Probability Sun Read Free Page B

exploratory committees. I’m flattered as hell by your wanting me and all that, but no thanks.”
    “May I sit down?”
    “If you insist.”
    “Will you sit down, too?”
    “Certainly. I can say no just as well sitting down as standing up. It’s an inherited family ability, passed along for generations.”
    They sat. Colonel Byars pulled her chair uncomfortably close to Capelo’s and said calmly, “This assignment is not an exploratory committee, Dr. Capelo. And you are not just any civilian—you’re a scientist with irreplaceable and non-duplicatable skills needed for this project, which is priority one, Special Compartmented Information clearance carrying ‘most vital to war effort’ status. You can be recruited for a project with that status, and you are being so recruited. Now.”
    Capelo said, “You’re wearing a portable communications shield. With a Faraday field big enough to encase these chairs.”
    “Affirmative. Your SCI clearances are already in process, and until they come through, I can’t give you all the specifics on the project. I can say that it’s one worthy of your prodigious talents, as they’ve been described to me. Of course, we can’t forcibly carry you off and make you do physics for us, but if you absolutely refuse to serve the Alliance, we can find you a willful obstruction to the war effort.”
    “And send me to prison,” Capelo said. “My God.”
    “And send you to prison,” Byars agreed. “But we don’t expect that to happen. First, there’s nothing in your record that indicates you oppose the war, and at least one personal reason to think you have an interest in defeating the Fallers who—”
    “Stop,” Capelo said. “Stop right now.”
    “As you wish. Second, the project is one with genuine and major scientific interest, one that we think will hold authentic fascination for you. Real physics, at the experimental and theoretical edge.”
    “You’re not a physicist,” Capelo said. “Not even a minor one. You wouldn’t know the theoretical edge if it sliced you in half.”
    “No. I’m proceeding on the words of people who are physicists.”
    “And you’d really send me to prison if I say no.”
    “We would indeed. We don’t like doing it this way, Dr. Capelo. A reluctant scientist on a military mission is nobody’s conception of ideal. Especially not mine. If this were up to me, I’d choose somebody else.”
    “Points for honesty, Colonel. But not many. I don’t like being pushed around.”
    “I don’t like doing it. But apparently you, and only you, are needed for this.”
    “And from the way you’re studying me, you can’t imagine why.”
    She didn’t answer. Capelo got up and strode around his sister’s sensibly decorated room, fighting the impulse to throw something. The bastards. The fucking imperial bastards. High-handed, dictatorial … Abruptly he flung himself back into the chair that stood too close to Byars’s.
    “I’m going to astonish you, Colonel. I’m going to accept.”
    “I’m pleased.”
    “No, you’re not. You wanted me to say no, that’s why you presented this as autocratically as possible. Your starched little military soul really does want somebody else. But somewhere above you there’s a military physicist who knows better, and I think I can guess who. He’s worth listening to. So I’ll accept, with two conditions:”
    Byars said levelly, “The Solar Alliance Defense Council doesn’t accede to conditions, Dr. Capelo.”
    “You will this time. This little recruiting session is being recorded, isn’t it? Of course it is. I already called you on your overall approach. Don’t add to it unreasonable obstruction of a war effort on your part.”
    Byars was good. She didn’t retort, didn’t move even a facial muscle. But Capelo saw the anger in her eyes.
    He said, “First condition: You confirm for me that the military physicist who wants me is Vladimir Cherkov. Confirming that surely doesn’t violate