Welcome to the OSL Achilles. And be aware, Ms. Jannex, that there is a great difference between life as a passenger and life as crew. You will find me a hard taskmaster.”
Jan could not speak. She had a home at last. True, it was a home that ranged the depths of the solar system, but it was a home. And with that home came a whole family, boasting stern-faced Captain Eric Kondo as its improbable paterfamilias.
She smiled at him…
…as Lena Ligon stared in a despair too deep for words at her reflection in a mirror. What she saw was no longer a Commensal, no longer a beautiful woman, no longer a young woman. She was gazing at her worst horror: her natural self. She shuddered at what she saw…
…while Milly Wu marvelled that two supposedly intelligent men could be so pigheaded and irrational. It was a miracle that she had persuaded them to a three-way holographic conference.
She tried again. “Do you want to understand the aliens, or don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” Jack Beston stared across the table at his brother, green eyes clashing with bright blue at an intensity sufficient to raise sparks. “But if you expect me to work with him…”
“Or me with him.” Philip Beston turned his most charming smile onto Milly. “I already have a working relationship with the Puzzle Network. If you — or Jack, for that matter — can tell me what I possibly have to gain by making it a three-way team…”
“I can.” Milly was becoming tired with spoiled brats. The Beston brothers may not have been born to money, but they had enjoyed enough years with money to develop all the pampered quirks. “If you want to work with me, either one of you, then you’ll have to work with each other. I’ll work with both of you, or I’ll work with neither. The SETI signal is more important than you, me, or all of us.”
Jack flamed at her, as expected. “You ungrateful bastard—”
“No.” Milly pointed at Philip. “Get it right, Jack. He’s the bastard. I’m Milly Wu, one of your younger female staff who can be seduced and laid aside. Remember me?”
“He may need you,” Philip said, before Jack could reply. “But I don’t. I have the Puzzle Network working with me.”
“For how long, Philip Beston? Don’t forget that I’m a member of the Puzzle Network. And I had a senior member panting down my neck long before I moved to Argus Station. Want to bet that I couldn’t make the case for working with the team who actually discovered the Wu-Beston anomaly?”
Philip said, “You wouldn’t!” and Jack said. “That’s my girl!”
“I’m not your girl, Jack Beston. And I’m not your girl, either, Philip Beston, so you can wipe that smarmy grin off your face. You two have to make up your minds. Do we have a SETI program, moving forward with all the best minds in the solar system behind it? Or do we have a big, paranoid mess, where everybody tries to hide an advance from everybody else?”
It was hard to say if they were more angry with Milly than with each other. Milly knew what she was getting herself into: years of squabbling, mediating between the Beston brothers, while — if they were lucky — the message from the stars slowly yielded up its secrets.
The strange thing was how good it all felt. Good to be alive, good to experience life with the passion left in. The trouble with her SETI studies was that they had occupied her so fully that they had squeezed out all the juice.
Now there was juice to spare. Milly glanced from one furious Beston brother to the other. Try as she might, she could not keep the smile off her face…
…and Rustum Battachariya, three hundred Ganymede levels below Milly, folded his hands across his great belly and watched it all. This information web was not as complete as in the Bat Cave on Pandora, but it sufficed. He could contemplate, if not eternity, then immediacy.
Bat relaxed in the steaming bath and was content.
