"I'm no goddam Green," Jenny said.

"Sorry." Curtis actually sounded apologetic. "Anyway--"

"Anyway, Adams," Harry said, "she knows who her friends are. So do I. Have a jug of corn. Real moonbeams."

"Jenny likes to feel wanted," Fang said. "She's not comfortable unless she's wanted by the law."

Jenny grinned, and sang,

"Wanted fan in Luna City, wanted fan on Dune and Down,

Wanted fan at Ophiuchus, wanted fan in Dydeetown.

All across the sky they want me, am I flattered?

Yes I am!

If I could just reach orbit, then I'd be a wanted

fan."

"… and in the midst of the Thirty-Sixth Ice Age, we were lighting global smudge pots. Wood-burning during the Middle Ages was so intensive that the forests of Europe were actually smaller than in the twentieth century. Coalburning, which began in the fifteenth century, saved the forests and put even more gunk into the air. By the late nineteenth century, most homes were heated by coal furnaces." Lutenist paused and rubbed his hands together, as if imagining heat vents and radiators.

A line had formed. Veggies disappeared as they moved past Alex. Almost everyone who passed put something in Alex's mouth. Dark red was miniature tomatoes; Alex feared the implications. The red-and-white spheroid burned.

Jenny sang,

"Wanted fan for mining coal and wanted fan for drilling oil,

I went very fast through Portland, hunted hard like Gully Foyle.

Built reactors in Seattle against every man's advice,

Couldn't do that in Alaska, Fonda says it isn't nice."

"Nice touch, Jenny. They'll be expecting you to rhyme it with 'ice.' "

"You don't really think the nukes could have saved Alaska, do you Jenny?"

Alaska had been beneath the Ice for fifteen years.

"… Then, beginning in the 1950s, we began to clean up our environment. Household coal furnaces gave way to centralized electric heating; and pollution was confined to the power plant areas, instead of belching from every chimney in the city. The famous pea-soup fogs of London disappeared."

Lutenist smiled wanly. "But so did the warm, rainy British winters. Heavy winters became the norm. In 1984 and '85 several campers froze to death when a blizzard struck the Riviera. Atlanta, Georgia, had a week of zero temperatures. Winter snow became common in the southlands. Meanwhile, the Sahara resumed its southward march and Ukrainian grain harvests became less and less reliable. Raindrops need tiny particles around which to condense. So, when you eliminate air pollution, what happens?"

"Less rain!" cried the audience.

"And less cloud cover means the ground loses heat faster. And that means?"

"The Great Ice!"

"Ice day is a'comin'," Jenny and Harry sang softly. "Hey sinner man, where you gonna run to--" It made a nice background, now, for Gregory's litany.

"Yes, my friends." Lutenist was walking back and forth in front of the piano. "The elimination of air pollution did not start with the Greens. It started with the Big Power Companies back in the fifties--as a by-product of their program of clean, centralized electrical power generation. But it accelerated with the environmentalist movement. Soon, we were not allowed to burn the leaves we raked off our yards. We had to bag them, in plastic bags, of course! And have them hauled away by trucks to landfills hundreds of miles away. The Green Laws became more and more stringent at the same time that interest in and support for science was waning--not a coincidence, I might add. Even today, with the Great Ice and the Sahara both sliding south, we are not allowed to throw another log on the fire!"

"Damned good thing!" Jenny Trout shouted.

Everyone looked at her.

"It's got to fall," she said. "All the way. We don't like this world we made! Bring it down! Bring it down!"

Harry had taken out his guitar. He struck a chord.

"Black powder and alcohol, when your states and cities fall, when your back's against the wall-"

Alex shuddered.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"… Someone's Daydream"

The Phantom of the Paradise leaped out of the TV screen, as the audience, as always, made helpful comments. Sherrine pretended to watch as her thoughts leaped more wildly than the masked phantom.

Sending the Angels home wouldn't be simple even if they had a ship. Some of it she could do. With Bob to analyze the ballistics she ought to be able to write the code. Some would be tougher. Fuel. They'd have to steal that.

First things first. Without a ship, everything else was moot.

Bob came into the lounge. Had he followed her? When he waved at her and headed in her direction, she sighed.

He was wearing his Rotsler badge. A cartoon face studied the SS ROBERT K. NEEDLETON and thought, "Pretentious." The sharp nose partly covered the letters. Bob dropped beside her on the sofa, just close enough to be within her personal space, and put an arm on the back of the sofa behind her. He leaned close to her ear. "Any ideas yet?"

He certainly had ideas. A couple of fen sitting nearby grinned at her. Oh, Ghu! she thought. After tonight, everyone will think we're back together.

To some men, "no" meant "maybe" and "maybe" meant "yes." She hadn't seen Bob in two months; now she couldn't get rid of him. He was cheerfully impervious to her rebuffs; as if he were not programmed to accept the data. Like Halley's Comet, no matter how shaken up he was at each encounter, he kept coming back. Only he didn't wait seventy-six years.

Not that he was unattractive. He had been among her better lovers, back in the days when she hung out with the spa set. And maybe she only needed to get used to him again. He had known how to do things in a hot tub that… For that matter, he knew how to talk with a woman, not simply at her. He had been as interested in hearing about her computer work--about LISP and LAN's and baud rates--as he was in telling her about his physics. There was only one thing he seemed incapable of understanding.

And that was endings.

Bob was a romantic. Most men were. They thought that a relationship had a beginning and a middle, but no end. Danny, the time traveler in The Man Who Folded Himself, had made that mistake. He kept going back and going back, trying to rekindle the romance with Donna; until finally he had kindled disgust and revulsion in her. The secret was to quit while you were at the top go out like a champion and not fade into an object of pity like a has-been fighter who couldn't quit the ring.

She didn't want that to happen between her and Bob. She liked him too much. So keep it neutral. Keep it professional.

"You know, that Gordon is kind of cute," she said. And how was that for a neutral, professional remark?

His arm made an aborted move toward her shoulder. "Oh?"

"Yes." She spoke in a whisper. "Not just his background--a space pilot, by Ghu!--but the way he looks. His facial bones and his little potbelly. And his puppy-dog eyes. He always seems so sad and withdrawn, it makes me want to cuddle him and cheer him up."

"Umm. I'm feeling a little sad and withdrawn myself," Bob said hopefully.

She slapped him backfingered on the arm. "Oh, you know what I mean. He seems so lonely, cut off forever from his home and his friends."

"It was his fault they were marooned, you know."

"What?" She had raised her voice slightly and someone sitting in a nearby chair shushed her. She lowered her voice and leaned closer to Bob. Bob helped her do that. "What do you mean?"

"He told me so himself." Bob whispered into her ear as if they were necking; and she flashed back to three nights ago, when he had woken her from the sleep of the innocent to recruit her into the Rescue Party. A good cover, he had said, in case anyone was listening. Yeah, a damned good cover. He probably thought of it himself. "This morning, when I brought them breakfast… Doc had taken 'Gabe' into the washroom to, uh, well, help him… you know."