“I could do.”
“You won’t. The smell is revolting. It made me throw up.”
“When did you ever gut a chicken?”
“About fifty years ago. Back when I was young and idealistic.”
“And foolish. Yeah, I know.”
She leaned over and rubbed his cheek with her fingers. “Am I a real pain?”
“No.” He tried to catch one of her fingers in his teeth—missing.
“In any case,” she said, “chickens will ruin the lawn. Have you ever taken a good look at their claws? They’re evil.”
Mark grinned. “Killer chickens.”
“They kill lawns, and rip the rest of the garden apart as well.”
“Okay. No chickens.”
“But I’m all in favor of the vegetable garden.”
“Yeah. Because I’m going to rig up an irrigation system, and a gardeningbot can look after the rest of it.”
Liz blew him a kiss. “I said I’d tend the herb bed myself.”
“Wow. All of it?”
“Any regrets yet?”
“Not one.”
“I can think of one.”
“What?” he asked indignantly.
“I need a big strong man to go out and look at the precipitator leaves again.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding! I fixed them last week.”
“I know, darling. But they barely filled the tank last night.”
“Goddamn semiorganic crap. We should have dug a decent well.”
“Well, we can get a constructionbot to lay a pipe down to the river when the real house is finished.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
The maidbot took their plates and cutlery away to stack in the dishwasher. Mark carried a dish of sticky toffee pudding through into the living room, along with two spoons. They snuggled up together on the sofa, and started scooping at the gooey mass from opposite ends. Over on the portal, Wendy Bose was stammering and weeping her way through a statement. Professor Truten, labeled by the subtitles as a “close family friend,” had his arm supportively around her shoulder.
“Poor woman,” Liz said.
“Yeah.”
“She needs to go into rejuve. I wonder if CST will pay for that?”
“Why does she need rejuve?” Mark peered at her image inside the portal. “She doesn’t look like she’s that old.”
Liz took advantage of his distraction to spoon up two lots of pudding. “Compared to whom? Dudley Bose’s replacement clone is going to be an eighteen-year-old. She’ll have a physical equivalence of late fifties. Trust me, that’s not a marriage you want to try.”
“Suppose not. I just can’t stop thinking about Bose and Verbeke. Talk about being abandoned a long way from home. Do you think they suicided when they realized?”
“Depends on the Dyson aliens. Maybe they built them an environment chamber, and right now they’ve cracked the translation hurdle and are chatting away happily.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Liz chewed thoughtfully for a moment. Professor Truten was helping Wendy Bose back into her house. “Nope. They’re bodydead.”
“I figured that, too.” His gaze wandered up to the cheap composite ceiling. “You know Elan’s almost the closest Commonwealth planet to the Dyson Pair.”
“There are seven closer than us, including Anshun. But you’re right, we’re close.” She giggled. “Only seven hundred and fifty-four light-years away. Scary, huh?”
He reached around with his free hand, and poked her just below the ribs, where he knew she was sensitive.
“Ow!” Liz screwed her face up, and retaliated by scooping up a giant piece of pudding.
“Hey!” he protested. “I’ve barely had a mouthful yet.”
“Life’s a bitch, then you rejuvenate and do it all over again.”
SIXTEEN
It was midday on America’s eastern seaboard. The sun had reached its zenith, allowing it to shine directly onto the streets lurking at the bottom of Manhattan’s concrete canyons. Looking down on Fifth Avenue from the two hundred twenty-fifth floor of the Commonwealth Exploration and Development Office, Nigel Sheldon could see the city’s perpetual traffic battle in action. All along that massive historical thoroughfare, yellow cabs and matte-black limousines were jammed together, two entirely separate and antagonistic species contesting dominance of the available lanes. Urban myth told it that the city’s cabs had illicit aggressor software installed in their drive arrays. It wouldn’t surprise Nigel given the times his limo had to brake to make way for a cab veering out in front of him. And they were the ones who benefited most from this brief visitation of light, hundreds of them gleaming splendidly amid their somber opponents, right now they looked victorious.
Closer to the base of the skyscraper he could see a thick semicircle of reporters around the main entrance. There was an idle thought, if he spat out of the window, how long would it take before one of them was hit, looking upward with revulsion and annoyance. It was good to have childish thoughts like that still, he felt—put a perspective on life. His fellow Council members could certainly do with lightening up.
They were already filling the room behind him. Thompson Burnelli and Crispin Goldreich sitting together at the table, heads together as they horse-traded and maneuvered, playing out the game in which all the Grand Families participated. Elaine Doi, looking more drawn than usual, but then she really didn’t need complications in the year that would see her placing her name into the ring for the pre-primaries of the presidential election. She was exchanging greetings with Rafael Columbia and Gabrielle Else. There were fewer aides this time around, reflecting the increased security and importance resting on the ExoProtectorate Council. Wilson Kime was standing talking with Daniel Alster, looking remarkably unflustered given the certain degree of animosity directed toward him by Council members, led by Senator Burnelli.
Nigel could take the politicking in his stride. Unlike Wilson, he’d never given himself the luxury of a sabbatical life away from the heart of the Commonwealth government. Thinking ahead was what he lived for; and he was pretty sure that none of the aides and think-tanks that the other Council members drew on for their briefs had prepared as many scenarios as the CST strategists had. Some of the worst-case outcomes were going to require counteractions that he would have to undertake by himself, through private and discreet ventures—including the ultimate fallback of evacuating his entire family from Commonwealth space altogether. Implementing such schemes didn’t particularly bother him—in fact they were quite a challenge. The only cause for concern today was the one thing that had been troubling him for several months now, the lack of any communication from Ozzie. Nigel was used to his friend vanishing for months, or even years at a time while he went worldwalking, or even homesteading and raising a new family. But he always answered his messages eventually.
“If you’re ready,” Elaine Doi said, somewhat impatiently.
Nigel turned from the window, nodding reluctantly. He’d been putting off the meeting in the small hope that Ozzie would appear at the last second, unapologetic as always and happy to have caused a nuisance. It wasn’t to be. The doors were closed, and the room secured.
Everyone settled around the table. The Vice President asked for the SI to be brought on-line, and its tangerine and turquoise lines began to shiver across the screen at the end of the room. “I believe we should start by congratulating Captain Wilson and his crew on performing an exceptionally difficult mission with true professionalism,” Elaine Doi said. “I know you had some hard choices to make out there, Captain, and I don’t envy you that, but I believe they were the right ones. Bringing back information was your first priority.”