“Sariena and Charlie are working out a symbolic system to write our story in stone for posterity,” Keene said. “Not dependent on any specific language. But decodable by anyone with the right knowledge.”
Foy smiled. “Why? Don’t they think we’ll still be here five thousand years from now?”
Keene shrugged. “Just in case. We’d like to leave something more permanent this time.”
Then Luthis and Shayle joined them, and for a while the talk ranged from native farming projects around Serengeti to Kronian spiritual philosophy. Keene was glad that, while he wouldn’t have wanted Gallian’s memory forgotten, nobody stood up to start giving an obituary or calling for a memorial moment of silence. The party was going well, and such things were appropriate to other occasions.
And he knew Gallian would have wanted it that way.
* * *
After they had helped close the last of the festivities down, Keene and Vicki walked with Cavan and Alicia back toward the newcomers’ room in what had been the dorm blocks, which was on the way to the residential area. With all the day’s business, it was Keene’s first chance to talk with Cavan about anything other than incidental matters. Keene fell quiet as they approached the point where the walkway leading to the building left the path that he and Vicki would continue along. Alicia was talking about her reactions to the first day of being back on Earth.
“Yes, everything was almost totally destroyed, and it will be a long time recovering. But there’s a . . . feeling that I can’t describe. It hit me when I saw the water and the areas starting to turn green again from the shuttle on the way down.”
“I know. I felt it too,” Vicki said. “It’s like suddenly being in touch with Life again. You said it happened to you after you left the base area with Charlie, didn’t you, Lan?”
No response.
Alicia nodded. “Yes, that’s it exactly! Being part of a living world. All of a sudden you realize how sterile Kronia was. I mean, of course we couldn’t have done without it. It preserved knowledge and technology when everything else was lost. And I’m sure that when we expand out of the Solar System, that’s where it will be from. But for all the other things, human things, we have to rebuild the center of the new civilization here. Kronia will be an outpost. Don’t you think so?”
She directed her last words at Keene and Cavan. They had come to the intersection with the path and halted. But Keene was looking at Cavan, as if not hearing her. Cavan was taking in the night scene of the base with its geometric shapes and lights, as if leaving Keene to come to his own conclusions in his own time—but somehow giving the impression of having an intimation of what they might be.
“That was why you did it, wasn’t it, Leo,” Keene said finally. Cavan turned on a look of feigned innocence that would have been an offense to Keene’s intelligence if they hadn’t known each other for years. “Why you wanted me on the Earth mission. It was political. You guessed something like that would happen. You tried recruiting me that time when you and Alicia came to Dione, but I said I wasn’t interested in politics. So you set me up with Vorse and Foy. You wanted me to know more about what Kronia meant and where it was heading.”
“You’d have stayed on Titan, content to let your work on the AG program justify your existence,” Cavan agreed, dropping the pretense.
“That whole line of Vorse’s about my being needed to supervise Agni’s MHD system was part of it. It wasn’t necessary. Shayle could have done it.”
Vicki was looking from one to the other, puzzled. “Leo had some ulterior agenda for sending you to Earth? Why?”
“I think I can see it now. . . .” Alicia said. “Leo never discussed it with me.”
“Not the kind of thing one talks about when the person concerned isn’t there,” Cavan remarked.
“See what?” Vicki asked again. She had never pretended to harbor any political instinct.