"I haven't seen you in two weeks."
Herrin blinked, sipped, sat holding the glass. "That long?"
"I see . . ." Waden made a loose gesture toward the nighted window. "That. From my office upstairs. I get reports."
Games. Herrin refused to ask, to plead for reaction, which Waden would surely like, that being the old game between them. He simply raised his glass and took another slow sip.
"They talk," Waden said, "as if you're really doing something special out there."
"I am."
Waden smiled. "And on budget. Amazing."
"I told you what we'd need."
"I could wish for equal efficiency elsewhere . . . Am I keeping you from . . . someone?"
"No." Herrin almost laughed. "I'm afraid I'm quite dull lately. Preoccupied."
"Not seeing Keye?"
He shook his head.
"What, a falling out?"
"No time." He had not, in fact, realized that he had not seen Keye in the better part of two months. He had simply postponed events. Waden, Keye, whatever had been important before . . . waited. He was amazed, too, to realize that so much time elapsed, like someone disturbed from a long sleep. "I'm afraid I haven't been social at all To try to hold the details in my memory . . . you understand . . . It shuts out everything else."
"Details."
"Perhaps you don't understand. Your art is different, First Citizen."
" 'Not creative.' I recall your judgment I am capable of such concentration; I currently have nothing that demands it; the limits of Freedom do not exercise me."
Herrin raised a quizzical brow, drained his glass, added more. "I heard a shuttle land last week."
"Two weeks ago," Waden laughed, and chuckled. "You are enveloped, Artist. Are you really that far from consciousness? A shuttle, a considerable volume of trade, a fair deal of traffic on Port Street, and none of this reached you."
"It made no shortage of anything I needed."
"You are master of your reality," Waden mocked him. "And it's all made of stone."
"No," Herrin said softly, "your reality, First Citizen. You are my obsession."
"An interesting fancy."
"Should I have noticed?"
"What, the shuttle?"
"Should it have been of interest to me?"
Waden smiled and refilled his own glass. "A man who forgets his personal affairs would hardly think it of interest, no. It was a military landing, Artist. There's a campaign on. They were interested in Singularity's itinerary. I've opened negotiations with them. I happen to have years of McWilliams's past records, cargo, statistics on all the pirates. The military is very interested. But that's very far from you, isn't it?"
"What negotiations?" he was genuinely perplexed. Waden had come here for a reason, bursting with something pent up. He drew a deep breath and looked Waden in the eyes. "Let me venture a guess. Your ministers and your departments are beyond their depth and you have no confidence in them. This is no casual call."
"Your intelligence surpasses theirs."
"Of course it does; it surpasses yours, but of course you have no intention of admitting it. What have you gotten yourself into?"
For a moment there was a baleful look in Waden's brown eyes, and then humor. "Indulge your fancies. They're of no consequence. You're only moderately wrong, my Dionysus: rationality is always superior to impulsive acts, even creative ones. But no, I don't want your advice; I don't need it."
"What do you need?"
Waden laughed. "Nothing, of course. But possibly what I've always needed, a little less solitude. Already you relieve my mind. I've shaken the world, Artist, and you've not even felt the tremors; what marvelous concentration you have."
"Have you taken sides?"
"Ah. To the point and dead on. Negotiations: Freedom will always be commercially poor so long as it relies on piratical commerce. And I am too great for this world."
"What have you done?"
"What would you do, as Waden Jenks?"
"Build this world. You're about to swallow too much, First Citizen. Digest what you have already; what more do you need, what—?" He lifted a hand toward the roof and the unseen stars. "What is that? Distances that will add to the vacancy you already govern. Hesse is still uncolonized. Half this world is vacant. What need of more so soon? Your ambition is for size. And you will swallow until you burst."
Waden Jenks tended to laugh at his advice, to take it in humor. There was no humor in Waden now.
"I will jar your Reality, Artist. Come with me. Come. Let me show you figures."
Herrin sucked in his breath, vexed and bothered and inwardly disturbed already; arguments with Waden were not, at this stage, productive of anything good. "My Reality is what I'm doing out there, First Citizen. Don't interfere with my work. I have no time to be bothered with trivialities."
Waden's eyes grew darker, amazed, and then he burst out laughing. "With trivialities! O my Dionysus, I love you. There's all a universe out there. There's scale against which all your ambition is nothing; there are places you'll never reach, peoples who'll never hear of you and never care, and you're nothing. But you shut that out, no different from the citizen who sweeps the streets, who has all the Reality he can handle."
"No. You'll give it all to me. That's what you're for. You asked me what I would do. I'd build up this world and attract the commerce you say we have to have. You're looking for a quick means, because Waden Jenks has no duration, only breadth. You'll devour everything you can, First Citizen, and those same people beyond your reach will always gall you; but not me. Because someday . . . at some time however far away . . . someone who's known my work will get out there, and carry my reputation there, and in time, in time, First Citizen—when we're both gone—I'll get there. My way."
"Will you?" Waden's grin looked frozen for the moment, and Herrin, wine-warmed, felt a little impulse of caution. "A little time giving orders has improved your confidence, hasn't it? I neglect to mention your program would simply build an economy the pirates would delight to plunder. We have one commodity now which we have to selclass="underline" the pirates themselves, which will buy us what will save us great expense. But I did invite comment. Plan as you choose. You've taught me something."
"What, I?"
"That duration itself is worth the risk; and that's my choice as well, Artist. By what I do . . . neither Freedom nor other worlds will go unshaken."
"Whom have you dealt with?"
"The trade . . . we can't get from merchants. But there's more than one way to get it, isn't there? The military wants a base in this sector; wants to build a station, to do for us what would take us generations. So I give them our cooperation. And Camden McWilliams ceases to annoy us."
"You've cut us off from the only commerce we get," Herrin exclaimed. "They'll desert you, this foreign military. They'll leave you once they've got what they want. They'll change things here, impose their own reality, never mind yours."
Waden shook his head.
"You're confident," Herrin said. "Do you really think you can handle them? It's wide, Waden."
"Does it daunt you? You talk about posterities. Does that length of time daunt you? And does it occur to you that what I do cannot be without effect in duration as well as breadth?"
"It occurs to me," he admitted.
"You never fail me," Waden said. "Whenever I'm in the least perplexed, you're the best reflection of my thoughts. My unfailing mirror. Arguing with you is like arguing with myself."