Homeward Bound (71 page)

“Thanks a hell of a lot, Mickey. I’ll remember you in my nightmares.” Johnson wished he could have left the control room in a display of at least medium dudgeon, the way Walter Stone had. But it was still his shift. He did everything required of him. He always had. He always would, for as long as he was physically able to. He was damned and double-damned if he would give Lieutenant General Healey the excuse to come down on him for something small like that.

He laughed out loud. “Are you attempting to contradict me?” Flynn inquired in moderately aggrieved tones. “How can I know whether something is funny unless you tell me the joke?”

Johnson explained, finishing, “Of course Healey doesn’t come down on me for the small stuff. He comes down on me for big stuff instead.”

After grave consideration, Flynn shook his head. “I don’t think you’d make Bob Hope quake in his boots, or Jack Benny, either.”

“I should say not,” Johnson replied. “They’re dead.”

“I don’t even think you’d get them worried enough to start spinning in their graves,” Flynn said imperturbably. “Neither would that Lizard called Donald, the one who runs the quiz show.”

“How’s he going to spin in his grave? He’s still alive,” Johnson said. “And so is that gal called Rita—oh, yeah.” Recordings of
You’d Better Believe It
had made it to the
Admiral Peary.
Some people found Donald funny. Johnson didn’t, or not especially. But, like every other male on the ship, he . . . admired the lovely Rita’s fashion statements. “One more reason to be sorry I’m not going back to Earth.”

“Two more reasons, I’d say.” Mickey Flynn paused to let that sink in, then went on, “However much you might like looking at her, you don’t suppose she’d look at you, do you? You were not born yesterday,
mon vieux.
”

Except for the minor detail that gravity would quickly kill him, Johnson was in reasonably good shape for his age, which was about the same as Flynn‘s. But the other pilot wasn’t wrong; neither one of them had been born yesterday, even subtracting cold sleep. After some thought, Johnson said, “I’ve been accruing pay since the 1960s, and I haven’t had a goddamn thing to spend it on. I may not be pretty, but I might do for a sugar daddy.”

“Maybe you would—if they still have sugar daddies back on Earth,” Flynn said.

“They will. That, I’m not worried about.” Johnson spoke with great conviction. “As long as old guys have more money than they know what to do with, pretty girls’ll give ’em ideas.”

“Hmm. On those grounds, I might even qualify for sugar daddyhood myself,” Flynn said. “I’ve been accruing pay longer than you have, since I joined the crew of the
Lewis and Clark
on the up and up instead of stowing away, and I’ve been a bird colonel longer than you have. I could outbid you.” He seemed to like the idea.

Johnson laughed at him. “If we’re back on Earth—or in orbit around it, anyway—there’ll be enough girls to go around. You get one, I’ll get another one. Hell, get more than one if you want to.”

“An embarrassment of riches. And, probably, a richness of embarrassments,” Flynn said. “But then, a richness of embarrassments is what sugar daddies are for. I should endeavor to give satisfaction.”

How did he mean that? Johnson refused to give him the satisfaction of asking. Instead, he said, “It’s pretty good weightless, from what I remember. Of course, it’s pretty damn good any which way.”

“There, for once, I find I cannot disagree with you.” Flynn looked aggrieved. “What an unfortunate development. Who could have imagined it?”

Johnson patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. It won’t last.” Flynn seemed suitably relieved.

When Johnson’s shift ended, he went down to the refectory. A couple of doctors were in there, talking while they ate about how they could reacquaint themselves with the state of the art once they got back to Earth. They’d been weightless only since reviving aboard the
Admiral Peary.
Johnson was jealous of them; he couldn’t go all the way home again.

He got himself a chopped-meat sandwich and a squeeze bottle full of rhubarb juice. The juice wasn’t bad—was damn good, in fact. He wouldn’t have been surprised if somebody on the starship were fermenting it. The meat was full of pepper and cumin and other spices. That helped keep people from thinking about what it was: rat or guinea pig. The
Admiral Peary
hadn’t brought along any regular domestic animals, and the frozen beef and pork and lamb was long gone. The rodents could live—could thrive—on the vegetable waste from the hydroponic farm. Better just to contemplate them as . . . meat.

In came Lieutenant General Healey. That did more to spoil Johnson’s appetite than remembering that he was eating a rat sandwich. How many steaks could you carve off of Healey? Or would he prove inedibly tough? That was Johnson’s guess.

The commandant hadn’t missed any meals. His face was full. His body was round. If what he ate ever bothered him, he didn’t let it show. Johnson eyed him again, in a different way this time. Healey was bound to have even more pay saved up than Mickey Flynn did. But with that scowl on the commandant’s face, all the money in the world wouldn’t turn him into a sugar daddy.

Johnson quickly looked away when Healey’s radar gaze swung toward him. Not quickly enough, though—the commandant got his food and then glided toward a handhold near the one Johnson was using. “Well?” Healey asked. “Why are you staring at me? Is my fly unzipped?”

“No, sir,” Johnson said tonelessly. The trousers they wore didn’t have flies.

“Well, then? I’m not Lana Turner, either.” Healey hopelessly dated himself with that crack. Johnson, also hopelessly dated, got it with no trouble. Did anyone on the
Commodore Perry
even know who Lana Turner was? They leered at the lovely Rita these days—not that she wasn’t worth leering at herself.

“No, sir,” Johnson said again. Leering at Healey for any reason was a really scary thought.

“Then keep your eyes to yourself,” the commandant snapped. “The only other reason you’d stare at me that way is to figure out where to stick the knife.” He took a big bite of his sandwich.

But Johnson shook his head. “Oh, no, sir.”

“Ha!” Healey jeered. “A likely story.”

“It’s true, sir,” Johnson insisted. “I don’t need to figure it out. I’ve known for a long time.” They eyed each other in perfect mutual loathing.

No matter what Kassquit had told Ttomalss about her emotional state, she clung to Frank Coffey now. “I hope you come back!” she said, and used an emphatic cough.

“So do I,” he answered, and used one of his own. “I will do everything I can. I want to see you again, and I want to see our hatchling. And if I have trouble coming back for any reason, perhaps you and the hatchling can come to Tosev 3. You and that little male or female are bridges between the Empire and Tosevites.”

“Truth,” Kassquit said. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I wish you were not going!”

“We both knew I would, sooner or later,” Coffey said. “The coming of the
Commodore Perry
has made it sooner, that is all.” He shook his head. “I did not think I would be leaving as a sire, though. I will say that. It makes things more difficult. . . . Do something for me?”

“If I can,” she said. “What is it?”

“Try not to hate me after I am gone.”

“I would not do that!” she said.

“I hope not,” he said. “Sometimes, though, after these things end, it happens. It is a way of telling yourself,
He is gone, so he could not have been any good while he was here.
”

Remembering how she’d felt after Jonathan Yeager returned to the surface of Tosev 3, and especially after he formed his permanent mating alliance with Karen, Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. She saw how doing as Frank Coffey said might make her feel better. In a small voice, she told him, “I will try not to.”

“Good,” Coffey said. “And one other thing. When the hatchling comes, try to let it get to know both members of the Race and wild Tosevites. There will be a good many males and females from the
Commodore Perry
here. Their physician no doubt did not expect to take care of a hatchling, but I think he will do a good job. He probably knows more than Dr. Blanchard does, just because the state of the art has moved forward since she went into cold sleep.”

He said such things as if they were as natural as sunrise or as stars coming out at night. (Even as Kassquit had that thought, she made the negative gesture. She’d grown up in space. There, the stars were always out. She’d had to get used to their being gone during the day.) To the wild Big Uglies, change and technical advances were natural. Were that untrue, they never would have built the
Commodore Perry.
For a whole swarm of reasons, Kassquit wished they hadn’t.

“I will do that,” she said. “The hatchling will be a citizen of the Empire, but it will know more of its biological heritage than I ever did. And I will do my best to make sure that it does not become an experimental animal, the way I did.” She added an emphatic cough to her words.

“Good.” Frank Coffey caressed her and kissed her. “Believe me, I like your biological heritage.” He had a way of showing enthusiasm without an emphatic cough. They lay down together.
The last time,
Kassquit thought. She did her best to make the most of it.

The next morning, the American Tosevites from the
Admiral Peary
got into the bus that would take them to the shuttlecraft port. Atvar got on the bus, too; he was going to Tosev 3 as final proof that the
Commodore Perry
was what the wild big Uglies claimed it was. No one on Home really doubted it any more. The Tosevites on the new starship already knew about things speed-of-light transmission from Tosev 3 was just now revealing here. But the Race wanted to see for itself, and the Big Uglies had agreed.

Shiplord Straha and Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref also boarded the bus. They would not be going back to Tosev 3. They were colonists no more. The American Tosevites could not be sure they would not deliver a message ordering Kirel and Reffet to start a last desperate war.

And Kassquit got on, too. Up till the last moment, she had not been sure whether she would. But she did. She would stretch things out to the very end. If that made the hurt that would follow worse, then it did, that was all.

Much of the talk aboard the bus was in English. Even Straha spoke the language well.
I should have learned it,
Kassquit thought once more.
My hatchling will learn it. A Tosevite should know a Tosevite language.

After a little while, Frank Coffey told her, “I am sorry. This must be boring for you.”

“I wish it were boring,” Kassquit said. “I do not understand what you are saying, but that is not the same thing. I do not know how long it will be before I see you again. I do not know if I will ever see you again. It is hard, but it is not boring.”

“I am sorry,” he repeated. “This is a chance to go home again.”

“I understand,” Kassquit said. “I do understand. But it is not easy for me whether I understand or not.”

Atvar and Straha got into a shouting match, which distracted everyone else. They seemed to be trying to decide which of them was the bigger idiot. By the way they were behaving, it was a contest they both wanted to lose. Atvar had made it very plain he did not like Straha. Straha seemed to be doing his best to show it was mutual.

“Enough!” Nesseref exclaimed after a while. “You will scandalize the Big Uglies!”

“Truth,” Atvar said with such dignity as he could muster. “It
is
enough, Straha.”

Straha only laughed at that—a huge, rude, tongue-wagging laugh. “You say that because you know you are in the wrong. There is no other reason. If you thought you were right, you would tell me so.”

“I do think I am right, and in a moment I will put my toeclaws up your cloaca to prove it,” Atvar retorted.

“I am not afraid of you,” Straha said.

“Enough!” That wasn’t Nesseref—it was Sam Yeager. “Both of you are my friends, and both of you are acting like hatchlings.”

The two prominent males hadn’t really listened to the shuttlecraft pilot, any more than they’d listened to each other. They did heed the departing American ambassador. Straha said, “Perhaps this is not the ideal time or place.”

“Perhaps it is not,” Atvar agreed. “After I return . . .”

“After you return, I will be at your service,” Straha said. “When you get to Tosev 3, you will also see the other ways the wild Big Uglies have got ahead of us. If we had only done as I wanted—”

“Enough!” This time, all the American Tosevites shouted it together. A volley of emphatic coughs rang out.

When they got to the shuttlecraft port, the row threatened to break out anew. The American Tosevites got between the two angry males of the Race. Jonathan Yeager spoke to Atvar. “I am bigger than you are, Exalted Fleetlord, and my sire is bigger than the shiplord. Between the two of us, I hope we can keep the two of you from disgracing yourselves and the Race.”

“I think you have just called us barbarians,” Atvar said mournfully.

“What have you been acting like?” Jonathan Yeager asked.

After that, Atvar and Straha really did subside. Embarrassment was a weapon more potent than many. Females and males in the body paint of Security examined everything that would be going up on the shuttlecraft. “We cannot be too careful,” they said, over and over.

A dark-scaled Rabotev pilot awaited them, eyestalks turning this way and that. Nesseref went up to him—or perhaps her—and started talking shop. Kassquit turned to Frank Coffey. “Do you see? They still worry that a member of the Race might smuggle ginger.”

He found it less funny than she did. “If lots of our ships are going to come from Tosev 3 to Home, they are going to have to worry about it. Either that, or they will have to start to accept ginger, the way the Race has on Tosev 3.”

“More changes,” Kassquit said sadly.

“More changes,” Coffey agreed.

A male whose body paint proclaimed him a security chief bawled, “Final check! All boarding the shuttlecraft, form a line
here
!” He pointed, reveling in his petty power. Along with Atvar, all the Tosevites except Kassquit formed a line
there.
The security male’s eye turrets swung toward her. “What about you?”