“What matters,” said Miyoko, pointing an index finger at North to emphasize her words, “is the threat to Diamond. You can’t think of sending this invader to Diamond until we at least understand—”
“We don’t know there’s a threat,” objected Saburo, not so much in disagreement as to calm his sister. He glanced uneasily at North, trying to read meaning into the craggy patience of the man who had led both his own team and the exploration unit of which Saburo was a member ever since—
But `since’ implied duration. . . . Saburo composed his mind, then his face, and nodded apology to Rolls.
“There is a threat to Diamond,” said Rolls, “whether or not we can see where it comes from.”
He looked up at North, then across the hall to Eisner, and continued, “I’ll admit that I can’t see the source of the threat.”
Eisner nodded her crisp agreement; North and North’s face said nothing.
“I don’t see what the problem is,” Penny said. “I don’t see why we’re here at all.”
Penny was playing with her appearance. As she spoke, she changed from a petite redhead in her early twenties to a tall, black-haired beauty whose face promised experience as well as passion . . . and back again to the redhead. A curtain of light provided a mirror, and the jewel on Penny’s breast glowed with the power it gave her desires.
“On Diamond,” Eisner said—in another of the attempts to inform which exasperated her fellows as much as Penny’s care of her physical form bothered Eisner— “the inhabitants—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Penny snapped, briefly flirting with an older image, still redheaded. “They’re having nightmares, terrible nightmares, and that’s all very sad—but there can’t be anything really wrong going to happen with them, because we’re the only ones who can touch them or Ruby.”
She looked around the room challengingly. “And if we did, the balance would fail, and we’d all—”
Penny made a moue of distaste and a dismissive gesture with fingers which for the moment were long and aristocratic. “Not that anybody would do that.”
Fortin stretched and smiled. His white skin and perfect features were a legacy of his android mother, but the twisted subtlety of his mind was his own . . . if not from the genes of North his father.
“Who can fault the wisdom of our Penny?” Fortin said. His lilting sarcasm cut all the deeper because what Penny said was true, though none of them doubted the reality of the danger except Penny, who didn’t care; and Rao, who couldn’t imagine it; and Dowson, who saw no threat in the Matrix and who lacked the fleshly baggage of emotions from which to create a hobgoblin that the data didn’t support.
“I still don’t think we should chance setting an intruder down in Diamond until we have a better idea of what’s going on,” Rolls said calmly.
“Of course,” said Eisner as much to herself as to the assembly, “if the intruder were put in Diamond, we might learn more about the threat—”
“We might learn he was the threat!” Miyoko snapped. “Put him in Ruby. They’ll take care of him!”
“Or set him on the plane of the Lomeri,” her brother added. “So long as he’s coming from outside the Matrix, we have absolute control of his destination. It makes no sense to take a risk—” he nodded to Miyoko “—even though the risk is still speculative.”
“We’ll set the intruder in Diamond,” said North, speaking for the first time during the assembly he had called, “because only in Diamond can we be sure that all of his weapons will be stripped from him—” he smiled “—without harm.”
“What do we care about hurting him?” Rao asked. “I mean, it’s all right with me, but he’s just an outsider. Isn’t he?”
He looked around his fellows to make sure that there wasn’t some point he had missed. Ngoya patted his arm.
North nodded. “I understand your position, my friend,” he said, “but I’ve seen far enough into the Matrix to be sure that this Hansen is no threat to Diamond.”
“But still—” said Miyoko.
“And I,” North continued, “have my own reasons for wanting him unharmed for the time. Surely I needn’t be the one to apologize for not killing, eh?”