Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

"Maybe," Meredith sighed. "But maybe not. The longer they hesitate, the more entrenched we become. And I'm sure they realize that."

"Let 'em realize it," Perez said, stepping toward the elevator. "In my humble and untrained opinion it's already too late for a successful invasion. Well. If that's all you wanted, my duty's up for the day and I'm going home. You coming?"

"Not yet," Meredith said, his eyes drifting to the windows and the Spinner village below. "I think I'll stick around and see if anything happens when the digger goes to dump its load."

Secretary-General Saleh—leader of the UN, chief trade representative to alien races, and arguably the most powerful man on Earth—laid down the last sheet of paper with the bitter taste of helplessness on his tongue. "What you're asking is essentially a carte blanche for whatever you want to do on Astra," he said wearily.

"You know I can't give you that."

"Why not?" Ashur Msuya asked. "The people want action—or haven't you been watching the newscasts lately?"

Saleh snorted. "Surely you don't expect me to take all those carefully staged demonstrations seriously?"

"The rest of the world does. And as for my proposal, it's clearly spelled out that you have the final word on anything I do."

"Oh, of course—except that the eight-day round trip renders that effectively meaningless."

"Only if you're looking for true veto power," Msuya said quietly. "And true responsibility."

For a long time Saleh stared into Msuya's unblinking eyes, knowing deep within him there was no way the man would be stopped. Saleh had originally chosen him to lead the mission to Astra because of his intensely pro-Third World stance, a bias Saleh had hoped would act as a bulwark against the West's usual ability to get more than its fair share of things. But the plan had backfired. Whatever motivations of justice Msuya may once have had were gone, submerged beneath his utter hatred for Colonel Meredith. With or without Saleh's permission he would find a way to destroy the colonel … and if Saleh stood in his way he might well precipitate a power struggle within the Secretariat itself, a battle that could cost Saleh his position and simultaneously wreck any chance the world might have for international peace and unity.

But if Saleh officially backed his proposal, the Secretary-General was covered. A

success in reclaiming Astra would reflect favorably on him; a failure would be Msuya's responsibility alone. The inherent communications time lag would give Msuya effective autonomy. If he chose to act on something their new Astran spies reported, there would be no chance for Saleh to exercise his supposed veto power.

And Msuya knew it. He was offering his political future against a chance for vengeance.

Dropping his gaze to the papers before him, Saleh sighed. "All right," he said, picking up a pen. "You'll take the Trygve Lie and go to Astra, sending the Hammarskjold home when you get there. You will keep within the boundaries set in this paper, observing and collecting information only. No action of any kind without my written permission first."

"I understand," Msuya nodded.

Sure you do. The meaningless words still tingling on his tongue, Saleh signed the page and tossed the batch of them across the desk. "Have my secretary give you a copy," he growled. "I'll arrange for the Hammarskjold to rendezvous with you periodically to deliver supplies and bring back any information you gather. In an emergency the Ctencri could probably be persuaded to deliver a message."

Msuya smiled tightly as he stood up. "Don't worry. I'm sure there will be no emergencies." Turning, he left the room.

My new frontier, Saleh thought dully, staring at the closed door. My quixotic hope for the restless and hopeless; the world I personally helped begin … and now I must simply sit by and watch while you live or die. For the first time in his life, he began to understand the permanent melancholy in his grandmother's face that had always bothered and frightened him as a child.

His grandmother had been a midwife in a small Southern Yemeni village … a village with a fifteen percent infant mortality rate.

Suddenly, it seemed, it was autumn.

Not like autumn in Pennsylvania, of course, Hafner thought as he climbed up one of the hillocks bordering the Dead Sea; not even like autumn in southern California. Here there were no maples or oaks to scatter colored leaves around like God's own currency thrown freely to rich and poor alike. On Astra the only signs of fall were a drop in air temperature and a gradual reduction in the number of daylight hours. Turning, Hafner squinted at the cone of Mt. Olympus in the near distance. Odd, he thought. / can't even force myself to see it as a natural formation anymore. I wonder why I couldn't see it as anything else before.

Carmen's voice drifting up from below interrupted his idle reverie. "Aren't you supposed to plant a flag or something when you get to the summit?"

Turning back, he grinned at her. "You come up with an Astran flag I can live with and I'd be pleased to plant it," he called. "Most of the designs I've seen so far would be more suitable for burial."

"You're an aesthetic snob," she said, laughing. "Come on down; lunch is ready."

He scrambled back down the gentle slope and joined her on the spread-out blanket. "At least we won't have any problem with ants," Carmen commented, handing him a sandwich. "Eat hearty; it's the first batch of processed algae from the Flying Hothouse."

Cautiously, Hafner took a bite. It was pretty good, actually, though not quite up to normal California standards. The texture was about right, and it took no real effort to believe he was eating actual ham. "Not bad," he nodded, the words coming out mushy around the food. "Especially with, what, only a week of work?"

"Closer to two—you've been spending too much time underground lately. Of course, the processing'll go much faster now that all the bugs are out of the system."

"Yeah." Hafner took another bite. "Speaking of being underground, you haven't told me yet what you thought of the Spinner cavern."

She shook her head. "I wish I had the words to do it properly. It's the most fantastic thing I've ever seen. Does that artificial sun actually track across the sky?"

"Sure does," he nodded. "Gives us a cycle of twenty hours of daylight to ten of night, presumably matching that of the Spinners' home world. And the sun isn't a hologram, or at least they don't think so—the light intensity is too great and matches a G3 star spectrum too closely. No one knows yet what it is or how they get it to move. Ditto for the clouds and stars, by the way."

She shook her head again. "I see now why you and Cris and the colonel were so dead-set on keeping the place out of the wrong hands—human or otherwise. I've been thinking—well, never mind."

"You've been thinking we were all going megalomaniac?" he prompted.

"Well … maybe a little. But I think I understand now."

"Good. Maybe it'll help you in your trade negotiations. How are they going, by the way?"

"Oh, business is booming. I've got six contracts in the stack, just waiting on the raw metal deliveries. I calculate that in a couple of years we'll have a shot at passing the U.S.'s GNP"

"And with a fraction of its population. The old oil barons will turn over in their graves."

Carmen was silent for a moment. "Maybe we should start figuring out how we're going to share all that wealth."

He frowned at her, trying to place that tone of voice. "You've been talking to Perez, haven't you?" he asked. "All that stuff about the New Mayflower."

"The who?"

"Oh, he hasn't sprung that one on you yet? He wants us to buy the Aurora or Pathfinder and outfit it for shuttling immigrants here from Earth."