The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (17 page)

“Jinx, are you trying to scandalize me with that old tale? Howie was my
partner
. You should be ashamed.”

“Not accusing you of anything, dear. Just cautious. How about it? Wait for my kids and I take all? Or divvy up, nice and polite?”

I simply wished that these enthusiastic entrepreneurs would get on with it. Our air pressure light had blinked red and I was feeling a touch light-headed. I suppose that roll after landing opened a slow leak. I dithered between a need to tell them to hurry and a realization that my bad bargaining position would drop to zero or even minus if I did so.

Mistress Snodgrass said thoughtfully, “Well, Jinx, it doesn’t make sense to drag this junk to your pressure—north of mine—when it’s about thirty klicks closer to take it to Kong by way of my place—south of yours. Right?”

“Simple arithmetic, Maggie. And I have plenty of room in this buggy for three more…whereas I’m not sure you could take three passengers even if you stacked them like hotcakes.”

“I could handle them but I’ll concede you have more room. All right, you take the three refugees and skin them all your conscience will let you…and I’ll take the abandoned junker and salvage what I can out of it. If any.”

“Oh, no, Maggie! You’re too generous; I wouldn’t want to cheat you. Right down the middle. Written records. Confirmed.”

“Why, Jinx, do you think I would cheat you?”

“Let’s not debate that, Maggie; it would only cause grief. That skycar is not abandoned; its owner is inside it this very minute. Before you can move it, you must have a release from him…based on a recorded contract. If you don’t want to be reasonable, he can wait right here for my transporter, and never abandon his property. No salvage, just cartage at hire…plus complimentary transportation for the owner and his guests.”

“Mr. What’s-your-name, don’t let Jinx fool you. He gets you and your car to his pressure, he’ll peel you like an onion, till there’s nothing left of you but the smell. I offer you a thousand crowns cash, right now, for that junk metal you’re sitting in.”

Henderson countered, “Two thousand, and I take you in to pressure. Don’t let her swindle you; there is more salvage than she’s offering in your computer alone.”

I kept quiet while these two ghouls settled how they were carving us up. When they had agreed, I agreed…with only nominal resistance. I objected that the price had gone up and was much too high. Mistress Snodgrass said, “Take it or leave it.” Jinx Henderson said, “I didn’t get out of a warm bed to lose money on a job.”

I took it.

So we wore those silly shelf-worn suits, almost as gas tight as a wicker basket. Gwen objected that Tree-San must not be exposed to vacuum. I told her to shut up and not be silly; a few moments’ exposure would not kill the little maple—and we had run out of air, no choice. Then she was going to carry it. Then she let Bill carry it; she was busy otherwise—me.

You see, I can’t wear a pressure suit that has not been especially made for me…while wearing my artificial foot. So I had to remove it. So I had to hop. That’s okay; I’m used to hopping, and at one-sixth gee hopping is no problem. But Gwen had to mother me.

So here we go—Bill leading off with Tree-San, under instructions from Gwen to get inside fast and get some water from Mr. Henderson to spray on it, then Gwen and I followed as Siamese twins. She earned her small case with her left hand and put her right arm around my waist. I had my artificial foot slung over my shoulder, and I used my cane and hopped and steadied myself with my left arm around her shoulders. How could I tell her that I would have been steadier without her help? I kept my big mouth shut and let her help me.

Mr. Henderson let us into the cab, then gasketed it tight and opened an air bottle lavishly—he had been running in vacuum, wearing a suit. I appreciated his lavish expenditure of air mix—oxygen wrested painfully from Lunar rock, nitrogen all the way from Earth—until I saw it next day on my bill at a fat price.

Henderson stayed and helped Maggie wrestle old B. J. 17 onto her transporter, running her crane for her while she handled her tread controls, then he drove us to Dry Bones Pressure. I spent part of the time figuring out what it had cost me. I had had to sign away the skycar totally—net just under twenty-seven thousand. I had paid three thousand each to rescue us, discounted to eight thousand as a courtesy…plus five hundred each for bed and breakfast…plus (I learned later) eighteen hundred tomorrow to drive us to Lucky Dragon Pressure, the nearest place to catch a rolligon bus to Hong Kong Luna.

On Luna it’s cheaper to die.

Still, I was happy to be alive at any price. I had Gwen and money is something you can always get more of.

Ingrid Henderson was a most gracious hostess—smiling and pretty and plump (clearly expecting that child). She welcomed us warmly, woke up her daughter, moved her into a shakedown with them, put us in Gretchen’s room, put Bill in with Wolf—at which point I realized that Jinx’s threats to Maggie were not backed up by force at hand…and realized, too, that it was none of my business.

Our hostess said goodnight to us, told us the light in the ’fresher was left on in the night, in case—and left. I looked at my watch before turning out me light.

Twenty-four hours earlier a stranger hight Schultz sat down at my table.

“Dear Lord, give me chastity and self-restraint…but not yet, O Lord, not yet!”

SAINT AUGUSTINE A.D.
354-430

That damned fez!

That silly, fake-oriental headdress had been fifty percent of a disguise that had saved my life. But, having used it, the coldly pragmatic thing to do would have been to destroy it.

I did not. I had felt uneasy about wearing it, first because I am not any sort of a Freemason, much less a Shriner, and second because it was not mine; it was stolen.

One might steal a throne or a king’s ransom or a Martian princess and feel euphoric about it. But a hat? Stealing a hat was beneath contempt. Oh, I didn’t reason this out; I simply felt uneasy about Mr. Clayton Rasmussen (his name I found inside his fez) and intended to restore his fancy headgear to him. Someday—Somehow—When I could manage it—When the rain stopped—

As we were leaving Golden Rule habitat, I had tucked it under a belt and forgotten it. After touch down on Luna, as I unstrapped, it had fallen to the ceiling; I had not noticed. As we three were climbing into those breezy escape suits, Gwen had picked it up and handed it to me; I shoved it into the front of my pressure suit and zipped up.

After we reached the Henderson home in Dry Bones Pressure and were shown where we were to sleep, I peeled down with my eyes drooping, so tired I hardly knew what I was doing. I suppose the fez fell out then. I don’t know. I just cuddled up to Gwen and went right to sleep—and spent my wedding night in eight hours of unbroken sleep.

I think my bride slept just as soundly. No matter—we had had a grand practice run the night before.

At the breakfast table Bill handed me that fez. “Senator, you dropped your hat on the floor of the ’fresher.”

Also at the table were Gwen, the Hendersons—Ingrid, Jinx, Gretchen, Wolf—and two boarders, Eloise and Ace, and three small children. It was a good time for me to come out with a brilliant ad-lib that would account for my possession of this funny hat. What I said was “Thank you, Bill.”

Jinx and Ace exchanged glances; then Jinx offered me Masonic recognition signs.

That’s what I have to assume they were. At the time I simply thought that he was scratching himself. After all, all Loonies scratch because all Loonies itch. They can’t help it—not enough baths, not enough water.

Jinx got me alone after breakfast. He said, “Noble—”

I said, “Huh?” (Swift repartee!)

“I couldn’t miss it that you declined to recognize me there at the table. And Ace saw it, too. Are you by any chance thinking that the deal we made last night wasn’t level and on the square?”

(Jinx, you cheated me blind, six ways from zero.) “Why, nothing of the sort. No complaints.” (A deal is a deal, you swiftie. I don’t welch.)

“Are you sure? I’ve never cheated a lodge brother—or an outsider, for that matter. But I take special care of any son of a widow just the way I would one of my own blood. If you think you paid too much for being rescued, then pay what you think is right. Or you can have it free.”

He added, “While I can’t speak for Maggie Snodgrass, she’ll make an accounting to me, and it will be honest; there is nothing small about Maggie. But don’t expect that salvage to show too much net. Or maybe a loss by the time she sells it because—You know where Budget gets those crocks they rent, don’t you?”

I admitted ignorance. He went on, “Every year the quality leasers, like Hertz and Interplanet, sell off their used cars. The clean jobs are bought by private parties, mostly Loonies. The stuff needing lots of work goes to boomers. Then Budget Jets buys what’s left at junkyard prices, starvation cheap. They rework that junk at their yard outside Loonie City, getting maybe two cars for each three they buy, then they sell as scrap whatever is left over. That jalopy that let you down—they charged you list, twenty-six thousand…but if Budget actually had as much as five thousand cash tied up in it, I’ll give you the difference and buy you a drink, and that’s a fact.

“Now Maggie is going to recondition it again. But her repairs will be honest and her work guaranteed and she’ll sell it for what it is—worn out, rebuilt, not standard. Maybe it will fetch ten thousand, gross. After fair charges for parts and labor, if the net she splits with me is more than three thousand, I’ll be flabbergasted—and it might be a net loss. A gamble.”

I told a number of sincere lies and managed (I think) to convince Jinx that we were not lodge brothers and that I was not asking for discounts on anything and that I had come by that fez by accident, at the last minute—found it in the Volvo when I hired it.

(Unspoken assumption: Mr. Rasmussen had hired that wagon in Luna City, then had left his headpiece in it when he turned in the Volvo at Golden Rule.)

I added that the owner’s name was in the fez and I intended to return it to him.

Jinx asked, “Do you have his address?”

I admitted that I did not—just the name of his temple, embroidered on the fez.

Jinx stuck out his hand. “Give it to me; I can save you the trouble…and the expense of mailing a package back Earthside.”

“How?”

“Happens I know somebody who’s bouncing a jumpbug to Luna City on Saturday. The Nobles’ convention adjourns on Sunday, right after they dedicate their Luna City Hospital for Crippled and Birth-Damaged Children. There’ll be a lost-and-found at the convention center; there always is. Since his name is in it, they’ll get it to him—before Saturday evening, because that’s the night of the drill team competition…and they know that a drill team member—if he is one—without his fez is as undressed as a bar hostess without her G-string.”

I passed the red hat over to him.

I thought that would be the end of it.

More hassle before we could get rolling for Lucky Dragon Pressure—no pressure suits. As Jinx put it: “Last night I okayed your using those leaky sieves because it was Hobson’s Choice—it was risk it, or leave you to die. Today we could use them the same way—or we could even bring the buggy into the hangar and load you in without using suits. Of course that wastes an awful mass of air. Then do it again at the far end…for an even greater air cost; their hangar is bigger.”

I said I would pay. (I didn’t see how I could avoid it.)

“That’s not the point. Last night you were in the cab twenty minutes…and it took a full bottle to keep air around you. Late last night the Sun was just barely rising; this morning it’s five degrees high. Raw sunlight is going to be beating against the side of that cab all the way to Lucky Dragon. Oh, Gretchen will drive in shadow all she can; we don’t raise dumb kids. But any air inside the cabin would heat up and swell and come pouring out the cracks. So normal operation is to pressurize your suit but not the cabin, and use the cabin just for shade.

“Now I won’t lie to you; if I had suits to sell, I would insist that you buy three new suits. But I don’t have suits. Nobody in this pressure has suits for sale. Less than a hundred fifty of us; I would know. We buy suits in Kong and that’s what you should do.”

“But I’m not
in
Kong.”

I had not owned a pressure suit for more than five years. Permanent habitants of Golden Rule mostly do not own pressure suits; they don’t need them, they don’t go outside. Of course there are plenty of staff and maintenance who keep pressure suits always ready the way Bostonians keep overshoes. But the usual habitant, elderly and wealthy, doesn’t own one, doesn’t need one, wouldn’t know how to wear one.

Loonies are another breed. Even today, with Luna City over a million and some city dwellers who rarely if ever go outside, a Loonie owns his suit. Even that big-city Loonie knows from infancy that his safe, warm, well-lighted pressure can be broached—by a meteor, by a bomb, by a terrorist, by a quake or some other unpredictable hazard.

If he’s a pioneering type like Jinx, he’s as used to a suit as is an asteroid miner. Jinx didn’t even work his own tunnel farm; the rest of his family did that. Jinx habitually worked outside, a pressure-suited, heavy-construction mechanic; “Happy Chance Salvage” was just one of his dozen-odd hats. He was also the “Dry Bones Ice Company,” “Henderson’s Overland Cartage Company,” “John Henry Drilling, Welding, and Rigging Contractors”—or you name it and Jinx would invent a company to fit.

(There was also “Ingrid’s Swap Shop” which sold everything from structural steel to homemade cookies. But not pressure suits.)

Jinx worked out a way to get us to Lucky Dragon: Ingrid and Gwen were much the same size except that Ingrid was temporarily distended around the equator. She had a pregnancy pressure suit with an external corset that could be let out. She also had a conventional suit she wore when not pregnant, one she could not get into now—but Gwen could.

Jinx and I were about of a height, and he had two suits, both first quality Goodrich Luna. I could see that he was about as willing to lend me one as a cabinetmaker is to lend tools. But he was under pressure to work something out, or he was going to have us as paying guests…and then as non-paying guests when our money ran out. And they didn’t really have room for us even while I could still pay.