“—and that will be no long while hence. Time hounds us, Kenmuir.” She never used his given name. He did not know whether it was due habit, hers being single, or a decision to avoid any true intimacy.
“But they’ll be the flower of Earth,” he argued. “The sort who want to do real work, live real lives, here, in space.” Like himself, he acknowledged. He had been lucky, had gotten into the Academy, the Space Service, at last the Venture. How could be begrudge anyone else the stars?Her lip lifted. “Yes, the lords of the world and their machine masters should well rejoice to see that restlessness bled away from the planet. On the Moon it will be more easily contained.” Her tone went urgent. “But understand you not? They will make Luna over. Their vast new constructions will break its peace while they in their hordes impose the society they want.”
“Uh, that can’t happen overnight.”
“Swifter than you believe, my innocent captain, and with entropic certainty. I say to you, it will destroy us.”
“Mars—”
“Mars is already lost.”
Recalling Eythil, Kenmuir didn’t dispute that. “M-m, your colonists on the asteroids and the outer moons—no, those places could never hold more than remnants,” powerless, impoverished, until ships from Earth came to remove them under the banner of charity and efficiency.
He glanced down at the leopard and pictured it confined for life in a cage full of apes.
“We, or our children, will cease wishing to live,” Lilisaire went on, quietly. “Some will drag out their last years, some not,” but go violently, in rebellion, crime, suicide. “None will bring young into that kennel of an existence. In two centuries, three, no matter, this mischief-making, unconforming breed will be extinct. How convenient for the cybercosm.”
Kenmuir doubted her concern for her species. Yet how genuine was the despair he heard beneath the steel! If she was right, if the Lunarians perished, a certain magnificence would have gone out of-the universe.
Shock: Could the cybercosm actually intend that?
The eyes regarding him were tearless, the slim body unbowed. “You must have some recourse in mind,” he said slowly.
She nodded. The ruddy hair rippled. “A forlorn venture,” she replied in the same level Voice, “belike in quest of a treasure that shall prove to be a myth.”
Leaning slightly forward, suddenly tense: “Will you dare it?”
Almost, he gasped at the impact. “T-tell me,” he stammered.
She straightened, relaxing her flesh. “It need be naught unlawful … on your part,” he heard. “Nevertheless there is a thing you can seek to learn for me, which has lain hidden away for lifetimes.”
“What?”
‘ “In this house abides a fugitive tradition. Yet I have also fact to relate. Come, drink, calm yourself, hear me out.”
He was amazed at the deftness with which she reviewed history. It was familiar to him, but she brought it into perspective—her perspective—and touched on matters about which he had known little.
She recalled to him the long, Machiavellian struggle to keep Luna sovereign, out of the Federation, waged by Niolente and her cohorts after Guthrie and Rinndalir left for Alpha Centauri and Fireball began disbanding. He had not known of several missions into deep space, whose purpose was never divulged, nor that those were what seemed to have given Niolente the confidence to keep striving.
Of course, in the end it had not helped her. Events torrented, the proclamation of the republic by one faction, its instant recognition by the governments of Earth, the dispatch of Peace Authority troops to its aid. No doubt the old woman had then resolved to die fighting, for the armed force she whistled up had no hope whatsoever. It was inevitable that the Authority would afterward ransack every site she had ever occupied, including any databases kept in them.
Kenmuir had not been aware that all the material was confiscated, that what was later released was incomplete, or that the official story about the accidental wiping of some files was inconsistent with themethodical procedures of the man in charge. Nobody had taken any special notice. The whole business was soon forgotten, except among certain of her direct descendants.