“Of course I’ll be there,” was Keene’s immediate response.
He called Allender while Sariena was still connected from the Osiris, and Allender’s answer was equally unhesitating and affirmative. So at least it seemed they were back in with a chance. But it was going to be a nasty fight.
Leo Cavan confirmed as much when he called Keene at home late that night. He’d heard that Keene had been recruited to help the Kronian cause. “I don’t know what else you’ve been saying, Landen, but you’ve certainly stirred up a hornet’s nest,” was the further piece of information he had to proffer. “I’ve been hearing your name all over the place today, and not with the friendliest of connotations. I have a bit of advice: Tread very carefully, Landen. Check that none of your library books are overdue, make sure not to roll through any stop signs, and don’t even look in the direction of a female who’s under age. There are departments in the bureaucratic netherworld of this fair capital of ours that specialize in dredging up sleaze, and some of the things they come up with would astound you. You are targeted for anything they can get on you. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with the scientific case. If I can find anything specific that they’re onto, I’ll let you know, but it’s hardly the kind of information they leave lying around. In any case, don’t underestimate these people, Landen. They can be frighteningly effective.”
19
Keene found himself constructing visions of gleaming metal cities and icy landscapes under star-filled skies; of strange habitats orbiting above distant moons; the hugeness of Saturn seen from outside its ring system. He tried to imagine life where science was not dominated by preconceptions, and to grasp the puzzling yet alluring culture with its different concept of value.
All he was trying to do was get Earth’s institutions to acknowledge the possibility that they could be wrong about something vitally important to the entire future of the human race. Yet the response was to be ridiculed, shouted down, and now, it seemed, viewed like some kind of political threat to the nation’s security. He analyzed his own feelings to ask himself if he was serious about giving Earth up as a lost cause if this attempt failed, and leaving to start anew in Kronia.
He didn’t try to deny that his thoughts about a new world and a new life included an element of intrigue for Sariena. Talking to Fey had brought home how fully he had immersed himself in his work at the expense of any meaningful personal life since they split up—not that it had been remarkably great before. So perhaps new challenge and adventure in a different direction was just what his life needed. It surely wouldn’t be before time. He thought back over his conversations with Sariena, looking to see if there was anything that, with a bit of wishful thinking, he could read as hints or leaders that might have failed to permeate his pragmatic engineer’s filter of awareness. With someone from a culture that had to be described as alien, it was difficult to tell. At other times he grew impatient with himself, asking what reason she might have for harboring any interest in him that went beyond the professional. . . . But on the other hand, why should that have to be a prerequisite to anything? These things had to start somewhere. Sometimes he caught himself half hoping that the talks would come to nothing and give him a reason for making the break.
Yet, for all that, another part of him deeper down was uncomfortable, and the only honest admission was that he didn’t know why. He wanted to rationalize that it would be quitting and he wasn’t a quitter, but he knew there was more to it. Because it would be “abandoning” Vicki and Robin, somehow? There was no reason, really, why that should be. He had never let a relationship develop with Vicki in a way that might have implied some kind of commitment, and certainly she had never indicated that she felt he owed her any. And yet it was true that he had drifted into something of a role with them, he supposed, especially where Robin was concerned, even if as little more than an emotional anchor and a psychological prop over the years. But reason and emotion communicate on different wires that don’t cross. Had he anticipated this situation a long time ago and avoided any involvement with Vicki precisely to give himself a moral escape hatch now? If so, then had the entire part he’d been acting out for months about caring what Earth did been a charade manufactured to prop up his self-respect, while all along he waited for the time to come when he would follow the course that he had already chosen?