For Love and Glory

VIII

Her team did not come to a real understanding of Jonna and the life thereon. That would be the work of centuries, if it could ever be completed. But they had learned about as much as anyone hoped for—a scattering of facts, some fragments of patterns—when shortly afterward they must leave.

First they returned their nonhuman members. As Dagmar ran from Gargantua toward a point high enough in the gravitational well to allow a hyperjump across light-years, Lissa stood in the saloon, watching the planet recede. She could have done so in her cabin, but it was cramped and the viewscreen here was bigger.

Never mind how familiar, she never wearied of such a sight. On its daylit half, the globe shone white, swirled with a hundred shades of blue, drowning out vision of the multitudinous stars. Nightside glimmered in the light of three moons, small golden crescents. More atmosphere than lay around Asborg or Earth, more clouds. But they opened enough for Karl’s people to have seen those stars and at last sought a way to them; and he himself was a mountaineer, used to her thin air.

She smiled as she remembered him. Might they meet again, often. Now the course was for Xanadu. The three little beings from there, with their extraordinary senses adapted to cold and darkness, had been as valuable in studying Jonna’s long night as his strength, woodcraft, and biological knowledge had been under its sun.

The leap after that would indeed be to home.

Dagmar murmured around her, like the great organism that in a sense the ship was. Air passed by in a cool breeze, currently bearing a slight piney fragrance. One standard gravity of acceleration gave a lightness welcome after Jonna. No matter how far they fared, the children of Earth brought along their remembrances.

A step on the deck made her turn her head. Romon Kaspersson Seafell had. come in. She suppressed a grimace, suddenly realizing that she wanted to be alone.

Not that the man was horrible. Medium-tall, slender, with sharp features, sharp dark eyes, and curly black hair, he wore a plain coverall like hers; but his bore the badge of his House on the shoulder, as if defiantly. Well, he was the only Seafell aboard, and only here because the Seafells had, surprisingly, contributed to the cost of this expedition and, reasonably enough, wanted at least one of their own along. He’d given no particular offense, and been a competent interpreter of geographical data.

“Good daywatch,” he greeted, adding after a moment’s hesitation, “milady.”

Why suddenly so formal? she wondered. Not that they’d been what you’d call close friends. In fact, she had confessed to herself, she didn’t quite like him—or, at any rate, she disliked what he stood for. However, relationships all around had been amicable enough, as they’d better be on a foreign planet.

“Likewise, Romon Kaspersson,” she answered carefully.

He drew alongside her and stopped, glanced at the screen, then regarded her. “Are we the only two idle ones aboard just now?” It sounded as though he wanted to make conversation.

“I daresay everybody else has their own activities,” she said— science, games, sports, sleep, whatever, while the ship conned herself through space.

He did not let the curtness put him off, but smiled a bit. “And I daresay you’ve been musing about your trailmate back yonder?”

It was easiest to reply, “Yes. Karl’s good people.” Actually, Hebo had been adrift in her mind. How was he doing? How would he fare, on an Earth that had become the strangest of all the known worlds?

“Agreed.” Romon laughed. “A little too much so perhaps. He made me feel less than saintly.”

Ah, well, Lissa thought, if he’s reaching for a touch of human warmth, why not? He never said much, but he must have felt rather lonely among the Windholms. Mostly he stayed with his computer and readouts, his reports from robots and landsats. She made a smile. “Why, you were perfectly well-behaved.”

Jesting was not natural to him. “I tried to be.” He bent his lips upward. “My thoughts, however, were often unruly.”

Was he probing for intimacy? She wasn’t interested, even though it had been a pretty long while. “That’s your business.”

He lifted a hand. “Please don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mean it in the usual way. I mean from—m-m-m—your standpoint, and probably your fellows’.”

“What, then?” Not to seem naive: “You want to tell me, don’t you?”

“Frankly, yes. I’ve been watching for a chance to talk with you like this.”

“Why me?”

He must have rehearsed his answer. “Because you’re Lissa Davysdaughter, and your father has the major voice in House Windholm’s space operations.”

She felt almost relieved. “Your House has its own.”

“But we’re basically commercial. Investors, developers, and our space operations are interplanetary and minor.”

She turned cold. “True.”

He allowed himself a hint of anger. “You know Seafell’s never had anything like Windholm’s landholdings. We’re latecomers on Asborg. We can’t afford aristocratic attitudes.”

“You could by now.”

“But traditions, institutions—” Yes, he was in earnest. “Can’t you believe we have ours, our ways of thinking and living, the same as you have yours?”

“Of course you do.” Every House does, she thought. And we all live on the same planet, and share in its governance, and what’s he leading up to?

“You don’t like ours, do you?”

“I don’t hate it. A matter of taste. The communal versus the corporate style?” Lissa shrugged. “They say diversity makes for a healthy society.”

“Is it so absolute a difference? We did help finance this expedition. We have our human share of curiosity. We’re not Shylocks, not in any sense.” Romon paused a moment. “Though he too had his ideals, didn’t he? And the haughty Christians scorned them.”

She almost caught the reference. Something literary, wasn’t it, and ancient? Yes, she’d noticed him screening old texts. He was not entirely a money machine. Maybe not even mostly.

It softened her mood a little. She’d better lighten it anyway. “I’m afraid we’ve all of us had our curiosity more aroused than satisfied.”

But he didn’t take her hint. “Yes. The Forerunner artifact— It changes everything.”

“A remarkable find,” she parried.

His tone accused. “You don’t seem to care that those vagabonds only intended to make money off it.”

Lissa lost whatever small kindliness she had begun to feel. She stiffened. That’s different, she almost said. They’re private parties, entrepreneurs of the classic sort—adventurers—who had no idea of grabbing a monopoly and couldn’t have if they’d wanted to.

Why do I think so, and so strongly?

“Well,” she decided to respond, “they found it and did the preliminary work. They deserve some reward.”

“Yes, yes. Beside the point. Which is, what shall we do with it?”

“Why, I expect there’ll be quite a swarm of investigators. Planetologists and biologists will piggyback. What else?”

“That’s the obvious outcome. All too obvious. But ask yourself: To whose profit? In the long run?”

“Everybody’s.”

His gaze never left her. “That’s not necessarily true, milady. It isn’t even likely. Look at history. Human history, and what little we know about nonhuman ones. Whatever there is to learn, science, technology, is going to give power. To do what? For whom?”

“Scarcely overwhelming power.”

“Are you certain? If nothing else, more clues to the Forerunners, and everything that may mean—” Romon drew breath. “Profit, gain, is power in itself. Your spendthrift friends don’t seem to have understood that. Or else it’s simply that there are just the two of them. A House, though, a world, a race has to think further ahead.”

Taken aback by the intensity, Lissa rallied to demand, “What are you getting at?”

“My superiors and I, we honestly thought we were joining the pure-science game. We have been venturing into it now and then, you know. Yes, I was to keep an eye out for possible commercial values, but that was a sideline. An idea absolutely absent from you Windholms.”

No, Lissa didn’t say, not really. We’re human too.

“Now this,” Romon pursued. “Milady, it needs to be kept in responsible hands. People who won’t recklessly let the knowledge run wild across the galaxy, but keep it under control, think hard about everything they learn, use the knowledge and the power wisely.”

“And keep the power for themselves,” Lissa said half automatically.

“You believe you, you Windholms, can afford idealism. I say you can’t. Nobody can.”

“What is realism?” she retorted. “How far can the races trust a—a set of interlocking corporate directorates?”

Romon sighed. “Let’s not get into a quarrel, milady. There’s no basic secret anymore. The news has been hyperbeamed to Asborg and by now has gone everywhere.” He tautened. “But discretion, control of access, caution about making any findings public—I agree, probably the artifact in itself can’t show us the way to more than some harmless technological progress. But it may have further clues—as I said, even to the Forerunners—and what might that mean?

“It’s not too late. I’m proposing cooperation between the leaders of all our Houses. And, yes, for the time being at least, working out diplomatic ways to keep nonhumans off. They’re still less predictable than we are. Not so?

“Milady, I simply wish to persuade you to help persuade your father to listen to the case I’m trying to make.”

And that the Seafell directors will be trying to make, Lissa thought. How much of this is genuine, how much is in hopes of gaining power? Control. And how much does a desire for control spring from common sense, how much from fear of the universe?

This man seems halfway honest. Maybe more than halfway. An ideologue? A fanatic? I can’t tell. Nor am I qualified to probe his psyche, nor do I want to.

Besides, why? It isn’t important. What matters is what he maybe represents.

She shivered.

It was a faint surprise how cool her voice remained. “You exaggerate my influence, Romon Kaspersson. As well as the meaning of that artifact. You’re always free to contact my father, or anybody else.”

He scowled, “Oh, yes. Theoretically. But I want him to listen, seriously listen, and then talk to his peers. You can get him to do that much, can’t you?”

“If he finds merit in the idea.”

“It’d help, it might be critical. Can you and I talk further? Soon?” His tone softened. Did she hear a sigh? “The voyage won’t last much longer.”

Thanks be, Lissa thought.

And yet— She was a Windholm. That carried an obligation to do what she could whenever it seemed needful. A small enough return for the wealth and privilege to which she was born. Not that this business looked sunshaking. But it could be an early sign of something larger.

Be that as it might—“If you want. Within reason. Not right now, please. I’d like to rest a while.” She escaped to her cabin.

Actually, the encounters afterward weren’t so bad. They were only occasional, and only in the course of a few ship-days. He spoke mildly, often smiling, and indeed tried to shift them into more personal conversation. She found she could divert that by asking him to explain the classical quotations he threw in, whether or not she recognized them. They were apt to be lyrical, even tender. Their authors, historical backgrounds, and whatever else she could get him to tell her about them used up time. He wasn’t a scholar or anything like that; however, his tastes surprised her a little by their depth and frequent delicacy.

What waited for her when she came home scattered all of it into the far corners of her mind.