“Imp,” his mother said fondly. “Ah, Gwen, here’s you Tantie-ma.” Yolande watched, was gratified to see her daughter give the serf an affectionate peck on the cheek.
“Glad to see you again, Tantie-ma,” she said.
“I’m . . . glad to see you, too, Missy Gwen,” Marya said. There was a smile on her face, slight but genuine.
Gwen slapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh, here, I brought you somethin’. Those books you wanted, from that store in Archona? Here’s the plaque.”
SPIN HABITAT SEVEN
CENTRAL BELT
BETWEEN THE ORBITS OF MARS AND JUPITER
DECEMBER 28, 1991
“Aw, Dad!”
Frederick Lefarge looked over at his wife. She was mixing them martinis, at the cabinet on the other side of the living room. Dinner was a pleasant memory and a lingering smell of guinea-chile and avocado salad—God, what did I do to deserve a good cook, on top of looks and brains?—and he wanted that drink, and his feet up, and more quiet than two teenaged daughters promised. On the other hand . . .
He glanced sternly at Janet and Iris. “Homework done?” he said. Gods, they’re getting to be young women, he thought. Halter tops, yet. And those fashionable hip-huggers . . . the damned things looked as if they had been sprayed on.
“Yeah,” Janet said. Well, her marks had been excellent, particularly the math. It looked as if there was going to be at least one spacer in the family, if this kept up. Iris nodded. Her current fancy was composing. Well, at least she was still working at that, not like the other fads.
“It’s a nice group,” Cindy said. She finished shaking the cocktail pitcher, broke it open deftly and filled the chilled martini glasses. “From school, and a bunch over from Habitat Three. You know, the Martins and the Merkowitz kids?”
Lefarge pushed his chair back. “All right,” he said, glancing at the viewer; it was set on landscape, with a time readout down near the lower righthand corner. “But be back by 0100, latest, or I’ll shut the airlock on you for a week, understand?”
“Thanks, Dad!” Janet gave him a quick hug.
“We’ll be back on time, Daddy.” Iris kissed his cheek. “And they’re playing one of my dance tunes,” she whispered into his ear, giggling.
He sighed as he watched them fling themselves down the hall with an effortless feet-off-the-ground twist; they adjusted to the varying gravity of the habitat’s shell decks the way he and Marya had to the streets of New York.
“Next thing you know, I’ll be beating off boyfriends with a club,” he grumbled, accepting the drink. “Ah, nice and dry.”
Cindy put hers on the table and went behind the chair. Her fingers probed at his neck. “Rock. Don’t worry, they’re sensible girls, and we’ve got a nice family town here.” He closed his eyes and rolled his head slightly as she kneaded the taut muscles. “At least we don’t have to worry about juviegroups and trashing or having them go into orbit over Ironbelly Bootstomper bands,” she continued.
Lefarge shuddered. “No, thank God. Sometimes I think the spirit that made America great hasn’t died—just emigrated.”
Cindy laughed and leaned over him; he felt a sudden sharp pain at the base of his cropped hair.
“Hey, cut that out!”
She held an almost-invisible something close to his eye on the tip of one finger: a gray hair. “You don’t have enough of these to be an old fogey yet, honey,” she said, and kissed him upside-down. Her face sobered. “Something’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”
He reached up to run his hand through her hair, streaked with silver against the mahogany color, shining and resilient. “You’re too old to be so indecently beautiful,” he murmured. Then: “I have to take a trip back dirtside,” he said.
“Oh. That chair big enough for two?”
She picked up her drink and settled in against him, curving into the arm he laid about her shoulders. The silk of her blouse and skirt rustled, and he smelled a pleasant clean odor of shampoo and perfume and Cindy. “Uncle Nate?”
“He’s sharp as ever, but not getting any younger,” Lefarge said grudgingly. “You know how it is, anyone in his position so long makes enemies.” The executive positions two or three steps down from the top in an agency like the OSS were coveted prizes. Not high enough to be political appointments, but they set policy. “Those who want his job, if nothing else; the problem is they’re all disasters waiting to happen.”
He paused to take another sip of the martini. “I have to blather to a couple of select committees. On top of that, Nate’s afraid the new people in charge over in Archona are foxy enough to let up the pressure. That von Shrakenberg’s a cunning devil; he knows how quickly some of us will go to sleep if they’re not prodded.” A frown. “I don’t like it, when the Snakes get quiet. They’re planning something. Maybe not now, maybe in a decade; something big.”
Cindy shivered against him, and he held her closer. “No more raids, at least,” she said. “Oh God, honey, I was so frightened.”
And when the raid sirens turned on, went straight from your office to your emergency station and had the rest of them singsonging and playing bridge, he thought with a rush of warmth. Jesus H. Christ, I’m a lucky man. Grimly: And we took out a major warship, too. They may be pulling back their fingers because we singed them.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” she went on.
“Witch.” He sighed. “In the latest courier package from Uncle Nate.” The Project was on the AI-3 distribution list; this was as secure an OSS station as anywhere in the Alliance, if only because so little went out. “They’re in contact with Marya again.”
“Bad?” Cindy said softly.
“No worse than before. That Ingolfsson creature’s spawn . . . ”He turned his head aside for a moment, then continued. “Anyway, Marya’s been taken to their main Martian settlement. Working in household accounts, but even better, she’s made some social contacts with the HQ office workers . . . just rumor, gossip, but priceless stuff. Contact’s a priest; Christ, it’s dangerous, though!” More softly: “And I miss her, sweet, I really do.”
“So do I. She was always like a big sister to me . . . ”
The disk player came on, with a quiet Baroque piece that Cindy must have selected beforehand. The lights dimmed, turning the homey familiarity of the living room into romantic gloom, and a new scene played on the viewer. He recognized that beach with the full moon over the Pacific and the swaying palms. Surf hissed gently . . .
“Why, Mrs. Lefarge,” he said, looking down at her face. She grinned. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that a respectable matron was trying to seduce her husband again.”
She wiggled into his lap. “Why, Mr. Lefarge,” she whispered, twining her arms around his neck. “Why do you think I was so eager to get the girls out of the house?” She nibbled at his ear. “And if you are too young to be a fogey, I’m too young to be a matron. So there.”
Chapter Seventeen
DRAKA FORCES BASE ARESOPOLIS
MARE SERENITATIS, LUNA
MARCH 25, 1998: 2000 HOURS
Yolande turned her head to scan the other side of the Wasp-class stingfighter. This is what it’s like to be a ghost, she thought. She ran her hand through the solid-seeming bulk of a crashcouch, looked down to see her shins disappear into the deck. A Wasp had room for exactly two crew, clamped into their couches for most of the trip. Or what it’s like to be a time traveller. The events she was experiencing were nearly a thousand hours in the past. She watched the movements of the pilot’s gloved fingers on the rests.