Keene nodded. “But I’ve got too much going on right now. In any case, I need my own space.”
Cavan indicated the upward direction with a motion of his head. “You mean there isn’t enough for you out there?” He studied Keene for a few seconds, swirling his glass. “Are you sure you’re not keeping your options open until you see how the land lies with that other lady you’ve had hovering on the fringes of your life for a while?” Keene frowned at him, perplexed. “The one who’d be a natural for the lead in a Queen-of-Sheba movie,” Cavan hinted.
Keene stared. “My God! Are you talking about Sariena?”
“I am, of course. Why act surprised?”
“What on earth makes you think that?”
“Excitement. Something different. The allure of the alien and unknown.” Cavan’s talonlike hands broke apart a bread roll and commenced buttering one of the pieces. “A perfectly understandable reaction, Landen—especially for somebody of your adventurous disposition. I mean, you’ve been in communication since before the Osiris left Saturn.” He paused, glanced up as if to be sure Keene was listening, and then went on, making his voice casual. “I could see your point, after all. She really is stunning. Everyone I talked to thought so when we were with the Kronians last night.”
“What?” It hit Keene only then that this was Cavan’s strange way of leading around to the subject he had wanted to discuss. And it had worked. Keene couldn’t deny that his first reaction was a twinge of resentment. “You’ve met her already?”
The meals arrived then, and Keene was able to let his surprise abate while plates and dishes were positioned, covers removed, and the glasses refilled. Having had his fun, Cavan became more serious. “I was at another dinner on Friday: the official White House reception for the Kronians—to be introduced to my `marks,’ for want of a better word.” He eyed Keene suggestively for a moment, as if inviting a response. Keene waited. Cavan explained, “The department has come up with a new angle on what an investigator does. Now, it appears, I’m supposed to cultivate the confidence of our guests of state, the purpose being to spy on them. It’s getting to be a tacky world that we live in, isn’t it, Landen?”
Unable to make anything of this so far, Keene merely motioned for him to continue.
“I’m one of several persons who have been assigned positions as official host representatives—tour guides, if you will—who will have constant contact with the Kronians. Our brief is to get close to them in order to get as much advance information as we can to help our own negotiators shoot them down.” Keene’s hand stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. Cavan nodded somberly. “It’s a nonstarter, Landen. A policy ruling has already been made that Earth isn’t buying the Kronian line. Our side’s only interest is to discredit the whole business and get it out of the public limelight as quickly as possible.” For the moment, Keene was too stunned to do more than stare. He looked down at his plate and found that suddenly he didn’t feel so hungry anymore. Cavan added after a few seconds, “Sorry if I’ve spoiled your dinner. The tab’s on me, if that helps.”
There was a silence. Finally, Keene said, “What’s going on, Leo? Are they all blind or something?”
“It’s not so much a case of being blind as of not wanting to see,” Cavan replied over his soup. “You know the way things work in this business. The academic establishment sees the Kronians as invaders of its turf and a huge potential threat to traditional funding—which has been thinned down in recent years in any case. Government science sold out long ago to become an instrument for justifying government policy, and nobody on the Hill wants to talk about the expense. For the private sector the investment would be colossal, and the return on it just isn’t there. That’s why the space program was shifted to a lower gear in the first place.”
Keene shook his head disbelievingly. “One day, none of that’s going to matter. This is something we can’t afford not to do. I mean, we’re not talking about selling laundry detergent here, Leo. Maybe we have to learn something from the Kronians. The know-how and the ability is there, and it’s something that needs to be done. So you forget all the shopkeeper economics, and you just do it.”