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now. The roads just end at the walkway around the perimeter. Some buildings are cut in half. Whole forests are bisected, and that doesn’t make for a credible world. Something had to keep the cage out of his view.”
“What?” Anna asked.
“I have an idea,” Kiril said. “It’s a little hard to conceive. Maybe he really did have a whole world at his disposal. Whenever he headed for the walkway, for the cage wall, everything changed behind him, and he was somehow turned around to head back toward the center of the dome. To him, it would have seemed like one long walk.”
“He wouldn’t have just lived in one restricted section, then,” Elvox said.
“He already told us about that,” Anna said. “He had all of Japan to travel in. But where is the dome now? I mean, what locale is set up inside?”
“Perhaps Heian-Kyô, or Kamakura,” Carina said. “He was dressed like a samurai, but he could have put on the armor when the illusions stopped. He was probably scared out of his wits.”
“That much seems certain,” Anna said. She looked at Elvox. “Do you have a few hours before you have to go back?”
“If I leave a message.” He removed the tapas insert from the pad. “I assume my men delivered this after sending it on from the lander.”
“If you trained them right. I’d enjoy your company here. Place your message?”
He agreed. In the lift, he stood behind her, frowning. Until now, he hadn’t violated any of the codes of a United Stars Officer. He had been completely loyal and dedicated. Was he compromising his duty by staying with Nestor? He didn’t think he was. On the whole, they would both benefit by not being evasive or hiding information.
Nestor took care of Kawashita honorably and without apparent guile. She could afford to — she wasn’t desperate. But then, neither was United Stars. As the largest human consolidation, USC had its hand in thousands of similar enterprises. How could he decide without bias? She was a persuasive woman. And was that persuasiveness deliberate? Or perhaps even worse, it was possible that her actions — while not deliberate — were part of the unconscious matrix of behaviors which made her what she was, Anna Sigrid Nestor. Her instincts could be far more dangerous than any subterfuge.
“I feel a little guilty,” he said as they entered their cabin.
“Why?” she asked.
“This may not be in the line of duty.”
“It may not be for me, either. So we are both consorting with the enemy.”
“No, not exactly, but —” He laughed.
“My people will get as much out of this as yours, everyone will be happy. So far, it looks a lot like a farce.”
“How’s that?” He thought she meant their own behavior, and he stiffened.
“This whole affair. An empty planet, heavily explored and charted — for nothing. Blank slate.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry. Everything will turn out fine. What would you be doing in your lander now?”
“Filing reports.”
“We’ve already sent an unedited transcript of Yoshio’s talk to your ship in orbit. What else could you report about?”
“Nothing my crew can’t handle,” Elvox admitted.
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Beyond Heavens River
Nine
If most people could be compared to dull glows, Nestor was white heat. Her eyes were wide and full of energy even while her voice was measured and restrained. She never said a thing that hadn’t been passed through a dozen self-contained censors. But she had ways of letting out her energy. One was in a sleep-field.
She was almost too much for him. On his home world, such cooperation and enthusiasm would have been unseemly. He was almost afraid of her independence, of having to satisfy both of them. Yet she didn’t demand more than he could give. All in all, they matched each other rather well.
After they’d made love, he sat up in the sleep-field and folded his hands on his stomach. “I was raised on a pretty straight-laced world,” he said.
“So was I — though my world was a