Enigma Read Free

Academy curriculum book. Nor did he have time for a sightseeing cruise. His attention was focused on holding his own in the challenging second-tier GS disciplines: Linguistics, Cultural Anthropology, Political Psychology, Economics of Production. Successful completion of all six tiers at GSA-Georgetown would qualify him for an internship somewhere in the Council’s world-wide bureaucracy.
    Though only twenty-two, Thackery had worked hard to separate himself from what he saw as youthful affectations, and to take on the habits of thought more appropriate to a mid-level Council facilitator or field agent. He was not surprised that Mollis took him for older than he was—that happened frequently. Nor was he much surprised that she found him stilted, even dull. There was no room for chance or emotional impulse in his plan. He meant his life to be orderly, even tame. That was, after all, the function of the World Council—to see that lives were orderly, even tame. With nine billion lives to consider, orderly and tame was the only acceptable formula.
    But Georgetown’s administration had intervened, which is why he was angry at them as well. Too many instructors had seen opportunities to use the trip as a practicum in their specialty: sociodynamics, economics, consumer motivation. His advisor had agreed with them, and Thackery was saddled with a half-dozen special projects to be completed before, during, or after the one-month voyage, with never a word to reducing or rescheduling his regular duties. And Director Stowell had approved the plan without troubling to find out what Thackery thought of it.
    So he had not come aboard Amalthea looking for excitement, or companionship, or even relaxation. He had come because his coming pleased those on whom so much of his future depended. And he was angry at himself for having forgotten it. He had gone into the Panorama not to see Jupiter but to observe his fellow passengers’ reaction to it. Instead, he had allowed himself to lose control.
    And now he was afraid to go back. Afraid that it would happen again, and afraid that it would not.
    For two days Thackery stayed away, while Amalthea looped around Jupiter between the orbits of the innermost Galilean moons. In that time, he managed to insult Ms. Goodwin, to start an argument over the current Council that nearly became a fistfight, and, by being conversationally brusque and sexually inconsiderate, to turn a pity fuck offered by Mollis into a disaster.
    “What is it with you?” she asked as she dressed afterward.
    “Your drug program out of balance?”
    “I’m not using,” he said, bristling defensively.
    “Then maybe you ought to be. What has you so wired? I thought you were all right, just a little naive,” she said, not unkindly. “But you knew what you were doing—you just didn’t care about my half of it. You can’t treat people like this. It isn’t right.”
    I’m fighting myself he thought. And losing . “I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”
    “I don’t need you to tell me that.”
    Chastened, he watched as she finished dressing. “Come to the Panorama with me,” he said impulsively. “I don’t think so. Thanks all the same.”
    “I told you, it wasn’t personal.”
    “That’s part of the problem.” When she was gone he sat on the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands. It isn’t getting better—you’re as out of control today as you were in the Panorama .
    You’re still angry , he told himself.
    No one planned this. It’s not anybody’s fault.
    I’m not angry at anyone in particular , he realized. I’m angry because I’m afraid and I don’t like it. Angry because I let myself be surprised. Angry because —He balked at completing the thought.
    Because—
    Because that hour Jupiter had me was the best hour of my life… and because it’s too late to let that change the course I’m on .
    Thackery mulled over that revelation for several minutes, examining it from all sides, looking