“Well, I don’t in any mathematical sense. Call it an instinct derived from many years of intense application to the study of human nature. If all the—”
“Wha-at?!” Sarda emitted a strangled protest verging on a shriek. His eyes bulged; his yellow mane shook; his shaggy mustache took on life and bristled. “You’re telling me now that this whole thing is based on nothing more than a hunch of yours?!”
“Instinct,” Kieran corrected. “More refined, less impulsive. It carries imputations of greater sophistication and more solid groundings in reality. The weak part about relying on logic is always in the assumptions.”
“Whatever—I don’t care. But holy Christ . . . !” Sarda waved both hands while he sought for words. “What I’m telling you is, there’s nothing to stop her going straight back and blowing everything. And all you’re telling me is that you don’t think she’ll do that! That really makes me feel a lot better, Kieran. You’re gambling five million of my money—”
“Mine too,” Kieran pointed out. “You more or less insisted yourself that you expected me to have a stake in this.”
“Making decisions concerning my personal life that I don’t recall ever being invited to give an opinion about . . .”
“It was hardly a feasible option at the time.”
“I don’t know anything about this woman,” Sarda fumed. “What if I don’t want this romance that you’re so touchingly keen on restoring?”
“If I’m right, we still stand to do a lot better. They have to be into this for more than just a split of five million. To find out what, we need Elaine as a willing ally through choice, not a reluctant snitch who was bullied into divulging the minimum she could get away with. I’m prepared to gamble that her feelings for the Leo-who-was will make that choice.”
“And what if you’re wrong?” Sarda asked dubiously.
Kieran clapped an arm cheerfully around his shoulder as they headed for the door, while Alazahad turned out the lights. “In that case, Leo, I know just the person to go to who can make us forget our sorrows and everything connected with them,” he said.
* * *
They drove in the Kodiak through the tunnel connecting Gorky canyon to Nineveh, heading back to June’s place, where Sarda had left his own vehicle. In his own mind, Kieran allowed that Elaine would need time to wrestle with her thoughts and reach a decision. In the meantime, he was trying anything to distract Sarda from constantly trying to come back to the subject.
“I was thinking over what you said about DNA being the program for a complete, self-assembling factory—much more complicated than any program people have ever written.”
“Uh-huh.” In the seat behind Kieran and June, Sarda returned from other ruminations. “Unimaginably more complicated. The whole set of plans needed to build a spaceliner wouldn’t make a dent in it.”
“So could a program like that just have written itself—out of random accidents, for no reason?”
“What makes you think it did?” Sarda asked.
Kieran shrugged. “That’s what they taught everybody when I went to school.”
“Outside of Earth, nobody in the business believes that anymore,” Sarda said. “Start changing lines of the machine-tool codes for making spaceliner parts at random, and you’ll end up with a pile of junk—if anything works at all. With what you’re talking about, it’s a lot of trillions times more guaranteed. In short, it’s ridiculous.” He seemed about to elaborate further, but then his eyes wandered away, and he pulled pensively at his mustache. “How can you be sure? I can’t believe you just let her walk away. We’re fooling ourselves. She’s not gonna be coming back.”
“Just give it until morning, Leo.”
“We might not have until morning. They could pull out and be gone anytime.”
“Not if they’re involved in higher stakes. Nothing’s going to happen tonight.”
“But how—”
“So why are things different on Earth?” June asked Sarda, turning her head from the seat beside Kieran.
“What? Oh . . . it’s the same as with a lot of things. They’ve all got turf and reputations to protect. I used to be an orthodox materialist once. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to see their line as being as dogmatic as the fundamentalism that it was invented to replace. That was why I decided to move out—to be part of an environment where questioning is permissible and it’s okay to look at alternatives.”