“Fine by me,” Dan said.

“Put him back there. There’s a pre-med kit under the seat. See if you can stop him from bleeding.”

Brian stepped on the swaying skimmer and dug under the seat among the rags and chains to bring out the plastic box. The skimmer doffed again as Dan stepped aboard. In the front seat Ruby took the control line and plugged it into her wrist. They moved forward, hissing. The small boat mounted above the spray on its hydrofoils and sped. Pont St.-Michel, Pont Neuf, and Pont des Arts dropped their shadows over the boat. Paris glittered on the shores.

Minutes later the struts of the Eiffel Tower cleared the buildings left, spotlighted on the night. Right, above slanted stone and behind sycamores, the last late strollers moved under the lamps along the Allee des Cygnes.

“All right,” his father said. “I’ll tell you.

“I think he should get that scar … “ his mother’s image spoke from the viewing column. “It’s been three days, and the longer he lets the scar go…”

“If he wants to go around looking as though there was an earthquake in his head, that’s his business,” Father said. “But: right now I want to answer his question.” He turned back to Lorq. “But to tell you”—he walked to the wall and gazed out across the city—”I have to tell you some history. And not what you learned at Causby.”

It was high summer on Ark.

Wind tossed salmon clouds about the sky beyond the glass walls. When a gust was too strong, the blue veins of the irises in the windward wall contracted to bright mandalas, then dilated when the eighty-mile winds had passed.

His mother’s fingers, dark and jeweled, moved on the rim of her cup.

His father folded his hands behind his back as he watched the clouds torn up like rags and flung from Tong.

Lorq leaned against the back of the mahogany chair, waiting.

“What strikes you as the most important factor in today’s society?”

Lorq ventured after a moment: “The lack of a solid cultural—?”

“Forget Causby. Forget the things that people babble to one another when they feel they have to say something profound. You’re a young man who may someday control one of the largest fortunes in the galaxy. If I ask you a question, I want you to remember who you are when you answer me. This is a society where, given any product, half of it may be grown on one world, the other half mined a thousand light-years away. On Earth, seventeen out of the hundreds of possible elements make up ninety per cent of the planet. Take any other world, and you’ll find a different dozen making up ninety to ninety-nine per cent. There are two hundred and sixty-five inhabited worlds and satellites in the hundred and seventeen sun systems that make up Draco.

“Here in the Federation we have three-quarters the population of Draco spread over three hundred and twelve worlds. The forty-two populated worlds of the Outer Colonies—”

“Transportation,” Lorq said. “Transportation from one world to the other. That’s what you mean?”

His father leaned against the stone table. “The cost of transportation is what I mean. And for a long time the biggest factor in the cost of transportation was Illyrion, the only way to get enough power to hurl the ships between worlds, between stars. When my grandfather was your age, Illyrion was manufactured artificially, a few billion atoms at a time, at great cost. Just about then it was discovered there was a string of stars, younger stars, much further out from the galactic center whose planets still possessed minute quantities of natural Illyrion. And it has only been since you were born that large-scale mining operations have been feasible on those planets that now make up the Outer Colonies.”

“Lorq knows this,” his mother said. “I think he should have—”

“Do you know why the Pleiades Federation is a political entity separate from Draco? Do you know why the Outer Colonies will soon be a separate political entity from either Draco or the Pleiades?”

Lorq looked at his knee, his thumb, his other knee. “You’re asking me questions and you’re not answering mine, Dad,”

His father took a breath. “I’m trying to. Before there was any settling in the Pleiades at all, expansion throughout Draco was carried on by national governments on Earth, or by corporations, ones comparable to Red-shift—corporations and governments that could afford the initial cost of transportation. The new colonies were subsidized, operated, and owned by Earth. They became part of Earth, and Earth became the center of Draco. At that time another technical problem that was being solved by the early engineers of Red-shift Limited was the construction of spaceships with more sensitive frequency ranges that could negotiate the comparatively ‘dusty’ areas of space, as in the free-floating interstellar nebulas, and in regions of dense stellar population like the Pleiades, where there was a much higher concentration of sloughed-off interstellar matter. Something like a whirlpool nebula still gives your little yacht trouble. It would have completely immobilized a ship made two hundred and fifty years ago. Your great-great-grandfather, when exploration was just beginning in the Pleiades, was very much aware of what I’ve just told you: the cost of transportation is the most important factor in our society. And within the Pleiades itself, the cost of transportation is substantially less than in Draco.”

Lorq frowned. “You mean the distances…?”

“The central section of the Pleiades is only thirty light-years across and eighty-five long. Some three hundred suns are packed into this space, many of them less than a light-year apart. The suns of Draco are scattered over one whole arm of the galaxy, almost sixteen thousand light-years from end to end. There’s a big difference in cost when you only have to jump the tiny distances within the Pleiades cluster as compared with the huge expanses of Draco. So you had a different kind of people coming into the Pleiades: small businesses that wanted to pick up and move themselves lock, stock, and barrel; co-operative groups of colonists; even private citizens—rich private citizens, but private nevertheless. Your great-great-grandfather came here with three commercial liners filled with junk, prefab hot and cold shelters, discarded mining and farming equipment for a whole range of climates. Most of it he’d been paid to haul away from Draco. Two of the liners had been stolen, incidentally. He also had gotten hold of a couple of atomic cannons. He went around to every new settlement and offered his goods. And everyone bought from him.”

“He forced them to buy at cannon point?”

“No. He also offered them a bonus service that made it worthwhile to take the junk. You see, the fact that transportation costs were lower hadn’t stopped the governments and big corporations from trying to move in. Any ship that came bearing a multimillon-dollar name out of Draco, any emissary from some Draco monopoly trying to extend itself into new territory—Grandfather blew them up.

“Did he loot them too?” Lorq asked. “Did he pick over the remains?”

“He never told me. I only know he had a vision—a selfish, mercenary, ego-centered vision that he implemented in any way he could, at anyone’s expense. During the formative years of its existence, he did not let the Pleiades become an extension of Draco. He saw in Pleiades’ independence a chance to become the most powerful man in a political entity that might someday rival Draco. Before my father was your age, great-grandfather had accomplished that.”

“I still don’t understand what that has to do with Red-shift.”

“Red-shift was one of the mega-companies that made the most concerted efforts to move into the Pleiades. They tried to claim the thorium mines that are now run by your school friend’s father, Dr. Setsumi. They attempted to begin harvesting the plastic lichens on Circle IV. Each time, Granddad blew them up. Red-shift is transportation, and when the cost of transportation goes down compared to the number of ships made, Red-shift feels its throat throttled.”