“Spacefluff!” Leah shook dark hair clear of her eyes. “Get your head screwed on, Tatty Snipes. I said I’ve known Chan since he was in diapers, but that’s only half of it. Since I was six years old, we’ve eaten together, and cried together, and slept together, and bathed together. Everything, from the first day I took him over down in the Gallimaufries. He was just like my own baby.”
“I’m sure he was,” said Tatty dryly. She was having her own “problems with this conversation. “But he’s not your baby now. He’s not anyone’s baby. He’s a man.”
It went right past Kubo Flammarion, but Leah caught it in a second. “Chan? You mean somebody—”
“Yes.”
“Who was it. Do you know who — ”
“Yes.” Tatty turned to Flammarion, who had listened to the exchange with total incomprehension. “Kubo, would you please go and bring Chan back here. Leah really needs to talk to him.”
As he left she turned rapidly to face the camera. “I was the somebody. I think you guessed that. And it wasn’t the way you think, an experienced woman seducing an innocent boy. It happened right after a Stimulator session, the one that made the big change. Leah, he needed somebody — any somebody. No, I don’t mean that. He needed somebody, but what he wanted was you. He spoke your name to me as though I was you. Maybe he even thought I was you.”
Leah’s image stared stonily out of the screen. “I see.”
“I know, Leah. I know just how you must be feeling.”
“No.” Leah shook her head. “You sure as hell don’t know how I’m feeling. You can’t. For all those years, ever since we were little children, I looked after both of us. As I grew up I had my own secret hope. I dreamed that Chan would somehow become intelligent, and grow up too, and we would become lovers.
“That was my fantasy, and by the time I was twelve I knew it could only be fantasy. He was the little boy who would never grow up. I could love Chan, but for that kind of love, sexual love, I would have to look somewhere else.” The anger faded from Leah’s voice and was replaced by a wistful tone. “There was no trouble finding sex, you see. There never is. But it wasn’t what I’d dreamed of. And now you tell me that the dream came true — but it was you and Chan, not me and Chan …”
Kubo Flammarion was entering the room, trailing a reluctant Chan along with him. But as they arrived in camera range, Leah was suddenly gone from the screen.
“Here he is,” said Flammarion. He stared at the empty display. “Well, blast it. Now where did she go?”
Tatty swiveled to face him. “Leah had to run. Her pursuit team is meeting. Let’s forget it, Kubo, it won’t work today.” She turned to Chan. I spoke to Leah. She sends you all her love, and she says she can’t wait until she has a chance to see you.”
Chan blushed with pleasure, a flood of pink across fair cheeks. “She said that? I wish I could have said the same thing to her.”
“You will. But she couldn’t stay. The program out there is really strict.”
“And it’ll get stricter,” added Flammarion, “the closer they get to descent to Travancore and the hunt for the Construct. But you shouldn’t be looking at that now, Chan — you ought to be learning all you can about Barchan, because that’ll be your next stop.”
He winked at Tatty. He didn’t know quite what was happening, but he sensed that somehow she had carried them through an awkward situation. Now it was time to get Chan thinking about something else.
Flammarion keyed in the sequence to take them back to the first image.
“Barchan,” he said. “Take a good look at it.”
The scene changed, and he leaned back in confusion. Instead of the heated dust-ball that would be Chan’s training site, the screen displayed the face of Esro Mondrian.
He nodded casually at Flammarion. “Sorry, Captain. I came in on override. I need to talk with Princess Tatiana.” He smiled at Tatty with no trace of embarrassment. “Congratulations, Princess. You did it. I knew you would. And to you, Chan” — he inclined his head — “welcome to Ceres. From all that I hear you’re going to be an outstanding member of the next Pursuit Team.”
“Which means you win your bet,” said Tatty bitterly. “I guess that’s all you care about.”
Mondrian stared at her with a surprised expression. “That’s not true, Princess, and you know it. We can talk about all that later. I called to say that I’ve arranged for us to have dinner tonight, and you’ll have the chance to meet an old friend.”
“I have no friends on Ceres — unless it’s Chan and Kubo.”
“Wait and see.” Mondrian was smiling again. “I’ll come over there and pick you up at seven. Dinner will be just the four of us: you, me, Luther Brachis — and Godiva Lomberd.”
“Godiva!” But before she could do more than say the name, Mondrian vanished from the screen. In his place were the swirling dust-clouds and umber sky of Barchan. Tatty stared at them, her fists tight-clenched.
“Damn you, Esro Mondrian.” She swung to Flammarion. “Damn that man. He ignores me for months. Then he thinks he can call up and suggest dinner, just like that, as though nothing has happened. Well, no way. I’ll see him in hell before I’ll see him at dinner.”
Tatty paused in her outburst. She had been talking to Flammarion, and so she had only just noticed Chan’s face. It was white and staring. “Chan! Are you all right?”
“Who was that man?” His voice was a whisper. “Who?”
“Him?” Flammarion, concentrated on Tatty, had not noticed the change in Chan. “He’s my boss, that’s who. Commander Esro Mondrian, head of the whole Morgan Construct operation. You want to meet him? You will, soon as your training program gets going.”
Chan was nodding. “Yes,” he said softly. His hands were clasped as tightly as Tatty’s. “I would like to meet Commander Mondrian — very much.” He glanced over to Tatty. “He wants you to go to dinner.”
“I know. I’m not going. Damn the man.”
Chan’s stare at her was more probing, an alien expression overwriting his mouth and innocent eyes. “I think you will, Tatty, he said at last. He nodded. “Yes, I think that you will.”
Chapter 17
These are the Seven Wonders of the Solar System:
• The Vulcan Nexus
• The Oort Harvester
• The Sea-farms of Europa
• The Uranian Lift System
• The Mattin First Link
• The Venus Superdome
• The Tortugas’ Tetrahedra
• The Persephone Fusion Network
• The Vault of Hyperion
• Oberon Station
• The Jupiter Bubble
• Marslake
There are a dozen items on the Seven Wonders list. That is not an error. For although everyone agrees on the first four, all the rest are a source of argument. Is the Hyperion Vault more impressive than Oberon Station, merely because it is bigger? Is the Jupiter Bubble more deserving of inclusion than the Venus Superdome, because it is far more difficult to maintain? How does technical sophistication trade off against beauty or elegance — or, for that matter, against importance to the human race? Why are visiting aliens all so taken with the Harvester, and so bored by the Sea-farms? And is it at all fair to include the metal tetrahedra of the Dry
Tortugas on such a list, since they are not the result of human efforts?
For some reason no one ever puts the reconstruction of Ceres anywhere on a catalog of marvels. Yet a minor planet, less than one thousand kilometers across, has become the most populous and influential body in the solar system. Should not that be regarded as a major miracle?
Ah, but the work was done long ago, using the same simple and ages-old technology that built the Earth-warrens and tunneled out the Gallimaufries. No one is impressed by that. And whatever the technology, the results are too familiar. Ceres is on no one’s list.