The Quiet Pools

“Why?”

“Because of a promise to my father.”

Dryke looked away, raising a hand to scratch the bridge of his nose. “A lot of maybes.”

“Then he is coming,” Christopher said.

The gaze firmed and found Christopher again.

“Has it occurred to you that the attack on Memphis was a successful one, after all?” Christopher asked. “The real damage was done to security. This panic plan puts hundreds of people on the ship who would otherwise never have gotten there, apparently including Marshall. And I’m guessing it overwhelms your normal screening procedures, too. Are you streamlining things to get people processed faster? Giving anyone a pass? Top management? The committee? Roger Marshall? Don’t answer, I can’t do anything with the information. Just questions.”

Something had awakened in Dryke’s eyes. His head tipped back slightly, and he stared at Christopher with something closer to—fear?

One last card. “Tell me—Marshall wasn’t involved in drawing up this plan, was he?”

There was a suspended moment, in which Christopher could almost see the picture in his mind replicating itself in Dryke’s. Then there was a bump as they docked with Memphis, and the all-clear tone.

This time, Dryke preceded him down the aisle. He seemed to be in a hurry.

The suite in which Sasaki received him was neither large nor grand, but it bore a stamp. A pale-tinted hanging scroll sandwiched in translute was strung between ceiling and floor as a room divider; in lighted display recesses on the wall were a bronze horse, a gleaming metal-paper origami of a dragon in flight, and a deep-rubbed mahogany Buddah, surrounded by flowers and candles, smiling within at some untold amusement.

Other recesses were empty, but there were two trunklike shipping casks stacked in a corner of the outer room. Furniture seemed sparse until Sasaki showed him a pair of facing chairs that slid out from an inner wall as though they were drawers. She settled in one and invited him to the other with an open hand. She was smaller than he had expected, and braver—they were alone, Sasaki having sent his escorts back.

“You said that you wanted the truth,” she said. “Are you equal to it?”

“How do you know, before you’re tested?”

She nodded. “A good answer. Ask your questions.”

“Is Memphis ready for space?”

“It will be, very shortly.”

“When are you leaving?”

“From Takara, a matter of days. For Tau Ceti, a matter of a few weeks. We will go out for our certification flight with full crew and manifest. If the systems are sound, we will not turn back at Pluto.”

“Who will be governor?”

She smiled slightly. “That duty will be mine, for now.”

“And what happens here? Who takes over? Or will there be anything to take over?”

“No,” she said. “This is the end of the Diaspora, as we have suspected for some time it would be. After Memphis sails, the Project will fall into bankruptcy. But the vultures will find very little meat on the bones. The money is all here, in Memphis and Ur. We have bought two starships for the price of five. Many promises will be broken, and many bills left unpaid. Not even Allied has ever seen an honest accounting.”

“Why that way?”

“Because it was time. Because it was the only way the flower would blossom,” she said.

Dryke joined them then, entering the suite quietly and standing with crossed arms beside the hanging scroll. Sasaki looked up past Christopher with a questioning glance.

“Marshall missed his flight from LAX,” Dryke said. “He apologizes and says he has to have more time to wrap up business. His personals didn’t miss their flight. I had the casks pulled out of the line on Technica and checked. The one that was supposed to be art and books was two hundred and eighty kilos of underwater explosives.”

Christopher closed his eyes, the rush of relief carrying away the strength from his limbs.

“I should have wondered why a man like that wanted to go,” Dryke said.

“Sometimes perfection is found in the result, not in the method,” Sasaki said. “And sometimes perfection is only possible in thought.” She looked to Christopher. “Now a question for you,” she said. “Do you want to come on Memphis?”

Her words encircled his heart and tightened until he could hardly breathe. “Yes.”

“Why?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. The reasons were all turned around inside each other, connected at odd places, sometimes not connected at all. His motives were all suspect, shallow, trivial—or else so deep and fundamental that he could not wrap sentences around them. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

To his surprise, Sasaki smiled warmly. “Then come.”

He drew a hard breath. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”

“Explain?”

“There’s someone else who belongs here before I do. A friend. Daniel Keith. He works in Selection—a BC- positive. He’d be up here now if it wasn’t for me.” He was fighting with tears. “If you’re going to give me a discretionary space, I—you have to let me give it to him.”

She was studying him closely. “Mikhail, do you know anything about this?”

“Keith was on the list,” he said. “He was sent to Prainha because of contact with Christopher. He’s under arrest there.”

“He was clear except for his friendship with this man?”

“Yes.”

She nodded, looking into Christopher’s eyes. “You don’t know how extraordinary I find it that you would give up your place to your friend.”

“I made him a promise.”

“Even so, that would be rare selflessness, even here.” She sat forward in her chair. “I think that we can find two places as easily as one.”

A shuddery sob escaped through the smile that sprang onto Christopher’s face. He pressed his palms together almost as though praying, and puffed away the rush of discordant emotion in hoarse breaths.

Rising, she smiled and touched his shoulder. “I will give you some time. Then there will be much more to say.”

He twisted in his chair as she started away. “You had me tested for the Chi Sequence. On Takara. Didn’t you?”

“That was the question I expected first,” she said. “Yes.”

“What am I?”

“Young,” she said. “But you will grow.” Guiding Dryke ahead of her, she started again for the door.

Christopher stood and called after them. “That’s not enough,” he said.

She turned and looked back. “Most of those who will make this trip will know no more.”

Shaking his head, he said, “I still need to know—do I belong here?”

Her gaze appraised him. “Not if you still need that question answered by me.”

He considered that for a long time, then laughed a little laugh, the joke a silent secret. “No. I suppose I don’t. But did any of us really have a choice? Did you?”

“No,” she said. “And still, I did what I wanted.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you know T. E. Lawrence?”

“A little.”

“The epigraph from Seven Pillars.” She quoted, “ ‘I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars, to earn you Freedom—’ ”

“Yes,” Christopher said, throat suddenly tight, thinking not of Lawrence, nor of Sasaki. “I have one more question.”