Nowadays motors induced much less radioactivity in their reaction mass. But coping with the problem back then had been quite a challenge, and fun.

The boat settled gently. A gangtube stretched itself on its wheels from the nearest gate to the airlock. The pilot climbed down from his control cabin, now above her, and said, "Here we are, m'lady. We've orders to stand by for three hours. If you'll want us later than that, please call our headquarters and request it."

"If I don't have to make a lightning advance to the rear inside that time, I probably Won't need to," she replied. "I can bum a ride home, or take the train. But gracias, boys. You've done well, and your being handsome didn't hurt the trip any." That was one advantage an old crone had, she could get away with practically unlimited impudence. In fact, people found it winning, and were disarmed.

A young lieutenant rode out in the tube and said he had been sent to escort her. She let him carry her bag.

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The fahrweg ride to the governor's mansion was short and direct. They made it in silence. Other passengers were pretty subdued too; you could almost smell the worry in them. Few details were yet public, but everybody knew a crisis of some kind was close to the breaking point.

In the entry she gave the man her cloak to stow with the bag. That was really no way to treat an officer of the Peace Authority, but he seemed honored. She continued to the well-remembered living room. Two persons rose from their chairs as she appeared. The third was already on his feet, Lunarian fashion.

Rita went straight to her. Dagny embraced the small woman, stroked the dark hair a*hd murmured.

Most of her looked over the shoulder at her breast, to Erann.

Brandir's grandson met the gaze, smiled faintly, and bowed. He was a beautiful youth—how old by now, eighteen?—with the silvery-blond hair and silvery-blue eyes that ran in his branch of the bloodline. The towering form wore close-fitting green raiment and soft red shoes.

The second visitor was Einar Haugen. As the shivering in her arms lessened, Dagny addressed him:

"Buenos dias. Though it isn't exactly that, is it?"

She let Rita go. The vice governor—former vice governor—shambled over to shake hands. He was a tall, thin man whom Wahl had never given anything very important to do. "This is terrible, terrible," he said in the same English. "You are most welcome, madame. Most good of you to come.

Please be seated. Coffee?" A pot and cups had been set out. "Or anything else?"

Dagny waved the offer aside. "No, I'm already wound as tight as my mainspring will go." He blinked. She saw that, while he got her drift, he didn't recognize the idiom. It was an antique, at that. And he, he couldn't be much over fifty. She caught Erann's glance again. "What are you doing here?"

"I was a house guest," the Lunarian answered.

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"Hm? I didn't know the Wahls still knew you particularly."

"There was a matter for privacy. In kindness, Governor Wahl agreed that I sleep here. That would let us meet alone whenever he discovered an hour free, as harried as he was. This mornwatch I deemed it best I stay to relate such little as I can that may throw light on the misfortune.

Having talked to the police, I would have taken me hence, but honored Haugen told me I should abide your arrival."

As well he might, Dagny thought. Erann had spoken smoothly, his countenance revealing nothing.

That too was Lunarian style, not suspicious in itself— 'Mond's and her great-grandson!—but the wind was for sure blowing weird.

They all settled down, the boy cat-watchful. Dagny regarded the woman. "Rita, dear," she said,

"you're walking wounded and about to fall on the deck. Don't deny it, I've seen the signs many a time before. In a few minutes I'm going to find you a sedative and tuck you in for a watch's rest or longer. But first can we get it over with, telling me what you people know?" She wanted that directly, not filtered through another mind. Learning just what had happened was vital to planning her own course.

Rita stared at the hands folded in her lap. Monotone: "Juan Aguilar, our mayordomo—our, our steward—Juan found him in his pool about the break of dawnwatch. He pulled him put, called Emergency, roused me on the intercom, did his best to give first aid. The medics came within minutes. They tried and tried, but could not revive him. Meanwhile I called you. As you advised, I called Seflor Haugen and asked him to keep the secret for a while, as well as he could. Then I had Juan wake Erann. The police have been here, but only for an hour, because there does not seem to have b-been—malhecho—" The voice died away. She had scarcely moved.

"I directed the police chief and medical office to THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 431

keep silence," Haugen said. "I have ordered appointments cancelled and official staff to stay away until called. That cannot go on for long. Besides the, uh, public interest, we must notify his son and daughter. And .. . proceed with the government's work."

He sounded more desperate, or frightened, than pompous. A well-intentioned political hack, Dagny thought, who took the job on Luna because he was in line for a raise in rank and expected this to be pro forma until he moved on to something harmless back Earthside. His eyes implored her. .

"How do they know it wasn't foul play?" she asked.

Haugen could deal with routine practicalities. "No sign of violence. Shortly before you arrived, I received the examiner's preliminary report from the hospital. The case does have its puzzling features, but nothing—I would rather continue this later, Mme. Bey-nac."

Yes. Rita. Decent of him. But a few things must yet be probed. "Any idea when he died?"

"Hours ago. The exact time is still undetermined because—We have no possibility of revivification.

He was, was there too long." Brain too deteriorated.

Hm. That was suggestive, considering how whore-frigid Wahl had kept the pool. "When did anybody last see him alive? What was he doing?"

"He had had a dreadful day, as you can imagine," replied Rita dully. "He came home and had supper with me. He did not eat much. We finished about 2030 and he said he must work late in his study and I should not stay awake for him. That was the last time for me, until he lay dead by the water. He was preparing a speech, a statement to the world, for the . . . the contingency of actual combat occurring."

He didn't employ speechwriters, Dagny recalled. That was one of the things she liked about him.

"Anyone meet him later?"

"Aguilar says he saw him come out of the room late in the evenwatch and pace the corridors for a while,

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then go back," Haugen answered. "That was not extraordinary. He always needed physical activity when he was under stress." He glanced at Erann. "Aguilar also mentioned seeing you pass by a little earlier. He had an impression you went into the office. You said nothing about that to the police."

"Nay," the boy admitted calmly. "It was not relevant, and it was private. He was, as you tell, seen later. I had sought my room, and I believe the steward did akin soon afterward."

Haugen nodded. He must already have been satisfied, since he had not informed the officers himself. To Dagny he said, "Aguilar went to his apartment and was with his wife till dawnwatch.

They retired about 2300, they state."

Rita stirred. "They are old and faithful servants," she said. "They came to the Moon to be with us. Do not doubt them."

"I don't imagine anyone does," Haugen reassured her. "Aguilar told his clock to call him early, in case the governor worked through the dawnwatch and could use his services. He found the computer running in the study, text on the screen. That was not Wahl's way. He left things neat before he went to bed. Therefore probably he had not. Aguilar searched and—found him."

"It would be natural for him to take a swim somewhere along the line, exercise part of his tension off," Dagny observed. "Evidently he did sometime around 2400, maybe an hour or two later. But wouldn't you expect him to turn in then, being halfway relaxed? This was going to be a wicked daycycle, after all. Obviously, though, he meant to come back from the pool and resume work. So he was abnormally charged up, even for this political mess we're in." Her eyes sought Erann again.

"What did you two talk about?"

"Ayomera," her great-grandson responded mildly. She knew the Lunarian expression. It wasn't quite THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 433

translatable into any Earthly tongue: the polite equivalent o/ making no response whatsoever.

"We'll have speech in a while, you and I," she told him. "Stick around. You too, uh, Governor, por favor. Rita, let's take care of you."

The woman accompanied her out like a robot. Dagny led her through the motions, pulled a blanket up to her chin, kissed her cheek, and waited till the drug had brought sleep.

Emerging, she looked right and left. Nobody around. The machinery of government was shut down for now, and household staff huddled in their quarters or went about their duties in terrified silence. A guard at the door and a monitor on the phones sealed the news between these walls.

Haugen was right, that couldn't last, nor should it. Whatever called for discretion had better be done fast.

How about checking the scene, just in case? Not that she'd likely find anything the detectives and their equipment had overlooked; but it was something to do while her thoughts churned about in the middle of nightmare. She bounded down the hall.

Jaime had shown her his pool once, and laughingly invited her to take a dip. "I needn't worry about possible brass monkeys among my ancestors," she'd retorted, "but I'm pretty sure they included no walruses." The chamber was, as she recalled, austere, echoey still, the water unruffled and colorless in its utter purity.

No, wait. Where was the faint smoke of mists? The air in here was fairly warm, the water Arctic. .

.. Was it? She stooped—her bones felt as if they creaked— and stuck a hand down.

Tepid. What the devil?

She located the thermostat and went to it. The setting read 35°, damn near blood warm. Now why would Jaime want that? Maybe so he could splash and wallow around for an hour, letting the misery leach out of him? That had never been his style.

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The olden cold went down Dagny's backbone and out to the ends of her nerves.

Sickness followed. No, por favor, please, let this idea be wrong, let it pass from her.

Only one way did she have a chance of that happening. She fought back to inner balance.

But be quick! She left the place and cast about the mansion, avoiding the living room, till she found Aguilar. The gray man sat sorrowfully at the accounts. He knew her, sprang to his feet and bowed, stood hands atremble awaiting her word.

"Good morning," she greeted in Spanish. "Forgive my intruding. You have had great shock and grief, and then you were questioned at length, no? I am sorry that I must ask you a little more."

"I am at your service, sefiora." He meant it, she knew.

"You found the senor in the pool, got him out, called for help, and until it came tried to resuscitate him. That was well done. What I must know is this. Was the water cold as usual?"

"I, I did not notice," he replied, startled. After a moment, in which the corrugated face squinched together: "Now that I think back . . . yes, perhaps it was not—not icy cold. Cold, but not icy. I am not sure, sefiora. I was not noticing. And ordinarily i, I had no business at the pool. It was long since I had felt of that water."

"Then I suppose, if it had been as cold as he liked, you would have been aware? You got soaking wet, after all."

A shaky nod. "Yes, you are right, sefiora, I would have noticed. It was cold, but not.. . not extremely cold."

And now it was lukewarm. "Do you think the seftor, this one time, may have wanted to swim at a more comfortable temperature?"

"Perhaps. I cannot say. He never did before. I well remember how he had the pool put in just for himself—" Aguilar clutched her arm. "Senora," he THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 435

gasped, "could a plunge into a surprise, could that have been fatal?"

His grip hurt her thin flesh, but she hadn't the heart to reprimand him. "Surely not. If somebody, for a prank, let us say, sneaked in and set the thermostat high, I can see him swearing very loudly and storming off to wake everybody and find who the guilty party was. Can you not?"

"Yes.** Aguilar released her. "Yes, I think he would do that. He was never one to suffer insults meekly."

"Macho. I agree. Well, I thank you, and please do not speak of this conversation to anybody else.

We still have the truth to discover."

The horror to uncover. She feared, she feared;

Boost onward, full thrust, and keep the radars alert. Grief was for afterward. She returned to the living room. Haugen and Erann sat in a silence thick enough to cut with a torch. The Earthman's head snapped around in her direction. The Lunarian rose, gave his people's salute of honor, and resumed his chair when she took hers.

"Okay, Rita's out of this wretchedness and we can talk freely," she said. "Governor, you were going to tell me what the doctors found."

Haugen frowned. "With respect, SeAora Beynac, isn't that the business of the police? There is no evidence of wrongdoing. The water was not poisoned, he was not killed by an uninsulated electric appliance dropped into it, nothing of that kind."

"I wonder how dangerous electricity is in CP water, anyway. By itself, it's a poor conductor."

Dagny kept Erann in her peripheral vision, not to stare at him. She knew the trick of using it. He might have been a breathing statue. "Seflor," she told Haugen, "I'm old and tired. You made a remark about oddities in this case. For favor, don't force me to call the medical office and wade through procedures."

"As you wish," Haugen sighed. He assembled his words. "First and foremost, his regular physical examinations showed him to be in excellent health. What 436

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went wrong? How did he come to drown? You understand, these findings are preliminary, many details wait for laboratory studies, but it does not appear that he suffered a heart attack, an embolism, an arterial spasm, any of the obvious possibilities for him to lose consciousness and drown."

"Did he drown?" Watch, watch, and don't show that you are watching.

"What else?" asked Haugen, surprised. "The signs, the appearance of the body—Ah, Aguilar's efforts, and then the emergency team's, they have made it unclear how much water was in the lungs, but the blood shows oxygen deprivation." He gave her an aggressive smile. "You do not "imagine, do you, that somebody choked him, then threw the corpse into the pool?"

Dagny pretended to take him seriously. "No, no. Who could have gotten in here unnoticed, let alone assaulted him without a racket that'd rouse a bureaucrat at his desk? Wahl was a strong man, well able to defend himself. If nothing else, he'd show bruise marks." Weightily:-"But you hinted at a few, hm, anomalies. What?"

"It's rather vague. The medical team leader said something to me about a general discoloration. It could be from lying for hours in that cold water." Erann's visage never stirred. "Does he have any theory?" Dagny pursued. Her pulse throbbed.

"She." Haugen made the correction as if it were important. Well, his ego needed shoring up, poor bastard; and its stability was a public concern, when all Luna needed a competent person in charge. "Who knows, at this stage? Probably suicide is ruled out. But some kind of brain failure, nerve cells misfiring, sudden unconsciousness?" His tone went shrill. "Maybe we do not know everything that space conditions, Moon conditions, can do to humans." Ever so faintly, Erann smiled. He was Lunarian. And he was human too!

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She turned directly to him. "Do you have any ideas?" she asked.

The fair head shook. "Nay. I can but share in the sadness."

Haugen's control gave way. "Do you?" he grated. "You're in your grandfather Brandir's household.

You know how glad he'll be of this." The Authority in confusion and dismay, Dagny thought; its new chief ill-informed and indecisive; the upshot, paralysis, while the barons strengthened themselves and their position; quite likely thereafter, the Authority backing down, the Federation left with scant choice but to go along, as the Selenarchs made good their tremendous claim. "What were you doing here, exactly now? What did you do?"

Erann raised a hand. "Were my lord not overwrought, I would ask satisfaction for gratuitous insult," he said, as stiffly as his soft accent allowed. "I forbear, and point out that I have been years in friendship with the Wahl family."

"That's true, you know," Dagny reminded Haugen. "When Leandro and Pilar lived here, they'd have schoolmates over fairly often, Lunarians among them." To Erann: "That's the last time I saw you till today. I happened to come on business while one of those parties was going on. How long ago was that? Three years? What've you been up to since?"

"I proceed with my studies, and, as honored Haugen said, otherwise have the pride to attend the lord Brandir at Zamok Vysoki." That must have come put in the course of police questioning, Dagny realized. The vice governor had not been on the Moon in those earlier daycycles.

"When were you last here, before yesterday?"

"About the time you spoke of. My lady, this is wearisome and profitless."

Dagny ignored the complaint. "Yes, that figures. After the kids, your friends, moved out, you had no more reason to visit." Friends? She recalled the boy Leandro as bearing a dislike of most Lunarians, which

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he did not always succeed in masking. The girl Pilar had felt otherwise, but then Pilar got shipped off to Earth. ... "What was your reason this trip?"

"I have explained it was a private affair. The lord Wahl wished it thus, and I keep faith." Erann rose to loom above her. "My lady, your greatness entitles you to much, and I say naught more save that I have said enough, have done my duty toward this troublous occasion, and now I will begone."

"Not yet," Dagny said. "We need a few words together, the two of us. Sr. Haugen, may we be excused? Meanwhile, I'll be obliged if you can get contact made with Selenarch Brandir. Use my name and, explain itfs crucial. Quantum encryption, of course."

The Earthman gaped. "Madame, I—What is this?"

Dagny gave him look for look. "You asked if 1 could help. I believe I can. Kindly let me do it my way."

"I must p-point out that you have no official standing."

"I have one hell of a long record, senor. *

His glance dropped. "Well, I will see what I can do/' he mumbled.

"Muchas gracias." Dagny stood up, "Come along, Erann."

The youth tautened. "Nay. I depart."

Dagny kept her tone light. "There's a guard at the door. He doesn't let anybody by without Sr.

Haugen's okay. Why begrudge an old lady a few minutes' chat? Do come along, dear."

She left. After an instant, Erann followed. The Earthman's gaze trailed them out of sight.

Dagny led a mute way to Wahl's personal office. It would be secured against eavesdroppers. When they were inside and closed off, she looked around. The silence was very full of him, his pictures, souvenirs, bow and trophies, the silver icon of Christ crucified. His words were still on the computer screen: "— cannot and will not suffer this. It is more than mutiny, worse than rebellion, it is treason to humankind. That

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we should be led into violence against each other, when outside our fragile shelters lies inhuman space—"

"Sit down, por favor," Dagny said.

"I have been too much seated," Erann answered.

"My neck hurts when I crane it. Sit. Down."

He obeyed, folding himself into Wahl's chair and swiveling it around from the desk to glower at her. She stood before him, arms folded. O God, he was 'Mond's blood and hers, and he looked so like Brandir at that same age! Somehow she made her voice crisp: "All right. What was the business between you and him?"

Beneath the alabaster skin, a vein in the neck pulsed blue. "I plighted secrecy. But I say to you, it was of no consequence to anyone else."

"If you tell me, probably it need go no further. I'm good too at keeping my mouth shut. But if you don't cooperate now, the whole damn Solar System will likely find out. There are ways of gathering clues and making deductions from them. Meanwhile you'll be in a chemical vat of a mess—what price your dignity then?—and your lord and his cause in a bigger one. Do talk, son."

The lips pressed tight.

Dagny sighed. "After all, I can pretty well guess. You can't very well have been a special emissary, so this must have concerned Wahl personally, and deeply enough that he'd take time for you in the middle of a life-or-death global crunch.

"Little Pilar. She was sweet on you. It stuck out of her a light-year, the time I saw you two in the same room. I doubt you felt it about her. Not only race; a couple years' age difference is mighty wide when you're that young. But it would've amused you, and given a sensation of getting some of your own back, to string her along. Nor do I suppose anything untoward ever happened, though that may well be because her father got her out of harm's way."

You rarely saw a Lunarian go red. "That... is a ... conclusion fetched most far,... my lady."

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"Oh, I've more basis than an offhand impression. I knew the parents fairly well, remember. When they told me they were sending her to school on Earth, naturally I asked why. Jaime was pretty evasive, which wasn't his habit. Later Rita confided a bit in me. The rest was obvious. I didn't think much about it, just felt 'sorry for them and for the child, and trusted she'd forget and be happy. But now—

"Of course she'd write to you, over and over, and beam to you and talk whenever a chance came alorig. It was easy for you to keep her on the hook, without committing yourself in any way. Easy, amusing as I remarked, and cruel." Dagny shook her head. "I wish I could think better of you."

Erann gripped the chair arms. "Dare you believe that of me?"

"Do you deny it? Let me remind you, if the police find reason to make the effort, they can trace such things back. Databases record where interplanetary calls went from, where to, and when. But me, I'd start with the girl. Her father is dead, Erann. She's a good kid. Not that she'd suspect you, not right away, but she'd be quite open to skillful questioning."

He sank back. "I would not have gone on," he muttered, "save that I was told the friendship might someday prove valuable."

"Exploitable, you mean," Dagny said heavily. "Your grandfather's idea? Not that I reckon he had anything definite in mind. It was simply a potential to keep in reserve. Until all at once—" She pointed at his heart. Her voice whipped. The lash went through and through her. "Whose idea was it to try murdering : Jaime Wahl? His, yours, the both of you?"

He began to rise. Maybe he recognized that to break her apart would destroy him and his, for he lowered himself again and whispered, "You do not rave in a dream. You know what you utter. But why do you, my lady? Why?"

Again Dagny sighed. Grief was a thickness in her

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throat. "Oh, I'm sure you saw the deed as—patriotic —if you have anything like a conception of what Earth calls patriotism. Do you? Doesn't matter, I suppose. You're young, idealistic in your way, born and bred in a hard world where life often goes cheap.

"The scheme is easy to reconstruct. You sent Wahl a confidential message asking to see him at his place— in the crisis, he wouldn't be anywhere else unless duty pulled him out—see him about his daughter. You admitted having kept in touch with her. Did you get her to message him as well? I'd rather think you didn't. It wouldn't have been really necessary. He's her father, he loves her, he'd receive you, hoping to talk you out of marriage or whatever you threatened him with. You knew his habit of solitary swimming; everybody on Luna has heard of it. You knew that the right words, calculated to enrage and frustrate him, would soon drive him to the pool, to work off enough fury that he could carry on in his job."

"And what of that?" Erann demanded.

"Only this. You'd slipped into that room and set the water thermostat way low, well under zero.

Afterward, of course, you returned and set it high, because the ice had to be melted as fast as possible. Once that had happened, if you'd gotten the chance I suppose you'd have reset it for the regular temperature, but you didn't, and I doubt you were counting on it. A warm pool would look kind of odd, but still the death would seem—accidental, or natural, if medically peculiar. In the general ruckus, and the Selenarchs touching off whatever hell they have planned, nobody would give the funny detail any close thought. By the time somebody figured out the truth, if anybody ever did, you'd be long gone. And we'd have far bigger problems on our hands."

Erann sat expressionless.

Dagny smiled on the left side of her mouth. "Want me to spell it out, do you? Okay. Supercooling.

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past its freezing point and stay liquid. Drop anything in, then, and it solidifies in a flash.

Wahl plunged, and suddenly he was enclosed in ice. He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe.

Consciousness would have lasted a minute or two. A bad death, that. He deserved better."

Now Erann got up. He stood above her and said, with tiger pride, "Luna deserves better than him."

She wouldn't let his height domineer her. She didn't want to look into his face anyway. "Suppose the scheme had failed?" she pursued. "The crystallization could easily have been triggered prematurely." »

"Then, were I accused, I would call it a jape, of intent merely to avenge humiliation. Did they doubt me, the question could not be tried before the contest for liberty had ended. Zamok Vysoki would be no worse positioned than aforetime."

"Nobody would buy that plea any more."

He shook his head. Brightness slid across the platinum locks. "Nay, clearly not, when he is in fact slain and you have bared the means. Investigation can belike find traces of me in the room.

Denial can but degrade me, and I will not make it."

He soared across the floor and stood at the wall, as if to let her see him easily and entirely.

"Besides," he said, "you are now the one who grips hardest of any. I will not hamper or delay you.

Maychance you can find an escape for all of us."

The sight of him blurred. Dagny rubbed her eyes. She.would not weep. Damnation, she had work yet to do. But he was honorable, by his lights he was honorable, and having done what he could, he stood ready to suffer what he must.

A thrilling went through her. He said that, had his plan miscarried, his cause would be no worse off. She couldn't stop to quiz him further, nor to wonder whether it had slipped from him or was purposeful, a signal and an appeal to her. But it fitted in with what else she figured.

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"Stay put till you hear from me," she ordered. "Look into yourself and think. Understand that you are the first Beynac who was ever a murderer. Then make what peace with your spirit you can."

She left him there and hastened back down the halls. Pain stabbed in her left knee and right shoulder, her pulse fluttered, she snatched after air. Mats vas-tu, ma vieitte. "—when the journey's over," she thought, 'there'll be time enough to sleep."

Haugen awaited her. "I have Selenarch Brandir ready for you," he announced as if it were an accomplishment.

Dagny mastered her wheezing. "I assumed he wouldn't stray far from a secure phone," she said drily. "Okay, I need to speak with him in private. That means private. The communications room, right? Meanwhile see if you can get Anson Guthrie of Fireball on a similar line and ask him to stand by for me likewise."

She didn't pause to note how the governor general of Luna took to being commanded around by an old female wreck, but continued on her way.

With no personnel present, the communications room seemed doubly big and empty. Screens stood in blind rows, air hissed from the grilles, a fallen piece of paper rattled underfoot like a dead leaf. One holo-cylinder glowed live. Dagny sat down before it and pushed the Attention key.

The head and shoulders of Brandir appeared. Behind him the image held a piece of a mural wall. The art was half naturalistic, wholly enigmatic to her. Her son's face was lean, sharp, hollowed and honed by time. It was not quite real that once those lips had milked her breasts while she crooned a nonsense song over the tiny bundle.

Yet: "Lady Mother," he greeted formally. "In what may I serve your desire?"

She turned her voice frosty. "You know full well."

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plead. You remember how I have refused calls from that Council of yours. Decision lies no longer with words."

"But you took this call because it was from the governor's headquarters, and you're hearing me out because obviously I'm there too and you'd God damn well better find out why. Okay, listen."

In a few short sentences, Dagny described her past several hours. His countenance stayed immobile.

Flittingly she recalled an eagle she saw once in a zoo when she was a child. Such were the eyes that looked into hers.

"I'm not about to pass judgment," she finished. "You murdered a decent man whom I sometimes worked together with and sometimes fought but always liked; and you did it by means of a boy who'll never quite get the corruption out of his soul; but we haven't time for trivia like that, do we? What's beyond argument is that you're desperate."

Then Brandir smiled. "On the contrary, lady Mother, Luna is poised to seize what is rightly Luna's."

"Don't shovel me that shit." He was the least bit taken aback at hearing that from her, she saw.

"If you and your gang were really confident, you wouldn't have wanted to change any factor in the equation. You're an intelligent son of a bitch, if I do say so myself, and you've had a long experience in the unforgiving history you helped bring about. You know how easily human arrangements go to chaos. This assassination was as wild and precarious an operation as I've ever heard of. It's got to have been done in a mood of 'What have we to lose?*

"Wahl reacted faster and more firmly than you counted on. He was about to hit you with everything he had, if you didn't back down, and you knew how slim your chances were. So try killing him in a way that didn't seem like murder. Haugen's not formidable, he'd dither and temporize while Wahl's military preparations went to pieces and your faction had time to build up strength as you meant to do in the first

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place. Then, come the showdown, you'd have your full house, and you could hope the Federation would fold."

"I sorrow that you, of all folk, demark the cause of liberation evil," Brandir said quietly.

"Son of mine, son of mine, don't insult me with slogans." Don't strike at my- heart. "You know how I've worked for what I believe the Moon deserves. Today that is not my business. Frankly, I think in this case 'liberation* is a catchword for the aggrandizement of a clique among the Selenarchs.

But that is neither here nor there, nor is the question of whether a Selenarchy is maybe what Luna needs. What I want is to prevent people getting killed."

"It was never our intention."

"Maybe not, but you're skirting too bloody close to it, and you did already send one man to the firecoils." Dagny sighed. "Brandir, I'm getting very tired. I've no more time or patience to spare. Hear what I propose.

"You and your fellows will make an honest offer to negotiate a peaceful settlement. I guess that has to include taking down your catapults, unless government crews operate them for you, and maybe surrendering assorted heavy weapons; but surely you can get concessions in return. Quid pro quo, tomorrow is another day, and so forth. The main point is that you make peace. If you do, we can pass Jaime Wahl's death off as natural, send young Erann home, and, not so by-the-by, free you to cook your next cabal."

"Otherwise, my lady?"

"There is no otherwise, really, if you aren't suicidal. After you and I are through here, I'm getting in touch with Anson Guthrie. Yes, Fireball does not mix in politics, but also yes, he doesn't approve of murder either, and Fireball stands to lose as much as anybody if civil war breaks out. Between us, we should be able to stiffen Haugen. With just a daycycle or two of delay, he'll repeat Wahl's ultimatum. If you still refuse, we'll release the story of how Wahl died.

Imagine the reaction on Earth. Only imagine."

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Dizziness whirled, black rags blew across vision, she had been talking far too long and fast. She sagged in her chair and breathed.

After a minute, Brandir laughed low. "It is my highest pride that my lady mother is you," he said.

"Come, we will make terms."

No, she would not'condemn him. He was what he was, forever her son, his children and their children forever hers too; let the future a thousand years hence sit in judgment on us all.

Of course they couldn't settle matters on the spot. They simply discussed, in sketchy wise, what he would set forth before his confederates, and how she might help restrain the government. At the end, though, he said to her, the first glimpse of his inner self that she had had for longer than she could tell, "Abide in life, I pray you. Else shall we fare ill."

Guthrie made a gruff remark to the same effect at the conference that followed between him and her. Eventually Haugen waxed fulsome on the subject. But this was well after the crisis had been resolved, for the time being. By then, Moondwellers in general, however much or little they knew about these events, took for granted that Dagny Beynac was their fountainhead of wisdom and leadership.

33

Winnipeg Station was turbulent with color and laughter. The crowd numbered more than a hundred, Kenmuir judged: male and female, teens and twenties, drawn in from far across the plains and maybe farther. Snatches of overheard exuberance told him they were bound for a camp in the Rockies, a spell of mountaineering, whitewater kayak ing, fires and song and falling in love under the stars.

Many tunics bore the emblem of a snowpeak and pine tree with the THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 447

name Highland Club. He wondered how often they met like this. Probably it was mostly over the net,

.their experiences mostly by vivifer or in quiviras. Besides demands of school and, perhaps for some, work, they'd have to wait their turn for reservations. Population hadn't dwindled enough nor had wilder-* ness preserves been restored enough that anybody could go anywhere into them, anytime and anyhow.

He had seen extrapolations which forecast that day for about a hundred years hence in North America. Elsewhere it might take longer, except in those regions where it already obtained.

Well, let him wish these youngsters a good holiday, and stave off envy. For them this was a happy world.

He stood aside with Aleka, as inconspicuously as possible, and watched them board. Around them the building soared in opalescence and airy arches. Close by, a tubeway lay like a wall, invisible save for supporting members and an electromagnetic coil. A coach hung in its vacuum, boxiness relieved by vivid hues and broad windows. The passengers funneled jostlingly and joyously to the gangtube and through. Aboard, they milled about, found seats and seatmates, stowed personal items, waved to friends and family who had come to see them off.

At the opposite end of the station, a smaller coach slid to a stop, connected to the gangtube at that point, and discharged a few people. A few others entered it. Not much eastbound traffic at the moment.

Sam Packer returned from a voucher outlet. "Here you be," he said. Kenmuir and Aleka took the cards he had brought. "You're on mini 7, predicted for, uh, about twenty minutes from now."

Too long, Kenmuir groaned within himself. At any instant—No. He put down his fears. After all, he and Aleka had chosen a private car, where they could talk freely, although places on a larger one were available earlier. If the hunters hadn't detected them here, it wouldn't likely happen by then. Besides, traveling in plain view could be more dangerous.

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"Muchas gracias," Aleka said. "What a poor little phrase that is."

Alarm sounded in Kenmuir. She shouldn't have spoken so. It made the matter seem important.

- Packer smiled, a white flash against brown skin. "My pleasure, seflorita." His look upon her was frankly appreciative. She gave it back with an interest that Kenmuir told himself should not annoy him.

Parker's glance turned his way. The man went serious. "Troth," he added, almost too low to hear through the hubbub.

Filled, the coach decoupled from the gangtube and slipped forward, swiftly out of sight. Its twin came after, to halt and accept the rest of the party.

Impulse overwhelmed Kenmuir. "You've gone above and beyond the call, Sam."

"Nan. We're Fireball, aren't we?"

Wistfulness dwelt in the words. Packer's father was only a public relations agent for the Space Service, and the son had found a career only as a live musician

—half a career, as infrequent as engagements were, although added to his credit the earnings let him live rather well. But Packers had been in Fireball and of it since Enterprises days.

Luck, getting hold of him and the loyalty in him. Or, no, not really. It was chance that the first airbus out of St. Louis had been to Twincity, a fairly quick groundway ride from Winnipeg.

However, Fireball folk were scattered around the planet, and Kenmuir knew several of them well enough to believe they'd take him and his companion in and give help without asking questions. He could have tried someplace else, hoping not to be caught in transit.

Packer shrugged. "And, what the Q, I enjoyed your visit," he added. "The tickets are nothing. Pay me back whenever it's convenient, or stand me dinner the next time we meet."

He had declined immediate cash compensation, remarking shrewdly, "I've a hunch you may be a tad low in that department right now." What counted was THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 449

his debiting the fares to himself, leaving no trace of Kenmuir and Aleka for the system to smell out. At the previous two stages of the journey the machines had accepted bills, of course, but Venator might order every transaction of that unusual sort reported to him.

If it led him here and he decided on an intensive investigation, it might well point him to Packer.

"Someday, Sam, if things go as they should, I'll explain this to you," Kenmuir mumbled.

"When they have gone that way, I'll be interested," Packer answered. He was intelligent, he knew something was damnably amiss, and that counted most of all.

"Maybe I'd better say adios," he suggested. "I've been thinking about a vacation trip, just me alone to wherever I take a notion."

Kenmuir caught his hand. "Clear orbit." Packer squeezed hard. Tears stood forth in the dark eyes.

The men let go. Aleka threw her arms about him and kissed him.

He responded heartily and departed with a smile.

"Wonderful kanaka," she breathed.

"Fireball the whole way through," Kenmuir said.

She cocked her head and regarded him for a second. "Then you do understand the Lahui Kuikawa.

Don't you?"

He could merely nod.

The second coach drew away. A lesser carrier arrived and stopped. Being empty, it must have been shunted in from a local cylinder to accommodate the assorted sovre who now boarded. Aleka and Kenmuir could have been among them.

A mini came and took on a man, woman, child, doubtless a family who wanted to travel by themselves.

Three more minis let their riders off. Aleka's hand stole into Kenmuir's.

Another appeared. "Number 7" stood on the side and sounded melodiously from a speaker. Aleka 450

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started to run, curbed it, and walked step by step alongside Kenmuir. Ahead of them, the gangtube made * connection to the carrier's airlock. Valves opened at either end. They passed their cards through the gatepost and went on in. Valves shut. The gangtube withdrew. The mini accelerated, smoothly but gaining speed moment by moment. In the windows, the station fell from view. A glimpse of handsome old buildings went by, then the prairie lay open everywhere around.

Aleka let out her breath in a gust. "Free!"

"For now," Kenmuir said.

She laughed. "Don't be such a glumbum. How long to Pacific Northwest, ten hours? If they haven't figured out where we got to, they'll scarcely be waiting at the other end. And from there it's a hop on the hydrofoil to Victoria, no?"

He couldn't tell how much of her cheerfulness was genuine, but it lightened his mood. He'd never before had occasion to use a conveyance like this. In his methodical fashion, he took stock. The cabin was about three meters square. Two facing benches, well cushioned, could fold down into beds, and a table could be lowered between them. An eidophone and an entertainment cabinet stood at the front end. In the rear were a sanitor cubicle and an air unit that was a miniature version of a spaceship's.

Spacelike, too, was the silence in which the car flew on forcefields through vacuum. The tubeway was barely visible outside; a little dust had inevitably blurred its clarity. Drive rings flicked by every few hundred meters, or now and then a pump. Forward and aft he saw the power cable as a thin gleam crossing the piers that, at their own intervals, supported the tubeway six meters above ground. On the left at a distance, the eastward shaft ran equally straight. As he watched, a carrier in it bulleted past.

Now and then he spied a remnant town—more accurately, village—or an isolated home. Otherwise THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 451

the prairie stretched like a sea, grass rippling in golden-green billows before a wind on which hawks and wild geese rode. It must be hot; light cataracted from a sky empty of clouds. He dimmed the windows and looked forward to the leafy shadows of Dakota New Forest.

Aleka racked the luggage Packer had gotten for them, filled with clothes and toiletries. From its holder she took the lunch and the thermoses of coffee and lemonade she had prepared at his cuisinier. After their breakfast there, they wouldn't be hungry for hours, but the sight of the things resting tidily on a shelf made this compartment their nest.

"I ought to have helped," Kenmuir apologized awkwardly.

"You will, amigo, you will." Aleka turned the water tap beside the sanitor upward, fountained a mouthful, and came back to bounce down onto a seat. "I'm going to make you talk yourself hoarse."

He settled opposite. Even under reduced sunlight, her skin and hair glowed. Ring shadows flowed across the curves of her. "What do you mean? You've seen everything I did."

"Have I? I doubt it, 'cause I don't know how to see. If you got a hasty peek at the layout and training manual for our community yacht in Niihau—a bar-kentine, she is—how much would you retain?

Never mind the names of sails and lines, could you draw me a picture of them? Bueno, I'm no spacer. Tell me what you learned in Prajnaloka and what it means."

He scowled. "Much less than we hoped, I'm afraid. My fault. I should have realized that the basic data are at the end of the text, and skipped ahead to them. I'm sorry."

"Pele's teeth! Will you stop hogging the blame for everything? We had what—three minutes max?—

before the word came to scoot. I'm not sure I savvy what kind of beast we grabbed the tail of.

That's your job, Kenmuir. Start talking."

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Her eagerness heartened him. Nonetheless he rummaged through his mind a while before he spoke, and made academic phrasing a defense.

"You undoubtedly did see that a clandestine Lunarian expedition went to a unique body far out beyond Neptune, which a similarly secret astronomical program had located, back in Dagny Beynac's time." She nodded. "A giant asteroid, mostly iron, therefore with a surface gravity comparable to Luna's. Other metals are abundant too, and it's accumulated a vast hoard of cometary materials, ices, hydrates, organics, preserved virtually intact."

"Yes, I got that far, and wondered what the fuss was about. Treasure trove? We've ample materials a lot closer to home, don't we? In fact, what with recycling and shrinking demand, aren't extractive industries supposed to peter out in the course of the next century?" The full lips curved ruefully. "I puzzled, and the rest of what we managed to screen didn't register too well.

Something about, uh, Rinndalir and Niolente mounting later expeditions."

"Correct. I wondered, myself, what they did, and skimmed the text till it reached that part. There I slowed down, which I shouldn't have, and was immersed when we got the alarm."

"So?"

"They were sending robots, with a very few trusted persons, to prepare the ground for a colony."

Aleka laid a finger to her chin. He found the gesture charming. "Strange. The way I remember—I studied that period up and down and sideways when I was young." As if she were old! "It was wildly romantic to me, Fireball bringing the last totalitarians down at the cost of its own power, Guthrie and Rinndalir leading their people away to Centauri—" He saw the vision flame in her.

How many on Earth particularly cared any longer? And those few who did, to whom the stars still called, they'd settle for the Habitat, because there would be nothing else in their lifetimes.

Even Aleka, Kenmuir

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thought, named the Demeter story romantic: a myth, no, a fairy tale. Her myth, the ideal by which and for which she lived, was of deep seas, a lonely island, and fellowship with the nonhuman. Not the inhuman, as for him; the nonhuman.

Her passion faded. "Would Rinndalir get involved in any such project?" she asked. "I remember how he said more than once, like when recruiting for the migration, that the Oort Cloud itself is too close to Earth. Nothing less than an interstellar passage could give gap enough to stay free, to keep from being swallowed up eventually by the Federation." She shrugged. "His idea of freedom, not mine." A sigh. "But damn, I'd've liked to've known him."

Kenmuir prickled, realized he was being jealous of a ghost, and sat back scoffing at himself. "I suspect that was camouflage for Niolente," he said. "To him the adventure was irresistible, but, naturally, he wanted her to succeed too, back here in the Solar System." •

"Succeed . .. how? I mean, why the secrecy? The Moon was a sovereign state—fully sovereign, outside the Federation. Why not simply announce the discovery of the asteroid, claim it, and start settling it openly?" Aleka paused. "That is, if anybody'd want to go." She winced. "Endless night, so far from the sun."

"I've thought about that." Kenmuir did not tell how many hours he had lain awake thinking. "At first, I'd guess, the idea was mainly to keep the asteroid— Proserpina—in the possession of their house, their phyle, for whatever gain was to be had. In that era, the demand for minerals and ices was growing. It might at length make a distant, rich source profitable. That never quite happened.

"After Fireball began dying, the position of the whole Selenarchy became hopeless. Niolente led a series of brilliant delaying actions. Yet she must have known she was only buying time.

"Time for what? I rather imagine she had several different possibilities in mind. But one of them was

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Proserpina. Ready it, arm it, and then reveal its existence, then plant a colony that would declare itself a new, independent Selenarchy. She may have dreamed that in the long run it would force a second . . . liberation ... of the Moon."

"A daydream, for sure." Aleka grimaced. "Not a beautiful one, either. In my eyes, anyway. We're well rid of the Selenarchs. Their heirs are bad enough."

"You're not a Lunarian," Kenmuir replied.

She gave him a long look. He thought he saw compassion. After a moment, though, she said, "Value judgments aside, how'd she expect a few squatters on a lifeless rock, away in the dark, could stand off the Federation? With missiles? Earth could send warheads that'd blow the whole asteroid to gravel, if Earth had to."

"If Earth had to," Kenmuir repeated. "Why should it? The purpose of installing weapons would be to force extreme measures, an atrocity, if the Federation insisted on denying the right of some Lunarians to live peacefully and remotely according to their customs. Which it would not, at such a price. Totalitarianism, the wjiole concept of purposeful social control, was newly discredited."

Aleka gazed out at the great, peaceful landscape. "Overreaction to the Avantists."

"No doubt. Since then, the cybercosm has evolved, and, yes, on the whole it's done well by us.

Just the same, you're in rebellion against it."

"Not really." He heard the distress. "My people are caught in a dilemma. It's not right against wrong, it's a conflict of rights. The one way I can see out of the trap is for us to get that cession from Lilisaire. Maybe I should be grateful for this situation that's given me a chance to earn it. But why the horrible tangle that's got us running from we know not what? I tell myself and tell myself, it's a misunderstanding, maybe a bit of overzealous bureaucracy, and it'll all soon straighten out. If I truly thought we were a menace to society, I'd hit that phone and call the police this minute to

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRg 455

come for us." She tautened in her seat. "Wouldn't you?"

"I, I suppose so," he faltered.

In haste, before she could ask him, or he ask himself, what drove him: "I was describing the context of those times. I think Niolente believed that if the Federation government learned prematurely about Proserpina, it would occupy the body on some pretext and forbid emigration. She meant to present it with a fait accompli, a world developed enough that her claim would be indisputable and enforceable.

"Now of course a ship of hers might be noticed meanwhile and tracked. Against that contingency, early on she took another precaution. It wouldn't be as effective as fortification, but it could be quickly done and it should give her a talking point. Her engineers put in a sophisticated detector system coupled to a huge, high-powered, thoroughly protected radio transmitter. At any sign of outsiders anywhere in the vicinity, it would shout the whole story to the Solar System and Alpha Centauri."

"What good in that?" Aleka inquired.

"Federation units could not then declare they were the discoverers," Kenmuir said. "Niolente was probably overrating the deviousness of her opponents— reading hers into them—but in any event, the arrangement exists to this day. No one can approach without touching off the news, except by using the proper pass code; and apparently that information perished with her."

"Couldn't the system be nullified?"

"Doubtless, though the effort would be considerable. Among other things, some robotic weapons are also in place. The job was never done, because there was no reason to. The Peace Authority—or, rather, a few top-level officials and the nascent cybercosm— became the sole inheritors of the secret. They've kept it ever since."

"Why?"

"At first, I'd guess, simply to avoid provoking the 456

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Lunarians further. Establishing a republic and reconciling them to it was amply hard already.

Later, as the cybercosm increased its capabilities and influence, it must have decided for reasons of its own to continue the policy. In the course of a generation or two, the number of humans who were told was brought sharply down. Close to zero, maybe. At least, this is the explanation that occurs to me for how Proserpina has stayed unknown."

"Till now," she said ferociously.

He responded with bleakness. "Chances are, it will remain so. We didn't read as far as the useful data, orbital elements and the rest. If we tried to make our story public, we'd be called hoaxers or dements, and quite possibly committed for treatment. We have nothing in support of it but our naked word, and half of that is nothing but conjecture. The likelihood of our gaining anything more is ... ridiculously small."

"We're taking the shot, though," she declared.

"Yes, we are." Alone, he might well have surrendered.

The car fled onward.

"But it doesn't make sense," she whispered at last. "Why this secrecy? What harm if Lilisaire leads a few Lunarians off to Proserpina? Give them time, and they'd make it come alive, same as the Moon. And it'd bleed off their opposition to the Habitat. What reasonable objection can the—the authorities have?"

She had'not said "the cybercosm." Dared she?

"I don't know," he answered. "I honestly can't imagine."

They passed a branch tubeway, curving off before it straightened and pointed southward over the horizon. It was behind them in less than a second. However, it had drawn his attention aft. Luna stood wan and waxing above the east. There had this wild hunt of his begun, there had its course been- set, long and long ago.

34

The Mother of the Moon

JL es," Dagny Beynac sighed. "It is too much."

"But you can't let go," said Anson Guthrie almost as softly. .

"Should I? You always held that nobody's indispensable, and the idea that anybody is means the believers are in bad trouble."

Her white head drooped. She leaned back into her lounger and let it shape itself to her gauntness and warm the shivering out. Eyelids fell. They lifted again and she beheld the familiar room, old furniture, young flowers, the viewscreen tuned to Earth and full of sunlight, bright water, forest, the house on Vancouver Island and children at play on its lawn. "Yeah," Guthrie agreed.

•The strength to talk flowed slowly back. He waited. Today he had come in a special body, four-legged, four-armed, but with two hands that looked and felt very like human hands. Besides the sensor-speaker turret, on top was a holocylinder in which he generated the appearance of living, middle-aged Guthrie. It must be difficult to control all of that at once. Now and then the image stiffened to a three-dimensional picture. Otherwise it spoke, smiled, regarded her with love as if it and not the turret were what actually saw. She did not know who else had ever encountered him like this. Maybe no one.

"Just the same," she said, "you carry on. Fireball can't do without you." "The hell it can't.

Quite likely better." "Then why do you stay at the helm?" The face grinned wryly. "Well, if nothing else, given the power it's gotten, sometimes acting damn near like a government, Fireball does need restraint. Otherwise it might degenerate into being one."

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"For Luna? We could do a lot worse." ."MacCannon forbid!"

She tried to match his effort at lightness. "Oh, you certainly wouldn't want the job." Lunarians thwarted, angry, the mighty among them weaving God knew what plots. Terran Moondwellers still more divided, some avid for independence, others dreading what it could mean to them, both factions threatening to mobilize. The Federation equally split on the issues— the right of societies and especially metamorphs to be themselves, an end to an increasingly troublesome and costly problem, versus the common heritage principle, fear of a rampant new nationalism, powerful interests vested in the status quo—and unable to reach a decision, now when Earth's mounting woes claimed most of its attention. . . . Whatever humor had been in him and her flickered out.

"No," he said, "I'm in my right mind. Besides, the united governments would never stand for it.

Privatizing government?" His visage grimaced. "But somebody's got to run the show here, and their man Haugen sure as entropy isn't succeeding. Not that Wahl could have for much longer, without you. You're the one who's been shoring things up, over and over, year after year, and it's worn you hollow."

"Not I," she protested. "The Council—" for Lunar Commonalty, not the High Council of the World Federation but her unofficial, informal gathering "— and the magnates and mayors who're wise, and—the common sense of common folks—" She had spent her breath. Her pulse wavered.

"Yes," Guthrie persisted, "but you've been what brings them together and holds them together, smooths down their squabbles and tickles their egos and prunes them back to size, gives them a direction and holds them to it, provides the God damn leadership."

His long, drawled sentence gave her time to recover. No doubt that was part of his intention. "I'm more a symbol, really, than a leader," she said.

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"Could be, which makes you all the more important. But the minority piece of you, the brains and guts, that's boosting away too."

Against a gravity field like Jupiter's, or a dead star's, or a black hole's. And she'd about exhausted her fuel, she thought. "Even being the symbol, the grand ancient, is getting to be too much," she mumbled. "This latest—" An appeal on the big public screen had not stopped rioting between the Terrans in Leyburg. She'd gone to stand there in person, in plain sight at the top of the cybercenter ramp, where anybody could throw a rock that under Lunar weight could kill her. The alternative would have been the turmoil going altogether out of control, deaths, destruction, possible major damage to the life-containing structure, martial law, and unforeseeable consequences everywhere around the Moon. "It wrung me dry."

And it had been no more than a wave on an incoming tide, and did anybody know, did anybody dream what ran underneath?

A new song from Verdea was going widely about. Though the Lunarian was close to untranslatable, snatches of it found utterance among Terrans in their ancestral tongues, as if somehow it spoke to them too—a phrase tossed into talk, a shout through nightwatch, a scrawl on a bulkhead, a flash onto a communicator screen.

"—You: Law alone, sight unbloodied, and never a heart ripped loose for gods that never were. Death is no more than stones that lie still in the groundgrip of waterless wastelands; ever obedient whirl the worlds; their ways you will understand and their whys will be born of your brains. You have given yourselves to serve and to master the steadiness of the stars.

"But the dust of stones shall be bones, dry bones rising for a journey from doubt into darkness.

Your forgotten begotten shall trouble your dreams, the heart shall break its cage, and death shall laugh at your law. For the stars are also fire.—"

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When first she heard it, Dagny had gone cold. She felt without any reason she could name that her daughter was less crying rebellion than looking beyond, into a future far and obscure.

The words broke free before she knew. "Oh, Uncans, I'm so tired!- So old. I can't go on."

I'm sorry! she immediately meant to say. I don't want to whimper.

He gave no opening for it. "No argument. Besides, you've paid your poll tax. You've earned some peace and quiet and spoiling the kids rotten when you see them." When Lars Rydberg brought them, his youngest descendants, from Earth for a visit.

"I've tried. Everybody keeps ... asking my advice, and then—"

"Uh-huh. One thing leads to another. They'll never stop while you're there for them."

"But I'm less and less able." She hugged herself against the chill and the trembling. "I'm afraid, hideously afraid I've . . . outlived whatever usefulness I had . . . and soon I'll make some blunder that kills people."

"I don't expect you will right away. As for afterward, you don't have to, ever. You can keep on helping, really helping, tirelessly, for as long as need be."

She looked up at the ghost-face and said into its hard gentleness: "I guessed what you had in mind when you called to ask if you could come around."

The head nodded. "You download your mentality."

She stared past him, at Edmond's quiescent picture, and was mute.

"Then you, this you, will be free," he said.

Throughout her life, when she came to a crux of things, thought had gone clear and heartbeat steady. It was not that she had an answer yet, it was that she had the questions.

"But the other me," she demurred.

For a second or two she dared not glance back at

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him. She reminded herself that what she would see was no vulnerable mortal countenance, it was a mask that he shaped and reshaped as he calculated was fitting. Regardless, how alive it seemed when she met those eyes again, how drolly understanding.

"I know," he replied to her. "You were always too kind to come flat out and say it in front of me, but I knew. How can I endure being a machine? The notion of becoming one too freezes you."

She lifted a hand to deny but let it sink. What he offered her was forthrightness. For his honor and hers, she must accept. "I've been amazed, whenever I thought about it. Other downloads—" Of the few that had been made, how many remained besides him? Two, three, four? She tried and failed to remember any that had requested termination because they were miserable. No, hadn't they, in their different ways, just said that they did not care to go on?

Guthrie smiled. "Me, I still find the universe interesting. You might very well also."

"I wonder. I doubt." Would she not in phantom fashion yearn for the flesh, little though she had left of it or of time? Was that emptiness not what the downloads wished escape from? Not that they grieved for what they had lost. What had they to grieve with? (Or did they, somehow? None had ever quite been able to explain, if it had tried at all.) But neither did they fear oblivion.

She gathered resolution. "Would I make a, an effective machine?" That was one solid reason some of them had giving for ending it, that they weren't suited for this, they weren't working right.

"You would," Guthrie said, "whether you liked the condition or not. I know you."

"Do you like it?" she forced out.

"Alive was better," he admitted bluntly. "But I find my fun anyhow. And you're of my blood, Diddyboom."

His blood, decades ash strewn over those Lunar

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mountains where the ash of his Juliana had waited for him. But also alive in her, Lars, her sons and daughters with 'Mond, and theirs and theirs, maybe for millions of years to come, maybe to outlive the stars. If it got the chance.

She spoke carefully, to give him truth but no impression of self-pity. "I don't suppose I'd want to continue indefinitely like you. I'm tired, Uncans. Not unhappy, on the contrary, but when the time comes for dying, I'll be ready." To follow 'Mond.

Again he nodded. "Old and full of days. And those days were mighty full themselves." Of achievement, said his tone, and love, mirth, adventure, passion; even the pain and sorrow were aliveness. "But Dagny, if you knew your work would not be for nothing but would go on, you—mortal you—could enjoy this last short while you've got, and lay you down with a will."

"Yes. But my download."

"She won't be you."

"I'll be responsible for her existing."

"She won't curse you for it. I know you well enough to know that, sweetheart." And how did it feel to him, she wondered, to watch his Diddyboom age and die while he abided changeless? "Think about it." Think fast, think hard and straight.

"I have," she told him. "This isn't a complete surprise to me. I do expect that other mind would carry on till the Moon is free—whatever that's going to mean—and reasonably safe. But then—"

"If then she wants to stop," Guthrie said, "she shall. I promise."

35

As it did every year, the system reminded Venator that this was his mother's birthday. He called her when the sun stood at midmorning above her home.

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They chatted a while in the mix of Anglo and Bantu that had been a private dialect when he was a child. Neither of them found much to say.

"It would be nice if you could come in person sometime," she finished wistfully. "I can't hug your image. And I would like to show you how well the roses are doing. Not a picture. We would walk around and touch and smell them."

Her own image was amply real in the big eido-phone, gray hair, lined face, gown full and plain as befitted a Cosmological Christian but a floral brooch at the throat. Behind her chair, the door stood open on mild weather and brilliant light. He had a partial view of stoep and yard and the Kwathlamba foothills, winter-tawny, spotted with groves, a herd of antelope in the distance. Her harp thrushes were trilling in the garden loudly enough for him to hear.

"I am busy, Mamlet," he said. "Extraordinarily busy. I visit whenever I can." And when was that last? He couldn't quite recall. Well, he'd make a point of it soon. No need to feel self-sacrificing, either. Once this Proserpina business was under control, some rest and gentleness would be very welcome.

"Yes. Take care of yourself," she urged anxiously. "Your work is too hard, too strange. Your father—" She stopped. It was not a subject to pursue. Although he had never reproached his only child, Ministrator Joseph Mthembu died knowing the boy was apostate and thinking' he had become half machine.

The father's religion professed to include the findings of science. Why did he not understand that what was happening was not the negation of human-ness but its fulfillment? Even if the Teramind and the Noosphere were too alien for him, wherever he went on Earth he saw people free of want, sickness, fear, mind-numbing toil of body or brain, free to live as they chose.

"Don't worry," Venator said. "Please don't. My work is my joy, and I have you and Dada to thank for it." That they gave him to the cybercosm. He smiled.

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"Besides, I get plenty of healthy recreation." He was out upon the mountains as often as the hunt allowed on which he was engaged.

She brightened. "Does that include a young lady?"

"Well,... no. Not yet." Not ever, he supposed, in the sense she meant. No grandchild for her. The species was still too numerous for its sanity. Always the elect must set the example; when they failed, they ceased to be the elect, and presently history cast them put. Always they had failed, until the cybercosm came into incorruptible being and guided them.

How he wished he could bring this sad little woman to see that DNA no longer counted. It had been evolution's means toward an end. Henceforward the true inheritance was of the spirit.

The thoughts, the unspoken responses, did not cross his awareness. They were in the background, a part of him. He smiled again. "Plenty of time later," he reassured her. "But first, some of my Mamlet's hand-cooked food, eh? In a month or two, I hope."

Offside, an urgency signal flashed. His blood roused. "Now I truly am busy," he said fast. "Have a wonderful day. You will be with friends, I trust. Give them my kindest regards."

"Yes," she whispered. He doubted she would. A synnoiont was not a mere successful son to be proud of. It was as if she shrank before his eyes. "Thank you for calling. Goodbye."

He blanked the screen. "What's the message?" he snapped.

"Lilisaire of Zamok Vysoki asks for contact with you, specifically, by the name Venator and rank Pragmatic," the speaker replied.

The assessment raced through him: The Lunarian didn't know where he was. Hardly a human in the universe did. But she expected the system would relay to him. Therefore she had discovered his standing within it and his leadership against her—with high probability, at least. That was no surprise to him, after his recent experiences. But should he take this call, THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 465

and thus confirm her deduction for her? Yes. It was a nearly trivial payout of information, for a chance to gain more, perhaps much more. What else did she know, and what did she mean to do with the knowledge? "Accept," he said, the headiness of the chase upon him.

Her image appeared, standing in a room as black as polished obsidian, clad in a form-fitting floor-length gown of sulfur-colored fiir texture. The auburn mane fell unbound past features that might have been carved in bone, a mask, but the eyes were like great luminous emeralds. Draped around her bare shoulders lay a metamorphic snake, its scales shattering light into sparks of rainbow.

Suddenly and violently, he wanted her.

Stop that. "Hail, my lady," he said in her language, before remembering that with him she preferred for some reason to use Anglo. He changed to it: "How may I serve you?"

The image was not static while photons went to and fro. She breathed. She moved, shifting the balance of her body well-nigh too subtly to see, but not to sense in his own.

The voice sang cold: "Agents of your corps have invaded a home on Earth, to disrupt its peaceful doings and seize valuable property therein. I would know by what license they acted. Else shall I complain to the Justiciar of the High Council, and to the Solar System at large."

So she was taking the offensive. Counterstrike. "I do not think you will, my lady."

She meant the stationary sophotect that bore the name Mary Carfax, Venator knew. Either it had phoned an alarm to somebody in her service when the men entered, or an automatic signal had gone out. Investigation had not yet shown which, and it doubtless made no difference. What mattered was the speed with which Lilisaire had learned, and reacted.

Regardless, beneath the hard surface she must be shaken. Keep her that way.

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"If the action had a warrant, the issuance and the cause should be in the public database," she said. "Naught have I found."

"The matter concerns official secrets, my lady," Venator riposted. "Under the Covenant, information may be withheld during a major emergency, until it has been resolved. In frankness, may I say that, under the circumstances, this is to your benefit?"

Transmission lag. He did not look away from her— bad psychological tactics—but he tried not to remember her naked.

"You speak as though opposition were crime." Was she temporizing while she planned the next move?

"Not at all, my lady," he said. "You have every right to your politics and free expression." He forged sternness. "But you have no right to confidential data, or to attempt ferreting them out.

You absolutely may not restrict the free expression and self-development of a sentience. That amounts to enslavement, my lady, the ultimate violation of rights."

A pair of seconds passed.

Litisaire smiled. It was almost a friendly smile, and her tone almost conversational. "We need not padfoot about the subject, you and I, need we? It is the machine in San Francisco. Indeed it has been of help to me from time to time, a consultant, as belike it has aided others. Broken in upon, it loyally informed an agent of mine on Earth. I naturally waxed indignant, and demand you exonerate your corps, if you are able."

"You spoke of property seized, my lady. A sopho-tect is no more property than you or I. There is no record of the manufacture of this one. It was kept from any direct contact with the cybercosm.

All points to the creation and maintenance of a slave."

The snake stirred, a rippling above her bosom, and raised its crested head. Was that a response to an invisible signal? Still smiling, she reached to stroke it under the jaw.

THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 467

"If data are absent, whom can you charge with the making?" she responded in the same half-amicable manner. "If it held itself apart, was that by its free choice, to preserve secrets entrusted to it? I cannot say. The machine mind is foreign to me. Ask it."

He wanted to state that she knew very well he could not. Mary Carfax had the means built in to wipe clean everything but the functional elements of its database. It had done so the moment the strangers made entry with obvious purpose. That included whatever compulsion to this had been in the program.

As for its existence, it could have been built slowly, piecemeal, perhaps in the course of a human lifetime, in a laboratory now altered beyond retrieval. The Selenarchs thought far ahead. They schemed for advantages remote in time, unforeseeable except as possibilities dependent on contingency.

Proserpina.

He would not admit to his knowledge. Let her wonder how widely it ranged. "Investigation is proceeding. I repeat my suspicion that you no more wish to bring this business into the open than

. .. the government does."

Her mockery continued through the lag. He saw it fade as she listened to him. Gone fluid, the countenance took on something akin to seriousness. "You imply accusation, seigneur," she attacked softly. "You misdoubt I have sought knowledge denied to any but a few. What became of the lofty principle that information shall be open to all who query of the net?"

He recognized it for an abstract argument, a way of disengaging. She would scarcely have hoped for more than to sound out the measure of his determination and estimate his progress. For her part, she had revealed or confessed to nothing. He admired the performance. The loss of the Carfax machine must be a sharp blow. It might well mean the unraveling of the entire web she had spun on Earth. It certainly indicated that her attempt at espionage had failed: for 468

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Alice Tarn was Venator's most probable connection to Carfax. He was not about to tell her that Tarn remained loose, unimportant though that had become.

Instead, he would press her. Maybe he could shock a bit of revelation out. "You're being disingenuous, my lady. It's always been accepted that certain facts must not be available to just anyone. For instance, how to synthesize a new disease. The cybercosm could readily model that, but it will not release the details, except to qualified persons with a genuine need to know. A criminal, intending to do it, would have to have computational capability isolated from the global system." Harshly: "Why was that independent sophotect made, and why was it programmed never to mesh with the cybercosm?"

He did not really, expect an answer.

Nor did he get one. "You own, then, seigneur, that the cybercosm makes every significant decision, that it rules over every world. Nay?"

"I do not!" He shouldn't let her anger him. "Are you subject to a hammer because it drives a nail better than you can with your fist?"

After the lag, scorn. "Such shoddiness I had not looked for in you, Venator. Robots may be tools, however powerful and cunning, but sophotects are not. Nor are they partners, despite many a mawkish avowal. The cybercosm reigns, under the Teramind and for it. Humankind is in its pay, albeit to no purpose I can perceive—" laughter rang like crystal "—unless it be olden habit, or amusement."

He could not help himself, he must repeat arguments that had lain centuries stale. Otherwise he would somehow be yielding to her, and he felt obscurely that he did not know where that might end.

"Do you mean citizens' credit? Why, that's simply the way we allocate, individually, the goods and services the machines produce for us, and keep track of demand. If we want to produce more and exchange with each other, we have our cash-and-bank currency."

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Transmitting, she rebuffed him more frostily still. "Nay, how you disappoint me. Though you be a hound for the regnancy, I had not thought your spirit was bribed into lameness." The snake hissed.

"Tameness, or common sense?" he flung back. "You Lunarians don't tolerate chaos either. You'd soon be dead if you did."

Waiting, he composed himself. Why should he feel vulnerable to her? A single nightwatch—Nevertheless it was a balm when she said quietly, "We seek the survival of our race, and of variousness everywhere. If that be chaos, then remember that life is chaotic."

"And chaos within bounds is creative," he agreed, eagerly taking what seemed to be an opening offered him. "You've given us splendors, you Lunarians. But can't you understand, the cybercosm is creative too? Is alive too?" Impulse: "It accepts downloaded human minds into itself, you know, minds that can contribute something fresh. Would you consider yours joining in the adventure?"

-With his. Not that anything but a ghost of fleshly memories would linger; the seed outgrows the husk. And yet—

Merriment pealed. "Eyach, and would they also like to put my bones on display? I have a most graceful skeleton."

"Must we be enemies?" he asked. "Is it impossible to make peace and, and cooperate?"

Her laughter died away. An inward mirth abided.

"If you care to talk further, at leisure, I will happily receive you again," she purred.

And distract him. No, not captivate him; He was no boy, no—a piece of archaic reading came back to twitch at his lips—mooncalf. But divert his attention. While he was not about to admit realizing what a trick she had played on him before, let alone that it had succeeded, he said, "Thank you.

When time permits. I hope you will profit," with a sardonicism directed more at himself than at her.

How beautiful, how unfairly beautiful she stood in

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the light gravity of her lair, 384,000 kilomete'rs out of his reach.

"We both may," she answered. "After all, the object of our quarrel lies in far space, does it not?

Fare you well, seigneur."

The image vanished.

At first he felt only the emptiness. After a second, he could grin and shake his head. Tension followed. Exactly what had she meant by that last remark?

Perhaps no more than a gibe. She'd never drop a hint that might draw his attention toward a different machination of hers. Unless she did it in hopes that he would dismiss it as a misdirection and keep his focus on Earth.

That would not be a fool's idea. Earth was in fact where he and she had been playing their game.

Alice Tarn was entirely of this planet. Tracing back the movements of Tarn's volant, ransacking the records of phone calls she had lately made, checking on the recipients, had been a gigantic effort, savagely concentrated into a pair of days and nights. But it led to the Carfax house, and from there the trails might well branch out to every node of Lunarian conspiracy on the globe.

Where then could Lilisaire turn but to space?

Farther space, Mars, the asteroids, the outer-planet moons, folk of hers thinly scattered but in possession of spacecraft, nuclear generators, robots, unsentient but highly capable computers, instrumentalities potent for work or for harm. She would hardly cry rebellion. They would not heed if she did; they were not insane. But he could think of other possibilities. For example, if somehow she had gotten an inkling of the nature of the secret, a few Lunarians yonder might furtively commence an astronomical search. ... He must organize a surveillance of them. That would be a lengthy and effort-costly undertaking in its own right.

At the same time, he must not neglect Earth, the more so when Lilisaire and her bravos might yet be able to accomplish something here.

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Maintain a watch for Tarn and Kenmuir. However, don't let it employ a substantial force, which could better be assigned elsewhere. The odds were large that they were of little further consequence. They had broken into the Proserpina file, yes, and it had run through to the end before it stopped; but the record showed that that had been a straight playing, no skips forward, whereas they fled within minutes of starting it. So they lacked the critical data.

It could be awkward if they made public what they did know—not unmanageable, but awkward. Best catch them soon. They had allies around the planet, Kenmuir his trothmates, Tarn her metamorphs and their associates. No doubt they'd try to contact one or more. But the system was alerted, and how could amateurs evade it?

Guthrie House, for instance—no, an unlikely destination, because Kenmuir wasn't stupid—he'd know it for a dead end and a trap. Still, just in case, robots at appropriate locations were set to observe every vehicle that went in or out of the Fireball mansion. If anyone debarked at it who might be either of the fugitives, that person would not get far without being halted and identified. Places more obscure posed more difficulty, but Venator did not see how his quarry could run much longer.

Lilisaire's established agents were the interesting ones. Had Carfax been the single sophotect among them?

He called for a connection to it.

The technicians were introducing it to the cyber-cosm, gradually, gently. They requested that he wait till the end of this session. He agreed, and turned to other tasks. They were plentiful.

When at length he talked with the machine, he got only a voice. What relevance had appearance?

Carfax-that-was amounted now to sensors, effectors, micro-circuits, devoid of body language.

Personality had been self-obliterated, leaving no more than the standard background. The new consciousness that was

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forming spoke slowly, hesitating as it groped for meanings or expressions. Had human emotions applied, Venator would have thought of it as shy.

—"No, I... regret... I can say nothing about former-.. . inputs or outputs. I search, but it is gone, all gone.

"Small loss," said Venator grimly, "if you were so enslaved."

"I do not understand that word. I search. . . . The ramifications are many. What sense do you intend?"

"Never mind," he sighed. "You'll learn quickly enough how to handle human vocabularies. I was hoping that some clue to what I'm after might remain in you, but if it doesn't, it doesn't."

Because to him the machine had a soul: "How are you doing?"

"Idiom? ... It has become evident that I am not adequately designed. I have various hardware deficiencies. They are to be remedied. Meanwhile I am guided as best I can go, into the cybercosm." The former program had known how to utter feeling. Thus far, this voice could merely quaver: "It is ... glorious."

For a moment, Venator almost envied the burgeoning intelligence. The hour of his somatic death and mental entry into the system lay decades ahead, if brute chance did not intervene. And it would be different from the sophotect's.

Better, though. His life would have prepared him. It should give him much for him to give the Unity.

Even the earliest, most primitive downloadings were transfigurations. It had always seemed perverse to him how few of the subjects kept their immortality. With or without the promise of becoming one with the Teramind, he believed that he, like Guthrie, would have chosen to live on.

,

36

The Mother of the Moon

1 o move in a robot body, sensing with robot senses, is a matter of skills, the mind growing into oneness with hardwiring and subroutines as its original was in oneness with nerves, glands, muscles, entirety. To generate continuously a holographic imitation of the living body—not old and feeble, but in vigorous middle age—is art. The download has not completely mastered it. She knows full well the stiffness of the face and the gestures in screen or cylinder, the times when she forgets and her image sits as if paralyzed, the frequency with which distractions cause her to let her timbre go flat, machinelike. Practice will bring improvement; but she has not had many opportunities to practice undisturbed.

However awkward, the projection is better than appearing as a disembodied voice or a box with eyestalks or a shape suggestive of a man in armor. At any rate, it is better in emotional confrontations like today's. It shows, or tries to show, that the download has not simply taken over Dagny Beynac's role in counsel and captaincy, it repeats her wisdom and compassion.

Or so she hopes. Expects? Computes as probable? Learning her own self is the slowest and hardest task of all.

Before her, the rugged, square image of Stepan Huizinga, speaking from Port Bowen, scowls. "You know what we fear, madame. Don't you?" Implication: he wonders whether she can.

"I know several of your fears," she replies. "Which is foremost?" Of course she has the answer, but lead him on, get him to open up, study him in action.

"What they name independence," he snaps. "Mad-474

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ame, we will not suffer it. We cannot." Wherefore his Human Defense Union is seriously talking about arming itself, forming what it calls a militia; and Dagny has phoned him to discuss this on an encrypted line.

"Quite a few of you Terran Moondwellers are eager for independence": a redundancy she deems necessary.

"Yes. They prate of liberty, property rights, restrictions taken off their enterprises—They- are idiots. Some are lackeys of the Selenarchs, but most are idiots. Or else they do not give a curse for anything but their greed."

"You, though?" she challenges very softly.

He lifts his head. "We live here, my people and I. We have our roots here, where many of us have spent most of our lives. You should sympathize,... madame," he finishes hastily, clearly seeing he has let slip what could be offensive.

She takes no umbrage, nor desires to pretend it. "Yes," she says, "I do," through memories reaching back over a lifetime. How deep into her do they go, now? She cannot tell. Will she ever find out?

He is emboldened. "Pardon me, but perhaps you have a certain bias. You—your original—did choose to bear Lunarian children." Again he retreats a step. Although he feels increasingly desperate, he is not a fanatic. "True, in those days you did not foresee, nobody did, how alien they would be."

"No more alien to me, in their ways, than a lot of Terrans I've known, in theirs," she says, keeping to mildness. "We get along. Partnership, friendship, love were possible between us, and are." Between living Dagny and them. The download is close to none but Guthrie, and that relationship too has become something other than what binds him and the woman.

Huizinga sighs. "It happens. If only it were always possible. Please believe me, the Human Defense Union is sincere about 'human' meaning everyone. This is not a matter of race prejudice."

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She doubts that. Experience, observation, study of history, a look into her soul, decided living Dagny that Guthrie was right when he remarked once, "Xenophobia isn't pathological in itself. A degree of it is built into our DNA, and is healthy. Not all men are brothers. The trick is keeping it under control, and setting it aside when it isn't needed."

The download does perceive Huizinga as a man who would not wittingly insult or harm anyone merely for being different from himself.

"It is a matter of survival;" he declares.

She sharpens her voice. "Nobody threatens your lives."

"No," he growls, "they threaten what we live for. Already Lunarians dominate the Moon." Better fitted for the environment, they usually move into the better positions, and their numbers are rising faster. Some Terran couples still enter the genetic lab and come forth prepared to have Lunarian children. But it would be impolitic to remind the angry man of that.

"Without the protection of Federation law, my people would soon be helpless against them." He refers mainly to the equalization program, the special facilities and subsidies and hiring quotas and exemptions that lie at the heart of so much Lunarian resentment. "They do not want democracy, you know. Or anyhow, their powerful ones, their damned Selenarchs, do not; and it is the Selenarchs who would be in charge of a 'free' Luna." She can hear the sarcasm. "They would take it entirely out of the Federation!"

"You are reacting to a nightmare, not a reality," she says. "Independence is by no means sure. In fact, at the moment its chances of passing the Assembly are practically zero. That won't change soon. It may never change."

"Unless the Lunarians revolt. They have come close to it, more than once." All too true. Single incidents, but how easily a spark could flare into wildfire, and who knows what conspiracies are brewing in hidden

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chambers and along sealed communication lines? "If they snatch command of the globe, the Federation may well yield," rather than fight a war—a war— which could destroy the prize and for which the Peace Authority is in any case ill equipped.

"You're borrowing trouble, I tell you. Don't." She quotes Guthrie: "The interest rate is too God damn high."

He blinks in surprise, rallies, and says firmly, "We wish to forestall trouble, madame. If we are prepared, it is far less likely. A loyal militia, able in an emergency to occupy key points and hold them until Earth can act, that should deter any treason."

She fashions intensity for visage and voice. "Don't you realize what you'd provoke? Counter-organization, and more among your fellow Earth-types, I'll bet, than among Lunarians. They're already making noises like this in the National League," the Terran faction that wants independence and reform, though within the framework of a democratic republic and Federation membership. "Then more and more Lunarians will see no recourse but to give troth to the barons and accumulate arms for them. You must all stop it, now, before we start sliding downhill into a three-cornered civil war."

Huizinga thinks before he replies. "Allow me to suggest that you exaggerate, madame."

"You do it much worse, seftor."

"Can you show me an alternative?"

"Yes. First, as I've said, the current legal state of affairs will, under any halfway reasonable circumstances, last for years at least. Those years can be lived in. I hear you have three children in their teens. Grant them time to finish growing up."

"What sort of world will they grow up into, if the Selenarchs have taken it over?"

"That is //the Selenarchs do. But let's suppose it, for argument's sake. Let's imagine your worst case. How bad is it actually?"

"We lose our freedom. After that they can take from THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 477

us whatever they choose—everything—whenever they choose."

"Really? I say most people would find life staying quite tolerable. The Selenarchs are Lunarians.

They can be ruthless, but they don't have the temperament to be tyrants. Oh, they would end the special coddling." Her image raises a hand to curb his response. "Those who couldn't stand the new conditions would be free to leave. There's no lack of berths and homesites in L-5, on asteroids, throughout the Solar System. Rather, there's a huge need of able brains, and rich rewards waiting for them."

"Easy enough to say."

"You think of the average person, losing home and savings and hope? It doesn't have to be like that. Your League is not the only group trying to anticipate the future. Quiet discussions have been going on in rather high quarters. No specific arrangements yet— remember, these are not certainties, they are contingencies—but we want to be ready to meet them if they come."

Huizinga stares long at her image, as if it were a human face. "What have you in mind?" he asks finally.

"I can't go into details, because nothing's been decided so far, as hypothetical as it all is. But probably the basic principles will include—bueno, what would you say to a buy-out of everybody who wants to leave? No confiscations; fair market values paid for all property they don't take with them. Transport and assistance in relocation, retraining, whatever is called for."

He catches his breath.

She makes a smile for him. "It isn't due any goodness of heart in the Selenarchs," she explains.

"It's a cold-blooded calculation that something of the kind is considerably cheaper than fighting a war or containing a rebellious minority. Nor do you have to trust just them. Fireball can offer its own guarantee— as formidable, everywhere beyond Earth, as any by 478

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the Federation—and join in underwriting the project. Again, not altruism, though I hope you'll recognize a desire to give a helping hand. But avoiding a destructive conflict and gaining a considerable addition to the labor force makes economic sense, don't you agree?"

He sits a while longer before he stirs and asks slowly, "Can you promise this?"

"Obviously not, at present," she replies. "The single thing I can tell you with absolute confidence is that if you go ahead with your militia folly, the option will evaporate. I can promise you, however, that I will work for it, and Anson Guthrie will, and assorted others who're well placed to make it go, and that if you and your followers cooperate, the chances look pretty good."

"I must think," he mumbles, "and confer and—'*

"Do," she urges. "Don't publicize it, please. We're not keeping it a state secret, but we operate best without a spotlight on us; and remember, this is just planning for a situation that probably won't come about for quite a few years, and possibly never will. Even so, we'll want your input too. Let's meet again, you and I. Meanwhile, contact me anytime you want."

That is what she exists for.

They talk a little more, and go through formalities that are in themselves encouraging, and break circuit. She spends a while replaying the conversation, recorded with his knowledge, and thinking about it. Then she transmits it to Zamok Vysoki, requesting that Brandir call her back.

Expectant, he is quick to respond. Again there are formalities, though of another kind and character. He is not altogether sure how to address this that is not altogether his mother. She can take advantage of that. She needs every slight advantage she can find.

"What's the latest word from you and your fellows?" she asks. "Any prospect of compromise?"

His head, lean and dry after almost ninety years,

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shakes, an emphasizingly Earthlike gesture. "Nay, not in the ultimate, however much time may pass until then. While the Federation has power over us, it will never cease seeking to encroach," on the sovereignty of the seigneurs in those demesnes they have taken for their own. "Unless Luna gain full freedom, our people must perish," meaning his class. Not literal death; the end of their prideful ways, of the whole culture that is growing up around them, shaped by them. But Lunarians are human enough to value some things more than life. "What we spoke of was strengthening our coaction."

Unsurprised, she does not pursue this. "Bueno, you've now listened in on me and Huizinga. What about his bunch? Did I propose more than yours would go along with?"

"You proposed actually nothing," he reminds her. "But should the eventuality arrive, and Fireball stand by its pledges, yes, I deem the policy sound. Belike the Nationals will pose a thornier problem."

"We'll be working on that one too."

Fingers fan outward, a Lunarian shrug. "It presupposes that Earth will let us depart, peacefully or otherwise."

She doesn't bother to make her image register earnestness, but concentrates on her voice and words. "That will require all of us working for the same thing, and organized to do it. Especially you Selen-archs. Unless you've been at it top-secretly, you have not yet given real, hard thought to how you'd deal with the Federation."

"Peace and trade will gain it more and cost it less than any nominal military victory and aftermath."

"Yes, yes, everybody says that, also on Earth. But the stick by itself won't serve. You have to dangle the carrot as well. What specific offers would you be willing to make—grudgingly, no doubt, but willing?"

"You have thoughts," he foreknew.

"I and some others have been hatching a few. For

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instance, take the helium-3 extraction works. A government monopoly, and not any national government's, the Federation's. The stuff is that important to fusion power, to Earth as a whole.

You can't simply expropriate it if you don't have overwhelming force; and you won't. That would mean war for certain."

"Nay. They are not insane yonder. Export to Earth would continue, on terms to be negotiated."

"You don't grasp the psychology, Brandir. It isn't your psychology. Any Federation government that condoned your seizure would fall. They're in too much trouble already," what with after-effects of the Dieback, the Avantist movement, a widening and seemingly unbridgeable gap between high-tech and low-tech societies, upheavals everywhere around the planet. "They can't afford to look weak.

Furthermore, under those circumstances they'd have Fireball's support, at least to the extent of economic and transport sanctions against Luna. The company doesn't want chaos on Earth."

Brandir stiffens. "It is our regolith which they sift for atoms the solar wind laid there through billions of years. They have no more claim upon it than they do upon our freedom,"

Dagny manufactures a sigh. "I didn't expect you'd stoop to rhetoric. Come off it, son."

He waits, poised.

"The fact is," she declares, "your class doesn't figure it can pay compensation for the property and the rights."

He goes impassive. "To buy put the miscontent Terrans will be an amply heavy lift."

"You haven't got the cash, you mean. Okay, consider a swap. You have ships and robots in the asteroid belt, new and fairly small investments but that should be worth a whopping lot by the time negotiations for independence begin," if any such time is in the future. "Offer to turn over enough of that to be an acceptable exchange for the helium plants."

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He comes as near showing shock as memory can recall. "My lady, that would reduce Lunarian space trade to paltriness."

"You may find you haven't much choice, if you want your sovereign state," she replies. "You can build the fleet back up afterward. Or you can decide sovereignty's too expensive. This is only a suggestion of mine, but I hope it will start you and your fellows thinking.

"Hash it over with them. This isn't an immediate issue, after all. Between us, we might hammer out a better scheme. The point I'm making today is that you must, you must, make ready in your minds to bargain, and to give as well as get."

They touch on other aspects, rather cursorily, but lightning flashes are brief.

As he bids her a courtly adieu, he leaves off inquiring how she has fared personally. He would have asked his mother. She tells herself that it ought not to hurt. She is a download.

Alone, she reviews the daycycle. Much remains to be done, and events can always whip out of control; but it does appear that this latest potential for eruption can be safely drained off, and maybe even a little progress made toward a united Moon. That is the true goal. Without a commonalty, there can be no Lunar independence, probably no peace, possibly no survival.

37

JVlost of Vancouver Island was park. You had to wait your turn for camping, but day trips were unrestricted and Victoria offered visitors an abundance of services. The smaller businesses among these were accustomed to cash payments. In the-morning Kenmuir 482

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and Aleka would get a private, manned cab to Sprucetop Lodge in the mountains. From there it was a stiff day's hike down to the Fireball property, where the gate should recognize him and let them in.

First they would take a night's rest here. The risk seemed less than the need.

As they left the cafe where they had had dinner, light blazed off windows in the Parliament buildings. It was as if those stately museum pieces momentarily remembered how life once busied itself within them. The light streamed from a sun golden-hazed on the horizon, threw a glade across the bay, drenched lawns and flowerbeds, gilded the wings of two belated gulls asoar in silver-blue. A group of young people stood gathered on a dock. Song lifted, a guitar toned, otherwise the evening lay quiet and few folk moved along the streets. •'

"Beautiful," Aleka murmured.

"Yes." Kenmuir barred himself from calling it somehow sad. Was that only his mood?

"Like home," she said.

He arched his brows. "Really?"

"Oh, the country, the air, everything's different. What a wonderfully various planet this is, no?

But the peace and happiness, they're the same."

Which she hoped to preserve on Nauru. Could she? Even if this crazy gamble of theirs, incredibly, paid off, could she?

They started toward the house where they had engaged bed and breakfast. Perhaps that caused her to fall silent. They had agreed on the tubeway that it would be safest, minimally noticeable, to stay as companions. "I can mind my manners," he promised, feeling a flush in his cheeks. She nodded, smiled, and relieved him by saying no more.

Instead they had mostly talked of what was past and what might come to be. Bit by bit, shyly at first, later more freely, they grew well acquainted, and liked what they found.

They were walking along a tree-shaded boulevard,

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already in twilight, before she spoke further. "I want to show you my home."

"I'd love to see it," he answered. See it, and know it for doomed.

"This place reminds me so much," she repeated herself. "Not that I haven't been in others like it, in their particular ways. We do live in a golden age, almost."

Though he didn't want to argue, he was unable to let a misstatement go by. "May I point out that gold is solid and inert?"

She frowned. "You needn't. I've heard enough about how nothing ever really changes any more, how we're at the end of science and art and adventure."

"Aren't we?"

"Look around you." She stopped, which made him jerk to a halt, turned, and gestured back toward the water. How supple every movement was, he thought. "Those youngsters there, or those we saw leaving Winnipeg, or nearly any kids anywhere. To them, the world is new. Love and sport and Earth and Moon, all the great works, all the story of our race, it's theirs/'

"True," he must concede. "I'll never use up the facts in the databases. Or Shakespeare or Beethoven, 111 never discover everything that's in them. A lifetime's too short for it."

"Exactly."

"Nonetheless you're at odds with the system."

She stamped her foot. "How often will we go over this ground? Haven't we trampled it flat by now?*' She resumed walking, long strides. "I didn't claim things are perfect, or ever will be.

We'll always have to fight off entropy."

He'd clumsied again. Rather than apologize, which she'd told him he did too readily, he attempted a chuckle. "I didn't expect such a trope from you." She glanced at him. Her eyes lighted the dusk.

"Oh, you know your physics, but I think of you more in terms of sea and wind and—Yes, the universe does still hold plenty of surprises."

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She dropped whatever annoyance she had felt. Earnestness remained. "And we won't go static, either. Like my Lahui, why, they've got all sorts of evolving to do yet. I bet they'll become something nobody foresaw."

He knew he should mumble agreement and proceed to inconsequentials. He couldn't. Was that stubbornness, or was it respect for her intelligence? "Will it matter, though?"

"What do you mean?"

"The cybercosm tolerates us—"

"It helps us!" she exclaimed. "Without it, Earth would be ... a poisoned desert . . . and savages fighting for scraps."

"Maybe, Or maybe we would have solved our problems by ourselves." He raised a hand. "In any case, the situation is what it is. Very well, I grant you, the cybercosm is not unkindly. It serves us, you might even say it indulges us. The monsters, the genocide artists of history, those were human."

"And we're freed of their kind." . "To what end? To keep us contented, out from underfoot, while the cybercosm goes on to its destiny?"

"Which is?" she demanded.

"You've heard. It's been prophesied for centuries, since before artificial intelligence existed.

Mind, pure mind, taking over the universe."

"Do you mind?" Her laugh went sweet through the quietness. "Me, I'm not jealous. I just want my people to make their own future."

"But in that, aren't they constrained, guided, shaped to fit into limits set for them?"

She tossed her head. "I haven't noticed much constraint or guidance on me lately."

No, he thought. She was with him on a mission they did not understand. Lilisaire's cause, devious and dubious. Irony: It would deny a home in space to humans who shared his longings; it would confront and in some dark way endanger the order of things THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 485

that nurtured Aleka; yet still they waged their forlorn campaign.

Together.

The words flew out as if of themselves. "I don't believe anything short of reconditioning could compel you. I've never known anyone more independent."

She caught his hand. The clasp glowed. "Gracias. You're no auhaukapu either."

They stopped once more and faced one another. Briefly, marvelingly, he wondered how that had happened. It was at a deserted intersection. The sky had turned violet and the Moon, waxing toward the half, seemed brightened thereby. They did not let go their hold.

"How I want you to meet the Lahui," she said low. "I can imagine you joining us. We could use your skills and, and you."

He shook his bewildered head. "No, I'm too old, "too alloyed with my habits,"

Her teeth gleamed. "Nonsense! You outperform every young buck I can name. That time in Over-burg—"

"The fight? That was nothing." He forced honesty: "And, in a way, I brought it on."

"How?"

"Oh, I—I'd accepted Bruno's .. , hospitality, and he naturally expected—" Kenmuir choked.

"Maopopo ia'u," He heard the scorn. "I know. He figured me for property, like his women."

Trapped, he floundered about. "I, I didn't like it—didn't see how to say no, when he got insistent—"

"Why should I blame you?" she asked soothingly.

"But I think you should know—I'd like you to know—" He struggled. "When I was alone with her, I couldn't."

"Oh, Kenmuir,"

"The situation, and, and clearly she didn't care—I said I was very tired, and she yawned, and ...

we both went to sleep."

Aleka threw back her head. Her laughter rang.

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In Kenmuir, chagrin faded to ruefulness. His heart thuttered less loudly. After all, how important was this? Lilisaire. Meanwhile, he had—reassured?—his friend.

Aleka sobered. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be." He managed a smile. "It is rather funny."

She took his other hand as well and looked directly up at him. "You're a lovely man, you are. And we have no idea where we're bound. Most likely to failure. Maybe we'll go free, maybe not. But Pele grins."

He waited.

"We've got tonight," she said.

He woke once. An old-style window, open to cool air and a breeze that lulled in leaves, faced west. The Moon shone through. It barely brought from shadow the curves along shoulder and arm and cheek where she lay breathing close against his side. Happiness welled quietly up in him. For this short spell, the Moon was the home of peace.

38

The Mother of the Moon

A

They found Dagny Beynac on the north rim trail. She had left her car at the shelter and gone afoot, alone, in an hour when no one else was about. It was a fairly easy hike, which she had often made, even in recent years; but her heart was old—"paper-thin," she had said, as if she felt it flutter in a wind from outside space-time—and on the heights it failed her. Or perhaps it did not, some among the party thought. A biomonitor in her suit would have flashed an alarm,to bring the paramedics within minutes. They might have been able to restart her body. Although at her age self-clone transplants were not

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feasible, surrogates might have kept her alive in a maintenance unit for several more years. The team discovered that, without mentioning it, she had long since removed her monitor.

For an equally long while her habit of going topside by herself, leaving no word behind, had been the despair of her friends. When they protested, she reminded them cheerfully that she was rambling the Moon before they, and usually their parents, were born. This was her choice.

Certainly the last sight she saw had been magnificent. Here a crest ran along the top of the ringwall, high and narrow enough that to southward she spied the crater floor. That part was deeply shadowed, but the central peak thrust up. into light athwart ramparts visible above the opposite horizon. Closer by, a radio mast gleamed like a victorious lance. Northward the slopes flowed down with the gentleness of Lunar rock, sharp edges worn away by skyfall, in highlights and sable.. Beyond them the terrain was brighter than most, impact splash which farther onward fingered out in great rays. Mountains guarded that rim of vision. Radiance went in a tide from an Earth near the full, blue and white, the colors of sea and air, dappled with land. Elsewhere in the night burned a few brightest stars. It was the dwelling place of silence.

When her absence raised fears, the Tychopolis constabulary ordered a satellite scan. Lunarian legislators had bargained to get a law that that was done at such resolution only in emergencies.

Beynac had supported them, making tart remarks about privacy. Opticals picked out the huddled shape almost at once and a squad hastened to it; but that was hours after the death.

Luna mourned. On Earth, every Fireball flag went to half-staff.

The news triggered various programs she had prepared. Most of them concerned just the tidying up of affairs. Half a dozen were messages, each personally 488 POUL ANDERSON

encrypted for the recipient. One went to Lars Rydberg on Vancouver Island.

Dearest Lars,

When this reaches you I shall be gone. Farewell, fare always well, you and yours whom I have loved.

Maybe we will have been together again after the date above. Probably we'll at least have talked by phone, as good as you are about calling. When last we did, your reserve broke down a little and you said the transmission lag, which otherwise you shrug off, felt like a small bleeding. You hurried on to something else, and I waited to cry till we were done. Yes, every time of late we have known we might not get another time. We haven't voiced it—why should we?— but months ago I noticed, a bit surprised, that my "hasta la vista" to you had become "vaya con Dios." Go with God, Now you will weep. I hope you don't keep solitary, but let Ulla comfort you. It is a gift you can give her, you know. Sten, Olaf, Linnea, Anson, William, Lucia, Runa, their spouses and children and children's children, no, I cannot find words for them except, "How blessed I have been. Thank you, thank you."

That is true, darling. My life was a glorious adventure. Remember me, miss me, but never pity me.

There have been things I would change if I could. Of course. Above all, I would have had my Edmond and my Kaino live out their days. But the joy that was ours did not die in me; and what wonders became mine! I not only saw a dead world bloom to life and a new race arise, I helped bring it about, I helped lead us toward liberty, and meanwhile humans went to the ends of the sun's kingdom and I was warmed by undeservedly much love. I will not let these riches go from me in dribs and drabs, among

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machines and chemicals, the eyes kept open while the brain behind them shrivels. No, I will live on, gladly, till I can no longer live free. Then, the medical data give reason to hope, I shall depart quickly and cleanly and altogether ready.

Afterward—I don't suppose "afterward" means anything in this case. "Go with God" is a wish that you go in safety and happiness, no more. Maybe I'm wrong. It would be a new adventure to find out!

Regardless, nobody ever quite leaves the living universe. What we have done travels on and on, we cannot tell how far, before it's lost in the cosmic noise. Closer to hand, duties remain to carry out, decencies to respect, mercies to grant.

And so I appeal to you, my Earth-son. You will understand what my dear Moon-children cannot. You, who have become a power within mighty Fireball, yet are wholly human, can do what neither Anson Guthrie nor any Selenarch is quite able to.

Oh, you will keep your troth. You will stay Guthrie's man as you promised long ago. I ask just that you set aside whatever weariness of age is on you and volunteer to him your services in the cause of Lunar peace.

You have the insights, the connections, the experience, everything I showed you and confided in you and got you involved with. No, you will not be the never-existent indispensable man. But you can play a very large—and very quiet; I know you—role in the coming years. It will be hard, thankless, often maddening, possibly catastrophic, but it will better the odds, and what more can we mortals do?

Herewith is a file, which I keep updated. It summarizes the situation, the factors I believe are important, and any recommendations that occur to me. You will see that much of this is confidential. I trust you. I trust you also

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to study it. Then, if you agree you can make a difference, you will go to Guthrie. And God go with you.

What else? They talk of building a great tomb for my ashes, come the day. I thought of asking you to intervene as best you can, try to have them scattered where Edmond's lie. But no, Verdea is passionate about what this would mean to everybody. If they really want it, let them. It won't matter to me. Save your efforts for the living and the not yet born.

What does matter, though—be kind to my download.

I think that's all. As you in your heart bid me goodnight, wish the children, from me, a good morning.

Your Mother

39

JVenmuir drew to attention. "Hola, seftor," he greeted. Aleka crossed hands on breasts and bowed.

The woman who had escorted them from the gate saluted.

The huge old man in the huge old room looked up from his hearthside chair. Lighting was turned low and the fire cast flickers over him. Its crackle mingled with an undertone of music—a contemporary piece that Kenmuir recognized, Nomura's "Symphonic Variations on Sibelius's 'Swan of Tuonela.'" As somber in the dimness were the portraits that stared from their frames. Through the windows he saw the long Northern dusk deepening into night.

"So you're back, lan Kenmuir," Matthias rumbled.

"Yes, sir," the pilot said. "May I introduce Aleka THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE491

Kame?" He could never think of her by the Anglo version of her name.

"Bienvenida, senorita."

"Gracias," she replied uncertainly. "You are very kind to receive us like this, on no notice, senor."

"Kenmuir called troth when you arrived. Besides, I'm ... curious."

"We have more to tell than a peculiar story, sir," Kenmuir said.

The Rydberg nodded. "That's plain to see."

"We need to speak with you in privacy."

"Equally obvious. Sit." Matthias gestured. Kenmuir and Aleka went to get chairs. Meanwhile Matthias addressed their escort: "Did you hear, Gould? Seal of secrecy. I want you to inform the staff, each individual person in the house and on the grounds." He described their whereabouts.

Aleka took the opportunity to whisper to Kenmuir, "Will that work?"

"Yes. Troth," he answered, not quite so shyly. "But for my part—I can't lie to him, you know."

"Why should you?"

"Nor expect him—nor ask him—to act against his judgment of what's best for all the Fireball consortes."

"Or for all living things. I understand."

They brought their chairs back to face the lodgemaster's carven seat. As he sat down, Kenmuir felt how weary he was. It was a physical tiredness, though, warm and loose-boned. This day's tramp, along upland greenwood trails to the sea had been as heartening as the half-sorrowful bliss last night. Aleka, beside him, took his hand.

Gould departed. "Ease off," Matthias said to Aleka. "Nothing that anybody here sees or hears will go past these bounds without my leave." Her grip tightened before she let go.

"Not that we'll expose them to more than necessary," Matthias continued. "But we do want service."

He touched a button on the arm of his chair. "You two 492

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must be exhausted, and hungry as black holes. Wouldn't you like to eat first, rest, sleep?"

"I don't believe I could, sefior," Aleka replied.

Kenmuir nodded agreement. "Maybe coffee and a bite of something, if the Rydberg pleases."

"I thought so," Matthias said. A boy entered. "What'll you have, Srta. Kame?"

Aleka smiled. "Bueno, if I might ask for a protein cake and a beer> that'd be wonderful." She was indeed a lusty sort, Kenmuir thought. Before him rose memory of their noontide pause at a spring.

She splashed him, laughing, and when she kissed him the water dewed her lips, and she was firm and bouncy and her sweat smelled sweet. Matthias chuckled and gave the order. The attendant left.

Matthias leaned back, bridged his fingers, and inquired in a matter-of-fact voice, "Where did you come from today? Sprucetop? ... Yes, that seemed likely. Covering your tracks." "It's a long story, sir," Kenmuir said. "And we ourselves don't know the half of it," Aleka added. "Not yet, anyhow."

"I suspect there are those who don't want you to," Matthias replied. "Go on, then, talk, at your own

pace."

They began, haltingly at first, breaking when the boy returned. Aleka attacked her beer with unabashed enthusiasm, and thereafter spoke in lively wise of her background and part. Kenmuir did most of the relating. Matthias kept throwing questions at them, like missiles. Once he said:

"An officer of theirs was here about a week ago. He wanted to know about you, Captain Kenmuir. I was not cooperative. Pragmatic Venator, he called himself."

"Pele!" Aleka gasped. She sat bolt upright. "The same who—"

When he had heard, Matthias scowled into the fire and directed the scuttler robot to poke it up and throw

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on another log. The flames snapped loud now that the music was ended. "Ar-r-rh," he growled. "This is a crisis matter."

"But why?" she protested. "We've tried and tried, lan and I, and we can't guess what's wrong."

"Go on," he ordered.

They did.

"—and so we came here," Kenmuir finished.

"Why?" Matthias asked.

"Where else? A few friends, like Sam Packer, might help us hide for a little bit longer, but what use?"

From beneath shaggy brows, eyes took aim and held steady. "Whereas you imagine Fireball, in my person, can arm you for this quixotry whose very meaning you don't know? Whatever gave you such an idea?"

Kenmuir sighed. "Desperation."

"And I had nothing better to suggest," Aleka said tonelessly.

His weariness began to ache in Kenmuir, "We realize it's all but hopeless. Still, Fireball is worldwide, even if our consortes aren't many, and—"

The Rydberg lifted a finger. "And you'd call on it to aid this Lunarian bitch who wants to keep our kind out of space?"

"No, sir, no. She only wants to save her society."

"Her society. Precisely. She, among the handful who own it."

"That isn't true, sir. Not that simple or, or anything—" Kenmuir's words died away. He sagged back in his chair.

Aleka stayed defiant. "It isn't, sefior. I don't know much about Lunarians, but I do know what it means to see your whole life go under. There are my people."

The massive head nodded. "There are, lass," Matthias said, gone gentle. "They're strangers to me, but I'm not forgetting them."

"We're not actually appealing to you, sir," Kenmuir said. "I wouldn't want the Trothdom to risk itself."

"That is a factor in the equation, aye."

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"And what could Fireball do, anyhow? Nothing, probably. Maybe help us two out of the worst consequences of our folly. Aleka, at least. She's innocent."

The woman stiffened. "Like fury I am!" she cried.

Did Matthias smile, very faintly, or was it a trick of light weaving over the furrows of his face?

"Don't jump to conclusions," he said. "They're apt to stand on slippery ground." Kenmuir knew it for a Guthrie quotation, and opened his mouth. "Silence."

For a span, only the fire talked, while. Matthias brooded and night gathered outside.

The old man said at last, perhaps to himself, like remote thunder: "Proserpina, the lost—Kaino, son of Dagny Beynac—Yes, surely she—"

He was still again, for a minute or three that grew long, before he turned his gaze on the visitors and spoke aloud:

"One indisputable fact in all this fog. The Federation government has systematically, for lifetimes, concealed potentially important data. It's bending every effort to maintain that concealment. No reason given, no justification. Clean against the Covenant." He looked away, out the window into the darkness. "What else is hidden? My whole life, I've felt the walls closing in."

He fell silent anew. Kenmuir's flagging pulse picked up till it hammered in his skull.

Matthias hunched his heavy shoulders. "I have to think about this. Think hard. Not much sleep for me tonight. But you two, you need your rest."

"Oh, senor—" Aleka breathed.

Matthias pressed the button. "You will take your rest," he commanded. "Whatever I decide, I want you fit for action. Trouble me no further." The attendant came in. "Berghall, see to this pair.

Bath, clean clothes, good supper, quarters."

The boy stood erect. "Senor." Pride shone from him.

"Go," Matthias said. "We'll meet in the morning."

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In a room upstairs where relics of ancient farings—a spaceship model, a glittery Moon rock, a view of the first human camp ever on Mars, a faded photograph of Anson Guthrie with his wife and children—rested like dreams come to harbor, two people could find their way to a renewed inner peace.

Nevertheless, as he was dropping off to sleep, Kenmuir wondered what thought of Dagny Beynac had been in the Rydberg. It was as if, at just that instant, the deep voice had stumbled.

40

The Mother of the Moon

While the hours become daycycles, tension mounts. Sometimes Dagny can snatch an interlude of the low-level activity that is a downlead's equivalent of sleep, but it is brief and always she is roused from it by the next upward ratcheting of the crisis.

Nominally she is no more than a member of the Provisional Trust, which has a doubtful standing. It is not the home rule government that, legally, should speak for Luna. It is a group that the legislature in Tsukimachi has called into existence and charged with negotiations. She had much to do with maneuvering enough deputies into voting for it, and with persuading Qovernor General Haugen that his veto would bring the open breach he fears.

In effect, the Trust has become the Lunar government, for it includes the Selenarchs who scornfully ignored a congress now impotent and irrelevant. True, representatives come also from the cities, the major industries and professions, the Terrans who want to stay on the Moon whatever happens. But all desire full independence. To that end, when they see fit they issue decrees which local magistrates put into action.

The power is sharply limited. Luna is still subject to the World Federation. Peace Authority forces have

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been redoubled. If any significant international statute is violated, the governor is to order the Trust dissolved and proclaim martial law.

Dagny is a delegate at large, chosen by the others and taking her seat at their urgent request. It has become she whose word is most heeded by them, who composes their differences for them, and who oftenest speaks on behalf of them. More than once, this has been directly to Federation President Daniel Janvier in Hiroshima. Such mana does the Beynac name have. It may be even stronger in the download than it was in the living woman. A robotic presence can seem impersonal, impartial. And underneath, does there go a dark mythic shiver ... at the voice from beyond the grave, the oracular hero?

Politics on Earth gropes and fumbles. The Lunar question can no longer wait. Unrest, agitation, riots and boycotts and subtler seditions, rumors of forbidden weapons secretly manufactured, hitches in production and trade, warnings from Fireball that worse will probably befall, have thrust aside matters that hitherto seemed closer to home. In the night sky the full Moon hangs like a bomb. Janvier summons a special session of the High Council and Assembly.

Debate drags and lurches. The North Americans and Russians, especially, abhor the precedent; if common heritage is ended on Luna, when then of the whole Solar System? The Chinese and Australians deem the principle obsolete. The Indonesians recall forebears who freed themselves from colonial masters. The Siberians feel that their own example is more apposite. Oratory burgeons like fungus.

The president and some of the parliamentarians strive to keep proceedings on course.

For humanity in general, everyday life goes on. The download has none, nor time for it.

The measures take form. They reach the floor. Autonomy passes. Luna shall be recognized as a Federation member after a democratic constitution with proper safeguards has been drafted, approved,

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and ratified. Across Earth, banners fly and crowds cheer.

The Provisional Trust rejects the program.

It insists on total independence, absolute sovereignty. It will honor the pledges made in a statement of position issued last year: property settlements, emigration assistance, trade and arms control treaties. But this shall be voluntary. Luna shall have complete freedom to make its future as it will.

Dagny knew this would be the response. She forewarned Janvier. He replied that he must do what he could with what he had. Now he denounces the refusal. -However, he does not declare the Trust disbanded. He promises to try persuasion. He and Dagny understand that this is a token. "I wish it weren't," she says to him on the encrypted laser. "I'd infinitely prefer a republic. But that is not suited for Lunarians, and they are my people."

Indignation seethes on Earth. Terrans riot on the^ Moon. Constabulary and Peace Authority have their hands full, restoring and enforcing order.

The High Council of the World Federation directs the president to call up the Authority reserves.

Several governments offer to reinforce these, if necessary, with men and materiel from their national militias.

Communications fly across space. Astromonitors observe and report a score of ships returning sunward from the asteroid belt. Upon inquiry, they identify themselves as the law requires: Lunarian-owned freighters for the mining and extraction operations that a few magnates conduct yonder. These enterprises are petty compared to, say, Fireball's or Maharashtra's; but the vessels are big and nuclear-engined.

"They cannot be .coming back simultaneously by coincidence!" exclaims Janvier.

Transmission lag.

"No," agrees download Dagny Beynac, "but as long as they follow safe traffic patterns, they are not obliged to give reasons. I've asked, and received no answer 498

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except that this is private business. It may be a precautionary move of some kind. I suggest you underplay, or you could have mass hysteria on top of your other problems."

Transmission lag,

"That may not be avoidable," he says grimly.

The ships do not take Lunar orbit, as they would if shuttles were to bring their cargoes down.