His pulse jumped. “Why, of course.”
“I’ll leave soon and meet you under the lightning tree.”
She could visit my office tomorrow, but we might be interrupted, or we might not have time afterward to mask ourselves. Or she could come to my cottage tonight, or I to hers, but that might be too intimate; it might confuse whatever she has to say. The thoughts and questions tumbled in him. He became rather absentminded company for the rest of the evening.
Finally he could say good night, don his thermal coverall, and go. Snow glistened crisp, scrunching beneath his shoes. The settlement huddled black by the dull sheen of ice on the river. Air went keen into his nostrils and streamed forth ghostly. The moon was full but tiny; nearly all light fell from crowding stars and argent Milky Way. It blanched the leafless boughs and towering bole of the tree he sought. The scar from which it had its name stood like a rune on high.
Kilbirnie trod from its vague shadow. Nansen halted where she did. They looked wordless into eyes that gleamed faintly in half-knowable faces.
“We missed you, skipper, we truly did,” the husky voice said low.
“Thank you. I missed you.” He smiled. “But that was personal presence. I continued as bossy as ever on the radio, didn’t I?”
“Nay. Ye’re a guid leader, the kind who trusts his followers to think and do for themselves.”
He saw what was coming, he had guessed it beforehand, but to help her he asked, “What did you wish to talk about now?”
“Surely you know.” She gestured at a point in the glittering sky. “Yonder wild star.”
“I’ve heard the arguments to and fro,” he said. “We’ll repeat them at a formal meeting. Is this the place for any?”
“Not the technical questions, no, like whether we can indeed program Envoy to keep herself safe —”
“Probably we can,” he interrupted. “But we can’t program you.”
Her grin flashed. “Och, I’ll be canny. We all will who go. We like being alive.”
He decided on a blunt challenge. “Do you, here?”
“Always and everywhere.” She plunged ahead: “But we can be part alive or fully alive. Ajit and Wenji, Mam and Selim — you and Lajos, among these planets — The rest of us want something real to do, too.”
“You can help,” he urged. “We need your help. Dios mio, have we not mysteries everywhere around us?”
“It is less than we could be doing. Fakework, often, which a robot can handle as well or better. Hanny and Tim think we may learn what we’d never otherwise know, yonder. And those Tahirians who want to come along — what might we learn from them, and about them?”
“Also,” he said slowly, “you would cut a couple of years off your time of service before we turn home.”
She straightened. “Aye, that’s at the core of what I wanted to speak of tonight, skipper. The technical matters, the public matters, we’ve chopped them over and over, and will over and over again, like making a haggis. But what it… means.”
Nansen waited.
She looked down at the snow. “Naught I’d care to say in a meeting.” The words came out one by one, in small white puffs. “What it means to me.”
He waited.
She looked back at him. Her tone steadied. “I’ll be away half a year, or thereabouts, more or less as much time as we’ll allow ourselves there. For you, two and a half years.”
He nodded. “Yes. And you’ll send your messages to us, but they’ll be almost a year old, and we won’t know —”
“Whether the ship that’s to bear you home is safe.”
“Whether you are.”
Silence shivered.
“Aye, ’tis much to ask,” Kilbirnie said.
I have to think about more than safety. What will this do to morale?”
Her smile caught the starlight afresh. “You’ve a high-hearted crew these days, skipper. Make them more so.”
“Yes,” he said harshly, “if I let this come to a vote, we both know how the vote will go. But may I?”
Her reply was soft. “I understand. The responsibility is on you. And we are being selfish in a way, we four. We’ll not be those who suffer a long span of fear for us.”