Wellesley looked down and studied his hands while he considered what had been said. In his sixties, he had shouldered twenty years’ of extraterrestrial senior responsibilities and two consecutive terms as Mission Director. Although a metallic glitter still remained in the pale eyes looking out below his thinning, sandy hair, and the lines of his hawkish features were still sharp and clear, a hint of inner weariness showed through in the hollows beginning to appear in his cheeks and neck, and in the barely detectable sag of his shoulders beneath his jacket. His body language seemed to say that when he finally had shepherded the Mayflower I1 safely to its destination, he would he content to stand down.
“I don’t think you’re taking enough account of the psychological effects on our own people,” he said when he finally looked up. “Morale is high now that we’re nearly there, and I don’t want to spoil it. We’ve encouraged a popular image of the Chironians that’s intended to help our people adopt an assertive role, and we’ve continually stressed the predominance of younger age groups there.” He shook his head. “Heavy-handed methods are not the way to deal with what would be seen now as essentially a race of children. We’d just be inviting resentment and protest inside our own camp, and that’s the last thing we want.
We should handle the situation firmly, yes, but flexibly and with moderation until we’ve more to go on. Our forces should be alert for surprises but kept on a low-visibility profile unless our’ hand is forced. That’s my formula, gentlemen–firm, low-key, but flexible.”
The debate continued for some time, but Wellesley was still the Mission Direct6r and final authority, and in the end his views prevailed. “I’ll go along with you, but I have to say I’m not happy about it,” Borftein said. “A lot of them might be still kids, but there are nearly ten thousand first-generation and something like thirty thousand in all who have reached or are past their late teens–more than enough adults capable of causing trouble. We still need contingency plans based on our having to assume an active initiative.”
“Is that a proposal?” Wellesley asked. “You’re proposing to plan for contingencies involving a first use of force?”
“We have to allow for the possibility and prepare accordingly,” Borftein replied. “Yes, it is.”
“I agree,” Howard Kalens murmured.
Wellesley looked at Slessor, who, while still showing. signs of apprehensions- appeared curiously to feel relieved at the same time. Wellesley nodded heavily. “Very well. Proceed on that basis, John. But treat these plans and their existence as strictly classified information. Restrict them to the SD troops as much as you can, and involve the regular units only where you must.”
“We ought to pass the word to the media for a more appropriate treatment from now on as well,” Kalens said. “Perhaps playing up things like Chironian stubbornness and irresponsibility would harden up the public image a bit… just in case. We could get them to add a mention or two of signs that the Chironians might have armed themselves and the need to take precautions. It could always be dismissed later as overzealous reporting. Should I whisper in Lewis’s ear about it?”
Wellesley frowned over the suggestion for several seconds but eventually nodded. “I suppose you should, yes.”
Sterm watched, listened, and said nothing.
CHAPTER SIX
HOWARD KALENS SAT at the desk in the study of his villa style home, set amid manicured shrubs and screens of greenery in the Columbia District’s top-echelon residential sector, and contemplated the porcelain bottle that he was turning slowly between his hands. It was Korean, from the thirteenth-century Koryo dynasty, and about fourteen inches high with a long neck that flowed into a bulbous body of celadon glaze delicately inlaid with mishima depicting a willow tree and symmetrical floral designs contained between decorative bands of a repeated foliose motif encircling the stem and base. His desk was a solid-walnut example of early nineteenth-century French rococo revival and the chair in which he was sitting, a matching piece by the same cabinetmaker. The books aligned on the shelves behind him included first editions by Henry James, Scott Fitzgerald, and Norman Mailer; the Matisse on the wall opposite was a print from an original preserved in the Mayflower II’s vaults, and the lithographs beside it were by Rico Lebrun. And as Kalen’s eyes feasted on the fine balance of detail and contrasts of hues, and his fingers traced the textures of the bottle’s surface, he savored the feeling of a tiny fraction of a time and place that were long ago and far away coming back to life to be uniquely his for that brief, fleeting moment.