seemed uneasy to be the center of the stares of a couple of dozen slight, nude figures who seemed to tinge their scorn with indifference, came directly toward him.
“Sir,” he began. “Commissioner Gottstein requests that you accompany me—”
5
Barron Neville’s quarters were somehow harsher than Selene’s. His books were on bold display, his computer-outlet was unmasked in one corner, and his large desk was in disarray. His windows were blank.
Selene entered, folded her arms, and said, “If you live like a slob, Barron, how do you expect to have your thoughts neat?”
“I’ll manage,” said Barron, grumpily. “How is it you haven’t brought the Earthman with you?”
“The Commissioner got to him first. The new Commissioner.”
“Gottstein?”
“That’s right. Why weren’t you ready sooner?”
“Because it took time to find out. I won’t work blind.”
Selene said, “Well, then, we’ll just have to wait.”
Neville bit at a thumbnail and then inspected the result severely. “I don’t know whether I ought to like the situation or not.… What did you think of him?”
“I liked him,” said Selene, definitely. “He was rather pleasant, considering he was an Earthie. He let me guide him. He was interested. He made no judgments. He didn’t patronize.… And I didn’t go out of my way to avoid insulting him, either.”
“Did he ask any further about the synchrotron?”
“No, but then he didn’t have to.”
“Why not?”
“I told him you wanted to see him, and I said you were a physicist. So I imagine he’ll ask you whatever he wants to ask you when he sees you.”
“Didn’t he think it strange that he should be talking to a female tourist guide who just happens to know a physicist?”
“Why strange? I said you were my sex-partner. There’s no accounting for sex attraction and a physicist may well condescend to a lowly tourist guide.”
“Shut up, Selene.”
“Oh—Look, Barron, it seems to me that if he were spinning some sort of fancy web, if he approached me because he planned to get to you through me, he would have shown some trace of anxiety. The more complicated and silly any plot, the more rickety it is and the more anxious the plotter. I deliberately acted casual. I talked about everything but the synchrotron. I took him to a gymnastics show.”
“And?”
“And he was interested. Relaxed and interested. Whatever he has on his mind, it isn’t involuted.”
“You’re sure of that? Yet the Commissioner got to him before I did. You consider that good?”
“Why should I consider it bad? An open invitation to a meeting of some sort delivered in front of a couple of dozen Lunarites isn’t particularly involuted, either.”
Neville leaned back with his hands clasped at the nape of his neck. “Selene, please don’t insist on making judgments, when I don’t ask you to. It’s irritating. The man is not a physicist in the first place. Did he tell you he was?”
Selene paused to think. “I called him a physicist. He didn’t deny it but I don’t recall that he actually said he was. And yet—and yet, I’m sure he is.”
“It’s a lie of omission, Selene. He may be a physicist in his own mind, but the fact is that he isn’t trained as a physicist and he doesn’t work as one. He has had scientific training; I’ll grant him that; but he has no scientific job of any kind. He couldn’t get one. There isn’t a lab on Earth that would give him working room. He happens to be on Fred Hallam’s crud-list and he’s been top man there for a long time.”
“Are you sure?”
“Believe me, I checked. Didn’t you just criticize me for taking so long.… And it sounds so good that it’s too good.”
“Why too good? I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“Doesn’t it seem to you we ought to trust him? After all, he’s got a grievance against Earth.”
“You can certainly argue that way, if your facts are right.”
“Oh, my facts are right, at least in the sense that they’re what turns up, if you dig for them. But maybe we’re supposed to argue that way.”
“Barron, that’s disgusting. How can you weave these conspiracy theories into everything? Ben didn’t sound—”
“Ben?” said Neville, sardonically.
“Ben!” repeated Selene, firmly. “Ben didn’t sound like a man with a grievance or like a man trying to make me think he sounded like a man with a grievance.”
“No, but he managed to make you think he was someone to be liked. You did say you liked him, didn’t you? With emphasis? Maybe that’s exactly what he was trying to do.”