"About time somebody said straight out that we're not up here to discover the twenty-first-century version of Tenon!"
"The Tenon hypothesyi slides down more easily."
"No, it'll be great. People love mystery, and that's what we're heading for."
"I wish you were right," Satoshi said. "But you're not."
"Hey, Satoshi?" Stephen Thomas said.
"Hmm?"
"Does Victoria really talk like that when she's in Canada, or was it just the reporter?"
"A little of both. You've been to Vancouver with Victoria, didn't you notice she uses more Canadian and British speech habits there?"
"I noticed her accent got stronger, but I was putting most of my energy into trying to make friends with her greatgrandmother. For all the good it did me."
"Grangrana's okay. She disapproves of the partnership in theory but she likes us as individuals."
"She likes you. She's not so sure about me," Stephen
2 6 vonda N. Mdntyre
Thomas said, with his usual certainty about the accuracy of his perceptions. "Why did the article keep calling Victoria 'Fraser MacKenzie'?"
"They don't much go for middle names—that's a British tradition, I think. They figure Victoria's got one of those unhyphenated double last names- Like Conan Doyle.
"Wonder what they'd do with my name?"
"Probably figure you didn't have any last name at all."
Stephen Thomas laughed and hit him, light and playful, in the ribs.
The message filter suddenly beeped and started to fill up with call requests, mostly from strangers, mostly from people outside Starfarer, and mostly for Victoria. Satoshi' sifted through them.
"Good lord," he said. "If we call these people back, we'll use up our communications budget for the next six months."
"Call them collect," Stephen Thomas said. "And tell them Victoria isn't here."
"How to win reporters and influence public opinion, by Stephen Thomas Gregory," Satoshi said.
The message filter in Victoria's cubicle signaled and then sang. Still half-asleep, disoriented by darkness, Victoria tried to sit up. The restraints of her sleeping web held her gently in place and she remembered where she was. A streak of light fell across her; the fabric door did not quite close.
"Answer," she said. "Hello?"
After the short time-delay, Satoshi spoke.
"Love, have you seen the news today?"
"I'm not even awake yet." She was surprised to hear his voice. "I think I slept the clock around. What time is it?
Never mind, what's up?" she said quickly, not waiting through the reply delay of Starfarer communications laser-to-satellite-to-transport and back. She did not want to waste expensive time on trivialities.
"You have a huge slug of messages from admirers of your interview," Stephen Thomas said.
"What interview?"
"I'm not sure you can call them all admirers," Stephen Thomas said.
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"Some are from people up here," Satoshi told her, "but a lot are from earth."
Victoria waited through the delay. She and Satoshi had perfected the technique of holding two simultaneous conversations on the communications laser, letting their comments cross and recross, one exchange being held during the reply delays of the second. To his own irritation, Stephen Thomas had not quite got the hang of it. Keeping him in the discussion, Victoria restricted herself to one line of thought and talk.
"The web's reporting on your banquet," Satoshi said.
"And your conversation with the premier. You'd better look at it. They emphasized your not wanting to speculate on what benefits Starfarer might bring back."
Victoria fell a hot flush of embarrassment spread across her face.
"I'll read it, of course. I thought I was having a conversation, not doing an interview for the record. Nobody was introduced to me as a reporter, and who ever reports Canadian news, eh?" She sighed. "I never met the premier before. She's honorable, I admire her. I wanted to tell her the truth, so she could understand what it is we're about."
With growing unease, she waited out the delay. Despite her cynical remark about Canadian news, she should have realized that anything the head of Starfarer^ alien contact department said to the premier of British Columbia was fair game for reporters.
It was late and I was tired and keyed up, she told herself. And then there were those toasts . . .
But I know better, she thought. I know better than to let my guard down, ever, and still sometimes I do it. What is it about people? Why do they prefer it when we claim we know everything? What's wrong with the truth, that not everything's been discovered?
"I understand what you were trying to do," Satoshi said.
"But I wonder if there's any way to downplay it after the fact?"
"Oh, bull," Stephen Thomas said. "Don't do that! You said just what needed to be said, Victoria, and anybody who doesn't back you on it has shit for brains."
"I can defend my comments. I can't retract them, Satoshi,
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not if I was quoted correctly. And it sounds like what I said is what got reported."
Victoria was glad of the privacy scramble that kept inquisitive types with backyard antennae from listening in on laser calls. She had more or less become accustomed to the casual profanity Stephen Thomas used, but in public it still embarrassed her. And the first time he swore in front of Grangrana . . .
"We just wanted to make sure you'd seen the articfe,"
Satoshi said. "So you'd have some warning if people pounce on you about it. We'd better get off the line. I love, you. Goodbye."
"Wait," Stephen Thomas said. "Did Sauvage finally show, or not? And I love you too."
"Yes, she's on board. I'll tell all about that when I get home. It's complicated. I love you both. I wish we had a picture. Bye."
She ended the connection.
Why did I feel so comfortable about telling the premier the cold hard truth about science? Victoria wondered. I was ready to back off if I picked up disapproval, if she wasn't prepared to hear it.
She had not picked up on disapproval because the premier had not shown any. Whatever her reactions to Victoria's comments, she had let Victoria make them. She had listened, and Victoria still believed she had understood.
Victoria closed her eyes, linked with the web, and let it play the article behind her eyes. When it ended, she decided it had been written without malice, but with an eye for the flashy line.
Victoria sighed and unfastened the restraint net. She wished she were already home, in bed with Satoshi and Stephen Thomas. She felt so lonely. She grabbed her shirt and struggled into it and swiped her sleeve across her eyes, pretending her vision had not blurred. Right now Satoshi and Stephen Thomas were almost as far out of her reach as Merry. But she was on her way home.
Chandra left the inn and used the pedestrian tunnel to cross beneath the highway. The cold damp tunnel smelled of cement. On the other side she stepped out into dry hot sunlight.
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Traffic rushed past on the magnetic road behind her. All last evening the other guests had babbled interminably about the good weather. Chandra, however, felt cheated. She had come to visit a rain forest. She expected rain.
She started recording, waited until the nerve clusters gnari-ing her face and hands and body started to throb, and stepped beneath the trees. The light dimmed to a weird gold-green, and the temperature dropped from uncomfortably hot to cool.
She hurried deeper into the forest, hoping to outdistance the
sound of the traffic as well as the next group of visitors. At first she walked gingerly, preparing for pain to catch up to her, waiting for the dullness of too much medication. To her surprise, her body worked fine, swinging along the trail. She had balanced the pills perfectly against the pain, astonishingly intense, of having spent all the previous day on horseback. This morning the muscles of her inner thighs had hurt like hell. Until she took a painkiller she could barely walk.