“Hail, my lady,” he greeted in his fluent Lunarian. “You are gracious thus to respond.”
For some reason, she chose to reply in Anglo. Her voice purred low. “Unwise would I be to linger when the Peace Authority calls.”
He shifted to the same tongue. “You know full well, my lady, we have very little power within your country unless your government grants it. Wise you may be, but kind you certainly are.”
She smiled. “A neat riposte. What would you of me, Officer?”
“An interview, if you please. I think you would prefer it be either over an encrypted line or in private person.”
Arched fox-colored brows lifted higher. “What could be so critical?”
“I believe you have made a shrewd guess at it, my lady.”
The mercurial visage refashioned cordiality. “May-chance I have. We shall see, Captain—Eyach, I have no name for you.” The sophotect, pretending to be a robot, had declared that was his rank.
“My apologies, my lady. I forgot to” instruct the communicator about that.” It was true, and he felt annoyed at himself. His name had long ceased to have meaning for him and he used any that suited his purposes. His actual identity was a function within the cybercosm.
“Venator,” he said, accenting the penult. Roving through the databases, his favorite recreation, he had acquired a jackdaw hoard of knowledge. It amused him to resurrect this word from a language dead and well-nigh forgotten.
Lilisaire inquired no further. Probably more Earth-lings than not went without surnames these days, as Lunarians always had. He imagined her thinking in scorn: but the Earthlings have their registry numbers. Her courtesy remained smooth. “Then, Captain Venator, wish you to come directly to me at Zamok Vysoki? I will make you welcome.”
Astonished, he said, “At once? I could take a suborbital and be there very shortly, but—”
“If you, of the Peace Authority, have a suborbital available at Tychopolis, your superiors look on this as important,” she said, still at catlike ease. “Yes, do, and allow time for the taking of hospitality. I will await.” The screen blanked.
He sat for a brief while recovering his equilibrium. How much did she know? What was her intent—to rush him along, to lead him astray, or merely to perplex him for sport’s sake?
If she was on the attack, let him respond.
Quickly he stripped, stepped under needle spray and dryer, and donned a close-fitting blue uniform with bronze insignia. Formality was his first line of defense. After hesitating, he decided to leave his interlink behind. He didn’t anticipate urgent need of it, and he was unsure what detectors and probes Lilisaire kept in her stronghold. The less she discovered about him, the better.
The sophotect made arrangements while he was on his way to the flyport A fahrweg took him below the ringwall, out to the drome. Antique installations like this remained in service in regions of lesser prosperity and population, also on Earth. His fellow riders were few. The vehicle waited in a launcher already set and programmed for its destination. A mobile gangtube admitted him to it. He secured himself in a seat. Go, he pressed.
Against this gravity, the electromagnetic acceleration was gentle. In moments he was falling free along an arc that would carry him high above the Moon and a quarter of the way around it.
Silence brimmed the cabin. Weightlessness recalled to him, a little, that ocean of thought in which he had lately floated. He looked out the viewscreens. Beneath him shadows edged a magnificent desolation of craters and worn-down highlands. Monorails, transmission towers, solar collectors, energy casters glittered steely, strewn across that wasteland. Few stars shone in the black overhead; light drowned them out. To north the sun stood at late Lunar morning. Earth was not far from it, the thinnest of blue crescents along a darkling disc. They sank as he flew.
Idly, he turned off the cabin lights and enhanced the stars. Their multitudes sprang forth before him, more each second while his eyes adapted. He traced constellations, Eridanus,/Dorado—yonder the Magellan-ic galaxies—Crux, Centaurus … Alpha Centauri, where Anson Guthrie presided over his companion downloads and the descendants of those humans who had left the Solar System with him …