worry about the bookkeeping later.”
“First we’d better worry about the feasibility of the whole thing,” I
said, hedging the way any engineer had better.
“Sure, sure, but that’s what you’re going to investigate, isn’t it?” The
letter we sent along with the plans had made clear that he shouldn’t
confide in anyone else till further notice. “You can call on our
facilities anytime, like a superreckoner to solve some complicated
question. Its operators don’t have to know what the calculation is for.
And so forth. But mainly, I’ll bet, you’ll be working by yourselves, on
the spot. R and D costs money. I don’t mind this much risk. Looks to me
like we’ve been dealt three of a land. We might draw for a full house or
a four.”
“Might,” I said. “Oh, well, we’ll keep reasonably good records here, and
if the effort fails, it’s deductible, isn’t it?”
“We’ll want a conference with you, viva voce, soon,” Ginny added.
The letter had given a slight but sufficient hint that we didn’t really.
“Sure. Anytime. I’ll see to it that you aren’t pestered while you’re
hereabouts. Only give me a little advance notice, please. You remember
the code message for that.”
There wasn’t any. Ginny caught on at once, I a second later. “We do,”
she said. “Meanwhile, carry on. Give everybody our best,” by which she
meant his family and our small gang of dreamers.
This was among the few interruptions in her labors. Mostly those were
too esoteric to seem like the hard work they were. She ransacked arcane
files, learning what she could about Fu Ch’ing, his cohorts, and
possible allies for us in England. The last of these searches drew her
into long comunications over channels known to few. She studied the
goetics of our local Indians and, besides the books, passed considerable
time down on the Zuni reservation, occasionally at peculiar hours. I
gathered that Ba-lawahdiwa wasn’t the only adept she inquired of,
learned from, and practiced with, but she didn’t encourage questions
about it. Having decided in due course that, yes, we should go, she
slipped off to Albuquerque and made the travel arrangements. I didn’t
ask what precautions she took.
I myself had far less of a role. Three days passed at the Point, in the
lab, more and more frustrated. We simply hadn’t anything worthwhile to
do. Then Helen Krakowski, newly back from Washington, sighed that I
might as well take indefinite leave of absence. Project Selene appeared
to have been decanted into a Klein bottle.
The next several days were good. Barney’s call Friday morning began
them. After that I didn’t spend, I gained, many hours with the kids.
Their mother being busy, I took them to shows and on excursions–not
always all three, because Val had her own pleasures to pursue while she
could, but generally she did come along–and once Ben and I went
fishing, just the two us– Never mind. In between, I worked on my ship
model, played a little poker, finally read War and Peace… No matter.
“I’ve found the man we want,” Ginny whispered at last in our bed. The
window stood open to a night not yet gone cold. A breeze lulled. She lay
close beside me. I put a hand on her thigh and through the silky
nightgown felt how the muscles stirred.
Nevertheless the news jarred me to hunter’s attention. “You have? Who?”
“Nobody you ever heard of, though he knew my parents and once had a
scientific collaboration with my father. Tobias Frogmorton of Cambridge
University.”
“Huh?”
“Professor emeritus of archaeology, Fellow of Trinity College. He’s
lived sedately, lifelong bachelor, except for field work in younger
days. During the Kaiser’s War he was a cryptographer. After taking a
thaumaturgic degree with honors, he put that knowledge to use, notably
in deciphering Mayan and Aztec inscriptions–animating copies, observing
responses to experimental readings and enactments. It’s become a
standard technique, which has lately cracked Minoan Linear A. His skills
were invaluable in the Caliph’s War, reconstructing intelligence from
fragments of information. But he’s been retired and obscure for years–a
large plus for our purposes. And he is willing to help.”
“Well, if you say so,” I muttered dubiously.