Although Rydberg had encountered such ideas before, it had been as speculations. To hear them calmly set forth as certainties was exciting. “How much expansion do you suppose will happen in your lifetime?” he asked.
A supple shrug raised and lowered Hymen’s shoulders as his hands flickered. “Less than might be. We have too many various demands on our resources, and Earth is a sink for them.”
Beynac lifted a fist. “I told you, God damn it, no politics today!” sfie cried.
Eyrnen cast Rydberg a rueful, almost friendly grin and relaxed. The Earthling returned it.
Inwardly, though, he knew a cold moment. He wanted, he truly wanted kindliness between himself and the other children of his mother, and their children. Never had he won to more than a polite tolerance. It wasn’t simply that they were different. He had gotten along well with metamorphs more radical than these. She knew what the overt problem was, and had just given it a name—politics, the wretched politics. But it was itself merely a symptom, a working, of the real trouble, like fever and buboes in medieval plague.
Property; the common heritage issue. Taxation. Education. Census. Home rule: legislation, legislature, the very concept of democracy and its desirability. Exclusivism. Legitimacy of power; negotiation, criminal law, sanctuary. And more disputes and more, some trivial in themselves but salt rubbed into the wound …
What brought conflict on, Rydberg thought, was a heightening strife between an old civilization and one that was nascent; no, between an old biological species and one that was new, perhaps unstable.
While Dagny, his mother, stood torn between them.
Why had she hushed and shunted aside his questions about the death of Sigurd-Kaino, his half-brother? Somehow, on some remote asteroid—He had asked no further, because that was clearly what she wanted. But why?
Her Lunarian children claimed silence of her.
His mind went to his half-sister Gabrielle-Verdea, still in her sixties as fierce, as insurgent a speaker as her gene-kindred possessed. Through him keened a song of hers. Lunarian, it could not well be rendered in Terrestrial words, and his knowledge of its native tongue was limited to the practicalities in which all languages are about equal; but—
With your Pacific eye, observe my scars
Of ancient wars.
Your bones remember dinosaurs. AAorning light brought alive the mandala of many colors in an arched window. White walls shone, relieved by pilasters that rose to join with the vaulted ceiling. Dura moss carpeted the floor, green and springy. Chairs, couches, table, desk were of wood and natural fiber, graceful as willows. Nothing in the chamber defied the complex of consoles, keyboards, screens, and other equipment that ruled over it. All was like a declaration that life, humanness, and the cybercosm belonged together.
A declaration much needed, Kenmuir thought. This multiple engine of communication and computation, advanced beyond anything he had ever encountered before, was a daunting sight at best.The wordless reassurance did not speak to him. He was come as an enemy.
Aleka at his side, he entered into cool quietness. The doorway contracted behind them. They were shut away, sealed off, private, until they opened the gates to the cybercosm.
She swallowed, squared her shoulders, and walked forward. He went more slowly. His heart thudded, his tongue lay dry. This bade fair to be the day of victory, failure, or ruin. Again he knew himself for a fool, who ought to flee and confess it. But no, then he would be less than a man.
Aleka settled at the primary console and gestured him to take the seat beside hers. When he did, she caught his hand and squeezed it. He felt her warmth, as if blood flowed between them. She smiled. “Bue-no,” she said, “let’s go for broke.” He had turned his face toward her. She leaned over and kissed him.
Before he could really respond, she had drawn back, laughing a little, and her fingers were on the keys. Knowing it wasn’t quite logical, he had disdained to take a tranquilizer. Now all at once the fears and doubts were burned out of him. That wasn’t logical either, but what the Q. When committed to a course of action, he had always gone calm. Never, though, had he felt more clear and quick in the head than now.