Earth

She was still embarked on a dangerous enterprise that might cost her her job, or even lead to jail. But at least now she wouldn’t become a pariah for the modern sin of keeping secrets. She’d just registered her story — from the Erehwon disaster to her recent, surreptitious orbital data collection for Pedro Manella. If any of it ever did come to trial, now she’d be able to show with this dated cache that she had acted in good faith. The Rio Treaties did allow one to withhold information temporarily — or try to — so long as careful records were maintained. That exception had been left in order to satisfy the needs of private commerce. The treaties’ drafters — radical veterans of the Helvetian War — probably never imagined that “temporary” might be interpreted to be as long as twenty years or that the registering of diaries like hers would become an industry in itself.

Teresa sealed the file, swallowing the key in her mind. Such was her faith in the system that she simply left the empty spool lying there on the countertop.

“I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“Done what, Pedro?”

“You know what I mean. What you did when you got back to Earth.”

Manella regarded her like a disapproving father. Fortunately, Teresa’s own dad had been patient and understanding — and thin. In other words, nothing like Pedro Manella.

“All I did was refuse to shake hands with Colonel Spivey. You’d think I’d have slapped him across the face or shot him.”

Looking down at the blue lagoons of Houston, the portly newsman shook his head. “In front of net-zine cameras? You might as well have done exactly that. What’s the public to think when a shuttle pilot steps out of her spacecraft, accepts the thanks of all the other astronauts, but then pointedly turns away and spits when the mission supervisor steps up for his turn?”

“I did not spit!” she protested.

“Well it sure looked that way.”

Teresa felt warm under the collar. “What do you want from me? I’d just verified — at least to my satisfaction — that the bastard must have had a black hole on Erehwon. He recruited my husband into an illegal conspiracy that caused his death! Did you expect me to kiss him?”

Manella sighed. “It would have been preferable. As it is, you may have jeopardized our operation.”

Teresa folded her arms and looked away. “I wasn’t followed here. And I got you your data. You asked nothing else of me.” She felt put-upon and resentful. As soon as she had arrived, and Manella’s assistants scurried off with her second spool, Pedro had launched into this Dutch uncle lecture.

“Hmph,” he commented. “You didn’t actually say anything to Spivey, did you?”

“Nothing printable or relevant. Unless you count commentary on his ancestry.”

Manella’s scowl lifted slightly. Much as he disapproved of her actions, he clearly would have liked to have been there. “Then I suggest you let people assume the obvious — that you and Spivey had been having an affair—”

“What?” Teresa gasped.

“ — and that your anger was the result of a lovers’—”

“Dumpit!”

“ — of a lovers’ tiff. Spivey may suspect you’re on to his activities, but he’ll not be able to prove anything.”

Teresa’s jaw clenched. The unpalatability of Manella’s suggestion was matched only by its inherent logic. “I’m swearing off men forever,” she said, biting out the words.

Infuriatingly, Manella answered only with a raised eye-brow, economically conveying his certainty she was lying. “Come on,” he replied. “The others are waiting.”

A chart projection hung over the far end of the conference room. It wasn’t holographic, merely a high-definition, two-dimensional schematic of the multilayered Earth. A nest of simple, concentric circles.

I

Next came a reddish shell, about twice as thick. LIQUID OUTER CORE — IRON + OXYGEN + SULFUR … 1227-3486 KILOMETERS, the caption read.

The beige stratum beyond that took up nearly the rest of the planet. MANTLE, the legend stated. OXIDES OF SILICON, ALUMINUM, AND MAGNESIUM (ECLOGITES AND PERIDOTITES IN PEROVSKITE FORM) … 3486-6350 KILOMETERS.

All three great zones featured subdivisions marked by dashed lines, tentative and vague lower down, with captions terminating in question marks. At the outermost fringe Teresa discerned a set of thin tiers labeled: ASTHENOSPHERE, LITHOSPHERE, OCEANIC CRUST, CONTINENTAL CRUST, HYDROSPHERE (OCEAN), ATMOSPHERE, MAGNETOSPHERE. Outlining that final zone, curving arrows rose from near the south pole, to reenter in Earth’s far northern regions.

The speaker at the front of the room was a trim blonde woman who pointed to those arching field lines.

“We were especially interested in the intense high-energy region astronauts call the ‘South Atlantic devil,’ a magnetic dip that drifts westward about a third of a degree per year. These days it hovers over the Andes…”

Using a laser pointer, she traced the high, diffuse fields that were her specialty. The woman obviously knew a thing or two about space-borne instrumentation.

She ought to, Teresa thought.

As a consultant transferred to Houston two years ago, June Morgan had become friends with several members of the astronaut corps, including Teresa and her husband. In fact, Teresa had been glad, at first, when June was assigned to work with Jason on a recent Project Earthwatch survey. Now, of course, Teresa knew her husband had been using that assignment to cover other work for Colonel Spivey.

That hadn’t kept him from getting to know June better, though. A whole lot better.

When Manella had brought Teresa in to introduce to everybody, June barely met her eyes. Officially, there was no grudge between them. But they both knew things had gone farther than any modern marriage contract could excuse. The one Teresa had signed with Jason made allowances for long separations and the planetbound spouse’s inevitable need for company. Their arrangement was no “open marriage” stupidity, of course. It set strict limits on the duration and style of any outside liaison and specified a long list of precautions to be taken.

The agreement had sounded fine four years ago. In theory. But dammit, Jason’s affair with this woman had violated the spirit, if not the letter, of their pact!

Perhaps it had been Teresa’s fault for following her curiosity, for checking who Jason had seen while she was away on a long-duration test flight. She had been shocked to learn that it was a NASA person… a scientist no less! A groupie, even a bimbo, would have been okay. No threat there. But an intelligent woman? A woman so very much like herself?

She recalled the feeling of menace that had flooded her then, creating a horrible tightness in her chest and a blindness in her eyes. For hours she had walked familiar neighborhoods completely lost, in a cold panic because she had absolutely no idea where she was or in what direction she was heading.

“You want me to give her up?” Jason had asked when she finally confronted him. “Well, of course I’ll give her up, if you want me to.”

His infuriating shrug had driven her crazy. He’d managed to make it sound as if she were the one being irrational, choosing this particular case to get jealous about all of a sudden. Perhaps illogically, she didn’t find his blithe willingness to go along with her wishes calming, for underneath his acquiescence she fantasized a regret she could not verify in any way.

His sojourns aloft were generally longer than hers. She had spent many more long days alone on Earth between missions, surrounded all the time by overtures. She’d seldom availed herself of those dubious comforts, whatever the freedoms allowed by their contract. That he’d been less reticent when he was home alone hadn’t bothered her till then. Men were, after all, inherently weasels.