He turned his head to grin briefly at Jean. "I think Jerry made my point."

Pernak remained unsmiling, "What about that ship sitting twenty thousand miles out in s.p.a.ce?" he said.

Before Bernard could reply. Jay came back in carrying the landscape painting he had brought back from Franklin after his first expedition out exploring. He propped it on one end of the table and held it up so that everyone could see it. "Do you notice anything unusual about that?" he asked them.

Pernak and Jean looked at each other, puzzled. Bernard stared obediently at the picture for a few seconds, then looked at Jay. "It looks like a nicely done painting of mountains," he said. "Is this supposed to have something to do with what we're talking about?"

Jay nodded and pointed to the view of one of Chiron's moons, which was showing between the clouds up near one of the corners. "That's Remus," he said. "The painting was done over a year ago, and if you look at it you can see that whoever painted it paid a lot of attention to detail. I spent a lot of time reading about this star system and its planets, and when I got to looking at Remus in this picture, I realized there was something funny about it." Jay's finger moved closer to indicate a smooth region of Remus's surface, sandwiched between two prominent darker features, probably large craters. "I was sure that in the most recent pictures I'd looked at from the Chironian databank, those two craters are connected by another one, where this unbroken area is a big one, several hundred miles across. When I checked, I found I was right-there's a huge crater right here, and it wasn't there a year ago."

Bernard frowned as the implication of what Jay was suggesting sank in. "Did you ask Jeeves about it?"

he inquired.

"Yes, I did. Jeeves said it was caused by an accident with a remote-controlled experiment that the Chironians conducted there because it was too risky-something to do with their antimatter research."

Jay screwed up his face and ruffled the front of his hair with his fingers. "But that's the kind of thing you'd expect somebody to say, isn't it?, and Chironians don't make a lot of mistakes." He looked around the circle of appalled faces staring back at him. "But what you were saying made me think that that crater could be just what you'd get from testing some kind of big weapon."

Bernard, Pernak, and Jean stared at the picture for a long time. Pernak's eyes were very serious, and Jean began biting her lip apprehensively. At last Bernard nodded and looked at the other two. "Okay, I'm with you," he told them. "Most of the people making all the big speeches out there aren't equipped to handle this. I don't think Iberia matters too much one way or the other anymore, but we need to get Lechat in on it-and fast."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

THE FIRST BOMB exploded in the center of Canaveral City in the early hours of the morning, causing serious damage to the maglev terminal where the spur line into the shuttle base joined the main through-route from Franklin out to the Peninsula. Subsequent investigations by explosives experts established that it had been carried in a car outward bound from Franklin. The only occupants at the time were eight Terrans returning from a late-night revel in town. They were killed instantly.

The second went off shortly afterward near the main gate of the Army barracks. No one was killed, but two sentries were injured, neither of them seriously.

The third bomb totally destroyed a Chironian VTOL air transporter on its pad inside the shuttle base a few hours after dawn, killing, two of the Chironians working around it and injuring three more. Although the craft itself had been empty, it was to have taken off within the hour to fly a party of fifty-two Terran officials, technical specialists, and military officers on a visit to a Chironian s.p.a.cecraft research and manufacturing establishment five hundred miles inland across Occidena.

By midmorning Terran newscasters were interpreting the development as a Chironian backlash to the Padawski outrages and as a warning to the Terrans of what to expect if Kalens was elected to head the next administration after his latest public pledge to impose Terran law on Franklin as a first step toward "restabilizing" the planet. Interviews in which Chironians denied, dispa.s.sionately and without embellishment, that they had had anything to do with the incidents were given scant coverage. Reactions among the Terrans were mixed. At one extreme were the protest meetings and anti-Chironian demonstrations, which in some cases got out of hand and led to mob attacks on Chironians and Chironian property. At the other, a group of two hundred Terrans who believed the bombings to have been the work of the Terran anti-Chironian extremists announced that they were leaving en ma.s.se and had to be stopped by a cordon of troops. Before they could disperse they were attacked by an inflamed group of anti-Chironians, and in the ensuing brawl the Chironians looked on as impa.s.sive spectators while Terrans battled Terrans, and Terran troops in riot gear tried to separate them.

In a hastily convened meeting of the Congress, Howard Kalens again denounced Wellesley's policy of "scandalous appeas.e.m.e.nt to what we at last see exposed as terrorist anarchy and gangsterism" and demanded that a state of emergency be declared. In a stormy debate Wellesley stood firm by his insistence that alarming though the events were, they did not const.i.tute a general threat comparable to the in-flight hazards that the emergency proviso had been intended to cover; they did not warrant resorting to such an extreme, But Wellesley had to do something to satisfy the clamor from all sides for measures to protect the Terrans down on the surface.

Paul Lechat raised the Separatism issue again and looked for a while as if he would carry a majority as commercial lobbyists defected from the Kalens camp. But the timing of the moment was not in Lechat's favor, and Borftein torpedoed the motion fresh off the launching ramp with a scathing depiction of them all allowing themselves to be chased off across the planet like beggars from somebody's back door.

Ramisson, who had been heading the movement for un.o.bstructed integration into the Chironian system, lodged a plea for restraint, but it was obvious that he knew the mood was against him and he was speaking more to satisfy the expectations of his followers than from any conviction that he might influence anything. The a.s.sembly listened dutifully and took no notice.

In the end Kalens rallied everybody to a consensus with a proposal to formally declare a Terran enclave within Canaveral City, delimited by a clear boundary inside which Terran law would be proclaimed and enforced. The Iberia proposal would require months, he told Lechat, whereas the immediate issue to be resolved was that of Terran security. In any case, it could hardly be carried out without an electoral mandate. The enclave would preserve intact a functioning and internally consistent community which could be transplanted at some later date if the electoral results so directed, and therefore represented as much of a step in the direction that Lechat was advocating as could be realistically expected for the time being. Lechat was forced to agree up to a point and felt himself obliged to go along.

Kalens had evidently been working on the details for some time. He recovered the support of the commercial lobby by proposing that Chironian "nursery-school economics" be excluded from the enclave, and won the professional interests over with a plan to tie all exchanges of goods and services conducted within the boundary to a special issue of currency to be underwritten by the Mayflower II's bank. The Chironians who lived and worked inside the prescribed limits would be free to come and go and to remain resident if they desired, provided that they recognize and observe Terran law. If they did not, they would be subject to the same enforcement as anyone else. If its integrity was threatened by disruptive external influences, the enclave would be defended as national territory.

Wellesley was uneasy about giving his a.s.sent but found himself in a difficult position. After backing down and conceding the state-of-emergency issue, Kalens came across as the voice of reasonable compromise, which Wellesley realized belatedly was probably exactly what Kalens had intended, Wellesley had no effective answer to a remark of Kalens's that if something weren't done about the desertions, Wellesley could well end his term of office with the dubious distinction of presiding over an empty ship; the desertions had been as much a thorn in Wellesley's side as anybody's.

That touched at what was really at the bottom of it all. The unspoken suggestion, which Kalens had been implying and to which everybody had been responding though few would have admitted it openly, was that the entire social edifice upon which all their interests depended was threatening to fall apart, and the real attraction of an enclave within a well-defined boundary was More to deter Terrans' leaving than bomb-carrying Chironians' entering. Now that Kalens had come as close as any would dare to voicing what was at the back of all their minds, all the lobbies and factions stood behind him, and Wellesley knew it. If Wellesley opposed, he stood to be voted out of office. So, he concurred, and the resolution was pa.s.sed all but unanimously.

Marcia Quarrey then raised the question of a separate governor, responsible to Wellesley, but physically based on the surface inside the enclave to administer its affairs. Perhaps the division of authority between the members of the Directorate sitting twenty thousand miles away in the ship had contributed to the difficulties experienced since planetfall, she suggested, and delegating it to one person who had the advantages of being on the spot would remedy a lot of defects. Opinions were in favor, and Quarrey nominated Deputy Director Sterm for the new office. Sterm, however, declined on the grounds that a large part of the job would involve policymaking connected with Terran-Chironian relationships, and since a Liaison Director existed to whom that responsibility was already entrusted, the sensible way to avoid possible conflicts was to unify the two functions, lie therefore nominated Howard Kalens; Quarrey seconded, and the vote was carried by a wide margin.

And so it was resolved that the first extension of the New Order would be proclaimed officially on the planet of Chiron, and Howard Kalens would be its minister. He had gained the first toehold of his empire.

"It's the beginning," he told Celia later that night. "Ten years from now it will have become the capital of a whole world. With a whole army behind me, what can a rabble of ruffians with handguns do to stop me now?"

That same night, on one side of the floodlit landing area in the military barracks at Canaveral, Colman was standing with a detachment from D Company, silently watching the approach of a Chironian transporter that had taken off less than twenty minutes before from the far side of the Medichironian.

Sirocco stood next to him, and General Portney, Colonel Wesserman and several aides were a.s.sembled in a group a few yards ahead.

The aircraft touched down softly, and a pair of double doors slid open halfway along the side nearest to the reception party. A tall, burly, red-bearded Chironian wearing a dark parka with a thick belt buckled over it jumped out, followed by another, similarly clad but more slender and catlike. More figures became visible inside when the cabin light came on. Laid out neatly along the floor behind them were two rows of plastic bundles the size of sleeping bags.

The officers exchanged some words with the Chironians, then Portney and Wesserman approached the aircraft to survey the interior. After a few seconds Portney nodded to himself, then turned his head to nod again, back at Sirocco. Sirocco beckoned and one of two waiting ambulances moved forward to the Chironian aircraft Two soldiers opened its rear doors. Four others climbed inside the aircraft and began moving bodies. As each body bag was brought out, Sirocco turned the top back briefly while an aide compared the face to pictures on a compack screen and another checked dogtag numbers against a list he was holding, after which the corpse was transferred to the ambulance.

Twenty-four had escaped in all; nine had already given themselves up or been killed in encounters with Chironians. Anita had not been among them. Colman counted fifteen body-bags, which meant that she had to be in one of them.

After watching the macabre ritual for several minutes, he turned to study the red-bearded Chironian, who was standing impa.s.sively almost beside him. He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but his face had the lines of an older man and looked weathered and ruddy, even in the pale light of the floodlights. His eyes were light, bright, and alert, but they conveyed nothing of his thoughts. "How did it happen?" Colman murmured in a low voice, moving a pace nearer.

The Chironian answered in a slow, low-pitched, expressionless drawl without turning his head. "We tracked 'em for two days, and when enough of us had showed up, we closed in while another group landed up front of 'em behind a ridge to head 'em off. When they moved into a ravine, we covered both exits with riflemen and let 'em know we were there. Gave 'em every chance, said if they came on out quiet, all we'd do was turn 'em in." The Chironian inclined his head briefly and sighed. "Guess some people never learn when to quit,"

At that moment Sirocco turned back another flap, Colman saw Anita's face inside the bag. It was white, like marble, and waxy. He swallowed and stared woodenly. The Chironian's eyes flickered briefly across his face. "Someone you knew?"

Colman nodded tightly. "A while back now, but..."

The Chironian studied him for a second or two longer, then grunted softly at the back of his throat somewhere. "We didn't do that," he said. "After we told 'em they were cooped up, some of 'em started shooting. Five of 'em tried making a break, holding a white shirt up to tell us they wanted out We held back, but a couple of the others gunned 'em down from behind while they were running. She was one of those five." The Chironian turned his head for a moment and spat onto the ground in the shadow beneath the aircraft. "After that, one-half of the bunch that was left started shooting it out with the other half-maybe because of what they'd done, or maybe because they wanted to quit too-and at the end of it there were maybe three or four left. We hadn't done a thing. Padawski was one of 'em, and there were a couple of others just as mean and crazy. Didn't leave us with too much of a problem."

Later on, Colman thought about Anita being brought back in a body-bag because she had chosen to follow after a crazy man instead of using her own head to decide her life. The Chironians didn't watch their children being brought home in body-bags, he reflected; they didn't teach them that it was n.o.ble to die for obstinate old men who would never have to face a gun, or send them away to be slaughtered by the thousands defending other people's obsessions. The Chironians didn't fight that way.

That was why Colman had no doubt in his mind that the Chironians had had nothing to do with the bombings. He had talked to Kath, and she had a.s.sured him no Chironians would have been involved. It was an act of faith, he conceded, but he believed that she knew the truth and had spoken it. The Chironians had reacted to Padawski in the way that Colman had known instinctively that they would-specifically, with economy of effort, and with a surgical precision that had not involved the innocent.

For that was how they fought. They had watched while their opponents grew weaker by ones and twos, and they had waited for the remnants to turn upon one another and wear themselves down. Then the Chironians had moved.

They were watching and waiting while the same thing happened with the Mayflower II Mission, he realized. When and how would they move? And, he wondered, when they did, which side would he be on?

CHAPTER.

TWENTY-SEVEN.

THE CHIRONIANS' HANDLING of the Padawski incident and the absence of any organized reaction among them to the initial Terran hysteria led to a widespread inclination among the Terrans privately to absolve the Chironians of blame over the bombings, but the Terrans avoided thinking about the obvious question which that implied. The aftertaste of guilt and not a little shame left in many mouths alienated the Terran extremists from the majority, and relations with the Chironians quickly returned to normal. Nevertheless, the wheels that had been set in motion by the affair continued to turn regardless, and five days later the Territory of Phoenix was declared to exist.

Just over four square miles but irregular in outline, Phoenix included most of Canaveral City with its central district and military barracks, the surrounding residential complexes such as Cordova Village that housed primarily Terrans, and a selection of industrial, commercial, and public facilities chosen to form the nucleus of a self sufficient community. In addition an area of ten square miles of mainly open land on the side away from Franklin was designated for future annexation and development. Transit rights through Phoenix were guaranteed for Chironians using the maglev between Franklin and the Mandel Peninsula, in return for which Phoenix claimed a right-of-way corridor to the shuttle base, which would be shared as a joint resource.

Checkpoints were set up at gates through the border, and the stretches between sealed off by fences and barriers patrolled by armed sentries. Terran laws were proclaimed to be in force within, and the unauthorized carrying of weapons was prohibited, all permanent residents were required to register; all persons duly registered and above voting age were ent.i.tled to partic.i.p.ate in the democratic process, thus conferring upon the Chironians the right to choose the leaders they didn't want, and an obligation to accept the ones they ended up with anyway.

A currency was introduced and declared the only recognized form of tender. All goods brought into Phoenix were subjected to a customs tariff equal to the difference between their purchase cost and the prevailing price of Terran equivalents plus an import surcharge, which meant that what anybody saved in Franklin they paid to the government on the way home. Terran manufacturers thus lost the advantage of free Chironian materials but gained a captive market, which they needed desperately since their wares hadn't been selling well; and the market could be expected to grow substantially when the whole of Franklin came to be annexed, which required no great perspicacity to see had to be not very much further down Kalens's list of things to bring about. The Terran contractors and professionals were less fortunate and raised a howl of protest as Chironians continued cheerfully to fix showers, teach cla.s.ses, and polish teeth for nothing, and an additional bill had to be rushed through making it illegal for anyone to give his services away. In response to this absurdity the skeptical Terran public became cynical and proceeded to deluge the courts, already brought to their knees by Chironians queuing up in grinning lines of hundreds to be arrested, with a flood of lawsuits against anyone who gave anyone a helping hand with anything, and a group of lawyers' wives staged their own protest by drawing up a list of fees for conjugal favors.

Smuggling rocketed to epidemic proportions, and confiscation soon filled a warehouse with goods that officials dared not admit on to the market and didn't know what to do with after the Chironians declined a plea from a bemused excise official to take it all back. The Chironians outside Phoenix continued to satisfy every order or request for anything readily; Terran builders who had commenced work on a new residential complex were found to be using Chironian labor with no references appearing in their books; every business became convinced that its compet.i.tors were cheating, and before long every session of both houses of Congress had degenerated into a bedlam of accusations and counteraccusations of illegal profiteering, back-door dealing, scabbing, and every form of skullduggery imaginable.

Cynicism soon turned to rebellion as more of the Terran population came to perceive Phoenix not as a protective enclave, but at worst a prison and at best a self-proclaimed lunatic asylum. Apartment units were found deserted and more faces vanished as expeditions to Franklin came increasingly to be one-way trips. Pa.s.sports were issued and Terran travel restricted while all Chironians were allowed through the checkpoints freely by guards who had no way of knowing which were residents and which were not since none of them had registered. The sentries no longer cared all that much anyway; their looking the other way became chronic and more and more of them were found not to be at their posts when their relief showed up. An order was posted a.s.signing at least one SD to every guard detail. The effectiveness of this measure was reduced to a large degree by a network of willing Chironians which materialized overnight to a.s.sist Terrans in evading their own guards.

Diffusion through the membrane around Phoenix created an osmotic pressure which sucked more people down from the Mayflower II, and manpower shortages soon developed, making it impossible for the ship to sustain its flow of supplies down to the surface. The embarra.s.sed officials in Phoenix were forced to turn to the Chironians for food and other essentials, which they insisted on paying for even though they knew that no reciprocal currency arrangements existed. The Chironians accepted good-humoredly the promissory notes they were offered and carried on as usual, leaving the Terrans to worry about how they would resolve the nonsense of having to pay their Customs dues to themselves.

n.o.body talked any more about annexing Franklin. Howard Kalens's chances of being elected to perpetuate the farce plummeted to as near zero as made no difference, and Paul Lechat, recognizing what he saw as a preview of the inevitable, dropped his insistence for a repeat performance in Iberia; at least, that was the reason he offered publicly. Ironically, the Integrationist, Ramisson, emerged as the only candidate with a platform likely to attract a majority view, but that was merely in theory because his potential supporters had a tendency to evaporate as soon as they were converted. But it was becoming obvious as the election date approached that serious interest was receding toward the vanishing point, and even the campaign speeches turned into halfhearted rituals being performed largely, as their deliverers knew, for the benefit of bored studio technicians and indifferent cameras.

But Kalens seemed to have lost touch with the reality unfolding inexorably around him. He continued to exhort his nonexistent legions pa.s.sionately to a final supreme effort, to give promises and pledges to an audience that wasn't listening, and to paint grandiose pictures of the glorious civilization that they would build together. He had chosen as his official residence a large and imposing building in the center of Phoenix that had previously been used as a museum of art and had it decorated as a miniature palace, in which he proceeded to install himself with his wife, his treasures, and a domestic staff of Chironian natives who followed his directions obligingly, but with an air of amus.e.m.e.nt to which he remained totally blind. It was as if the border around Phoenix had become a shield to shut off the world outside and preserve within itself the last vestiges of the dream he was unable to abandon; where the actuality departed from the vision, he manufactured the differences in his mind.

He still retained some staunch adherents, mainly among those who had nowhere else to turn and had drawn together for protection: Among them were a sizable segment of the commercial and financial fraternity who were unable to come to terms with an acceptance that their way of life was finished; the Mayflower II's bishop, presiding over a flock of faithful who recoiled from abandoning themselves to the evil ways of Chiron; many from every sector of society whose natures would keep them hanging on to the end regardless. Above all there remained Borftein, who had nowhere else to attach a loyalty that his life had made compulsive. Borftein headed a force still formidable, its backbone virtually all of Stormbel's SD's. Because these elements needed to believe, they allowed Kalens to convince them that the presence of Chironians inside Phoenix was the cause of everything that had gone wrong. If the Chironians were ejected from the organism, health would be restored, the absented Terrans would return, normality would reign and prosper, and the road to perfecting the dream would be free and un.o.bstructed.

A Tenure of Landholdings Act was pa.s.sed, declaring that all property rights were transferred to the civil administration and that legally recognized deeds of t.i.tle for existing and prospective holdings could be purchased at market rates for Terrans and in exchange for nominal fees for officially registered Chironian residents, a concession which was felt essential for palatability. Employment by Terran enterprises would enable the Chironians to earn the currency to pay for the deeds to their homes that the government now said it owned and was willing to sell back to them, but they had grounds for grat.i.tude-it was said-in being exempt from paying the prices that newly arrived Terrans would have to raise mortgages to meet.

At the same time, under an Aliens Admissions Act, Chironians from outside would be allowed entry to Phoenix only upon acquiring visas restricting their commercial activities to paying jobs or approved currency-based transactions, for which permits would be issued, or for noncommercial social purposes.

Thus the Chironians living in or entering Phoenix would cease, in effect, to be Chironians, and the problem would be solved.

Violators of visa privileges would face permanent exclusion. Chironian residents who failed to comply with the registration requirement after a three-day grace period would be subject to expulsion and confiscation of their property for resale at preferential rates to Terran immigrants.

Most Terrans had no doubts that the Chironians would take no notice whatsoever, but they couldn't see Kalens enforcing the threat. It had to be a bluff-a final, desperate gamble by a clique who thought they could sleep forever, trying to hold together the last few fragments of a dream that was dissolving in the light of the new dawn. "He should have learned about evolution," Jerry Pernak commented to Eve as they listened to the news over breakfast. "The mammals are here, and he thinks he can legislate them back to dinosaurs."

Bernard Fallows leaned alongside the sliding gla.s.s door in the living room and stared out at the lawn behind the apartment while he wondered to himself when he would be free to begin his new career at Port Norday. He had broached the subject to Kath, as he now knew she had guessed he would, and she had told him simply that the people there who had met him were looking forward to working with him.

But he had agreed with Pernak and Lechat that a nucleus of people capable of taking rational control of events would have to remain available until the last possibility of extreme threats to the Chironians went away, and that Ramisson's Integrationist platform, to which Lechat had now allied himself, needed support to allow the old order to extinguish itself via its own processes.

Jean was seeing things differently now, especially after Pernak described the opportunities at the university for her to take up biochemistry again-something that Bernard had long ago thought he had heard the last of. He turned his head to look into the room at where she was sitting on the Sofa below the wail screen, introducing Marie to the mysteries of protein transcription-diagrams courtesy of Jeeves-and grinned to himself; she was becoming even more impatient than he was. Some days had pa.s.sed since he told her he was in touch with Colman again and that before the travel restrictions were tightened, Colman had often accompanied Jay on visits to their friends among the Chironians in Franklin, to which Jean had replied that it would do Jay good, and she wanted to meet the Chironians herself.

Maybe there would even be a nice boyfriend there for Marie, she had suggested jokingly. "A nice one,"

she had added in response to Bernard's astonished look. "Not one of those teenage Casanovas they've got running around. The line stays right there."

Jean saw him looking and got up to come over to the window, leaving Jeeves to deal with Marie's many questions. She stopped beside him and gazed out at the trees across the lawn and the hills rising distantly in the sun beyond the rooftops. "It's going to be such a beautiful world," she said. "I'm not sure I can stand much more of this waiting around. Surely it has to be as good as over."

Bernard looked out again and shook his head. "Not until that ship up there is disarmed somehow." After a pause he turned to face her again. "So it doesn't scare you anymore, huh?"

"I don't think it ever did. What I was afraid of was in my own head. None of it was out there." She took in the sight of her husband-his arms tanned and strong against the white of the casual shirt that he was wearing, his face younger, more at ease, but more self-a.s.sured than she could remember seeing for a long time-propped loosely but confidently against the frame of the door, and she smiled. "Kalens may have to hide himself away in a sh.e.l.l," she said. "I don't need mine anymore."

"SO you're happy you can handle it," Bernard said.

"We can handle anything that comes," she told him.

CHAPTER.

TWENTY-EIGHT.

CELIA KALENS STRAIGHTENED the kimono-styled black-silk top over her gold lame evening dress, then sat back while a white-jacketed steward cleared the dinner dishes from the table. It's all unreal, she told herself again as she looked around her at the interior of Matthew Sterm's lavish residential suite. Its preponderance of brown leather, polished wood with dull metal, s.h.a.g rugs, and restrained colors combined with the shelves of bound volumes visible in the study to project an atmosphere of distinguished masculine opulence. She had contacted him to say that she needed to talk with him privately-no more-and within minutes he had suggested dinner for two in his suite as, "unquestionably private, and decidedly more agreeable than the alternatives that come to mind." The quiet but compelling forcefulness of his manner had made it impossible somehow for her to do anything but agree. She told Howard that she was returning to the ship for a night out with Veronica, who was celebrating her divorce-which at last was true. Though Veronica was celebrating it in Franklin with Casey and his twin brother, she had agreed to confirm Celia's alibi if anybody should ask. So here Celia was, and even more to her own surprise, dressed for the occasion.

Sterm, in a maroon dinner jacket and black tie, watched her silently through impenetrable, liquid-brown eyes while the steward filled two brandy gla.s.ses, set them alongside the decanter on a low table, then departed with his trolley. Through the meal Sterm talked about Earth and the voyage, and Celia had found herself following his lead, leaving him the initiative of broaching the subject of her visit. Finally, he stood, came around the table, and moved her chair back for her to rise. She experienced again the fleeting sensation that she was a puppet dancing to Sterm's ch.o.r.eography. She watched herself as he ushered her to an armchair and handed her a gla.s.s. Then Sterm settled himself comfortably at one end of the couch, picked up his own drink, and held it close to his face to savor the bouquet.

"To your approval, I trust," he said. Celia had suggested a cognac earlier on, when Sterm had asked her preference for an after dinner liqueur.

She took a sip. It was smooth, warm, and mellowing. "It's excellent," she replied.

"I keep a small stock reserved," Sterm informed her. "It is from Earth-the Grande Champagne region of the Charante. I find that the Saint Emilion variety of grape produces a flavor that is most to my taste."

His precise French p.r.o.nunciations and his slow, deliberate speech with its crisp articulation of consonants were strangely fascinating.

"The white makes the best brandies, I believe," Celia said. "And isn't the amount of limestone in the soil very important?"

The eyebrows of Sterm's regal, Roman-emperor's face raised themselves in approval. "I see the subject is not unfamiliar to you. My compliments. Regrettably, rareness of quality is not confined to grapes."

Celia smiled over her gla.s.s. "Thank you. It's rare to find such appreciation."

Sterm studied the amber liquid for a few seconds while he swirled it slowly around in his gla.s.s, and then looked up. "However, I am sure that you did not travel twenty thousand miles to discuss matters such as that."

Celia set her gla.s.s on the table and found that she needed a moment to reorient her thoughts, even though she had known this was coming. "I'm concerned over this latest threat to evict Chironians from Phoenix. It's not the bluff that many people think. Howard is serious."

Sterm did not appear surprised. "They have merely to comply with the law to avoid such consequences,"

"Everyone knows they won't. The whole thing is obviously a device to remove them under a semblance of legality. It's a thinly disguised deportation order."

Sterm shrugged. "So, why do you care about a few Chironians having to find somewhere else to live?

They have an entire planet, most of which is empty. They will hardly starve."

It wasn't quite the answer that Celia had been prepared for. She frowned for a second, then reached for her gla.s.s. "The reaction that it might provoke worries me. So far the Chironians have been playing along, but n.o.body has tried to throw them out of their homes before. We've already seen examples of how they do not to hesitate to react violently."

"That frightens you?"

"Shouldn't it?"

"Hardly. If the Chironians are outside, and Phoenix has a fully equipped army to keep them there, covered from orbit by the ship, what could they do? Leaving them where they are would const.i.tute a greater risk by far, I would have thought."