“I am, of course. You set thieves to catch thieves, isn’t that right? If we’ve got the kind of situation that we’re all too familiar with rearing its head again, we need old hands at the game on our side too.”
Keene saw Vicki’s pained look and her shaking her head almost imperceptibly. No, he told himself firmly. It was time he lived his own life for once, of his own choosing. Besides, if the Pragmatists were playing a lost game in the way Cavan had said, the Kronians should be able to deal with them here, regardless of how they had fared in Earth’s totally different, hostile environment. Keene had better things to do than be used as extra insurance.
He shook his head and smiled tiredly. “I had my fill of all that on Earth, Leo. Did my share, if you want my honest opinion. Do you realize what that means to me back there on Titan—at the Center? Finally, for the first time in my life, I’m involved in truly free, creative science—what science should be—without having to answer to bureaucrats, funding committees, or closed-shop peer review panels. We’re talking about artificial gravity, Leo!—a whole new landscape of physics and engineering.” Cavan’s eyes were fixed on Keene penetratingly, as if weighing up whether or not to let it go at that. If there was more to go into, Keene would have preferred it to be between the two of them at another time, rather than imposed on the party. He judged it a good time to withdraw tactfully. “Where’s Robin?” he asked, looking around and then at Vicki. Robin had stopped by to pay due respects to the visitors, but had been withdrawn and quiet, finally retiring to what had once been his room.
Vicki inclined her head in the direction of the doorway leading out to the hall. “Still moping, I guess.”
“Maybe someone should go and cheer him up,” Keene said. “Shall I?”
“You can try.”
Keene went out to the hallway and tapped at the door to the space that Vicki had made into a study and workroom. He waited a moment, then entered.
Robin was at the triangular corner shelf that served as a desk, looking at something on the screen standing unrolled from a portable compad. He clicked it off and turned his head enough to see who was there. Now eighteen, yellow haired and athletically built with an innate tan that still endured, he would have been a natural for a high-school quarterback or swimming team, had such things still existed. “Hello, Lan,” he greeted.
“Hi, C.R. Just came to see how you were doing in here. Not in a mood for the party?” From long habit, Keene still referred to him as Christopher Robin, after the English children’s book character.
“Oh . . . I guess not. I’d rather just be on my own right now.”
“Uh-huh.” Keene nodded to say that was okay by him and perched himself on the spare chair behind the door. In addition to Vicki’s books and papers, the room still had relics from Robin’s days, including a fish tank, his collection of rock fragments from meteorites and various Saturnian moons, and an array of potted creeping plants weaving their way among pictures of spacecraft, habitats, and astronomic objects, along with maps of Dione, Titan, Rhea, and Mimas. Robin brought up a screen showing part of the Mandelbrot fractal world and watched it with a detached expression. “Your mom was telling Leo about the Mars encounters and the new theory that they’re talking about,” Keene said. “I thought you’d be interested.”
Robin pushed himself back in the chair, frowning awkwardly. He didn’t feel especially sociable, Keene sensed, and was struggling to maintain outward civility. “It’s interesting, sure, but . . .” He tossed out a hand and left it unfinished, seemingly not really sure what he meant. It was a ghost of the Robin Keene had known back on Earth, who had devoured theories of things like dinosaur engineering, planetary origins, and early human history, and would have driven Vicki to distraction with speculations on this latest development.
“I heard it was you who put the idea into Emil Farzhin’s head that it might have been Mars,” Keene said. “He was trying to make Venus fit with the records. What made you think of that?”