A chill passed over Althea as Douglas Kramnik's openly hostile gaze arrowed directly to her husband. "Excuse me, Mr. Forrestal?"

"You didn't call this meeting to discuss anything," Martin said. His words echoed ringingly from the Spacehawk battery's wall. "You called it to form a State."

Gasps went up from several points in the crowd. Martin released Althea and mounted the podium. Kramnik glared at him in undisguised fury.

"Hello, everyone," Martin said. "For those of you who haven't met me yet, I'm Martin Forrestal. I married into Clan Morelon about three years ago. I've been fixing broken things for the residents of Jacksonville ever since. The lab Doug Kramnik has a problem with will be my lab. Mine and my wife Althea's. We're the targets of this little sally into statism, and we've decided that we're not going to take it lying down."

"Oh?" Douglas Kramnik drawled derisively. "What do you plan to do about it?"

Martin turned toward the Kramnik patriarch with a theater-quality show of incredulity.

"Exactly what I'm doing now, Doug. I'm exposing it for what it is: a play for power, and a quest for vengeance against my wife for turning down your son Bart's marriage suit and marrying me instead."

Kramnik's face reddened. Murmurs swept across the crowd.

"But I'm not going to stop there," Martin said. He turned back to the throng. "Someone-anyone who's opposed to the lab and hopes to stop it, step forward and tell us all why, please." He smirked. "Preferably someone not from Clan Kramnik."

The crowd rustled for a moment as a woman of middle years made her way to the edge of the podium. She looked up at Martin as if she'd rather not have come forward, but had been driven by conviction, though possibly not her own.

"Step up here next to me, Madam," Martin said. He offered her a hand up, which she took, and stood beside him facing the crowd. "I don't believe we've met before. What's your name, please?"

"Marilyn Shuster."

"Your landhold is about half a mile to the east, isn't it?"

She nodded.

"Would you tell us, please, what it is about our proposed lab that has you worried or offended?"

Althea marveled at the gentleness of her husband's voice and manner. He was putting forth all his powers, not to persuade or dissuade, but to welcome the Shuster woman and to put her at ease, that she might speak her mind unafraid for the consequences. She was responding visibly and positively, unafraid to speak her mind to Martin despite his great size and obvious, passionate commitment to the very thing she feared.

Douglas Kramnik had edged toward the side of the podium. He seemed to be fading into irrelevance.

"Well," Shuster said, "Mr. Kramnik told us there might be effluents. Runoff from your experiments with fuels. Stuff that could get into the groundwater and harm the kids."

Martin nodded. "I see. That would be pretty serious. I wouldn't like it much myself, even though I don't yet have any kids. But what if it weren't true?"

"Well," Shuster said, "what about the noise?"

"From engine testing, you mean?" Martin said.

Shuster nodded.

"We're planning to put up baffles that will dampen that to a tolerable level," Martin said. "The lab will be so far from any other landhold that no one is likely to hear anything. That's one of the reasons we selected that particular plot." He turned toward the larger crowd. "But isn't that sort of thing what nuisance-abatement suits are for?"

A second murmur swept over the crowd. Douglas Kramnik stepped forward to confront Martin.

"You're asking these people to take it on faith that your lab won't do any of the things they fear." Kramnik smirked and folded his arms over his chest. "But you can't guarantee that; you can only make soothing noises. If you leak hydrazines into the groundwater and these people start getting sick, or their youngest children wither and die, a verdict in a damage suit won't be much consolation."

"Oh, how true, how very true," Martin said. "But tell us, Doug: do you guarantee that none of the various buildings in the Kramnik compound will emit toxic wastes?"

Kramnik was nonplussed. "Why should we have to do any such thing? It's a residential compound!"

"But we have only your word for that, Doug," Martin said unctuously. "Privacy rights are taken seriously around here. No one can force entry to your lands to observe your doings for himself. So we have to take the innocence of what happens there on faith, don't we?"

"There's a difference," Kramnik ground out. "You've announced your intentions. You included them in the statement you filed at Jacksonville Surety."

Martin nodded. "Exactly. And as a result, the emissions from our lab will be far more closely watched and assessed than the ones from your compound. Because our neighbors will want to assure themselves of our good behavior. But that's all the protection against noxious pollution anyone on Hope has ever had: the willingness to watch, and to stay alert."

A wide grin spread across Althea's face. She barely restrained the impulse to applaud.

Martin turned toward the crowd once more. "But protecting ourselves against toxic wastes isn't what's really going on here. What Doug Kramnik is trying is to establish a precedent for the pre-indemnified use of force: the defining privilege of a State. Madam Shuster, tell me, please: if the community were to forbid us to build our lab where we've sited it, but we were to proceed anyway, what do you think would be the next step?"

"Well," she said, "I suppose we'd try to stop you."

Martin assumed his most benevolent expression. "How?"

She looked away.

"That's the problem, isn't it?" Martin said. "It would be a very ugly business, especially if we were to resist. And Clan Morelon is quite large, too, so the outcome wouldn't be guaranteed. But just for the sake of argument, let's stipulate that the opponents of the lab would prevail, maybe even without bloodshed. What would that imply, for anything anyone might want to try, for the rest of time?"

The crowd was so silent that Althea fancied she could discern individual heartbeats.

"Now for the good part," Martin boomed. "You don't have a thing to worry about, because Althea and I have decided that the lab will not be built on our parcel to the north. You see, we don't want to upset anyone, especially neighbors we've come to know and value. So, since there's obviously so much concern over our lab, we're going to move it to where you won't have to worry about it at all."

"Where?" came a voice from the crowd.

Martin shook his head. "You don't need to know."

"Yes we do!" the same voice called out.

"Well," Martin said, "you'll find out in good time." His visage hardened. "When we build it, and not a moment before.

"Oh, there's something else you ought to know," he said. "The lab site will include a ground-to-orbit launching device: a mass driver. It will make it possible not just to put packages into orbit, but also to hurl them to other points on the surface of Hope. Of course, the receiving stations will have to be specially built to accept incoming ballistic objects without damage to them or to it, but that's a separate issue. Once such stations are built, the driver will permit its neighbors to export their goods to points all over Hope, without requiring trucks, barges, or aircraft. The impact on local commerce should be substantial."

He smiled ruefully. "What a pity the lab won't be built here, eh?"

As the crowd digested the news, Martin stepped down from the podium. Douglas Kramnik gaped open-mouthed at his back.

"So what now?" Althea said.

Martin squeezed her hand as they came out of the tree-shrouded path and turned toward the great oaken doors to Morelon House. "Whatever you like, love. A little dinner and some music in the hearthroom, maybe?"

"C'mon!"

He chuckled. "Now we wait."

"For what?"

He grinned impishly down at her as he pulled the door open and gestured her through. "For the bribes, of course. Our neighbors are now dealing with a bit of guilt over almost having been suckered into permitting a State, and some freshly planted covetousness over the mass driver. I give them till Randsday before they send us a delegation to 'discuss' the lab project and what we might need for it."

I married a conniver.

They made their way to the kitchen, where Dorothy Morelon and Cecile Dunbarton were hard at work over the dishes. Dorothy looked back over her shoulder and smiled.

"We put warmers in the small oven for you."

"Thanks, Dot," Althea said. "What is it tonight?"

"Just roast chicken, squash, and rice."

"Good enough." Althea waved Martin to his usual place at the table, fetched the warmers from the small oven and utensils from the drying rack, and presented her husband with his evening meal. As usual, he folded his hands and bowed his head.

"Lord," he murmured, "thank you for this day, for its blessings and its challenges, and for your sustenance through its trials. May we always be grateful for your many gifts. Amen." He raised his head, smiled at her, and picked up his fork.

Some day I really have to quiz him about all that.

Althea regarded her plate. It was Charisse's typically uninspired fare. The chicken had been roasted to desiccation and the squash was practically liquefied, but there was nothing lethal about it.

It'll keep life in the body, anyway.

-Don't count on that over the long haul, Al.

(humor) Knock it off, Grandpere. Charisse's cooking didn't seem to hurt you. You certainly ate your quota of it.

-Humbly, dear. Resignedly, even. Never joyfully. How did the community gathering come off?

Martin took them by surprise. He threw a mixed message at them: one-third personal affront, one-third moral indignation, and one-third commercial appeal. He actually expects the neighbors to try to bribe us to build the lab here.

-Smart fellow. Always appeal to the other person's self-interest, including his investment in his concept of himself.

Hm?

-I'm fairly sure the worthy residents of Jacksonville environs don't want to be thought of as willing statists, Al. At least, the ones I knew wouldn't have liked it.

Oh. Good point. Martin mentioned Bart Kramnik's marriage suit, too.

-Even better, for you. Become an instrument of revenge for a declined marriage proposal? Unthinkable!

Yeah. And as Martin said, now we wait.

"Al?"

"Hm?" She looked up from her plate. "What, love?"

"Is everything all right? You're not eating."

"Oh. Sorry, I was just thinking about tonight." She glanced around the kitchen. Dorothy and Cecile had completed their labors and departed. She spooned up a large bite of squash, swished it around in her mouth, and swallowed resolutely. "No need to worry, there's nothing wrong with me. Dinner, though..."

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "We're supposed to be grateful for the fruits of others' labors, love. Especially the ones we benefit from." He returned to his chicken.

"Oh, I am, I am. But..."

"Hm?"

"The mass driver?"

That got his full attention. "What about it?"

"I can have it up and running in about three months."

"What?"

She grinned and pushed her plate away. "Probably less. The old-style propulsion system assumed impulse and power limitations we won't suffer from, and as long as we'll be its sole users, I can employ a design tailored to our needs alone. Actually," she said, "I've planned to do it that way from the first."

He peered at he, perplexed. "You never said anything."

She smirked. "You never asked."

"When do I get to see this radical new design?"

She frowned. "What makes you think it's all that radical?"

"First," he said, "because you haven't said anything about it until just now. Second, because I know the technology-possibly just as well as you-and putting a heavy-load mass driver together in two years was my optimistic estimate. Third, because I married a genius, I knew it from the day we met, and I've been waiting for you to demonstrate it for three years now."

"What," she growled, "turning five million dekas into just over two hundred million in barely sixteen years, all by my lonesome, wasn't enough of a demonstration?"

He chuckled. "That was just the first taste. I knew more was coming." He reached across the table and took her hands. "Quintember the tenth is going into my journal as your birthday."

"But-"

"Your other birthday. So," he said with a squeeze of her fingers, "when and where do we start?"

She shrugged. "I have a couple of deals yet to strike, so it might be a week or two more. As for where..." She hunched as if to hide her naughty smile. "Does Thule sound good to you?"

All expression departed Martin's face.

"You are a genius," he breathed. "No neighbors, copious solid and liquid resources, accessible only by long-range aircraft. Couldn't be more private-or better protected from meddlesome schmucks-if you put it on the Relic. Wait, where's the power to come from?"

"That's one of the deals I have to strike." She released his hands and sat back. "But don't neglect the reverse of the coin: the degree of privacy equals the degree of isolation. Once we're up there..."

"I know," he said. "Like Jesus in the desert."

"Hm?"

"Never mind." Martin relaxed visibly. "It will be rugged, and lonely, and brutally cold about nine months out of the year-good cooling for the capacitor banks-and after a month we'll have calluses on our calluses-probably be sick of the sight of one another, too-and I can't wait."