Transmission lag.
“Good. You are … quick-witted,” as I judged you to be. “And as a matter of fact, it would be more convenient if you paid your visit a week from now. I am so grateful. How have you been?”
Because it would be a natural action, and because it might be helpful there in the high castle, Aleka related her day.
“Yes, something ought certainly to be done about this. Perhaps something can be done. We’ll see. Adios for now, dear.”
The screen darkened. Only wind and sea and the hiss of the bow cleaving water spoke further. Aleka’s
glance returned to the Lunar disc. Strange, if that was where her hope lay, hope for the ancient unreasonableness of life. Or maybe not so strange. Yonder, too, it had flourished from the earliest years, heedless of the machines that kept it in being.
Bowen had gained a few amenities, among them L’Etoile de Diane. The restaurant’s menu was limited, but that was because all vegetables and fruit were fresh, raised in its own agro. unit. Lately, as excavation and outfitting continued, it had become able to add fish and poultry. The proprietor spoke of wine which wasn’t bruisingly shipped from Earth, beginning fairly soon. Dagny, who could ill affordtthe place, rejoiced when Edmond Beynac invited her. She recognized that that wasn’t entirely on account of the dinner.
“Not bad,” he said of his roast duck. “But if we chance to have Earthside leave at the same time, let me introduce you to a real confit d’oie. I know an inn at Les Eyzies where they make the best in the universe.” He sipped from his glass and chuckled. “They should, by hell. They have been doing it for centuries.”
Earthside together? Dagny told her pulse to behave itself. “Everything in those parts is old, isn’t it?” she asked for lack of a brilliant response.
“No, no, we are living people, not museum exhibits or tourist shows.” The broad shoulders shrugged. “But yes, that is an ancient land, and more survives than castles and archaeological sites. Most of my ancestors, they doubtless trace back to Cro-Magnon Man.” He grinned. “Or further, if those geneticists are right who think Neandertal blood is in us too. I would not mind that, being descended from a little fellow who stayed alive in the face of the glacier and the cave bear.”
She recalled a picture in a book, a hunter on those primeval barrens, and thought Edmond resembled him. Maybe the setting helped her impression along —not this small, warm, food-fragrant room where conversation buzzed low and music (Debussy?) breathed from the speaker—but the view in the ports and in the clear cupola. By day you dined underground; at night the topside section was opened for patrons who didn’t worry about a bit of added radiation. Candles on the tables scarcely dimmed the splendor of Earth near the full; even some of the brighter stars gleamed through, unwinking and wintry. The ground was no longer bare and somber, it reached in a dream of luminance and shadows, as if every stone were alive and every craterlet a well where the spirits might give you your wish. Such works of humankind as stood in view became themselves magi-calH&e shapes in a painting by a man who had slain mammoths. Edmond sat poised against a cold wilderness through which he pursued bigger game than ever walked the tundra.
“You’re interested in prehistory?” Dagny ventured. “You sure keep a zoo of interests.”
He had a smile that came and went quickly but brightly. “Well, my father is professor of the subject at the University of Bordeaux. Me, I thought I might go into the same science, but then I decided most of the great discoveries in it have been made, and—Fireball was giving us the space frontier.”
She couldn’t resist: “Not exactly giving, as Anson Guthrie would be the first to admit.”
He grinned. “Touchtf His prices, however, they are no more than the traffic will bear, and we do not have to deal with mole-eyed, lard-bottomed bureaucrats, we can simply pay and go. I envy you that you know him so well.”
She had told him about her past, what parts seemed appropriate, in the course of their developing acquaintance. “I rarely see him any more. He and his wife put me in a good school, and they paid my expenses at the academy, but I had to qualify for it on my own and since I’ve graduated they’ve never shown me any partiality.”