The eeriness tingled again down Kenmuir’s spine. “There’s a way that’s not ordinary?”
“You’ll help us, senor?” Aleka joined in.
Matthias nodded. “What little I can. Or, rather, I’ll hope to help the cause of freedom.”
“You decided this last night?” Kenmuir asked, and realized at once how stupid the question was.
Matthias’s voice marched on, toneless but clock-steady. “It wasn’t jsasy. Til be breaking a promise as old as the Trothdom and as strong as any I ever gave.And it may be for nothing, or it may be for the worse. Why are they so determined to keep Proserpina from us? I should think if the Lunarians got knowledge of it, access to it, they wouldn’t oppose the Habitat—at least, not with force enough to matter. And the Habitat is our way to the stars.” He breathed for a moment. “Or is it? I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Aleka heard the pain. She released Kenmuir’s hand and reached over to grasp his.
He closed the great knobbly paw about hers and held it for two or three heartbeats before he let go. A smile ghosted briefly over his lips^ “Gracias, querida,” he signed. “I did think about you too, and your people.”
Resonantly: “And I thought over and over how high-handed, how unlawful Venator’s gang is being. If the Federation government can do this to us, concealing a fact that would change thousands of lives, maybe change the course of history, what else is it doing? What will it do next? Guthrie used to quote a proverb about not letting the camel’s nose into your tent. I think more than its nose is in. Bloody near the whole camel is. Or soon will be, if we sit meek.”
“Could they have a decent reason for the secrecy?” she asked low.
Kenmuir spoke. Anger had been crystallizing in him too, sharp and cold. “At best, they aren’t even offering that much of an excuse. They’re treating us like children.”
“Children of the cybercosm,” Matthias agreed. “Or wards, or pets, or domestic animals.”
Trouble trembled in Aleka’s face and words. “Most people feel free and happy.”
“Most dogs do,” Matthias said.
“I’m not against you, senor. I just can’t help wondering—the larger good, also for my people—”
“Either we act or we don’t,” Kenmuir snapped.
“Yes.” She straightened. “Bueno, let’s act, then, and take the responsibility for whatever comes of it, like—like free adult humans.” Kenmuir decided he should utter another question whose answer he was almost sure of, if only to get it out of the way. “Could we simply broadcast what we know? I suppose Guthrie House has the equipment. It’s got plenty of every other kind I can think of.”
“I considered that,” Matthias admitted. “No. It wouldn’t be any real use. I’ve lived on Earth and dealt with the powers that be long enough to have learned what works, and how, and what doesn’t work. A bare statement like that—too easily denied, and guided down the public memory hole. Meanwhile Venator and his merry men would have seized us. They might all too well pick up clues to Fireball’s secret, and go blot it out.”
Kenmuir’s fists clenched. Aleka half sprang to her feet, sank back down, and whispered, “lan’s told me about—the Founder’s Word?”
“Yes.” The Rydberg’s voice tolled. “It came to me near the end of this night what I must do. Then I could sleep for a bit. It’s right that this be where.”
The sanctuary, the shrine, Kenmuir thought.
The hands of the clock reached XII and VII. It boomed forth the hour. A breeze outside made the fog swirl at the windows like smoke.
“Not that the knowledge will necessarily save you,” Matthias went on. “Odds are that it won’t. If you think the gamble is sheerly loco, I swear you never to speak of this again, not even between yourselves, not ever again.”
“I swear,” Aleka said as if it were a prayer.
“By my troth,” Kenmuir declared.
“And yet the story is the story of a vow that was broken,” Matthias said.
They waited.
After a minute had ticked away, he continued: “Lars Rydberg promised his mother Dagny Beynac that if she’d download, then when the downlead’s work was done he’d wipe its program and give it oblivion. The download itself asked him to, and again he promised.”“But he didn’t?” Aleka breathed while Kenmuir’s pulse stumbled.