Which was well for her and hers, and for everybody everywhere who loved liberty. Why care about skin-traces? Lines now radiated from the corners of her mouth and eyes when she laughed, ‘Mond had gone frosty at the temples, yet neither of them had noticeably slowed down.
“Yes, Dagny’s supplied me gossip along with business talk,” Guthrie said. “Good workmanship here. It’s got a solid feel to it, the sort you seldom find any more. Meant to last beyond your own lives, eh?”
The woman nodded. “So we hope. Of course, it’s nothing like your home on Earth.”
“Which one?”
“Hm, well, I happened to recall the Vancouver Island estate. The sea, the woods—“ Her stay there had probably been the happiest of her infrequent visits to the planet, apart from times when she and ‘Mond were together in his France. She gestured at the screen. “We have to pretend.” Quickly, lest he get a false idea that she felt the slightest bit sorry for herself: “But we’ve got plenty you don’t,” more and more as Tychopolis grew. Bird-flight in Avis Park. Beautiful Hydra Square. Wonders, bred for Luna, in the zoo and botanical gardens. Outside, stern grandeur, sports—dashball, rock skiing, mountain climbing, suborbital flits, exploration—and the excitement, bewilderment, and occasional heartbreak of a civilization coming to birth.
“Right,” Guthrie agreed. “Wish I could’ve called on you before. Too busy. Always too backscuttling busy.” He took a turn around the room, glancing at things. “I do miss books,” he remarked. “Antique bound volumes. When I was young, dropping in on somebody, if they were readers, what you saw on their bookshelves would tell you more about them than a month’s palaver.”
“I-remember from your houses,” Dagny said. “No need to remind you about the transport problems we had till lately.”
“Nevertheless we can oblige you,” Edmond said. He took a hand-held cyberlit off a table, where it rested beside a small meteorite full of metallic glints, and started it. Titles and authors’ names appeared on the screen. “Here, play with this.” He gave it to Guthrie.
The jefe unscrolled part of the catalogue, darting to and fro among its items. Most were in the central library database, listed here because they interested the Beynacs. Some were personal property. He evoked a few pages, including representations of texts and pictures centuries old. “Fine collection,” he said meanwhile. “This gadget’s not the same as hofding a real book, but then I daresay the Egyptian priest told Solon, at boring length, how much more character hieroglyphs had than any spindly alphabet.”
He w#s no clotbrain, Dagny reflected, in spite of his sneers at self-styled intellectuals.
A door opened. The housekeeper robot scanned in, sensed people, and, in the absence of orders, withdrew, closing the door again.
“Ah, your professional publications, ‘Mond,” Guthrie observed. “Impressive clutch. M-m, I see you’re stiff-necked as ever pushing your theory about a big ancient asteroid.”
“The evidence accumulates,” the geologist answered. He sought the miniature bar. “But we are being inhospitable. What will you have to drink?”
“I’m told they’ve begun brewing decent beer since I was last on the Moon. That, por favor, to go in hot pursuit of a cold akvavit, if you’ve got some.”
“Dagny would disown me if we did not, especially when you were coming.” Edmond prepared the same for her, a dry sherry for himself.
“But where’s your real writing?” Guthrie asked him.
“Hein?”
“Those novels Dagny’s mentioned, under the name —uh, blast, I’m getting senile—”
“You are not, Uncans,” she declared. “You’ve simply got so much else in your head. Jacques Croquant, that’s his pen name.”
“My secret is out!” Edmond groaned. “I did not know you had told him.”
“I’d like to read ‘em,” Guthrie said. “’Fraid my French has gone down a black hole, what little there ever was of it, but if a translator program won’t mangle the style too badly, I gather they’re fun.”
Edmond shrugged. “Style, what is that? They are deep-space adventure stories I write in spare time for amusement. The pseudonym is because academics are snobs. They respect my Lunar work, yes.” As well they might, Dagny thought fiercely. It had revolutionized selenology. “But I want also my ideas about the early Solar System taken seriously, investigated.”