“No. They can’t detect it.”

  “All right, then,” Jordan said. “But could you please call me at least once every day?”

  “Of course,” Aditi answered. “Every hour, if I could.”

  “I miss you, darling.”

  “And I miss you, Jordan. I hope we can be together soon.”

  Unconsciously, he nodded. “I’ll be working on that. And waiting for your next call.”

  “I love you, Jordan.”

  Suddenly realizing that Longyear and his uncle could hear everything the two of them said, Jordan lowered his voice slightly. “I love you, too, Aditi. And I’ll be with you as soon as I possibly can.”

  “That will be good.”

  “It’ll be wonderful.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Au revoir.”

  The phone screen went dark. Jordan stared at it for several silent moments, smiling as he wondered how much French she had picked up.

  Longyear pointed to a roadside sign that flashed by. “Five more miles and we’ll be at the reservation.”

  “Good,” said Jordan as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. But he was wondering about his wife being held a captive back in Barcelona. With Castiglione.

  * * *

  Mitchell Thornberry was trying to smile at the three-dimensional image of Anita Halleck hovering across the desk from him. It looked as if the World Council chairwoman was sitting in his office.

  Smile, he told himself. Be a jolly old elf.

  Halleck was smiling, too: a thin, patently forced curve of her lips. “I see you’ve got your video feed working again,” she was saying.

  “That I have,” said Thornberry.

  “Was Kell in your office the last time we spoke?”

  Thornberry hesitated. He had heard of the voice analyzers and scanners that security people used to determine if someone was lying or not.

  “Why do you ask?” he replied.

  “Kell is a fugitive. We’re trying to find him.”

  “Is he a criminal, then?”

  “We want to keep him in protective custody. For his own safety. There’s already been one attempt on his life.”

  Thornberry forced his smile wider. “Well then, if you can’t find him, with all the fine resources you have at your beck and call, then I imagine the crackbrain killers can’t find him, either.”

  “You think so? That’s rather naive, isn’t it?”

  More seriously, Thornberry said, “I’m going to appeal to the International Court of Justice to enjoin you from holding Jordan in custody. It’s not right. It’s an infringement on his freedom.”

  “You’d rather see him assassinated by some fanatic?”

  “I’d rather see him free.”

  Halleck said, “Aiding a fugitive is a criminal offense, you know.”

  “Tell that to me lawyers,” Thornberry snapped.

  “If you know where he is, it would be best if you tell me.”

  “And how should I know where he is?”

  Halleck let her distaste show on her face. “Mr. Thornberry, you have become quite wealthy from alien technology. But you’re not so powerful that the World Council can’t freeze your assets and examine your dealings, down to the smallest detail.”

  “You can tell that to me lawyers, as well,” Thornberry said, snapping his fingers to cut off the phone connection.

  Halleck’s image disappeared and Thornberry said to himself, I’d better speak to me lawyers, m’self, by God.

  KTBR

  “You’re the starman,” said Lester Youngeagle, outright awe clear in his voice, his face, his eyes.

  Station KTBR was housed in a modest plastic-walled building, shaped like a bright white mound hugging the earth. Tornadoes were a frequent threat, Longyear had explained to Jordan as they drove up to it, and the building’s aerodynamic design allowed the wind to slip by it without much resistance.

  “No windows,” he had pointed out as his uncle parked the truck. “Nothing for the wind to grab hold of.”

  “Who thought up the design?” Jordan had asked.

  With a hint of pride in his voice, Longyear had replied, “Our people have designed hogans this way for millennia. We know how to live with tornadoes, better than the whites with their bricks and frame houses.”

  Once they entered the building, the young female receptionist had summoned Youngeagle. He can’t be much more than twenty, Jordan thought as he shook hands with the young man. Youngeagle was not quite Jordan’s height, but stocky, thickset, with skin the color of burnt tobacco leaf, wide-set deeply brown eyes and jet black hair hanging down to his collar. He was wearing a white shirt, its sleeves rolled up past his elbows, and well-faded jeans.

  “I saw that broadcast you did a coupla days ago,” Youngeagle said, once they had shaken hands. “Every damned station on Earth! Wow! How’d you do that?”

  “Alien technology,” Jordan said. “It’s one of the gifts we can offer to the people of Earth.”

  As he led Jordan, Longyear, and Uncle Twelvetoes down the building’s central corridor, Youngeagle asked, “So what brings you here? What can I do for you?”

  Jordan said, “Anything you do for me might get you in trouble with the World Council. As far as they’re concerned, I’m a fugitive.”

  “So you’re hiding out here, on the reservation.”

  “That’s right.”

  They passed a big, open studio, dark and empty. Four 3-D cameras stood idle in the middle of the floor. Each corner of the area was decorated differently: a library, a news desk, an angle of smart screens showing weather maps that reached up to the lights hanging from the ceiling, and what looked to Jordan like a fake classroom. A scattering of lights came on automatically as they entered the area.

  “We do most of our broadcasts from one of these sets or another,” Youngeagle explained as he led them to the library set.

  “You’re not broadcasting now?” Jordan asked.

  “Network feed. We’ll go on the air again with the local news at six.”

  Gesturing to the sofa and armchairs in the library corner, Youngeagle said, “This is the most comfortable spot in the building.”

  Jordan and Longyear took the sofa, Youngeagle one of the upholstered chairs. Twelvetoes remained standing, off to one side.

  Leaning forward intently, Youngeagle asked, “So what can I do for you?”

  “Can you put me in touch with the people who run the major news networks?”

  Youngeagle flinched backward slightly. “I wish I could. I wish I knew some of those birds. But I’m only the general manager of a small station out in the wilderness.”

  “Oh,” said Jordan. “I see.”

  With a forlorn little shake of his head, Youngeagle said, “Just about the only person I know in the New York end of the business is a gal I met at a conference last year. Her name’s Vera something … Vera Griffin, that’s it.”

  “She’s with the news media?”

  “The Otero Network. She’s only a junior manager in Otero’s control center, but she’s bright and ambitious.”

  “Well,” he said to Youngeagle, “she’ll have to do.”

  Turning to Longyear, sitting beside him, Jordan said, “It’s a start.”

  NORDQUIST AND STAVENGER

  Gilda Nordquist rode a commercial rocket to the Moon, sitting amidst the tourists and schoolchildren who were on their way to Selene or the more adult attractions of the Hell Crater entertainment complex.

  The man seated beside her was an astronomer, heading for the Farside Observatory. He tried to engage Nordquist in conversation, but she quieted him soon enough with her flat, monosyllabic responses. Men, she thought. Always on the prowl.

  Commercial flights did not coast to the Moon; that would mean taking several days to reach their destination. Instead, they accelerated at less than half a g—half the gravitational force experienced on the Earth’s surface—halfway to the Moon, then reversed and slowed their approach so that they landed on the lunar surface in a matter of hours, not days. The passengers experienced zero gravity only for the few minutes of the turnaround.

  Still, Nordquist was dismayed that two of the children and several adults moaned and gagged while briefly weightless. At least no one upchucked, she thought gratefully, recalling the sickening smell of vomit from earlier flights to orbital zero-g facilities. The astronomer beside her took zero-g in stride. He must be a veteran traveler, she thought.

  To her surprise, Douglas Stavenger himself was waiting for her at the end of the flexible passageway that connected the spacecraft’s hatch to the air lock of Selene’s Armstrong Spaceport, smiling warmly, wearing a plain gray set of coveralls, much like most of the other permanent Luniks.

  She walked carefully in the light lunar gravity, not wanting to stumble and make a fool of herself. Once she reached him, Stavenger extended his arm and she took it gratefully.

  “You’ve never been to the Moon before, have you?” he asked—solicitously, it seemed to her.

  “This is my first time,” she admitted.

  “You’re doing fine.” And he led her slowly into the terminal’s main area.

  Stavenger was beginning to look his age, she thought. Even with his body teeming with nanomachines, there were crinkles in the corners of his eyes and his once-dark hair was peppered with gray. She saw that she was several centimeters taller than he, but he still was handsome and broad-shouldered.

  “It’s so good of you to meet me personally,” Nordquist said, actually feeling impressed.

  As they walked past the lines of other passengers filing through the immigration inspections, Stavenger smiled boyishly.

  “I don’t have much of a staff,” he explained. “I haven’t been an official member of Selene’s government for ages.”

  Nordquist picked up his slight emphasis on the word “official.” Stavenger had been Selene’s leader back in the early days, when the community was still known as Moonbase. He had led the short, sharp battle for independence against the old United Nations a century before Nordquist had been born. For all that time he had been the power behind the throne of Selene; he had no official position, he merely was the man who made the effective decisions.

  “But you’re a member of the World Council,” she said to him. “That’s quite an honor.”

  He smiled at her. “Anita Halleck’s rubber stamp,” he said. The smile told her that he didn’t mean for her to take the remark seriously. But still, she thought, he’d said it.

  They rode the tram through the tunnel that linked the spaceport to the mostly underground community of Selene. Stavenger assumed—correctly—that Nordquist wasn’t interested in the usual tourist attractions in the Grand Plaza. He knew she hadn’t come to the Moon for low-g acrobatics or flying like a bird on rented wings with nothing but her own muscle power.

  He took her directly to his home: a snug set of rooms nestled deep in Selene’s warren of tunnels.

  Stavenger ushered her into a smallish room furnished with comfortable chairs; its walls were covered with smartscreens that glowed softly. No desk, Nordquist noted. No signs of authority; he doesn’t need to impress visitors, he’s impressive on his own.

  Once they had settled into padded chairs facing each other, Stavenger got straight to the subject. “I assume your visit here has to do with Jordan Kell.”

  “You assume correctly,” Nordquist responded. “He’s slipped away from the security team that was guarding him.”

  Surprised, Stavenger blurted, “He did?”

  “Yes. Apparently he spent last night with Professor Rudaki, but now he’s gone.”

  “You don’t know where he is?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Rudaki doesn’t know where he’s gone?”

  “If he does, he’s not admitting it.”

  Stavenger fought down the urge to smile. Anita’s security people can’t run roughshod over a Council member the way they would over an ordinary citizen, he knew.

  “And Kell’s wife?” he asked.

  Nordquist replied, “She’s safely in the Council’s communications complex. One of our research scientists is studying the communications device that’s implanted in her brain.”

  “Oh?”

  Her face taut, Nordquist explained, “That’s the device that allowed Kell to take over every broadcast station in the solar system.”

  “Yes,” Stavenger said, nearly smiling. “Even our own system here in Selene carried Kell’s little speech.”

  “We’d like to know how they did that.”

  “They? You mean Kell and his wife?”

  “Yes. And, of course, that device in her skull can send and receive messages faster than light.”

  Stavenger leaned back in his chair. “Anita must be very interested in that.”

  “Indeed she is.”

  “You know,” he said, “I was the one who got Anita active in public service, ages ago. She’s come a long way since then.”

  Nordquist started to reply, thought better of it, and merely nodded.

  “She’s very ambitious,” Stavenger said.

  “She has enormous responsibilities.”

  “And no intention of stepping down as head of the World Council.”

  “She’s facing reelection next year.”

  “She’ll win easily.” Suddenly Stavenger’s eyes narrowed. “Unless Kell runs against her.”

  Nordquist’s jaw sagged open. “Run against her? He can’t! He’s a fugitive!”

  “Has he been charged with a crime?”

  “No … but he’s escaped from protective custody.”

  “And Anita’s trying to get him back, keep him bottled up, prevent him from talking to the public.”

  “It’s protective custody,” Nordquist insisted. “There are plenty of fanatics out there who’d try to kill him.”

  “Or use him for their own purposes.”

  Nordquist sat up straight, stiff-backed. “Mr. Stavenger, I’m here to remind you that aiding a hunted fugitive is a breach of the law—even on the Moon.”

  Strangely, Stavenger broke into a low chuckle. “We’re not harboring Kell here in Selene. You can assure Anita of that.” Then he sobered and added, “Although, if he showed up here, I imagine our governing council would be tempted to grant him asylum.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Selene is an independent nation, Ms. Nordquist. We make our own decisions.”

  “You’d better not decide to harbor Kell. Or his wife. Make certain that your governing council understands that.”

  “What would Anita do if we did harbor him?”

  Nordquist hesitated only a heartbeat before answering, “The first thing she’d do is cut off all commerce between Earth and Selene. That’s the first step. There would be more to follow, I assure you.”

  Stavenger muttered, “Yes, I assume there would be.”

  “Kell’s not worth going to war.”

  “Freedom is,” said Stavenger.

  GRIFFIN AND OTERO

  “Lester Youngeagle?” Vera Griffin was sitting in the cubicle that had been assigned to her as the new producer of the “Neighbors and Friends” segment of the evening news show.

  As she had expected, her promotion meant she had to move to the network headquarters, in Boston. With a mixture of anticipation and reluctance she had made the move, and now she sat in her new cubicle, its partitions bare and impersonal, surprised that this young Native American she had met more than a year ago was calling her.

  Griffin was wearing a stylish shifting-hued blouse and trim dark slacks: hardly a producer’s outfit, she thought. She had simply grabbed the first clothes she could yank out of her travel bag this first morning in Boston and hurried from her new apartment to her new office.

  Youngeagle’s three-dimensional image hovered in front of her desk. In his shirtsleeves, he appeared to be sitting at a desk as well. Smaller than her own, she noted. It looked old, hard-used.

  “Yes, I remember you,” Griffin said, checking her directory of names as she spoke. “The … uh, the conference last year in Spokane.”

  “That’s right,” said Youngeagle, obviously pleased that she remembered him. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. What’s with you? Are you in Boston?”

  Youngeagle shook his head. “No, I’m still in North Dakota.”

  “So what are you calling about?”

  Lowering his voice a notch, Youngeagle replied, “I’ve got a bombshell of a story for you.”

  One thing that Griffin had learned in the few days since the network had announced that she would be a producer was that everyone had a story they wanted to get on the air.

  “A bombshell?” she asked wearily.

  “Jordan Kell,” whispered Youngeagle.

  “The starman!”

  “The guy who took over every broadcast outlet on Earth.”

  And the rest of the solar system, Griffin added silently. Excitedly.

  “You know where he is?” she asked.

  Grinning like a successful conspirator, Youngeagle said, “He’s right here on the reservation, with me.”

  “That’s in Nebraska?”

  “North Dakota.”

  “What’s he doing there?”

  “He wants to talk to a network executive. I figured you’d know more about that than I do.”

  The image of Carlos Otero flashed through Griffin’s mind. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  * * *

  It took most of the day for Griffin to battle her way through the layers of Otero’s protective staff. The Big Boss seldom made time for a newly promoted minor producer. But Griffin insisted that she had the inside track on a story that was so big she would only talk to Otero himself about it.

  Where the staff flunkies she had argued with were hard-faced and sharp-voiced—even Otero’s personal assistant had practically sneered at her—the Big Boss himself smiled genially as the assistant ushered Griffin into his airport-sized office.

  “It’s Vera Griffin, isn’t it?” Otero asked as he got to his feet and came around his massive carved ironwood desk, extending a hand to her.

  Griffin nodded and smiled back as she plowed across the thick carpet. You know damned well what my first name is, she was thinking. You’ve got my whole dossier on your desk screen.