Starplex

“But no one could possibly still care about what she did after all this time. And—and I need her. She’s an important part of my staff. And she’s my friend.”

Keith spread his arms. “What would you have me do?”

“Talk to her. Tell her she doesn’t have to go through with this.”

Keith scratched his left ear. “All right,” he said, at last. “All right.”

Rissa smiled at him. “Thank you. I’m sure she’ll—”

The intercom chimed. “Colorosso to Lansing,” said a woman’s voice. Franca Coloresso was the delta-shift InOps officer.

Keith tipped his head up. “Open. Keith here. What is it, Franca?”

“A watson has come through from Tau Ceti, with a news report I think you should see. It’s old news, in a way—sent from Sol to Tau Ceti by hyperspace radio sixteen days ago. As soon as Grand Central received it, they relayed it to us.”

“Thanks. Pipe it down to my wall monitor, please.”

“Doing so. Close.”

Keith and Rissa both turned to face the wall. It was the BBC World Service, being read by an East Indian man with steel-gray hair. “Tensions,” he said, “continue between two of the Commonwealth governments. On one side: the United Nations of Sol, Epsilon Indi, and Tau Ceti. On the other, the Royal Government of Rehbollo. Rumors of further deterioration in the situation were fueled today by the terse announcement that Rehbollo is closing three more embassies—New York, Paris, and Tokyo. Coupled with the four other closings a week ago, this leaves only the Ottawa and Brussels embassies open in all of Sol system. The consular staffs from the embassies closed today have already departed on Waldahud starships for the Tau Ceti shortcut.”

The view cut to a beefy Waldahud face. The super at the bottom of the screen identified him as Plenipotentiary Daht Lasko em-Wooth. He spoke in English, without aid of a translator—a rare feat for a member of his race. “It’s with great regret that economic necessity has forced us into this move. As you know, the economies of all the Commonwealth races have been thrown into disarray by the unexpected development of interstellar commerce. Reducing the number of our embassies on Earth simply represents an adjustment to the times.”

The screen changed to show a middle-aged African woman, identified as Rita Negesh, Earth-Wald Political Scientist, Leeds University. “I don’t buy that—not for a minute,” she said. “If you ask me, Rehbollo is recalling its ambassadors.”

“As a prelude to what?” asked an off-camera male voice.

Negesh spread her arms. “Look, when humanity first moved out into space, all the pundits said the universe is so big and so bountiful, there was no possibility of material conflict between separate worlds. But the shortcut network changed all that; it forced us up close with other races, perhaps before we or they were ready.”

“And so?” said the unseen questioner again.

“And so,” said Negesh, “if we are moving toward an… an incident, it may not just be over economic issues. It may be something more basic—the simple fact that humans and Waldahudin get on each others’ nerves.”

The wall monitor changed back to the hologram of Lake Louise. Keith looked at Rissa, and let out a long sigh. “An ‘incident,’ ” he said, repeating the word. “Well, at least we’re both too old to be drafted.”

Rissa looked at him for a long moment. “I think that makes no difference,” she said, at last. “I think we’re already at the front lines.”

Chapter XIV

Keith always enjoyed taking an elevator to the docking bays. The car dropped down to deck thirty-one, the uppermost of the ten decks that made up the central disk. It then began a horizontal journey along one of the four spokes that radiated out from there to the outer edge of the disk. But the spokes were transparent, as were the elevator cab’s walls and floors, and so the passengers were treated to a view looking down on the vast circular ocean. Keith could see the dorsal fins of three dolphins swimming along just below the surface. Agitators in the ocean walls and central shaft produced respectable half-meter waves; dolphins preferred that to a calm sea. The radius of the ocean deck was ninety-five meters; Keith was always staggered by the amount of water contained there. The roof was a real-time hologram of Earth’s sky, with towering white clouds moving against a background of that special shade of blue that always tugged at Keith’s heart.

The elevator finally reached the edge of the ocean and passed through into the prosaic tunnels of the engineering torus. Once it came to the outer edge of the torus, it descended the nine levels to the floor of the docking bays. Keith disembarked, and walked the short distance to the entrance to bay nine. As soon as he entered, he saw Hek, the symbolic-communications specialist, and a slim human named Shahinshah Azmi, the head of the material-sciences department. Between them was a black cube measuring a meter on a side. The cube was resting on a pedestal that brought it up to eye level. Keith walked over to them.