Down he went to the bottom and streaked along just above. His flesh responded to the flowing cold, lashed into utter aliveness. The tile pattern, his hands where they came forward to thrust him on, passed stark in their clarity, transfigured by refraction. His eyes needed the goggles, they could not well open straight onto the purity, it would have washed the salt out of them. Like all Lunar water, this came totally clean from each recycling. Not in its comet had it been so unsullied, not since its ice-dust glittered in the nebula that would become the Solar System, and something of that ancient keenness had returned to it as well. He drove himself through a reborn virginity.
When his lungs could strain no more, he broke surface, breathed hard, went around and around the rim until he felt ready to go under again. And thus he reveled until his body warned him he would soon begin losing too much heat.
He swung out, leaped to the bath alcove, and let a nearly scalding shower gush over him. A vigorous toweling followed, and he was ravenously ready for breakfast.
He did stop a minute before he went off to get dressed, and looked at the instrument panel. There had been some trouble lately with temperature control. The thermometer was holding steady. Probably Maintenance had fixed the system so it would stay fixed. Well, it was simple enough. Coils under the pool tapped whatever cooling the thermostat called for from the municipal reservoir of it, a liquid-air tank which itself drew on space during the long Lunar night. Still, Wahl habitually kept track of everything he could for which he felt in any way responsible.
Too little of the first, too much of the second! He grimaced and went headlong down the hallway.
In his bedroom he donned not civilian garb but theblue uniform of the Peace Authority. He was entitled, being a major in its reserve, and today such a reminder of what he represented, what power ultimately stood behind him, could be helpful.
The legislature was convening next week. Deputy Rabkin had announced that he would introduce a bill to give the tax agency warrant-free access to business databanks, making it harder to cook up falsifications. Most delegates with Terrestrial genes favored the measure; evasion was getting out of hand. Speaking for what she called the free folk, Deputy Fia threatened that if this proposed rape of privacy came to the floor, she would lead the Lunarians out, form a rump parliament, and nullify any act that passed.
It could happen. She was the sister of the Selenarch Brandir and his chief agent within the cities. (Jesus and Mary, if the arrogance of the feudal lords wasn’t checked soon, they’d make that honorific into a title!) Maybe nothing too serious would come of this, but maybe it could be the neutron shot into the fis-sionables.
It must be headed off. The parties concerned must be argued, cajoled, browbeaten, bribed, blackmailed —whatever it took—into some kind of mutually face-saving compromise. Wahl would be meeting with them, by ones and twos, personally. No telephone image could stand in for the living presence, the life laid on the line. If necessary, he would go to that citadel in the Cordillera, yes, alone, to stare the great troublemaker down.
Chances were, matters wouldn’t come to that. However, Wahl had a busy stretch ahead of him. As always, the prospect of action heartened. Maddeningly much of his two years’ tenure had gone in frustration, defiances to which he could not even put a proper name. It was like trying to grip and hold a stream as4t rushed on toward its cataract. He entered the breakfast room in a fairly good mood.
His wife and son were already there1, she transferring the meal’ from autococinero to table, the boy slumped sullen in his chair. Aromas rolled around Wahl, omelette, toast, juice, coffee, coffee. His taste buds stood up and cheered.
The viewscreen was also bracing. The vista was from above the city, mountainside rolling down to Sinus Iridum, monorail a bright thread across its darkness to the spaceport, elsewhere a cluster of industrial domes and, on the near horizon, a power transmitter aimed at Earth. The mother world hung in the southern sky, a blue-and-white arc not far from the stopped-down sun disc, incredibly beautiful. It was scenery better than the crowded constructions around Port Bowen.