I figured the crew and owners ùd be friendly. Why shouldn’t they be? At a minimum, they’d help Emissary return after her mission was completed. And in that case, why not send them home close to the same date as they left?”
“I’ve heard your argument,” Hancock said, “but only after you began agitating. If you felt it was that plausible, that important, why didn’t you file a report beforehand with the appropriate bureau?”
Brodersen shrugged. “Why should I? The idea wasn’t absolutely unique to me. Besides, I’m a private citizen.”
She gave him a narrow look. “The wealthiest man on Demeter is not altogether a private citizen.”
“I’m small potatoes next to the rich on Earth,” he replied blandly.
“Like the Rueda clan in Peth -with whom you have a business as well as family relationship. No, you are not entirely a private citizen.”
Still she stared at him. He sat back, cradling the warmth of his pipe bowl, and let her. Not that he had illusions about his handsomeness. He was a big man, a hundred and eighty-eight centimeters tall and thickboned, muscular, broad in the shoulders, deep in the chest; but of late years he had added girth till he appeared stocky. His head was likewise massive, mesocephalic, squarefaced, with heavy jaw and mouth, jutting Roman nose, eyes gray, wideset, downward-slanted, crow’s-footed, skin weathered and furrowed. Like most men on Demeter, he went clean-shaven and cropped his hair above the ears; it was straight, coarse, black with some white streaks, a last inheritance from his great-grandmother. For this meeting, as for most occasions, he wore casual colonial male garb: bolero of orosaur leather above a loose blouse, baggy pants tucked into soft halfboots, wide belt holding assorted small tools and instruments in its loops plus a sheath knife.
Side 10
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
“Regardless,” he said, keeping his amicable tone, “I don’t know of any laws I’ve broken, nor bent unrepairably far out of shape.”
“Don’t be too cocksure about that,” she warned.
“Hm, maybe we’d better run through the story from the beginning, and see if you can point out where I went illegal. Otherwise, relax and enjoy.”
Brodersen took a breath before he continued: “I thought, and mentioned to miscellaneous people, that Emissary might come back early. Few paid me much heed. Yes, as you’ve guessed, I did sponsor that robot observer the Foundation sent to study the T machine-but it was mainly doing legitimate scientific work, and I’ve yet to get a satisfactory explanation of why it was required to take up such a distant orbit.
“Hold, if you will. Let me rant for a minute longer.” Though his eyelids crinkled, belying the imperious note, his voice tramped on. “Space regs don’t demand that research plans be explained in detail. And what harm in keeping a lens cocked for Emissary, anyway? You accuse me of deception? Blazes, Aurie,
`twas the other way around!
“Just the same, after a few months the observer did return, and beamed a message to the station it was supposed to, under certain circumstances. I called you and asked-sort of tactfully, I think- if you knew anything about the matter.
You said no. I checked with Earth, and everybody I contacted there said no too.
Now I’d hate to call them all liars. Especially you, Aurie. Nevertheless, today you invited me down for a confidential discussion, which seems to be about gagging me.”
She straightened in her chair, gripped her desktop, and defied him: “You were jumping to conclusions from the start. Absurd conclusions.”
“Must I run barefoot through the cowbarn for you?” His note of patience was not spontaneous; he had planned his tactics en route to this house.
“Directly or indirectly, you’ve got to have heard my reasoning before. But okay, herètis again.”
She pulled smoke into her lungs and waited. He thought fleetingly how much human discourse was like this, barren repetition if not mere tom-tom beat, and wondered if the Others were free of the necessity, if they could speak straight to a meaningful point.
“The robot spotted a Reina-class transport popping out of a gate,” he said. “Sure, it was too far off to identify the ship, but we humans have built nothing bigger and the shape was right. Either that was a Reina or it was a nonhuman vessel of the same general kind. The robot then tracked Faraday closing in on the newcomer, and then tracked them both as they followed the Phoebus-to-Sol guidepath. That was enough for its program to decide it should come home and report.