Armor (16 page)

“Jack,” he began, “Jack Crow. What do you think about fighting the Antwar?”

Uh oh.

I froze. Holly did too along with everyone else.

“Not tonight,” I blurted into the silence and added a punctuating burp.

Everyone laughed, hooting and hollering. I relaxed my suddenly taut shoulders and smiled. I had gotten away with it.

I dragged through the rest of the evening by drinking too much and, when absolutely necessary, relying on my store of meaningless but expected Jack Crowisms. Fortunately enough, the mood of this gathering was more inclined toward performance than most. No long silences while fat drunks awaited an exhibition of the “real, private” me.

Instead they took turns flashing their lore.

I learned from a biochemist the reason he and many others continued to prefer the old fashioned and acidic spirits over the physiologically harmless syntho. “Scotch and thuch. . . such, ischemically, mind you a better drunk,” he assured me.

I learned from an ecological palaeontologist the name easily a meter long of the local disease responsible for Sanction having fish, insects, and rodents but not reptiles, birds, or amphibians.

I learned from an apparent score of local ranchers the difficulties of breeding herds from embryos. The “immigrants” meaning, of course, the newly arrived low-rent Cityfolk as opposed to the newly arrived high class Country folk had so far managed to both steal and eat almost everything old enough to graze.

I learned from an assistant statistical historian, one of Holly’s aides apparently, that not one person associated with the Project from the scientists currently staffing it to the scientists who had initially authorized it had managed to grasp the Director’s theories. No one else was smart enough to really follow it.

But they were, all of them, smart enough to know that Hollis Ware was smart enough. Or something.

Then it was over and I was shown to my suite. I peeled out of everything, took aim at the bed, and somebody tap-tapped on my door.

Karen stood swaying, so blonde and precious I could taste her skin. She took a deep breath.

“All right,” she whispered. “No dancing.”

“You mean fucking?” I asked cruelly.

She bit her lip. Her eyes were shining. She nodded.

I pulled her in and slammed the door.

VII

I woke up hearing Karen bitching away at some servant type in the anteroom. Something about trying to show a little decorum around the place for a change and how she would not accept having to apologize to the great Jack Crow himself about the slovenly attitude on this dreary planet and so on and soon….

The great Jack Crow, me, missed the rest of her tirade trying to find the edge of the bed. I had the great hangover.

A few minutes later, sitting up at last and drinking the morningafter goodie some gentle soul had left there for me, I heard the outer door close behind her. Immediately after came the sound of gentle laughter followed by the muttered grumblings of somebody who knew better than to take such incredible rudeness seriously. I smiled to myself, found something to wear, and stumbled into the next room to confront the victim.

It was a man. A rather nice looking guy, about forty or so.

He was a couple of inches shorter than me with short blond hair and a beautifully cropped van dyke a couple of shades darker. He was wearing Crew garb. The name Cortez was stenciled over his left breast pocket. He was sitting on the arm of a chair, looking desultorily at his watch and tapping his foot with gentle impatience. I liked him right away.

I made some sort of noise and he all but leaped to his feet and stood staring at me apprehensively. I let him worry while I fished out a cigarette and lit it. Then I gestured through the smoke toward the door.

“She always such a bitch?” I asked

Cortez got stiffer, looking surprised. Then, abruptly, he relaxed. He smiled brightly and warm, a much better sight, and answered. “Always, Mr. Crow.”

I nodded with understanding and took another drag. He gestured toward a chair. “Wouldn’t you like to sit down?” he offered.

I waved him away. “I think I better just sort of stand here a bit,” I said, gesturing toward my hung-over head meaningfully. I leaned against the door jamb as if for support, though in fact the morning after goodie had already done most of its job.

Cortez laughed pleasantly.

“Why do you take it?” I asked.

He looked at me, shrugged. “Well, you are Jack Crow, after all.”

I sneered. “The great and famous Jack Crow, huh?”

He smiled. “The very one.”

“Hmm. We’ll get into that later on. But you still haven’t answered my question. You said she was always a bitch.”

“Well,” he offered sheepishly, “she was always the Chief

Administrator too.”

“Oh.”

“Yessir: ‘oh. ‘ “

I sniffed the air. “Is that coffee?”

He stepped quickly over to the side table set against the far wall. “Yes. I just made it. Would you like some?”

“Please.” I found that I was almost completely recovered. I sat down in one of the three armchairs surrounding a low coffee table. It was an awfully pretty room, I noticed, for a Fleet Project Cortez noticed my gaze as he sat the mug before me.

“This is the
VIP
room,” he offered helpfully. “Only the brass rate this. The rest of us live in dormitories.”

I nodded and sipped. It was good. “So what’s this about her being the boss? I thought Hol. . . Dr. Ware was top dog?”

“He is. He’s Director of Project. But she handles everything that doesn’t immediately concern the research. There’s quite a lot to do, you know, what with over five hundred Crew and families and the like.”

“Hmm. Do all of you work on the research?”

He laughed. “God no. Most of us don’t ever even come in here. This is my first time inside the ship since we grounded practically. Most of us are the support team. We keep the scientists fat and thoughtful.”

“A noble cause, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” he replied, then added with a smile: “And it pays damn well, too.”

I smiled in return. “What’s your real job?”

“I’m hydroponics. I spend most of my time in the greenhouse at the far end of the valley.”

“Don’t they farm this area in the usual way? Soil looks good enough.”

“Oh, it is, I suppose. But we, that is, the greenhouse crew, don’t trust it. Those agro folk are, by tradition, foul-ups. We keep the greenhouse going on earth soil for when something comes along and wipes out all their careful work. Then we’ll save everybody’s ass, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

I laughed. Interdepartmental rivalries were the same everywhere.

“Well, have you had to come to the rescue yet? Have they fouled up?”

“Not yet,” he replied, then added with a twinkle, “But the day is young.”

I laughed again and waved him toward an armchair. “Have some coffee or something and sit down and tell me the rest of it.”

He was quick to take advantage of my offer, seating himself gratefully across from me. He sipped from his mug.

“You mean you really want to know about why we are so wonderful? Or just why the agros are genetically inferior?”

I laughed and waved him off, “I do not. For the sake of argument, I will immediately concede the vast superiority, genetic and intellectual. ...”

“Don’t forget sexual,” he offered with another twinkle. “All right, dammit. For your sake alone, I hereby declare that you guys are bloody supermen compared to the farmers. Okay?”

He nodded. “The least you could do.”

“No doubt,” I growled. “Now tell me about the rest of it. You say that Holly, Dr. Ware, is the Director of Project. That means he runs the thinking. And Karen. . . . What’s her last name, anyway?”

“Wagner.”

“Okay. Karen runs everything else.”

“Right.”

“But who has the final say? Surely, Dr. Ware. .. .” “Oh, he’s the final boss. That is to say, he’s over her as far as Fleet is concerned. Course then there’s Lewis.” “Who’s Lewis?”

Cortez smiled. “Damned if I know, exactly.”

I groaned. “You aren’t being very helpful.”

Cortez continued to smile. “I know I’m not. I don’t mean to be vague. It’s just that. . . Well, Lewis is an interesting story.”

“Why not start it by telling me what he does around here.”

“Lewis? Nothing.”

“Nothing? I don’t get it? Then what’s he doing here on this planet?”

Cortez grinned delightedly. “He owns it.”

I stared. “I beg your pardon?”

Cortez shrugged. “Just that. Lewis owns the place. The whole planet.”

“But I thought this was Fleet territory.”

“It’s Fleet Space,” he corrected. “And the planet, Sanction, was Fleet charted. But by the time anybody actually set foot on it from Fleet, Lewis was already here. He’s the one who named it Sanction. First Citizen and all that.”

“I see.”

Cortez grinned again. “Maybe you don’t yet. You see, the Project only leases this valley. It doesn’t own a thing here. So, technically, Lewis is the real authority.”

“You seem awfully happy about it.”

He laughed. “Oh, I am. Everybody is. That is, everybody who’s Crew is. The brass don’t like it much.”

“Fleet likes control.”

“They do. But what they got here is. . . well, what they got is the Cityfolk. You know, the refugee settlement across the river.”

“Hmm,” I mumbled. “I had wondered about that.” “Yeah, so have the brass. You see, Lewis won’t let anybody touch them. He won’t even restrict their immigration except medically. And they keep coming.”

“You like that?”

Cortez looked surprised. “Of course. Hell, how many Fleet Projects get to have a frontier town next door? Hell, I’ve done three years on places with no place to have fun but mercury lakes. Having that wide-open place is like a dream.” “I thought they didn’t like you guys, you Project people.” Cortez waved that aside. “Oh, it’s just the brass that they don’t like. They love having us come by.”

I nodded to myself, wondering if Cortez really believed what he had said. Or maybe he just didn’t know how deep the hatred was. What he probably saw as just being a regular guy was, and was certainly recognized by the refugees as, slumming.”

“Just the same,” I offered gently, “you’d best be careful when you go over there.”

Cortez grinned mischievously. “Oh, we know they’re all just a bunch of deserters and low rents. But they’re a lot of fun, just the same. And I don’t think there’s really a place for being a snob out here. I mean, we’re all stuck out here just the same. We oughta try to get along. Besides, we aren’t real Wild West. No private blazers is Lewis’s policy, so how much damage could two drunks do barehanded? Fall over is ‘bout all.”

I didn’t say, just thought, about a lady I’d met once who, barehanded, blind drunk, pregnant and squatting to piss, could move so fast she could kill any two drunks, or four, “a half second before they can die, by God!”

I lit another cigarette to hide a sudden desire to scream at him. But I knew it wouldn’t have done any good. It would only frighten him, clam him up, and then I wouldn’t be able to get any other information from him later on.

But, dammit! How could he be so blind? How could he miss the danger? How could he not feel it when he walked across the river? Maybe he had and just ignored it. Or maybe he was just too far apart from them. Too far apart from the idea of them and from the idea that being “stuck out here together” was a notion that didn’t apply to the frightened desperate mass across the river who now and forever would think of this place, not as a backwater saloon to be used and forgotten, but as. . . Home.

I started to say something then, to somehow try to get a bit

of it across. But there was a soft gong from somewhere and a light appeared glowing on the ceiling

Cortez set down his mug and keyed something on the underside of the table. There was a loud click, followed by the forming of a holo above the table surface. A man’s head and shoulders appeared in the air.

“Who is. . . Oh, Cortez! Is he up yet?”

Cortez looked questioningly at me. Evidentially I was out of range. I nodded. Cortez looked at the display. “He’s up.”

“Good,” replied the figure in the air. Could you tell him that Holly wants to see him. You know, Dr. Ware sends his compliments and all that sort of crap. And would he please come at his convenience?”

Cortez nodded, hiding his smile with a hand on his chin.

“I know what to do. Where’s he supposed to go?”

“The lab.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him.”

“Thanks, Cortez. Out.”

“Out,” Cortez replied and keyed off. He looked at me.

“When is it convenient?” he asked with a smile.

“Now,” I said firmly.

“Oh,” he said quickly, abashed. “I’ll get your clothes together.”

“Thanks,” I said at his rapidly retreating back. I put out the cigarette and leaned against the back of the chair with a sigh.

May as well get to it. Sooner I started, the sooner I could finish. And then, of course, the sooner I could start to forget what I had done.

VIII

The ship would never lift again. The Crew had made it a permanent fixture on Sanction by scattering windows here and there and brightening up the upper passageways with skylights. In order to maintain structural integrity in space, it would require the kind of tooling found only in Fleet Shipyards. I supposed it was no great loss. The ship had never had much control or power, requiring tractor steering the entire trip. Still it never failed to astonish me the way Fleet tossed about the taxpayers’ money. And, of course, the changes were a definite improvement for its residents. It now seemed more like an office complex than a starship. More like part of the land than a tunnel that must be entered in order to get paid.

Cortez insisted on escorting me to Holly’s workshop. It was lucky that I gave in. The place was huge. And despite the alterations, it still bore that twisting turning efficiency of starships which is so confusing to newcomers. It took only a few minutes to make me confused. And not long after that I was practically lightheaded trying to keep up with our gyrations. I stopped abruptly. I cannot stand to be lost. “Show me where we are,” I demanded.