Cade smiled, leaned back in his chair at the glass-topped cane table they were using, and dabbed his mouth with his napkin before taking a sip of wine. “That’s good, Neville. I’ll try and remember it. We’ll have to find an excuse to come out and visit you some day.”
“Do that!” Baxter enthused. “We’ll give you a great time. Balance the books for the way you’ve taken care of me here.”
“What time’s your flight?” Julia asked.
“Not till three. But I want to stop by the mission and say so long to Vrel and the guys. Dee too, if she’s there. If not, say it for me when you see her, will you, Julia?”
“Of course.”
Baxter shook his head. “Dee . . . there’s one thing. How long has she been going with Vrel now? At least since the last time I was over. It was a pretty rare thing then—with aliens, I mean. She’s just . . . you know, does her own thing, and to hell with what anyone thinks.”
“That’s Dee,” Julia agreed.
“My kind of person,” Baxter said. “I think it’s starting to rub off on Vrel too.” He halved an artichoke heart with the side of his fork. “You’re doing a great job, stripping the uptightness off these aliens, Roland. Do them good.”
Cade held up a hand. “This isn’t a social adjustment center. I’m just an opportunist taking what comes, same as you. Same as practically everyone you saw here the other night.”
Baxter became more serious. “What drives them? Have you figured it out yet, Roland? It’s not just wealth or money. They’re all filthy rich by our standards. But they never let up.”
“You should have talked more to Mike Blair,” Cade answered. “He spends most of his time with them and knows a lot more than I do. . . . But from what I can make out, it isn’t so much that what you’ve got says who you are, as who you are decides what you get. Except `get’ doesn’t mean just owning things—as you just said, all of them practically own everything anyway. It involves things like privileges you’re entitled to, what positions you qualify for, the recognition you can expect. . . .”
“Sort of like a social rank,” Julia put in. “But more complicated. Think of it as a combined credit rating and grade-point average based on just about everything you do. They need computers to figure it out. It translates as `entitlement.’ ”
“No wonder they come across like robots off an assembly line,” Baxter remarked.
“Oh, be kind, Neville,” Julia chided. “You just said yourself that a lot of them are loosening up.”
“But not the other way around.” Baxter motioned appealingly with his fork. “Does anyone really think they could import their system here? Who’d want it?”
Cade made a face. “I’d say it would suit a lot of people that I can think of just fine,” he replied.
Baxter left twenty minutes later. Cade saw him to the front door. As the cab was pulling away, a maroon Chevrolet carrying two people entered the driveway and came up to the house. Even before the driver got out, Cade recognized the fair, sleeked-back hair of Lieutenant Rossi from the Internal Security Service. The passenger was a woman in a blue-gray, two-piece business suit, hair tied high on her head, carrying a black document case. Cade waited at the door as they came up the steps.
“Mr. Cade. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time,” Rossi opened. “This is a colleague of mine, Investigator Wylie. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Ms. Wylie,” Cade acknowledged, then looked back at Rossi. “What now?” He had a policy of never inviting government into his life, and if they invited themselves, to offer as little encouragement as possible.
Rossi looked past him through the doorway. “Er, could we go inside?”
“Okay.” Cade held the door while they entered, closed it, and led the way back through to the sun lounge. Julia was just finishing her meal. Rossi caught Cade’s eye pointedly. “Oh, that’s okay,” Cade said. “We don’t have any secrets. Julia, these are Lieutenant Rossi and Investigator Wylie from the ISS. Apparently, they have some questions.”