He leaned against the backrest of the bar chair to light a cigarette, and watched Lyn as she poured two more coffees. There was something about the way her gray-green eyes never quite lost their mischievous twinkle and about the hint of a pout that was always dancing elusively around her mouth that he found both amusing and exciting-“cute,” he supposed an American would have said. He thought back over the three months that had elapsed since the Shapieron left, and tried to pinpoint what had happened to turn somebody who had been just a smart-headed, good-looking girl at the office into somebody he had breakfast with fairly regularly at one apartment or the other. But there didn’t seem to be any particular where or when; it was just something that had happened somehow, somewhere along the line. He wasn’t complaining.
She glanced up as she set the pot down and saw him looking at her. “See, I’m quite nice to have around, really. Wouldn’t the morning be dull with only the viscreen to stare at.” She was at it again. . . playfully, but only if he didn’t want to take it seriously. One rent made more sense than two, one set of utility bills was cheaper, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
“I’ll pay the bills,” Hunt said. He opened his hands appealingly. “You said it yourself earlier-Englishmen are creatures of habit. Anyhow, I’m maintaining standards.”
“You sound like an endangered species,” she told him.
“I am-chauvinists. Somebody’s got to make a last stand somewhere.”
“You don’t need me?”
“Of course not. Good Lord, what a thought!” He scowled across the bar while Lyn returned an impish smile. Maybe the world could wait another forty-eight hours to find out about Pluto. “What are you up to tonight-anything special?” he asked.
“I got invited to a dinner party over in Hanwell. . . that marketing guy I told you about and his wife. They’re having a big crowd of people in, and it sounded as if it could be fun. They told me to bring a friend, but I didn’t think you’d be all that interested.”
Hunt wrinkled his nose and frowned. “Isn’t that the ESP-andpyramid bunch?”
“Right. They’re all excited because they’ve got a superpsychic going there tonight. He predicted everything about Minerva and
the Ganymeans years ago. It has to be true-Amazing Supernature magazine said so.”
Hunt knew she was teasing but couldn’t suppress his irritation. “Oh for Christ’s sake. . . I thought there was supposed to be an educational system in this bloody country! Don’t they have any critical faculties at all?” He drained the last of his coffee and banged the mug down on the bar. “If he predicted it years ago, why didn’t anybody hear about it years ago? Why do we only hear about it after science has told him what he was supposed to predict? Ask him what the Shapieron will find when it gets to the Giants’ Star and make him write it down. I bet that never gets into Amazing Supernature magazine.”
“That would be taking it too seriously,” Lyn said lightly. “I only go there for the laughs. There’s no point in trying to explain Occam’s Razor to people who believe that UFOs are timeships from another century. Besides, apart from all that, they’re nice people.”
Hunt wondered how this kind of thing could still go on after the Ganymeans, who flew starships, created life in laboratories, and built self-aware computers, had affirmed repeatedly that they saw no reason to postulate the existence of any powers existing in the universe beyond those revealed by science and rational thinking. But people still wasted their lives away with daydreams.
He was becoming too serious, he decided, and dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand and a grin. “Come on. We’d better do something about sending you on your way.”
Lyn headed for the living room to collect her shoes, bag, and coat, then met him again at the front door of the apartment. They kissed and squeezed each other. “I’ll see you later, then,” she whispered.
“See you later. Watch out for those crazies.”
He waited until she had disappeared into the elevator, then closed the door and spent five minutes clearing the kitchen and restoring some semblance of decency to the rest of the place. Finally he put on a jacket, stuffed some items from the desk into his briefcase, and left in an elevator heading for the roof. Minutes later his airmobile was at two thousand feet and climbing to merge into an eastbound traffic corridor with the rainbow towers of Houston gleaming in the sunlight on the skyline ahead.