Gould departed. “Ease off,” Matthias said to Aleka. “Nothing that anybody here sees or hears will go past these bounds without my leave.” Her grip tightened before she let go.
“Not that we’ll expose them to more than necessary,” Matthias continued. “But we do want service.” He touched a button on the arm of his chair. “You twomust be exhausted, and hungry as black holes. Wouldn’t you like to eat first, rest, sleep?”
“I don’t believe I could, sefior,” Aleka replied.
Kenmuir nodded agreement. “Maybe coffee and a bite of something, if the Rydberg pleases.”
“I thought so,” Matthias said. A boy entered. “What’ll you have, Srta. Kame?”
Aleka smiled. “Bueno, if I might ask for a protein cake and a beer> that’d be wonderful.” She was indeed a lusty sort, Kenmuir thought. Before him rose memory of their noontide pause at a spring. She splashed him, laughing, and when she kissed him the water dewed her lips, and she was firm and bouncy and her sweat smelled sweet. Matthias chuckled and gave the order. The attendant left.
Matthias leaned back, bridged his fingers, and inquired in a matter-of-fact voice, “Where did you come from today? Sprucetop? … Yes, that seemed likely. Covering your tracks.”
“It’s a long story, sir,” Kenmuir said. “And we ourselves don’t know the half of it,” Aleka added. “Not yet, anyhow.”
“I suspect there are those who don’t want you to,” Matthias replied. “Go on, then, talk, at your own
pace.”
They began, haltingly at first, breaking when the boy returned. Aleka attacked her beer with unabashed enthusiasm, and thereafter spoke in lively wise of her background and part. Kenmuir did most of the relating. Matthias kept throwing questions at them, like missiles. Once he said:
“An officer of theirs was here about a week ago. He wanted to know about you, Captain Kenmuir. I was not cooperative. Pragmatic Venator, he called himself.”
“Pele!” Aleka gasped. She sat bolt upright. “The
same who—”
When he had heard, Matthias scowled into the fire and directed the scuttler robot to poke it up and throw on another log. The flames snapped loud now that the music was ended. “Ar-r-rh,” he growled. “This is a crisis matter.”
“But why?” she protested. “We’ve tried and tried, lan and I, and we can’t guess what’s wrong.”
“Go on,” he ordered.
They did.
“—and so we came here,” Kenmuir finished.
“Why?” Matthias asked.
“Where else? A few friends, like Sam Packer, might help us hide for a little bit longer, but what use?”
From beneath shaggy brows, eyes took aim and held steady. “Whereas you imagine Fireball, in my person, can arm you for this quixotry whose very meaning you don’t know? Whatever gave you such an idea?”
Kenmuir sighed. “Desperation.”
“And I had nothing better to suggest,” Aleka said tonelessly.
His weariness began to ache in Kenmuir, “We realize it’s all but hopeless. Still, Fireball is worldwide, even if our consortes aren’t many, and—”
The Rydberg lifted a finger. “And you’d call on it to aid this Lunarian bitch who wants to keep our kind out of space?”
“No, sir, no. She only wants to save her society.”
“Her society. Precisely. She, among the handful who own it.”
“That isn’t true, sir. Not that simple or, or anything—“ Kenmuir’s words died away. He sagged back in his chair.
Aleka stayed defiant. “It isn’t, sefior. I don’t know much about Lunarians, but I do know what it means to see your whole life go under. There are my people.”
The massive head nodded. “There are, lass,” Matthias said, gone gentle. “They’re strangers to me, but I’m not forgetting them.”
“We’re not actually appealing to you, sir,” Kenmuir said. “I wouldn’t want the Trothdom to risk itself.”
“That is a factor in the equation, aye.”“And what could Fireball do, anyhow? Nothing, probably. Maybe help us two out of the worst consequences of our folly. Aleka, at least. She’s innocent.”
The woman stiffened. “Like fury I am!” she cried.
Did Matthias smile, very faintly, or was it a trick of light weaving over the furrows of his face? “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he said. “They’re apt to stand on slippery ground.” Kenmuir knew it for a Guthrie quotation, and opened his mouth. “Silence.”