The Spheres of Heaven

Chan studied the image of a young woman with dark hair and curiously lustrous and liquid eyes. “Mm. How old?”

“Twenty-four. That’s one of the few things we do know about her.”

“She’s a beauty. But I never heard of her, and I never saw her before.”

“Maybe not. But she’s from Earth, we think from the Gallimaufries.”

“So are a hundred million others. Odd place to look for a space crew member. What are her qualifications?”

“For space work? None. She is described in the crew duty roster as a `general worker with versatile personal skills.’ But I think that is Friday Indigo’s idea of a joke. Judging from her picture and the limited information that we do have about her, it looks rather as though Friday Indigo—” MacDougal paused. “Well, it seems as though he bought her a few months ago, when he was down on Earth. For purely sexual purposes. Is that possible?”

“If she’s a Commoner, it’s more than possible. Happens every day of the week and every week of the year. All he’d have to do is find out who owned her contract. Not me or the Boz, in this case. I would have remembered her.”

“In this case? Are you admitting that you—”

“I’m not admitting a damn thing. I’m just telling you the way things run in the basement warrens. It’s not all flowers and nectar down there, you know. If you don’t like what you’re hearing, stick it. Tell the boys in Unimine and Foodlines that I’m too immoral for you to work with, and the whole expedition is off. I’ll be more than happy to go back home to the warrens.”

“You know that is not an option. They would kill me.”

“I doubt it. They know what the Stellar Group wants. They’d more likely come straight to me and put the screws on some other way. All right, what else do you have? You might as well get it over with — I can see you’re fidgeting.”

“Word from the Stellar Group members. I forwarded to them your requirement that the ship you take to the Geyser Swirl must have a Tinker Composite, a Pipe-Rilla, and an Angel on board.”

“That wasn’t a requirement. Call it more of a test shot. What did they say?”

“They say that they have absolute confidence in you, and that their presence would be quite unnecessary and even indicate a lack of trust. They will have no representatives on your ship.”

“In other words, they’re scared shitless. Don’t blame ’em. That’s one worry out of the way. Don’t want them looking over my shoulder. Suppose I have to off somebody?”

“They still insist that there be no violence.”

“Course not.” Chan fumbled in his pocket and found nothing but empty fizz holders. Had he really taken that many? He shook his head and went on, “Violence. Think we’d tell ’em if there was? Good. No aliens. Makes things a lot simpler. Got a ship picked out yet?”

“The best one in the solar system. The Hero’s Return , a former Class Five cruiser. An appropriate name, don’t you think, considering the mission?”

“Depends whether or not we come back. It takes more than a nice name to make that happen.”

“And you’ll be under the command of a highly respected officer, General Dag Korin.”

“Whoa there, Mr. Ambassador. What’s this `under the command of’ crap?”

“The General is one of the system’s great heroes.”

“I’m sure he is. But if I’m going to a dangerous place I’d rather be led by one of the system’s great cowards. And I’m not supposed to be led by anyone. I thought I was running this show.”

“We need a person of known reputation in charge. With all due respect, that’s not you.”

“Then the expedition can go without me. You can stuff it. I won’t have some general getting in the way when I want to do something a Pipe-Rilla might not approve of.”

“I don’t think you’ll find it’s that way with General Korin. His attitude to aliens is … different. At the very least, you ought to meet with him.”

“All right.” Chan swept his arm across the desktop. “Then bring him on. Bring ’em all on.”

“Not just now, I think.” MacDougal caught the glass as it skidded across and off the desk.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think that you are in any condition to — I mean, I do not believe that the General can be available at such short notice. Let me arrange it for, let’s say, tomorrow morning.”

“Bright and early.” Chan caught at the edge of another thought. “One more thing, Ambassador. I have to know when this ship — the Return — will leave. How much time do I have?”

“I will have that information for you. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow morning . Bright and early.”

“If you insist.” Dougal MacDougal examined the way that Chan Dalton sat slumped in his chair, eyes half closed. Tomorrow morning, Chan Dalton’s brain would feel like a boiled pudding.

A person ought to be careful what he asked for. He might get it.

* * *

Dag Korin. General Dag Korin. Chan was irritated by him already, and the man had hardly spoken a word.

It wasn’t his age, though the General, hero of Capella’s Drift, looked about a hundred and ninety-nine years old. It was his boots. Ceres gravity was so weak that you couldn’t clatter or stamp on the floor. Chan had tried it, and reaction bounced him high into the air.

But Dag Korin could do it. He must have magnetic soles. He could march up and down on the hard floor of the Ambassador’s main office, and every step produced a brain-piercing crash.

And now he was starting to talk, too. Not just talk, lecture, not in an old man’s voice but in brazen and stentorian tones that resonated off the ceiling and the bare walls and right through Chan’s fragile skull case.

“I share completely Mr. Dalton’s dislike and utter distrust of the aliens.” Crash went the boots, as the General made a sharp about-turn. “We do not want them with us in our expedition to the Geyser Swirl. What are they, after all? A Pipe-Rilla is no more than an oversized praying mantis, an ugly creature put together from lengths of leftover drain pipe. An individual member of a Tinker Composite has less brain than a horsefly. It takes ten thousand of them together to match a human in intelligence! As for the Angels, to my eye they have always looked as though they belong in a stewpot with other vegetables.” Crash, crash went the boots. “And when it comes to the human virtues, of courage and nerve, what do we find? We find them wanting. The aliens — allthe aliens — are the most craven, cowardly, fainthearted — if they even have hearts — pusillanimous, fearful, shivering, timorous beings imaginable. The idea that such objects should be able to limit human access to the universe via the Link Network is so totally outrageous that it takes my breath away.”

Chan felt like saying, but I worked with those aliens on Travancore, and I liked them. I like them still. I just don’t want them in the way if things get sticky in the Geyser Swirl and we have to protect ourselves.

He didn’t have the strength to speak, and General Korin was just hitting his stride.

“However, we must not allow our natural disgust with these meddling beings to interfere with our primary goal. First, we will cooperate with them in our journey to the Geyser Swirl, so as to produce an end to the quarantine. Then we must assure our permanent access to the Link Network. We must learn how it was that they were able, twenty years ago, to place the embargo on us. I am told that will be much easier to do once we are again using the Link Network on a regular basis. And beyond that, we must pursue our long-term plan: to assert our dominance, to establish a pax Solis everywhere within the Perimeter — and then extend that perimeter.”

No point in mentioning to the General that there was already peace everywhere within the Perimeter. Well, almost everywhere. Let’s say, everywhere that humans were not in control. And Chan had no objection to increasing the human sphere of influence; he was in fact in favor of it, provided there was something in it for him. But did Korin have to be so loud about the matter, so early in the day? Chan took a drink of cold water.