He was returning to normal. Which is to say, totally abnormal.

I sighed. “Sure. We can go to the Geotron.”

That sounded like the end of it, but it wasn’t. We were in the submersible, cruising back to Ernesto Kugel’s lab, while I wondered what story I was going to tell. Probably I’d say nothing. I’d pretend I had a nice pleasant tour, and leave it to Anna Griss to tell it otherwise.

Then McAndrew started up again.

“Jeanie. You really wouldn’t have killed her, would you? No matter what.”

I reached out and stroked his cheek. “Of course not. But can we drop it now? You and I ought to be celebrating our survival. Maybe we ought to act on Ernesto Kugel’s suggestion — his first one.”

It came out as flat and artificial as it sounds, and it didn’t fool McAndrew for one moment. He gave me a wary, weary look, and leaned back in his seat. But it did accomplish my objective. It shut off a line of conversation that I was afraid to pursue.

Because one thing I’ve learned in life is that a person never knows her own invariants. I thought I knew the answer to McAndrew’s question, but I wasn’t positive. That terrible rage, the all-consuming fury that I felt when Anna Griss was poised on the edge of the pit… if she had been a little more resistant, just a little tougher and more defiant — then who knows what I would have done?

Not I.

But one thing I did know for sure. I was not going to discuss that sort of thing with McAndrew. Ever.

He’s a dear, and he’s super-smart, and in almost every way I can think of he is wonderful. But he’s also like most people who spend their lives studying the nature of the Universe.

He can only take a tiny little bit of reality.

SEVENTH CHRONICLE: Rogueworld

The laws of probability not only permit coincidences; they absolutely insist on them.

I was sitting in the pilot’s chair with McAndrew at my shoulder. Neither of us had spoken for a long time. We were in low polar orbit, sweeping rapidly across the surface of Vandell with all pod sensors wide open. I don’t know what McAndrew was thinking, but my mind was not fully on the displays. Part of me was far away — one and a quarter light-years away, back on Earth.

Why not? Our attention here was not necessary. The surveillance sensors were linked to the shipboard main computer, and the work was done automatically. If anything new turned up we would hear of it at once. But nothing new could happen — nothing that mattered.

For the moment, I needed time to myself. Time to think about Jan; to remember her seventeen years, as a baby, as a slender child, as a fierce new intelligence, as a young woman; time to resent the chain of circumstance that had brought her and Sven Wicklund here, to die. Somewhere below these opalescent clouds, down on the cold surface of the planet, our sensor systems were seeking two corpses. Nothing else mattered.

I knew that McAndrew shared my sorrow, but he handled it in a different way. His attention was focused on the data displays, in a concentration so intense that my presence didn’t matter at all. His eyes lacked all expression. Every couple of minutes he shook his head and muttered to himself: “This makes no sense — no sense at all.”

I stared at the screen in front of me, where the dark vortex had again appeared. It came and went, clearly visible on some passes, vanished on others. Now it looked like a funnel, a sooty conical channel down through the glowing atmosphere, the only break in the planet’s swirling cloud cover. We had passed right over it twice before, the first time with rising hopes; but the sensors had remained quiet. It was not a signal. It had to be a natural feature, something like Jupiter’s Red Spot, some random coincidence of twisting gas streams.

Coincidence. Again, coincidence. “The laws of probability not only permit coincidences; they absolutely insist on them.”

I couldn’t get McAndrew’s words out of my head.

He had spoken them months ago, on a day that I would never forget. It was Jan’s seventeenth birthday, the first time of choice. I was down on Earth, choking on the dense air, meeting with the new head of External Affairs.

McAndrew was at his office at the Penrose Institute. We were both trying to work, but I for one wasn’t succeeding too well. I wondered what was going through Jan’s head, waiting for graduation from the Luna System.

“Naturally, there will have to be some changes,” Tallboy was saying. “That’s to be expected, I’m sure you’ll agree. We are reviewing all programs, and though I am sure that my predecessor and I” — for the third time he had avoided using Woolford’s name — “agree on overall objectives, we may have slightly different priorities.”

Dr. Tallboy was a tall man, with a lofty brow and a keen, intellectual eye. Although we had shaken hands and muttered the conventional greetings a couple of times before, this was our first working meeting.

I pulled my wandering attention back to him. “When will the program review be finished?”

He shook his head and smiled broadly (but there were no laugh lines around his eyes). “As I’m sure you know very well, Captain Roker, these things take time. There has been a change of Administration. We have many new staff to train. There have been new Budget cuts, too, and the Office of External Affairs has suffered more than most. We will continue all the essential programs, be assured of that. But it is also my mandate to expend public funds wisely, and that cannot be done in haste.”

“What about the Penrose Institute’s experimental programs?” I said — a bit abruptly, but so far Tallboy had offered nothing more than general answers. I knew I couldn’t afford to seem impatient, but my meeting wouldn’t last much longer.

He hesitated, then sneaked a quick look at the crib sheets of notes in front of him on the desk. It didn’t seem to help, because when he looked up the fine and noble brow was wrinkled in perplexity.

“I’m thinking particularly of the Alpha Centauri expedition,” I prompted him. “Dr. Tallboy, a quick go-ahead on that means a great deal to us.”

“Of course.” He was nodding at me seriously. “A great deal. Er, I’m not completely familiar with that particular activity, you understand. But I assure you, as soon as my staff review is completed…”

Our meeting lasted fifteen more minutes, but long before that I felt I had failed. I had come here to push for a decision, to persuade Tallboy that the program should go ahead as planned and approved by Woolford; but bureaucratic changes had changed everything. Forget the fact that McAndrew and I had been planning the Alpha Centauri expedition for a year; forget the fact that the Hoatzin had been provisioned, fuelled, and inspected, and the flight plans filed long since with the USF. Forget the masses of new observational equipment that we had loaded onto the ship with such loving care. That had been under the old Administration. When the new one came in everything had to start again from scratch. And not one damned thing I could do about it.

I did manage to extract one promise from Tallboy before he ushered me out with polite assurances of his interest and commitment to the Institute’s work. He would visit the Institute personally, as soon as his schedule permitted. It wasn’t anything to celebrate, but it was all I could squeeze out of him.

“He’ll visit here in person?” said McAndrew — I had run for the phone as soon as I cleared the Office of External Affairs. “Do you think he’ll do it?”

I nodded. “I didn’t leave it up to him. I saw his secretary on the way out, and made sure that we’re in the book. He’ll do it.”