Steel Beach (9 page)

“I only work with survivors,” he said, quietly. Before either of us had a chance to reply he was on his feet. He limped slightly as he went to the door and held it open for us.

I got up and jammed my hat on my head. I was almost out the door when I heard Brenda.

“I don’t understand,” she was saying. “What makes you think I’m not a survivor?”

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” he said.

I turned on him.

“Brenda,” I said, slowly. “Correct me if I’m wrong. Did I just hear myself accused of not being a survivor by a man who risks his life in a
game
?”

She didn’t say anything. I think she realized that, whatever was going on here, it was between him and me. I wished I knew what it was, and why it had made me so angry.

“Risks can be calculated,” he said. “I’m still alive. I plan to stay that way.”

Nothing good lasts forever. Brenda piped up again.

“What is it about Hildy that makes you—”

“That’s none of my business,” he interrupted, still looking at me. “I see something in Hildy. If I were to join you two, I’d have to make it my business.”

“What you see, pal, is a man who takes care of his own business, and doesn’t let some gal with a knife do it for him.”

Somehow that didn’t come out like I’d intended. He smiled faintly. I turned and stomped out the door, not waiting to see if Brenda followed.

I lifted my head from the bar. Everything was too bright, too noisy. I seemed to be on a carousel, but what was that bottle doing in my hand?

I kept tightly focused on the bottle and things slowly stopped spinning. There was a puddle of whiskey under the bottle, and under my arm, and the side of my face was wet. I’d been lying in the puddle.

“If you throw up on my bar,” the man said, “I’ll beat you bloody.”

Swinging my gaze toward him was a major project. It was the bartender, and I told him I wasn’t going to throw up, then I almost choked and staggered toward the swinging doors and made a mess in the middle of Congress Street.

When I was done I sat down there in the road. Traffic was no problem. There were a few horses and wagons tied up behind me, but nothing moved on the dark streets of New Austin. Behind me were the sounds of revelry, piano music, the occasional gunshot as the tourists sampled life in the old west.

Somebody was holding a drink before my face. I followed the arm up to bare shoulders, a long neck, a pretty face surrounded by curly black hair. Her lipstick was black in the dim light. She wore a corset, garters, stockings, high heels. I took the drink and made it vanish. I patted the ground beside me and she sat, folding her arms on her knees.

“I’ll remember your name in a minute,” I said.

“Dora.”

“Adorable Dora. I want to rip off your clothes and throw you into bed and make passionate love to your virginal body.”

“We already did that. Sorry about the virginal part.”

“I want you to have my babies.”

She kissed my forehead.

“Marry me, and make me the happiest man in the moon.”

“We did that, too, sweetheart. It’s a shame you don’t remember it.” She held her hand out to me and I saw a gold wedding ring with a little diamond chip. I squinted at her face again. There was some kind of filmy aura around it…  

“That’s a bridal veil!” I shouted. She was looking dreamy, smiling up at the stars.

“We had to sober the parson up, then go bang on the jeweler’s door and send somebody around to find Silas to open the general store for my gown, but we got it done. The service was right there in the Alamo, Cissy was my maid of honor and old Doc stood up for you. All the girls cried.”

I must have looked dubious, because she laughed and patted me on the back.

“The tourists loved it,” she said. “It’s not every night we get as colorful as that.” She twisted the ring off her finger and handed it to me. “But I’m too much of a lady to hold you to vows you made while not in your right mind.” She peered closer at me. “Are you back in your right mind?”

I was back enough to remember that any marriage performed by the “parson” in “Texas” was not legally binding in King City. But to get an idea of how far gone I’d been, I’d really been worried for a moment there.

“A whore with a heart of gold,” I said.

“We all have our parts to play. I’ve never seen the ‘town drunk’ done better. Most people omit the vomit.”

“I strive for authenticity. Did I do anything disgraceful?”

“You mean aside from marrying me? I don’t mean to be unkind, but your fourth consummation of our marriage was pretty disgraceful. I won’t spread it around; the first three were rather special.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the tongue work was some of the best I’ve—”

“No, I mean…  ”

“I know what you mean. I know there’s a word for it. Inability, immobility…  a limp cock.”

“Impotence.”

“That’s it. My grandmother told me about it, but I never expected to see it.”

“Stick with me, honey, and I’ll show you even more wonders.”

“You were pretty drunk.”

“You’ve finally said something boring.”

She shrugged. “I can’t swap repartee with a cynic like you forever.”

“Is that what I am? A cynic?”

She shrugged again, but I thought I saw some concern in her expression. It was hard to tell, with just moonlight and swimming eyeballs.

She helped me to my feet, brushed me off, kissed me. I promised to call on her when I was in town. I don’t think she believed me. I had her point me toward the edge of town, and started home.

Morning was smearing up the sky like pale pink lipstick.

I’d been hearing the rippling of the river for some time.

My efforts at reconstructing the day had brought back some broad outlines. I recalled taking the tube from the Arena to Texas, and I knew I’d spent some time working on the cabin. In there somewhere I saw myself throwing finished lumber into a ravine. I remembered seriously thinking of burning the cabin to the ground. The next thing I knew I was sitting at the bar in the Alamo Saloon, tossing down one drink after another. Then the clouds rolled in and the memory transcription ended. I had a hazy picture of the Parson swaying slightly as he pronounced us man and wife. What a curious phrase. I supposed it was historically accurate.

I heard a sound, and looked up from the rocky path.

A pronghorn antelope was standing not ten feet in front of me. He held his head high, alert and proud, but not frightened of me. His chest was snowy white and his eyes were moist and brown and wise. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

On his worst day he was ten times better than I had ever been. I sat down on the path and cried for a while. When I looked up, he was gone.

I felt calm for the first time in many years. I found the cliff face, located the climbing rope, and hoisted myself to the top. The sun was still below the horizon but there was a lot of yellow in the sky now. My hands toyed with the rope. How did it go…  the rabbit goes in the hole, the dog chases the rabbit around the tree, two, three, four…  

After several tries, I got it right. I slipped it around my neck and looked down the cliff. Your acceleration is low in Luna, but your body mass is constant. You need a big drop, six times what would do on Earth. I tried to do the calculations in my head but kept losing track.

To be on the safe side, I picked up a large rock and held it tightly to my chest. Then I jumped. You get plenty of time for regrets, but I had none. I remember looking up and seeing Andrew MacDonald looking down at me.

Then came the jerk.

“If you’re going to build a barn for brontosaurs,” I told Brenda, “You’d better make the ceiling at least twenty meters high.”

“And why is that, Mr. Bones?”

Where she’d learned about minstrel shows I had no idea, but she’d been using the term for a while now, whenever I got into lecture mode—which, considering the state of her ignorance, was most of the time. I wasn’t going to let it annoy me.

She was looking up at the ceiling, which was twenty-five meters above us. Myself, I wasn’t looking up all that much lately. For several days I’d had a persistent and painful stabbing pain in my neck whenever I turned my head in a certain position. I kept meaning to visit the medico and get it fixed, but it would spontaneously remit for a few hours and I’d forget to make an appointment. Then it would creep up and stab me when I least expected it.

“Brontosaurs are not real bright. When they get alarmed they raise their heads and rear up on their hind legs to take a look around. If the ceiling is too low they smash their teeny heads against it and stun themselves.”

“You’ve spent time around dinosaurs?”

“I grew up on a dinosaur ranch.” I took her elbow and steered her out of the way of a manure loader. We watched as it scooped up a pile of watermelon-sized pellets.

“What a stench.”

I said nothing. The smell had both good and bad associations for me. It took me back to my childhood, where one of my jobs had been operating the manure loader.

Behind us, the massive doors to the swamp began rumbling open, letting in a blast of air even hotter and more humid than that inside the barn. In a moment a long neck poked inside the door, ending in an almost negligible, goofy-looking head. The neck kept coming in for a very long time before the massive body made its entrance. By then another head and neck had appeared.

“Let’s get back here out of the way,” I suggested to Brenda. “They won’t step on you if they see you, but they tend to forget where you are not long after they look away from you.”

“Where are they going?”

I pointed toward the open gate across from us. The sign on it said “Mating Pen Number One.”

“Mating season’s just about over. Wait till Callie gets them penned up, then we can take a look. It’s pretty interesting.”

One of the brontosaurs made a mournful honk and moved along a little faster. In one-sixth gee, even a thunder lizard could be sprightly. I doubt they set any speed records back on Old Earth. In fact, I wondered how they stood up at all, out of the water.

The reason for the burst of speed was soon apparent. Callie entered the barn, mounted on a tyrannosaur. The big predator responded instantly to every touch of the reins, hurrying to block an attempted retreat by the male, rearing up and baring its teeth when it looked as if the female might make a stand. The big herbivores waddled quickly into the mating pen. The doors closed automatically behind them.

The thing the ancient paleontologists had never got right about dinosaurs was their color. You’d think the examples of so many modern reptiles might have given them a hint. But if you look at old artists’ conceptions of dinosaurs, the predominant colors were mud-brown and khaki-green. The real item was much different.

There are several strains of b-saur but the type Callie prefers are called Cal Tech Yellowbellies, after the lab that first produced them. In addition to the canary undersides, they range from that old reliable mud-brown on their backs to a dark green, emerald green, and kelly green on their sides and necks. They have streaks of iridescent violet trailing back from their eyes, and white patches under their throats.

Tyrannosaurs, of course, are predominately red. They have huge, dangling wattles under their necks, like iguanas, which can be puffed up to make an outrageous booming mating call. The wattles are usually deep blue, though purple and even black are not unknown.

You can’t ride a t-saur like a horse; the back is too steep. There are different methods, but Callie preferred a sort of narrow platform she could either sit or stand on, depending on what she was doing. It strapped around the beast’s shoulders. Considering the amount of lizard still rising above that point, she spent most of her time on her feet, barely able to peer over the head.

“It looks unstable,” Brenda said. “What if she falls off?”

“You don’t want to do that,” I told her. “They’re likely to snap at you if you come in view suddenly. But don’t worry; this one is muzzled.”

An assistant leaped up to join Callie in the saddle. He took the reins from her and she jumped to the ground. As the t-saur was being ridden out the barn door she glanced at us, did a double take, and waved at me. I waved back, and she gestured for us to come over. Not waiting, she started toward the breeding pen.

I was about to join her when something poked through the metal railing behind us. Brenda jumped, then relaxed. It was a brontosaur pup looking for a treat. Looking into the dim pen behind us, I could see several dozen of the elephant-sized young ones, most of them snugged into the mud, a few others gathered around the feeding trough.

I turned out my pockets to show the brute I didn’t have anything on me. I used to carry chunks of sugar-cane, which they love.

Brenda didn’t have any pockets to turn out, for the simple reason that she wasn’t wearing any pants. Her outfit for the day was knee-length soft leather boots, and a little black bolero top. This was intended to let me know that she had acquired something new: primary and secondary sexual characteristics. I was fairly sure she hoped I’d suggest we put them to use one of these days soon. I’d first caught on that she had a crush on me when she learned that Hildy Johnson was not my born name, but one I had selected myself after a famous fictional reporter from a play called
The Front Page
. Soon she was “Brenda Starr.”

I must say she looked more reasonable now. Neuters had always made me nervous. She had not gone overboard with the breasts. The pubic hair was natural, not some of the wilder styles that come and go.

But I was in no mood to try it out. Let her find a child of her own age.

We joined Callie at the breeding pen, climbed up to the top of the ten-meter gate and stood with her, looking over the top rail at the nervously milling behemoths.

“Brenda,” I said, “I’d like you to meet Calamari Cabrini. She owns this place. Callie, meet Brenda, my…  uh, assistant.”

The women reached across me to shake hands, Brenda almost losing her balance on the slippery steel bars. All three of us were dripping wet. Not only was it hot and humid in the barn, but ceiling sprinklers drenched the place every ten minutes because it was good for the skins of the livestock. Callie was the only one who looked comfortable, because she wore no clothes. I should have remembered and worn less myself; even Brenda was doing better than me.