Between Planets (3 page)

“Oh I’m at the station, Doctor—Gary Station. I just got in.”

“Then grab a cab and come here at once.”

“Uh, I don’t want to put you to any trouble, Doctor. I called because mother said to say goodbye to you.” Privately he had hoped that Dr. Jefferson would be too busy to waste time on him. Much as he disapproved of cities he did not want to spend his last night on Earth exchanging politeness with a family friend; he wanted to stir around and find out just what the modern Babylon did have to offer in the way of diversion. His letter-of-credit was burning a hole in his pocket; he wanted to bleed it a bit.

“No trouble. See you in a few minutes. Meanwhile I’ll pick out a fatted calf and butcher it. By the way, did you receive a package from me?” The doctor looked suddenly intent.

“A package? No.”

Dr. Jefferson muttered something about the mail service. Don said, “Maybe it will catch up with me. Was it important?”

“Uh, never mind; we’ll speak of it later. You left a forwarding address?”

“Yes, sir—the
Caravansary
.”

“Well whip up the horses and see how quickly you can get here. Open sky.”

“And safe grounding, sir.” They both switched off. Don left the booth and looked around for a cab stand. The station seemed more jammed than ever, with uniforms much in evidence, not only those of pilots and other ship personnel but military uniforms of many corps—and always the ubiquitous security police. Don fought his way through the crowd, down a ramp, along a slidewalk tunnel, and finally found what he wanted. There was a queue waiting for cabs; he joined it.

Beside the queue was sprawled the big, ungainly saurian form of a Venerian “dragon.” When Don progressed in line until he was beside it, he politely whistled a greeting.

The dragon swiveled one fluttering eyestalk in his direction. Strapped to the “chest” of the creature, between its forelegs and immediately below and in reach of its handling tendrils, was a small box, a voder. The tendrils writhed over the keys and the Venerian answered him, via mechanical voder speech, rather than by whistling in his own language. “Greetings to you also, young sir. It is pleasant indeed, among strangers, to hear the sounds one heard in the egg.” Don noted with delight that the outlander had a distinctly Cockney accent in the use of his machine.

He whistled his thanks and a hope that the dragon might die pleasantly.

The Venerian thanked him, again with the voder, and added, “Charming as is your accent, will you do me the favor of using your own speech that I may practice it?”

Don suspected that his modulation was so atrocious that the Venerian could hardly understand it; he lapsed at once into human words. “My name is Don Harvey,” he replied and whistled once more—but just to give his own Venerian name, “Mist on the Waters”; it had been selected by his mother and he saw nothing funny about it.

Nor did the dragon. He whistled for the first time, naming himself, and added via voder, “I am called ‘Sir Isaac Newton.’” Don understood that the Venerian, in so tagging himself, was following the common dragon custom of borrowing as a name of convenience the name of some earth-human admired by the borrower.

Don wanted to ask “Sir Isaac Newton” if by chance he knew Don’s mother’s family, but the queue was moving up and the dragon was lying still; he was forced to move along to keep from losing his place in line. The Venerian followed him with one oscillating eye and whistled that he hoped that Don, too, might die pleasantly.

There was an interruption in the flow of autocabs to the stand; a man-operated flatbed truck drew up and let down a ramp. The dragon reared up on six sturdy legs and climbed aboard. Don whistled a farewell—and became suddenly and unpleasantly aware that a security policeman was giving him undivided attention. He was glad to crawl into his autocab and close the cover.

He dialed the address and settled back. The little car lurched forward, climbed a ramp, threaded through a freight tunnel, and mounted an elevator. At first Don tried to keep track of where it was taking him but the tortured convolutions of the ant hill called “New Chicago” would have made a topologist dyspeptic; he gave up. The robot cab seemed to know where it was going and, no doubt, the master machine from which it received its signals knew. Don spent the rest of the trip fretting over the fact that his ticket had not yet been turned over to him, over the unwelcome attention of the security policeman, and, finally, about the package from Dr. Jefferson. The last did not worry him; it simply annoyed him to have mail go astray. He hoped that Mr. Reeves would realize that any mail not forwarded by this afternoon would have to follow him all the way to Mars.

Then he thought about “Sir Isaac.” It was nice to run across somebody from home.

Dr. Jefferson’s apartment turned out to be far underground in an expensive quarter of the city. Don almost failed to arrive; the cab had paused at the apartment door but when he tried to get out the door would not open. This reminded him that he must first pay the fare shown in the meter—only to discover that he had pulled the bumpkin trick of engaging a robot vehicle without having coins on him to feed the meter. He was sure that the little car, clever as it was, would not even deign to sniff at his letter-of-credit. He was expecting disconsolately to be carted by the machine off to the nearest police station when he was rescued by the appearance of Dr. Jefferson.

The doctor gave him coins to pay the shot and ushered him in. “Think nothing of it, my boy; it happens to me about once a week. The local desk sergeant keeps a drawer full of hard money just to buy me out of hock from our mechanical masters. I pay him off once a quarter, cumshaw additional. Sit down. Sherry?”

“Er, no, thank you, sir.”

“Coffee, then. Cream and sugar at your elbow. What do you hear from your parents?”

“Why, the usual things. Both well and working hard and all that.” Don looked around him as he spoke. The room was large, comfortable, even luxurious, although books spilling lavishly and untidily over shelves and tables and even chairs masked its true richness. What appeared to be a real fire burned in one corner. Through an open door he could see several more rooms. He made a high, and grossly inadequate, mental estimate of the cost of such an establishment in New Chicago.

Facing them was a view window which should have looked into the bowels of the city; instead it reflected a mountain stream and fir trees. A trout broke water as he watched.

“I’m sure they are working hard,” his host answered. “They always do. Your father is attempting to seek out, in one short lifetime, secrets that have been piling up for millions of years. Impossible—but he makes a good stab at it. Son, do you realize that when your father started his career we hadn’t even dreamed that the first system empire ever existed?” He added thoughtfully, “If it was the first.” He went on, “Now we have felt out the ruins on the floor of two oceans—and tied them in with records from four other planets. Of course your father didn’t do it all, or even most of it—but his work has been indispensable. Your father is a great man, Donald—and so is your mother. When I speak of either one I really mean the team. Help yourself to sandwiches.”

Don said, “Thank you,” and did so, thereby avoiding a direct answer. He was warmly pleased to hear his parents praised but it did not seem to be quite the thing to agree heartily.

But the doctor was capable of carrying on the conversation unassisted. “Of course we may never know all the answers. How was the noblest planet of them all, the home of empire, broken and dispersed into space junk? Your father spent four years in the Asteroid Belt—you were along, weren’t you?—and never found a firm answer to that. Was it a paired planet, like Earth-Luna, and broken up by tidal strains? Or was it blown up?”

“Blown up?” Don protested. “But that’s theoretically impossible—isn’t it?”

Dr. Jefferson brushed it aside. “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it’s done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen. Studied any mathematical philosophy, Don? Familiar with infinite universe sheafs and open-ended postulate systems?”

“Uh, I’m afraid not, sir.”

“Simple idea and very tempting. The notion that everything is possible and I mean everything—and everything has happened.
Everything
. One universe in which you accepted that wine and got drunk as a skunk. Another in which the fifth planet never broke up. Another in which atomic power and nuclear weapons are as impossible as our ancestors thought they were. That last one might have its points, for sissies at least. Like me.”

He stood up. “Don’t eat too many sandwiches. I’m going to take you out to a restaurant where there will be food, among other things…and such food as Zeus promised the gods and failed to deliver.”

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time, sir.” Don was still hoping to get out on the town by himself. He had a dismaying vision of dinner in some stuffy rich man’s club, followed by an evening of highfalutin talk. And it
was
his last night on Earth.

“Time? What is time? Each hour ahead is as fresh as was the one we just used. You registered at the
Caravansary
?”

“No, sir, I just checked my bags at the station.”

“Good. You’ll stay here tonight; we’ll send for your luggage later.” Dr. Jefferson’s manner changed slightly. “But your mail was to be sent to the hotel?”

“That’s right.”

Don was surprised to see that Dr. Jefferson looked distinctly worried. “Well, we’ll check into that later. That package I sent to you—would it be forwarded promptly?”

“I really don’t know, sir. Ordinarily the mail comes in twice a day. If it came in after I left, it would ordinarily wait over until morning. But if the headmaster thought about it, he might have it sent into town special so that I would get it before up-ship tomorrow morning.”

“Mean to say there isn’t a tube into the school?”

“No, sir, the cook brings in the morning mail when he shops and the afternoon mail is chuted in by the Roswell copter bus.”

“A desert island! Well…we’ll check around midnight. If it hasn’t arrived then—never mind.” Nevertheless he seemed perturbed and hardly spoke during their ride to dinner.

The restaurant was misnamed
The Back Room
and there was no sign out to indicate its location; it was simply one of many doors in a side tunnel. Nevertheless many people seemed to know where it was and to be anxious to get in, only to be thwarted by a stern-faced dignitary guarding a velvet rope. This ambassador recognized Dr. Jefferson and sent for the
maître d’hôtel
. The doctor made a gesture understood by headwaiters throughout history, the rope was dropped, and they were conducted in royal progress to a ringside table. Don was bug-eyed at the size of the bribe. Thus he was ready with the proper facial expression when he caught sight of their waitress.

His reaction to her was simple; she was, it seemed to him, the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, both in person and in costume. Dr. Jefferson caught his expression and chuckled. “Don’t use up your enthusiasm, son. The ones we have paid to see will be out there.” He waved at the floor. “Cocktail first?”

Don said that he didn’t believe so, thank you.

“Suit yourself. You are man high and a single taste of the flesh-pots wouldn’t do you any permanent harm. But suppose you let me order dinner for us?” Don agreed. While Dr. Jefferson was consulting with the captive princess over the menu, Don looked around. The room simulated outdoors in the late evening; stars were just appearing overhead. A high brick wall ran around the room, hiding the non-existent middle distance and patching in the floor to the false sky. Apple trees hung over the wall and stirred in the breeze. An old-fashioned well with a well sweep stood beyond the tables on the far side of the room; Don saw another “captive princess” go to it, operate the sweep, and remove a silver pail containing a wrapped bottle.

At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels. Don had never seen one but he recognized its function; it was a Martian’s “perambulator,” a portable air-conditioning unit to provide the rare, cold air necessary to a Martian aborigine. The occupant could be seen dimly, his frail body supported by a metal articulated servo framework to assist him in coping with the robust gravity of the third planet. His pseudo wings drooped sadly and he did not move. Don felt sorry for him.

As a youngster he had met Martians on Luna, but Luna’s feeble field was less than that of Mars; it did not turn them into cripples, paralyzed by a gravity field too painful for their evolutionary pattern. It was both difficult and dangerous for a Martian to risk coming to Earth; Don wondered what had induced this one. A diplomatic mission, perhaps?

Dr. Jefferson dismissed the waitress, looked up and noticed him staring at the Martian. Don said, “I was just wondering why he would come here. Not to eat, surely.”

“Probably wants to watch the animals feeding. That’s part of my own reason, Don. Take a good look around you; you’ll never see the like again.”

“No, I guess not—not on Mars.”

“That’s not what I mean. Sodom and Gomorrah, lad—rotten at the core and skidding toward the pit. ‘—these our actors, as I foretold you…are melted into air—’ and so forth. Perhaps even ‘the great globe itself.’ I tally too much. Enjoy it; it won’t last long.”

Don looked puzzled. “Dr. Jefferson, do you
like
living here?”

“Me? I’m as decadent as the city I infest; it’s my natural element. But that doesn’t keep me from telling a hawk from a handsaw.”

The orchestra, which had been playing softly from nowhere in particular, stopped suddenly and the sound system announced “News flash!” At the same time the darkening sky overhead turned black and lighted letters started marching across it. The voice over the sound system read aloud the words streaming across the ceiling: BERMUDA: OFFICIAL: THE DEPARTMENT OF COLONIAL AFFAIRS HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE PROVISIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE VENUS COLONIES HAS REJECTED OUR NOTE. A SOURCE CLOSE TO THE FEDERATION CHAIRMAN SAYS THAT THIS IS AN EXPECTED DEVELOPMENT AND NO CAUSE FOR ALARM.