Perhaps, Maya thought, Arkady had defused the one with the other. If so it had been cleverly done, but Arkady was a clever man. She thought back. Actually it had been John Boone who had changed the subject. He had in effect flown to the ceiling and come to Arkady’s rescue, and Arkady had seized the chance. They were both clever men. And it seemed possible they were in some sort of collusion. Forming a kind of alternative leadership, perhaps, one American, one Russian. Something would have to be done about that.
She said to Michel, “Do you think it’s a bad sign we all consider ourselves such liars?”
Michel shrugged. “It’s been healthy to talk about it. Now we realize we’re more alike than we thought. No one has to feel they were unusually dishonest to get aboard.”
“And you?” Arkady asked. “Did you present yourself as a most rational and balanced psychologist, hiding the strange mind we have come to know and love?”
A small smile from Michel. “You’re the expert in strange minds, Arkady.”
Then the few still watching the screens called out. The radiation count had started to fall. After a while it slipped back to just a little above normal.
Someone returned the Pastoral to the moment of the horn call. The last movement of the symphony, “Glad and Grateful Feelings After the Storm,” poured from the speaker system, and as they left the shelter and fanned out through the ship like dandelion seeds on a breeze, the beautiful old folk melody was broadcast throughout the Ares, elaborating itself in all its Brucknerian richness.