doing? How would he fare, on an Earth that had become the strangest of all the known worlds?
“Agreed.” Romon laughed. “A little too much so perhaps. He made me feel less than saintly.”
Ah, well, Lissa thought, if he’s reaching for a touch of human warmth, why not? He never said much, but he must have felt rather lonely among the Windholms. Mostly he stayed with his computer and readouts, his reports from robots and landsats. She made a smile. “Why, you were perfectly well-behaved.”
Jesting was not natural to him. “I tried to be.” He bent his lips upward. “My thoughts, however, were often unruly.”
Was he probing for intimacy? She wasn’t interested, even though it had been a pretty long while. “That’s your business.”
He lifted a hand. “Please don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mean it in the usual way. I mean from—m-m-m—your standpoint, and probably your fellows’.”
“What, then?” Not to seem naive: “You want to tell me, don’t you?”
“Frankly, yes. I’ve been watching for a chance to talk with you like this.”
“Why me?”
He must have rehearsed his answer. “Because you’re Lissa Davysdaughter, and your father has the major voice in House Windholm’s space operations.”
She felt almost relieved. “Your House has its own.”
“But we’re basically commercial. Investors, developers, and our space operations are interplanetary and minor.”
She turned cold. “True.”
He allowed himself a hint of anger. “You know Seafell’s never had anything like Windholm’s landholdings. We’re latecomers on Asborg. We can’t afford aristocratic attitudes.”
“You could by now.”
“But traditions, institutions—” Yes, he was in earnest. “Can’t you believe we have ours, our ways of thinking and living, the same as you have yours?”
“Of course you do.” Every House does, she thought. And we all live on the same planet, and share in its governance, and what’s he leading up to?
“You don’t like ours, do you?”
“I don’t hate it. A matter of taste. The communal versus the corporate style?” Lissa shrugged. “They say diversity makes for a healthy society.”
“Is it so absolute a difference? We did help finance this expedition. We have our human share of curiosity. We’re not Shylocks, not in any sense.” Romon paused a moment. “Though he too had his ideals, didn’t he? And the haughty Christians scorned them.”
She almost caught the reference. Something literary, wasn’t it, and ancient? Yes, she’d noticed him screening old texts. He was not entirely a money machine. Maybe not even mostly.
It softened her mood a little. She’d better lighten it anyway. “I’m afraid we’ve all of us had our curiosity more aroused than satisfied.”
But he didn’t take her hint. “Yes. The Forerunner artifact— It changes everything.”
“A remarkable find,” she parried.
His tone accused. “You don’t seem to care that those vagabonds only intended to make money off it.”
Lissa lost whatever small kindliness she had begun to feel. She stiffened. That’s different, she almost said. They’re private parties, entrepreneurs of the classic sort—adventurers—who had no idea of grabbing a monopoly and couldn’t have if they’d wanted to.
Why do I think so, and so strongly?
“Well,” she decided to respond, “they found it and did the preliminary work. They deserve some reward.”
“Yes, yes. Beside the point. Which is, what shall
“Why, I expect there’ll be quite a swarm of investigators. Planetologists and biologists will piggyback. What else?”
“That’s the obvious outcome. All too obvious. But ask yourself: To whose profit? In the long run?”
“Everybody’s.”
His gaze never left her. “That’s not necessarily true, milady. It isn’t even likely. Look at history. Human history, and what little we know about nonhuman ones. Whatever there is to learn, science, technology, is going to give power. To do what? For whom?”
“Scarcely overwhelming power.”
“Are you certain? If nothing else, more clues to the Forerunners, and everything that may mean—” Romon drew breath. “Profit, gain, is power in itself. Your spendthrift friends don’t seem to have understood that. Or else it’s simply that there are just the two of them. A House, though, a world, a race has to think further ahead.”
Taken aback by the intensity, Lissa rallied to demand, “What are you getting at?”
“My superiors and I, we honestly thought we were joining the pure-science game. We have been venturing into it now and then, you know. Yes, I was to keep an eye out for possible commercial values, but that was a sideline. An idea absolutely absent from you Windholms.”
No, Lissa didn’t say, not really. We’re human too.
“Now this,” Romon pursued. “Milady, it needs to be kept in responsible hands. People who won’t recklessly let the knowledge run wild across the galaxy, but keep it under control,
“And keep the power for themselves,” Lissa said half automatically.
“You believe you, you Windholms, can afford idealism. I say you can’t. Nobody can.”
“What is realism?” she retorted. “How far can the races trust a—a set of interlocking corporate directorates?”
Romon sighed. “Let’s not get into a quarrel, milady. There’s no basic secret anymore. The news has been hyperbeamed to Asborg and by now has gone everywhere.” He tautened. “But discretion, control of access, caution about making any findings public—I agree, probably the artifact in itself can’t show us the way to more than some harmless technological progress. But it may have further clues—as I said, even to the Forerunners—and what might that mean?
“It’s not too late. I’m proposing cooperation between the leaders of all our Houses. And, yes, for the time being at least, working out diplomatic ways to keep nonhumans off. They’re still less predictable than we are. Not so?
“Milady, I simply wish to persuade you to help persuade your father to listen to the case I’m trying to make.”
And that the Seafell directors will be trying to make, Lissa thought. How much of this is genuine, how much is in hopes of gaining power? Control. And how much does a desire for control spring from common sense, how much from fear of the universe?
This man seems halfway honest. Maybe more than halfway. An ideologue? A fanatic? I can’t tell. Nor am I qualified to probe his psyche, nor do I want to.
Besides, why? It isn’t important. What matters is what he maybe represents.
She shivered.
It was a faint surprise how cool her voice remained. “You exaggerate my influence, Romon Kaspersson. As well as the meaning of that artifact. You’re always free to contact my father, or anybody else.”
He scowled, “Oh, yes. Theoretically. But I want him to listen, seriously listen, and then talk to his peers. You can get him to do that much, can’t you?”
“If he finds merit in the idea.”
“It’d help, it might be critical. Can you and I talk further? Soon?” His tone softened. Did she hear a sigh? “The voyage won’t last much longer.”
Thanks be, Lissa thought.
And yet— She was a Windholm. That carried an obligation to do what she could whenever it seemed needful. A small enough return for the wealth and privilege to which she was born. Not that this business looked sunshaking. But it could be an early sign of something larger.
Be that as it might—“If you want. Within reason. Not right now, please. I’d like to rest a while.” She escaped
