«He sure gave your Colonel Murdock a hard time this morning. Mrs. McGrath, you shoulda seen your husband in action.» Wynne chuckled wheezily.
Kinsman changed the subject. «Say, do you know Cy Calder… old guy, works for Allied News in California?»
«Only by legend,» Wynne answered. «He died a couple months ago, y’know.»
«No … I didn’t know.» Kinsman felt a brief pang deep inside the part of him that he kept frozen. He made himself ignore it.
«Yep. He musta been past eighty. Friend of yours?»
«Sort of. I knew him … well, a few years back.»
Mary-Ellen said, «I’d better get to some of the other guests. There are several old friends of yours here tonight, Chet. Mix around, you’ll find them.»
With another rasping cackle, Wynne said, «Guess we could let somebody else get next to the bar.»
Kinsman started to drift away, but Wynne followed beside him.
«Murdock send you over here to try to soften up McGrath?»
Pushing past a pair of arguing cigar smokers, Kinsman frowned. «I was invited to this party weeks ago. I told you, Mrs. McGrath and I are old friends,»
«How do you get along with the congressman?»
«What’s that supposed to mean?»
Wynne let his teeth show. «Well, from what I hear, you were quite a hellraiser a few years back. How’d you and Mrs. McGrath get along in college together?»
You cruddy old bastard. «If you’re so interested in Mrs. McGrath’s college days, why don’t you ask her? Or her husband? Get off my back.»
Wynne shrugged and raised his glass in mock salute. «Yes sir, Major, sir.»
Kinsman turned and started working his way toward the other end of the room. A grandfather clock chimed off in a corner, barely audible over the human noises and clacking of ice in glassware. Eighteen hundred. Gold and Smitty ought to be halfway to Copernicus by now.
And then he heard her. He didn’t have to see her; he knew it was Diane. The same pure, haunting soprano; a voice straight out of a legend.
Her voice stroked his memory and he felt all the old joys, all the old pain, as he pushed his way through the crowd.
Finally he saw her, sitting cross-legged on a sofa, guitar hiding her slim figure. The same ancient guitar: no amplifiers, no boosters. Her hair was still long and straight and black as space; her eyes even darker and deeper. The people were ringed around her, standing, sitting on the floor. They gave her the entire sofa to herself, like an altar that only the anointed could use. They watched her and listened, entranced by her voice. But she was somewhere else, living the song, seeing what it told of, until she strummed the final chord.
Then she looked straight at Kinsman. Not surprised, not even smiling, just a look that linked them as if the past five years had never been. Before either of them could say or do anything, the others broke into applause. Diane smiled and mouthed, «Thank you.»
«More, more!»
«Come on, another one»
«‘Greensleeves.’»
Diane put the guitar down carefully beside her, uncoiled her long legs, and stood up. «Would later be okay?»
Kinsman grinned. He knew it would be later or nothing.
They muttered reluctant agreement and broke up the circle around her. Kinsman took the final few paces and stood before Diane.
He said, «Good to see you again.»
«Hello, Chet.» She wasn’t quite smiling.
«Here Diane, I brought you some punch.» Kinsman turned to see a fleshy-faced young man with a droopy mustache and tousled brown hair, dressed in a violet suit, carrying two plastic cups of punch.
«Thank you, Larry. This is Chet Kinsman. Chet, meet Larry Rose.»
«Kinsman?»
«I knew Chet in the Bay area a few years back, when I was just getting started. You’re still in the Air Force, aren’t you, Chet?»
«Affirmative.» Play the role.
Diane turned back to Larry. «Chet’s an astronaut. He’s been on the Moon.»
«Oh. That must be where I heard the name. Weren’t you involved in some sort of rescue? One of your people got stranded or something and you—»
«Yes.» Kinsman cut him short. «It was blown up out of proportion by the news people.»
They stood there for a moment, awkwardly silent while the party pulsated around them.
Diane said, «Mary-Ellen told me you might be here tonight. You and Neal are both working on something about the space program?»
«Something like that. Organized any more peace marches?»
She laughed. «Larry, did I ever tell you about the time we tried to get Chet to come out and join one of our demonstrations? In his uniform?» Larry shook his head.
«Do you remember what you told me, Chet?»
«No. I remember it was during the Brazilian crisis. You were planning to invade the U.C.L.A. library or something. I had flying duty that day.»
It was a perfect day for flying, breaking out of the coastal haze and standing the jet on her tailpipe and ripping through the clouds until even the distant Sierras looked like nothing more than wrinkles. Then flat out over the Pacific at Mach 5, the only sounds in your earphones from your own breathing and the faint, distant crackle of earthbound men giving orders to other men.
«You told me,» Diane said, «that you’d rather be flying patrol and making sure that nobody bombs us while we demonstrated for peace.»
She was grinning at him. It was funny now; it hadn’t been then.
«Yeah, I guess I did say that.»
«How amusing,» Larry said. «And what are you doing now? Protecting us from the Lithuanians? Or going to Mars?»
You overstuffed fruit, you wouldn’t even fit into a flight crewman’s seat. «I’m serving on a Pentagon assignment. My job is congressional liaison.»
«Twisting congressmen’s arms is what he means,» came Neal McGrath’s husky voice from behind him.
Kinsman turned.
«Hello, Chet, Diane … eh, Larry Rose, isn’t it?»
«You have a good memory for names.»
«Goes with the job.» Neal McGrath topped Kinsman’s six feet by an inch. He was red-haired and rugged-looking. His voice was soft, throaty. Somehow the natural expression of his face, in repose, was an introspective scowl. But he was smiling now. His cocktail-party smile, thought Kinsman.
«Tug Wynne tells me I was pretty rough on your boss this morning,» McGrath said to Kinsman. The smile turned a shade self-satisfied.
«Colonel Murdock lost a few pounds, and it wasn’t all from the TV lights,» Kinsman said.
«I was only trying to get him to give me a good reason for funneling money into a permanent Moonbase.»
Kinsman answered, «He gave you about fifty reasons, Neal.»
«None that hold up,» McGrath said. «Not when we’ve got to find money to reclaim every major city in this country, plus fighting these damned interminable wars.»
«And to check the population growth,» Diane added.
Here we go again. Shrugging, Kinsman said, «Look, Neal, I’m not going to argue with you. We’ve been making one-shot missions to the Moon off and on for fifty years now. There’s enough there to warrant a permanent base.»
McGrath made a sour face. «A big, expensive base on the Moon.»
«Makes sense,» Kinsman slid in. «It makes sense on a straight cost-effectiveness basis. You’ve seen the numbers. Moonbase will save you billions of dollars in the long run.»