Piers, Anthony - Cluster 05 by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers, Anthony
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 11 Tangent

It was not easy to arrange his talk with Tanya Coombs. Her Station was in a planetoid on the far side of the System; it would take hours to travel there by shuttle. He could do it instantaneously by Mattermission-except that the prohibitive expense meant the authorities would never authorize it.

They would throw away horrendous amounts of energy mattermitting a whole fleet of warships to a distant Sphere, but none for one person within the System. And Transfer to a host at that other Station was out; the Society of Hosts kept too close track of all such transactions.

No, a physical meeting with her was not feasible, and perhaps not desirable. What did she know of him, or he of her? Only that each had survived. Did she share his new concern for the Band society?

Did she care whether a species was about to be incidentally exterminated? If not, it would be foolish of him to make known to her his own questions. The very fact of his sneaking out to meet her privately would betray him; he might blurt out his treason to the universe. For treason was really what was in his mind: he wanted to help an alien species at the expense of his own.

He would have to call her. But here too were problems. All calls to and from military Stations were monitored. There would be no privacy. In fact he could not even place the call without clearance from the Transfer authorities. It might be possible to have Helen place a call to a friend of hers at that Station, who could then contact Tanya Coombs-but this would be tedious and uncertain, would not enable him to learn what he needed to about her private attitudes, and might not escape the notice of the authorities anyway, even if Tanya did not turn him in. And if she did share his concern for the Bands, how could she trust him? She could take him for an administration agent testing her loyalty.

She would tell him nothing of her true sentiment. Not by vid. So he was effectively blocked off; he had to keep his concerns to himself.

Meanwhile, there was Helen to think about. Would it be smart to renew his term marriage to her?

How little he had known her, these years of the first term!

He had thought there had been no connection between his professional life and his personal one, when all the time she had been trying to reconcile the two. She wanted to align their philosophies so as to fashion a harmonic situation for their child. He had thought she had simply lost interest. She had proved that she had not-and had also proved he had not. He now saw himself and her as Monsters-but just as a person could adapt to changed circumstances, he could adapt to an alien host-or to his own

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