Friday (52 page)

“Later, Freddie. After we’re through here.”

He glanced toward the door. “Ah, yes! Later, with a friendly libation and many a tale. Meanwhile we have yet to pass Cerberus.”

Two watchdogs, both armed, were at the door, one on each side. I started saying mantras in my mind while chattering double-talk inanities with Freddie. Both masters-at-arms looked at me, both seemed to find my appearance unexceptionable. Possibly a dirty face and scraggly hair acquired in the night helped, for, up to then, I had never once been seen outside cabin BB unless Shizuko had labored mightily to prepare me to fetch top prices on the auction block.

We got outside the door, down a short ramp, and were queued up at a table set just outside. At it sat two clerks with papers. One called out, “Frances, Frederick J.! Come forward!”

“
Here!
” answered Federico and stepped around me to go to the table. A voice behind me called out, “There she is!”—and I sat Mama Cat down quite abruptly and headed for the skyline.

I was vaguely aware of much excitement behind me but paid no attention to it. I simply wanted to get out of range of any stun gun or sticky-rope launcher or tear-gas mortar as fast as possible. I could not outrace a radar gun or even a slug rifle—but those were no worry if Pete was right. I just kept placing one in front of the other. There was a village off to my right and some trees dead ahead. For the time being the trees seemed a better bet; I kept going.

A glance back showed that most of the pack had been left behind—not surprising; I can do a thousand meters in two minutes flat. But two seemed to be keeping up and possibly closing the gap. So I checked my rush, intending to bang their heads together or whatever was needed.

“Keep going!” Pete rasped. “We’re supposed to be trying to catch you.”

I kept going. The other runner was Shizuko. My friend Tilly.

Once I was well inside the trees and out of sight of the landing boat I stopped to throw up. They caught up with me; Tilly held my head and then wiped my mouth—tried to kiss me. I turned my face away. “Don’t, I must taste dreadful. Did you come out of the ship like
that?
” She was dressed in a leotard that made her look taller, more slender, more western, and much more female than I was used to in my quondam “maid.”

“No. A formal kimono with obi. They’re back there somewhere. Can’t run in them.”

Pete said irritably, “Stop the chatter. We got to get out of here.” He grabbed my hair, kissed me. “Who cares what you taste like? Get moving!”

So we did, staying in the woods and getting farther from the landing boat. But it quickly became clear that Tilly had a sprained ankle and was becoming more crippled each step. Pete grumbled again. “When you broke for it, Tilly was only halfway down the gangway from the first-class deck. So she jumped and made a bad landing. Til, you’re clumsy.”

“It’s these damn Nip shoes; they give no support. Pete, take the kid and get moving; the busies won’t do anything to me.”

“Like hell,” Pete said bitterly. “We three are in it together all the way. Right, Miss—Right, Friday?”

“Hell, yes! ‘One for all, all for one!’ Take her right side, Pete; I’ll take this side.”

We did pretty well as a five-legged race, not making fast time but nevertheless putting more bush between us and pursuit. Somewhat later Pete wanted to take her piggyback. I stopped us. “Let’s listen.”

No sound of pursuit. Nothing but the strange sounds of a strange forest. Birdcalls? I wasn’t sure. The place was a curious mix of friendly and outré—grass that wasn’t quite grass, trees that seemed to be left over from another geological epoch, chlorophyll that was heavily streaked with red—or was this autumn? How cold would it be tonight? It didn’t seem smart to go looking for people for the next three days, in view of the ship’s schedule. We could last that long without food or water—but suppose it froze?

“All right,” I said. “Piggyback. But we take turns.”

“Friday! You can’t carry me.”

“I carried Pete last night. Tell her, Pete. You think I can’t handle a little Japanese doll like you?”

“Japanese doll, my sore feet. I’m as American as you are.”

“More so, probably. Because I’m not very. Tell you later. Climb aboard.”

I carried her about fifty meters, then Pete carried her about two hundred, and so on, that being Pete’s notion of fifty-fifty. After an hour of this we came to a road—just a track through the bush, but you could see marks of wheels and horses’ hooves. To the left the road went away from the landing boat and the town, so we went left, with Shizuko walking again but leaning quite a lot on Pete.

We came to a farmhouse. Perhaps we should have ducked around it but by then I wanted a drink of water more than I yearned to be totally safe, and I wanted to strap Tilly’s ankle before it got bigger than her head.

There was an older woman, gray-haired, very neat and prim, sitting in a rocking chair on the front veranda, knitting. She looked up as we got closer, motioned to us to come up to the house. “I’m Mrs. Dundas,” she said. “You’re from the ship?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I’m Friday Jones and this is Matilda Jackson and this is our friend Pete.”

“Pete Roberts, ma’am.”

“Come sit down, all of you. You’ll forgive me if I don’t get up; my back is not what it used to be. You’re refugees, are you not? You’ve jumped ship?”

(Bite the bullet. But be ready to duck.) “Yes. We are.”

“Of course. About half the jumpers wind up first with us. Well, according to this morning’s wireless you’ll need to hide out at least three days. You’re welcome here and we enjoy visitors. Of course you are entitled to go straight to the transient barracks; the ship authorities can’t touch you there. But they can make you miserable with their endless lawyer arguments. You can decide after dinner. Right now, would you like a nice cup of tea?”

“Yes!” I agreed.

“Good.
Malcolm!
Oh, Mal
cooom!
”

“What, Mum?”

“Put the kettle on!”

“
What?
”

“The
billy!
” Mrs. Dundas added, to Tilly, “Child, what have you done to your foot?”

“I think I sprained it, ma’am.”

“You certainly did! You—Friday is your name?—go find Malcolm, tell him I want the biggest dishpan filled with cracked ice. Then you can fetch tea, if you will, while Malcolm cracks ice. And you, sir—Mr. Roberts—you can help me out of this chair because there are more things we’ll need for this poor child’s foot. Must strap it after we get the swelling down. And you—Matilda—are you allergic to aspirin?”

“No, ma’am.”

“
Mum!
The billy’s boiling!”

“You—Friday—go, dear.”

I went to fetch tea, with a song in my heart.

It has been twenty years. Botany Bay years, that is, but the difference isn’t much. Twenty
good
years. This memoir has been based on tapes I made at Pajaro Sands before Boss died, then on notes I made shortly after coming here, notes to “perpetuate the evidence” when I still thought I might have to fight extradition.

But when it became impossible to keep their schedule through using me, they lost interest in me—logical, as I was never anything but a walking incubator to them. Then the matter became academic when The First Citizen and the Dauphiness were assassinated together, that bomb planted in their coach.

Properly this memoir should end with my arrival on Botany Bay because my life stopped having any dramatic highlights at that point—after all, what does a country housewife have to write memoirs about? How many eggs we got last season? Are you interested? I am but you are not.

People who are busy and happy don’t write diaries; they are too busy living.

But in going over the tapes and notes (and sloughing 60 percent of the words) I noticed items that, having been mentioned, should be cleared up. Janet’s canceled Visa card—I was “dead” in the explosion that sank the
Skip to M’Lou
. Georges checked carefully in Vicksburg low town, was assured that there were no survivors. He then called Janet and Ian…when they were about to leave for Australia, having been warned by Boss’s Winnipeg agent—so of course Janet canceled her card.

The strangest thing is finding my “family.” But Georges says that the strange thing is not that
they
are here but that
I
am here. All of them were browned off, disgusted with Earth—where would they go? Botany Bay is not Hobson’s choice but for them it is certainly the obvious choice. It is a good planet, much like Earth of centuries back—but with up-to-date knowledge and technology. It is not as primitive as Forest, not as outrageously expensive as Halcyon or Fiddler’s Green. They all lost heavily in forced liquidation but they had enough to let them go steerage class to Botany Bay, pay their contributions to company and colony, and still have starting money.

(Did you know that here on Botany Bay, nobody locks doors—many don’t have locks.
Mirabile visu!
)

Georges says that the only long coincidence lies in my being in the same ship they migrated in—and it almost wasn’t. They missed the
Dirac
, then barely caught the
Forward
because Janet crowded it, being dead-set on traveling with a baby in her belly rather than in her arms. But of course if they had taken a later ship or an earlier ship, I still would have met them here without planning it. Our planet is about the size of Earth but our colony is still small and almost all in one area and everyone is always interested in new chums; we were certain to meet.

But what if I had never been offered that booby-trapped job? One can always “what if—” but I think that it is at least fifty-fifty that, after shopping as I had planned, I would still have wound up on Botany Bay.

“There is a destiny that shapes our ends” and I have no complaints. I
like
being a colonial housewife in an 8-group. It’s not formally an S-group here because we don’t have many laws about sex and marriage. We eight and all our kids live in a big rambling house that Janet designed and we all built. (I’m no cabinetmaker but I’m a
whee!
of a rough carpenter.) Neighbors have never asked snoopy questions about parentage—and Janet would freeze them if they did. Nobody cares here, babies are welcome on Botany Bay; it will be many centuries before anyone speaks of “population pressure” or “ZeePeeGee.”

This account won’t be seen by neighbors because the only thing I intend to publish here is a revised edition of my cookbook—a good cookbook because I am ghost writer for two great cooks, Janet and Georges, plus some practical hints for young housewives that I owe to Goldie. So here I can discuss paternity freely. Georges married Matilda when Percival married me; I think they drew straws. Of course the baby in me fell under the old test-tube-and-knife saying—a saying I have not heard even once on Botany Bay. Maybe Wendy derives some or most of her ancestry from a former royal house on The Realm. But I have never let her suspect it and officially Percival is her father. All I really know is that Wendy is free of exhibited congenital defects and Freddie and Georges say that she doesn’t carry any nasty recessives either. As a youngster she was no meaner than any of the others and the usual moderate ration of spankings was enough to straighten her out. I think that she is quite a nice person, which pleases me as she is the only child of my body even though she is no relation to me.

“The only…” When I got her out of the oven, I asked Georges to reverse my sterility. He and Freddie examined me and told me that I could get it done…on Earth. Not in New Brisbane. Not for years and years. That settled that—and I found that I was somewhat relieved. I’ve done it once; I don’t really need to do it again. We have babies and dogs and kittens underfoot; the babies don’t have to be from my body any more than the kittens do. A baby is a baby and Tilly makes good ones and so does Janet and so does Betty.

And so does Wendy. Were it not impossible I would guess that she gets her horniness from her mother—me, I mean. She had not yet turned fourteen the first time she came home and said, “Mum, I guess I’m pregnant.” I told her, “Don’t guess about it, dear. Go see Uncle Freddie and get a mouse test.”

She announced the result at dinner, which turned it into a party because, by long custom, in our family whenever a female is officially pregnant is occasion for rejoicing and merriment. So Wendy had her first pregnancy party at fourteen—and her next one at sixteen—and her next one at eighteen—and her latest one just last week. I’m glad she spaced them because I reared them, all but the newest one; she got married for that one. So I have never been short of babies to pet, even if we didn’t have four—now five—no, six—mothers in this household.

Matilda’s first baby has a number-one father—excellent stock. Dr. Jerry Madsen. So she tells me. So I believe. Like this: Her former master had just had her sterility reversed, intending to breed her, when he got this chance to sell her services for a high-pay four-months’ job. So she became “Shizuko” with the shy smile and the modest bow and chaperoned me—but conversely I chaperoned her without intending to. Oh, had she tried, she might have found a little night life in the daytime…but the fact was that she spent almost twenty-four hours of each day in cabin BB to be sure to be there whenever I came back.