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Also tinkers with electronics.”

“Any relation to the president?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Great-grand-uncle or something.”

“Rich kid.”

I shrugged. “He was here on vacation when the Cape closed down.”

“He might want to use another name dirtside. No telling who’s being blamed for what.”

“Good idea.” I wondered how many were still blaming us for the war. For starting the strike that triggered the blackout that caused the collapse that started the war.

“So.” She leaned back. “Have you discussed this with your husbands yet?”

“There won’t be any discussion,” I said slowly. “Not in the sense of debate.”

“You haven’t asked me how long the project is supposed to last.”

“No. I…guess I assumed that was up to me.”

“More or less. There are external factors. Our immunology people don’t think you should eat the food, except for prewar packaged goods. We can send along six months’ rations. Maybe a year’s worth, if you feel strongly about it.”

“I think I do. Yes. We might be stranded.” She scribbled a note. “Will we have to work in suits?”

“No, just masks and gloves. You’ll have shots, but we really don’t know what you’ll be up against. There might be any number of weird germs floating around; mutant strains of common diseases if not biowar agents. There’s an element of risk.”

“Worth it,” I said automatically.

“I’m not so sure. Hope so.” She looked thoughtful. “You’re taking quite a gamble…physical danger aside, I mean.”

“My position with Janus,” I said. “One husband, perhaps. Perhaps both. We’ve discussed the possibility before, in the abstract. It is what my training and experience point to.”

“They said they’d leave you?”

“Not in so many words. But I don’t think Dan would give up his starship. John would, but he can’t go to Earth.”

“Well, even if it becomes a permanent thing, you’ll be spending a lot of your time up here.”

“That’s what I was going to tell them. True or not.”

2

I wanted to drop it on both of them together, and in public, so Dan would be less likely to blow up. Our schedules didn’t match for dinner, but we were all free at 2200. We met at the Light Head for a glass of wine and some music.

Dan didn’t say anything at first. He just listened, chewing on his lower lip. John only smiled and nodded. “You aren’t surprised?” I said.

“Not really. One of my women was commandeered by Shuttle Division this morning. They wanted to test out the Mercedes, see about modifying it to be hyperbaric at earth-normal pressure. Sounded rather like a trip to Earth was in the works. I’d have been surprised only if you weren’t going to be aboard.”

“You didn’t want to ask us first,” Dan finally said.

“We’ve talked about it before.”

“Not as a certainty; not as a real choice.”

“She doesn’t really have a choice,” John said. “Do you.”

I took Dan’s hand. “No, not really. Can’t you see?”

“You’re throwing away Janus.” He was looking at a point somewhere over my left shoulder. “The chance to be Policy Coordinator aboard.”

“You know that was never my main ambition. Head stewardess.” Then I thought of something that hadn’t occurred to me earlier. “Besides, I can still spend some time on the project; keep my hand in. It doesn’t make any difference whether my terminal is here or in New York.”

“That’s true,” John said. “Once you get the self-help operation under way, you could start dividing your time. Cover all your bets.” We both looked at Dan expectantly.

“What happens when the ship leaves? And you’re still on Earth?”

“I’ll only be gone six months.”

“This time. If it works you know it won’t be the last.”

No percentage in being evasive. “If it works…well, I’ll have a new job. Most likely here, rather than dirtside. But no, I won’t be aboard Newhome. Will you, if I’m here?”

“I—” He bit off what he was going to say and stood abruptly. “I need time to think.” He tried to stalk out, but in a quarter gee all you can do is mince. He left behind half a glass of wine, which was unusual.

I divided his wine between us and waited for John to say something. “Maybe I should talk to him,” he said. “Keep him from being impulsive.”

“No. I want to see what he decides on his own.”

“It might well be divorce. Or at least a ninety-eight-year trial separation.”

“We’ll see. What about you?”

John shrugged with the glass in his hand; some wine flowed out and he carefully moved the glass underneath to catch it. “I’ll stay, of course. I don’t know whether I love you more than Dan does,” he said quietly, “but I need you more. I need you a lot more than I need the diversion of Janus.”

A telling word choice, diversion. Dan and John were equal in authority in the project, but to John it was ultimately just something to do. Increasingly, Dan lived for it.

We finished our wine and John invited me up to his flat, even though Thursday was usually Daniel’s. I really wanted to go with him, tenderness as well as cowardice, but that would have made things worse.

The lights were off in our room. I eased the door shut even though I could tell, with the extra sense married people evolve, that Dan wasn’t sleeping. Left my clothes in a pile on the floor and slipped in beside him.

After a minute he rolled over, turning his back to me. “Still thinking?” I said.

“You know I never could argue with you. Anything I say is going to sound selfish.”

“And anything I say, what? Betrayal?”

The sheet rustled as he shifted. I could feel him staring at the ceiling. “That’s your word.” He held his breath for a moment. “No. I just…I really don’t know how to say what I feel.”

I touched his arm; he didn’t respond. “Just talk.”

“You know how John and I felt when you went down to Africa? How you just disappeared and the next thing we knew…”

“I didn’t have any choice. We weren’t allowed to tell anyone.”

“I know, I know; that’s not it. And before, with the quarantine, the strange years you were talking with… Earth—and even before, before we were married, when you first went dirtside. Oh hell. I don’t know how to put it.”

I’d never heard him talk like this, odd soft monotone. “I don’t think I see what you’re getting at. You were worried—”

“Worried, yes, but that’s not it.” He suddenly sat up; I could feel him draw his feet up so he was hugging his knees. “One of the last letters you wrote me before the war—no, it was a letter to John—you said that sometimes you had an intuition that—what was it?—that you were somehow fated. You talked about times of change, about Franklin and the American colonies. That from your study of history you saw a consistent pattern, individuals who were caught up by some… inexorable historical force. Who didn’t make history so much as serve it.”

“I remember. But that was just a girl’s fantasy, an egotistical—”

“And mystical claptrap besides. So I said. It seems nevertheless to be coming true, year by year. If something happens, you’re there.”

“I haven’t tried to reconcile the colonies with the home country. I haven’t even invented the lightning rod.”

“That’s not the point. You haven’t been in a position of power, not yet. But you’re a locus, a nexus. Things happen around you.”

I laughed, maybe nervously. “I can’t believe this is my rationalist husband talking.”