Her eyelashes fluttered. “Thank you, Torben.” Then she looked straight at him and said, “You’ll do best to take up your life again as soon as possible.”
“No argument there,” he must agree. “One thing I won’t miss is all this sitting around on my ass.”
She raised her brows. “Why, what would you rather use?”
He grinned and shrugged. She did have a sense of humor, or, at least, she knew how to put one on, like a dress. Like anything purely human?
She turned earnest. “Have you considered what you’ll do?”
“N-no. Been turning some notions over, but I never was one [162] to think really far ahead. Except—” he blurted, “I’d like to come back here once in a while and see you again.”
She shook her head. “No,” she told him gravely. “That would be very inadvisable, Torben.”
“Why?”
“For you.”
Heartbreak? he wondered. Or confusion, or what? Would she even exist anymore as this woman I’ve sort of known? She’s maybe been only one—well, incarnation of her whole self. I don’t know. I doubt if I ever will.
Once, when they’d grazed seriousness, she’d said, “The future is intellect.” Thereupon she’d glided off the matter. Harking back, he suspected the remark had not been accidental. They, or it, or whatever reigned on Earth, had probably judged—one of their carefully reasoned, millisecond judgments—it was best not to let the patient get above himself, not to give him hopes that were bound to be broken. Old-fashioned, purely organic life had reached its limits.
Or so they believed.
Maybe they did.
As if directly sensing his flicker of resentment and rebellion, Avi smiled anew, took his hand—how slender hers was!—and said, “You won’t care about that when you’ve heard what I’ve got to tell you.”
He let go of all larger questions—did they matter to him, anyway?—and stared. Yeah, he thought through a quickened pulsebeat, there’s no sort of regular interstellar news channel, but word does get around, and I imagine Earth keeps alert, the way I’d keep alert for outside things while I’m mainly piloting a ship. “Say on. Please.”
Her steady voice overwhelmed him: the black hole collision, observed at close range by Susaians and by humans from Asborg, preliminary data speeding forth over the scientific grapevine. “Hey, Judas priest, sensational!” burst from him. “Have you folks sent a mission out for a good look?”
[163] Her voice cooled. “No, that’s not necessary.”
Why not? tumbled through him. Did the Earth-mind have the whole thing figured out beforehand? Or doesn’t it give a damn anymore about anything but its quantum navel?
No, that’s unfair, downright stupid. I’m like a rat in a maze wondering why the experimenter doesn’t want to run it too and find the cheese.
The sheer archaism of his symbol was a shocking reminder.
He heard Avi: “But I daresay that in the next several years there’ll be quite a bit of activity in the neighborhood. Somebody like you could find a way to make a profit off that.” Her laugh trilled. “And have fun.”
Again his misgivings died down. And see Lissa Windholm, he thought. Though what I could actually do—
It struck him like a fist. He stood amazed.
Avi cocked her head. “Seems like you’ve suddenly had an idea.”
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled. “I, I’d rather not say anything. It’s too vague yet. Probably too far-fetched.”
“I understand,” answered the warmth he had come to know so well.
Do you completely? he couldn’t help wondering. If I can get this notion, others can. If the Earth-mind is interested at all, it will have already. Has her link with it told her?
He pulled himself away from that, back to the allurement before him. “Yes,” she said low. “An adventurer, a loner. You’ll want to take off straightaway, I’m sure. But—Torben, could you wait to make ready till tomorrow? We ought to have a little farewell party first, the two of us.”
“You betcha!” he answered half gladly.
XXXI
HOW often had she stood with her father on the watchtower at Ernhurst while they talked—casually, merrily, sadly, intensely, starkly, always lovingly—just the two of them? Lissa had not kept count, any more than she kept count of her heartbeats.