“I just got to reading some of the translations that Mom brought home. When I was looking at some pictures of Mars, I noticed that the descriptions seemed to fit. Then, when they talked about oceans and continents . . . it couldn’t have been Venus.”
“Emil had taken them as some kind of metaphor.”
Robin shrugged. “I just think literally, I guess.”
The simplicity of youth, Keene thought to himself. Just following the evidence wherever it seemed to point, without trying to fit it to predetermined answers. The Kronians hadn’t really invented anything new. Keene had listened more than once to older and what he considered wiser heads saying that the wisdom so often prized in later years was little more than rediscovering things that had been obvious at sixteen.
But he could tell this wasn’t a time for such things. “Vicki tells me you might be enlisting with the Security Arm,” he said, trying a change of subject.
“I’m thinking about it. Leo suggested it. It has its attractions.” Robin kept his eyes on the screen, zooming endlessly down through finer levels of mathematically generated, never-repeating detail. Keene wondered if it signified an unconscious need to find structure in life when everything else had fallen apart.
“Alicia says she heard from Mitch,” he said. Harvey Mitchell had commanded the Special Forces unit that came with Cavan to California. He and three of the others had arrived eventually at Kronia as part of the group that had escaped via Mexico. “It seems he’s working with them too somewhere. You might bump into him again out there if you decide to go ahead.”
“Maybe.”
“You could get a chance at space crew, too, later.”
Robin started to answer, but then turned his head away quickly and straightened up from the chair in the same reflex movement. “Lan, look, I know you’re trying to help, but . . .” His voice caught. “Sorry. . . . I need to get out for some air.” He scooped a windcheater jacket from a hook by the door and left hurriedly, keeping his face averted. Moments later Keene heard the outer door close in the hall.
He shook his head and stared down at his arms resting on his knees, hands still cradling his glass. Well, I guess I get first prize at blowing that, he told himself. But he wasn’t sure what else he might have said. His gaze drifted back to the patterns on the screen, descending through endless scales of whorls, traceries, and sunflower bursts. Curiously, he got up, moved across, and killed the Mandelbrot pattern to redisplay the file that Robin had obscured when Keene came in. It contained a list of graphic images. Keene selected one and opened it. A picture filled the screen of a group of grinning teenagers and staff posing in the sunshine for a class photo in front of their school building. Robin was near the center of the third row, standing. The caption read: Jefferson Junior High, Corpus Christi, TX. Keene stared at it for several seconds, then closed the image and reactivated the Mandelbrot display. A lump formed at the back of his throat. He got up and went back through to the living area to rejoin the others.
CHAPTER TEN
The party departed at the first lightening of the murky, ever-turbulent skies that signaled the beginning of another day. Bo was in command, again seconded by Scar-arm, both carrying the mysterious Oldworld weapons that Rakki still couldn’t see as being effective in any way. Screecher was with them, assigned to keeping a watch on Rakki, who had not been given a weapon. With them were four other Neffers carrying spears and bows: Manuka and Shingral, and two whose names Rakki hadn’t memorized but thought of as Gap Teeth and Fish, the latter for no better reason than that he had been gutting a catch for Fire Keeper the first time Rakki saw him. They took two of the dogs with them, one mottled black and gray, the other a ragged brown, both fearsome, and two hill animals of a kind that Rakki hadn’t come across before, with long heads, low, straight backs, and long-haired hides.