“You know your way about “among both Selenites and Earthlings,” Fia said. “You have the linkages to high persons and the skill to use them. Through you, we can win a cooperation from Fireball that it would not elsewise see for profitable.”
“You can make sure our course toward the planetoid remains veiled,” Temerir added.
“Yours is our blood,” Brandir finished.
He smiled. He was beautiful.
Dared they take for granted she would turn on Earth?
No, wrong thinking. Helping Luna would be no treason to her kind. Would it? What harm to anyone —except self-infatuated politicians, busybody bureaucrats, and magnates enriched by their franchises and monopolies—if more freedom came to these children of hers and ‘Mond’s?
That wasn’t fair, she reminded herself. Once you started taking your own propaganda seriously, you were headed for fanaticism. Earth had made an enormous investment in Luna. All history shrieked how right the Federation was to dread a resurgent nationalism. The Lunarians chafed at laws written with good intent, when they did not violate them, covertly or more and more openly. Common heritage was only the most obvious sore point. Environmental concerns, weapons control, educational requirements, taxes, licenses, regulations, most of them reasonable —from the viewpoint of a civilized Earthling—but the civilization aborning here was none of Earth’s, was maybe not quite human—
Wasn’t it wise at least to make the cage larger, before the beast tried breaking altogether loose?
She couldn’t tell. She wished she could seek counsel of Guthrie. But she was sworn to silence, and these were her children.
“Well,” she sighed, “we’ll talk about it.” LJrums boomed and thuttered. A chant pulsed among them, now organ deep, now shrill as the whistles that interwove, hai-ah-ho-hee. At the landing field the noise went low, like a distant thunderstorm, but its darkness thickened the twilight closing in.
Thunderstorm, yes, Aleka thought. Air pressed downward from the cloud deck, hot, heavy with unshed rain; her skin gleamed wet under blouse and shorts, and prickled as if from gathering electricity.
For a moment she stood beside the hired volant, unsure. Likeliest she’d leave with Kenmuir in hers, which had brought him here. But that wasn’t certain. The news had been a shock when she retrieved it while approaching Overburg—negotiations suddenly broken off, Mayor Bruno calling a game against Elville, agovernment advisory not to visit the area. She might need to flit in a hurry.
“Wait here,” she directed the cab. “If I haven’t told you otherwise, return to your station at, oh, hour seven tomorrow.”
“In view of the hazard the charge for that will be double the standard rate,” the robot warned.
The debit would put quite a nick in her modest personal account. However, Lilisajre ought to reimburse eventually. Besides—her head lifted—she was playing for almighty high stakes. “Authorized.” Her voice pattern was sufficient signature. She gripped her two suitcases hard and set forth across the field.
It reached empty. When she got in among the houses, at first the sole light came from equally deserted pavement. Was everybody downtown, working up enthusiasm? Best would be to skirt that section. But she didn’t know how. She had simply projected a street map from the database and memorized the most direct route to the inn. It lay beyond the square.
If only she could have talked with Kenmuir beforehand. They’d have arranged a safer meeting place, maybe an arbitrary spot in the countryside. Bueno, he had had no way of telling where she was en route. To set the communications net searching would have been to provide any hunters with a major clue. After she got the bad word, she tried to call him from the flyer. The innkeeper told her that Sr. Hannibal was out. Not knowing when to expect her, he-must have gone to eat or something. She saw no point in leaving a message. On her second attempt, nobody replied. By then she was so close that she decided to go ahead with tfte original plan.
Rightly or wrongly. Probably there was no real danger. She stepped onward. Gloom canopied the buildings and crouched between them. Ahead, though, light strengthened wavery over the rooftops. Drums, whistles, song, stamping feet grew louder, till the racket beat in her marrow. The street ended at a large edifice, a pile of night. She turned left, then right at its edge, hoping to stay clear of the crowd without getting lost. Unfamiliarity tricked her. All at once she came forth into the next street and found she was at a corner of the square diagonally across it. The spectacle jarred her to a halt.