The one wall of this room that wasn’t window featured ten paintings, five each of human and Tauran manufacture. The human ones were bland cityscapes in the various seasons. The Tauran things were skeins and splotches of colors that clashed so much they seemed to vibrate. I knew that some of them were pigmented with body fluids. They were evidently prettier if you could see into the ultraviolet.
At some subtle signal, they all set down their copies of the schedule in unison.
“We have no objection to this as far as it goes,” said the leftmost Man. She betrayed her lack of telepathy by glancing down the row; the others nodded slightly, including the Tauran. “The days when you need both shuttles will be an inconvenience, but we can plan around them.”
” `…as far as it goes’?” Marygay said.
“We should have told you this earlier,” she said, “but it must be obvious. We will require that you take two more passengers. A Man and a Tauran.”
Of course. We’d known about the Man, and should have foreseen the Tauran. “The Man is not a big problem,” I said. “He or she can eat our food. But ten years of rations for a Tauran?” I did a quick mental calculation. “That’s an extra six or eight tonnes of cargo.”
“No, it is not a problem,” Antres 906 rasped. “My metabolism can be altered to survive on your food, with a few grams of supplement daily.”
“You can see the value of this to us,” the Man said.
“Now that I think of it, of course,” I said. “Both of your species may change somewhat in forty thousand years. You want a pair of time travelers as baselines.” Marygay shook her head slowly, biting her lower lip. “We’ll have to change the makeup of the crew. No disrespect, Antres, but there are many veterans who could not tolerate your presence for ten hours, let alone ten years.”
“And in any case, we can’t guarantee your safety,” I said. “Many of us were conditioned to kill your kind on sight.”
“But they have all been de-conditioned,” Man said.
I thought of Max, slated as assistant civil engineer. “With uneven success, I’m afraid.”
“That is understood and forgiven,” Antres said. “If that part of the experiment fails, then it fails.” It turned to the last page of the report and tapped on the diagram of the cargo cylinder. “I can make a small place to live down here. That way your people will not be exposed to me often or involuntarily.”
“That’s workable,” I said. “Send us a list of things you’ll need, and we’ll integrate them into the loading schedule.” The rest was formalities, having a small cup of strong coffee and a glass of spirits with the Men. The Tauran disappeared and came back in a few minutes with his list. They had obviously been prepared for us.
We didn’t say anything about it until we were out of the building. “Damn. We should have foreseen that and beaten them to the punch.”
“We should have,” Marygay said. “Now we have to go back and deal with people like Max.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be someone like Max who kills the Tauran. It’ll be someone who thinks he’s over with the war. And then one day just loses it.”
“Someone like you?”
“I don’t think so. Hell, I’m not over the war. Bill says that’s why I’m running away.”
“Let’s not think about the children.” She put an arm around my waist and bumped me with her hip. “Let’s go back to the hotel and actively not think about them.”
After a pleasant interlude, we spent the afternoon shopping, for friends and neighbors as well as ourselves. Nobody in Paxton had a lot of money; we basically had a barter economy, with every adult getting a small check each month from Centrus. Sort of like the universal dole that was working so well, the last time we’d been on Earth. It did work pretty well on Middle Finger, since nobody expected luxuries. On Earth, people had been almost uniformly poor, but surrounded by constant reminders of unattainable wealth. Out here everyone had about the same kind of simple life.