Nemesis

4. Father

Odd - or perhaps stupid - that she was still capable of hurting herself unbearably with thoughts of that kind after fourteen years.

Crile was 1.8 meters tall where, on Rotor, the average height for men was a bit under 1.7 meters. That alone (as in the case of Janus Pitt) gave him a commanding aura of strength that persisted well after the time when she came to recognize, without ever quite admitting it to herself, that she could not rely on his strength.

He had a craggy face, too; a prominent nose and cheekbones, a strong chin - a look, somehow, of hunger and wildness. Everything about him spoke of strong masculinity. She could almost smell it when she met him, and was struck with fascination at once.

Insigna was still a graduate student in astronomy at the time, completing her stint on Earth, looking forward to returning to Rotor so that she could qualify for work on the Far Probe. She dreamed of the wide advances the Far Probe would make possible (and never dreamed that she herself would make the most astonishing one).

And then she met Crile and found herself, to her own confusion, madly in love with an Earthman - an Earthman . Overnight she felt herself abandoning the Far Probe in her mind, becoming ready to remain on Earth just to be with him.

She could still remember the way he had looked at her in astonishment and said, ‘Remain here with me? I'd rather come to Rotor with you.’ She could not have imagined that he would want to abandon his world for her . How Crile managed to obtain permission to come to Rotor, Insigna did not know and had never found out.

The immigration rules were strict, after all. Once any Settlement had a sizable population, it clamped down on immigration - first, because it could not exceed a certain definite limit on the number of people it could support comfortably, and, second, because it made a desperate effort to keep its ecological balance stable. People who came on important business from Earth - or even from other Settlements - had to undergo tedious decontamination procedures, a certain degree of isolation, and an enforced departure as soon as possible.

Yet here was Crile from Earth. He complained to her once of the weeks of waiting that had been part of the decontamination, and she was secretly pleased at the way he had persisted. Clearly, he must have wanted her very badly to submit to it.

Yet there were times when he seemed withdrawn and inattentive and she would wonder then what had really driven him to Rotor over such obstacles. Perhaps it was not she, but the need to escape Earth that had been the motivating force. Had he committed a crime? Made a murderous enemy? Fled a woman he had grown tired of? She had never dared ask.

And he had never offered information. Even after he had been allowed to enter Rotor, there was a question as to how long he might be able to remain. The Bureau of Immigration would have to grant a special permit to make him a full citizen of Rotor and that was not ordinarily likely.

Insigna had found all the things that made Crile Fisher unacceptable to Rotorians additional inducements for fascination. She found that his being Earth-born lent him a difference and a glamour. True Rotorians would be bound to despise him as an alien - citizen or not - but she found even that a source of erotic excitement. She would fight for him, and triumph, against a hostile world.

When he tried to find some sort of work that would enable him to earn money and occupy a niche in the new society, it was she who pointed out to him that if he married a Rotorian woman - Rotorian for three generations - that would be a powerful inducement for the Bureau of Immigration to grant him full citizenship.

Crile seemed surprised at that, as though it hadn't occurred to him, and then pleased. Insigna had found it a little disappointing. It would be much more flattering to be married for the sake of love than for the sake of citizenship, but then she thought to herself: Well, if that's what it takes-

So, after a typical long Rotorian engagement, they were married.

Life went on without much change. He was not a passionate lover, but he had not been that before the marriage either. He had offered her an absent affection, an occasional warmth that kept her constantly near happiness if not altogether immersed in it. He was never actively cruel and unkind, and he had given up his world for her and gone through considerable inconvenience to be with her. Surely that might be counted in his favor, and Insigna counted it so.

Even as a full citizen, which he had been granted after their marriage, there remained a kernel of dissatisfaction within him. Insigna was aware of this and could not entirely blame him. He might be a full citizen, yet he was still not a native-born Rotorian and many of the most interesting activities on Rotor were closed to him. She did not know what his training had been, for he never mentioned how much of an education he had had. He didn't sound uneducated, and there was no disgrace in being self-educated, but Insigna knew that on Earth the population did not take higher education as a given, the way that Settlement populations did.

The thought bothered her. She didn't mind Crile Fisher being an Earthman and facing down her friends and colleagues where that was concerned. She didn't know, though, if she could quite handle his being an uneducated Earthman.

But no-one ever suggested he was, and he listened to the tales of her work on the Far Probe with patience. She never tested his education by discussing the technical details, of course. Yet sometimes he asked questions or made comments that reflected on such things and she valued them, when they came, for she always managed to convince herself that they were intelligent questions and comments.

Fisher had a job on one of the farms, a perfectly respectable job, even an essential one, but a job that was not high on the social scale. He did not complain or make a fuss about that - she'd give him that - but he never talked about it, or showed any pleasure in it. And there was always that air of discontent about him.

Insigna learned, therefore, to attempt no cheery ‘And what happened to you at work today, Crile?’

The few times she had asked, just at first, the answer had been a flat ‘Nothing much.’ And that would be all, except for a short a

Eventually, she grew nervous about talking to him even of petty office politics and a

Insigna had to admit that her fears went against the evidence there, an example of her own insecurity rather than his. Fisher didn't show signs of impatience when she did find herself forced to discuss the day's work. Sometimes he even asked, with a pallid interest, about hyper-assistance, but Insigna knew little or nothing about that.

He was interested in Rotorian politics and showed an Earthman's impatience with the smallness of its concerns. She fought with herself not to show displeasure at that.

Eventually, there fell a silence between them, broken only by indifferent discussions concerning the films they had viewed, the social engagements they undertook, the small change of life.

It didn't lead to active unhappiness. Cake had quickly changed to white bread, but there were worse things than white bread.

It even had a small advantage. Working under tight security meant talking to no-one about one's work, but how many managed to whisper partial confidences to wife or husband? Insigna had not done so, for she had little in the way of temptation, since her own work required little in the way of security.

But when her discovery of the Neighbor Star was suddenly placed under tight wraps, without warning, could she have managed? Surely it would have been the natural thing to do - to tell her husband of the great discovery that was bound to put her name into the astronomy texts for as long as humanity existed. She might have told him even before she told Pitt. She might have come bouncing in: ‘Guess what! Guess what! You'll never guess-’

But she hadn't. It didn't occur to her that Fisher would be interested. He might talk to others about their work, even to farmers or sheet-metal workers, but not to her.

So it was no effort to mention nothing to him of Nemesis. The matter was dead between them, was not missed, did not exist, until that dreadful day when their marriage came to an end.

When did she move over wholeheartedly to Pitt's side?

At the start, Insigna had been horrified at the thought of keeping the Neighbor Star a secret, profoundly uneasy at the prospect of moving away out of the Solar System to a destination concerning which they knew nothing but the location. She found it ethically wrong and indecently dishonorable to set about building a new civilization by stealth, one which excluded all the rest of humanity.

She had given in on the grounds of Settlement security, but she had intended to fight Pitt privately, to bring up points of argument. She had rehearsed them in her own mind till they were foolproof and irrefutable and then, somehow, she never presented them.

Always - always - he took the initiative.

Pitt said to her, early on, ‘Now remember, Eugenia, you discovered the companion star more or less by accident, and one of your colleagues may do so as well.’

‘It's not likely-’ she began.

‘No, Eugenia, we're not going to depend on unlikelihood. We're going to make certain. You're going to see to it that no-one looks in that direction, that no-one wants to study the particular computer sheets that would give away the location of Nemesis.’

‘How can I possibly do that?’

‘Very easily. I have spoken to the Commissioner and, as of now, you are in complete charge of the Far Probe research.’

‘But that would mean I've been moved over the head-’

‘Yes. It means an advance in responsibility, in pay, in social stature. To which of these do you object?’

‘I don't object to any of this,’ said Insigna, her heart begi

‘I'm sure you can fulfill the job of Chief Astronomer more than adequately, but your chief aim will be to see to it that the work done can be of the highest quality and significance, provided that what is done has nothing to do with Nemesis.’

‘But, Janus, you can't keep it completely secret for ever.’

‘I don't intend to. Once we move out of the Solar System, we will all know where we're going. Till then, as few as possible will know, and those few will learn as late as possible.’