Balance Point by Robert Buettner Page A

turned, pressed herself against me and kissed me. “Checking Daisy” was code that Kit and I had shared before, and it had nothing to do with boat maintenance.
    There was a suite at the far end of the boathouse that had been designed for a caretaker, but never occupied. The suite had a view of the Gulf, which was nice, and a bed, which was nicer.
    Later, we sat naked side by side on a platform at the base of stairs that led down from the office to the Gulf and dangled our feet in the warm water. It was, in fact, so much later that the band had quit and the main house and outbuildings were dark except for the downlights of the security ‘bots circling above the compound’s roofs. The Moon had risen and now hung high in the silent sky. Whatever the condition of Daisy’s bright work, after two weeks separation, Kit’s had required lots of polishing.
    “Did Weason even know why you were along on the trip?”
    My view had been that Kit’s father had steered her onto the mission to Paris with Weason because it might reignite Kit’s feelings for a man Edwin Trentin-Born saw as a suitable match for his daughter. However, the last few hours had temporarily mellowed my anxiety.
    “Mostly the trip was to pump up Brad’s foreign-policy credentials. He knew I was along to notify other governments that we’ve certified an intelligent species under the Intelligent Species Protection Act. And that we promised the grezzen race that the ISPA notifications would be delivered confidentially.”
    “We could have told the French that in a Cutlergram.”
    “Jazen, diplomatically and philosophically, contact with another intelligent species is the biggest event that’s happened to mankind since End of Hostilities. Civilized nations deliver news like that in person.”
    I loved Kit with every fiber of my being, I knew that my birth parents were Trueborns, and I had come to believe in Trueborn democracy, with all its warts.
    Nonetheless, there were moments when anyone raised on an outworld saw a certain irony in the way Trueborns perceived the universe and their place in it. Which was that everything revolved around perfect them.
    I kissed a half-moon-shaped scar above her clavicle, which her dress had barely covered. I had dug that bullet out myself.
    Then I answered her. “Civilized nations don’t end hostility by exterminating the only other intelligent species in the universe.” Even though the Slugs had started the war by killing sixty million Earthlings, Orion had raised me to believe me that two wrongs don’t make a right.
    “Which is exactly why we passed ISPA. So what happened between mankind and the Slugs wouldn’t happen again.”
    “ISPA or no ISPA, we can’t even get along with ourselves.”
    Kit straightened her back like the self-righteous Trueborn she was. “Cold War II’s Yavet’s fault. What kind of civilization pollutes and overpopulates its world so badly that killing babies at birth is virtuous?”
    I raised my palms. “No argument, lady. Remember, I was raised an Illegal.”
    We sat and listened to the waves lap the pilings. Then she nudged me with a bare shoulder. “Illegal. I like bad boys.” She shoved me off the platform, dove in behind me, then wrapped her thighs around my torso.
    “Can we get off underwater, Parker?”
    She dunked me, then I clawed to the surface and coughed salt water. “Dunno. We can drown there, though.”
    “We’ll cross that bridge when it collapses underneath us.”
    It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized that we had never discussed what rat bastard Cutler might be up to. I thought about poor Mort’s concerns and smiled. At least whatever Cutler was up to didn’t involve the Yavi, who were even bigger rat bastards than he was.

EIGHT
    Max Polian floated weightless in the Trueborn cruiser’s forward observation blister. The ship again drifted within sight of an inhabited world, but virtually nothing else remained the same since his conversation with