BOUNDARY(173)

"'Compromised,'" Hughes drawled, again exaggerating his accent, as if he couldn't help do so while savoring the word. In the dialect of Washingtonese favored by Jensen and his type, that translated as: can't be certain to get with the program in every jot and particular.



He sat up straighter and went back to his usual manner of speech, which had only a trace left of his Mississippi rural origins. "Yes, one of the linguists is a foreigner, indeed. A citizen of our well-known archenemy, Great Britain. The only country, let me remind you, to ever invade the United States—and who's to say their conduct for the past two centuries hasn't just been a ploy to get us to lower our guard so they can do it again?"



"This is no time for jokes, Andy!"



"Who's joking?" He twisted his head slightly, gesturing in the direction of the Pentagon. "You and I both know perfectly well that somewhere buried over there are plans for repelling a British invasion— and invading them, for that matter. They're called 'contingency plans' and we've got them for just about everything. A surgical strike at Antarctica's penguins, I imagine, if that's ever needed. And so what? Nobody in their right mind really expects them to be used— just like nobody in their right mind really thinks Ms. Jane Mayhew is Mata Hari. Including you, so don't give me lectures about telling jokes. And will you please sit down? As short as I am and as tall as you are, you're giving my neck a crick having to look up at you."



After a moment, Jensen did so, his long and angular body folding up on the couch like a collapsing pile of sticks.



"What a nightmare," he hissed, closing his eyes and rubbing them. "It's the combination that makes it such a mess. A reactionless drive in the abstract would be one thing. Such a drive and the possibility we might someday be able to interpret what might be blueprints for building it has every nation in the world hollering bloody murder. All of them are now insisting that the United States has to open up the space program and give everyone equal access to Melas Chasma. The Central African Republic, Mongolia, Paraguay, you name it."



He lowered his hand and stared gloomily at the opposite wall. "Those we can brush off, of course. But the Chinese and even the Europeans are every bit as adamant, and . . ."



"Those we can't. Or, if we did, wouldn't do any good. I've seen the intelligence. If they really put their money where their mouth is, the Europeans can build a Nike or its equivalent inside of three years. It'd take the Chinese longer, but not that much. The Indians could eventually manage it, too—possibly even the Brazilians—although that would take a couple of decades or so."



He swiveled his head to look out of the window again. The Potomac settled him down, as always. That very same river had flowed there, after all, more than two centuries earlier when the British burned the capital. Hughes' long career, if nothing else, had convinced him that most political uproars were a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing once a few years went by.



"And then what?" he mused. "Do we instruct our people on Mars and Phobos—that mighty military host—to fend them off with . . . I'm not sure what. I believe Captain Hathaway has a few pistols stashed away somewhere, in the event he ever had to suppress a mutiny."



"The President—just this morning—sent down orders to start building three more Nike-class ships," Jensen growled. "We can get them functional before anyone else can assemble even one equivalent ship up there, and I can assure you—"



"Yes, yes, they'll be armed to the teeth. And—again—so what? Do you really propose to start a new world war over this?"



He turned his head back to look at Jensen. "Well. Do you?"



"Don't be absurd!"



"I'm not being absurd. 'Absurd' is a word you apply to a threat that everyone knows is empty. Which that threat is—and the Europeans and the Chinese will say so openly. The Europeans will probably be polite about it. Formally speaking, at least."



His hand started moving through the pile of papers on his desk, looking for one of them. "It's a done deal, George. My own recommendation—yes, I know it's out of my area—is that you recommend to the President that we be Mr. Nice Guy about the whole thing. Offer to set up a joint space program. In the real world, once their feathers get unruffled, the Europeans and Chinese will let us basically manage it. If for no other reason, because they won't want to sink the money into creating their own full-scale alternative. So we wind up with a messy compromise but still one that isn't out of control."



He found the paper he was looking for and took it in his hand. Then, waited.