Anything good and hopeful had always been snatched away. In the general scheme of things, it was high time that Columbia and MRI rejected her as well. And yet, somehow, they had failed to do so, even when given a prize opportunity to do so. They were congratulating her.
The elevator slowed to a halt at ground level and the doors opened. Sianna stepped blinking into the sunlight, disoriented by the bright light and open spaces, the sharpness and clarity of it all. She walked out onto the broad expanses of the central plaza, feeling more than a bit muzzy and lost.
It was like the feeling she got coming out of a matinee, stepping from a darkened theater into the sunlit street after her eyes had spent two or three hours telling her body that it was after dark. Sianna felt like that, only a dozen times more so. She felt like she had indeed been out of time for a while, and now was being thrust, most unwillingly, back into it.
In any event, it was still daytime. She looked toward the Sunstar, and gauged its position in the sky. About three in the afternoon, she decided. Or had they been down there more than a whole day? No, that couldn’t be. Or maybe it could. Bother to all of it.
She looked up at the late-afternoon sky, gleaming perfect robin’s-egg blue. The air was sweet, with just a hint of new-mown grass in the air, wafting down from the roof gardens and Central Park. The air was alive with sound as well—laughter and conversation, the whirring hum of traffic, the busy background bustle of the city, awake and alive. Even in the midst of her exhaustion, it gave her a lift, put a bounce back in her step. She still wanted to go home and get to bed, but home and bed were suddenly a destination, a reward, rather than a place to go hide.
It was amazing what the simple sight of the real open sky, even the Multisystem sky, could do for her spirits.
She got back to her apartment, freshened up, and got ready for bed, grateful that her roommate was still out. She set the phone to take messages without disturbing her and went to bed. It was over now. She had done her bit, found the idea that everyone had been looking for. Now the really smart people could work on it. She could get some rest, get up early, and get cracking on those books. She snuggled down into her pillow and went to sleep.
Next morning Sianna woke up at five a.m., and was out of bed in an instant, feeling quite virtuous, and perhaps a little bit smug. One exam today, and she had never felt readier for work in her life.
She breezed through breakfast and set to work on studying for her finals, happily working through a series of transformational analyses just for practice. She got to her exam at noon and plowed through the problems in no time. She was the third one to finish—even with having triple-checked all her work.
She treated herself to a browse through a bookshop on the way home, and got back to her apartment about three. She made herself a late lunch and indulged herself by reading half a novel instead of studying for her history exam.
It wasn’t until nearly eight-thirty that, looking up from her hook, she thought to check her message system. She had forgotten that she had left the comm switched to message-taking. Dozens of people could have called and she never would have known it.
But there was only one text, the time tag showing that it had come in some time at about five a.m.
Be in my office at 0900 hours tomorrow. W. Bernhardt.
No request, no please. Just the flat order. There was a sudden knot in her throat, and her hands turned sweaty. She had thought she had done her part, that she could let everyone else worry about it.
A lot she knew. Again.
Thirteen
Carrot and Stick
“Is the Multisystem all one creature? A complex ecology of interdependent forms? Something in between, like a huge coral reef of tiny beings making up a greater whole? Or is the question utterly meaningless? Is there no analog or pattern available to the human mind that would provide a useful understanding of what a Charonian is?
“All we can know for certain is that the Charonians had once been very different, and then came to be what they are. Coming into the Universe leaves a scar or two, and change is never complete. The same is true of humanity: our navels are the scars of umbilicals we lost, and the white blood cells that swim in our veins are the descendants of parasitic amoebae that survived by turning from foe to friend. In the process of remaking themselves, the Charonians surely kept some mark of their old selves—and their old weaknesses—behind.
“No matter how well we think we know them, those residuals, those bits of heritage from their unknown past, will at time cause wholly unexpected behavior.”
Night had fallen long before, but Wolf Bernhardt was still at work, preparing his cables, carefully composing the messages. He had to get the phrasing right, exactly right, if he was to be sure of NaPurHab and the Terra Nova cooperating in their own salvation.
Well, actually, NaPurHab shouldn’t be any great challenge. We’re sending you lots of free supplies. Please take them. It wouldn’t take much more than that. The Terra Nova would be the real challenge.
But NaPurHab had already been a fight, here on the ground. It had been tremendously hard to get the backing he needed to provide those supplies, to do a full-scale resupply operation. Thank God he had won through.
It was frustrating to be the only one who understood that the Naked Purple Habitat was itself important, above and beyond the lives of the people on board. It was a vital, irreplaceable observation post. And if the Breeding Binge went as badly it might, NaPurHab might well be the largest surviving human population. It might well be that the survivors on Earth would be begging NaPurHab to rescue them in the none-too-distant future. Earth needed NaPurHab. In the grand scheme of things, who cared who operated it, or if the occupants were a nuisance at times?
But now, events were suddenly moving. He would use the latest data about the SCOREs, and this new information from that Colette girl, to throw a scare and a bit of excitement at the finance committee. It would cement the commitment for a massive and immediate resupply mission to NaPurHab, enough gear and supplies to maintain them for years longer, maybe decades if need be.
But the Terra Nova. Would the Colette girl’s ideas be enough to tempt Steiger away from the suicidal Highwayman mission? Or was Steiger bound and determined to attempt boarding a CORE again?
Supplies. Supplies were the answer. Lift cargo earmarked for the Terra Nova to NaPurHab. Give them another reason to break off.
But how to phrase it? What sort of message would tempt Steiger into coming in? Don’t forget she was not the only one on board that ship. Get MacDougal interested in resupply, and in the Lone World, and Steiger could be goaded into action.
If he played this thing right, there were all sorts of possibilities. It was all cold-blooded, yes. It was using crisis and fear and hope to manipulate people and events. Parts of Wolf could see that, and did not like what they saw.
But those parts were in the minority. The rest of him, the larger part of him, saw his complicated, manipulative schemes and saw they might be the catalyst for all sorts of progress against the enemy. Unless, of course, his urge to do something, anything, now that it seemed he finally had the tools in hand, was the catalyst for getting them all killed.