He sagged down onto the empty chair at the next desk. 288

"Hell yes! What are you doing here? I never thought . . ."

She was just as lovely as he remembered her from five years before. Maybe even more beautiful. Her high cheek- bones and dark eyes had always given her an ascetic, almost otherworldly appearance. But now there was strength in her face, an awareness that can only come from experience and pain. Instead of the black turtlenecks and tight jeans that had been her trademark since he had first seen her in a Berkeley coffeehouse twenty years earlier, she wore plain blue standard-issue coveralls with the insignia of a communications clerk on the shoulder.

"Your hair," he realized.

Diane shrugged. "It took too much time every day to keep it that long."

It had cascaded down to her waist, midnight black and lustrous. Now Diane's hair was barely shoulder-length and was pulled back off her face.

"I don't understand," Kinsman said. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming here? What happened?"

Her smile faded. "You need a license to be an entertain- er, these days. The antisubversion laws, you know."

Kinsman shook his head. "I've been up here for five years ..."

"Well, anyway, they revoked my license. Because of a concert I gave in Detroit, where they had the riots."

A thousand questions boiled through Kinsman's mind.

"I had to find something to do." Diane gave a nervous little laugh. "Would you believe that I was broke? By the time the IRS finished with me, there wasn't a damned thing left. So I went out and got a job. When I saw an opening for a tour of duty on the Moon, I applied for it. Extra pay, you know."

"You should have let me know . . ."

Her eyes shifted slightly away from him. "I didn't know if you'd want to have me here."

"Not have you . . . ?"

"I was wrong, Chet," Diane said quietly. "About a lot of things."

"So you came up here."

Brightening slightly, she echoed, "So I came up here. To see what your brave new world is all about. To see you, I guess."

"And Neal?" Kinsman asked. "He's still in the Senate, isn't he?"

"Oh, sure. He's back with Mary-Ellen. He and I broke up pretty soon after you left Washington. He might get tapped as the party's Vice Presidential candidate next year."

Kinsman muttered, "The sacrificial Iamb."

"It's not good down there, Chet," Diane said, with a slight shudder. "I don't know what's going to happen to them, but you were right to get out and get away."

Suddenly he wanted to change the subject, move on to something more cheerful. Gesturing to the computer key- board in front of Diane, he said, "They didn't waste any time putting you to work."

"No, they didn't. Your people are very efficient."

Kinsman mused, "The government revoked your enter- tainer's license, but here you are in the most sensitive section of the base."