Seven Steps to the Sun (11 page)

Mike didn't want to impose on Joe, so he walked away but Joe turned towards him and stuck five fingers in the air. Mike took this to mean five minutes. He sat down cautiously on an ergonomic-looking chair. Much to his pleasure, the chair which looked frighteningly uncomfortable, wasn't. It fitted into all the peculiar nooks and crannies of the human body. Joe finished his meeting, and threw the switch in a final dramatic gesture of triumph.

'Right, I think we're ready to leave now. Oh, I nearly forgot.'

He rummaged around in a cupboard until he found what he was looking for. 'Here's that tape machine I was talking about,' he said, handing over a small box about the size of a two-ounce tin of tobacco.

'Thank you, but I must give you something.'

'A present. When you've finished your new book, you can send me a signed copy.'

'Sorry, I'm not good with these things.' Mike said, looking helplessly at the machine.

'Very simple. You just hold it in your hand and talk,' said Joe, giving a demonstration.

'What makes it work?'

'Well, the motors work from the heat of your hand, and the on/off switch is activated by the voice. The only hard work you have to do is setting the replay button,' said Joe, handing back the toy.

'How many hours' recording does one get?'

'Oh, I don't know. I think the instruction card said something like twenty-four hours. Why? How many hours of recording do you need for a book.'

'Well. I reckon to speak around eighty words per minute. So for a book running eighty thousand words, that's about twenty hours playing time, allowing for some correction.'

'Then you should be fine with that tape.'

They made their way back to the lift and then up to the chopper. They were soon airborne and passing swiftly over White Plains. Mike remembered the city below him as a suburb of New York, all sprawling and untidy. Now it was bright and clean, and appeared to cover a very small area with buildings of strangely unusual shapes.

'I see you're experimenting with new materials,' Mike ventured.

'Yes. Clay. You can turn clay into a material hundreds of times stronger than steel or concrete. The process is expensive, but not as expensive as producing high-quality steel.'

'How do they do it?'

'Don't know, it's a highly guarded industrial secret.'

'It must be incredibly strong,' said Mike, as they passed another building which was built like a letter L upside down.

'Oh, it is. Not only is it incredibly strong, but it has phenomenal flexing rates. They did a demonstration at a conference I attended where they had a bridge made of the stuff, and ran heavy loads over it. The bridge was built to withstand loads of up to fifty tons. They showed us that you could run loads of up to three hundred tons over it. I must admit the thing flexed in a crazy way, and I wouldn't have liked to be out on it,' said Joe, flying round the building for Mike's benefit.

Mike looked where they were going to land. From the air the houses below looked as if they were grouped in a park. The sight of real petrol-driven cars made him feel more at home. Joe picked up his over jacket and came round to let Mike out.

'I'm stupid, Joe. I should have bought fresh clothes,' said Mike, remembering he hadn't a stitch apart from the smelly things he had on.

'Don't worry about that, Mr Jerome, we'll pick some things up for you later.'

'Joe, stop calling me Mr Jerome, my name is Mike.'

'Sure, Mike, sure,' said Joe, putting his hand on Mike's shoulder and directing him towards the house.

Mike was very impressed with the pleasant layout. Each house was situated so that it couldn't be seen by any of the surrounding ones. They walked on across the close-cut grass and eventually into a little dell which effectively hid the house. The front door opened as Mike trod on the welcome mat. Joe ushered him in.

'Mary, honey, we're home,' Joe called. There was a sound from somewhere in the house and Mary appeared.

'Hi, Mike, welcome,' Mary said, coming forward and greeting Mike. Joe then gave her a big hug.

'It's very kind of you and Joe to invite me,' Mike said, taking a longer look at her; she was a good bit younger than her husband.

Joe took him out past a beautiful swimming pool to a very small cabana.

'Here you are, and if there's anything you want, just give us a shout on the house intercom,' said Joe.

'Could I go for a swim?' asked Mike.

'Sure, there are suits over there in the cupboard. The only thing is, could you take a shower first as we get very short of water during the summer, and I try and keep the pool as clean as possible.' Joe bowed his head a little and shuffled his big feet.

'Of course,' said Mike, smiling at Joe's embarrassment. Mike gave a sigh of relief as Joe closed the door behind him. Being happy, pleasant and mentally alert knocked hell out of him. He crossed to the window and looked at the pool, slipped quickly out of his clothes and went into a cubicle that seemed to contain just a thermostat. Mike turned it towards hot and water deluged out of pin holes in the sides of the wall. The water was hot, but he could bear it. Indeed it felt like a million dollars, as the old corny movies would have said. Mike pressed a soap dispenser and jets of soap spurted from above, mixing with the water, to form a massive foam mountain.

Standing under the bouncing jets, he recalled the problem of his contact lenses. Usually before taking a bath or shower he would have removed them. He looked closely at the big mirror; there were no lenses but he thought he could see a small scar in each eye. Mike had no urge now for a dip in the pool. Only the state of his clothes bothered him, they were cold, damp and smelly. As he struggled into them he felt in his trouser pockets to make sure his money was still intact. It was. Touching the crisp bank notes brought back the strange feeling he'd had on discovering the disappearance of the Professor's notes. This sensation sharpened the urgency to find Pete to establish his own real earthly existence.

Mike found Joe near the pool, swinging in a hammock chair.

'Joe, I'm sorry to be such a nuisance, but I really must get a change of clothes.'

'Sure thing. Mary said she'd got to go into town and would do your shopping for you.'

'Oh, I can't ask her to do that,' said Mike.

'She buys all my clothes so she won't go too far wrong in what she buys you,' said Joe, looking amused by Mike's remark.

'Fine, the only other thing I could do with is some money.'

'How much do you want?' asked Joe, getting up. 'Five hundred dollars,' said Mike, feeling in his pocket for his bank card. He didn't want Joe to see the bundle of notes he was carrying, otherwise the man might wonder why he hadn't cashed them.

'Good, you've got a bank card. What I'll do is get the bank to send the money over to the office, and Mary can drop in and pick it up,' Joe said making his way into the house, and going into his study. He thumbed through a pile of punch cards and selected one.

Mike handed over his bank card, and Joe put it on top of the punch card in the machine.

'Could you take the money over to my office,' Joe said, to the man on the screen.

'Sure, Mr Blinberg. Will there be anything else?'

'No, thanks,' said Joe and turned the phone off. Suddenly there was a buzz and Joe turned the screen on again. On it appeared a piece of paper. They watched a message being typed out. The monies has been cleared in London. Mike gave a silent sigh of relief.

'I'm off to town,' said Mary, coming into the room.

'Fine, Mike here would like you to pick up some clothes, and could you go to the apartment, as there's a packet of money waiting.'

'What kind of clothes?' asked Mary, turning to Mike.

'Oh, just a change of clothes. I didn't bring any with me.'

'I'll do my best. See you fellas later,' said Mary, leaving the room.

'Don't forget to go to the apartment to get that money, will you, honey,' called Joe. Mary's reply came singing back that she wouldn't.

'Would you care for a drink?' asked Joe, after Mary had gone.

'Love one.' Mike followed Joe into the living-room. 'What will you have?'

'Whisky and soda.'

Ice?' asked Joe, getting a bottle from the sideboard. Mike nodded his approval of the ice idea. Joe made up the drink and handed it to Mike. It made him shiver at the first sip. They strolled back to the side of the pool, where Joe brought Mike a hammock chair from behind the cabana. Mike sank into it, and stretched out his limbs.

'This drink is very welcome,' said Mike, contemplating the sky from his position.

'Glad you like it. It's getting more and more difficult to get hold of real spirits,' came Joe's voice from deep in his chair. 'And you know, I don't really approve of these new change-your-personality drugs that you can take with your drink. I suppose folks have to fill their lives with some forms of fantasy otherwise they wouldn't survive, but the whole thing is getting out of hand, and there will eventually be more of the voting public under drugs than sane hard working men. When it gets to this stage, God help the sane people. The problems in this country will never be solved,' Joe said, throwing his arms in the air in despair.

'Or any country for that matter.'

'True, but take the fear that's been created in this country by its total isolation from the rest of the world.'

'Yes,' murmured Mike.

'I wouldn't have believed twenty years ago that we would now be facing a crisis in the production of food. I must admit at that time I was sceptical about the articles and statistics relating to the population explosion and food production. But here we are, in what was one of the richest countries in the world, struggling through a policy of isolation to produce enough for our own people's needs.'

'What do you feel will happen?'

'Without direct control over population by the politicians, I hate to think what's going to happen. Total breakdown of our society, I shouldn't wonder.'

'But surely the developments of synthetic foods I an cope?' suggested Mike.

'I would have thought so but again the politicians left everything too late. No scientist can be expected to produce all the right answers at the drop of a hat. I believe most synthetic food is good, but they're still troubled with side effects produced by their consumption,' said Joe getting up. 'Let me give you another drink.'

'Thanks,' said Mike longing to pump Joe for more information but realizing he should obviously know as much, if not more, about existing world problems. Again the question of finding his friend came forcefully to the front of his mind.

'Joe, if you didn't have to live here in the States, you know, if you could freelance like me, where would you go?'

'Australia, why?'

'Oh, I have an old friend I need to contact and I don't seem to be getting anywhere.'

'If you like, we'll try and locate him, it shouldn't be too difficult,' said Joe dropping asleep.

Mike didn't ask any more questions. He was just about to relax himself when he heard footsteps. Raising himself into an upright position, he saw Mary crossing towards him alongside the pool.

'That was quick,' Mike said with a grin, nodding towards Joe.

'I hope these will be O.K.,' she said.

Mike thankfully took the various packages offered to him, and headed towards the guest house. Once inside the room a little of the built up nervous tension vanished, and he relaxed. Inside the parcels he found very thin pants, a thin transparent vest, socks and a jump suit. The underclothes were soft and close fitting, he would have preferred them a bit more on the loose side, but he couldn't be fussy. The jump suit was made up in two halves which just seemed to stay together without any apparent way of fastening. Mike pulled the trousers on, they fitted like a glove, and so did the top. Good for Mary, she obviously knew her shopping. Mike was fascinated by what held the top and bottom of his jump suit together, and he kept joining and breaking the two halves in an effort to find the answer, but couldn't. The last chore, before he was fully clothed, was to get his boots back on. He knew in his heart of hearts that he should never have taken them off in the first place. His feet had probably grown at least a size with the heat. He went into the shower and ran the cold water on them for a while. After much pulling and heaving he got the blasted things on. He couldn't win, as the effort made him sweat, and he was now as damp and uncomfortable as he'd been before. There was a gentle tap on the door and Mary came gliding in. She had a book in her hand.

'Is everything all right?'

'Yes, how do I look?' Mike said turning round to show himself off.

'Fine, it fits you very well,' she said, coming up close to him. Mike could almost feel her body touch his. It was her fresh womanly smell that nearly upset the cart, so he took a step back. Mary noticed and smiled in a knowing way.

'I wondered whether you'd mind autographing your book, Joe would be so happy,' she said putting the book on the bed.

'Certainly,' said Mike as she vanished again. It struck him that she was playing a game with him. It disturbed him. She'd pierced his armour with a sharp knife. Her smell, and the sensuous manner. They brought all kinds of thoughts into his head. He walked up and down the room for a while, telling himself that he was just a randy old man, and Mary was only being nice to him, not making a pass. He picked up the book and opened it. He smiled to himself at the biography on the inside sleeve, until his eye caught something at the bottom that he hadn't written. It said that he was dead.

The following morning Mike found Mary sitting in the kitchen. She was watching a television programme about the servicing of communication satellites. The figures floated about, their co-ordination obviously impeded by the lack of gravity.