He closed the connection without leaving space for a reply. Then he switched off his phone. “You stay on the line, Lynn,” he said. “Ike and I have things to do.”

“They might not play ball,” Ike said, anxiously. “Milyukov might be spaceborn, but he’s got access to the library. He knows Earth history, and understands it well enough to have done his best to keep a tight stranglehold on the information passing between surface and orbit. He didn’t want you here in the first place—he won’t want to let you spin the story.”

“He doesn’t have a choice,” Matthew said. “His authority over his own people is going to vanish overnight if he tells them that they can’t hear thisnews because he doesn’t trust the messenger. The story’s too big, and he’s already been sitting on it for too long. He’s been able to deflect attention away from the ruins, and he was able to dismiss the weapon that killed Bernal as a malicious hoax, but all that’s going to rebound on him now. The shit will be hitting the fan all over the microworld. From now on, I’m in charge.”

“You?” Ike queried. “What happened to us? Don’t Lynn and I get a say in anything?”

“I’m the one who knows how to play the game,” Matthew told him, bluntly. “No matter what you used to think of my TV prophet act, it’s the only way we can turn this whole business around. It has to be me. Maybe it should have been Bernal, but he’s not here, so it has to be me.”

“You’re an arrogant son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Ike said—but he didn’t say it like a man who intended to put up a fight.

“Yes I am,” Matthew said. “But you have to take charge of putting the boat together, because you know how and I can only follow orders. We have to reassemble it so that Lynn can stay safe. She can’t come with us because she’d slow us down—and somebody has to stay here to feed those basketball things to the robots, so that they can start letting us in on the secrets of esoteric chimerization.”

Having said that, Matthew became aware of the fact that Lynn Gwyer was also looking at him with an expression of profound annoyance.

He shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Sorry, Lynn. Luck of the draw. What did Milyukov have to say?”

“He said he’d do his best,” she told him.

“He’s a lying bastard,” Matthew opined, “but he’ll have to make good on the promise anyway. He really will do his best, up to and including targeting the drop to within a hundred meters. As soon as the dandelion seed settles, Ike and I will be on our way. It won’t be so bad—if I’m right, the wreckage of this little population explosion really will help us figure out how emortal chimeras cope with the arithmetic of the sex-death equation, and how they keep evolution going in spite of the unhelpful frame in which they have to operate. It won’t be as big a story as the first contact, but Dulcie’s already pocketed that one. The best Ike and I can hope for is to be heroes of the rescue dash.”

Had the situation not been so tense, Matthew thought, Lynn might have allowed herself a wry laugh. As things were, her voice remained level and earnest. “Do you have any idea how big this plain is?” she said. “I suppose you think we were lucky because they came to meet us rather than letting us follow the river for a few hundred kilometers more, hunting all the while for scraps of evidence, but there’s half a continent out there. You’ll never find her. You’ll find the phone, and maybe enough of a trail, to tell you which way they went, but you’ll never find herif they don’t want you to.”

“They were close enough to know when we arrived,” Matthew pointed out. “They didn’t have to trek across half a continent to get here, and no matter how scared they are they won’t run away that far. We’re lucky they found so much to steal, luckier still that they had the courage and intelligence to steal it, and luckiest of all that Dulcie caught a glimpse of them while she was in a reckless mood. If they were interested in us before, they’re absolutely fascinated by us now. If we’re really lucky, they’ll come to us again—but if we have to go looking for them, we can be sure they’ll eventually let us find them, because that’s what they’ve already done. Whatever they’ve done with Dulcie, their tactics are already on show. Sex or no sex, in every respect that really matters, they’re just like us.”

“That’s way too many assumptions,” Lynn complained. “And whatever else you’ve achieved, you’ve certainly set up a context of expectation. When your cameras get here, you’d better have something to put out. You’ve promised breaking news, and you’ll have to deliver. Have you even paused to consider what this will do to the argument about whether we can and ought to stay here? You do realize that the entire future of the colony may hang on what happens next?”

“I’ve been stuck in a basket halfway down a cliff for a day and a half,” Matthew reminded her. “I’ve done nothing butpause for consideration. I know exactlywhat hangs on what happens next—and I certainly wouldn’t trust anyone but me to report it responsibly. Would you?”

“Less than a fortnight ago,” she pointed out, “you were still in the solar system, so far as subjective time is concerned. Do you really think you’re the man best qualified to put an informed and considered commentary together?”

“Yes I do,” Matthew said. “If not me, who? If not now, when?”

“It shouldhave been Bernal,” Ike put in.

“Maybe it should,” Matthew retorted, “but Dulcie killed him in a fit of rage, because he couldn’t respond to her need the same way twice, so I’m here instead. Would you rather have Tang Dinh Quan telling the world and the microworld alike that this is final proof of the fact that we need to let the world alone for a hundred or a thousand years, and maybe forever, lest we interfere with the indigenes’ right of self-determination?”

That threw Lynn slightly. “Is that what you’re going to say on air?” she asked. “In thattone of voice?”

“Of course not,” he told her. “I’m going to be sweet reason itself.”

“But which end of the argument are you going to support?”

“How do I know, until I find out more?”

She wasn’t buying that. “Don’t pretend to be any better than the rest of us, Matthew. You know full well that almost everyone else is in a better position to make an informedjudgment. I know you’ve already made up your mind. You’re grabbing the platform before anyone else does because you never could be content to wait in the wings. I want to know, Matthew. I want to know how you intend to play it.”

“This is a complete waste of time,” Ike told her. “Matthew’s right about one thing—we have work to do. We have to put the boat together, and put the cargo in the boat, and make the whole thing safe from attack or pilferage. We have to do it now, before we have another plague of worms to deal with, or an army of purple people. His bad arm and your bad ankle will make it difficult enough, without falling out with one another. We have to take this one step at a time.”

Lynn backed down easily enough. “Maybe we all need a pause for consideration,” she said. “This really has changed everything, hasn’t it?”

“For the better,” Matthew told her. “Yesterday, we were still alone in the universe. Today, the universe might be full of thieves like us. Where there’s two, there’s probably a legion.” But he was getting to work even as he said it, and he knew that he had to reserve his strength. He didn’t bother to add: And if we’re so far ahead of these guys, somewhere out there is a race of thieves that will make our little venture in interstellar colonization look like a playground game, whether we get it right or not.

THIRTY-FOUR

Matthew was right, as he had known he would be, about Captain Milyukov having to make good on his promise to do his best. Not only did Hope’s technicians manage to land the mini-shuttle within 400 meters of the reassembled boat, but they even contrived to put it down on the right side of the river and to miss the kinds of vegetation that might have suspended it out of reach. Ike and Matthew raced to the spot, worrying that the aliens might get there first, but it proved easy enough to recover the TV camera and the emergency food supplies. The replacement parts for the boat were a bonus, which they loaded on an improvised sled so that they could drag them back to the boat without too much difficulty. Matthew was able to do his share of the haulage by looping the towrope over his left shoulder.