Eon

Eon

Greg Bear

For Poul and Karen

with much appreciation

and love.

Prolog - Four Beginnings

One - Christmas Eve 2000

New York City

"It's going into a wide elliptical Earth orbit," Judith Hoffman said. "Perigee about ten thousand kilometers, apogee about five hundred thousand. It'll make a loop around the moon every third orbit." She pulled back from the video screen to let Garry Lanier have a look from where he sat on the edge of her desk. For the time being, the Stone still resembled a baked potato, with no meaningful detail.

Outside the door to her office, the noise of the party was a distant reminder of ignored social obligations. She had brought him into the office just a few minutes before.

"That must be an incredible fluke."

"It's not a fluke," Hoffman said.

Tall, with close-cut dense black hair, Lanier resembled a pale-skinned Amerindian, though he had no Indian blood. Hoffman found his eyes particularly reassuring—gently scrutinizing, the eyes of a man used to seeing across great distances. She did not put her trust in people on the basis of looks, however.

Hoffman had taken to Lanier because he had taught her something. Some had called him bloodless, but Hoffman knew better. The man was simply competent, calm and observant.

He had a kind of blindness to people's foibles that made him peculiarly effective as a manager. He seldom seemed to recognize petty insults, bitchiness or backbiting. He saw people only in terms of their effectiveness or lack of it, at least as far as his public reactions showed; he cut through their surface dross to find the true coin beneath. She had learned some interesting things about several people by observing their reactions to Lanier. And she had adapted her own style, picking up on his finesse.

Lanier had never been in Hoffman's at-home work area before, and now, in the video's cool light, he inspected the shelves of memory blocks, the broad, empty desk with its basic secretary's chair, the compact word processor beneath the video.

Like most of the party-goers, he was a little in awe of Hoffman. On the Hill, she was called the Advisor. She had acted in official and unofficial capacities as a science expert for three presidents. Her video programs reviving and re-exploring science had been popular in the late 1990s, in a world just recovering from the shock of the Little Death. She had served on the board of directors of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and now ISCCOM—the International Space Cooperation Committee. Though she could not disguise her solid build, her taste in clothes was immaculate. There was a conscious limit to her style; however; her fingernails were short and unpainted, well-manicured but not elegant, and she wore little makeup. She allowed her brunette hair to find its own shape with a minimum of interference; it tended to make a nimbus of fine curls around her head.