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were concerned, right? So you were about ten years old, in your own subjective terms.
He frowned.  I don t see your point.
 Well, Sandy, she said unhappily,  when I was ten years old I was pretty immature, but I wasn t stupid.
I wouldn t have been totally oblivious to an occasion like that. I d remembersomething about Alpha
Centauri, even if it was only how excited the grownups were. Don t you?
He scowled more deeply.  I ve seen pictures of it, he offered.
 Yes, she agreed.  So have we. The Hakh hli have shown us tapes. But I wasn t there. Were you?
 Of course I was. Ihad to have been, he said reasonably, though he was still scowling.
She sighed.  I don t think you were, she said.  I think they lied to you.
He stared at her, thunderstruck and slightly offended.  Why would they do that? he demanded. She
was, after all, talking against the oldest friends he had.
 That s what I d like to know, she said seriously.  What reason could they possibly have? For instance,
suppose when they captured your parents 
 Theyrescued them, he snapped.
 When they took them aboard the Hakh hli ship, then. Suppose your father wasn t dead. Suppose your
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mother wasn t even pregnant. Suppose you weren t born until early in the return trip, and then something
happened to your parents, and they brought you up 
 Something did happen to my parents. Then the Hakh hli did bring me up.
 But you don t remember anything about Alpha Centauri. So it couldn t have happened the way they
told you, Sandy, she pointed out.
He was definitely edgy now. He snapped,  What s your point?
 Only that they lied to you, Sandy.
 But that s silly! There wasn t any reason for them to lie, was there? Why would they do that?
And she sighed.  I wish I knew.
Chapter 14
Good seaports make great cities, but seaports have one inescapable flaw. They are inevitably located at
sea level. With the swelling of the oceans New York City has gotten wet. Of the five boroughs the Bronx
has suffered the least; the heights around Inwood and Riverdale still stand proud. Brooklyn, Queens, and
Staten Island are mostly shallow shoals, apart from the stretches left over from the long glacial ridge, the
scrubbings of the last Ice Age, that made their few hills. The island of Manhattan is somewhere in
between. Where it rose in hills, even minor ones like Murray Hill, it is still dry. But the Wall Street area is
a new Venice. Blue water fills the streets between its skyscrapers. The great bridges rise from water and
return to water. Across what used to be the Hudson River now just a brackish extension of the Lower
Bay the Palisades still tower above the sea, and that is where Hudson City has grown. It has two
qualities that make it an important metropolis. One is the salvage industry it supports, for there are
treasures still to be rescued from those flooded buildings of downtown New York. The other is
sentiment. No former New Yorker could possibly accept a world in which there wasn t any New York
City, even if it had to be in New Jersey.
The blimp landed at Hudson City while Sandy was still asleep. He missed the first sight of what once had
been, or once had thought it was, the central city of the human race. He was still bleary eyed as they
drove through Hudson to their hotel. Even though he was both sleepy and abstracted, he could not help
noticing that Hudson City was orders of magnitude huger and busier than Dawson had been, but the
puzzlement in his mind drowned out the curiosity about this huge, human place.
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Their quarters weren t two separate rooms this time. Instead they had a  suite of three linked rooms, a
bedroom apiece and a larger sitting room between. As soon as they were alone Sandy followed Polly
into her bedroom to confront her with what Marguery Darp had said.
Predictably, her response was belligerent.  Lie to you? she cried.  What sort of statement is that? Of
course our Major Seniors did notlie to you. Is your mind disordered and not functioning clearly because
you are so obsessed with prospect of amphylaxis with that Earth female?
Sandy made a fist and slammed it against the nearest wall. The wall shook, and Polly giggled in alarm.
 Stop talking about me and the Earth female! he shouted.  Answer the question! What she said was
true. I don t remember the ship visiting that other star. Do you?
Polly hesitated.  Perhaps not very well, she admitted.  But what does that prove? Earth people don t
know anything about time dilation, do they? When we get back to the ship you can ask the Major
Seniors to clarify your understanding.
He glared at her.  Who says I m going back to the ship?
 Well, she conceded,  perhaps you are not. I do not know if that has been decided.
 Perhaps Idefinitely am not. In any case, who asks the Major Seniors anything? he growled in English.
 Well, then you can ask ChinTekki-tho by radio. I must call him this morning; when I am finished and
not at any earlier time you can speak to him yourself. And speak Hakh hli to me and not that Earth
language, she finished.
He blinked at her.  What is purpose of that? he asked, but obeying. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]