Her look returned to him. During their hours in Overburg they had barely begun to know one another. He became acutely aware of her fullness, lips and breasts and hips and round strong limbs. “Why would you?” she asked.
“Oh,” he floundered, “too complacent—When was the last scientific discovery that amounted to more than the next decimal place or the newest archeologi-cal dig? Who’s pioneering in music, graphics, poetry, any art? Where’s the frontier?”
“Regardless,” she gainsaid him—how spirited she was—“you’re trying to stop the Habitat.”
Lilisaire’s mission, he thought. His selfishness. But he couldn’t confess that. Most especially not to himself. “Lunarian society deserves to survive,” he replied lamely. “It’s different from anything on Earth, a, a leaven.” He stared about him, randomly into the forest. “It’s created its own beautiful places, you know.” They were a trio that drew glances as they passed through Tychopolis—the big, white-inaned woman, her broad countenance lined across the brow and at the mouth and eyes but her back straight and her stride limber, the tall man, also Earth-born, his locks equally white and the gaunt face weathered, likewise still in full health; and the Lunarian, coppery-dark of skin below the midnight hair, making the slanty sleet-gray eyes seem doubly large. In flare-collared scarlet cloak, gold-and-bronze tunic with a sunburst at the belt, blue hose, he might have been setting youthful flamboyance against the plain unisuits of the elders; but his expression was too bleak.
At the lifelock he identified himself to the portal. It opened on an elevator terminus. “This is a service entrance,” he explained. “The public access is closed for reconstruction.” His English was less idiomatic and lilting than that of most among his generation, perhaps because in his work he necessarily called on many Terrestrial databases and consulted with many Terrestrial experts.“I know that, of course,” Lars Rydberg answered. “I am not sure just what sort of reconstruction it is.”
Eyraen led the way into the elevator. “We can ill allow animals, seeds, or spores from low-level to get into the city. Think of bees nesting in ventilators, squirrels gnawing on electrical cables, or disease germs which the high mutation rate here may have turned into a medical surprise for us.”
Dagny Beynac sensed the implied insult. “My son is quite well acquainted with the obvious,” she said tartly.
“I pray pardon, sir,” Eyrnen said to Rydberg. He did not sound as if he meant it. “I did but wish to ensure that the problem stood clear before you. Some folk confuse our situation with that of the L-5 colony. Yonder they have no more than large, closely managed parks. We are fashioning a wilderness.”
Rydberg went along with the half-conciliation. “No offense,” he answered. “I do know this, but wondered about the technical details. It’s very good of you to show us around.”
It was, even if the bioengineer’s grandmother had specifically requested it for herself as well as her visitor, and a request from Dagny Beynac had on the Moon somewhat the force of a royal command. Quite a few Lunarians would have refused anyway, or at least taken the opportunity to display icy, impeccably formal insolence.
Odd that this son of Jinann should show what hostility he did. She was always the most Earthling-like of the Beynac children, the most amicable toward the mother world. Well, Eyrnen belonged to the next generation.
And was he actually hostile? Rydberg thought of a cat asserting itself before a dog, warning the alien lest a fight erupt. Could that be Eyraen’s intent? Rydberg smothered a sigh. He didn’t understand Lunarians. He wondered how well his mother did.
“A pleasure,” the engineer was saying. “My lady grandmother has not guested these parts in some time. We have much new to reveal.” He did not add outright that he’d rather she’d come unaccompanied. Instead: “She has been overly occupied on behalf of her people.” Against the encroachments of Earth, he left unspoken.
Rydberg’s ears popped. They were going deep indeed.
He admired the deftness with which Beynac intervened: “About those technicalities, I’d be interested to hear, too. Okay, you’ve got a long tunnel, for trucking bulky loads and numbers of passengers to and fro. Valves at either end keep the noticeable animals on the reservation. As you said, it’s the bugs and seeds and microbes and such that could sneak by. But I thought your sensors and mini robots were keeping them well zapped. I haven’t heard of anything escaping that couldn’t easily be taken care of.”