Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End (13 page)

“You swallow something radioactive, Mouse?”

“What?”

“You just started glowing.”

The lady psychologist was not immune. Mouse wangled a date before her brother returned. BenRabi did not doubt that Mouse would make the date an interesting experience.

He could not fathom Mouse’s method. Even knowing they were being manipulated, knowing Mouse’s reputation, women walked right in. Indeed, Mouse’s reputation seemed to make him more interesting.

Their guide returned. He deposited his half-finished tray on the conveyor to the sculleries. He waited impatiently while his flock followed suit. He scowled at Mouse, who had opened up with the big guns and had Grace laughing like a teenager at stories woollier than the mammoths they antedated.

“Style,” benRabi told himself. “That’s what he’s got.”

“Excuse me?” one of the ladies asked.

“Talking to myself, Ellen. It’s the only way to hold an intelligent conversation.”

“You think they’ll be mad at us because of this?”

“Maybe. More likely at each other. Like Mouse said, it was a dumb idea, no matter what the point was.”

“Unless it’s a cover.”

“That’s a possibility.”

The man had a bus waiting outside the cafeteria. In ten minutes it reached the departure bay they had left so laboriously earlier. By then Mouse was holding Grace’s hand. He had her purring and almost unable to wait till he got off work.

“Come on, Storm,” her brother snapped. “Back to your assigned department. The rest of you, go back to your jobs. Grace, for god’s sake . . . ”

“Oh, shut up, Burt.”

“He’s got a name,” one of the ladies crowed. Mouse’s mutinous attitude was catching. The Seiners had tried to put something over on the landsmen and they were responding with a mocking camaraderie.

“Come on, Mouse,” Moyshe grumbled. “Let’s don’t start anything.”

“Right. At eight, Grace? Bye.” Storm bounced onto the scooter he had commandeered for the ride to the departure station. Moyshe took the seat behind him.

“New worlds to conquer, eh?”

“That’s one way of looking at it, Moyshe. This old one is starting to wear. They must have some kind of open contract on me. Some kind of bounty for the girl who cons me into the ‘I dos.’ They won’t take no for an answer. Not and stay friends. Weird people.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Kindervoort demanded when they strolled into the coliseum, where he was overseeing some especially poor marksmen.

“Surprise,” Mouse crowed. “The game was called on account of rain.”

“What’s he talking about, Moyshe?”

“It was some kind of dumb exercise. I’m sure you know what it was all about.”

“I told him it was stupid.”

“Who?”

“The Ship’s Commander. He’s up to something with you two. I don’t know what.”

“Remind him that one of the reasons I crossed over was because people wouldn’t play games with me here. I’d have a job I knew what it was. I’d have a place in the scheme. Tell him that if the crap keeps up, I hike my ass back to Contact and chain me to a couch. He can put his auction project where the sun don’t shine. It’s a stupid operation too.”

“Calm down, Moyshe. Just go back to your job.”

When Kindervoort turned away, Mouse said, “Good to see you stand up on your hind legs, Moyshe.”

“It takes me awhile to get fired up.”

“Like the man said, let’s go to work. We’ve got a long way to go with these clowns.”

The next morning, whispering with motionless lips as they hurried along a crowded passageway, Mouse said, “They used the time to fix us up with a new set of bugs, Moyshe. Very good stuff. Better than anything Kindervoort stocks. The kind that hook into a stress analyzer. They’re putting the big eye on us, Moyshe. From now on you’d better play safe, no matter where you are or who you’re with.”

“What would they be looking for? We don’t have anything to hide.”

“Who knows? But don’t forget that they’re looking.”

Ten: 3049 AD
The Main Sequence

BenRabi was trying to clip a couple of stubborn, noxious-looking hairs out of his right ear. Amy called, “Ready yet, honey?”

“Half a minute.” He had butterflies. He did not want to go. The stalls and arguments had run out, though. He had to meet Amy’s family. Such as it was.

He was about to be exhibited to her mother. A prime trophy, he thought. Former landsmen turned Seiner, on his way up. A prize for any single girl.

He had been getting that feeling from Amy. The new was wearing off. The magic was fading. He was becoming an object of value instead of one of emotion.

Was the problem his or hers? Was he reading her wrong? He always misinterpreted women.

“Moyshe, will you come on?”

He stepped out of the bathroom. “How do I look?”

“Perfect. Come on. We’ll be late for the shuttle.”

“I want to make a good impression.”

“Stop worrying. Mom would be happy with a warthog, so long as I was married.”

“Thanks a lot.”

A flash of the old Army returned. “Any time.”

They rode a scooter out one of the connecting tubes, into the halls of the asteroid. Amy slowed to pass a series of doors with temporary plaques hung on them, reading names Moyshe found meaningless. “We’re here.”

The plaque said
STAFINGLAS
. Amy parked the scooter among a small herd nursing charger teats.

“What’s that mean? Stafinglas?” Moyshe asked.

“I don’t know. I think it’s made up.”

“That’s where your mother lives?”

Amy nodded. “We’ve got to hurry. They’ll start pumping the air out of the lock in a couple minutes. They won’t let us board after they start.”

Could he stall that long? He decided that would be a petty trick. Much as intuition warned him that the trip was a waste, it was important to Amy. The thing to do was grit his teeth and ride it out.

The shuttle was a small, boxy vessel useful for nothing but hauling passengers. The seats were full when Moyshe and Amy boarded. Dozens of people stood in the aisles. BenRabi recognized a few as
Danion
crewfolk.

“Lot of relatives of
Danion
people in this Stafinglas, eh?”

“Yes. The old harvestships are like family enterprises. Three or four generations have served in the same ship. It gets to be a tradition. Almost nobody ships outside their own fleet. They say that’s why we’re getting into this nationalistic competitiveness between fleets. There’s talk about having a computer assign new crews by lot.”

Moyshe smiled. “Bet that’s a popular idea.”

“Like the black plague.”

His feet hurt and his back ached before the shuttle reached its destination. It was a six-hour passage. He spent every minute standing.

Stafinglas was exactly what Moyshe expected. An asteroid with kilometer upon kilometer of broad tunnels which served as residential streets. “I’m home,” he told Amy. “It’s just like Luna Command.”

She gave him a funny look. “Really?”

“On a smaller scale.” He wanted to tell her it was not a natural or comfortable way to live. Instead, he asked, “You ever been down on a planet?”

“No. Why?”

“Just curious.” He could not explain. She did not have the experience to understand.

“Anything else I should know about your mother? I want to make a good impression.”

“Stop saying that,” Amy snapped. “Stick to literary things. You can’t miss. Duck an argument. She’s contrary as hell. She’ll start a fight just to find out how stubborn somebody is.”

He looked at her askance.

“We had some beauts when I was young. Nothing I did and nobody I knew was ever good enough. Talk libraries if you know anything about them. She’s librarian for Stafinglas.”

The more Amy talked about her mother the less he wanted to meet the woman. He had encountered dragons before. They rolled right over him.

“We’re here.” Amy stopped at a door, reluctant to take the last step.

“Well?”

Biting her lower lip, Amy knocked.

Four hours later they excused themselves to go out for lunch. Neither spoke till they had drawn their meal trays. As he settled at a table, Moyshe said, “Jesus, do I have a headache.”

“Headache? Not here?”

“Tension headache. Not migraine.” It had been bad. Much worse than he had expected. The woman was a classic. He glanced at Amy. Want to know what a woman will be like in twenty-five years? Have a good, long look at her mother.

“I’m sorry, Moyshe. I . . . I can’t even make excuses for her. There isn’t any excuse for that kind of behavior.”

“Uhm. Maybe I’d better get used to it. Maybe she was just saying what a lot of people think. Me and Mouse and the others may have to live with that the rest of our lives.”

“You should have fought back.”

“Would that have changed anything? No. It would’ve kept her going that much longer.”

Moyshe was still numb. As an Old Earther he had been fighting prejudice since entering the Navy. He had thought he possessed a thick hide. But never had he encountered anyone as virulent as Amy’s mother. Outworlders went through the forms of equality, keeping their prejudices subtle and silent. Amy’s mother was open and vicious and adamantine about hers. Neither suasion nor force would alter her thinking in the least.

She had disowned Amy before it was over.

“You want to try again?” Amy asked.

He was startled. “What?”

“She
is
my mother, Moyshe.”

He reached across the table, took her hand for a second. “I know.” She was doing her brave act to conceal her pain. “I know. I’ve got one too. And she isn’t that much different.”

“They want the best for you. And they think they’re the ones to decide what’s best.” Amy gulped several mouthfuls. “Mother never was good at expressing feelings positively. Maybe that’s why I’m a little weird. I spent a lot of time with her while I was growing up. She never qualified for fleet duty. That was the big disappointment of her life. Till we gave her something else to feel sorry for herself about.”

Amy almost never mentioned her father. All Moyshe ever learned was his name and the fact that he had been killed in an accident here in the nebula. Apparently, despite protestations to the contrary, Amy’s mother had found the accident convenient.

“We’d better not go back, Moyshe,” Amy decided. “Not today. Let’s give her a chance to calm down and get used to the idea.”

“Okay.”

They had to kill four hours before a shuttle became available. Moyshe thought Amy would use the time to visit old friends. She did not. She said all her real friends were aboard
Danion.
She became defensive. She did not want to face any more disapproval. The stay-at-home Seiners were, apparently, less cosmopolitan than the people of the harvestfleets.

Going back, Amy suggested, “If you want, tomorrow we can sneak over and see those alien ships. The research center isn’t that far.”

Moyshe perked up a little. “All right. That’s a good idea. I’ve been looking forward to it. What do we do about our work assignments?”

“I’ll take care of everything.”

Amy took sleeping pills as soon as they reached their cabin. Despite a long, long day, Moyshe was not in the mood for bed. He strolled down the passageway and awakened Mouse.

“How’d the get-together go?” Mouse asked. And, without awaiting an answer, “That bad, eh?”

“It’s a whole different world, Mouse. I thought I knew how to handle prejudice . . . I never saw anything like it. Her mother was the worst, but there was plenty everywhere else we went, too.”

“I know. Grace took me for a little tour this morning.”

“You guys got out of bed long enough?”

“Hey, you got to do something the other twenty-three hours of the day.”

“So tell me. And where’s the board? I’ve been here three minutes and I still haven’t seen a chess board.”

“Sorry.” Mouse grinned. BenRabi had accused him of being unable to relate with the human male unless a chess board was interposed. “Guess I’m preoccupied.”

“She show you anything interesting?”

“I’m not sure. You can’t break the habits of trade-craft. So you look and you listen. But you don’t find anything that gives you a handle on these people.”

“Where’d you go?”

“To some kind of office complex first. Like a government and trade headquarters. We hunked around there for five hours. They had everything out in the open . . . You know, like no confidential files or anything, and nobody getting excited because you pick up a paper and read it. You take white. But there wasn’t anything there. I mean, nothing anybody back home would give a damn about. I didn’t see a damned thing worth remembering.”

“What the hell kind of weird move is that?”

Mouse smiled. “Some Seiner pulled that on me the other day.”

“And lost.”

“Yeah. But I was better than him. Hey. You know what they’re doing? They’re getting ready to go back to Stars’ End.”

“That isn’t any secret.”

“No. But they’re so damned serious. I mean, Grace and I went to this one asteroid they were making into a dry-dock. After we left the other place. I got to talking to this engineer. Her husband is on the team that’s adapting a shuttle to piggyback the Stars’ End weapons to orbit.”

BenRabi raised his attention from the board. “Curious. Everywhere you go . . . They’re so damned sure of themselves, aren’t they?”

“Awfully. Maybe we’re too sure they can’t do it. Maybe they have an angle.” Mouse’s attention had left the board too. He seemed to have a question he was afraid to ask. Moyshe felt the intensity of it, boiling there behind his friend’s eyes.

“I’ve got a hunch that they do. Through the starfish, somehow.”

Mouse returned to the game. His unorthodox opening got him into trouble early. BenRabi had him on the ropes, but let him wriggle loose by making a too-eager move. It cost him a knight.

“You always did get too excited,” Mouse observed. “How has your head been?”

“I had a headache today. Just tension, though. Why?”

“Just asking.” A move later, “What I meant was that disorientation stuff you had because of the Psych program. Any trouble?”