He stopped, surrendering because he could see that she was looking at him with resigned incomprehension. She said, obviously trying to be reasonable, "But Viktor, you said yourself all these things were zillions of miles away and they took millions of years to happen. How can you call them 'important'?"
He ground his teeth. "Knowledge is important!" he barked. It was an article of faith.
Unfortunately, Nrina was not of his religion. She took a turn or two around the room, looking at him in bafflement.
Viktor did not like the feeling that he had committed a terrible social blunder. "I could get a job and pay them back," he offered.
"The kind of job you could get, Viktor," she said with a sigh, "would not pay them back in twenty years. What can you do?" She hesitated, then plunged in. "Viktor? Who are Marie, Claude, Reesa, and Mom?"
"What?"
"They are names you used to say. When you were feverish from freezer burn," she explained. "Sometimes you called me Marie and Claude, sometimes Reesa. And just at the beginning I think you said 'Mom.' Were these women you loved?"
He was flushing. "One was my mother," he said gruffly. "Marie-Claude and Reesa—yes."
"I believed it was that." She sighed, twirling a lock of his hair in her slim fingers. Then she looked at him seriously. "Viktor," she said, "I could design a woman like you if you wished. I could make one from your own genes, as I did with Balit for Forta and Frit. Or, if you can describe this Reesa and this Marie-Claude, I could make one like them. Or with the best qualities of both; if you wish. She would be physically of your kind, not as tall and slim as we are. Of course," she added compassionately, "it would take time. The embryo must gestate, the child grow—twenty years, perhaps, before she would be of mating age …"
He looked at her with a sudden shock. "What are you telling me?" he demanded. "Do you want to stop our, uh, our—"
She let him flounder without an ending to the sentence. When it was clear he couldn't find one, she shook her head affectionately. "Come to bed," she ordered. "It's late."
He obeyed, of course. And when they had made love, and Viktor rolled over to get some sleep, it seemed that it was only minutes before Nrina was poking at him.
It must have been later than he thought, because she was fully dressed, gauzy work robe over her cache-sex, hair pinned up out of the way. "Get up, Viktor," she ordered.
He craned his neck to blink at her. "What? Why?" It wasn't uncommon for Nrina to have to get up early to work, but she didn't usually insist on his own rising.
She looked serious. "I want you to go to Newmanhome with Pelly," she told him.
He gaped at her. "Newmanhome?"
"He is leaving tomorrow," she said.
Viktor rubbed his eyes. He was having trouble taking in what she had said. "Are you angry because of the money?" he asked plaintively.
"No. Yes, but that isn't why. It is simply time for it to be over, that's all."
"But—but—"
"Oh, Viktor," she sighed. "Why are you being so difficult? You didn't think I would pair with you permanently, did you?"
Pelly's ship was as impressive inside as out—only a chemical rocket, to be sure, but a huge one. Viktor was impressed all over again at the richness of a society that could afford to build such vast, sophisticated machines for so little purpose.
To Viktor's surprise, Frit, Forta, and Balit turned up at the launching, Forta and Frit almost weeping as they kissed their son. It looked exactly like a farewell. "Balit!" Viktor cried. "What is this?"
"I'm coming with you," the boy said simply. Incredulous, Viktor turned toward the parents—and recoiled from the anger in their eyes.
"Yes, he is going to join you, Viktor," Frit said bitterly. "We have discussed it all night, but Balit insists. He is freed now; how can we stop him? But I cannot forgive you, Viktor, for putting these ideas in his head."
CHAPTER 27
In the middle of that feebly expiring universe, Wan-To suddenly felt almost young again. There was still nuclear fusion going on somewhere!
Then the last of the ancient memories fell into place, and his next thought was to curse himself.
He had been such a fool. Why hadn't he thought ahead? Why hadn't he planned for this? It would have been so easy for him to do this same trick on any scale he liked, to send whole galaxies of stars off in the long-term storage of fast-as-light travel, so that he would have billions upon billions of them ready for his use in this time of his need!
For that matter, why hadn't he built some sort of homing impulse into the matter-doppel's instructions, so that they could have returned to normal space nearby?
The list of charges Wan-To could make against himself had suddenly become almost endless, but he gave up on them as common sense reasserted itself. Self-recrimination wasn't really Wan-To's style. Anyway he had more exciting things to think about.
Yes, yes, the memories were clear. There were twelve stars, and they were still alive! Still even young! And all his!
True, they had been somewhat depleted by the drain of energies that had been needed to send them hurtling across the universe, and certainly they were now a terribly long way away—but they were his. He searched eagerly through his specific memories of that offhand action. There was not much there, but he was certain that some of them had billions of years yet to go even on the main sequence—then they would be long-lived dwarfs for much longer than that.
Cheerful for the first time in many eons, Wan-To began the task of planning how to make use of this wholly unexpected new gift.
CHAPTER 28
Landing on Newmanhome again was a thrill for Viktor Sorincaine. For one thing, it was real spaceflight! The vessel was a real spaceship landing shuttle, and Pelly let him sit in the copilot seat as they brought it in. Just being on Newmanhome was an even greater thrill; it was home again. His real home. The place where he belonged—even though, shockingly, the place was no longer anything like the green and promising land he had grown up in. (Nothing green had lived through Newmanhome's ages of ice. Nothing was alive anywhere at all on Newmanhome, except what the habitat people had put there.) Yet Viktor even had friends there! Jeren was waiting eagerly for him, shy and dumb and devoted; and Korelto. Even surly Manett managed to grumble a greeting as he clasped Viktor's shoulder. His eyes, though, were fixed on little Balit as the boy was helped out of the lander and onto a carrying chair. "He's really Frit and Forta's kid?" Manett whispered. "He actually came with you? Fred! Then maybe something's really going to happen around here after all!"
"Sure things are going to happen!" Jeren rumbled loyally. "Viktor's here now!" Then he wheedled, "But leave him alone, you guys, all right? He needs time to get settled in, doesn't he? Now, look, Viktor, I fixed up a place for you. I can take you there any time. Are you hungry? I could make some rabbit stew—real rabbits, Viktor; we've got a whole flock of them breeding now …"
Viktor hardly heard any of that. He was gazing around at the planet he had left. It wasn't all depressing. Although the hills were brown and bare, the bay was clear blue. So was the sky, with cotton-ball clouds dotted out over the ocean. And there was definitely a certain amount of life on Newmanhome again. Human life, anyway. Practically the planet's whole population—nearly sixty people!—had come to greet the new arrivals, like the citizens of any frontier town gathered at the railroad station to see the train come in.