Immediately he recognized that—as he should have assumed— the flowers were artificial. Yet he was still pretty sure that artificial flowers weren't among the cargo manifest for Nike. Atomic powered or not, every ounce of her cargo space had been allotted to useful things; even the decorative items brought on board had been selected for flexibility and long term use, not for casual ornamentation.
There was a faint perfume to the flowers, though not, as far as he could tell, that of any one flower. A scent Madeline sometimes wore, now that he thought of it. He studied the flowers more closely, still trying to make sense of their presence. At very close range, he could see they were handmade, and from the oddest things. Stems from sections of tie-down cable, petals from various types of shrink-wrap and packing seals . . .
He looked up slowly, incredulously. "You made these?"
"Yes," she said softly, almost shyly. "I know it's kind of silly, but— "
"How long did it take you to do this?"
"Not all that long. Well, about a week. I spent my off hours working on them."
"A week?" He glanced down at the chocolates. Those he knew were real, as he'd selected them himself. He also knew that on the Dessert Points scale that the crew had to abide by, that box represented about a full week's worth of desserts for Madeline—and she was someone who doted on chocolate.
He looked from the box to the flowers to her face. Her gaze was calm, serious . . . yet very intense.
"Why?" he asked, finally.
"There isn't a standard ritual to make amends to a man that I know of. Some things haven't changed much in a hundred years, despite all the other advances. But this gets my point across. Can I talk to you now?"
He gestured her further inside. "Sure, sure. Sit down. Um, have a chocolate."
"Not right now, thanks."
If she was turning down chocolate, she was serious. "Okay. Well . . . go ahead, talk. I'm kinda bad at this, and I wasn't ready."
Madeline settled herself into one of the chairs across from Joe's sofa, where Joe had sat down, and then looked into his eyes. "Joe, you've always known that I was an intelligence agent. This job was given to me the day A.J. discovered this base, and that job was to control information. An agent doesn't allow her personal feelings to affect her work. In fact, smart agents don't allow themselves to have personal feelings at all during a mission."
She gazed down at her hands, "I did, anyway, even though I knew it wasn't a good idea. But . . . oh, let's just say that mine is a lonely life. That didn't bother me for years. I'm still not sure why it started bothering me now. I think it's because all this time on the Nike project, especially since we left Earth, made me feel like I had something of a family. For the first time in my life, really."
Her shoulders seemed to twitch. "But whatever the reason, I did start having feelings for you that went way beyond anything an agent should have, for one of the people she is—I'll be blunt—assigned to watch over. I guess I'd hoped, somehow, I wouldn't have to do anything, so it would never get to be a problem." She shook her head. "A stupid hope. Either way it would have had a bad result—I have to intervene, and become the enemy, or I don't, because the entire mission finds nothing worthwhile.
"And that's what I don't want my life to be, Joe. Finding nothing worthwhile."
Joe stared at the small woman, trying to put his thoughts in order. As ever, Madeline was persuasive. Sincerity seemed to drip from every word. But Joe also knew that her professional skills made her a superb liar. A master of deceit, capable of convincing anyone that she was on their side, while she calmly worked against them. Or, if not against them, certainly not for them.
Could be a superb liar, he corrected himself. The ability to do something didn't automatically mean it was exercised. And . . . did he really think she'd been lying to him all along? Or any of them, really?
No. He knew the answer the moment he asked himself the question.
He stood up and paced to the window, but ended up looking at her instead. "Madeline, I'm the kind of person who gets committed to things. And I guess what bothers me is that I don't know how I'd handle getting personally committed to someone who might well end up on the other side—the way I see it, anyway—of the life's work I've also committed myself to. You haven't gotten a response from your superiors yet, have you?"
She shook her head. "Nothing concrete, one way or the other yet. There must be considerable arguing going on."
"And what if they tell you to crack down?"