Rachel sat forward. “Let’s put a pin in that for now.” This was her mission, her group. Her agenda, by necessity, needed to be flexible . . . but it needed to remain her agenda.

Taj accepted this. “Fine. But as you’ve seen, your return is not secret. There will be immense pressure, and a few planned events will save everyone a great deal of stress—”

“Oh, we’ll do events,” Rachel said. “But not until we’ve come to some kind of arrangements with these companies.”

“What do you mean?”

“Taj,” Rachel said, sounding impatient, “what do you think we want to do here?”

Taj glanced at his grown son, which annoyed Rachel. “I’m over here,” she snapped. “I’m speaking to you . . . Father.”

Mrs. Remilla entered the room at that point, bowing and smiling nervously, and sliding to the back like a parishioner making a late arrival at Mass. Rachel hoped she had heard the exchange; she doubted that women had reached equality with men in this society, even after twenty years.

“My apologies,” Taj was saying. “I assumed this was . . . the first step in a return to Earth?”

To Rachel’s surprise, and pleasure, Yahvi laughed. “You only return to home,” the girl said. “This isn’t my home.”

“We are visiting,” Rachel said. “What happens after the next couple of days, maybe a week or two, is entirely dependent on what we learn.

“And in order to survive here for days, maybe a week or two, we’ll need money, won’t we?” Here she turned directly toward Mrs. Remilla. “Or is ISRO going to be paying hotel and travel bills for us?”

Taj blustered, as if the thought of money had never occurred to him. “We weren’t planning to charge you.”

“For our landing? Thank you,” Rachel said. She indicated the hospital. “And for this medical care? Thank you, again, for not billing us.

“But we have no plans to be guests of the Indian government or ISRO, or the Coalition, or NASA—assuming it even exists. We’re going to operate freely, and starting as soon as possible.

“And we will want our own funds.” She looked at the others. “It’s entirely possible that one or more of us already have money on Earth somewhere, from insurance. Tea, maybe you could tell me what happened to my parents’ house. Somebody must have bought it from—?”

“Actually, I handled it,” Tea said, “and you’re right. That money went into—”

Rachel’s nod cut her off. The exchange was one she had simulated, in a way, during the long fall from Keanu. So far it reminded her of her early council meetings when she first became mayor of the HBs, where she had been granted status and some license, but only the power and authority she took. It all felt very familiar.

To Taj and Remilla, she said, “Tell the press to bring their bids when they have them as soon as they have them.

“And we’ll need someone who can serve as our agent. After we get done with media access fees, we have scientific and technical matters to discuss.” She reached for Taj’s hand while glancing at Pav, who stood there, smug, arms folded, proud.

“We would all like you to be our agent, Taj. Tea, too. You’re family. But if you’d rather not, please find someone who will.

“Now, where are we spending the night?”

The answer was, first night in the base hospital—which triggered grumbling from Xavier Toutant. “Relax,” Pav told him. “We need time to regroup, check our luggage, and get some answers.”

They had been talking in the conference room—Taj had not left it for two hours by that time. When Xavier left, Pav turned to his father. “When did you and Tea get married?”

“Fourteen years ago,” he said. “We grew close in the aftermath of the mission.” It was an inadequate way to describe years of mutual isolation and desolation, their desperate couplings and eventual realization of their mutual affection and need.

“I can imagine. Don’t worry; I have no objection. I was just . . . surprised.”

Pav walked to the window, which showed only a portion of the base under a hot Bangalore afternoon. “We don’t know anything, really, about what’s going on here.” He looked back. “That’s what we came to find out. Is Earth still Earth?”

“Some of it,” Taj said. To Rachel, it sounded like an honest answer—if not overly helpful.

“That’s what we need to know, as soon as possible. And who better to brief us than my own father?”

QUESTION: Girls your age are often obsessed with music and fashion. Do you miss those things?

YAHVI: How would I know?

QUESTION: Didn’t your mother tell you about them? Or other women on Keanu?

YAHVI: Apparently not.

QUESTION: Well, do you have any curiosity about—boys?

YAHVI: I’m sexually active, if that’s what you’re asking.

QUESTION: Well, no . . .

ADVENTURE CREW PRESS CONFERENCE,

APRIL 14, 2040

YAHVI

Before the briefing, there was lunch, served in the same conference room. “Does anybody want to lie down or rest?” Rachel said. No one wanted to, though Yahvi would have enjoyed getting out of this building altogether and seeing some of India and Earth.

Even if it meant she had to deal with lots of other human beings. But her parents had warned her, the first day was going to be boring meetings and lots of logistical crap. So far they’d been right.

One of the few times.

Xavier asked, “Where are we staying tonight?”

“Right here,” Taj said. “They had a few unoccupied rooms, so they converted them.”

“Which means they took out the IV units and added an extra lamp,” Tea said. Pav laughed.

A couple of Indian Air Force enlisted men brought in trays of covered dishes as well as cartons. “We didn’t know what you’d be hungry for,” Wing Commander Kaushal said, “so we brought a variety of lunch fixings.”

Which turned out to be sandwiches—something Yahvi had seen exactly once in her life—as well as bowls of various vegetables and fruits, along with more exotic items she could not place. And some very strange breaded objects inside the cartons.

Xavier went after the material in the cartons as if it would make him immortal. Taj and Tea as well. Even her parents were digging into the other food.

Yahvi hesitated. None of it looked appealing. And she still wasn’t feeling hungry. “Is Zeds getting food?”

“Our specialists are with him now,” Mrs. Remilla said. “And I have something for you.”

Yahvi glanced at Rachel, who, mouth full, nodded in approval.

The gift turned out to be an electronic device, a small rectangle no bigger than the palm of Yahvi’s hand, with frail-looking tendrils attached to it. “It’s called a Beta,” Remilla said. “It holds hundreds of thousands of popular recordings—everything that hit the top twenty for the past one hundred years.” She looked at Rachel. “I couldn’t live without mine.”

“Are people still making music?” Pav said. “Are there still bands?”

“Yes,” Taj said, “though not necessarily where they used to be. We’ll be talking about that shortly.”

Remilla spent several moments showing Yahvi how the Beta worked; the tendrils had tiny weighted units at their ends that fit into one’s ears.

There were only three controls: play/stop, up/down for title/artist, right/left for keyword. “The battery is good for two years,” she said. “If you’re still on Earth at that time, call me and I’ll give you a replacement.”

Two years on Earth! The thought terrified Yahvi. But she managed to utter, “Thank you.” She had that much social sense.

Shunning the food, she took the Beta to a corner of the room and sat down.