"What, hopping like a Survey ship?" he asked incredulously. "You could spend years getting across space that way!"
"Maybe they didn't care. Maybe hyper made them sick." Now he recognized what the odd tone in her voice was; she didn't seem terribly excited, now that she had what she was looking for.
"Well, we don't have to do that," he pointed out. "Once we get out of here, we can backtrack to the EsKay homeworld! Make a couple of jumps, and we'll be stellar celebs! All we have to do is,"
"Is forget about our responsibilities," she said, sharply. "Or else 'forget' to turn in this book with the rest of the loot until we get a long leave. Or turn it in and hope no one else beats us to the punch."
Keeping the book was out of the question, and he dismissed it out of hand. "They won't," he replied positively. "No one else has spent as much time staring at star-charts as we have. You've said as much yourself; the archeologists at the Institute get very specialized and see things in a very narrow way. I don't think that there's the slightest chance that anyone will figure out what this book means within the next four or five years. But you're right about having responsibilities; we are under a hard contract to the Institute. We'll have to wait until we can buy or earn a long leave."
"That's not what's bothering me," she interrupted, in a very soft voice. "It's, the ethics of it. If we hold back this information, how are we any better than those pirates out there?"
"How do you mean?" he asked, startled.
"Withholding information, that's like data piracy, in a way. We're holding back, not only the data, but the career of whoever is the EsKay specialist right now. Lana Courtney-Rai, I think. In fact, if we keep this to ourselves, we'll be stealing her career advancement. I mean, we aren't even real archeologists!" There was no mistaking the distress in her voice.
"I think I see what you mean." And he did; he could understand it all too well. He'd seen both his parents passed over for promotions, in favor of someone who hadn't earned the advancement but who 'knew the right people'. He'd seen the same thing happen at the Academy. It wasn't fair or right. "We can't do everything, can we?" he said slowly. "Not like in the holos, the heroes can fight off pirates while performing brain surgery."
Tia made a sad little chuckle. "I'm beginning to think that's all we can do, just to get our real job done right."
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. "Funny. When this quest of ours was all theoretical, it was one thing, but we really can't go shooting off by ourselves and still do our duty, the duty that people are expecting us to do."
She didn't sigh, but her voice was heavy with regret. "It's not only a question of ethics, but of priorities. We must simply go on doing what we do best" number="and Chria Chance really put her finger on it, when she pointed out that she and Neil and Pol wouldn't know how to recognize our plague spot, and we would. She knows when she should let the experts take over. I hate to give up on the dream, but in this case, that dream was the kind of thing a kid could have, but-"
"But it's time to grow up, and let someone else play," Alex said firmly.
"Maybe we could go pretend to be archeologists," Tia added, "but we'd steal someone else's career in the process. Become second-rate, but very, very lucky amateur pot-hunters."
He sighed for both of them. "They'd hate us, you know. Everyone we respected would hate us. And we'd be celebrities, but we wouldn't be real archeologists."
"Alex?" she said, after a long silence. "I think we should just seal that book up with our findings and what we've deduced about it. Then we should lock it up with the rest of the loot and go on being a stellar CS team. Even if it does get awfully boring running mail and supplies, sometimes."
"It's not boring now," he said ruefully, without thinking. "I kind of wish it was."
Silence for a long time, then she made a tiny sound that he would have identified as a whimper in a softperson. "I wish you hadn't reminded me," she said.
"Why?"
"Because, because it seems as if we're never going to get out of here, that they're going to find us eventually."
"Stop that," he replied sharply, reacting to the note of panic in her voice. "They can't hover up there forever. They'll run out of supplies, for one thing."
"So will we," she countered.
"And they'll run out of patience! Tia, think, these are pirates, and they don't even know there's anyone else here, not for certain, anyway! When they don't find anything, they'll give up and take their loot off to sell!" He wanted, badly, to pace, but that would make noise. "We can leave when they're gone!"
"If, we can get out"
"What?" he said, startled.
"I didn't want you to worry, but there's been two avalanches since you got back, and all the snow the blizzard dropped."
He stared at her column in numbed shock, but she wasn't finished.
"There's about eleven meters of snow above us. I don't know if I can get out. And even if CenSec shows up, I don't know if they'll hear a hail under all this ice. I lost the signals from the surface right after that last avalanche, and the satellite signals are getting too faint to read clearly."
He said the first thing that came into his head, trying to lighten the mood, but without running it past his internal censor first "Well, at least if I'm going to be frozen into a glacier for all eternity, I've got my love to keep me warm."
He stopped himself, but not in time. Oh, brilliant. Now she thinks she's locked in an iceberg with a fixated madman!
"Do," Her voice sounded choked, probably with shock. "Do you mean that?"
He could have shot himself. "Tia," he began babbling, "it's all right, really, I mean I'm not going to go crazy and try to crack your column or anything, I really am all right, I, "
"Did you mean that?" she persisted.
"I," Oh well. It's on the record. You can't make it worse. "Yes. I don't know, it just sort of, happened." He shrugged helplessly. "It's not anything crazy, like a fixation. But, well, I just don't want any partner of any kind but you. If that's love, then I guess I love you. And I really, really love you a lot." He sighed and rubbed his temples. "So there it is, out in the open at last. I hope I don't offend or frighten you, but you're the best thing that ever happened to me, and that's a fact. I'd rather be with you than anyone else I know, or know of." He managed a faint grin. "Holostars and stellar celebs included."
The plexy cover to Ted Bear's little 'shrine' popped open, and he jumped.
"I can't touch you, and you can't touch me, but, would you like to hug Theodore?" she replied softly. "I love you, too, Alex. I think I have ever since you went out to face the Zombie Bug. You're the bravest, cleverest, most wonderful brawn I could ever imagine, and I wouldn't want to be anyone's partner but yours,"
The offer of her childhood friend was the closest she could come to intimacy, and he knew it
He got up, carefully, and took the little fellow down out of his wall-home, hugging the soft little bear once, hard, before he restored him again and closed the door.