He was all the more annoyed at being roused out of his pleasant lethargy.
‘Now, what, Garand?’ he said ungraciously.
Wyler did not lose his urbane smile. He said, between his teeth, ‘We've found it, just exactly as you said we would.’
‘Found what?’ said Fisher, not remembering. Then, realizing what this must refer to, he said hastily, ‘Don't tell me anything I'm not supposed to know. I won't be tangled with the Office any more.’
‘Too late, Crile. You're wanted. Tanayama himself wants you in front of him.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as I can get you there.’
‘In that case, tell me what's going on. I don't want to face him cold.’
‘That's what I intend to do. We studied every portion of the sky that the Far Probe did not report on. Apparently those who did so asked themselves, as you advised, what it was that a Far Probe camera could see that a Solar System camera could not. The obvious answer was a displacement of the nearer stars, and once that was in their heads, the astronomers found an astonishing thing, something they couldn't have predicted.’
‘Well?’
‘They found a very dim star with a parallax of well over one second of arc.’
‘I'm not an astronomer. Is that unusual?’
‘It means that the star is at only half the distance of Alpha Centauri.’
‘You said “very dim”.’
‘It's behind a small dust cloud, they tell me. Listen, if you're not an astronomer, your wife on Rotor was. Perhaps she discovered it. Did she ever say anything to you about it?’
Fisher shook his head. ‘Not a word. Of course-’
‘Yes?’
‘In the last few months, there was an excitement about her. A kind of brimming over.’
‘You didn't ask why?’
‘I assumed it was the imminent departure of Rotor. She was excited about going and that drove me mad.’
‘On account of your daughter?’
Fisher nodded.
‘The excitement may have been over the new star, too. It all fits. Naturally, they'd go to this new star. And if your wife had discovered it, they would be going to her star. That would account for some of her eagerness to go. Doesn't it make sense?’
‘Maybe. I can't say it doesn't.’
‘All right, then. That's what Tanayama wants to see you about. And he's angry. Not at you, apparently, but he's angry.’
21It was later that same day, for there was no delay on this occasion, that Crile Fisher found himself in the office of the Terrestrial Board of Inquiry, or, as it was far better known to its employees, simply the Office.
Kattimoro Tanayama, who had directed the Office for over thirty years, was getting quite elderly. The holographs shown of him (there weren't many) had been recorded years before, when his hair was still smooth and black, his body straight, his expression vigorous.
Now his hair was gray, his body (never tall) was slightly bent, and possessed an air of frailty. He might, thought Fisher, be reaching the point where he was considering retiring, if it were conceivable that he intended to do anything but die in harness. His eyes, Fisher noted, were, between their narrowed lids, as keen and as sharp as ever.
Fisher had a little trouble understanding him. English was as nearly universal a language on Earth as it was possible for a language to be, but it had its varieties, and Tanayama's was not the North American variety Fisher was accustomed to.
Tanayama said coldly, ‘Well, Fisher, you failed us on Rotor.’
Fisher saw no point in arguing the matter; and no point in arguing with Tanayama, in any case. ‘Yes, Director,’ he said tonelessly.
‘Yet you may still have information for us.’
Fisher sighed silently, then said, ‘I have been debriefed over and over.’
‘So I have been told, and so I know. You have not been asked everything, however, and I have a question to which I - I - want an answer.’
‘Yes, Director?’
‘In your stay on Rotor, have you been aware of anything that would lead you to believe that the Rotorian leadership hated Earth?’
Fisher's eyebrows climbed. ‘Hate? It was clear to me that the people on Rotor, as on all Settlements, I think, looked down on Earth, despised it as decadent, brutal and violent. But hatred? I don't think they thought enough of us, frankly, to feel hatred.’
‘I talk of the leadership, not of the multitude.’
‘So do I, Director. No hatred.’
‘There's no other way of accounting for it.’
‘Accounting for what, Director? If that is a question I may ask?’
Tanayama looked up at him sharply (the force of his personality made one rarely aware of just how short he was). ‘Do you know that this new star is moving in our direction? Quite in our direction?’
Fisher, startled, looked quickly toward Wyler, but Wyler sat in comparative shadow, well out of range of the sunlight from the window, and was not, in appearance, looking at anything.
Tanayama, who was standing, said, ‘Well, sit down, Fisher, if it will help you think. I will sit down, too.’ He sat down on the edge of his desk, his short legs dangling.
‘Did you know about the motion of the star?’
‘No, Director. I didn't know of the existence of the star at all till Agent Wyler told me.’
‘You didn't? Surely it was known on Rotor.’
‘If so, no-one told me.’
‘Your wife was excited and happy in the last period before Rotor left. So you told Agent Wyler. What was the reason?’
‘Agent Wyler had thought it might be because she had discovered the star.’
‘And perhaps she knew of the star's motion and was pleased at the thought of what would happen to us.’
‘I can't see why that thought should make her happy, Director. I must tell you that I do not actually know that she knew of the star's motion or even that it existed. I do not, of my own knowledge, know that anyone on Rotor knew that the star existed.’
Tanayama looked at him thoughtfully, rubbing one side of his chin lightly, as though relieving a slight itch.
He said, ‘The people on Rotor were all Euros, I believe, weren't they?’
Fisher's eyes widened. He hadn't heard that vulgarism in a long time - never from a government functionary. He remembered Wyler's comment soon after he had returned to Earth about Rotor being ‘Snow White’. He had dismissed it as a piece of lighthearted sarcasm, and had given no heed to it.
He said resentfully, ‘I don't know, Director. I didn't study them all. I don't know what their ancestries may be.’
‘Come, Fisher. You don't have to study them. Judge by their appearances. In all your stay on Rotor, did you encounter one face that was Afro, or Mongo, or Hindo? Did you encounter a dark complexion? An epicanthic fold?’
Fisher exploded. ‘Director, you're being twentieth-century.’ (If he had known a stronger way of putting it, he would have.) ‘I don't give these things thought, and no-one on Earth should. I'm surprised you do, and I don't think it would help your position if it were known that you do.’
‘Don't indulge in fairy tales, Agent Fisher,’ said the Director, moving one gnarled finger from side to side in admonition. ‘I am talking about what is. I know that on Earth we ignore all variation among ourselves, at least outwardly.’
‘Just outwardly?’ said Fisher in indignation.
‘Just outwardly,’ said Tanayama coldly. ‘When Earth's people go out to the Settlements, they sort themselves out by variation. Why should they do that, if they ignored all variation? On any Settlement, all are alike, or, if there is some admixture to begin with, those who are well outnumbered feel ill-at-ease, or are made to feel ill-at-ease, and shift to another Settlement where they are not outnumbered. Isn't that so?’
Fisher found he could not deny this. It was so, and he had somehow taken it for granted without questioning it. He said, ‘Human nature. Like clings to like. It set up a - neighborhood.’
‘Human nature, of course. Like clings to like, because like hates and despises unlike.’
‘There are M - Mongo Settlements, too.’ Fisher stumbled over the word, and realized full well that he might be mortally offending the Director - an easy and dangerous man to offend.