“You mean, to seek out what objective reality really is? That’s what scientists do, right?” Her impish raising of an eyebrow and the tongue pushing lightly in her cheek were just quizzical enough to stop short of skepticism.

“Okay… well, they’re supposed to, anyway.”

Gina’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Oh, but they do. You only have to read the textbooks.”

Hunt grinned. He liked this kind of company. “I thought we were talking about reality,” he said.

“But isn’t that what you do?” Gina asked, maintaining the pretense. “Uncover reality?”

“Of course I do. Every scientist knows that he’s different.”

“So you know what’s really out there?”

“Sure.”

Gina moved her legs and sat forward to rest her chin on her hand, staring at him in a play of fascination. “Go on then, tell me. What’s really out there?”

“Photons.”

“That’s it?”

Hunt turned a palm upward. “That’s all that physics can tell you. Everything that’s out there reduces to photons interacting with atoms in nerve endings. That’s it. There isn’t anything else. Just wave packets of whatever, tagged with quantum numbers.”

“Not too exciting,” Gina commented.

“You did ask.”

“So what about the rest of this interesting world that I see?”

“What else do you see?”

She shrugged and motioned vaguely with a hand. “Cabbages and kings. Oceans and mountains, colors and shapes. Places with people in them, doing things that mean something. Where does all that come from?”

“Emergent properties of relationships manifesting themselves at progressively higher levels in a hierarchy of increasing complexity,” he told her, not really expecting her to make much out of it.

“Neural constructs,” she supplied, parrying him. “I create it in my head.”

Hunt raised his eyebrows and nodded his compliments. “Where else? We’ve already agreed what everything from outside is.”

“In the same way that every book that might ever be written is built up from the same twenty-six-letter alphabet. The qualities that we think we perceive aren’t out there in the symbols. The symbols are simply a coding system for triggering what a lifetime of living has written into our nervous systems.”

“You’ve got the idea. Sometimes I think it’s amazing that any two of us ever manage to perceive anything similar at all.”

“I’m not always so sure that we do,” Gina responded.

“Which from your point of view is just as well. If we all saw everything the same, you wouldn’t have anything controversial to write about.” He paused. “I don’t exactly get the feeling that all this is especially new.”

“I already told you, I get curious about things. And in any case, writers read a lot. It’s compulsive. The real reason they write is that it gives them an excuse for doing the research.”

Enough fencing, Hunt decided. She had held her own without getting defensive and turning the thing into a duel. He got up and took the mugs through to the kitchen, along with his breakfast dishes. “So what have you written that brought lynch mobs screaming out of the woodwork?” he asked over his shoulder as he loaded the dishwasher.

In the lounge, Gina rose from the couch and turned to study the view out of the picture window. She was a shade on the tall side of average, with a trim, firmly shaped figure that was right for the navy dress.

“Well, there was one I did awhile back about Earthguard and the no-growth lobby,” she said, without turning her head. “Have you had much to do with that?”

“Not a lot. I thought they went away years ago… Anyhow, haven’t the Thuriens pretty much blown them out of the water for good?”

“I wrote it before the Thuriens showed up.”

“Okay. So what were the doomsday brigade into this time?”

“Oh, our expansion out into the Solar System. Numbers were growing too fast, resources being depleted. Earth wouldn’t be able to feed an unchecked spacegoing population, and off-planet alternatives were either inadequate or impractical, et cetera, et cetera.”

Hunt poured coffee into two fresh mugs. “If we paid too much attention to that lot, we’d still be conserving flint for our grandchildren to make axes. I’ve got other things to do.”

“The trouble is, a lot of people who matter do pay attention to them. And they’re the ones who shape what everyone else thinks.”

“Well, I think you’ll find all that’s changing.”

“But look what it took,” she said. “Yes, now at last, the world’s beginning to realize that by all the measures that mean anything, growing populations are a sign of things getting better.” She turned as Hunt came back into the lounge, carrying the mugs. “Everyone’s got two hands and one mouth, right? People produce more than they consume.”

“I had a grandmother from Yorkshire who used to say something like that: You should always listen twice as much as you talk. ‘That’s why God gave thee two ears an’ one mouth, lad.’”

Gina frowned at him suspiciously. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“No. What you said just reminded me of it. There’s-” Hunt broke off and looked up at her suddenly as he set down the mugs. “Wait a minute. Was it you who wrote that book-something about people being precious?”

“People, Priceless People,” Gina confirmed, nodding. “Did you read it?”

“Not all of it. Someone I used to work with showed me some of it-about how the real cost of just about every natural resource has been falling over the last couple of centuries, wasn’t it?”

“Which is a sign of a commodity that’s getting more abundant, not scarcer.”

“And how things like longer life expectancies and falling infant mortality add up to an environment that’s getting better, not worse. Yes, I remember it.” Hunt nodded and looked at her with greater interest. “What other heresies have you committed?”

“Oh… that the nuclear weapons of the twentieth century were the main thing that prevented World War III from happening on at least four occasions between 1945 and final disarmament. In other words, the Bomb and the Pentagon probably saved more lives than penicillin did.”

“The Russians more or less admitted that,” Hunt commented. “It ruled out major war as an option, and that was all they understood.”

“But how much of the public knows that they admitted it? Most people still think it was the peace demonstrators that did it.”

Hunt nodded. “That would stir up a few waves on the port beam. What about the starboard side of the ship? Did you start any storms there, as well?”

“Oh, yes… by suggesting that sex is probably better for teenagers than religion, and drugs aren’t a problem. You know-the usual prime-time family-hour stuff.”

“That’d do it, right enough. You’ve been busy.” Hunt himself seemed comfortable enough with everything she had said. He sat down in the recliner and leaned back with his fingers interlaced behind his head. “But you never got to be a millionairess out of it."

“Not that I noticed, anyhow.”

Hunt inclined his head to indicate the general direction outside, where her Peugeot was parked. “Not doing too badly, all the same, by the looks of things,” he remarked.

“Rented. From the airport.”

“So you’re just visiting.”

“Right.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Maddox-a small hotel on the east side of town.”

“Uh-huh.” Hunt watched her silently for a few seconds to let the preliminary talk fade into the background. “So,” he said finally, “now that you’re here, what can I do for you?”

“I’d like some help with a new book that I want to write.” Gina drew back from the window, but instead of sitting back down on the couch, she crossed the lounge and turned, arms folded, propping herself against the table carrying the comnet terminal. “About the Jevlenese. You’re one of the few original sources, and from what I’ve read, a pretty open and approachable one. So I’m approaching.”