Steel Beach (19 page)

“You are cynical about this process,” the CC was saying, “because you’ve only seen it from the commercial side, and between humans and creatures with a very basic brain structure. It is much more interesting when the negotiations are conducted between higher mammals. There have been some interesting developments in Kenya, where lion/antelope arbitration has been going on for five decades now. The lions, in particular, have become quite adept at it. By now they know how to chose the most skilled representative, a sort of shop steward, using the same instincts that drive them to dominance battles. I really believe they’ve grasped the concept that there must be lean hunting times, that if
all
the antelope were killed they would get nothing but commercially prepared chow—which they like well enough, but is no substitute for the hunt. There is one grizzled old veteran without any teeth who, year after year, gives the antelope as hard a time at the bargaining fire as he ever did on the savannah in his youth. He’s a sort of Samuel Gompers of the—”

I was spared any more details of this leonine Lenin’s exploits by David Earth, who finally bestirred himself. He got to his feet, and prong-head stood hastily, destroying the polite myth that he had anything to do with the proceedings. David seldom attended contract talks with individual ranchers anymore, he was too occupied with appearances promoting his Earthist philosophy to the voters. On television, of course; there would be no quicker way to disperse a political rally than to have David walk into it.

“I think we really have a problem,” he said, in his Jovian voice. “The innocent creatures we represent have too long chafed under your yoke. Their grievances are many and…  well, grievous.”

If David had a weakness, that was it. He wasn’t the world’s greatest speaker. I think he grew worse every year, as language became more of a philosophical burden to him. One of the planks of his platform—when the millennium was achieved—was the abolition of language. He wanted us all to sing like the birdies sing.

“To name only one,” he boomed on, “you are one of only three murderers of dinosaurs who—”

“Ranchers,” Callie said.

“—who persist in using the brontosaur’s natural enemy as a means of instilling terror into—”

“
Herding
,” Callie gritted. “And no t-saur of mine has ever so much as put a scratch on a stinking b-saur.”

“If you persist in interrupting me, we’ll never get anywhere,” David said, with a loving smile.

“No one will stand there and call me a murderer on my own land. There are courts of libel, and you’re about to get dragged into one.”

They regarded each other across the fire, knowing that ninety-nine percent of threats and accusations made here were simply wind, tossed out to gain an advantage or disconcert an opponent—and hating each other so thoroughly that I never knew when one would put a threat into action. Callie’s face reflected her opinions. David merely smiled, as if to say he loved Callie dearly, but I knew him better than that. He hated her so much that he inflicted himself on her every five years, and I can think of little more cruel than that.

“We must seek closer communion with our friends,” David said, abruptly, and turned and walked away from the fire, leaving his minion to trail along ignominiously behind him.

Callie sighed when he vanished into the darkness. She stood up, stretched, boxed the air, getting the kinks out. Bargaining is tough on the whole mind and body, but the best thing to bring to the table is a tough bottom. Callie rubbed hers, and leaned over the cooler she had brought with her. She tossed me a can of beer, got one for herself, and sat on the cooler.

“It’s good to see you,” she said. “We didn’t get a chance to talk the last time you were here.” She frowned, remembering. “Come to think of it, you took off without any warning. We got to my office, you were gone. What happened?”

“A lot of things, Callie. That’s what I came here for, to…  to talk them over with you, if I could. See if you could offer me some advice.”

She looked at me suspiciously. Well, she was in a suspicious frame of mind, I understand that, dealing with the intransigent union. But it went deeper. We had never managed to talk very well. It was a depressing thought to realize, once again, that when I had something important to share with someone, she was the best that sprang to mind. I thought about getting up and leaving right then. I know I hesitated, because Callie did what she had so often done when I’d tried to talk to her as a child: she changed the subject.

“That Brenda, she’s a much nicer child than you give her credit for. We had a long talk after we found out you’d left. Do you have any idea how much she looks up to you?”

“Some idea. Callie, I—”

“She’s putting herself through a history course that would stagger you, all so she can keep up when you talk about ‘ancient history.’ I think it’s hopeless. Some things you have to live through to really understand. I know about the twenty-first century because I was there. The twentieth century, or the nineteenth can’t ever seem as real to me, though I’ve read a great deal about them.”

“Sometimes I don’t think last month seems real to Brenda.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. She knows her recent history a lot better than you’d think, and I’m talking about things that happened fifty, a hundred years before she was born. We sat around and talked…  well, mostly I told her stories, I guess. She seemed fascinated.” She smiled at the memory. It didn’t surprise me that Brenda had found favor with Callie. There are few qualities my mother values more in a human being than a willing ear.

“I don’t have much contact with young people. Like I was telling her, we move in different social circles. I can’t stand their music and they think I’m a walking fossil. But after a few hours she started opening up to me. It was almost like having…  well, a daughter.”

She glanced at me, then took a long drink of beer. She realized she had gone too far.

Normally, a remark like that would have been the start of the seventy zillionth repeat of our most popular argument. That night, I was willing to let it slide. I had much more important things on my mind. When I didn’t rise to it, she must have finally realized how troubled I was, because she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and looked at me.

“Tell me about it,” she said, and I did.

But not all of it.

I told her of my fight in the Blind Pig, and of my conversation with the CC that led to the pseudo-experiences still so fresh in my mind. I told her the CC had explained it as a cure for depression, which it was, in a way. But I found it impossible to come right out and tell her that I’d tried to kill myself. Is there a more embarrassing admission one can make? Maybe some people would think nothing of it, would eagerly show off what the experts called hesitation marks—scars on the wrist, bullet holes in the ceiling; I’d been doing a little reading on the subject while sequestered in Texas. If suicide really
is
a cry for help, it would seem reasonable to be open and honest in revealing that one had attempted it, in order to get some sympathy, some advice, some commiseration, maybe just a hug.

Or some pity.

Am I simply too proud? I didn’t think so. I searched through my motives as well as I was able, and couldn’t discern any need for pity, which is what I’d surely get from Callie. Perhaps that meant my attempts had actually been motivated by depression, by a desire simply to live no longer. And that was a depressing thought in itself.

I eventually wound down, leaving my story with a rather obvious lack of resolution. I’m sure Callie spotted it right away, but she said nothing for a while. I know the whole thing was almost as difficult for her as it was for me. Intimacy didn’t seem to run in the family. I felt better about her than I had in years, just for having listened to me as long as she had.

She reached behind the cooler and brought out a can of something which she poured on the fire. It flared up immediately. She looked at me, and grinned.

“Rendered b-saur fat,” she said. “Great for barbecues; gets the fire blazing real quick. I’ve used it on the meeting fires for eighty years. One of these days when he provokes me enough, I’ll tell David about it. I’m sure he’ll love me in spite of it. Will you toss some more of those logs on the fire? Right behind you, there’s a pile of them.”

I did, and we sat watching them blaze.

“You’re not telling me something,” she said, at last. “If you don’t want to, that’s your business. But you’re the one who wanted to talk.”

“I know, I know. It’s just very hard for me. There have been a lot of things going on, a lot of new things I’ve learned.”

“I didn’t know about that memory-dump technique,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought the CC could do that without your permission.” She didn’t sound alarmed about it. Like practically all Lunarians, she viewed the CC as a useful and very intelligent slave. She would concede, along with everyone else, that it was a being devoted to helping her in every possible way. But that’s where she parted company with her fellow citizens, who also thought of the CC as the least intrusive and most benevolent form of government ever devised.

The CC hadn’t mentioned it, but his means of access to the Double-C Bar Ranch was limited. This was no accident. Callie had deliberately set up her electronics such that she could function independent of the CC if the need should arise. All communication had to come through a single cable to her Mark III Husbander, which really ran the ranch. The link was further laundered through a series of gadgets supplied by some of her similarly paranoid friends, designed to filter out the subversive virus, the time bomb, and the Chinese Fire Drill—all forms of computer witchery I know nothing about apart from their names.

It was wildly inefficient. I also suspected it was futile; the CC was in here, talking to me, wasn’t he? Because that was the real reason for all the barriers, for the electronic drawbridge Callie could theoretically raise and lower at will, for the photo-etched moat she hoped to fill with cybernetic crocodiles and the molten glitches she meant to dump into invading programs. She claimed to be able to isolate her castle with the flick of one switch. Bang! and the
CC
would be cut adrift from its moorings to the larger datanet known as the Central Computer.

Silly, isn’t it? Well, I’d always thought so, until the CC took control of my own mind. Callie had always thought that way, and while she was in the minority, she wasn’t alone. Walter agreed with her, and a few other chronic malcontents like the Heinleiners.

I was about to go on with my tale of woe, but Callie put her finger to her lips.

“It’ll have to wait a bit,” she said. “The Kaiser of the Chordates is returning.”

Callie immediately went into a sneezing fit. David’s already avuncular expression became so benign it bordered on the ludicrous. He was enjoying it, no doubt about it. He seated himself and waited while Callie fumbled through her purse and found a nasal spray. When she had dosed herself and blown her nose, he smiled lovingly.

“I’m afraid your offer of ninety-eight murders is—” He held up his hand as Callie started to retort. “Very well. Ninety-eight creatures killed is simply unacceptable. After further consultation, and hearing grievances that have astounded me—and you well know I’m an old hand at this business…  ”

“Ninety-seven,” Callie said.

“Sixty,” David countered.

Callie seemed to doubt for a moment that she had heard him right. The word hung in the air between them, with at least as much incendiary potential as the fire.

“You started at sixty,” Callie said, quietly.

“And I’ve just returned us there.”

“What’s going on here? This isn’t how it’s done, and you know it. There’s no love lost between us, to put it mildly, but I’ve always been able to do business with you. There are certain accepted practices, certain understandings that if they don’t have the force of law, they certainly enjoy the stamp of custom. Everyone recognizes that. It’s called ‘good faith,’ and I don’t think you’re practicing it here tonight.”

“There will be no more business as usual,” David intoned. “You asked what’s going on, and I’ll tell you. My party has grown steadily in strength throughout this decade. Tomorrow I’m making a major speech in which I will outline new quotas which, over a twenty-year period, are intended to phase out the consumption of animal flesh entirely. It is insane, in this day and age, to continue a primitive, unhealthy practice which demeans us all. Killing and eating our fellow creatures is nothing but cannibalism. We can no longer allow it, and call ourselves civilized.”

I was impressed. He hadn’t stumbled over a single word, which must have meant he’d written and memorized it. We were getting a preview of tomorrow’s big show.

“Shut up,” Callie said.

“Countless scientific studies have proved that the eating of meat—”

“Shut up,” Callie said again, not raising her voice, but putting something else into it that was a lot more powerful than shouting. “You are on my land, and you
will
shut up, or I will personally boot your raggedy old ass all the way to the airlock and cycle you through it.”

“You have no right to—”

Callie threw her beer in his face. She just tossed it right through the fire, then threw the empty can over her shoulder into the darkness. For a moment his face froze into an expression as blank as I’ve ever seen on a human; it made my skin crawl. Then he relaxed back into his usual attitude, that of the wise old sage bemused by the squabbles of an imperfect world, looking down on it with god-like love.

A mouse peeked out of the weeds of his beard to see what all the commotion was about. It sampled one of the beer droplets, found it good, and began imbibing at a rate it might regret in the morning.

“I’ve squatted out here beside this damn fire for over thirty hours,” Callie said. “I’m not complaining about that; it’s a cost of doing business, and I’m used to it. But I
am
a busy woman. If you’d told me about this when we sat down, if you’d had the courtesy to do that, I could have kicked sand into the fire and told you I’d see you in court. Because that’s where we’re going, and I’ll have an injunction slapped on you before that beer can dry. The Labor Relations Board will have something to say, too.” She spread her hands in an eloquent Italianate gesture. “I guess we have nothing further to talk about.”