Evolution

Roberta, whose identity was still being held secret from the public, was frantically working eighteen-hour days, and had never been happier. Her job at Lunar Magnetics, working under Jennifer Holmes, gave her daily contact with the Door project. Her free time was spent with Mike Ordner. He had not put up even token resistance when she proposed moving to Mars. His only comment had been, “Just tell me when to pack.” He had never truly felt a part of the Crisium community and was hoping to find his niche on Mars.

Trevor York, for his part, discovered that trying to discredit a dead man was harder than he had thought. True, among certain segments of the population, there was an attitude that the human race was better off without Lister. A surprising number of people, however, considered him a martyr. York pitched his Lunar segment to those who had hated Lister and set it to air. Too late, he discovered that every advertising slot during the show had been bought by Lunar Magnetics, acting as a thinly disguised front for the Crisium government, meaning Lister’s widow.

No commercials had been shown. Instead, the signal, beamed live from Crisium, had consisted of outtakes from his conversation with Lister. When he had asked Bob to switch off so that he and Alan Lister might have a few words off the record, Lister’s clandestine cameras had kept right on recording. A kind of electronic judo resulted, with Anne Lister using his own words to throw him. The strength of the reaction caught him off guard. He was condemned by many, particularly the religious right, for being so callous about the fate of Emily Starnes.

It had been cleverly arranged. After the fact, he had demanded that advertisers be more carefully screened, but the damage was done. Anne Lister had succeeded in making a fool out of him. York’s viewers wanted scandal and slander. She had known that and used it against him, aware that his viewers didn’t really care who was the victim. They were just as happy to see him at the sharp end of the stick as anyone else.

He heard through the grapevine that she considered him, like Lewis Cantner, to be a symptom of all that was wrong with Earth. He considered doing a show on her, then thought better of it. She had already shown herself to be a capable adversary.