"Fabian," she called softly.
His eyes opened drowsily, and he grinned up at her. "Am I dreaming?"
She kissed his brow. "What do you think?"
Julia combed the sweat-damped hair from his eyes as he lay back on the pillows. He really is very handsome, she thought. Funny I never noticed before. Or was that never wanted to notice before? It would have been complicated.
Then she frowned, and peered at his face. "I don't believe it! You're looking guilty already."
"Certainly not," Victor protested. "What you're seeing is plain relief. I thought—"
"What?" she asked eagerly. It was fun teasing him, she hadn't been free to tease a man like this for a long time. It was fun having him in bed too. Nothing astonishing, but that would come with time. She intended there would be a lot of time from now on.
Victor shrugged. "Rick."
"Oh, him. No. He was sweet, and hunky too, of course."
"Thank you very much, ma'am."
She giggled. "Not my type, though. Outside of his work, there's nothing of interest about him. Sad really."
"My heart bleeds."
She waited a while. "I'm extremely grateful to him, though. I would never have thought of flying the Hexaëmeron away. Lord, the thought of having to make that choice still makes me feel cold."
"It won't happen again."
"Thank heavens." She rested her head on his chest. "I'm going to reward Rick, show him just how appreciative I am."
"How?"
"Give him his radio telescope, that Steropes he's forever whining about."
"You serious?"
"Yes. We know it's not a pointless search any more. That puts a whole new perspective on SETI. Now people have been convinced there is life in the galaxy they'll expect a follow-up. And I want Event Horizon to maintain its leadership in the field."
"There isn't going to be much doubt about that, I'm afraid. Greg certainly isn't going to come forward to claim any credit for what happened up at New London. And Sinclair is already a channel celebrity with his religious 'cast; telling the world how you tamed the Beast and liberated the New Jerusalem. So that's another brick firmly cemented in the wall of legend. Julia Evans, superwoman."
"Bugger." She hadn't thought of that aspect. Perhaps Greg… No, that wouldn't be fair at all. "Oh well, at least Steropes won't put a strain on my finances now."
"Too true. That second chamber is quite something, even if the miners didn't appreciate losing their jobs five years ahead of schedule."
The two of them had walked the length of the second chamber the day after the alien left, their boots kicking up puffs of arid dust. It was a landscape of rock turrets and deep zigzag canyons, delicate arched stone bridges reinforced with cores of solid iron. Instant geology; she'd seen the smoothness of water-etched curves, run her spacesuit glove over weather-chewed redstone outcrops. Yet for all its pristine state, the solid cyclorama engendered a sense of déjà-vu. It was the landscape of her childhood, a composition drawn from memory. There had been few nights when she hadn't sat on the rocks above the First Salvation Church warren and watched the sun set above the desert.
"All part of the deal," she said. "The alien was me, after all, remember? A completed second chamber gives Event Horizon a considerable financial boost. What did you expect?"
"Was that really necessary?" he asked quietly. "Showing your memories to that thing?"
"It was the deal, Victor. How else could we be sure the Hexaëmeron would leave? And not just leave, but travel a long way before it resurrects its planet's species. The Centauri system would be no use. Our own ark starships will be there in less than a century; perhaps even sooner if Beswick ever does work out how to open a wormhole. But with my personality loaded in, I guarantee it won't stop for fifty-sixty light-years. Good enough, I think."
"Not much of a deal for the alien. We're free of it, you make a profit. What did it get?"
"It got to live, Victor. Death was the only other option. And that would have been a monumental crime. Planetary genocide. I'm not sure I could have sanctioned that. But it can wait for a couple of millennia until it finds a barren star system to colonize, it's already waited billions of years."
"If you say so," he said reluctantly. "And what about us? What sort of combination do we make? You build it and I protect it?"
There was a tremble in his voice, slight though, well concealed, it wouldn't register with many people. Do I know him that well already, or have I always known? "Something like that. I don't think you're cut out for life as a househusband."
"That's true enough." His arm came over her back, hand stroking the side of her ribs. "Funny how the Hexaëmeron knew us so well it cut straight to the heart of our society. It knew all along that people like you and Jepson were the real powers in the land."
"I've been thinking about that. And it was wrong. Jepson and I were simply the most appropriate people, not the most powerful. That's the way the world works today. A million different interests, all competing, all clamouring for a voice. I told Marchant the world is becoming more complex, and the Hexaëmeron proved that to me beyond a shadow of a doubt. Simple political systems don't work any more; that two-party, two-ideology confrontation is behind us now. We need a system valid for the data age, a world where total information is available and no two places are physically more than ninety minutes apart. Parochialism is dead, long live parochialism."
He gave her a long look. "I don't get it."
"Think about Wales. As part of England it was failing; above-average unemployment, mediocre social services and infrastructure. To New Conservative politicians in Westminster it's just another special interest grouping, like education policy or tax levels. They invest minimum resources compatible with a maximum return of votes; double the investment and they certainly don't double their votes. So it's automatically marginalized. That's why there are such powerful regional secession movements evolving. Not just here, but right across the globe; the Californias, Italy, Germany, even China's decentralization is the same thing with a different name. Small but forceful local governments, providing they are democracies, can always look after their people more effectively. What they lacked in previous eras was the strength and stability resulting from size, which is what Marchant was so worried about England losing. But now access and membership to large-scale organizations is profoundly simple; they're virtually spoilt for choice. Autonomous regions will become nodes in the global networks; and there are hundreds of them, thousands, each of them separate, but every one interlocking; financial, commercial, strategic defence alliances, corporate, pure data, trading markets, all of them networks of some kind or another. Event Horizon itself is a network; my factories are so widely distributed now any product you buy has components made all over the place, there is no single source."
"So you're going to back the Welsh Nationalists' bid for independence?"
"Yes. But first I'm going to dump the New Conservatives. Not dramatically, but they'll get no more money or patronage from me. They were necessary after the PSP fell, rampant capitalism is always a good way to build quickly, and we needed that then, we'd fallen so far. But unless you're very careful, that kind of economy becomes a runaway shark, always having to move to eat, to survive. You get unemployment in the name of efficiency, suffering in the name of market forces. That's over. We've rebuilt, we've gathered all we lost; now we need to consolidate. If the New Conservatives can't accept that, then they deserve to go; if they're smart, they'll adapt their policies. Whatever they do, it isn't important to me any more. They don't matter. England will benefit from Welsh secession as much as the Welsh."
"So it will be you who decides Wales's fate after all. Doesn't that place you outside these networks you have so much faith in? Doesn't that make you the controller the Hexaëmeron thought you were?"