The Girl With the Jade Green Eyes by John Boyd Page B

plagiarized source, and an appropriate, pirated poem—he had just the poem he could quote from memory—would give her a relic to take with her to the stars. Thousands of years from now, earth time, on some far-distant planet, she might gather her grandchildren around her to read to them, in his own English tongue, the tribute a long-dead earth man once penned to her beauty.
    The image was so compelling Breedlove decided to use the motel’s stationery as a curio to enchant her grandchildren further, and he wrote beneath the motel’s letterhead the title he had chosen for Kyra’s poem, “To One in Quarantine.”
Thou wast all that to me, Kyra,
    For which my soul did pine—
    A green island in the Sound, Kyra,
    Mount Rainier and a shrine,
    All intermingled with fairy fruits and flowers.
    And all the flowers were mine.
Now all my days are trances,
    And all my nightly dreams
    Are where thy green eye glances,
    And where thy footstep gleams—
    In what sidereal dances,
    By what galactic streams?
    He looked upon his handiwork and was pleased; Kyra did not know Edgar Allan Poe from little green apples.
    By 1:15 p.m. (1315 Kyra’s time) he was dawdling over coffee in the dining room when a voice page sent him quickly to the telephone—but the caller was Kelly.
    “I’ve been euchred out of a lunch date with Kyra. The Navy has taken over. Condon called Houston to fly in a NASA expert in space medicine, and he won’t be in until tomorrow.”
    “How did you learn this?”
    “Immigration’s got informants over there, and quarantine is supposed to be my operation. By the way, would you get the Lincoln back to the car pool on the double.”
    “I’ll bring it as soon as I get a call from Kyra.”
    “Forget it. They’re holding her incommunicado.”
    A disturbed Breedlove hung up, then did what any concerned friend of a patient would have done: he called the patient’s doctor. He had only a brief wait before Condon answered.
    “Doctor, I’m inquiring about Kyra.”
    “She’s doing as well as can be expected.”
    “I’m concerned about her time of release. I have to be away for a couple of hours, but I don’t want to be out when she calls.”
    “You’ll have time to drive to Vancouver.”
    “Would I be able to speak to her now for a moment?”
    “No. She’s busy. Call her back after five.”
    Condon hung up. His words substantiated Kelly generally, but it remained to be seen if Kyra was being held incommunicado. If the Department of Defense tried to keep her from communicating with her guardian, a whole new ball game would begin. Defense’s only argument for holding her would be for reasons of national security, and that argument had become suspect in the eyes of the public. With his photographs of Kyra, his letter of authorization, and his eyewitness’s account of her arrival on earth, he possessed the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers. The newspapers would love the story.
    Breedlove returned Kelly’s car to the pool, walked down the street to a rental agency, and rented a less pretentious vehicle. He drove back to the motel and at 5:05 called the operator at the clinic. She gave him the private number of the VIP suite and he dialed the number. A recording of a woman’s voice answered. “We are sorry, but this number is temporarily disconnected.”
    He could not argue with a recording, but he feared the number had not been temporarily disconnected, that Kyra was vanishing into the vast anonymity of the Department of Defense. He next called Peterson at Selkirk. Within the Department of Interior, chief rangers held positions analogous to those of ship captains in shipping firms. They were not of the hierarchy, but they were deferred to as the men who got the work done. Peterson listened as Breedlove described the situation. His answer was temporizing, soothing, encouraging.
    “Frankly, Tom, I think you’re getting emotionally involved. Blackmailing Defense is an irrational move. Maybe the telephone is out of