Spinneret

"Yeah." Almost reluctantly, she thought, he unfolded his napkin. "I wish I'd had a bottle of wine to bring, but I don't have friends in high places like you do."

"Except Gorgon's Heads."

He smiled wryly. "And with friends like them—" Shaking his head, he dug into his food.

"Rough day, I gather?" Carmen asked, pouring them each some water.

"More just dead-dull boring," he shrugged. "I'm not even doing anything aside from sitting there keeping the Gorgon's Heads quiet—it's everybody else that's photographing the control labels and computer-coding everything in sight. I never before realized how tiring it gets sitting around doing nothing."

"You can leave other people alone once they're in the tower, though, can't you?"

"Everywhere except the main control room. The top floor, I should say; we haven't actually proved it's the control room yet." He waved his fork. "But even in the other rooms no one can get to the stairs or elevators without one of us five escorting them. And heaven help anyone who tries leaving the tower itself.

Davidson tried it once and nearly got strangled by one of those tentacles."

"Ouch. I don't suppose there's any way to persuade that guard circle to go patrol the village or something."

"I'm sure there is—just as I'm sure there's a way to induct more people into the Grand Order of Den Mothers, as Al Nichols calls it. We just haven't found it yet."

"Mm." Carmen shook her head. "I still don't understand exactly why you five were able to get special status but nobody else can. It seems—well, sort of capricious."

"Not really." Hafner finished off his lasagna and helped himself to another spatulaful. "Actually, if Perez's theory is right, the Gorgon's Head system is being quite self-consistent. The five of us had made it to the control room without being challenged by either one of their own units or by anything else, so as far as the Gorgon's Heads were concerned we must have been supervisors and had to be recorded as such. But now that they've set up a cordon around the tower nobody else can get up there alone, and so no one else gets to be a supervisor."

"Leaving you five as rotating tour guides." The entire setup still seemed pretty bizarre, but if she worked hard at it she could believe it made sense. The Spi

"Actually, we're more like three to three and a half," he said. 'Colonel Meredith hardly ever comes by, and Perez and Major Barner together don't pull much more than a single shift. It almost makes me wish I hadn't supported the whole Council idea way back when—at least then Perez wouldn't always be pulling 'official business' on us and ducking out."

"If there weren't any Council, Perez wouldn't have been there in the first place,"

Carmen pointed out. "It would've just been the other four of you."

"Plus thirty soldiers, if I hadn't gotten all righteous about that," he grumbled.

"Someday maybe I'll learn to keep my mouth shut."

They ate in silence for a few minutes. The dining nook window faced west, and through it she could see that the lights of the admin complex were still ablaze.

Finishing up the details on our trade proposals? she wondered. Or still trying to figure out how to code the Spi

"Pe

She focused on Hafner again. "Sorry—just thinking about all the work we have to do to make Astra economically stable." She sighed. "And so much of it depends on how fast we can learn to control the Spi

Hafner pursed his lips and looked out the window himself. "Carmen … what are the races out there pla

She frowned. "No, not really."

"It's not an idle question," he went on, almost as if he hadn't heard her. "The Spi

"Any number of things," she shrugged. "We've worked up a three-page list of possibilities ourselves, and we don't know half of what there is to know about the cable yet."

He shook his head. "You're missing my point. The buildings down there—the whole Spi

Why on Earth would any culture make something that lasts that long?"

She started to speak, then paused. It wasn't a trivial question. "Maybe they were building the ultimate city back on their home world or something. Maybe a tomb or memorial, like the pyramids or the Taj Mahal."

"Or maybe a cage for something very big and long-lived," he said quietly. "That's one of the possibilities that keep occurring to me."

She grimaced. "That one I'd rather not think about. Maybe— well, maybe they just lived a lot longer than we do. In terms of lifetimes, then, the cable may not seem exceptionally durable."

"Maybe." Hafner leaned back in his chair. "That list you mentioned—any overtly military uses on it?"

"I—" She frowned. "Now that you mention it, no, there aren't."

"The colonel's playing it cool," Hafner nodded heavily. "But I doubt that it's doing any good. None of the races out there are dumb enough or naive enough to have missed the warfare possibilities."

She nodded silently. It was a topic she and Meredith had never discussed openly, but from the very begi

"It could still foul up the political balance, though, maybe in more subtle ways,"

Hafner said. "Suppose one of the empires out there is having internal dissent, a problem maybe that the central government could quickly crush with a cablewrapped spaceship. That would free the government's resources and attention to be turned to its neighbors."

"What would you have us do, then?" Carmen growled, knowing full well that he wasn't attacking her personally, but still feeling compelled to defend her project.

"Turn Astra over to the UN? Or pull out entirely and let the Rooshrike have it?

Either way, the cable's going to be made and used by someone. The genie's out, Peter; you can't stuff it back in its bottle."

He held up his hands, palms outward. "Peace. I wasn't picking on you or your work—and as far as genies go, I did my fair share to pop the cork. I just … that's the other possibility that keeps coming back to me. Maybe the Spi

She shuddered. "You would bring that up, wouldn't you?"

"Sorry." He shook his head. "Look, let's get off the whole subject, okay? I didn't bring any wine, but I did bring some music. Why don't you put it on while I clear the table, and then you can pick up the story of your life again. I think we'd made it through high school last time."