BenRabi muttered: “ ‘Aljo! Aljo! Hens ilyas! Ilyas
im gialo bar! . . . ’ ” Over a joint
with stripped threads.
“What the hell?” Mouse asked.
“A nonsense poem. By Potty Welkin. From Shadows in a
Dominion Blue. Goes:
“ ‘Nuné! Nuné! Scutarrac . . . ’ ”
“Never heard of it. Think we ought to cut new
threads?”
“Let’s put in a new fitting. It was a political
protest thing. Not one of his biggies. It was a satire on
Confederation. The poem was his idea of what a political speech
sounded like.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s just the way I feel this morning. Like a poem
without sense or rhyme that everybody’s trying to figure out.
Including me. There. That’s got it. What do we do
next?”
Beyond Mouse, Amy consulted her clipboard. She had been staring
at him with questioning eyes. “A cracked nipple in a lox line
about a kilometer from here.”
“Uhn.” BenRabi tossed his tool kit into the electric
truck, sat down with his legs dangling off the bed. Mouse joined
him. Amy took off with a lurch that bounced spare fittings all over
the truckbed. She had been angry and uncommunicative all week.
Moyshe had been as wary himself, as unsure. He thought she was
upset because he had not tried to seduce her.
Mouse had let it be for three days. Now, whispering, he asked,
“What happened between you two?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, Moyshe. I know you better than that.”
“Nothing. Really. That’s the trouble.” He
shrugged, tried to change the subject. “I still can’t
believe we’re inside a ship. I keep feeling we’re back
in the tunnels at Luna Command.”
“What did you mean by that poem?”
“What I said. People keep trying to figure me out. So they
can use me.”
The ship was a lot like Luna Command, with long passageways
connecting the several areas that had to be big to function.
“I don’t understand,” Mouse said.
“Who does? No, wait. Look. Here’s Skullface, trying
to get me to cross over . . . ”
“So? He tried me too. He’s trying everybody. Looks
like part of their plan. I just told him I couldn’t meet his
price. I don’t know anything that would be any good to him
anyway. So what’s the big deal? It’s all part of the
floor show. We’ve been through it before.” But there’s something different this time, benRabi
thought. I’ve never been tempted before. “Why was she
hustling me?” He jerked his head toward Amy.
Mouse laughed wearily, lowered his head, shook it sadly.
“Moyshe, Moyshe, Moyshe. Does it have to be a plot? Did the
Sangaree woman burn you that bad? Maybe she likes you.
They’re not all vampires.”
“But they’ll all get you hurt,” benRabi
mumbled.
“What? Oh. You ever stop to think maybe she feels the same
way?”
BenRabi paused. Mouse could be right. Mouse knew how to read
women, and it paralleled his own impression. He wished he could
assume a more casual, no-commitment attitude in his personal
relationships. Mouse managed, and left the girls happy.
“Speaking of women. And her.” The Sangaree woman
gave them a bright gunmetal smile and mocking wave as they glided
past her work party, “What to do?” She had been less
obnoxious since Mouse’s recreation-day demonstration, but had
not abandoned her plot.
“Just wait. We’re making her nervous. You think old
Skullface knows about her? We might make a few points by stopping
her when she moves.”
“It’s a notion,” Mouse said, becoming
thoughtful. As they rolled to a stop, he suggested, “Why
don’t you come by for a game tonight?”
His partner was still very much devoted to the mission, Moyshe
realized.
Amy plugged the truck into a charger circuit. “That woman.
Who is she?”
“Which woman?” Mouse countered, tone idle.
BenRabi scanned the area. It looked like the site of a recent
elephant riot. The passage had been open to space. Liquids had
frozen and burst their pipes.
“Well be here a week, Amy. How come we didn’t bring
any replacement pipe?”
“They’re sending a Damage Control team up after
lunch. They’ll bring what we need. We just worry about the
lox line now. It’s got to be open by noon. You didn’t
answer my question, Mouse.”
“What’s that?”
“Who’s that woman?”
BenRabi shrugged, said, “Maria Gonzalez, I
think.”
“I know her name. I want to know what’s between you
three.”
BenRabi shrugged again. “I guess she hates spies. A lot of
people have scratched us off their Christmas lists.” Avoiding
her eyes, he handed Mouse a wrench.
“Who does she work for?”
The question took him by surprise, but he was in good form.
"Paul Kraus in atmosphere systems. He could tell you whatever you
want to know.”
Mouse chuckled.
A muscle in Amy’s cheek started twitching. “You know
what I mean. Answer me.”
“Take it easy, Amy,” Mouse said. “Your badge
is showing.”
‘What?”
“A little professional advice, that’s all.
Don’t press. It puts people off. They clam up. Or play games
with you, leading you around with lies. A good agent never pushes
unless he has to. You don’t have to. Nobody’s going
anywhere for a year. So why not just lie back and let the pieces
fall, then put them together.” He had selected the tone of an
old pro advising a novice. “Take our situation. Give me a
twenty-centimeter copper nipple, Moyshe. You know we’re Navy
men. We know you work for Kindervoort.
Okay . . . ”
“I what?”
“Don’t be coy. Torch, Moyshe. And find the solder.
You give yourself away a dozen times a day, Amy. The greenest
apprentice wouldn’t have fallen for that left-handed wrench
thing.”
BenRabi chuckled. Amy had torn through all three tool kits
trying to find the mythical wrench. Then she had gone down to
Damage Control and tried to requisition one. Somebody down there
had gone along with the gag. They had passed her on to
Tooling . . .
Amy had been given a crash course in plumbing, but she had not
learned enough to fool the initiate.
Fury reddened her face. It faded into a soft smile. “I
told him I couldn’t pull it off.”
“He probably didn’t expect you to. He knows
we’re the best. Doesn’t matter anyway. We’re out
of it now. Just a couple spikes here working. Okay, we know where
we stand. Where’s the flux, Moyshe? So why don’t you do
like we do? Don’t push. Pay attention. Wait. It’ll come
in bits and pieces. No hard feelings that way. And that closes Old
Doc Igarashi’s Spy School and Lonely Hearts Club for today.
Be ready for a surprise quiz tomorrow. Ow! That’s
hot.”
“Watch the torch, dummy,” Moyshe said. “This T
pipe is an odd size. We’ll have to choke it down to two
centimeters somehow.”
“Here,” Amy said. She made a checkmark on one of the
sheets on her clipboard, handed Moyshe a reduction joint with a
number tag attached. “Special made. See. I’m
learning.” She laughed. “No more questions. Mouse.
Moyshe. I feel better now. Not so sneaky.”
“Good for you,” Mouse said. Danion suddenly groaned and shivered. BenRabi whirled, looking
for a spacesuit locker. Mouse crouched defensively, making a sound
suspiciously like a whimper. “What the hell?” he
demanded. “We breaking up?”
Amy laughed. “It’s nothing. They’re shifting
mindsails and catchnets.”
“Mindsails?” BenRabi asked. “What’s
that?”
Her smile vanished. She had, evidently, said too much. “I
can’t explain. You’d have to ask somebody from
Operations Sector.”
“And that’s off limits.”
“Yes.”
“Got you.”
The shuddering continued for a half hour. They lunched while
waiting for the Damage Control people. Amy began to lose her
reserve toward benRabi. Soon they were chattering like teenagers
who had just made up.
Mouse did a little poking and prodding from the sidelines, as
skillfully as any psychologist, maneuvering Amy into inviting
Moyshe out next recreation day.
BenRabi went to Mouse’s cabin after supper. They played
chess and, lip reading, discussed what Moyshe was putting down,
using the venerable invisible ink trick, between the lines of his
drafts of Jerusalem. They also attacked the problem of the Sangaree
woman, and found it as stubborn as ever.
Recreation day came, with all its mad morning chess tournaments
and its afternoon sports furor, its Archaicist exhibitionism, and
its collectors’ excitement. BenRabi concluded some business
with Grumpy George, got deadlocked over some stamps, and managed a
handsome cash settlement on some New Earth mutant butterflies he
had brought along for trading.
That evening he and Amy attended another ball. This one was
Louis XIV. He went in his everyday clothing. Amy, though, scrounged
a costume and was striking. From the ball they went to her cabin so
she could change. They had been invited to another party, by the
same cousin.
“How did you people get involved in the Archaicist
thing?” Moyshe asked while she was changing.
“We’re the originals,” she replied from her
bathroom, her voice light with near-laughter. She had been
mirthfully happy all day. Moyshe, too, had been feeling intensely
alive and aware. “It starts in creche. In school. When we act
out history. We haven’t really been around long enough to
have any past of our own, so we borrow yours.”
“That’s not true. We all have the same
history.”
“I guess you’re right. Old Earth is
everybody’s history if you get right down to it. Anyway,
it’s a creche game. A teaching method. And it carries over
for some people. It’s fun to dress up and pretend. But we
don’t live it. Not the way some people do. Know what I
mean?”
“You remember Chouteau? That Ship’s Commander who
brought us here? He had as bad a case as I’ve ever
seen.”
“An exception. Look at it this way. How many people go to
these things? Not very many. And they’re most of the
Archaicists aboard. See? It’s a game. But your people are so
serious about it. It’s spooky.”
“I’ll buy that.” Curious, he thought. In these two
weeks he had seen nothing culturally unique to the Seiners. They
lived borrowed lives in a hash that did not add to a whole. His
expectations, based on landside legends, rumors, and his Luna
Command studies, had been severely disappointed.
But Amy had a point. He had encountered only a narrow selection
of her people. An unusual minority. The majority, remaining aloof,
might represent something different.
She came from the bathroom. “Zip me up, okay?” Then,
responding to a question, “We’re not complete
borrowers. It’s partly because you’re just seeing a few
people, like you say. And partly because this is the fleet. You
wouldn’t judge Confederation by what you saw on one of your
Navy ships, would you? The Yards and creches are different. Except
when we’re working, we try to make life a game. To beat the
boredom and fear. Can’t be that much different for Navy men.
Anyway, you’re not seeing the real us, ever. You’re
just seeing us reacting to you.”
What were these Yards? They kept slipping into Seiner
conversation. Did the Starfishers have a world of their own, hidden
somewhere out of the way? It was not impossible. The records
revealing the whereabouts of scores of early settlements had been
destroyed in the Lunar Wars . . . He was about
to ask when he recalled Mouse’s advice about pressing.
There was much, much more to the Seiner civilization than anyone
in Confederation suspected. The bits he and Mouse had collected
already would be worth fortunes to the right people. If he kept
learning at this rate . . .
They were going to give him another medal when he got back. He
could see it coming. He would rather have that damned year off.
The party was a carbon of the previous one. Same people. Same
music. Same conversation and arguments. Only he and Amy were
different. They watched their drinking and tried to understand what
was happening to them.
The partiers were younger than he or Amy, and uncomfortable with
the gap, though Amy’s cousin did her best to make them part
of things. Moyshe never felt unwelcome, only out of place. He
supposed he had been as much an anomaly before, but had been too
preoccupied to notice.
Had Amy manipulated the invitation? If so, why? Another
Kindervoort ploy? Both Jarl and Mouse seemed eager to push them
together.
Why did he question everything? Even the questioning? Why did he
feel that he was losing his grasp on his place in the universe?
They cuddled. They drank. The shadows closed in. They probed one
another’s pasts. He learned that she had once had an abortion
after having been tricked into pregnancy by a man who had wanted to
marry her, but whom she had loathed. He resisted the temptation to
ask why she had been in bed with him in the first place.
He also learned that she was afraid of sexual intercourse
because of some failing in herself. What? She shied away from
explaining. He did not press.
Time marched. The sun of the party zenithed and hurried on. He
and Amy stayed till everyone else had gone.
They feared leaving more than overstaying their welcome. That
room locked them into a cell with well-known walls. Their
interaction was defined by rules of courtesy toward their hostess.
The limits would expand a pale of hurt.
Yet courtesy demanded that they leave before Amy’s cousin
found their presence painful.
The subtle differences between weeks coalesced and came to a
head when they reached benRabi’s cabin. Amy was frightened,
unsure. So was he. This time, they knew, something would happen.
The Big It, as they had called it when he was first becoming
sexually aware.
Like kids, they were eager and afraid. The pleasant sharing they
wanted carried with it a big risk of pain.
Thus did the sins of the past leave their marks. Both were so
frightened of repeating old mistakes that they had almost abandoned
trying anything new.
Moyshe watched the processes of his mind with mild amazement.
The detached part of himself could not comprehend what was
happening. He had survived affairs. Even with the Sangaree woman.
Why this retrogression to the adolescent pain and confusion of the
Alyce era?
There was a long, pale, tense moment when the night balanced on
the edge of a double-edged blade. Amy stared at him as he slowly
dismounted from the scooter. Then, with a grimace, she jammed the
charging plug into a socket.
Moyshe yielded to a surge of relief. She had saved him the need
to make a decision. She would bear the blame if anything went
wrong.
They remained nervous and frightened. The tension had its effect
in temporary impotence and difficult penetration. They whispered a
lot, reassuring one another. BenRabi could not help remembering the
first time, with Alyce. Both of them had been virgins.
Now, as then, they managed the main point only after trying too
hard. Experience made it easier from there.
The truly cruel blow did not fall till the ultimate moment.
At the peak instant Moyshe felt a flood of hot wetness against
his groin, something he had thought the exclusive domain of
pornography.
Amy started crying. She had lost bladder control.
Ego-mad with that stunning proof of his manhood, benRabi laughed
and collapsed upon her, holding her tightly.
She thought he was laughing at her.
Her nails ripped his skin. Angry words filled the air. She tried
to knee him. He rolled away, baffled and babbling.
Hair streaming, wet with their sweat, trailing a damp, wrinkled
sheet, Amy fled into the corridor. By the time benRabi got into his
jumpsuit and started after her, she was a hundred meters down the
corridor, scooter forgotten, trying to wrap herself in the sheet as
she fled.
“Amy! Come back. I’m sorry.”
Too late. She would not listen. He started after her, but gave
it up when people began coming out to see what was going on.
He went back and pondered what he had done.
He had given her a gut-kick in a festering wound. This must have
happened before and have caused her a lot of grief. This was why
she had been so frightened. But she had come to him anyway, hoping
for understanding.
And he had laughed.
“Fool,” he said, flinging a pillow against a wall.
Then, “She should have warned
me . . . ” He realized that she had, in
her timorous way.
He had to do something before her anger ossified into
hatred.
He tried. He really tried. He returned her clothing with a long,
apologetic note. He called, but she would not answer. He visited
Kindervoort and asked his help, but that seemed to do no good.
Their paths no longer crossed. She did not return to work. He
could not corner her and make her listen.
The sword had fallen.
His new supervisor, another of Kindervoort’s people, was a
small, hard character named Lyle Bruce. Bruce was uncommunicative
and prejudiced. He was intolerant and grossly unfair. Repairs had
to be done his way even though he was less skilled than Amy.
Mouse and benRabi took it all and smiled back. So Bruce tried
harder. “His turn in the barrel will come,” Mouse
promised. “This is just some test Kindervoort is putting
on.”
BenRabi agreed. “He won’t last. I’ll sweet him
to death.”
BenRabi was right. Next week Bruce was replaced by a man from
Damage Control. Martin King was not exactly friendly, but neither
was he antagonistic. He was a prejudiced man controlling his
prejudices, for the good of Danion. He did nothing to
hamper their work.
At shift’s end one day he told Moyshe, “I’m
supposed to take you to Kindervoort’s office.”
“Oh? Why?”
“He didn’t say.”
“What about supper?”
“Something will be arranged.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
Kindervoort’s office was a place comfy-cozy in
nineteenth-century English decor. Lots of dark wood, scores of
books. A fireplace would have set it off perfectly.
“Have a seat, Moyshe,” Kindervoort suggested.
“How’s it going out there?”
BenRabi shrugged.
“Dumb question, huh?” He left his chair, came around
his desk and sat on its corner. “This isn’t really
business. Relax.” He paused. “No, that’s not all
the way true. Everything gets to be business, sooner or later. I
want to talk about Amy. You willing?”
“Why not?” After all, this was the man he had come
running to when things had fallen apart.
“It’s personal. I thought you might be
touchy.”
“I am.”
“And honest. I’ll be honest too. I want to help because
you’re my friends. Not close, but friends. And I’ve got
a professional interest, of course. There’s going to be more
of this kind of trouble. That’s bad for Danion. I
want to find ways to smooth things over.”
Nicely rehearsed speech, Moyshe thought. “You want to use
me and Amy as guinea pigs?”
“In a way. But it’s not just an experiment.
You’re what counts in the end.”
Moyshe fought his reaction to Kindervoort’s appearance. He
pushed back the anger and resentment this interference
stimulated . . .
Swirling visions of stars and darkness. The image of the gun
flaming on a black velvet background. He had never had it so
strongly, nor in such detail. Fear replaced anger. What was
happening? What did this deadly vision mean to his unconscious
mind?
“Moyshe? Are you all right?” Kindervoort bent over
him, studying his eyes. His voice was remote.
BenRabi rumbled for an answer. His tongue betrayed him. Ghosts
had begun dancing inside his head. He could not focus his
attention.
A burning crowbar drove through his right eyesocket.
“Migraine!” he gasped.
It was so sudden. None of the little spots or the geometric
figures that were the usual warnings. Just the ghosts, the guns,
and that curiously familiar stellar backdrop.
BenRabi groaned. The devil himself had him by the skull, trying
to crush it down to pea size.
Kindervoort bounced back around his desk, took something from a
drawer, dashed through a door into an adjoining bathroom, returned
with pills and water. BenRabi watched with little interest. The
pain had become the dominant force in his universe. There was just
him and it . . . And now voices.
He heard them, faint and far away, unintelligible but real, like
snatches of conversation caught drifting down a hallway from a
distant room. He tried to listen, but the agony made a flaming
barrier against concentration.
“Moyshe? Here’re some pills. Moyshe? Can’t you
hear me?”
A hand grabbed benRabi’s chin, pulled back. Fingers forced
his mouth open. Dry, bitter tablets burned his tongue. Water
splashed him. A hand covered his mouth and nose till he had no
choice but to swallow. The hand departed. He gasped for air.
He had not screamed. Not yet. Because he could not. The pain was
killing him, and he could do nothing but cling to its shooting
star. Down it went, down into
darkness . . .
Seconds later he recovered, the pain vanishing as quickly as it
had come. With it went the ghosts and voices. But he remained
disoriented.
Kindervoort was seated behind his desk again, talking urgently
into an intercom. “ . . . exact time you
went on minddrive.” He glanced at his watch. “Were the
comnets open? Thanks.” He switched off. His expression was
grave.
Moyshe had to have more water. He felt as dry as a Blake City
summer. He tried to rise. “Water . . . ”
“Stay there!” Kindervoort snapped.
“Don’t move. I’ll get it.” Glass in hand,
he rushed into the bathroom.
BenRabi fell back into his chair, shivering both from shock and
coolness. He had sweated out a good liter. The painkiller, which
hit the system as fast as a nerve poison, worked perfectly but did
nothing to ease nervous exhaustion. He would not be able to move
for a while.
Several glasses of water and a blanket helped. When he felt
human enough to talk again, Kindervoort went on as if nothing had
happened. “Moyshe, I think it’s important that we work
out something between you and Amy. Both on the personal and social
level.”
“Uhm.”
“Will you talk to her?”
“I’ve been trying for a week and a half.”
“All right. Easy. Easy.” He thumbed his intercom.
“Bill? Send Miss Coleridge in now.”
Amy burst through the door. “What happened? I
heard? . . . ”
Softly, so Moyshe could not hear, Kindervoort explained.
Amy’s concern became mixed with dismay. She moved to benRabi.
“Are you all right?”
“I’ll live. Unfortunately.”
“Moyshe. Moyshe. What’re we going to do?”
“I’m going to say I’m sorry,” he
murmured.
The apologies and explanations came easy with the edge off their
emotions, though Amy remained sensitive. Her problem, as Moyshe had
suspected, had caused her a lot of grief.
Kindervoort thoughtfully absented himself. In an hour or so they
concluded a cautious truce.
BenRabi muttered: “ ‘Aljo! Aljo! Hens ilyas! Ilyas
im gialo bar! . . . ’ ” Over a joint
with stripped threads.
“What the hell?” Mouse asked.
“A nonsense poem. By Potty Welkin. From Shadows in a
Dominion Blue. Goes:
“ ‘Nuné! Nuné! Scutarrac . . . ’ ”
“Never heard of it. Think we ought to cut new
threads?”
“Let’s put in a new fitting. It was a political
protest thing. Not one of his biggies. It was a satire on
Confederation. The poem was his idea of what a political speech
sounded like.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s just the way I feel this morning. Like a poem
without sense or rhyme that everybody’s trying to figure out.
Including me. There. That’s got it. What do we do
next?”
Beyond Mouse, Amy consulted her clipboard. She had been staring
at him with questioning eyes. “A cracked nipple in a lox line
about a kilometer from here.”
“Uhn.” BenRabi tossed his tool kit into the electric
truck, sat down with his legs dangling off the bed. Mouse joined
him. Amy took off with a lurch that bounced spare fittings all over
the truckbed. She had been angry and uncommunicative all week.
Moyshe had been as wary himself, as unsure. He thought she was
upset because he had not tried to seduce her.
Mouse had let it be for three days. Now, whispering, he asked,
“What happened between you two?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, Moyshe. I know you better than that.”
“Nothing. Really. That’s the trouble.” He
shrugged, tried to change the subject. “I still can’t
believe we’re inside a ship. I keep feeling we’re back
in the tunnels at Luna Command.”
“What did you mean by that poem?”
“What I said. People keep trying to figure me out. So they
can use me.”
The ship was a lot like Luna Command, with long passageways
connecting the several areas that had to be big to function.
“I don’t understand,” Mouse said.
“Who does? No, wait. Look. Here’s Skullface, trying
to get me to cross over . . . ”
“So? He tried me too. He’s trying everybody. Looks
like part of their plan. I just told him I couldn’t meet his
price. I don’t know anything that would be any good to him
anyway. So what’s the big deal? It’s all part of the
floor show. We’ve been through it before.” But there’s something different this time, benRabi
thought. I’ve never been tempted before. “Why was she
hustling me?” He jerked his head toward Amy.
Mouse laughed wearily, lowered his head, shook it sadly.
“Moyshe, Moyshe, Moyshe. Does it have to be a plot? Did the
Sangaree woman burn you that bad? Maybe she likes you.
They’re not all vampires.”
“But they’ll all get you hurt,” benRabi
mumbled.
“What? Oh. You ever stop to think maybe she feels the same
way?”
BenRabi paused. Mouse could be right. Mouse knew how to read
women, and it paralleled his own impression. He wished he could
assume a more casual, no-commitment attitude in his personal
relationships. Mouse managed, and left the girls happy.
“Speaking of women. And her.” The Sangaree woman
gave them a bright gunmetal smile and mocking wave as they glided
past her work party, “What to do?” She had been less
obnoxious since Mouse’s recreation-day demonstration, but had
not abandoned her plot.
“Just wait. We’re making her nervous. You think old
Skullface knows about her? We might make a few points by stopping
her when she moves.”
“It’s a notion,” Mouse said, becoming
thoughtful. As they rolled to a stop, he suggested, “Why
don’t you come by for a game tonight?”
His partner was still very much devoted to the mission, Moyshe
realized.
Amy plugged the truck into a charger circuit. “That woman.
Who is she?”
“Which woman?” Mouse countered, tone idle.
BenRabi scanned the area. It looked like the site of a recent
elephant riot. The passage had been open to space. Liquids had
frozen and burst their pipes.
“Well be here a week, Amy. How come we didn’t bring
any replacement pipe?”
“They’re sending a Damage Control team up after
lunch. They’ll bring what we need. We just worry about the
lox line now. It’s got to be open by noon. You didn’t
answer my question, Mouse.”
“What’s that?”
“Who’s that woman?”
BenRabi shrugged, said, “Maria Gonzalez, I
think.”
“I know her name. I want to know what’s between you
three.”
BenRabi shrugged again. “I guess she hates spies. A lot of
people have scratched us off their Christmas lists.” Avoiding
her eyes, he handed Mouse a wrench.
“Who does she work for?”
The question took him by surprise, but he was in good form.
"Paul Kraus in atmosphere systems. He could tell you whatever you
want to know.”
Mouse chuckled.
A muscle in Amy’s cheek started twitching. “You know
what I mean. Answer me.”
“Take it easy, Amy,” Mouse said. “Your badge
is showing.”
‘What?”
“A little professional advice, that’s all.
Don’t press. It puts people off. They clam up. Or play games
with you, leading you around with lies. A good agent never pushes
unless he has to. You don’t have to. Nobody’s going
anywhere for a year. So why not just lie back and let the pieces
fall, then put them together.” He had selected the tone of an
old pro advising a novice. “Take our situation. Give me a
twenty-centimeter copper nipple, Moyshe. You know we’re Navy
men. We know you work for Kindervoort.
Okay . . . ”
“I what?”
“Don’t be coy. Torch, Moyshe. And find the solder.
You give yourself away a dozen times a day, Amy. The greenest
apprentice wouldn’t have fallen for that left-handed wrench
thing.”
BenRabi chuckled. Amy had torn through all three tool kits
trying to find the mythical wrench. Then she had gone down to
Damage Control and tried to requisition one. Somebody down there
had gone along with the gag. They had passed her on to
Tooling . . .
Amy had been given a crash course in plumbing, but she had not
learned enough to fool the initiate.
Fury reddened her face. It faded into a soft smile. “I
told him I couldn’t pull it off.”
“He probably didn’t expect you to. He knows
we’re the best. Doesn’t matter anyway. We’re out
of it now. Just a couple spikes here working. Okay, we know where
we stand. Where’s the flux, Moyshe? So why don’t you do
like we do? Don’t push. Pay attention. Wait. It’ll come
in bits and pieces. No hard feelings that way. And that closes Old
Doc Igarashi’s Spy School and Lonely Hearts Club for today.
Be ready for a surprise quiz tomorrow. Ow! That’s
hot.”
“Watch the torch, dummy,” Moyshe said. “This T
pipe is an odd size. We’ll have to choke it down to two
centimeters somehow.”
“Here,” Amy said. She made a checkmark on one of the
sheets on her clipboard, handed Moyshe a reduction joint with a
number tag attached. “Special made. See. I’m
learning.” She laughed. “No more questions. Mouse.
Moyshe. I feel better now. Not so sneaky.”
“Good for you,” Mouse said. Danion suddenly groaned and shivered. BenRabi whirled, looking
for a spacesuit locker. Mouse crouched defensively, making a sound
suspiciously like a whimper. “What the hell?” he
demanded. “We breaking up?”
Amy laughed. “It’s nothing. They’re shifting
mindsails and catchnets.”
“Mindsails?” BenRabi asked. “What’s
that?”
Her smile vanished. She had, evidently, said too much. “I
can’t explain. You’d have to ask somebody from
Operations Sector.”
“And that’s off limits.”
“Yes.”
“Got you.”
The shuddering continued for a half hour. They lunched while
waiting for the Damage Control people. Amy began to lose her
reserve toward benRabi. Soon they were chattering like teenagers
who had just made up.
Mouse did a little poking and prodding from the sidelines, as
skillfully as any psychologist, maneuvering Amy into inviting
Moyshe out next recreation day.
BenRabi went to Mouse’s cabin after supper. They played
chess and, lip reading, discussed what Moyshe was putting down,
using the venerable invisible ink trick, between the lines of his
drafts of Jerusalem. They also attacked the problem of the Sangaree
woman, and found it as stubborn as ever.
Recreation day came, with all its mad morning chess tournaments
and its afternoon sports furor, its Archaicist exhibitionism, and
its collectors’ excitement. BenRabi concluded some business
with Grumpy George, got deadlocked over some stamps, and managed a
handsome cash settlement on some New Earth mutant butterflies he
had brought along for trading.
That evening he and Amy attended another ball. This one was
Louis XIV. He went in his everyday clothing. Amy, though, scrounged
a costume and was striking. From the ball they went to her cabin so
she could change. They had been invited to another party, by the
same cousin.
“How did you people get involved in the Archaicist
thing?” Moyshe asked while she was changing.
“We’re the originals,” she replied from her
bathroom, her voice light with near-laughter. She had been
mirthfully happy all day. Moyshe, too, had been feeling intensely
alive and aware. “It starts in creche. In school. When we act
out history. We haven’t really been around long enough to
have any past of our own, so we borrow yours.”
“That’s not true. We all have the same
history.”
“I guess you’re right. Old Earth is
everybody’s history if you get right down to it. Anyway,
it’s a creche game. A teaching method. And it carries over
for some people. It’s fun to dress up and pretend. But we
don’t live it. Not the way some people do. Know what I
mean?”
“You remember Chouteau? That Ship’s Commander who
brought us here? He had as bad a case as I’ve ever
seen.”
“An exception. Look at it this way. How many people go to
these things? Not very many. And they’re most of the
Archaicists aboard. See? It’s a game. But your people are so
serious about it. It’s spooky.”
“I’ll buy that.” Curious, he thought. In these two
weeks he had seen nothing culturally unique to the Seiners. They
lived borrowed lives in a hash that did not add to a whole. His
expectations, based on landside legends, rumors, and his Luna
Command studies, had been severely disappointed.
But Amy had a point. He had encountered only a narrow selection
of her people. An unusual minority. The majority, remaining aloof,
might represent something different.
She came from the bathroom. “Zip me up, okay?” Then,
responding to a question, “We’re not complete
borrowers. It’s partly because you’re just seeing a few
people, like you say. And partly because this is the fleet. You
wouldn’t judge Confederation by what you saw on one of your
Navy ships, would you? The Yards and creches are different. Except
when we’re working, we try to make life a game. To beat the
boredom and fear. Can’t be that much different for Navy men.
Anyway, you’re not seeing the real us, ever. You’re
just seeing us reacting to you.”
What were these Yards? They kept slipping into Seiner
conversation. Did the Starfishers have a world of their own, hidden
somewhere out of the way? It was not impossible. The records
revealing the whereabouts of scores of early settlements had been
destroyed in the Lunar Wars . . . He was about
to ask when he recalled Mouse’s advice about pressing.
There was much, much more to the Seiner civilization than anyone
in Confederation suspected. The bits he and Mouse had collected
already would be worth fortunes to the right people. If he kept
learning at this rate . . .
They were going to give him another medal when he got back. He
could see it coming. He would rather have that damned year off.
The party was a carbon of the previous one. Same people. Same
music. Same conversation and arguments. Only he and Amy were
different. They watched their drinking and tried to understand what
was happening to them.
The partiers were younger than he or Amy, and uncomfortable with
the gap, though Amy’s cousin did her best to make them part
of things. Moyshe never felt unwelcome, only out of place. He
supposed he had been as much an anomaly before, but had been too
preoccupied to notice.
Had Amy manipulated the invitation? If so, why? Another
Kindervoort ploy? Both Jarl and Mouse seemed eager to push them
together.
Why did he question everything? Even the questioning? Why did he
feel that he was losing his grasp on his place in the universe?
They cuddled. They drank. The shadows closed in. They probed one
another’s pasts. He learned that she had once had an abortion
after having been tricked into pregnancy by a man who had wanted to
marry her, but whom she had loathed. He resisted the temptation to
ask why she had been in bed with him in the first place.
He also learned that she was afraid of sexual intercourse
because of some failing in herself. What? She shied away from
explaining. He did not press.
Time marched. The sun of the party zenithed and hurried on. He
and Amy stayed till everyone else had gone.
They feared leaving more than overstaying their welcome. That
room locked them into a cell with well-known walls. Their
interaction was defined by rules of courtesy toward their hostess.
The limits would expand a pale of hurt.
Yet courtesy demanded that they leave before Amy’s cousin
found their presence painful.
The subtle differences between weeks coalesced and came to a
head when they reached benRabi’s cabin. Amy was frightened,
unsure. So was he. This time, they knew, something would happen.
The Big It, as they had called it when he was first becoming
sexually aware.
Like kids, they were eager and afraid. The pleasant sharing they
wanted carried with it a big risk of pain.
Thus did the sins of the past leave their marks. Both were so
frightened of repeating old mistakes that they had almost abandoned
trying anything new.
Moyshe watched the processes of his mind with mild amazement.
The detached part of himself could not comprehend what was
happening. He had survived affairs. Even with the Sangaree woman.
Why this retrogression to the adolescent pain and confusion of the
Alyce era?
There was a long, pale, tense moment when the night balanced on
the edge of a double-edged blade. Amy stared at him as he slowly
dismounted from the scooter. Then, with a grimace, she jammed the
charging plug into a socket.
Moyshe yielded to a surge of relief. She had saved him the need
to make a decision. She would bear the blame if anything went
wrong.
They remained nervous and frightened. The tension had its effect
in temporary impotence and difficult penetration. They whispered a
lot, reassuring one another. BenRabi could not help remembering the
first time, with Alyce. Both of them had been virgins.
Now, as then, they managed the main point only after trying too
hard. Experience made it easier from there.
The truly cruel blow did not fall till the ultimate moment.
At the peak instant Moyshe felt a flood of hot wetness against
his groin, something he had thought the exclusive domain of
pornography.
Amy started crying. She had lost bladder control.
Ego-mad with that stunning proof of his manhood, benRabi laughed
and collapsed upon her, holding her tightly.
She thought he was laughing at her.
Her nails ripped his skin. Angry words filled the air. She tried
to knee him. He rolled away, baffled and babbling.
Hair streaming, wet with their sweat, trailing a damp, wrinkled
sheet, Amy fled into the corridor. By the time benRabi got into his
jumpsuit and started after her, she was a hundred meters down the
corridor, scooter forgotten, trying to wrap herself in the sheet as
she fled.
“Amy! Come back. I’m sorry.”
Too late. She would not listen. He started after her, but gave
it up when people began coming out to see what was going on.
He went back and pondered what he had done.
He had given her a gut-kick in a festering wound. This must have
happened before and have caused her a lot of grief. This was why
she had been so frightened. But she had come to him anyway, hoping
for understanding.
And he had laughed.
“Fool,” he said, flinging a pillow against a wall.
Then, “She should have warned
me . . . ” He realized that she had, in
her timorous way.
He had to do something before her anger ossified into
hatred.
He tried. He really tried. He returned her clothing with a long,
apologetic note. He called, but she would not answer. He visited
Kindervoort and asked his help, but that seemed to do no good.
Their paths no longer crossed. She did not return to work. He
could not corner her and make her listen.
The sword had fallen.
His new supervisor, another of Kindervoort’s people, was a
small, hard character named Lyle Bruce. Bruce was uncommunicative
and prejudiced. He was intolerant and grossly unfair. Repairs had
to be done his way even though he was less skilled than Amy.
Mouse and benRabi took it all and smiled back. So Bruce tried
harder. “His turn in the barrel will come,” Mouse
promised. “This is just some test Kindervoort is putting
on.”
BenRabi agreed. “He won’t last. I’ll sweet him
to death.”
BenRabi was right. Next week Bruce was replaced by a man from
Damage Control. Martin King was not exactly friendly, but neither
was he antagonistic. He was a prejudiced man controlling his
prejudices, for the good of Danion. He did nothing to
hamper their work.
At shift’s end one day he told Moyshe, “I’m
supposed to take you to Kindervoort’s office.”
“Oh? Why?”
“He didn’t say.”
“What about supper?”
“Something will be arranged.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
Kindervoort’s office was a place comfy-cozy in
nineteenth-century English decor. Lots of dark wood, scores of
books. A fireplace would have set it off perfectly.
“Have a seat, Moyshe,” Kindervoort suggested.
“How’s it going out there?”
BenRabi shrugged.
“Dumb question, huh?” He left his chair, came around
his desk and sat on its corner. “This isn’t really
business. Relax.” He paused. “No, that’s not all
the way true. Everything gets to be business, sooner or later. I
want to talk about Amy. You willing?”
“Why not?” After all, this was the man he had come
running to when things had fallen apart.
“It’s personal. I thought you might be
touchy.”
“I am.”
“And honest. I’ll be honest too. I want to help because
you’re my friends. Not close, but friends. And I’ve got
a professional interest, of course. There’s going to be more
of this kind of trouble. That’s bad for Danion. I
want to find ways to smooth things over.”
Nicely rehearsed speech, Moyshe thought. “You want to use
me and Amy as guinea pigs?”
“In a way. But it’s not just an experiment.
You’re what counts in the end.”
Moyshe fought his reaction to Kindervoort’s appearance. He
pushed back the anger and resentment this interference
stimulated . . .
Swirling visions of stars and darkness. The image of the gun
flaming on a black velvet background. He had never had it so
strongly, nor in such detail. Fear replaced anger. What was
happening? What did this deadly vision mean to his unconscious
mind?
“Moyshe? Are you all right?” Kindervoort bent over
him, studying his eyes. His voice was remote.
BenRabi rumbled for an answer. His tongue betrayed him. Ghosts
had begun dancing inside his head. He could not focus his
attention.
A burning crowbar drove through his right eyesocket.
“Migraine!” he gasped.
It was so sudden. None of the little spots or the geometric
figures that were the usual warnings. Just the ghosts, the guns,
and that curiously familiar stellar backdrop.
BenRabi groaned. The devil himself had him by the skull, trying
to crush it down to pea size.
Kindervoort bounced back around his desk, took something from a
drawer, dashed through a door into an adjoining bathroom, returned
with pills and water. BenRabi watched with little interest. The
pain had become the dominant force in his universe. There was just
him and it . . . And now voices.
He heard them, faint and far away, unintelligible but real, like
snatches of conversation caught drifting down a hallway from a
distant room. He tried to listen, but the agony made a flaming
barrier against concentration.
“Moyshe? Here’re some pills. Moyshe? Can’t you
hear me?”
A hand grabbed benRabi’s chin, pulled back. Fingers forced
his mouth open. Dry, bitter tablets burned his tongue. Water
splashed him. A hand covered his mouth and nose till he had no
choice but to swallow. The hand departed. He gasped for air.
He had not screamed. Not yet. Because he could not. The pain was
killing him, and he could do nothing but cling to its shooting
star. Down it went, down into
darkness . . .
Seconds later he recovered, the pain vanishing as quickly as it
had come. With it went the ghosts and voices. But he remained
disoriented.
Kindervoort was seated behind his desk again, talking urgently
into an intercom. “ . . . exact time you
went on minddrive.” He glanced at his watch. “Were the
comnets open? Thanks.” He switched off. His expression was
grave.
Moyshe had to have more water. He felt as dry as a Blake City
summer. He tried to rise. “Water . . . ”
“Stay there!” Kindervoort snapped.
“Don’t move. I’ll get it.” Glass in hand,
he rushed into the bathroom.
BenRabi fell back into his chair, shivering both from shock and
coolness. He had sweated out a good liter. The painkiller, which
hit the system as fast as a nerve poison, worked perfectly but did
nothing to ease nervous exhaustion. He would not be able to move
for a while.
Several glasses of water and a blanket helped. When he felt
human enough to talk again, Kindervoort went on as if nothing had
happened. “Moyshe, I think it’s important that we work
out something between you and Amy. Both on the personal and social
level.”
“Uhm.”
“Will you talk to her?”
“I’ve been trying for a week and a half.”
“All right. Easy. Easy.” He thumbed his intercom.
“Bill? Send Miss Coleridge in now.”
Amy burst through the door. “What happened? I
heard? . . . ”
Softly, so Moyshe could not hear, Kindervoort explained.
Amy’s concern became mixed with dismay. She moved to benRabi.
“Are you all right?”
“I’ll live. Unfortunately.”
“Moyshe. Moyshe. What’re we going to do?”
“I’m going to say I’m sorry,” he
murmured.
The apologies and explanations came easy with the edge off their
emotions, though Amy remained sensitive. Her problem, as Moyshe had
suspected, had caused her a lot of grief.
Kindervoort thoughtfully absented himself. In an hour or so they
concluded a cautious truce.