Heller smiled faintly. At least it was good that the differences that erupted across the table in the conference room could be left there. Anything else would have made life intolerable in the cramped, communal atmosphere of the base. “The shuttle from Tycho has just landed,” she said. “I wonder what’s new.”
“Yes, I know. No doubt some mail from Moscow and Washington for us to argue about tomorrow.” The original UN charter had ruled against representatives receiving instructions from their national governments, but nobody at Farside kept up any pretenses about that.
“I hope not too much,” she sighed. “We should be thinking of the future of the whole planet. National politics shouldn’t come into this.” She glanced sideways as she spoke, searching his face for a hint of a reaction. Nobody at Washington had yet been able to decide for sure if the UN stance was being dictated from the Kremlin, or if the Soviets were simply playing along with something they found expedient to their own ends. But the Russian remained inscrutable.
They came out of the corridor and entered the “common room”
-normally the UNSA Officers’ Mess, but assigned temporarily for off-duty use by the visiting UN delegation. The air was warm and stuffy. A mixed group of about a dozen UN delegates and permanent residents of the base was present, some reading, two engrossed in a chess game, and the others talking in small groups around the room or at the small bar at the far end. Sobroskin continued walking and disappeared through the far door, which led to the rooms allocated for office space for the delegation. Heller had
intended going the same way, but she was intercepted by Niels Sverenssen, the delegation’s Swedish chairman, who detached himself from a small group standing near where they had entered.
“Oh, Karen,” he said, catching her elbow lightly and steering her to one side. “I’ve been looking for you. There are a few points from today’s meeting that we ought to resolve before finalizing tomorrow’s agenda. I was hoping to discuss them before it’s typed up.” He was very tall and lean, and he carried his elegant crown of silver hair with a haughty uprightness that always made Heller think of him as the last of the true blue-blooded European aristocrats. His dress was always impeccable and formal, even at Bruno where practically everyone else had soon taken to more casual wear, and he gave the impression somehow of looking on the rest of the human race with something approaching disdain, as if condescending to mix with them only as an imposition of duty. Heller was never able to feel quite at ease in his presence, and she had spent too much time in Paris and on other European assignments to attribute it simply to cultural differences.
“Well, I was on my way to check the mall,” she said. “If the discussion can wait for an hour or so, I could see you back here. We’ll go through it over a drink maybe, or use one of the offices. Was it anything important?”
“A few questions of procedure and some definitions that need clarifying under one or two headings.” Sverenssen’s voice had fallen from its public-address mode of a moment earlier, and as he spoke he moved around as if to shield their conversation from the rest of the room. He was looking at her with a curious expression
-an intrigued detachment that was strangely intimate and distant at the same time. It made her feel like a kitchen wench being looked over by a medieval lord-of-the-manor. “I was thinking of something perhaps a little more comfortable later,” he said, his tone now ominously confidential. “Possibly over dinner, if I might have the honor.”
“I’m not sure when I’ll be having dinner tonight,” she replied, telling herself that she was getting it all wrong. “It might be late.”
“A more companionable hour, wouldn’t you agree,” Sverenssen murmured pointedly.
It was getting to her again. His words implied that the honor would be his, but his manner left no doubt that she should consider it hers. “I thought you said that you needed to talk before the agenda gets typed,” she said.