Getting ready for Erythro took Insigna quite a while, of course. There were matters on Rotor that could not be left at midpoint. There had to be arrangements in the astronomy department, instructions to others, appointment of her chief associate to the position of Chief Astronomer pro-tem, and some final consultations with Pitt, who was oddly non-communicative on the matter.
Insigna finally put it to him during her last report before leaving.
‘I'm going to Erythro tomorrow, you know,’ she said.
‘Pardon me?’ He looked up from the final report she had handed him, and which he had been staring at, though she was convinced he wasn't reading it. (Was she picking up some of Marlene's tricks and not knowing how to handle it? She mustn't begin to believe that she was penetrating below the surface when, in fact, she was not.)
She said patiently, ‘I'm going to Erythro tomorrow, you know.’
‘Is it tomorrow? Well, you'll be coming back eventually, so this is not goodbye. Take care of yourself. Look upon it as a vacation.’
‘I intend to be working on Nemesis' motion through space.’
‘That? Well-’ He made a gesture with both hands as though pushing something unimportant away. ‘As you wish. A change of surroundings is a vacation even if you continue working.’
‘I want to thank you for allowing this, Janus.’
‘Your daughter asked me to. Did you know she asked me to?’
‘I know. She told me the same day. I told her she had no right to bother you. You were very tolerant of her.’
Pitt grunted. ‘She's a very unusual girl. I didn't mind obliging her. It's only temporary. Finish your calculations and return.’
She thought: That's twice he mentioned my return. What would Marlene make out of that if she were here? Something evil, as she says? But what?
She said evenly, ‘We'll come back.’
He said, ‘With the news, I hope, that Nemesis will prove harmless - five thousand years from now.’
‘That's for the facts to decide,’ she said grimly, then left.
24It was strange, Eugenia Insigna thought. She was over two light-years from the spot in space where she was born and yet she had only been on a spaceship twice and then for the shortest possible journeys - from Rotor to Earth and then back to Rotor again.
She still had no great urge to travel in space. It was Marlene who was the driving force behind this trip. It was she who, independently, had seen Pitt and persuaded him to succumb to her strange form of blackmail. And it was she who was truly excited, with this odd compulsion of hers to visit Erythro. Insigna could not understand that compulsion and viewed it as another part of her daughter's unique mental and emotional complexity. Still, whenever Insigna quailed at the thought of leaving safe, small, comfortable Rotor for the vast empty world of Erythro, so strange and menacing, and fully six hundred and fifty thousand kilometers away (nearly twice as far away as Rotor had been from Earth), it was Marlene's excitement that reinvigorated her.
The ship that would take them to Erythro was neither graceful nor beautiful. It was serviceable. It was one of a small fleet of rockets that acted as ferries, blasting up from the stodgy gravitational pull of Erythro, or coming down without daring to give in to it by even a trifle, and, either way, working one's way through the cushiony, windy unpredictability of an untamed atmosphere.
Insigna didn't think the trip would be pleasurable. Through most of it they would be weightless and two solid days of weightlessness would, no doubt, be tedious.
Marlene's voice broke into her reverie. ‘Come on, Mother, they're waiting for us. The baggage is all checked and everything.’
Insigna moved forward. Her last uneasy thought as she passed through the airlock was - predictably - But why was Janus Pitt so willing to let us go?
25Siever Genarr ruled a world as large as Earth. Or, to be more accurate perhaps, he ruled, directly, a domed region that covered nearly three square kilometers and was slowly growing. The rest of the world, however, nearly five hundred million square kilometers of land and sea, was unoccupied by human beings. It was also occupied by no other living things above the microscopic scale. So if a world is considered as being ruled by the multicellular life-forms that occupied it, the hundreds who lived and worked in the domed region were the rulers, and Siever Genarr ruled over them.
Genarr was not a large man, but his strong features gave him an impressive look. When he was young, this had made him look older than his age - but that had evened itself out now that he was nearly fifty. His nose was long and his eyes somewhat pouchy. His hair was in the first stages of grizzle. His voice, however, was a musical and resonant baritone. (He had once thought of the stage as a career, but his appearance doomed him to occasional character roles, and his talents as an administrator took precedence.)
It was those talents - partly - that had kept him in the Erythro Dome for ten years, watching it grow from an uncertain three-room structure to the expansive mining and research station it had now become.
The Dome had its disadvantages. Few people remained long. There were shifts, since almost all those who came there considered themselves in exile and wished, more or less constantly, to return to Rotor. And most found the pinkish light of Nemesis either threatening or gloomy, even though the light inside the Dome was every bit as bright and homelike as that on Rotor.
It had its advantages, too. Genarr was removed from the hurly-burly of Rotorian politics, which seemed more ingrown and meaningless each year. Even more important, he was removed from Janus Pitt, whose views he generally - and uselessly - opposed.
Pitt had been strenuously opposed to any settlement on Erythro from the start - even to Rotor orbiting around Erythro. Here, at least, Pitt had been defeated by overwhelming public opinion, but he saw to it that the Dome was generally starved for funds and that its growth was slowed. If Genarr had not successfully developed the Dome as a source of water for Rotor - far cheaper than it could be obtained from the asteroids - Pitt might have crushed it.
In general, though, Pitt's principle of ignoring the Dome's existence as far as possible meant that he rarely attempted to interfere with Genarr's administrative procedures - which suited Genarr right down to Erythro's damp soil.
It came as a surprise to him, then, that Pitt should have bothered to inform him personally of the arrival of a pair of newcomers, instead of allowing the information to show up in the routine paperwork. Pitt had, indeed, discussed the matter in detail, in his usual clipped and arbitrary manner that invited no discussion, or even comment, and the conversation had been shielded, too.
It came as an even greater surprise that one of the people coming to Erythro was Eugenia Insigna.
Once, years before the Leaving, they had been friends, but then, after their happy college days (Genarr remembered them wistfully as rather romantic), Eugenia had gone to Earth for her graduate studies and had returned to Rotor with an Earthman. Genarr had scarcely seen her - except once or twice, at a distance - since she had married Crile Fisher. And when she and Fisher had separated, just before the Leaving, Genarr had had work of his own and so had she - and it never occurred to either to renew old ties.
Genarr had, perhaps, thought of it occasionally, but Eugenia was quite apparently sunk in sorrow, with an infant daughter to raise, and he was reluctant to intrude. Then he was sent to Erythro and that ended even the possibility of renewal. He had periodic vacation time on Rotor, but he was never at ease there any longer. Some old Rotorian friendships remained, but only in lukewarm fashion.
Now Eugenia was coming with her daughter. Genarr, at the moment, didn't remember the girl's name - if he had ever known it. Certainly, he had never seen her. The daughter should be fifteen by now, and he wondered, with a queer little interior tremble, if she was beginning to look anything like the young Eugenia had.