recognized the sound and the gesture; they had been given her in the past, a sign of sympathy and respect. It struck her like a wave that the Susaian felt directly what she could merely guess at, how much it signified that this man thus opened his heart.
“I’m Lissa, Torben,” she blurted. “After everything we’ve been through together.”
He was silent for a few heartbeats, until, very softly: “Thanks. Thank you.”
Orichalc’s look upon him seemed to intensify, almost to glow.
“Maybe we can see more of each other, oftener?” Hebo proposed. “Peaceful-like, I mean.”
Lissa half wished the Susaian weren’t here. It complicated fibbing. “I’m afraid we’ll both be awfully busy.”
“Not that much. If we don’t let ourselves be.”
“Take time off?” He nodded. She decided on blunt honesty. “I’d like that if the situation were different. I could try to arrange it without disrupting my work. But— I’m sorry, Torben, I truly am, but I doubt I could ever quite get out of my mind that it’s work to oppose what you’re aiming at, and my side is the underdog.”
“That’s not right!” he protested. “You agreed Freydis needs some regular industries.”
“Yes. A minimum, and the goal should be to phase them out as far as possible once the colony learns new, better ways. Which it has to start doing soon, or Venusberg will have taken the planet over.”
“A somewhat exaggerated dread, my dear,” Orichalc said.
Lissa scowled. “You both know what I’m getting at.”
“But do you know what Captain—Torben is talking about?”
She stared.
Hebo turned his own look on the Susaian. “How much do you sense?” he demanded.
“I cannot read your mind, sir.”
“What can you read, then?” Hebo asked roughly.
“Good will. Hesitation. An inner loneliness.”
“Him, lonely?” exclaimed Lissa.
“Perhaps I should say nothing further. I have no wish to give offense.”
Lissa wasn’t used to being abashed. “Well, I—I don’t want to intrude—on your privacy, either—Torben. Maybe I’d better say goodbye.” She started to rise.
He reached a hand toward her. “No. Wait. Please, damn it.”
She sat back and could not escape smiling.
He pondered for half a minute, then slapped his sound leg and laughed aloud. “All right!” he nearly roared. “You win. And I’m glad.”
Lissa’s pulse jumped. “Do you want to tell us something? We want to hear.”
His voice dropped, his face tautened. “If you’ll both first swear secrecy. I mean secrecy. Not a breath or a hint before I give you leave, which I don’t expect will be for several years.” He looked at the Susaian. “Your mates will know you’re keeping something from them, Orichalc, but I’m betting they won’t pry.”
“That perception will of itself motivate them not to,” replied the other. “This is a basic ethic.”
Hebo’s gaze returned to Lissa. “And—I think we’ve learned quite a bit about each other, we three,” he said.
“Enough for trust,” Lissa answered low. “More than enough. Yes, you have my promise, Torben. My oath, by the honor of my House.”
She hoped with sudden passion that she wouldn’t regret giving it. Well, if so, maybe she could talk him out of whatever he intended.
“I have nothing to offer but my bare word,” said Orichalc. His people didn’t need spoken pledges.
“Plenty for me,” Hebo sighed. “I must admit it’s been lonely. Oh, I’ve got friends here, fun, the kind of ties that shared work makes. But always I’m hiding the thing that really matters, from everybody but Dzesi.” And she isn’t human, Lissa thought. “It’s a kind of permanent lie. Now—”
He leaned back, pausing again, before he went on, his tone gone decisive: “You’d have learned anyway, in due course. Everybody would have. Supposing anything comes of my notion. Today I can share it with you.”
“Who knows but what we may be able to help a little?” said Orichalc.
He kens honest intentions, Lissa realized. Warmth flowed through her.
Hebo drew breath and plunged into his explanation in the headlong way she had come to know.
“I’ve thought about the Forerunners quite a lot, off and on, because of what happened on Jonna. When I heard about the black hole collision, and how you were there for it, maybe that’s what made the notion click together. A grazing crash, of a sort probably unique in the history of the galaxy, almighty rare in the whole universe. Did the Forerunners predict it, way back when they or their machines were scouting this neighborhood? Wouldn’t they have wanted observation from close by?”
“Do you believe they could have calculated the event?” asked Orichalc, incredulous. “The latest traces we have of them are some three million years old.”
“Not terribly long ago, when you remember that an orbit around the galactic center takes close to 200 million years at our distance from it. Besides, their oldest things we’ve found seem to go back at least five million years. Which gives ’em maybe two million to collect astronomical data and run the calculations with computing power I imagine makes our best look puny. Yes, I know about chaos theory, but my own amateur figuring convinces me that times and distances weren’t so great that exact prediction was impossible. After all, those were two pretty damn massive bodies. Not easily perturbed.”
“We detected no probes or anything else foreign when we were there,” Lissa said.
Hebo grinned. “You were kind of busy.”
“But neither have later expeditions.”
“Would you expect them to? We’re talking a volume of something like a cubic light-year. Hell, we today can build probes that’re bug size and radiate practically nothing.”
“But things coming the whole way from wherever the Forerunners now are—”
“Oh, they’d’ve established a local base before they left these parts. At a nearby star, seems obvious to me.”
“That could mean any of thousands,” Orichalc objected.
“As a matter of fact, several of the nearer ones have been looked at since I was there,” Lissa added. “Negative, at least as far as Forerunner spoor is concerned.”
“I know,” Hebo retorted. “Think I haven’t been following every scrap of such news that comes in? What those crews wanted to see was whether there’re planets with biospheres to be affected when the radiation gets there. Which means they went to likely stars—and, sure, found three that scientists will want to keep an eye on. But those are small stars, more or less like Sol or Sunniva. It would be hard, maybe out of the question, to forecast their exact trajectories that far in advance.
“A fairly massive one, however, that’s something else. And the observations—starting with those your
Amazement gaped at him.
“My guess,” he said. “That kind generally has planets, or at least asteroidal junk for von Neumann machines to reproduce off of. Why haven’t I already gone for a look? Well, those are mighty fierce environments. My little
He nodded. “Yes, I’m keeping this to myself because I mean to get there first. If I find what I’m hoping for, all that information—an entire, working Forerunner base—will make my fortune. Not that I’d want to monopolize the place, or could if I did want to. But just the fact that it exists, plus whatever knowledge I can pick up on the first trip—remember, Lissa, how I said once on Jonna, the only, real interstellar currency is information? In spite of being interrupted, Dzesi and I did fairly well on discoverers’ awards and so on. This one would let us retire, to live however we jolly well please till the universe burns out.
“I came to Sunniva from Earth—oh, sure, thinking you’d be on Asborg, but also because I’d gotten wind of an opportunity to make the money I’d need. Which turned out to be true, and is why I’m here, doing what I am, Lissa. Till I’ve made my stake. A few more years, I estimate. Meanwhile, you’ve admitted that Venusberg’s work is useful.
