lot of others, felt uncomfortable using the direct link.
"Okay, I'm here now. What's wrong?" He had seen her a
couple of times since the party; she always had people with her, come to talk with her or help her, eat with her or cook for her. Her presence was a tremendous success. At least one thing had been going right, among so much else going wrong.
It was too bad she would be leaving. She ought to be home packing. The EarthSpace transport a few hours ahead of the armed military carrier would be the last civilian vessel to approach until Starfarer^ situation was resolved one way or another. EarthSpace had already sent out orders for no one to disembark, but it had no way of enforcing the demand or calling the transport back. The transport had to pick up more reaction mass from Starfarer. Otherwise it would have to power itself home with only emergency reserves: a tricky. risky maneuver.
"He was there again last night. He's always there. Can't I make him stop?"
"You mean Griffith?"
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She nodded.
"I don't know. You could report him to the chancellor for harassing you."
"I'm sure he's figured out something to report me to the chancellor for, and you know who'd be believed."
"I know he scares you. But, Florrie, you know, he isn't really interested in you or me or anybody except Kolya. That's why he's always in your garden at night."
"He hasn't actually done anything . . ."
"Isn't it kind of pointless to worry? You'll be going back to earth on the transport. I guess he will be, too, but once you're home you'll probably never see him again. Are you packed? There isn't that much time. You do understand that it's the last chance to leave?"
She sagged in his chair as if she had suddenly reached the limit of her energy.
"Are they sending me away?" she said, so faint he could hardly hear her.
"No, not sending you, exactly . . ."
"Why should I have to go, when 1 didn't even have anything to do with the meeting? Nobody even told me it was happening!"
"Don't you want to go home?"
"This is my home now! I came all the way out here—why do you think I'd want to leave again?"
"Because everything's changed," Infinity said.
"Not for me," Florrie said.
One of Slarfarer's telescopes trained itself on the military carrier as it accelerated toward the starship. It hung in the center of the screen, apparently unmoving, but pushing forward at twice the delta-vee of a regular transport.
Victoria found her gaze and her attention drawn to the image no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on all the other things she had to think about.
The prospect of nuclear weapons on board Starfarer angered and distressed and saddened her more than any other element of the attempted takeover, even, strangely enough, the possibility that the starship would be turned into a low-orbit watchpost. The battle against arming the starship was
230 vonda N. Mclntyre
the hardest fight the alien contact team had taken on. Victoria stilt sometimes felt astonished that they had won it.
The one good thing the approaching military carrier had done was unify the faculty and staff- There were plenty of members who believed the expedition could present itself as peaceful while carrying defensive weapons, but even they were angered by the means being taken to arm the ship.
Victoria stared at the screen, at the dark ungainly carrier with its exterior cargo of shrouded missiles.
"They've been planning this for a long time," Stephen Thomas said. 'They must have. They can't have gotten it all in place and made the decision just since our meeting." He glanced at the image on the screen.
Feral stood beside him. They both looked at the carrier.
"I'm not so sure," Feral said. "I think they realized they had to work fast. I think I would have heard something, rumors ... "
"Like about the meeting?" Stephen Thomas said.
"Thanks very much," Feral said. "Rub it in. Wait till I
get my sources lined up, there won't be anything on this ship
I don't know about."
"Sounds intriguing."
"And see if I tell you any good gossip."
Victoria pulled her attention away from the image of the carrier.
"Stephen Thomas, please, I can't stand that. Will you turn it off? Or let me use the screen for a few minutes, then I'll go somewhere else and you can watch some more."
"Sure."
Stephen Thomas and Feral stood aside for her.
"Is this private?" Feral asked.
"I'm calling my great-grandmother. She'll have heard what's happening, she'll be worried."
Stephen Thomas glanced away, his expression frozen. He had to make a call to earth, too . . .
"What's the carrier's latest ETA?" Feral asked. "Will it get to us before we reach transition point?"
For a second Victoria could not figure out why Feral would ask Stephen Thomas a question to which he already knew the answer.
"We can't tell," Stephen Thomas said. "It depends on STARFARERS 231
how efficient Iphigenie's orbit is and how much extra acceleration the carrier's got—which is classified information."
Some animation returned to his face and entered his voice. Feral had asked just the right question to distract him, and he had given him an opportunity to lecture a little.
As Victoria requested an earth connection through the web, she wondered if Feral knew about Stephen Thomas's rocky interactions with his father, or if he had simply noticed his unease. Stephen Thomas did not often open up to anyone on such short acquaintance. She wondered, absently, if Stephen Thomas and Feral had slept together last night. Probably not;