He sipped the cooling caff and watched the anoles creep about the foliage in quest of the small nuisances that lived below them on the food chain. Top predators in a bubble world. They, like Kathy, were not fierce, on other scales. Like Kathy, they conceived no higher threat in the universe than themselves.
He still loved his daughter. He wasn’t sure about Judy this morning. He hadn’t been that confident about that transaction for quite a long while. He suddenly reached that conclusion, curiously, without overmuch pain. Like Kathy, Judy had her bubble. It wasn’t his. Unlike Kathy’s, he knew what Judy’s looked like, and he’d been reluctant to live there, from long before he married her.
A governor needed a spouse. Absolutely needed one. That had been the transaction. Earth believed in traditional values. It might be a reconstructed reality, crashed, oh, so many times during the long hegemony, but if it was anything, it was traditional, and it was what people wanted to feel safe.
Damn Gide anyway. Him and histraveling environment, as if anything out here was going to wreck Earth’s purity. As if the taps were spreading formulae and processes for deadly nanoceles that were going to spread throughout humanity.
“Listen,” he’d say, if Gide could possibly listen, “let’s just go to the club and have a drink. Let’s solve whatever you came here to fix or find. I can tell you nobody’s going to do a thing like that. It can’t make anybody any money, and money’s what drives the smuggling operations.
“Believe me,” he’d say, further, if Gide would believe anything he hadn’t, himself, experienced, “Concord’s still here. Earth’s ages come and go, in all this fear of contamination. And we’ve lived for ages out here, right above the source—we’ve lived with every fault and failure of the system. We’ve lived with ondataccidents and Movement sabotage, way back in our history, and we survive very handily, still human after ages of exposure, no side effects…”
Well, he’d tried to make that point, regarding the gardens. And to keep him out of view of an Outsider populace that experimented on itself in its long personal progress toward remediation. An Outsider populace that was, in general, colorful and in damned good physical shape, give or take the grotesques’ bad judgment or bad taste. Illicits didn’trun rampant on Concord Station, thank you, as much because the populace was educated about their hazards as because station police chased down each and every outbreak. Outsiders weren’t a splinter of humanity, some artificial second species. They were healthy, trim, fit, and they still bred true from station to station, or with Earthers, if one was foolish enough. They were in such fit shape it made an honest governor who’d had one too many desserts wish he dared take on a few long-term nanisms to sculpt his own youth back, but never say that to the ambassador. Never admit any such thoughts.
He hadused short-term nanotech for approved medical reasons. He’d taken the viral treatment to retain his thinning hair. Earth allowed that much for its own citizens.
But those extra desserts were their own protection, weren’t they? A Concord governor couldn’t afford to look toogood when one of these types came calling. Unexpected attractiveness, a good-looking middle age, who knew? It might end up as a sin in some secret report.
Three more days. They’d pack Mr. Gide onto his ship and wave him a fond good-bye. And there wouldn’tbe any proof that Project taps were passing technological secrets. The Outsiders weren’t fools.
He hoped Dortland moved fast. He hoped they found Kathy before she made a misjudgment that wouldn’t lethim take her back under his roof—before she landed in a hospital bed. If it weren’t for Gide, damn him, he’d be personally on Kathy’s case. Give him one address where she’d just used that card, and he’d be there. He’d talk to her. He’d take her shopping for some look she could live with, he’d buy her an ice cream the way he’d used to, and they’d reach an understanding about her mother, and her sessions, and so many things, so many issues he’d postponed dealing with, all because he’d tried to take Judy’s side and not Kathy’s for years.
That had been a terrible mistake. He saw that, now, clear as clear. And he knew what he had to do about it now to preserve the peace. Not a divorce. It was late in his life to create a scandal. But a very different understanding was going to exist in his household.
In three more days, when Mr. Gide’s ship was a blip outbound and out of his life.
7
0837 H. Procyon dressed in the sober shirt, the solemn coat. Breakfast wasn’t sitting any better on his stomach than the 0400h caff had done, and he tried not to think further ahead than he had to.
0842h. He checked the mirror in the bath and had a wild moment’s fantasy, as the Old Man had suggested, of calling in sick—sick with something disgusting and of at least a week’s duration. The way he felt, he could almost qualify. His head felt fuzzy. He wanted to go back to bed and try for the several hours’ sleep he hadn’t gotten. But he wouldn’t sleep if he did, and he was in it too deep to try to dodge it now.
On the other hand, he promised his bleary-eyed reflection, if he got through early with this interview, he could take this one day, maybe tomorrow, satisfy everybody, make the Director very pleased with him, try to settle the mess with Ardath, and maybe be back where he wanted to be, in his own downstairs office, by the time this ship left port—maybe even late-shift tomorrow if the report was what they wanted and if he could keep his eyes open. If he just got through this one day without knocking into politics he didn’t want to know about, and lived through the debriefing, then he could tell Brazis all about his sister’s visit before Brazis told him. He could put it in the best light, and come out clean. It was all he asked. Just back to the job and no blowup.
He was about to go down to the door when he noticed a blinking light on the entertainment unit.
Messages. Physical line. He didn’t have Sam report on them—usually they were social messages coming in from that source. He’d get the list when he had time to handle it, see if it was anyone he wanted to talk to. His friends all accepted that he was rotten about messages. It wouldn’t be anything.
No. He couldn’t stand it. This morning, of all mornings, he had to be sure. He punched the button to get the ID.
His mother.
The anniversary call had ricocheted. The crystal egg and his excuses had, two of them, and nothing had dissuaded her.
Or it could be an emergency. A problem. A health problem. He punched in.
“Jeremy, dear, thank you so much. I know you’re busy, but you have to eat. You don’t have to bring anything. Aunt Melody is bringing that fruit salad.
“Do you suppose you can get your sister to come?…”
God. It was 0858. He had two minutes to get to the lift station. He left the message still playing.
“Down, Sam.”
He descended. He walked out his door and lit out of the close at high speed, down Grozny and up Lebeau. He didn’t need to run, quite. But he couldn’t slow down.
He was out of breath when he arrived at the lift station, so out of breath he leaned a hand against the wall beside the lift call, in among half a dozen others waiting for a car.