Nemesis

25. Surface

Eugenia Insigna was apprehensive. More than that.

‘I tell you, Siever, I haven't had a good night's sleep since you took her out in the aircraft.’ Her voice degenerated into what, in a woman of less firm character, might almost have been described as a whine. ‘Wasn't the flight through air - off to the ocean and back, and coming back after nightfall, too - wasn't that enough for her? Why don't you stop her?’

‘Why don't I stop her?’ said Siever Genarr slowly, as though he were tasting the question. ‘Why don't I stop her ? Eugenia, we have gotten past the stage of being able to stop Marlene.’

‘That's ridiculous, Siever. It's almost cowardly. You're hiding behind her, pretending she's all-powerful.’

‘Isn't she? You're her mother. Order her to stay in the Dome.’

Insigna's lips compressed. ‘She's fifteen. I don't like to be tyra

‘On the contrary. You would love to be tyra

Insigna frowned. ‘Siever, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I don't feel any such thing, and couldn't possibly.’

‘Of course you don't. I was just making something up. But Marlene won't be. She'll know, from the twitching of your thumb or the movement of your shoulder blade or something , just what is bothering you, and she'll tell you, and it will be so true, and so shameful, I suppose, that you will be too busy looking for ways to defend yourself, and you'll give in to her rather than have her keep peeling away the outer layers of your psyche.’

‘Don't tell me that's what's happened to you.’

‘Not much because she's fond of me, and I've tried to be very diplomatic with her. But if I cross her, I shudder to think what a shambles she'll make of me. Look, I've managed to delay her. Give me credit for that. She wanted to go out immediately after the plane trip. And I held her off to the end of the month.’

‘How did you do that?’

‘Pure sophistry, I assure you. It's December. I told her that, in three weeks, the New Year would begin, at least if we go by Earth Standard time, and how best to celebrate the begi

‘Why worse?’

‘Because she doesn't view it as a personal caprice, but as something of vital importance to Rotor, or even to humanity, perhaps. There's nothing like satisfying your personal pleasure and calling it a noble contribution to the general welfare. It excuses everything. I've done it myself, so have you, so has everyone. Pitt, more than anyone else whom I know, does it. He has probably convinced himself that he breathes only to contribute carbon dioxide to the plant life of Rotor.’

‘So, by playing on her megalomania, you had her wait.’

‘Yes, and it still gives us one more week to see if anything will stop her. I might say, though, that my plea didn't fool her. She agreed to wait, but she said, “You think that if you delay me, you will win your way at least a little bit into the affections of my mother, don't you, Uncle Siever? There's nothing about you that indicates you consider the coming of the new year of the slightest importance.” ’

‘How unbearably rude, Siever.’

‘Merely unbearably correct, Eugenia. Same thing, perhaps.’

Insigna looked away. ‘My affections? What can I say-’

Genarr said quickly, ‘Why say anything? I've told you I loved you in the past, and I find that getting old - or getting older - hasn't much changed it. But that's my problem. You've never treated me unfairly. You never gave me reason to hope. And if I'm fool enough not to be able to take no for an answer, what concern is that of yours?’

‘It concerns me that you're unhappy for any reason.’

‘That counts for a lot right there.’ Genarr managed a smile. ‘It's infinitely better than nothing.’

Insigna looked away and, with obvious deliberation, returned to the topic of Marlene. ‘But, Siever, if Marlene saw your motivation, why did she agree to the delay?’

‘You won't like this, but I'd better tell you the truth. Marlene said, “I'll wait till the New Year, Uncle Siever, because perhaps that will please Mother, and I'm on your side.” ’

‘She said that?’

‘Please don't hold it against her. I have obviously fascinated her with my wit and charm and she thinks she's doing you a favor.’

‘She's a matchmaker,’ said Insigna, obviously caught between a

‘It did occur to me that if you could bring yourself to show an interest in me, we could use that to persuade her into all sorts of things that she would think would further encourage the interest - except that it would have to be real or she would see through it. And if it were real, she wouldn't feel it necessary to make sacrifices to bring about what was already so. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ said Insigna, ‘that if it weren't for Marlene's perceptiveness, you would be positively Machiavellian in your approach to me.’

‘You've got me dead to rights, Eugenia.’

‘Well, why not do the obvious thing? Lock her up and, eventually, carry her on to the rocket back to Rotor.’

‘Bound hand and foot, I suppose. Aside from not thinking we could do such a thing, I've managed to catch Marlene's vision. I'm begi

‘And breathing their alien bacteria, getting them into our food and water.’ Insigna's face curled into a grimace.

‘What of it? We breathe, drink, and eat them - to an extent - right here. We can't keep them out of the Dome altogether. For that matter, there are bacteria on Rotor that we breathe, drink, and eat, too.’

‘Yes, but we're adapted to Rotor's life. These are alien bits of life.’

‘All the safer. If we're not adapted to them, neither are they to us. There are no signs they can possibly parasitize us. They would simply be so many i

‘And the Plague.’

‘That's the real difficulty, of course, even in the case of something as simple as letting Marlene go outside the Dome. We will, of course, take precautions.’

‘What kind of precautions?’

‘She would wear a protective suit, for one thing. For another, I'll go out with her. I'll serve as her canary.’

‘What do you mean, “canary”?’

‘It was a device they had on Earth some centuries back. Miners carried canaries - you know, little yellow birds - into mines. If the air went bad, the canary died before the men were affected, but the men, knowing there was a problem, would get out of the mine. In other words, if I begin to act queerly, we'll both be brought in at once.’

‘But what if it affects her before it affects you?’

‘I don't think it will. Marlene feels immune. She's said that so many times that I have begun to believe her.’

Eugenia Insigna had never before watched the New Year approaching with such a painful concentration on the calendar. There had never been reason before. For that matter, the calendar was a vestigial hangover, twice removed.

On Earth, the year had begun by marking the seasons, and the holidays that related to the seasons - midsummer, midwinter, sowing, harvest - by whatever names they were called.

Crile (Insigna remembered) had explained the intricacies of the calendar to her, and had reveled in them in his dark and solemn way, as he did in everything that reminded him of Earth. She had listened to him with a mixture of ardor and apprehension; ardently because she wished to share his interest, as that might draw them closer together; apprehensively because she feared his interest in Earth might drive him away from her, as eventually it did.

Strange that she still felt the pang - but was it dimmer now? It seemed to her that she could not actually remember Crile's face, that she remembered only the remembering now. Was it only the memory of a memory that stood between her and Siever Genarr now?

And yet it was the memory of a memory that held Rotor to the calendar now. Rotor had never had seasons. It had the year, of course, for it (and all the Settlements in the Earth-Moon system, which left out only those few that circled Mars or that were being built in the asteroid belt) accompanied Earth on its path around the Sun. Still, without seasons, the year was meaningless. Yet it was kept together with months and weeks.

Rotor had the day, too, fixed artificially at twenty-four hours during which sunlight was allowed to enter for half the time and blocked off for the other half. It could have been fixed for any length of time, but it was fixed at the length of an Earth day and divided into twenty-four hours of sixty minutes each, with each minute consisting of sixty seconds. (The days and nights were at least uniformly twelve hours long.)

There had been occasional movements among the Settlements to adopt a system of merely numbering days and grouping them into tens and multiples of tens; into dekadays, hectodays, kilodays, and, in the other direction, decidays, centidays, millidays; but that was really impossible.

The Settlements could not set up each their own system for that would have reduced trade and communications to chaos. Nor was any unified system possible save that of Earth, where 99 per cent of the human population still lived, and to which ties of tradition still held the remaining 1 per cent. Memory held Rotor and all the Settlements to a calendar that was intrinsically meaningless for them.

But now Rotor had left the Solar System and was a world that was isolated and alone. No day, or month, or year in the Earthly sense existed. It was not even sunlight that marked day from night, for Rotor gleamed with artificial daylight and darkened to a light whisper twelve hours on and twelve hours off. The harsh precision was not even broken by the gradual dimming and brightening at the boundaries that might simulate twilight and dawn. There seemed to be no need. And within this all-Settlement division, individual homes kept their illumination on and off to suit their whims or needs, but counted the days by Settlement time - which was Earth time.