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forward, her hostess skills giving way to her professional ones.
"You could always spot my motives," Kingsley laughed. "The U Agency fellows
will pull in some
'foreign advisers' right away."
Benjamin saw it. "And the people you e-mailed the most, brought into the
discussion earliest  "
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"They'll be the ones recruited." Kingsley smiled.
"And the astronomers I saw today working for the
Agency  "
"Exactly. They were brought in the traditional way, a consultancy for a sum
they could scarcely decline."
"They know what we're doing?"
"Of course. Some have been monitoring our work
 which impresses them, I'm happy to say  since the first week."
Channing said, "You make it sound like moving chess pieces."
123
Kingsley looked reflective. "I suppose it is. All done very diplomatically, of
course, through all the proper channels. I was afraid I was being a bit
obvious, but so far Arno has not caught on."
"You believe," Benjamin said, sitting back and gazing up at the hard, bright
stars visible through the softly rattling fronds of palm trees.
"I wanted bright people here, people I knew from my work. Screens are going to
start coming down soon, I'll wager."
"Really?" Channing chewed her lip, her face pale in the gloom.
"This is the calm before the storm  a very long storm, quite probably,"
Kingsley finished morosely, taking a long pull at his drink.
Benjamin told her about the trajectory Kingsley had displayed. "It's moving
faster, cutting the time to reach Jupiter."
"And that provokes the U Agency?" she asked wonderingly.
Kingsley studied the leafy garden with a skewed slant to his mouth. "I felt
bound to let those above know, as did Victoria. We spoke of it the second day
I was here. I did not include you two in my thoughts because, frankly, I felt
it was a side issue, just a reporting up the chain of command sort of thing.
But quite quickly it caught the attention of certain people at the NSF, then
DARPA  my sources tell me."
124
Benjamin disliked both what he was learning and getting it from Kingsley. The
man had mastered astronomy, international diplomacy, and  no doubt, they
would soon learn  figure skating. Now he knew how laymen felt when
confronting the complex weave of astronomy with only newspaper-
level knowledge. He hated playing straight man here, but stifled that and
asked, "Why in the world would the Defense Advanced Research Project
Agency have connections to NSF's astronomy office?"
"There is a standing procedure, ever since the Air
Force began detecting what turned out to be gamma-
ray bursters, remember?" Kingsley smiled. "Their satellites designed to detect
nuclear explosions found signals coming from the sky. Bursters bequeathed us
this alliance of interests."
"And from there on, let me guess," Benjamin said, "it went to the National
Security Council, then the
President's Science Adviser."
Kingsley raised an eyebrow in appreciation. "You know more of this labyrinth
than I expected. Pretty nearly so, yes."
"So we're stuck having to work with those
Chicken Littles, huh?" Channing said.
Kingsley gave her a puzzled glance. "Uh, Chicken& "
125
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"The U Agency's purpose is to stop disasters before they grow, mostly by
taking action across national and even continental boundaries. They're a
quietly accepted part of global integration," she rattled off knowledgeably.
Benjamin was surprised at how much she knew.
When she had a mind to, she showed as much acuity as Kingsley. And he, in
turn, had small blind spots, like not remembering who Chicken Little was. The
man's concentration upon his career had swept all else from his mind. Most
astronomers were distracted sorts, unable to recognize many of the faces on
the magazines next to the checkout line in markets. Kingsley took this to an
extreme, but his footing among the corridors of power was deft and firm.
With lacerating sarcasm, Channing made fun of the U types, reminding them that
she had some dealings with the Agency in her "spacesuit days."
Her eyes danced with memories. "The two most common elements in the universe [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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