A World of Difference Read Online Free PDF Page B

somehow.”
    “I know what you mean,” he said. “That bothers me, too. It’s almost as if Houston’s known all along that the coordinates they gave out to everybody weren’t the right ones, and just decided now to let us in on it.”
    He had meant the words as a joke, but once out they had an appalling ring of probability to them. He felt Sarah’s slim frame stiffen. “I wish you hadn’t said that,” she told him. “I don’t—want to believe it.”
    “Likely it isn’t true,” he said, though he doubted that himself.
    “Give me one good reason why not.” Sarah’s tone said she did not believe he could come up with one.
    But he did. “When was the last time the United States was able to hang on to a secret for thirteen years?”
    “A point,” she admitted at last. “Not a very consoling one, but a point. You pick the oddest ways to make me feel better.”
    “Did you have something else in mind?” he asked hopefully.
    “No,” she said after a small pause. “I’m tired, I’m grouchy, I wouldn’t enjoy it much now, and I don’t think I could make it much fun for you.”
    “You’re very annoying when you make sense, you know,” he said. That coaxed a small, almost reluctant laugh from her, but she went to sleep all the same. After a while, so did Irv.
    * * *
    Oleg Lopatin’s face, Tolmasov thought unkindly, was made for frowning. Those eyebrows—the colonel still thought of them as Brezhnev brows, though the Chairman was seven years dead and thoroughly discredited—came down like clouds covering the sun.
    “You should have asked the Americans about the coded message,” Lopatin said.
    “I did not see how I could, Oleg Borisovich. They have never asked us about any we receive. And besides,” Tolmasov added, unconsciously echoing Emmett Bragg, “I did not think they would tell us. They would have sent it in clear if they did not care whether we heard it.”
    “You should have asked them, anyway,” Valery Bryusov said.
    “Why do you say that, Valery Aleksandrovich?” Tolmasov asked, more sharply than he had intended. The linguist did not usually speak up for Lopatin. If he did, he probably had a good reason. Tolmasov wondered if he had missed something.
    Bryusov tugged at his mustache. The gesture had become a habit of his in the months since he had let it grow. It was red-blond with a few white hairs, a startling contrast to the hair on his head, which was about the color of Tolmasov’s.
    He tugged again, then said, “We send things in code because it is our habit to send things in code. Even Oleg Borisovich will agree, I think, that it would not matter much if the Americans found out what was in a good many of them.”
    Lopatin’s frown got deeper. “I suppose that may be true in a few cases,” he admitted grudgingly. Tolmasov knew it was true. He was a trifle surprised the KGB man did, too. Lopatin went on, “What of it, though?”
    “The crew of
Athena
must know that, too,” Bryusov said, ticking off the point on his finger like the academician he was. “They must have studied us as we studied them. They, though, boast of how open—to say nothing of prodigal—they are with information. If they send in code, then, it must be something unusual and important, and so worth asking about.”
    “You may have something at that,” Tolmasov said. “Let me think it over; perhaps next time we talk with
Athena
I will put the question to Bragg. Hearing what he says could be interesting, I suppose.”
    “My congratulations, Valery Aleksandrovich,” Shota Rustaveli said. “Even a theologian would be proud of reasoning that convoluted. Here it may even have reached the truth, always an unexpected bonus.”
    “Thank you so very much, Shota Mikheilovich,” Bryusov said.
    “Always a privilege to assist such a distinguished scholar,” Rustaveli replied, dark eyes twinkling. Bryusov scowled and floated off to find something to do elsewhere. Tolmasov smiled at his retreating back. If he