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Dagny made haste to change the subject. "That world my son helped explore, I'd like to think he'll be remembered there as well. If only—" No, better not pursue this either.

Etana did, turning sympathetic while remaining firm. "Nay, you realize it must wait in the knowledge of a chosen small few. Else would Earth close it to us."

Paranoia? Maybe, maybe not. Temerir's discovery did have the potential of a colony—for Lunarians.

The gravity was right; the minerals were abundant and easily available, not buried under many kilometers of ice as in comets; water, ammonia, and organ ics were present, with more to be had in the same general region of space.

Who, though, would want to dwell that far from the sun, in a cold close to absolute zero?

Dagny supposed Brandir and his confederates were being cagey. After all, today Lunarians weren't forbidden, but neither were they encouraged to prospect and develop the asteroids of the Belt and the lesser moons of the outer planets. And that was in spite of their being far better suited for the conditions than Earth-type humans, in some respects possibly superior to robots.

She couldn't resist probing a bit: "When will you open it to yourselves?"

"When the time is befitting. That may well be long after we today are dead."

It was inhuman to think so far ahead, and to feel assured the secret would stay inviolate. Dagny sighed. "Yes, Brandir,.Temerir, Fia, they've discussed it with me. Never fear, I'll keep my promise, I won't betray you."

"Honor shall be yours," said Etana with rare warmth.

She clearly didn't want to talk about Kaino, she who had shared him. What now was in the breasts of his other mates? It had been good of this one to come speak, however briefly, with his mother.

Dagny wouldn't risk pushing her any further. Just the same, THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 357

here was a chance to set forth something that could be ... his invisible cenotaph.

"I do have a suggestion," Dagny began. "Have you decided on a name for your little planet?"

Etana showed surprise, which was gratifying. "Nay. Brandir and I touched on it once during the voyage, but reached no idea. Nor have others considered it since, to my knowledge." And that wasn't quite human either. The young woman sat still for a bit. "A name will be useful, yes."

"Proserpina," Dagny said.

"Hai?"

"As distant and lonely as it is, out beyond Pluto, who was the god of the underworld and the dead—his queen sounds right to me."

"Have we not already a Proserpina?"

Dagny shrugged. "Probably. An asteroid? I haven't checked. Never mind. Duplications exist, you know."

"What suppose your children of this?"

"I haven't asked them yet. It only occurred to me yesterday. What do you think?"

Etana cradled her chin and gazed into air. "A musical name. The goddess of the dead—because you lost a son to her?"

The sea noises roared and wailed.

Dagny sat straight as she said, "And because every springtime Proserpina comes back to the living world."

27

* rajnaloka was as lovely as its setting. From that mountaintop you looked far across the Ozark range, forest-green below the sun, down into a valley where a river ran quicksilver and up to cumulus argosies scudding before a wind freighted with earthy scents. A mockingbird trilled through quietness, a cardinal

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flitted like flame. These were old mountains, worn down to gentleness, their limestone white or pale gold wherever it stood bared. The life upon them was ageless.

A small community clustered around the ashram, service establishments and homes. Those buildings were of natural wood, low and rambling under high-pitched roofs, most of them fronted by porches where folk could sit together as twilight deepened. Flowerbeds bordered them with color. They seemed a part of the landscape. The ashram itself rose at the center, its massive edifices surrounding quads where beech or magnolia gave shade; but the material was native stone and the architecture recalled Oxford. A transceiver-winged communications mast soared in harmony with them, the highest of their spires.

Kenmuir and Aleka were still too exhausted to appreciate the scene. Tomorrow, he thought. At the moment he had all he could do, accompanying the mentor who guided them over campus and following what the dark, white-bearded, white-robed little man said.

"No, por favor, don't apologize. We were informed in advance that you didn't know exactly when you would arrive—"

—by Mary Carfax, which had made the reservation for Aleka Kame and Johan. Kenmuir reminded himself once more that that was his name while he stayed here.

"—and in any event, we have a relaxed attitude toward schedules. There are usually accommodations to spare. Most participation in our programs is remote."

Most participation in most things was, Kenmuir thought dully. Eidophone, telepresence, multiceiver, vivifer, quivira, how much occasion did they^ leave anybody to go any real distance from home?

"I am not quite sure just what you are seeking," Sandhu continued.

"Enlightenment," Aleka answered.

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"That word has many meanings, and the ways toward any of them are countless."

"Of course. We are hoping to get a glimmering of it from the cybercosm. For that, we need the kind of equipment you have." Kenmuir wished he could talk as brightly and readily as she did. Well, she was young, she could bounce back fast from tension and terror.

The mentor came close to frowning. "None but synnoionts can achieve direct communion with the cybercosm."

"Certainly, senor. Doesn't everyone know that? But the kind of insight, guidance, the understanding of space-time unity and mind that come from the database and sophotectic teachers—"

Aleka smiled. "Am I sounding awfully pretentious?"

Sandhu smiled back. "Not really. Earnest, naive, perhaps. The explorations and meditations you speak of, they are what most of us here undertake. But they are the work of a lifetime, which is never long enough to complete them. And you say you have but a short while to spend."

"We hope to try it, senor, and find out whether we're ... worthy. Then maybe later—"

Sandhu nodded. "Your hope is not uncommon. Bueno, I can see you are both weary. Let us get you settled in. Tomorrow we shall give you preliminary instruction and test your skills. This evening, rest." He gestured about him. "Drink beauty. Drink deep."

He showed them to dormitory-style quarters. The men's section was sufficiently full that Kenmuir would share a room—two cots, two desks, two chairs, a cabinet—with a novice from the Brazilian region. At a simple meal in the refectory, Aleka whispered to him that she was alone. This was a piece of luck although, had it not happened, she could have made her arrangements anyway, less conveniently.

Talk at table was amicable, not very consequential, in several languages. Afterward a number of the fifty or sixty visitors and some of the permanent Soul-questers mingled socially or relaxed with sedate

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games. Kenmuir, who didn't feel up to it, went outside. Nobody took that amiss; these people were as diverse as their Daos. He stood on a terrace, breathing summer odors. Below him the lights of the village fell away toward darkened woods, above him shone stars and the thin yoimg Moon, around him danced fireflies. At last he sought his bed.

His roommate had already arrived and sat studying a text in a reader. He was an intense youth who introduced himself as Cavalheiro. Kenmuir saw no way out of a conversation. It proved interesting.

"I search for God in the quivira," Cavalheiro tried to explain. The surprise on his listener's face was unmistakable. "Ah, yes. You wonder, am I dement? A quivira gives nothing but the full-sensory illusion, the dream, of an experience. True. However, one does not passively let the program run. One interacts with it, not so? The result is that the episode affects the brain and goes into the memory just as if it were real."

"Not quite," Kenmuir demurred. "That is, whenever I've been there, well, afterward I knew I was actually lying in the tank."

"All you want is entertainment, or sometimes knowledge," Cavalheiro said. Not always, Kenmuir thought. On long space missions, sessions in the quivira were a medicine for sensory impoverishment. Their input helped keep a man sane.

"I seek the meaning of things," Cavalheiro went on. "The programs I use were written by persons

.who spent their lives pursuing the divine. They had the help of sophotects long intimate with humans, that draw on the whole of every religious culture in history and think orders of magnitude more powerfully than us. The conceptions in the programs go beyond words, images, consciousness.

They go to the depths of the spirit and the bounds of the cosmos. I think the Teramind is in them."

"Urn, may I ask what it... feels like?"

"It is no single thing. I have cried to Indra and he THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 361

has answered me out of the thunders. I have questioned Jesus Christ. I have felt the compassion of Kwan-Yin. I have—no, it is not possible to speak of near ing samadhi. But do you not see, it is interaction. In a little, little way, I give form to the divine, while it fills me and shapes me."

"You are both finding and making your God, then?" Kenmuir ventured.

"I am trying to understand and enter into God," Cavalheiro replied. "I am not unique in taking this path. None of us has lived to walk it to the end, and I do not imagine any human ever will.

But it is what our lives are about."

Aleka having demonstrated high competence and sketchily described what she and Kenmuir claimed were .their intentions, they received permission to proceed. By then the sun stood at mid-afternoon. They said they would like to relax with a walk now and begin next morning. "An excellent idea," Sandhu approved. "What you desire lies as much in the living world as in any abstractions," He signed the air. "Blessings."

Trails wound down the mountain through its woodland. They chose theirs because it looked unfrequented. Their goal was solitude in which to plan their strategy. Time passed, though, while they fared in silence.

High above them, the greenwood rustled to a breeze. That and their footfalls on soil were the only sounds at first, except when a squirrel chittered and sped aloft or a bird-call came liquid from shadowy depths. Light-Becks danced. Air beneath the leaves lay rich and warm. They passed some crumbling, moss-grown blocks that Kenmuir guessed were remnants of a highway; but if a town had once been hereabouts, it was long abandoned, demolished to make room for the return of nature.

Presently he began 'to hear a trill of running water. The path reached a brook that 362

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swirled and splashed in a small cascade, down to a hollow where blackberries beckoned robins.

He and Aleka stopped for a drink. The water was cool. It tasted wild. Straightening, he wiped his mouth and sighed, "Bonny country. And so peaceful. Like a whole different planet."

Aleka gave him a quizzical glance. Here, where the canopy overhead was thinner, her skin glowed amber below a faint sheen of sweat. "Different from what?" she inquired.

He grimaced. "Those places we've lately been."

"You've got it wrong, I think. They are the alien planets. This is the normal one, ours."

"How?" he asked, puzzled.

"Why, what you said. Here things are beautiful and peaceful. Bueno, isn't most of Earth?"

"Why, uh—"

He harked back. The heights and heather and bluebells, glens and lochs, old hamlets and friendly taverns of his earlier life. Immensities of forest, prairie, savannah, splendor of horned beasts and lethally graceful predators, birds in their tens of thousands aflight across the sky. An antique walled city, lovingly preserved. A city that was a "single kilometer of upwardness triumphant amidst its parkland. A city that floated on the sea. A village where each home was a dirigible endlessly cruising. A guitar plangent through tropical dusk or in an Arctic hut. And nobody crowded, nobody afraid . .. unless they wanted to be?

"Y-yes," he admitted. "Most of it. And where it isn't, by our standards, maybe that's what the people choose." He thought of the Drylanders. "I'm not sure how much choice they have, given what they are. But they're not forced."

Aleka cocked her head—the obsidian-black hair rippled—and considered him. "You're a thoughtful kanaka," she murmured.

Unreasonably, he flushed. "You make me think."

"Naw, with you it's a habit."

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"Well, you open my eyes to what's around me on Earth."

Suddenly in the sunshine, he felt cold. What did ht know of Earth, really? Of common humanity? His universe had become rock and ice, the far-strewn outposts of beings whose blood was not his, and one among them whom he utterly desired but who he knew very clearly did not love him. How glad he was when Aleka pulled him back from the stars: "I don't claim this world is perfect. Parts of it are still pretty bad. But by and large, we're closing in on the Golden Age."

In argument was refuge. "How can you say that, when you yourself—"

Aleka stamped her foot. "I said it isn't perfect. A lot needs fixing. Sometimes the fixing makes matters worse. Then we have to fight. Like now."

Kenmuir recalled the bitterness of Lilisaire and other Lunarians against the whole smooth-wheeling system. He recalled how the machines of that system were competing them out of space. Asperity touched him. "I take it you don't share the standard belief in the absolute wisdom and beneficence of the cyber-cosm?"

She shrugged. "Never mind the-cybercosm. We deal with people, after all. And they're as shortsighted and crooked as ever."

"But the system—the advice, that governments never fail to take—the services, everywhere around us like the atmosphere, and we as dependent—" Services that had lately included doping a drink, it seemed; and what else?

"You mean, do I imagine the machines are pure, and humans alone corrupt the works? No." Aleka's laugh sounded forlorn. "Maybe I'm eccentric in not thinking the Teramind has anything particular to do with God."

"Then I'm eccentric too," Kenmuir agreed.

Through him went: What was the Teramind? The

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culmination, the supreme expression of the cyber-cosm? No. The lesser sophotectic intellects, some of (hem outranging anything the human brain could conceive, took part in it, but they were not it, any more than cliffs and crags are the peak of a mountain. A single planetwide organism would be too slow, too loose; light-speed crawls where thought would leap. The machines, ever improving themselves, had created a supreme engine of awareness, somewhere on Earth—

White on a throne or guarded in a cave There lives a prophet who can understand Why men were born—

and it engaged in its mysteries while, surely, heightening its own mightiness; but it was not omniscient or omnipotent, it was not everywhere.

Its underlings, though, might be anywhere.

He must assume that none were here. Else his battle was already lost.

"I do admit, basically this is a good world," Aleka said. Her gaze sought peace in the boisterous water. "I don't want to overthrow it. I feel guilty, lying to our decent, kind hosts. All I want is freedom for my folk to be what they are."

For which end she did indeed lie, Kenmuir thought, and she would defy the whole civilization of which she spoke so well, until she had won or it had convinced her that her cause was wrong.

Why had it not? Why this secrecy, these ... machinations?

"I'm no revolutionary either," he said, while rebel* lion stirred within him. "I'd just like to see things, well, shaken up a bit."

Her look returned to him. During their hours in Overburg they had barely begun to know one another. He became acutely aware of her fullness, lips and breasts and hips and round strong limbs. "Why would you?" she asked.

"Oh," he floundered, "too complacent—When was the last scientific discovery that amounted to more THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 365

than the next decimal place or the newest archeologi-cal dig? Who's pioneering in music, graphics, poetry, any art? Where's the frontier?"

"Regardless," she gainsaid him—how spirited she was—"you're trying to stop the Habitat."

Lilisaire's mission, he thought. His selfishness. But he couldn't confess that. Most especially not to himself. "Lunarian society deserves to survive," he replied lamely. "It's different from anything on Earth, a, a leaven." He stared about him, randomly into the forest. "It's created its own beautiful places, you know."

28

The Mother of the Moon

1 hey were a trio that drew glances as they passed through Tychopolis—the big, white-inaned woman, her broad countenance lined across the brow and at the mouth and eyes but her back straight and her stride limber, the tall man, also Earth-born, his locks equally white and the gaunt face weathered, likewise still in full health; and the Lunarian, coppery-dark of skin below the midnight hair, making the slanty sleet-gray eyes seem doubly large. In flare-collared scarlet cloak, gold-and-bronze tunic with a sunburst at the belt, blue hose, he might have been setting youthful flamboyance against the plain unisuits of the elders; but his expression was too bleak.

At the lifelock he identified himself to the portal. It opened on an elevator terminus. "This is a service entrance," he explained. "The public access is closed for reconstruction." His English was less idiomatic and lilting than that of most among his generation, perhaps because in his work he necessarily called on many Terrestrial databases and consulted with many Terrestrial experts.

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"I know that, of course," Lars Rydberg answered. "I am not sure just what sort of reconstruction it is."

Eyraen led the way into the elevator. "We can ill allow animals, seeds, or spores from low-level to get into the city. Think of bees nesting in ventilators, squirrels gnawing on electrical cables, or disease germs which the high mutation rate here may have turned into a medical surprise for us."

Dagny Beynac sensed the implied insult. "My son is quite well acquainted with the obvious," she said tartly.

"I pray pardon, sir," Eyrnen said to Rydberg. He did not sound as if he meant it. "I did but wish to ensure that the problem stood clear before you. Some folk confuse our situation with that of the L-5 colony. Yonder they have no more than large, closely managed parks. We are fashioning a wilderness."

Rydberg went along with the half-conciliation. "No offense," he answered. "I do know this, but wondered about the technical details. It's very good of you to show us around."

It was, even if the bioengineer's grandmother had specifically requested it for herself as well as her visitor, and a request from Dagny Beynac had on the Moon somewhat the force of a royal command. Quite a few Lunarians would have refused anyway, or at least taken the opportunity to display icy, impeccably formal insolence.

Odd that this son of Jinann should show what hostility he did. She was always the most Earthling-like of the Beynac children, the most amicable toward the mother world. Well, Eyrnen belonged to the next generation.

And was he actually hostile? Rydberg thought of a cat asserting itself before a dog, warning the alien lest a fight erupt. Could that be Eyraen's intent? Rydberg smothered a sigh. He didn't understand Lunarians. He wondered how well his mother did.

"A pleasure," the engineer was saying. "My lady THE STARS A.R E ALSO FIRE 367

grandmother has not guested these parts in some time. We have much new to reveal." He did not add outright that he'd rather she'd come unaccompanied. Instead: "She has been overly occupied on behalf of her people." Against the encroachments of Earth, he left unspoken.

Rydberg's ears popped. They were going deep indeed.

He admired the deftness with which Beynac intervened: "About those technicalities, I'd be interested to hear, too. Okay, you've got a long tunnel, for trucking bulky loads and numbers of passengers to and fro. Valves at either end keep the noticeable animals on the reservation. As you said, it's the bugs and seeds and microbes and such that could sneak by. But I thought your sensors and mini robots were keeping them well zapped. I haven't heard of anything escaping that couldn't easily be taken care of."

Maybe she was giving Eyrnen a taste of his own medicine, no matter how innocent her smile. He accepted it, replying, "The improvements in the lifelock are partwise qualitative, better technology, but main wise quantitative, more of everything. As the ecology below strengthens and increases its fertility, and as the region grows, invasive pressures will heighten. We must anticipate them."

The elevator hissed to a stop, the door slid open, and the three emerged onto a balcony from which a ramp spiraled on downward. Rydberg caught his breath.

He stood near the ceiling of a cavern whose floor was almost two kilometers beneath him. The inset sunlike lamps that lighted it shone, as yet, gently, for this was "morning" in their cycle. They made warm a breeze that wandered past, bearing odors of forest which must be thick and sweet on the ground. Distance hazed and blued the air; seen across tens of kilometers, the other walls were dim, half unreal. Cloudlets drifted about. Birds flew by. So did a human 368

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a ways off, wings spread iridescent from the arms, banking and soaring not in sport—that was for such places as Avis Park—but watchful over the domain. It stretched in a thousand-hued greenness of crowns, and meadows starred with wildflowers, and a waterfall that stabbed out of sheer rock to form a lake from which a stream wound aglitter. ...

Eyrnen let the others stand mute a while before he said, "Let us go and walk the trails. Shall I summon a car for the ramp?"

"Not for me!" Beynac exclaimed. She took the lead, in Lunar bounds, as a girl might have.

"It's a wonderful creation," she had said the dusk-watch before. "I look forward on my own account, but still more to seeing you see it for the first time."

Having finished supper, they lingered over coffee and liqueurs. Drinks had preceded the food and a bottle of wine complemented it, for this celebrated the beginning of several daycycles she had arranged free of duties. Her son had completed his business for Fireball and meant to spend that period with her before going home. They were all too seldom to-fsther. A glow was in their veins, an easiness in their earts.

She had cooked the meal herself, to a high standard, but served it in the kitchen. Now that she lived alone, except for, visits like his, she saved her baronial dining room for parties. The kitchen was amply spacious, an abode of burnished copper, Mexican tile, and fragrances. A picture of Edmond Beynac in his later years, at his desk, looked across it to a Constable landscape reproduced by molecular scan. A Vivaldi concerto danced in the background.

"I'm eager," Lars said. "From everything I have screened about it—" He hesitated. "That's not much."

If only the Lunarians would cooperate with the news media, at least about matters as harmless and to

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their credit as this, he thought. If it weren't for the Earth-gene Moondwellers, what would Earth ever learn?

Dagny let his remark pass. "I've been far too long away from it," she mused. "I do miss natural nature."

"Most of your communities have lovely -parks."

"Oh, yes." Her glance went to the painting. "But no living hinterlands."

He smiled. "If that's what you wish for, come see us again on Vancouver Island."

She smiled back, shaking her head a bit. "I've probably grown too creaky for the weight."

"You, at a mere ninety? Nonsense." Not just because of faithfulness about her biomed program and regular vigorous exercise in the centrifuge, he thought. She'd had luck in the heredity sweepstakes, and shared the prize with him. He did not feel greatly diminished in his own mid-seventies. "Do come."

"Well, maybe." She sighed. "There's always so bloody much to do, and the months go by so fast."

"Come for Christmas," he urged.

Her face kindfed. "With your grandchildren!"

She had great-grandchildren here, but they were Lunarian.

She loved them, he felt sure, and no doubt they liked well enough the old lady who brought th^m presents and had the grace not to hug them or gush over them; but did they listen to her stories and songs with any deep feeling, did they ever care to romp with her?

"I'll bring along a great-grandchild of mine to help you celebrate your hundredth birthday," he said impulsively.

She laughed low. The light caught a glistening in her eyes. "You're a darling, once you've had a smidgen of alcohol to dissolve that Swedish starch." Her look sought her husband's image. "Oh,

'Mond," she whispered, "I do wish you could've known him better."

The picture was an animation. Because of the

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comfort between them, Lars asked what would otherwise never have escaped him: "Do you activate that very often?"

"Not often any more," she answered. "I know it so well, you see."

"All these years," he blurted. "Nobody else. You must have had offers."

Sudden merriment rang forth. "Lots, though the last one was a fairish time ago. I was tempted occasionally, but never enough. 'Mond kept right on being too much competition for 'em."

The smile waned. She looked elsewhere. "Although," she said, "he's become like a dream I had once long ago."

"We live by our dreams, do we not?" he replied as softly.

It was a temperate-zone forest. Near Port Bowen, a tropical environment was under development, less far along because excavators did not have the fortune of starting but with hollows as big as were here. Talk went of making a prairie, or else a small sea, below Korolev Crater, but probably population and industry on Farside would remain too sparse for decades to support such an effort.

Eyraen guided his kin folk down a path along which elm and ash and the occasional oak arched leaves above underbrush where wild currants had begun to ripen. Deeper in the wood, birch gleamed white and light-spatters speckled shade. Butterflies fluttered brilliant in the air; the call of a cuckoo rippled its moist stillness. Where leaves from former years had blown onto the trail, they rustled underfoot. Smells were of summer. Yet this was no Terrestrial wild. Biotechnology had forced the growth; low gravity would let it go dizzyingly high.

A winged creature swept past and vanished again into the depths. It had been small, brightly furred, with a ruddering tail. A shrill cry died away in its wake. "What was that?" Rydberg asked.

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"A daybat," Eyraen told him. "One of our genetic experiments. Besides being ornamental, we hope it will help keep the population of necessary insects stable."

"It'll be quite a spell, with quite a few mistakes along the way, before you have a real, self-maintaining ecology," Beynac predicted.

"It is evolving more quickly than was forecast," Eyrnen replied. "I will live to walk through a true wilderness."

"Oh, scarcely that," Rydberg demurred. At once he regretted it. Bad habit, correcting other people's impressions.

Eyrnen glared at him and snapped, "How genuine is any of your so-called nature on Earth?"

"Down, boys," Beynac said. She could bring it off. To Rydberg: "Don't be persnickety, dear. What is nature, anyway? There'll be life that can do without human or robot attention, as long as the energy comes in; and don't forget, that's solar energy, good for several billion years."

Rydberg nodded. "True." The optical conduits that led it from the surface wouldn't likely give out. The molecular resonances that imposed a twenty-four-hour night-and-day cycle and the changing of the seasons might get deranged, but while some species would die off, others would adapt.

And, eventually, new breeds appear? As the sun grew hotter until runaway greenhouse effect seared and boiled Earth barren, could this forest endure, gone strange, in the deeps of the Moon?

He made his remark prosaic: "From what I have heard, a solidly viable ecology requires more space than this."

"So the scientists declare," Eyrnen conceded. "I think forms can be bred that would not need it.

However, the point is moot, because the realms will in fact be vastly increased. At last, perhaps a century hence, all will be linked together."

"Hm, what a monstrous job."

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"In future we will not depend on machinery to carve out volumes where geology has not provided them. Bacteria already in $e laboratories can break down rock, multiplying as they do. It will take more energy than is available today, and of course they must be modified to fit into the ecology, but these a^e matters readily dealt with when the time comes."

Although Rydberg had encountered such ideas before, it had been as speculations. To hear them calmly set forth as certainties was exciting. "How much expansion do you suppose will happen in your lifetime?" he asked.

A supple shrug raised and lowered Hymen's shoulders as his hands flickered. "Less than might be.

We have too many various demands on our resources, and Earth is a sink for them."

Beynac lifted a fist. "I told you, God damn it, no politics today!" sfie cried.

Eyrnen cast Rydberg a rueful, almost friendly grin and relaxed. The Earthling returned it.

Inwardly, though, he knew a cold moment. He wanted, he truly wanted kindliness between himself and the other children of his mother, and their children. Never had he won to more than a polite tolerance. It wasn't simply that they were different. He had gotten along well with metamorphs more radical than these. She knew what the overt problem was, and had just given it a name—politics, the wretched politics. But it was itself merely a symptom, a working, of the real trouble, like fever and buboes in medieval plague.

Property; the common heritage issue. Taxation. Education. Census. Home rule: legislation, legislature, the very concept of democracy and its desirability. Exclusivism. Legitimacy of power; negotiation, criminal law, sanctuary. And more disputes and more, some trivial in themselves but salt rubbed into the wound. ...

What brought conflict on, Rydberg thought, was a heightening strife between an old civilization and one

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that was nascent; no, between an old biological species and one that was new, perhaps unstable.

While Dagny, his mother, stood torn between them.

Why had she hushed and shunted aside his questions about the death of Sigurd-Kaino, his half-brother? Somehow, on some remote asteroid—He had asked no further, because that was clearly what she wanted. But why?

Her Lunarian children claimed silence of her.

His mind went to his half-sister Gabrielle-Verdea, still in her sixties as fierce, as insurgent a speaker as her gene-kindred possessed. Through him keened a song of hers. Lunarian, it could not well be rendered in Terrestrial words, and his knowledge of its native tongue was limited to the practicalities in which all languages are about equal; but—

With your Pacific eye, observe my scars

Of ancient wars.

Your bones remember dinosaurs.

29

AAorning light brought alive the mandala of many colors in an arched window. White walls shone, relieved by pilasters that rose to join with the vaulted ceiling. Dura moss carpeted the floor, green and springy. Chairs, couches, table, desk were of wood and natural fiber, graceful as willows. Nothing in the chamber defied the complex of consoles, keyboards, screens, and other equipment that ruled over it. All was like a declaration that life, humanness, and the cybercosm belonged together.

A declaration much needed, Kenmuir thought. This multiple engine of communication and computation, advanced beyond anything he had ever encountered before, was a daunting sight at best.

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The wordless reassurance did not speak to him. He was come as an enemy.

Aleka at his side, he entered into cool quietness. The doorway contracted behind them. They were shut away, sealed off, private, until they opened the gates to the cybercosm.

She swallowed, squared her shoulders, and walked forward. He went more slowly. His heart thudded, his tongue lay dry. This bade fair to be the day of victory, failure, or ruin. Again he knew himself for a fool, who ought to flee and confess it. But no, then he would be less than a man.

Aleka settled at the primary console and gestured him to take the seat beside hers. When he did, she caught his hand and squeezed it. He felt her warmth, as if blood flowed between them. She smiled. "Bue-no," she said, "let's go for broke." He had turned his face toward her. She leaned over and kissed him.

Before he could really respond, she had drawn back, laughing a little, and her fingers were on the keys. Knowing it wasn't quite logical, he had disdained to take a tranquilizer. Now all at once the fears and doubts were burned out of him. That wasn't logical either, but what the Q. When committed to a course of action, he had always gone calm. Never, though, had he felt more clear and quick in the head than now.

"Direct me," she said.

Yesterday they had drafted a general plan. Afterward he had spent much time alone, pondering when his mind did not drift freely in hopes of inspiration. Nonetheless, they must grope their way forward, improvising, his knowledge of space and astronautics guiding her skill with the system.

"The history of interplanetary exploration," he told her unnecessarily. "For openers, a summary."

That should make their undertaking seem an innocuous bit of research, perhaps by someone with nothing better to do.

Hypertext appeared in three-dimensional configuration. Aleka entered the commands that led topic by

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topic outward from the asteroid belt to the Kuiper and beyond. Casualties... . Sigurd Kaino Beynac did not come home. The purpose and destination of his voyage were never put in any public database. Whatever tale was kept sequestered was probably lost in the disastrous ending of Niolente's rebellion. So the computer said.

"We knew this stuff," Aleka complained.

"Yes, but I want it in an entire context, or as nearly entire as exists," Kenmuir replied. "Next we'll focus on scientific missions to asteroids."

The established associations quickly brought up Edmond Beynac and his death. Kenmuir nodded. He had expected that. "Beynac was after confirmation of his ideas about the early Solar System. Let's check on exactly what they were. It's vague in my memory. I'm beginning to realize that that's largely because I've scarcely ever seen it mentioned. Because he was in fact mistaken, or because there was something there that somebody would like to suppress? He was too important in his science for all record of this to be erasable."

When he had studied the precis, which took time, Kenmuir whistled low. "M-m-hm. I get a suspicion of what kind of body Kaino went out to. But that was years after his father died, and he wouldn't have taken off blind. First, an astronomical search. But nobody's ever heard—" He sketched instructions for Aleka to track down the account.

And: "Ah, yes, I'd forgotten, or maybe never knew, a brother of Kainp's directed the major Lunar observatory of that period. We'll run through a list of what reports and papers came out of it between those two death's."

And: "Some curious gaps, wouldn't you say? Distant comets discovered and catalogued, nothing anomalous, but... I should think the surveys would have found more of them. We know they're out there. Were certain findings left unreported?"

And: "If I were seriously interested in spotting,

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m-m, Edmond Beynac's hypothetical mother asteroid, I'd get better parallaxes than you can from the Moon. Robotic probes—those launches will be recorded, even if the results are not."

Aleka giggled. It sounded like a guitar string breaking. "How lucky for us the cybercosm is a data packrat. It hoards everything."

"Aye, but a part of the hoard stays permanently underground." Kenmuir was silent a while. "Duck back to Kaino. The departure date of his last voyage, exact type and capabilities of his ship, initial boost parameters as far as they were routinely tracked, date of the return without him.

That will all have been public."

And: "Yes, it's consistent with an expedition to the Kuiper Belt, though that still leaves an unco huge region." Kenmuir frowned. "The last decade or two of the Setenarchy. Missions dispatched by the aristocrats of Zamok Vysoki: Rinndalir till he left for Alpha Centauri, Niolente afterward.

Very little information would ever have been released about them, but we'll see what's available, including whatever the Peace Authority found in her files."

"You've told me they claimed a lot of that was accidentally destroyed," Aleka said.

"They claimed. Let's look. Again, ship types and launch parameters. Those could not have been hidden, at least not if they left from the Moon. And maybe you can locate a few cargo manifests or the like, scraps of fact, pointing to what they may have carried... . Uh, I'd better explain how such matters work."

Having assembled the figures, Kenmuir turned to an auxiliary board and calculated trajectories, fuel consumption, the range of what could have happened. When he was through, he sat back and said in his driest voice, "Plain to see now, Lilisaire's suspicions and mine are right. Some sort of project in deep space, involving construction. Clandestine, which means THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 377

trips to the site had to be few and far between and minimally manned. But even in those days, you could do quite a lot with well-chosen, well-programmed robots, if the raw materials were handy."

He rose and paced. His hands wrestled one another. "Yes," he said in a monotone. "Do you see, Aleka? It's almost got to be Edmond Beynac's giant iron asteroid, orbiting out where only dust and gravel and cometary iceballs large and small are supposed to be. His children kept the discovery to themselves, thinking it might prove valuable. The secret was passed down the generations, doubtless to just one or two each time, else it couldn't have been kept so long. Finally Rinndalir and Niolente decided to try making use of it."

"A long shot, a whatVto-lose move," the woman breathed. "Otherwise somebody would have tried earlier. After Fireball made war on the Avantists, it was doomed, however slowly its dying went.

The Selenarchs were threatened too. Without Fireball, they had no realistic hope of maintaining their independence against a determined Federation. Unless— Beynac's world—but how? What help was there?"

"Something the government doesn't want known^"

"Not the whole government. How could it, century after century, and nobody blab?"

"The cybercosm. The—" Kenmuir decided not to say, "Teramind." Instead: "It could rather easily keep the knowledge to itself, except for a few totally trustworthy human agents. When Lilisaire grew curious, that synnoiont Venator took charge of investigating how much she might have learned and what her Lunarians might be thinking of."

She nodded. His last sentence had been automatic, unnecessary.

He halted. "Well, I believe we've gotten everything we can out of the open files," he said. "In remarkably short time, thanks to these facilities." Indeed, so thorough a probe into a quasi-infinity of bytes would

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hardly have been possible to a less-equipped station. "Still, several hours. Do you want to take a break, br shall we plunge ahead?"

"I couldn't relax, waiting. Could you?"

"Frankly, no." He rejoined her. They exchanged a cold grin.

Hers faded. As if reaching out for comfort, she murmured, "I wonder if Dagny Beynac knew."

"You've heard of her?"

"She was quite a power on the Moon, wasn't she?"

"Yes, I rather imagine she did know. The siblings would have needed her help in covering the trail. But she took the secret with her to the tomb."

Aleka shook herself. "C'mon. Anchors aweigh."

They spent minutes formulating their question. It was simple enough, but it must look like one onto which she had stumbled, a bit of aroused curiosity. Kenmuir put in what specifics he had been able to guess at, such as the broad arc of heaven in which the object most likely was wandering, but in its final form the query amounted to: Does a very large ferrous asteroid, perturbed out of the inner Solar System, orbit through the Kuiper Belt?

* Aleka straightened, moistened her lips, and entered it.

A sharp note sounded. A red point of light blinked in the screen. Below it, words leaped out: FILE 737. ACCESS IS RESTRICTED TO AUTHORIZED PERSONS. DNA IDENTIFICATION IS REQUIRED.

The Anglo changed to a series of other languages. Aleka shut the display off.

She and Kenmuir sat for a span in silence. Again he felt a steely steadiness. "Hardly a surprise, eh?" he said at length. "Shows we're on the scent." He gestured at the little bag Aleka had carried along. "Shall we?"

"One minute," she answered. Her voice was as level as his, but he saw sweat on her forehead. He thought it

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would smell sweet, of woman, were the reek of his not smothering that. "An ordinary scholar would wonder why."

"Good girl!" His laugh rattled. "You've a gift for intrigue, evidently."

Her mouth quirked. May I ask for the reason the file is classified? she tapped. Throughout, they had left vocal connections dead, so they could talk freely, and likewise the visual pickup.

Besides, a real researcher would avoid distractions like that.

CONSIDERATIONS OF GENERAL SAFETY NECESSITATE THAT CERTAIN ACTIVITIES AND CERTAIN REGIONS OF

DISTANT SPACE BE INTERDICTED TO ALL BUT PROPER CYBERNETIC ASSEMBLIES. OTHERWISE THE DANGER WOULD

EXIST OF STARTING SOME OBJECTS, WHICH HAVE UNSTABLE ORBITS, INWARD. THAT COULD EVENTUALLY HAVE

SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES. IT IS A CYBERNETIC RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVIDE AGAINST FORESEEABLE

MISFORTUNES, NO MATTER HOW FAR AHEAD IN TIME. DETAILS ARE WITHHELD TO AVOID TEMPTATION.

HOWEVER, IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO STATE THAT NO BODY RESEMBLING YOUR DESCRIPTION IS KNOWN, AND ON

COSMOLOGICAL GROUNDS IS IMPLAUSIBLE. SEE—The screen proffered a list of references. Kenmuir knew by the titles and dates that they were papers published in Edmond Beynac's lifetime, arguing against his theory.

"You lie," he muttered at the machine. "You lie in the teeth you haven't got."

"That takes sentience," Aleka whispered. "We've contacted a sophotect."

"Highly specialized, a node in the network," Kenmuir deemed. "It's best to have some flexibility, not a simple, blank refusal." He sighed. "We could continue the pretense, I suppose, and call up those ancient disputes, but I'm for going straight on ahead."

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Aleka raised a hand. "Wait a minute. Let me think."

Quietude lasted. The faint colors thrown by the mandala window onto the wall opposite had noticeably shifted downward since she and Kenmuir arrived.

He glimpsed that she had turned her regard upon him, and looked back. Her eyes were gold-flecked russet. "This is mucho important business," she said very softly.

"Yes," he answered for lack of a better word.

"Somebody high, high up wants it kept kapu. The haku, the kahuna—I don't know who or what, but I think that in the past it got the Teramind's attention, and can get it again."

Chill touched him. "Could well be."

"Is the purpose bad?"

"Perhaps not. Why mayn't we decide for ourselves?"

"Do you still want to go through with this?"

He considered for an instant. "If you do."

She nodded. "Yes. But listen. You remarked that keeping information squirreled away—for a long, long time, as this has been—that needs more than a lock. It needs flexible response. Bueno, will the guardian really be satisfied with a DNA scan?"

"That was all it demanded."

"Anything more might be too clumsy." And anything less, Kenmuir reflected, such as a facial or fingerprint identification, was too easily counterfeited. "Still, if I were in charge, knowing that Lilisaire is on the prowl, I'd take an extra precaution or two. Like instructing the guardian to notify me if anybody does make entry, legitimately or not."

Kenmuir started where he sat. "Huh! That didn't occur to me."

"Nor to me till just now. I may be wrong, of course."

"But if you're right—" Thought searched wildly. "Venator wouldn't sit and wait. He'll be busy, quite likely far from here."

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 381

"So he'd want the guardian to contact not only him, but agents closer, who can pounce fast."

"The police?"

"Not local police. They'd wonder why they were ordered to arrest a couple of persons harmlessly using the public database. Those persons might'tell them why, and they'd tell others, and folks would wonder. Me, I'd have the crack emergency squads of the Peace Authority alerted, around the planet, to be prepared for a quick raid, reasons not given but the thing top secret."

"As a recourse—" Protest rose in Kenmuir's throat like vomit. "Are we going to let this possibility paralyze us?"

"No," Aleka said. "But we'd better scout around first."

She gave herself anew to the equipment. It told her the nearest Authority base was in Chicago Integrate. "Allowing time to scramble, an arrowjet cpuld bring a squad here inside half an hour,"

she reckoned. Kenmuir, who knew virtually nothing about constabulary, mustered courage. Maybe he could at least flash a message to Zamok Vysoki. It must go in clear. However, since the Moon was in the sky, it could beam directly to a central receiver there, and—and be intercepted by a surveillance program, and provoke immediate counteraction—"What we'll need to know is whether they do scramble," Aleka was saying. "Hang on."

Her fingers danced. The patience schooled into a spacer had strength to hold Kenmuir motionlessly waiting.

After a time he chose not to number, Aleka leaned back, wiped a hand across her face, and mumbled,

"Good. We will know."

"How's that?" he croaked.

"I've set it Up. Traffic Control will inform us if and when any high-speed unscheduled flyer leaves CI in this general direction." She shook her head. "No, no, nothing special, no break-in.

The sort of information

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a civilian might have reason to want. For instance, we could be studying atmospheric turbulence effects, or some such academic makework. I just had to figure out how to request it."

His belly muscles slackened a trifle. "Then . . . if it happens .". . we'll have twenty or thirty minutes to get to your volant and away?"

"Not that simple. TrafCon will oblige a mOka'i every bit as readily as us, if not more so. Easy enough to get the registry of a vehicle that left here a short while back, and know exactly where it is while it's moving. We'H've got to land somewhere close by and be off like bunnies." Aleka sighed. "I trust Lilisaire will ransom my poor flyer, or buy me a new one. Unless you and I end up where we won't have any need of personal transport."

Kenmuir refused to think about the ugliest possibilities. This was the modern world, for God's sake. Thus far he and she had done nothing illegal. If they were about to, well, it was not technically a serious offense, not in a society that recognized every citizen's right to information. They'd be entitled to a public hearing, to counsel, to procedures that might well be too awkward for the secretkeepers. It wasn't as though they were dealing with an instrument of an almighty state, KGB or IRS or whatever the name had been—

He wished he could believe that.

"What we must do is escape, and then take stock," he said. A detached part of him jeered that he could also tell her the value of pi to four decimal places. "How?"

"That's what I mean to check out." Once more she got busy. Schedules paraded over the screen.

After a while: "All right. There's no public transport out of Prajnaloka, and it's sparse everywhere close around, as thinly populated as the area is. Mostly it's local, which does ire no good. Figure ten minutes to run to my volant. Ten or twelve minutes airborne before anybody can intercept us, no more.

"The single place in range is Springfield. It has a THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 383

twice-daily airbus to St. Louis Hub. There we could vanish into the crowd and quickly get seats to somewhere else big and anonymous. Trouble is, the opposition will know this too, or find out in a hurry. We'll have to time our arrival at Springfield and departure from it ve-ery closely. The next bus is in about half an hour. Otherwise we'll have to wait till evening."

"That gives us time to prepare," he said reluctantly.

"And it gives time for things to go wrong," she retorted. "Obviously, the fact that we bounced off the edge of the no-no hasn't raised an alert. Else we'd be under arrest this minute. But is a query going along the lines? Or—we are being chased. The data could be starting to point this way." Her voice rang. "I say keep moving!"

He weighed it. If they must immediately cut and run, it meant abandoning their spare clothes and things in the dormitory. But those were easily replaced, all their cash being on their persons, and stuff left behind might even divert suspicion for a critical short span. Impulsively, he thrust out his hand. "Go."

She returned the clasp, hers hard and warm. "Okay, aikane." Then he understood why humans throughout history had time and again staked their lives on ventures that later generations saw as fantastical. It was the nature of the beast.

Aleka took up her bag, set it on her lap, and plucked forth a thing that appeared to be a brown cloth. Unfolded, it revealed itself as a gauntlet of thin material—material that was alive, like the mask she had earlier worn. She slipped it over her right hand.

"Lilisaire's agent gave it to me in Hawaii," she had told Kenmuir that night in Overburg while the fire died away. "Prepared special. She thinks we may find use for it."

"What is it?" he asked.

"An organism with tissue reserves to last a couple of weeks. Made from a biospecimen of that synnoiont who visited her—Venator, she said is his name. It 384

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carries his DNA. If we should need to get past a biolock, won't its keys be likely to include that high-powered a feljow, who's working on the case?"

"But, but how'd she get a useable sample?" The scraps of skin and other tissue that everybody shed in the course of a day wouldn't do. They were tiny, dead and degraded, mingled with dust and other debris. It took delicate equipment, most of which was only in the possession of police forces', to find such stuff; and once you had mapped the genome, you would have to have independent means of ascertaining whose it was. "If she drew blood somehow, maybe faking an accident—but wouldn't he surmise her intentions?"

Aleka grinned. "I didn't ask. I did guess."

He felt his cheeks go hot, and was angry that they did. "No, wait," he snapped, "that's ridiculous. A gamete has just half the chromosomes."

He saw his error even as she responded: "Ah, but we're talking about lots and lots of gametes.

Between them, a lab can quickly enough work out the complete original genome. Then it synthesizes one, and— You're not trying to clone the human, you know, just some skin for a simple substrate.

Not much of a trick. Slip your sample to a technie in your pay, who goes and does the job in any of a lot of genetech labs. I daresay this wasn't the first occasion of that general sort for Lilisaire. When the thing was ready, he'd bring it to her under his shirt or whatever. We'd better not underestimate friend Venator, but in this particular business with her—" Aleka laughed. "Poor, unsuspecting superman!"

Soon afterward, events exploded and Kenmuir forgot the pain.

Of course this station had biolock capability. That belonged with its inclusiveness. Not all sealed files were official. You might well want to enter highly personal information in the public database or a private one, for use in conjunction with other facts THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 385

already there. The cybercosm would know, in the sense that it scanned everything, but it would not betray your confidence.

Aleka keyed in and presented her life glove. After a moment the screen displayed PROCEED TO FILE

737,

To avoid the appearance of being the same person who inquired before, she tapped out Give me full information on the giant ferrous asteroid in the Kuiper Belt.

PROSERPINA. THIS IS THE NAME BESTOWED BY THE LUNARIANS WHO DISCOVERED AND FIRST EXPLORED IT.

SUCCESSORS OF THEIRS PARTLY DEVELOPED IT FOR SETTLEMENT. ITS MASS IS—

Kenmuir hunched forward, as if he could haul the words out of the terminal. His pulse racketed.

Yes, yes, Edmond Beynac's—

—REMNANT OF A PROTOPLANET, PERTURBED INTO AN ECCENTRIC ORBIT WITH HIGH APHELION. BY COLLISIONS

DURING GIGAYEARS IT HAS ACQUIRED SUBSTANTIAL DEPOSITS OF WATER ICE, ORGANICS, AND—

Generalities. When would the bloody program get down to the numbers?

—POTENTIAL OF COLONIZATION BY LUNARIANS—

On Kenmuir's right, a second screen flashed. Aleka leaned past him to read. The breath hissed between her jaws. She shook him out of raptness. "That's it," she said. "A speedster just took off from Chicago base. Hele aku."

"A minute, a minute," he gasped. "The orbital elements—"

"You want to mull them over in a nice quiet cell? Move, boy!" She was on her feet. She slapped his shoulder, hard.

He clambered erect and stumbled after her, out the door, across the quad, toward the communal garage.

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Sunlight dashed over him, overweeningly bright, but eastward above a roof he spied the wan Lunar crescent,

Do strifes ever end? he wondered in the turmoil. Was he waging a war that began in the days of Dagny Beynac? ,

30

The Mother of the Moon

The swimming pool filled most of its chamber. Mist lay ovet it like a blanket, white in the bleak light that shone from fluoropanels and reflected off tile, for the water was very cold. The vapors scarcely stirred, as still as the air rested. So had Jaime Wahl y Medina ordered this place be kept for him. It was his refreshment, his twice-daily renewal, exercise to rouse the blood and shorten the times he must spend in the damned centrifuge. God knew the governor general of Luna needed whatever gladness he could find. Peace and quiet, too. Nobody else came here; family and friends used the older, larger, warmer pool at the opposite end of the mansion.

He entered as he was wont, late in dawnwatch, kicked off his sandals, hung his robe from a hook, and slipped his goggles on. For some minutes he went through his warmup routine, a powerfully built man of middle height and mid-forties age, big nose and heavy chin underscored by the blackness of hair, brows, mustache, brown eyes crinkled at the corners by years of squinting into the winds and tropical brightnesses of Earth. Chill raised gooseflesh on shaggy arms and legs.

Having finished, he climbed the ladder to the diving board at the deep end of the basin, bounced—less vigorously than he would have liked, lest his head strike the ceiling—and plunged.

He also fell more slowly than he would have preferred. But the water received him with a liquid crash

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 387

that echoed from the walls. It surrounded him, embraced him, slid sensuously around every movement, and now gravity made no difference, he was free, more free than in space itself.

Down he went to the bottom and streaked along just above. His flesh responded to the flowing cold, lashed into utter aliveness. The tile pattern, his hands where they came forward to thrust him on, passed stark in their clarity, transfigured by refraction. His eyes needed the goggles, they could not well open straight onto the purity, it would have washed the salt out of them. Like all Lunar water, this came totally clean from each recycling. Not in its comet had it been so unsullied, not since its ice-dust glittered in the nebula that would become the Solar System, and something of that ancient keenness had returned to it as well. He drove himself through a reborn virginity.

When his lungs could strain no more, he broke surface, breathed hard, went around and around the rim until he felt ready to go under again. And thus he reveled until his body warned him he would soon begin losing too much heat.

He swung out, leaped to the bath alcove, and let a nearly scalding shower gush over him. A vigorous toweling followed, and he was ravenously ready for breakfast.

He did stop a minute before he went off to get dressed, and looked at the instrument panel. There had been some trouble lately with temperature control. The thermometer was holding steady.

Probably Maintenance had fixed the system so it would stay fixed. Well, it was simple enough.

Coils under the pool tapped whatever cooling the thermostat called for from the municipal reservoir of it, a liquid-air tank which itself drew on space during the long Lunar night. Still, Wahl habitually kept track of everything he could for which he felt in any way responsible.

Too little of the first, too much of the second! He grimaced and went headlong down the hallway.

In his bedroom he donned not civilian garb but the

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blue uniform of the Peace Authority. He was entitled, being a major in its reserve, and today such a reminder of what he represented, what power ultimately stood behind him, could be helpful.

The legislature was convening next week. Deputy Rabkin had announced that he would introduce a bill to give the tax agency warrant-free access to business databanks, making it harder to cook up falsifications. Most delegates with Terrestrial genes favored the measure; evasion was getting out of hand. Speaking for what she called the free folk, Deputy Fia threatened that if this proposed rape of privacy came to the floor, she would lead the Lunarians out, form a rump parliament, and nullify any act that passed.

It could happen. She was the sister of the Selenarch Brandir and his chief agent within the cities. (Jesus and Mary, if the arrogance of the feudal lords wasn't checked soon, they'd make that honorific into a title!) Maybe nothing too serious would come of this, but maybe it could be the neutron shot into the fis-sionables.

It must be headed off. The parties concerned must be argued, cajoled, browbeaten, bribed, blackmailed —whatever it took—into some kind of mutually face-saving compromise. Wahl would be meeting with them, by ones and twos, personally. No telephone image could stand in for the living presence, the life laid on the line. If necessary, he would go to that citadel in the Cordillera, yes, alone, to stare the great troublemaker down.

Chances were, matters wouldn't come to that. However, Wahl had a busy stretch ahead of him. As always, the prospect of action heartened. Maddeningly much of his two years' tenure had gone in frustration, defiances to which he could not even put a proper name. It was like trying to grip and hold a stream as4t rushed on toward its cataract. He entered the breakfast room in a fairly good mood.

His wife and son were already there1, she transferring the meal' from autococinero to table, the boy

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 389

slumped sullen in his chair. Aromas rolled around Wahl, omelette, toast, juice, coffee, coffee.

His taste buds stood up and cheered.

The viewscreen was also bracing. The vista was from above the city, mountainside rolling down to Sinus Iridum, monorail a bright thread across its darkness to the spaceport, elsewhere a cluster of industrial domes and, on the near horizon, a power transmitter aimed at Earth. The mother world hung in the southern sky, a blue-and-white arc not far from the stopped-down sun disc, incredibly beautiful. It was scenery better than the crowded constructions around Port Bowen.

Of course, that wasn't the reason he had lately moved his residence and the seat of government to Tsukimachi in the Jura. Port Bowen was a company town, in Anson Guthrie's ghostly pocket, and half the time Fireball was at loggerheads with governments, the national, the Federation, the Lunar Authority. Not that that had ever led to disorder, but the lesser companies centered here were more cooperative. If the percentage of resident Lunarians was higher, that had its advantages as well as it drawbacks.

"Buenos dias," Wahl greeted his son. Rita he had kissed when they woke.

Leandro mumbled an answer. He kept his face turned downward. His gaudy outfit was at odds with his behavior.

"Where is Pilar?" Wahl continued in Spanish.

"She said she wasn't hungry," Rita replied.

Wahl frowned. A wound reopened and a part of his pleasure drained out. Again the girl was moping in her room. It had been happening too often to be mere sulk. What was the matter, then?

Depression brought on by loneliness? Fourteen was so vulnerable an age. How could he tell, what could he say? Pilar was a good child, she deserved to be* happy. If, just once, she brought herself to confide in him, or at least in her mother—When did children ever give parents that overwhelming gift?

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He sat down. Rita poured coffee before joining him. He crossed himself and sipped. The flavor went robust and friendly through his mouth.

"What are your plans for today?" he asked Leandro. Saturday, no school. Homework? If there was any, it would be scamped, or neglected altogether. The boy's scores were terrible. It wasn't due to lack of intelligence; he'd been bright and eager on Earth.

Leandro didn't look at him. "Nothing special."

The father forced a smile. "I have trouble believing that." In fact, Leandro was more sociable than his sister. But Wahl didn't like the lot he went about with—louts, loudmouths, no credit to the Earth genes they bragged of. More than once, quarrels with their Lunarian classmates had exploded into fights. Not that the Lunarians never provoked it.

"When I was sixteen," Wahl said, "I'd have been outdoors by now." Horse at a gallop, hoofs drumming, surge of muscles between his thighs, grass in billows beneath the wind, a hawk overhead—if only such spaciousness existed anywhere in space!

Leandro tossed his head. "That was then."

"Hold on," Wahl rapped. "We will have courtesy here."

The boy started to rise. "I'm not hungry either."

"Sit down. You will finish what's on your plate and you will answer my question."

Leandro yielded, knowing he'd spend the daycycle confined to quarters if he didn't. Tone and expression conveyed his resentment. "Pardon me . .. sir. I am meeting some fellows in about an hour. We are going to Hoshi Park."

Not likely, Wahl thought. Not those decorous amusements. The Ginza? Or worse? Unwise to insist on knowing. "Be home for dinner."

"I am not sure I—"

"You heard me. Hour 1^00, in time to dress^proper-ly. No later."

teandro flushed fiery. He wolfed his food, mouthed a formal request for leave to go, and stalked out.

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 391

A meal in silence had little savor. "You were too hard on him, dear," Rita ventured sadly.

"I didn't enjoy it," Wahl reminded her. "Without discipline, he could get into serious trouble."

"I understand. This horrible atmosphere, conflict, racial tension, and too few safe, healthy outlets—" She touched his hand. "But perhaps we should be gentler. It's not easy being young.

Here, it's very hard, for both of them."

He regarded her. She was short, well-formed, round-faced, always an excellent helpmate and hos-less, but her bubbliness had dwindled on the Moon. More than the social and political situation oppressed her. She was among those who could never quite be physically comfortable in low gravity.

"Harder on you," he said, "and you don't complain."

She smiled a little. "Nor you, old duty lugger."

"I've enjoyed past duty more," he admitted. Even police actions and relief efforts in stricken corners of Earth. Even the niggling negotiations and boring parties that a Federation delegate must endure. He hadn't wanted to enter politics, but they persuaded him that Argentina needed someone of his caliber in Hiroshima, and, yes, he had gotten several worthwhile things accomplished. For those, his reward was first to be talked into administration of the African Protectorate and now into this cauldron called Luna.

He took several mouthfuls, consciously tasted them; and vowed, "I'll have things under control within five years. God willing, no longer. And then we'll go home and never leave again." To the lively life in Buenos Aires, the serenity of the house in San Isidro, the freedom of the ranch in La Pampa.

She smiled once more. "Oh, surely now and then to Guangzhou. Where else shall I buy my frivolous clothes?" He chuckled back at her and they finished their breakfast in mildness.

But then it was time to start the daycycle's work. See the news; play whatever communications had arrived; answer those that required it; at the ap-392

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pointed hour, call Sato Fujiwara. The shipping-line executive was a friend of Philip Rabkin and willing to brief the governor about the deputy. By all accounts, Rabkin was a reasonable man, but best to come well prepared to the lunch with him later today. Groundwork, and also a practice run for meeting the really difficult cases like Fia. }

Wahl's private office comforted him with its mementos, pictures from home, a Noh mask, a Moshi-Dagomban figurine in wood, his archery trophies (it had been a minor triumph, adapting his skills that well to Lunar conditions), an eighteenth-century crucifix on the wall. He settled down before his terminal and keyed for tidings.

URGENT. CONFIDENTIAL flashed at him. What the devil? His nightcycle staff had entered an override.

He keyed afresh. The report smashed forth.

"jMadre de Dfosf"

It was as if he had dived into his pool and it had turned to ice around him. He caught his breath, exhaled most carefully, willed muscles to slack off, felt his pulse drop to a hard slugging. The forebrain took over.

Constabulary headquarters had sent notification: About 0130, as per his orders, a vehicle was bound across Mare Imbrium for Archimedes Station. Aboard it was the accused murderer Darenn. (No proper name. He was among the many Lunarians whose parents, scoffiaw, had not registered the birth. Nor had he made good their omission. His ident as George Hanover was false, although some of his race did still use Terrestrial names as alternatives. A fake registry was easy to arrange.

The datalines were infested with subversive operators and the computer worms they planted.) The transfer was being made in secret because, detained in Port Bowen pending trial, he had become too flammable a symbol. Earth-gene Selenites in a 'mutinous humor might riot, or Lunarians might organize an attempt to free him, or—Violence, breakdown of law, while outside THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 393

waited the vacuum and the radiation. Archimedes was a strongpoint; one could control who went in and out. At the same time, telecom of every sort guaranteed the killer his rights. He should have been sent to Archimedes in the first place. But who could think of everything?

The screen showed a recording made on the spot. A jetflyer came down. Half a dozen spacesuited men sprang from it and by nearbeam demanded admission to the police van. They bore weapons that could blow it open. Surrender was the only option. The men entered, helped Darenn into a rescue capsule, and carried him off to their flyer. It rocketed away before any constabulary vessel could reach the scene.

Wahl struck fist against knee. This meant that the corps, Earth's guardians of order, had been infiltrated.

He refocused on the report.

Monitor satellites had likewise recorded the incident, from above, but they weren't equipped to interpret what they saw. Data retrieval showed that the flyer had launched from Tychopolis spaceport. (No use inquiring further. Given today's volume of traffic, Control was satisfied with preventing collisions and had stopped asking for surface-to-surface flight plans.) After taking Darenn and his liberators aboard, the flyer hopped over to Farside, Gagarin Base. From there, ground transport could carry the gang anywhere, anonymously. They left their craft behind.

Therefore somebody had been willing to write it off, not a negligible cost, for the sake of this operation.

Detectives found that the registration was false and the inboard database had been wiped. They would try for fingerprints, stray hairs and skin cells, any possible clue, but were not optimistic. By now, Darenn must be in concealment, perhaps getting a new face, new loops and whorls and every other mark short of his DNA—or perhaps only lying low until the next time Brandir wanted a killer.

Brandir? That might be unfair. Another of the magnates could be behind this. Or it could be quite a

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different sort of conspiracy. But Wahl doubted that. It had the earmarks: a Selenarch ordering justice executed, then standing loyal to the executioner as a Selenarch stood loyal to all his vassals.

Earth people commonly likened the Lunarians to cats. Wahl thought about wolves.

Before he went any further, he had better review the entire case. It had not seemed major.

Tangled, nasty, potentially dangerous after emotions began seething up around it, but not worth his close attention. That had changed. He keyed for background.

Constabulary headquarters had organized the file well. He got a swift and incisive narrative.

Rafael Adair was Earthborn, but a twenty-year resident. He went into partnership with the Lunarian female Yrazul. Probably they were lovers, a situation unusual but not unknown though seldom stable. They meant to prospect along the fringes of Mare Australe, broken country where they had found reason to think valuable concentrations of minerals might be; and that was'Tare on Luna.

According to acquaintances who were afterward willing to talk, the relationship was going from tempestuous to embittered. Perhaps the couple hoped this joint venture would help them reconcile, perhaps they simply hoped to get rich.

Adair chanced to be in camp, seeing specimens through analysis, while Yrazul was in the field. Her vehicle was a moondodger, fast, nimble, but unshielded. A solar flare was predicted. She planned to get back under shelter before the proton storm hit. Lunarians delighted in skimming the edge of danger.

A meteoroid struck her car, smashed through, disabled engine and communications. Self-seal must have acted fast enough, closing off the drive section where she was, to preserve breathable air long enough for her to don her spacesuit. After that, she was stranded. Her contact with the robots she had been directing was gone, not tjiat they could have done much to help. A satellite recorded the accident and transmitted to Monitor Central; but the transmission was continu-THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 395

ous, the program was not set to flag an event so unlikely, and besides, the flare soon had Emergency Services fully occupied.

When she failed to return or to contact him, Adair should have taken their well-shielded van and gone in search. Instead, he waited hours. (Rage, cowardice, greed?) Finally he went. Later he claimed that he assumed she had driven into a cave or beneath an overhang. Else why hadhe not received a call for help? Storm or no, a satellite would have relayed it.

A reasonable, if rather discreditable story. The trouble with it arose from the traces. Inspector Hop-kins studied them too closely.

As he reconstructed the story, Adair came within sight of her vehicle. She left it and ran to meet him and go aboard his. He turned about and drove off.

Then Yrazul knew she would die. Already she had

f taken a radiation dosage that would keep her hospital-

; ized for months while the nanos rebuilt her cells. Soon

| she would be over the threshold that cannot be

! recrossed. In the Moon dust she scrawled with a finger what had happened. Thereafter she forced her helmet

up and drank vacuum. It was a death more merciful.

Adair came back after the flare was gone and wiped out the message. Presently he called in to say that, grown worried, he had finally followed her tracks and discovered her, too late. He assumed she had chosen to perish in the open under the stars.

Wahl came doubly erect. It was the astronomer Temerir, that cold brother of Brandir, Fia, and Verdea, who pried the case open. Yrazul had been a granddaughter of their sister Jinann. They hung together, those Beynacs. . .•. Temerir went over the ground and thereupon summoned Stanley Hopkins.

Would Yrazul really have left her moondodger, where she had some slight protection, unless she saw rescue coming? Why was the dust scuffled around her? Why did Adair's van approach, retreat, and return? Its tracks showed its course. Left undisturbed, they might endure for a million years.

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Hopkins ordered the shell of the van checked for residual radioactivity. He learned that it could not have been out under the flare nearly as long as Adair related.

Confronted with the evidence, the man broke. He pleaded fear. Well, nobody went willingly out into such a gale, armor or no. Inquiries in depth suggested he had other motivations. He was definitely guilty of abandonment, which on the Moon was a first-class felony. The law demanded he be imprisoned and rehabilitated.

The old Lunar law, in force during the years of the Jihad, the chaos, and the Coordinating Committee, demanded death.

Once established, the Lunar Authority had abrogated that, together with certain other practices.

It seemed a largely pro forma betterment. How often did abandonment occur? Scarcely ever.

Yrazul was of Selenarchic family.

Maybe she could have been any Lunarian, or anybody at all. Wahl didn't know.

What he knew was that Adair, free on bail, had been knifed dead. (You didn't trigger firearms inside a settlement. The old law made that too a capital offense.) It was a murder quick and clean; Darenn should have been able to leave his note explaining the reason for it and escape.

Unfortunately, a burly Dutch spaceman happened to witness the job and in a flying tackle captured the Lunarian.

Unfortunately indeed. What was becoming a cause c&ebre had threatened to touch off a political crisis. Now it positively would.

Wahl switched off the playback, rose, went around and around the room. You couldn't really pace here, you bounded, airily, a wisp of dandelion fluff—you and your concerns mattering no more than that? But he must prowl his cage, and he would not whine.

What to do?

God be thanked, the hijacking was not yet in the news. He could keep it out for hours more; they were

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 397

good people on his staff. Meanwhile he must prepare for the public reaction.

A hunt for the gang and its master(s?) would be hopeless, merely infuriating the seditiously minded. Yet the government could not dismiss the outrage as a bagatelle. Such a sign of weakness would dismay the law-abiding, on whose support the Authority depended as every government does. It would incite new violations, more blatant than ever. The extremists would take fire; they might well rupture the legislature, give the entire system a possibly fatal wound, in spite of anything the governor and the moderates could offer them.

Surely no sensible member of any faction wanted that, or an uproar, or a crime wave. They must make common cause, issue a joint call for order and reason, hold their followers steady.

Who were the sensible ones? He needed an individual who could tell him and could bring them together, fast, before things disintegrated.

Dagny Beynac.

Had she the forcefulness, the sheer physical strength for these hours ahead? How old was she, anyway? A hundred and five, a hundred and ten? Something like that.

Still, the last time he saw her, she had seemed hale enough. And she headed the Council for Lunar Commonalty, which she had taken a lead in forming. (Lunar, Wahl reassured himself, not Lunarian.) Unrecognized by the Authority, the Federation, any single nation, or the Selenarchs, it had become in several ways the most influential organization on the Moon; and that was largely due to her.

Quick! Call Beynac.

Easy, though. Take a minute and think. Was this really his best approach to controlling the damage? He should reconsider his relationship with her, and everything he knew about her. Begin with that talk they had had, the two of them alone, shortly after he assumed office here. He had asked if she objected to

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its being recorded, and she had grinned as she answered, "No, provided you keep it clean."

Having canceled his appointments, he played that part of it which to him epitomized the whole.

Her posture remained erect, but the big bones stood forth in her spareness—not ugly, he thought; no, beautiful, like a strong abstract sculpture. Against the pale skin, her eyes seemed large and bluely luminous, as if from a star behind them. Rather than unisuit or tunic and slacks, she wore a caftan of gray iridon. Her only jewelry was a Saturn brooch at her throat and a worn golden ring.

"Understand, por favor," she said, and her voice still resonated, "I claim no legal status. The Council is a forum. When its members reach basic agreement on an issue, it advises and urges, pro bono publico." She laughed. "That doesn't happen too often."

"Hm, I shouldn't think so," Wahl agreed. For courtesy's sake, although he had heard that she knew Spanish well, he used English too, despite the fact that his was colorless. "Two genetic types, more unlike than any races on Earth."

"We all live on the Moon," Beynac replied sharply. "It is our country."

She sat in this conference chamber as the spokeswoman of her fellowship, its representative to him. To what degree did she speak for her world? He had better explore carefully. But not timidly.

Absolutely not.

"A Lunar nation? I am afraid, madame, that is impossible. At least within ... my lifetime. May I speak frankly?"

"I've been hoping you will," she said.

"From my studies and briefings, and from what I have observed at close range for myself, I suspect Lunarians and Terricolas will never be able to form a durable society."

"I've seen unlikelier metals alloy." Beynac shrugged. "And if in the end it's the Lunarians alone THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 399

who inherit Luna, what's bad about that? They're our blood."

Daycycle by daycycle as he dealt with them, Wahl had begun to question it. In lineage, yes; but how much did that mean? How akin are mastiff and dachshund? Wrong comparison, he thought.

Terricola and Lunarian were not the same species, perhaps not the same genus. They could never breed, not even a mule-child.

"Well," he temporized, "conceivably someday in the far future—"

"The future has^ way of arriving sooner than we expect," said Beynac. "But let's get to business and save the philosophy for dessert. Of course we aren't talking revolution or any such foolishness today, neither you and I nor they and I. What I'm here about, Governor, is how to keep from encouraging foolishness."

Wahl inclined his head. "I appreciate your guidance, madame," he told her, quite sincerely. "You have had a long experience."

Beynac smiled. "I collect governors."

"I the third, ay?" Japing faded. "You said you wish to talk honestly with me."

"And you with me, right? We size each other up."

"I see." Wahl tugged his chin, looked beyond the human before him at an image of his garden at home where roses nodded to a breeze, and marshalled words. "Tell me, if you will, how do you—how did you—judge my predecessors?"

The reply came prompt and blunt. "Zhao had a fair amount of wisdom. I always respected him. We always did, whether or not we liked some particular action of his. Gambetta was a politician. Well-meaning, but to her this was one more step toward the presidency of the World Federation."

"Would you like to see her win it?"

"We wouldn't mind, on Luna," said Beynac dryly.

"I should think not. She gave you everything you wanted."

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"Correction, por favor. Half of what the assorted groups among us wanted."

Piecemeal, reluctantly. Forced by connivance, tricked by semantics, and maybe to a degree psychologically intimidated—anything to avoid trouble. Not that Wahl believed Beynac had engineered that pressure. It came from the barons, the businessfolk, the multitudinous malcontents, unorganized but vocal, who were the atmosphere that rebellion breathed.

The intelligence Wahl had received declared that this woman sought ever to mediate, to work out compromises. After all, while most of her descendants were Lunarian, it had long ceased to be a secret that she had an Earthside son from whom stemmed also a family.

The trouble was, not every one of those compromises had proven viable, nor had every one of them been lawful.

Wahl chose his words. "Notwithstanding, madame, my impression is that for Gambetta you have little respect."

"That's as may be, and it doesn't matter any more," Beynac said. "You're in charge now."

"Exactly." Appeal to her. "And, madame, I too mean well. With my entire heart, I do not want conflict. As for my wisdom, I hope you will lend me yours."

The blue eyes looked straight into his. "But."

He nodded. "But the situation is growing impossible. My duty is to get it corrected."

"I have a notion," she said quietly, "that what's growing is that new society you don't suppose can be."

"Perhaps, In which case—I speak plainly, madame, because I respect you too much to, m-m, pussyfoot—" -

She smiled at him. Suddenly he understood a part of why so many men heeded her. "Gracias," she murmured. "I think I'm going to like you."

He cleared his throat and hurried on. "If it is a

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 401

society, it is a society in flagrant violation of the law, hostile, unruly—"

She stopped him by raising a hand. "If you please, senor, let's just go over this point by point.

What are the Lunarians and quite a few Terran Moondwelters hostile and unruly for? Mind you, I don't claim they are always in the right. For openers, I admit what's obvious, that they are not a solid bloc, most especially not the Lunarians. But their grudge curve is Gaussian, so to speak. It does have a maximum.

"Officially, or what passes for officially in the Council, I'm here to discuss with you, in a preliminary and informal way, a petition we're drawing up to present to the World Federation and world opinion. You see, we don't want to spring it on you as a surprise, as if we had no use for you and everything you stand for." Surely she had taken, the lead in evoking that attitude, Wahl thought. "Maybe you can convince us that such-and-such a demand is out of line. Well, no, you won't, you can't, on certain of them, any more than you can yield on others. But maybe between us we can work out a document that explains the Moondwellers' position in a sensible way. Then maybe real, honest dickering can begin."

Wahl doubted it. The important differences were irreconcilable. The. larger good required that some practices, some beliefs, be suppressed, as the Conquis-tadores had suppressed the human sacrifices of the Aztecs.

Too strong a metaphor. By all means, give the Selenites—not the Selenarchs, the Selenites—

whatever legitimate rights they were being denied. The problem was to find precisely what those were, and how to make the populace accept that the rest were illegitimate. . "Pray proceed, madame."

Beynac sighed. "You've heard it before, over and over. Bear with me. I promised them I'd spell it out for you." The tone of apology gave place to confidence. "Besides, it can't hurt for you to hear it from

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across the fence. That might make it more real, bring it closer to home."

He felt himself stiffen at the underlying condescension.

No. That was wrong. She was simply aware of her capabilities. "I listen," he said.

"Do interrupt," she urged. "I've doubtless heard every argument you can raise, but I'll be interested to know how you, Jaime Wahl y Medina, go about the job.

"I won't say much about the biggest issue of the lot, because it's been talked over aplenty. I'll just warn you that we've decided it is the biggest. The right to own real property. 'Common heritage' is an anachronism. It has to go, on the Moon and throughout the Solar System."

"You will not find substantial agreement to this on Earth," Wahl said. "There most people don't look on it as an anachronism, but as a foundation stone of a more hopeful future."

"I know. If individuals can own pieces of celestial bodies, that means jurisdiction gets carved up among the countries they're citizens of, and nationalism gains a new lease on life. Look, the details can be adjusted. Federation law could be the sole law off Earth, provided it recognizes and guarantees private property rights. Besides, we're not convinced the average Earthdweller cares about common heritage any longer. We know for a fact that a lot of them would like it abolished; and they don't all work for Fireball, either. When will your politicians have the guts to admit it's become a shibboleth?"

Wahl arranged his expression as well as his words with care. "Frankly, Mrs. Beynac, the conduct of many Selenites is not helping toward that end. You speak of Federation law for the planets, satellites, asteroids. It already applies, and is being systematically flouted. That is done by everyone from the great baron or mine operator who occupies his leasehold as THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 403

though it were his freehold, to the ordinary person not only evading his taxes but cooperating in a network of organized, data-falsifying evaders. How much confidence does this give those politicians you seem to consider so venal?"

She nodded. "Well put, sir. But the taxes are another of our main grievances. They're excessive."

"They are commensurate with the increasing prosperity of Luna, which is linked to the well-being of Earth."

"Yes, yes. Listen, por favor, I'm not personally unsympathetic to the poor, nor unwilling to help relieve them and cope with the rest of Earth's problems. After all, I'm North American by birth and Ecuadoran by citizenship. But the Terran Moondwell-er who seldom sets foot there, the Lunarian who never does, they don't feel that way and it's not reasonable to expect they should. Where's the quid pro quo for them?

"Furthermore, they hate income tax, and would hate it no matter how modest it was, because it's an invasion of privacy. We value personal privacy very highly here, Governor. It was scarce and precious in the early days. We still often have to forgo it, sometimes for long stretches like on a field trip or a space voyage. The desire for it is downright fierce in the Lunarians, I suppose because our Moon culture reinforces a predisposition that got built into their genes. What people here do about the income tax, they don't think of as cheating, but resistance."

Wahl frowned. "It will be difficult to pass legislation exempting them from it. Even if the Federation waived it, the countries of their citizenship scarcely would. Income tax is essential to the modern state."

Beynac smiled crookedly. "Some would say that's the best reason of all for abolishing it."

"Please, let us be realistic." Wahl paused. "I daresay that privacy fetish is also the cause of widespread obstructionism toward the census and other govern-404

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mental information-gathering activities?" She nodded. "And yet I hear that the Lunar magnates have quite efficient methods of their own/'

"In Lunar eyes, that's different. Don't blame me, I'm only telling you. But think. You're a Catholic, right? Well, then you tell your priest things you'd bloody anybody else's nose for asking about."

He contemplated her for a while before he said 16w, "What you mean is that the conflict is, at bottom, not economic or political but cultural. We do not have brewing anything like the First North American Revolution. No, it is to be a rising against occupation and exploitation by foreigners, aliens."

"You are an intelligent man," she replied gravely.

His tone went grim. "The analogy I see is the First North American Civil War. My duty is to do everything I can to prevent it. If this requires aborting a distinct Lunar civilization, then that is what must be. Now do you see why I have ordered full enforcement of the Educational Standards Act?"

"I knew that was your motive." She sounded half regretful. "Requiring private schools, as well as public, to teach—to try and instill—ideals, like democracy and the equal worth of all human beings, what decent person could object to that? Not I. But it doesn't go down well with Lunarian children. They hear different at home. Furthermore, it's like telling cats they ought to behave like dogs. The whole thing was quietly phased out because it was causing too many problems. Not much violence, truancy, or even insolence. Subtler. A, a contempt. I myself could feel it in the kids. And now you're demanding the mistake be revived."

Wahl sighed. "You Selenites agitated year after year for home rule. You, madame, took a forefront role in that. And now you have it. How shall you maintain it, if your younger generations don't learn the principles and procedures of civilized self-government?"

"Pretty limited home rule, given that the governors general are charged with keeping it inside Federation

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 405

and assorted national law, and that appeals from their rulings are regularly denied in court."

Beynac gazed past him—into the past? He heard a measure of sorrow in her voice. "I confess this has been the greatest disappointment in my life." Even greater than when her children developed into . . . Lunarians? "Federation law is for the most part humane and rational. What parts of it are not, as far as the Moon is concerned, I thought we could get gradually changed by democratic means. On the whole, our Terran legislators are still hoping, still trying. But the Lunarians—they don't seem to have the right stuff for politics. Those who do go in for it are apt to be their worst, corrupt, quarrelsome, egotistic, short-sighted. Our legislature is working very poorly, and I've come to doubt it can improve."

"That may not be a completely bad thing," he risked saying, "in view of what measures it has attempted to pass."

"Like restoring the death penalty for criminal abandonment? Even Gambetta had to veto that one.

There I agreed with her. The rest of my family did not. They aren't monsters, Governor. They have a high standard of—honor, I suppose is the nearest English word. But they are children of a world that is not Earth."

"A curious kind of honor," he rejoined. "It causes men to order the flogging or murder of offenders, without trial, and then shield the agents. Madame, that cannot be permitted to continue."

"Right of justice and right of granting sanctuary. That's how they regard it. I think it goes too far, which hurts me. But unless you want to keep it underground, growing worse and worse, some compromise with it will have to be negotiated."

"Why? You ask me to concede to the Selenarchs powers they have taken illicitly for themselves.

That can only encourage them to claim more. Already some among them deal directly, not just with companies, but with governments, those governments that are—I say between us two—less than ideal members of the

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World Federation. Shall they at last declare full sovereignty? Build their own nuclear weapons?

Fight their own wars? No, madame, no."

"I can't conceive of them wanting to. They are not insane. What they want—what ordinary, peaceful Moondwellers want—is freedom to be what they are and become what they choose to be. I'm sure that's possible within the framework of the civilization "you and I share, and in fact will enrich it in ways we can't imagine. But that's only if they are not compelled, confined, twisted about to the point where they see no other way than violence."

"They will be well advised to avoid driving the Authority and Federation to that point."

"Yes. You have your legitimate rights and claims. I understand them as clearly as I do theirs, I who belong to both worlds. We're here today to search for roads to reconciliation."

"We will not accomplish that in a few hours."

"Nor in years, if ever. But if you're willing to keep on talking a spell, I am."

"I've set this daycycle aside, madame. Er, can I offer you any refreshment?"

She laughed aloud. "Can you! A cold beer would put me in Heaven, and a shot of akvavit to go with it would admit you to join me there."

The conversation did indeed become long. It didn't stay entirely serious, nor had she intended that it do so. She asked him out about himself and his life, reminisced about hers, quipped, told jokes, introduced him to a bawdy ballad concerning a spaceman named MacCannon, and left him, at the end, thoroughly charmed.

j

Since then they had come together a number of times, alone or in the presence of others, in business or sociability. He felt that the sociability was at least as important. It let him meet eminent Selenites personally, informally. It gave him her sanction—well-nigh her protection, he often thought—and thus his initia-THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 407

tives and efforts did not encounter automatic resistance. For Rita, above all, it lessened the loneliness a bit.

Maybe, too, it slowed the upward ratcheting of tension and increase of ugly incidents. It did not halt them. Supposedly the Lunar Petition was under consideration in Hiroshima. It had gone to several committees. None had yet reported. Wahl gathered that they had deadlocked on various points and tabled it pending further studies. They felt no need of haste. The Moon was distant, its population was small, there were huge and urgent problems everywhere around the home globe.

Meanwhile Wahl's own deadlock seemed to him in danger of breaking apart.

Today, when he called Dagny Beynac, her phone informed him that she was unavailable until hour noon. He guessed she was resting, old and frail as she was. He didn't like wondering what would happen after she died.

While he waited—hm—should he try for Anson Guthrie? Fireball had an enormous stake in keeping the peace. Besides, apparently the download had not lost normal human sympathies. But Wahl might well be unable to raise him on short notice. He might be unable or unwilling to intervene. What could he do, actually? If he took a direct part, perhaps that would worsen things. Better get Beynac's opinion first. If she approved the idea, she could certainly put him in touch with Guthrie and probably persuade the reve-nant; they were close.

Restless, Wahl left his office and stalked down the corridor. Never mind the countless other demands on him. It was too soon for a second icy swim, but he'd take a long walk through the city, maybe even fetch his spacesuit and go topside for a hike. That ought to clear his buzzing head.

He came by Pilar's room. The door was open. She sat at her telephone. Her slight frame shivered.

Blood came and went in her cheeks. "Oh, Erann," she breathed.

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The face in the screen was youthful, with the exotic Lunarian handsomeness. Wahl recognized it. He had met the boy once or twice when the youngsters had a party in this mansion. It had seemed good to promote friendship between the races.

Erann. A grandson of Brandir.

He smiled, seductive as Lucifer, and murmured something. Pilar strained forward, hands outheld, as if she could seize the image to her.

•Her father stood where he was for a thunderful minute. She didn't notice. Almost, he broke in on her. £ut what to do then, what to cry out? He continued down the hall. His fists swung at his sides. Breath struggled in his throat.

He must speak with Rita. Today. Get this thing stopped before the damage was irretrievable.

Tactfully if possible. Otherwise by whatever means proved necessary. Maybe create a reason to send the girl, the innocent child, to school on Earth, where she would be entirely among humans.

31

The cybercosm woke Venator about midnight. "Attention," called a speaker. "The Proserpina file is opened."

Instantly alert, he sprang from his cot and ordered light. Bare and narrow, the room seemed to radiate chill. "Who has done it?" he snapped. Hope flickered. He was not the sole human who knew.

Another might have found cause to review those data.

The voice stayed flat. Thus far, the mentality engaged was little more than a high-capacity automation. "The DNA pattern belongs to—" Venator's identification followed.

No!

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 409

With an almost physical thrust, he denied the denial. "Location," he demanded.

"Prajnaloka, a community in south central North America." A screen lit, displaying a regional map.

An arrow pointed. It was redundant. He knew that place, although he had never visited in person.

The intruder or intruders could not belong there, he thought. Soulquesters were the last people in the universe who'd challenge the system in any way. Besides, how would one of them have gotten the genetic key?

Lilisaire's agents, then. Fiendishly clever. Skilled, at least. They would never have come near the file unless their search strategy was so well-designed, with questions so natural and cogent, that it took them past every point at which the program might have detected a possible spy and blocked the line of investigation. Yes, this matched the picture he'd formed. Kenmuir, for spatial background; someone else, for a wide and deep knowledge of the information net, together with much past experience.

They felt their way to the portals of the secret, and—

"Has the nearest Peace Authority station been contacted?" Venator asked. He stepped to a peg and took a robe off it. The floor was cold and hard beneath his feet.

"Yes." He shouldn't have wasted time inquiring, he should have taken it for granted.

"Get me the captain of the emergency division. Crash priority." Venator slipped the robe over his nakedness. He needed to impress the man. Inwardly, he needed to cover himself, hiding from rage and shame. It was clear to him, now, where that DNA had come from.

A face appeared in the screen. "James Fong, captain of emergency services, Peace Authority, Chicago Integrate," the voice said in Anglo. Two names; old-fashioned; it suggested solid reliability.

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"Pragmatic Venator, intelligence corps." Aside: "Verify." The system signalled that this was true.

"We have a crisis. I am a synnoiont. Verify. It's that serious, Captain."

Fong sucked breath in between his teeth. "Yes, senor."

"Two persons—I believe they are two—are making an illicit break into a top secret, from Prajnaloka*. The consequences could be disastrous. Fly a squad to capture them before they finish the job and escape. Take them back and hold them in solitary, pending further orders. Do not question them or permit them to talk with anyone, including you and your officers. With the personnel of the ashram, be courteous but discreet. Tell them they have been deceived by enemies of sanity, get them to describe those persons* actions, and ask them to keep quiet about the whole affair."

"Yes, senor. We can't suppress everything. People will see us. Rumors will fly."

"That ought not to matter if the operation is quick and thorough. Report directly to me by name."

The cybercosm would route the call. "Begin."

"At once, senor. I'll lead the raid myself. Service!" The screen blanked.

Good. Fong was trustworthy. That was reassuring. It was even promising. A tingle went through Venator. Within this hour, the quarry should be his. Thereafter—

He put his feet into sandals and went out, down the corridors of shifting light-shapes and silent machines. His task required much better equipment than a phone and a terminal. He might well have to consult with the whole cybercosm.

Certainly he must soon do so. The issues were of the gravest. Fong and his followers would realize that. Arrest and temporary isolation were permissible under the Covenant, barely, by invoking the Emergency Provisions Clause. But they'd wonder why Venator wanted the prisoners straightaway whisked off. Why

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no news, later, about the charges against them? Were their rights being violated? Answers must be devised* more or less satisfactory.

His heart demanded it too, Venator thought. He'd try persuasion first, of course, but if Lilisaire's agents were stubborn and insisted on public proceedings, what then?

He didn't know. Whatever was necessary, he supposed. It would depend on their behavior, and how much they had learned, and on Lilisaire's next move, if any, and—more unknowns than he could list, no doubt. Chaos.

At worst, he guessed, the cybercosm would tell him to have their recent memories wiped. He bit his lip. That would be nearly as gross a violation as killing them, and it risked terrible side effects. And after they were released, how was their amnesia going to be explained?

Might the cybercosm order actual killing?

Maybe. If necessary.

Necessary to preserve sanity in the near future, and preserve the far future itself.

He reached the main communication chamber and settled down before the console. It curved around the swivel seat, a flatscreen on his left, a holoscreen on his right, and a viewtank in front.

When Fong called back, the eidophone would relay to that. Venator dismissed the urge to talk with him as he flew. Pointless. Distracting. Hunters should wait before they spring.

However—With voice and fingers, he made connection to the Proserpina file. The program was still unrolling. Well, if it held the pair in place, that should suffice. It would have to. And why not?

The spies would go over it more than once, excitedly discuss it, take notes. For Lilisaire.

A machine entered, carrying a tray. It was hu-manoform, suggestive of a man wrapped in foil, except for the turret, the two extra arms, and the inhumanly graceful movements. "Would you care for refreshment?" it asked musically.

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A teapot steamed on the tray beside a plate of protein cakes. "Thank you very much," Venator said, for this was no robot, it was a sophotect using the body. "A long night ahead of me. Of us."

"Yes. What else can assist you?"

"Nothing at the moment. I'll let you know."-Venator glanced up at the shining facelessness. "How fully are you involved?" It was the cybercosm to which he spoke, through this avatar.

"A minor part, but a standby signal has gone out to the whole system."

Venator nodded. He had instructed the half-mind guarding the fije to notify him and alert the constabulary if it was activated. That went automatically; but it was extraordinary enough that a higher-level intelligence in the net was bound to have noticed and sent appropriate messages of its own.

The machine departed. Venator sipped the tea and munched a cake. Coarse, homely fare. A symbol.

That which controlled the world and comprehended the universe had also thought of this ordinariness.

Universe—On a sudden impulse, he retrieved the Alpha Centauri file. In a blind way, he felt it could strengthen his resolve.

It was prodigious. He could only skip about, semirandomly asking for this scene and that, while he waited to hear from Fong.

Far and far. The newest sight transmitted from Sol's closest neighbor was more than four years old. Guthrie's handful of colonists spent half a century making the passage, and readying for that one voyage had consumed every resource at his command. What was left, the World Federation took over, and Fireball Enterprises became a memory. There would be no more such argosies.

Venator chose a view from an earlier time, when the first unmanned probe arrived. That in itself had been no mean achievement. The double sun blazed brilliant against blackness. Fast-forwarded, the scan swept inward until Alpha A was a disc of light and the THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 413

probe orbited the single life-bearing planet in the system.

Demeter was no Earth. Or else it was a primordial Earth, or an Earth that might have come to be had not population control, molecular technology, and clean energy saved it. The seas of Demeter swarmed with organisms, true, enough to create and sustain air that humans could breathe; but just a few primitive plants and creatures clung precariously to existence along the shores. Inland were rock, sand, dust blown on scouring winds, as stark as Mars. Why? Many factors, strong among them the absence of a huge moon to stabilize the rotation axis; and Luna was the child of a cosmic accident, a monster collision, back near the beginning.

No wonder that search had never found spoor of other thinking races. Life was a rarity. Sentience must be infrequent to almost the vanishing point. Maybe, in the whole of the universe, it had evolved on Earth alone.

It would make itself be the meaning and destiny of that universe.

Venator advanced the scene through time until he found an image of Demeter as it was now—four and a third years ago. Cloud-swirls marbled sapphire and turquoise ocean. Snows whitened a wintering north country and the crowns of mountains. Southward and lower, continents and islands lay soft green and brown, hues of forest, meadow, marsh, pastureland for mighty herds and breeding grounds for mighty flocks.

The scan magnified, focused, sped close above the world. He glimpsed a stand of birch, their leaves snaring sunlight; wild horses in gallop; a hillside blue with cornflowers; a village of small homes; a town lifting spires above a harbor where pleasure boats rocked at their moorings and a freighter unloaded its cargo; traffic on roads and aloft; a contrail like a road to heaven, slowly breaking up, where a spacecraft had ascended.

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All this had Terrans, with their proliferating robots and molecular machinery, wrought in less than three hundred Earth years, while in space their Lunarian allies made the asteroids blossom.

All this, despite the fact that on a day not very much further ahead, another senseless cataclysm was to destroy the planet, and nobody knew how or if any creature upon it could survive.

Deep within himself, Venator felt a shudder. Here, if ever, the Faustian spirit had made its absolute manifestation and seized its ultimate home.

No, he thought, the thing went beyond even that. It was not simply sheer, unbounded will, demonic energy and brazen laughter. ("We've decided the motto and guiding principle of our government shall be 'Absit pntdentia nil rei publicae profitur,'" Guthrie had communicated once. "Gracias to the database for fancying it up into Latin. What it means is 'Without common sense you ain't gonna have nothing.'" The insult to every concept of a guided society stood brutally plain.) It was that the necessities of the adventure had brought forth something altogether new and strange.

The scan winged onward. Cultivated fields passed beneath, goldening toward harvest. They were few and mainly for chemical production. Basic food and fiber were manufactured, as on Earth or Luna.

Those who wished—on Demeter, most people—supplemented with kitchen gardens, orchards, the bounty of wild nature. The scan showed another woodland. It was that nature, the global web of life, which had made this world fit for humans.

But technology could not in a few centuries do the work of evolution through gigayears. The ecology here was inevitably simple, fragile, poor in feedbacks and reserves, always near the edge of catastrophe. Earth's had crashed again and again in massive extinctions. Demeter's began to die when it was barely seeded; and there would have been no rebirth. A whole cybercosm could not take over the task of nursing it back to

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health, bringing it along to ripeness, keeping it in balance as an organism keeps itself in balance, being it... unless that cybercosm permeated the life, and had the awareness and purpose and—love—of human minds downloaded into it. ... Demeter Mother, Venator had walked the veldt among lions and Cape buffalo, scaled a glacier, shot rapids, disarmed more than one dement gone violent. From this alienness, he recoiled.

Like a providence, the console said: "Your call." The view from afar blanked out and Pong's full-body image appeared. Evidently he had commandeered a similar unit where he was. He saluted.

"Reporting, senor." His face spoke for him: failure.

Venator tasted vomit. He swallowed. "Well?"

"I'm sorry, senor. The persons are gone. As nearly as we've been able to find out, they—two of them, male and female—went hastily to the volant they'd come in and skipped off. That was about forty-five minutes ago."

Proserpina, first and always. "What about the file they were invading?" ,

"I think they left it running, and it finished and turned off. If they'd learned we were on our way— they could have posted an inquiry—that would be a logical thing to do, not disclosing to the net that they were in fact gone. Buying time."

Venator nodded. His neck felt stiff. "I expect you're right." Oh, clever, clever. Lilisaire chose her instruments well. "Have you learned anything about them yet?"

"We've just started, senor." A partial image of a second man entered the field. "One moment, por favor." Fong conferred. Again to the synnoiont: "TrafCon has-now identified the volant. It went to Springfield Mainport and parked illegally, right at the terminal. Shall I contact the civil police there?"

"No." What use? "Look at bus schedules. Either the pair are hiding in town or they've boarded a flight to someplace else. Who's the volant registered to?"

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"Um-m-m—" Fong squinted offview, at another screen. "Alice Tarn of Niihau, Hawaii."

"Good. Carry on. Find out what you can, but don't make a production of it and don't linger past the point of diminishing returns. Do you understand? Confidentiality is vital. But bring me whoever can tell us the-most about those persons."

"Yes, senor." Fong left the scan field. Venator beheld a wall with a mural of lotuses.

He swung his attention from it. While he waited, he could investigate Alice Tarn.

The file on her that the system assembled for him proved surprisingly rich. She had not courted publicity, but as active as she was, more got noted than the standard entries. Birth and upbringing in that curious little leftover society, studies in Russia, travels elsewhere, including Luna, work on the mainland with metamorphs and a couple of organizations trying to better the lot of metamorphs. .. . Yes, a great deal of time at the net, and many periods during which she had dropped out of sight.. . . Arrival at San Francisco Bay Integrate eight days ago.

Blank, till her vehicle proceeded to Santa Monica. Blank, till it flew to a spot in the Salton Desert, stopped briefly, and continued to Overburg; get information on Overburg, later, later. . .

. Two days there, then cruising around for hours till it descended at Prajnaloka.... And now to Springfield, where it sat abandoned.

Images showed a young woman, comely, well-formed, vivacious, little or no sign of the steel beneath the flesh.

Had she met Lilisaire when she visited the Moon? Probably. Perhaps that could be verified.

How and why had she become Lilisaire's ally? A complete data search ought to give hints, perhaps an answer.

An officer entered the scan field. "An airbus left Springfield for St. Louis Hub at 1315," she reported. "It arrived there ten minutes ago."

Just too soon. If Kenmuir and Tarn were aboard, by

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now they had disappeared into the city, or else they were on one of a dozen different carriers bound for as many destinations. Once upon .a time, monitors in every major transfer point could instantly have been set to watch for them. But Fireball brought down the Avantists, and the modern world was not totalitarian: it had never needed or desired intensive surveillance capabilities.

There were plenty anyhow, of course, serving everyday purposes. Some could be mobilized, ranging from high-resolution optical satellites to traffic evaluation units and ... as an extreme measure, every sophotect on Earth. But that would take time, because they could not be diverted without notice from their regular duties; and the operation would be conspicuous, inconveniencing citizens, causing them and their legislators to demand an explanation; and meanwhile, what might Kenmuir and Tarn do?

Little or nothing, in all likelihood. How could they?

He had underestimated them before, Venator thought.

Fong escorted an old man into view and introduced him as Sandhu. He fought to control his distress and hold onto serenity as he related how Tam and—Johan —had arrived according to a reservation properly made beforehand, and given every evidence of being sincere in their wishes. What had gone amiss?

"I cannot tell you today, sir," Venator soothed him. "The Peace Authority is on the trail of a criminal conspiracy. We request your silence. Have no fears. On the whole, the matter is well in hand, and we know your people are innocent of any wrongdoing." He was glad to see the poor little fellow grow a bit easier.

The call making the reservation—it could be traced back. In fact, Venator decided, that was the first order of business. It should give a lead into Lilisaire's entire Earthside cabal. Let Kenmuir and Tam run fugitive a while longer, unless a limited, low-priority observation program happened to succeed. With the cyber-cosm alerted, anything they tried to do with 418

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whatever information they had stolen should close a trap on them.

But tighten security around Zamok Vysoki. Have forces in readiness to blockade the castle, or even enter it and arrest everybody present. Afterward find ways to cope with the political uproar that would follow. It could not be as troublesome as the opening of Proserpina would be.

—Information. Thought. Belief. Mind. Already life was evolving from the biosphere to the noosphere, and what went on in the brain mattered more than what happened among the stars.

Venator harked back: From Guthrie's rebellious exodus, unforeseeably, arose Demeter Mother. But at least she was light-years removed, only tenuously and indirectly in touch with Earth, an abstraction to most humans of the Solar System, nothing to catch their imaginations as the prophets and visions of old had done. Let her remain so, and hope she perished with her planet.

Meanwhile, keep watch, but never let her know. Laser beams went back and forth between Sol and Alpha Centauri, bearing words and images. Merely words and images. To humans of the Solar System, the colonization that had once been an ongoing epic was become a commonplace, a remote background, irrelevant to them. The cybercosm encouraged that attitude by proclaiming its own lack of interest. It declared itself willing to communicate and give advice if asked —which seldom happened any more, as diiferent as the Centaurians had grown to be. But physical space exploration was not for the Teramind. The grand equation that unified all physics had long since been written.

The possible interactions of matter and energy were manifold and held surprises, but they would always be details, nothing that could ttot have been computed in advance or, at any rate, be accounted for as another permutation. The endless frontier lay in the mind and its creations.

Venator smiled. Of course the cybercosm didn't

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speak quite candidly. Miniprobes followed events around Alpha Centauri as best they could, and sent reports that were neither overheard nor made public. Unacknowledged spacecraft were ranging out into the galaxy, though decades or centuries must pass before word came back from them. The destiny of the cybercosm was to transcend the material universe, but before then, some of the permutations might prove important.

Demeter Mother already had.

However, she was afar, and everything else was farther. Proserpina orbited the cybercosm's home sun.

And Luna bore, as it had borne since the first Lunarians came to birth, the seeds of chaos. For a moment Venator wondered how often they had sprouted, not openly as history knew of but in secret.

How many deaths had been murder disguised?

Enough brooding on the past. Fong had returned to sight. Venator gave him his concluding instructions, ended transmission, and set about the next stage of the campaign.

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1 he phone roused Dagny about 0600. Its program recognized that the matter must be that urgent.

She sat up, ordered, "Light," and blinked at the suddenly seen room. For a moment its familiarity came strange to her, 'Mond's picture, the children's from years when they were little, the recent portrait of them with their mates and many of their descendants down to an infant in arms who was her newest great-greatgrandchild, a very unlunarian posing done for her sake only, the gaudy purple-and-gold drapes she had lately chosen to liven things up—She had been gone. Her dead friend faded in awareness. She turned to

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the bedside screen and ordered, "Receive." Rita Urribe de Want's face appeared. She too must have been wakened, for her hair was unkempt and a robe was thrown over her nightgown. Tears sheened on her cheekbones and ran down to the corners of trembling lips. "Setfora, S-seriora Beynac," she stammered, "el esta' muerto."

Knowledge struck home like a knife. Dagny mustered her Spanish, though the other woman's English was better, to cry, "Jaime? Oh, my dear! What happened?" Was it in truth a knife?

"In his swimming pool—found—Nobody knows. The medics are there now." Rita gulped, squared her shoulders, and made her voice toneless. "I have called you first, after them, because of what this can mean to everybody. You will know best whom to consult, what to do. He would have wanted it, I think." The resoluteness cracked, "And, and you were always good to us."

Heartbreaking humility, Dagny thought. And undeserved. She'd cultivated acquaintance with the governor general, these past five years, as she had done with his predecessors, because how else could she play any part in containing the fires of strife? ... But, yes, she had gained a certain liking as well as respect for Jaime Wahl y Medina, considerable sympathy as well as respect for his wife, and it showed.

"I'll be right over."

"No, no, that is not necessary."

"The hell it isn't," Dagny said in English. "Stand fast, querida. I'm so sorry. But we've got work ahead, tough work, and I doubt it can be done on the com lines. Give me a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, can you stall? Keep this quiet. Ask the medics to. Notify Haugen but ask him to sit tight. Collect what information you can but don't let any of it out. Okay?"

Again Rita gathered her strength together. "Yes, I hope I shall be able ... to persuade Seflor Haugen and the others, and keep the staff here under control, and—For two or three hours, perhaps yes."

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"Brave lass." Dagny smiled into the grief. "I'm on my way, then. Later we'll mourn Jaime. Right now we have things to do for him. Hasta luego."

She flicked off and called the mayor of Tychopolis. His phone program recognized her and put her straight through to him in his own chamber. "Hallo. Not up yet? Well, move. Listen, I need immediate transport to Tsukimachi. Immediate. A suborbital if you can get me one. Yes, these bones can still take that kind of boost. Otherwise the fastest jet the local constabulary have available, and I'm not talking about a Meteor or an Estrella. Til accept nothing less than a Sleipnir."—

—"Never mind why. A good many lives may depend on it. That's enough for now, and you will please keep it to yourself. Pull rank, use my name if need be, but get me the craft."—

—"I'll meet you at the port, TrafCon office, in case we need to browbeat those people, in exactly one hour. It'd be nice if the boat had some breakfast aboard for me, but what it must have is readiness to launch. Okay? See you."

She blanked and left her bed. Inalante would swing it. He was powerful, he was able, and he was a son of Kaino.

In the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face, she began to feel the aches and drag of weariness. Sleep had been in short supply these past few daycycles. She'd hoped for peace till 0900 or 1000 this mornwatch, because after that all hell might be letting out for recess. (Which it already had, in a shape she hadn't expected.) At her age, you didn't bounce back after just a catnap. Had she ever been that young? It seemed impossible.

The mirror showed eyes that appeared unnaturally large and bright in the bony pallor around them.

Anson Guthrie had remarked a while ago that she looked more ethereal every time he saw her. But she bloody well couldn't afford to be, not yet, maybe not anytime this side of the ash box. After weighing what

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her physician had told her, what her experience suggested, and what the situation was, she took a medium-strength diergetic. That, with coffee and food and will power, ought to get her through the next hours without too high a price to pay afterward.

Somewhat recharged, if a little chilled, she made herself presentable in warm coverall and half-boots. A hooded cloak should keep her from being noticed; few people were out this early. She recorded a noncommittal message for callers, took the bag she kept packed for hasty departures, and went forth.

Hudson Way stretched quiet. The ceiling simulated blue sky, stray clouds still faintly pink from sunrise, strengthening light which set aglitter the dawnwatch moisture in the duramoss underfoot.

The air blew and smelled like an appropriate breeze. The ambience was a bit too perpetually pretty for her, but most residents in this neighborhood were Terran and had voted to have it thus. There were other places she could go to pretend, in full surround, that she walked by a gray seat. and its drumroll surf.

At the corner of Graham she boarded the fahrweg and rode out to the spaceport, changing lines twice. Fellow passengers were sparse and paid her no attention. She had freedom to think.

Poor Rita. Poor kids, though Leandro was at the university and partly estranged from his father, while Pilar had been in school on Earth for two or three years. Poor Jaime, above all. He'd lived with such gusto, when his job didn't exhaust or infuriate him. He'd been her opponent more often than not, but a fair one, playing for what he believed was right, right not just for Eajth but for the Moon.

And now he was dead. How convenient for some people. How potentially disastrous for the rest.

Murder? Hard to imagine, there in his home. Besides, nobody had ever attempted it when he went out, though he kept no bodyguard. To be sure, he was formidable by himself, a vigorous Earth-muscled man with combat experience and a black belt in karate.

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That made his death in a swimming pool the more incomprehensible. Especially as opportune as it was.

It shouldn't have been, Dagny thought—not for anyone, neither the coldly calculating Lunarian magnates nor the most radical, slogan-drunk Terran demonstrator. Until a short while ago, it wouldn't have been. Given the present political climate on Earth— leaders and publics daily more conscious of how much the state of affairs on Luna contradicted and defied their world order—any governor was bound to make correction the goal of policy. Zhao's patient pressure and Gambetta's concessions had failed. Over and over, a crisis was patched up while the society evolved onward.

Ward's mission was to bring this globe back under Federation law and make sure it stayed there. No compromises.

But the governor necessarily had broad discretion, and must cooperate with the legislature, unless things got to the point of outright insurgence and troops were the only option. Few leaders would have gone ahead more carefully, yes, considerately than Wahl did: step by step, glad to reward, reluctant to punish, always concerned for the other fellow's dignity, ready to give up plans for retirement and spend a decade or longer preparing the ground for full enforcement of the major laws, even admitting that meanwhile those laws might be modified. How had it come about that any Moondwellers could wish him dead?

She had no clear answer. None existed. Human affairs are chaos. But, riding along, she could retrace their course into this particular strange attractor.

Friction, contention, hard words, disobedience, resistance open or covert, arrests, penalties, unrepen-tance were everywhere. However, she thought the Uconda business last year was a prime factor. She'd had a bad feeling about it at the time, and tried to warn the governor, when he forbade expansion of operations at that Farside mine because it would measurably pollute local vacuum and radio background. The astronomers, quantum experimentalists, 424

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and other researchers at Astrebourg were naturally glad of the action in itself; but a number of them, Temerir most prominently, were enraged that it had been carried out by decree like that.

Worst upset was Brandir. At his brother's instigation, he had been quietly bargaining with the owners. He would compensate them well if they shut down altogether and began anew on territory he controlled'. The deal would have enhanced his prestige, thereby his influence. It would have involved the owners and their workers giving troth to him, thus increasing his power. R would have bypassed the Lunar Authority, treated the sites as if they were private property, and so violated the intent if not quite the letter of the law. Wahl told Dagny in private that that was surely the real intention, and reason for him to forestall it. Of course this fuelled anger in the opposition.

Had the Lunarian seigneurs cleverly fanned the emotion, or had it directly caused some among them to make a new move, or what? Dagny was uncertain. Her children told her what they wanted to tell her and no more, as did their children and children's children. Sometimes that was considerable, sometimes they actually asked for her counsel, but this had not been one of the occasions, and when she taxed Brandir with it he went courteously impassive as he had done so often before.

The catapults. Whatever brought it about, the catapults were the issue that could detonate revolt.

Spaceport the fahrweg flashed and intoned. Dagny left it. The walk through the terminal, across mostly empty floors, felt long to her.

She had come ahead of time. Nevertheless Inalante was waiting at TrafCon: a middle-aged man in black tunic and white hose, something of his father haunting the features and something of his grandfather, a steadiness beneath the rapid-fire speech, sounding through the voice. "Be you hale, kinlady. A Sleipnir stands provisioned and cleared for liftoff."

"Good lad!" she exclaimed, pleased out of all THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 425

proportion. "I'll bet you've even gotten black pudding aboard."

He smiled. "Unfortunately, what shops may stock it are not yet open. For haste's sake, I ordered mere field rations stowed. But recalling you also like moonfruit, I brought these from my home."

He gave her a bag.

Nor did it make sense that her eyes should sting. They could be absolute darlings when they chose, her Lunarians, wholly human. Well, God damn it, that was what they were. "Gracias. Thanks. I, I'll think of you from now on whenever I taste moonfruit."

"Need you further help?"

"Mainly that you keep the city calm."

"I have been preparing through these past day-cycles," he said grimly.

"You'll soon hear news that will change everything. I don't know what the changes will be, nor do I dare tell you more here where we could be overheard, but expect a huge surprise."

"While you fare alone to cope." The oblique eyes searched her. "Have you the potence of body for it?"

"I'd better."

"Then fare you victoriously, mother of us." Inalante took her hand and bowed deeply over it.

He was no revolutionary, she knew. Nor was he a lackey. He cared little or naught what the constitutional structure might be, as long as he and his were left unmolested to pursue their own ends. Since that required peace, he had accepted the mayoralty here, in an uncontested election, to help maintain it. From this position he could maneuver for changes in rules that he disliked, meanwhile conniving at enough evasion of them to keep people somewhat content without provoking the Authority to intervene.

No doubt a majority of Moondwellers felt more or less likewise. But their ambitions were seldom of a kind that Federation law would much hinder. It was the powerful and the radical who strained against restraints, and it was they who would break the system or be broken by it. Or both, Dagny thought.

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She went to her gate, through the gangtube, and into her vehicle.

The crew were a pair of constabulary officers, pilot and reserve, Terrans. They greeted the lady Beynac with deference and promised her breakfast as soon as they were in stable flight. She harnessed into her seat and relaxed.

Liftoff went deftly, at little more than two Lunar gravities. Altitude attained, the seat swung on its gimbals as the hull brought its length horizontal. A snort of thrust followed; then weight leveled off and there was only the almost subliminally faint thrum and hiss of downjets holding the mass aloft. Dagny's engineering years came back to her and she spent a minute estimating how much more fuel-expensive this flight was, over the distance she must cover, than the suborbital she had tried for, besides being slower. But the idea was to be able to cruise freely and set.

down wherever you wanted, on a moment's notice. When you had a pinch of antimatter to season your exhaust, efficiency was no big consideration.

The reserve brought her tray and, seeing she was not in a conversational mood, withdrew. The coffee wasn't bad but except for blessed Inalante's gift the food was as dull as usual. Dagny ate dutifully. For the most part her look went out the window at her side to mountains, maria, craters, wrinkled below the sun and a sickle Earth. Now and then a work of humankind gleamed into view, a dome cluster, a monorail, a relay mast, a solar collector, a microwave transmitter beaming the energy invisibly to the mother world. Glare drowned nearly all stars. Once, though, she saw a spark soar across the high black and vanish into distance.

Probably a cargo pod, catapult-launched from Leyburg, she judged. It would be loaded with something, chemicals or biologicals or nanos or whatever else was best produced under Lunar conditions. Her glimpse being insufficient for her to gauge the trajecto-THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 427

ry, she couldn't tell what the pod was like. It might be meant for aerodynamic descent on Earth, parachute landing on Mars, rendezvous with L-5 or an asteroid or an outpost farther yet. Never mind. Wherever bound, it bore a magnificent achievement, and she had been among the builders of the groundwork.

But catapults—

Easy to hurl anything off the Moon, with its low escape velocity and its lavishness of virtually cost-free energy. The trouble lay in that "anything." A hundred-tonne mass, shaped to penetrate atmosphere, would strike on Earth with the force of a tactical nuclear warhead.

When Brandir and three fellow Selenarchs began construction of catapult launchers on their demesnes, did they speak truth about simply wishing to enter the business? On economic grounds alone, that seemed dubious. Certainly no permission had been granted. Wahl ordered the projects halted, pending agreement on safeguards. If that failed (and surely no lord wanted inspectors stationed permanently on his holding) the works must be dismantled. The Selenarchs argued, delayed, obstructed. Satellites observed men, machines, robots going in and out of the shell thrown around the engines "for meteorite protection while negotiations proceed." Wahl sent investigators. They were turned back at the boundaries.

His words of yesterday evenwatch passed again through Dagny's head. How haggard his face in the screen had been; but she heard a ring as of iron. "I do not know what their intent is. They understand I cannot allow this. Do they not? Then why are they forcing the issue? I have a horrible suspicion that they have more weapons than we know of, an arsenal that would let their castles stand off what force I have at my command. They can trust that a shocked Earth will not respond with missiles, if they can threaten retaliation. They will call for talks about, yes, independence, or something that will amount to the same 428

POUL ANDERSON

thing. Am I wrong in my guess? Can you give me a better one? If not, then on the mornwatch after tomorrow I will order the constabulary to occupy those estates, and we shall see what happens. I give them that long in the thin hope that you, Senora Beynac, can bring them to their senses.

Nowhere else do I see any way of avoiding a fight, nowhere else but in you, sefiora."

Instead of calling Brandir, she was flying to meet with a widow.

—She dozed. 'Mond spoke to her. She could not understand the words, but he smiled.

The craft gyred about, reduced forward momentum, maneuvered downward. Dagny woke to a glimpse of the docking cradle. The shaft beneath it made an O of blackness. She'd contributed to the design, long ago, long ago: a hole to receive most of the short-lived isotopes in the jet, a cup above whose skeletal structure picked up an amount negligible compared to natural background count.