The Many-Coloured Land - 1 (9 page)

Oh, Mercy. Oh, my dear. The uttermost part of the galaxy is nearer than you are, my lady passing by. And yet. And yet.

CHAPTER TEN

Only Georgina had been sorry to hear that Stein was going. They had got gloriously drunk together on his last day in Lisboa and she'd said, "How'd you like to do it in a volcano?" And he had muttered fondly that she was a crazy fat broad, but she assured him that she knew a guy who would, for suitable consideration, look the other way while they took a research deep-driller out of Messina, where there was this adit that led right into the main chamber of Stromboli.

So what the hell, they egged on over and the guy did let them get away with it. So what if it cost six kilobux? It was seismic down there in the surging lava with colored gas bubbles oozing slowly up the observation window like a bunch of jellyfish in a bowl of incandescent tomato soup.

"Oh, Georgina," he had moaned in the postcoital triste. "Come with me."

She rolled over on the padded floor of the driller cockpit, white flesh turned to scarlet and black by the glare outside, and gave the weeping giant mother-comfort from her melon-sized breasts.

"Steinie. Lovie. I've got three beautiful children and with my genetic quotient I can have three more if I want them. I'm happy as a clam at high tide playing with my kids and torching busted bores and loving up any man who isn't afraid I'll eat him alive. Steinie, what do I need with Exile? This is my kind of world. Exploding in three million directions all at once! Earthlings increasing and multiplying in every nook of the galaxy and the race evolving into something fantastic practically before your eyes. You know that one of my kids is coming out meta? It's happening all over the place now. Human biology is evolving right along with human culture for the first time since the Old Stone Age. I couldn't miss it, lovie. Not friggerty likely."

He broke away and knuckled out tears, disgusted with himself. "You better hope I didn't plant anything in your potato patch then, kid. I don't think my genes'd meet your standards."

She took his face in both hands and kissed him. "I know why you have to go, Blue Eyes. But I've also seen your PS profile. The squiggles in it have nothing to do with heredity, whatever you may think. Given another nurturing situation, you would have turned out fine, laddie."

"Animal. He called me a murdering little animal," Stein whispered.

She rocked him again. "He was hurt terribly when she died, and be couldn't know you understood what be was saying. Try to forgive him, Steinie. Try to forgive yourself."

The deep-driller began to lurch violently as massive eruptions of gas rose from Stromboli's guts. They decided to get the hell out of there before the sigma-field heat shields gave way, and burrowed out of the lava chamber via an extinct underwater vent. When they finally emerged on the floor of the Mediterranean west of the island, the driller's hull clanged and pinged with the sounds of rocks falling through the water.

They rose to the surface and came into a night of mad melodrama. Stromboli was in eruption, farting red and yellow fire clouds and glowing chunks of lava that arched like skyrockets before quenching themselves in the sea.

"Holy petard," said Georgina. "Did we do that?" Stein grinned at her owlishly as the driller rocked on steaming waves. "You wanna try for continental drift?" he asked, reaching for her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Richard Voorhees took the Express Tube from Unst to Paris to Lyon, then rented a Hertz egg for the last part of his journey. His earlier notion of eating and drinking and screwing his way across Europe and then jumping off an Alp had been modified when a fellow passenger on the liner from Assawompset happened to mention the odd Earth phenomenon of Exile.

That, Richard knew instantly, was just the kind of reprieve he needed. A new start on a primitive world full of human beings with no rules. Nothing to bug you but the occasional prehistoric monster. No green Leakie-Freakies, no dwarf Polli-wogs, no obscene Gi, no glaring Krondaku making you feel like your nightmares just came true, and especially no Lylmik.

He started pulling the strings as soon as he got out of decon and was able to get to a teleview. Most Exile candidates applied months in advance through their local PS counselors and took all the tests before they ever left home. But Voorhees, the old operator, knew that there had to be a way of expediting matters. The magic passkey had come via a big Earthside corporation for which he had done a delicate job less than a year ago. It was to the advantage of both the corporation and the ex-spacer that he exit the here and now as soon as possible; and so with scarcely any arm-twisting at all, the outfit's XT-Operations agreed to use his good offices to convince the people at the auberge to let Richard take abbreviated tests right there at the starport, then proceed directly to Go.

This evening, however, as he glided out of the Rhone Valley toward the Monts du Lyonnais, he still admitted to a few qualms. He landed at Saint-Antoine-des-Vignes just a few kilometers from the inn and decided to have one last meal on free turf. The August sun had dropped behind the Col de la Lucre and the resolutely quaint village drowsed in leftover heat. The café was small but it was also dim and cool and not, thank God, too cutesy atmospheric for comfort. As he ambled in, he noted approvingly that the Tri-D was off, the musicbox played only a subdued, jangling tune, and the smells of food were incredibly appealing.

A young couple and two older men, locals by the look of their agrigarb, sat at window tables wolfing large plates of sausage and bowls of salad. On a stool at the bar sat a huge blond man in a glossy suit of midnight nebulin. He was eating a whole chicken prepared with some pinkish sauce and washing it down with beer from a two-liter pewter tankard. After hesitating for a moment, Richard went and took another stool.

The big fellow nodded, grunted, and kept feeding his face. From the kitchen came the proprietor, a jolly pot-bellied man with a heroic aquiline nose. He beamed a welcome to Voorhees, spotting him as an offworlder immediately.

"I have heard," Richard said carefully, "that the food in this part of Earth is never prepared with synthetics."

The host said, "We'd sooner gastrectomize than insult our bellies with algiprote or biocake or any of the rest of that crap-diddle. Ask any gorf in the place."

"Say again, Louie!" cackled one of the oldsters at the window, hoisting a dripping hunk of sausage on his fork.

The proprietor leaned on the counter with hands palm down. This France of ours has seen a lot of change. Our people are scattered over the galaxy. Our French language is dead. Our country is an industrial beehive underground and a history buff's Disneyland on top. But three things remain unchanged and immortal, our cheeses, our wines, and our cuisine! Now, I can see that you've come a long way." The man's eyelid drooped in a ponderous wink. "Like this other guest here, maybe you still have a ways to go. So If you're looking for a really cosmic meal, well, we're a modest house, but our cooking and our cellar are four-star if you can pay for it."

Richard sighed. "I trust you. Do it to me."

"An aperitif, then, which we have chilled and ready! Dom Pérignon 2100. Savor it while I bring you a selection of whimsies to whet your appetite."

"Is that champagne?" the chicken muncher asked. "In that little bitty bottle?"

Richard nodded. "Where I come from, a split of this will set you back three centibux."

"No shit? How far out you be, guy?"

"Assawompset. The old Assawomp-hole of the universe, we call it. But don't you try."

Stein chortled around his chicken. "I never fight with a guy I'lll I meet him formal."

The host brought a napkin with two small pastries and a little silver dish full of white steaming lumps. "Brioche de foie gras, croustade de ris de veau a la financiere, and quenelles de brochet au beurre d'dcrevisses. Eat! Enjoy!" He swept out.

"Financier, huh?" muttered Richard. "There's a good epitaph." He ate the pastries. One was like a cream puff stuffed with delicious spiced liver. The other seemed to be a fluted tart shell filled with bits of meat, mushrooms, and unidentifiable tidbits in Madeira sauce. The dish with white sauce consisted of delicate fish dumplings.

"This is delicious, but what am I eating?" he asked the host, who had emerged to take the credit cards of the local diners.

"The brioche is filled with goose liver pate. The tart has a slice of truffle, braised veal sweetbread, and a garnish of tiny chicken dumplings, cock's combs, and kidneys in wine sauce. The pike dumplings are served in creamy crayfish butter."

"Good God," said Richard.

"I have an outstanding vintage coming up with the main course. But first, grilled baby lamb filet with little vegetables, and to set it off, a splendid young Fume from the Chateau du Nozet,"

Richard ate and sipped, sipped and ate. Finally the host returned with a small chicken like that which Stein had lately devoured. "The speciality of the house, Poularde Diva! The most adolescent of young pullets, stuffed with rice, truffles, and foie gras, poached and coated with paprika supreme sauce. To accompany it, a magnificent Chateau Grillet."

"You're kidding!" Richard exclaimed.

"It never leaves the planet Earth," the host assured him solemnly. "It rarely leaves France. Get this behind your uvula guy, and your stomach I'll think you died and went to heaven." Once again he whirled out.

Stein gaped. "My chicken tasted good," he ventured. "But I ate it with Tuborg."

"To each his own," Richard said. After a long pause for attending to business, he wiped pink sauce off his mustache and said, "You figure somebody on the other side of the gate will know how to brew up some good booze? "

Stein's eyes narrowed. "How you know I'm goin' over?"

"Because you couldn't look less like some colonial gorf visiting the Old Country. You ever thought about where your next bucket of suds is coming from in the Pliocene?"

"Christ!" exclaimed Stein.

"Now me, I'm a wine freak. As much as I could be, dragging my ass all over the Milky Way. I was a spacer. I got busted. I don't wanta talk about it. You can call me Richard. Not Rick. Not Dick. Richard."

"I'm Steinie." The big driller thought for a minute. "The stuff they sent me about this Exile told how they let you sleep-learn any simple technology you think would be useful in the other world. I don't remember if it was on the list, but I bet I could cram brewing easy. And the hard sauce, you can make that outa just about anything. Only tricky bit would be the condensation column, and you could whip that up outa copper-film decamole and hide it in your hollow tooth if they didn't wanta let you in with it on the up. You with your wine, though, you might have a problem. Don't they use special grapes and stuff?"

"Don't they fuggin' ever," said Richard gloomily, squinting through the glass of Grillet. "I suppose the soil would be different back then, too. But you might be able to come up with something halfway decent. Let's see. Grapevine cuttings of course, and definitely yeast cultures, or you'd end up with moose pee for sure. And you'd have to know how to make some kind of bottles. What did they use before glass and plass? "

"Little brown jugs?" Stein suggested.

"Right. Ceramic. And I think you can make bottles outa leather if you heat and mold it in water, Christ! Will you listen to me? The hung spacer carving out a new career as a grape-squash moonshiner."

"Could you get a recipe for akvavit?" Stein was wistful. "It's just neat alcohol with a little caraway seed. I'll buy all you can make." He did a double take. "Buy? I mean barter, or something . . . Shit You think there'll be anything civilized waiting for us?"

"They've had nearly seventy years to work on it."

"I guess it all depends," Stein said hesitantly.

Richard grunted. "I know what you're thinking. It all depends on what the rest of the fruitcakes have been up to all this time. Have they got a little pioneer paradise going, or do they spend their time scratching fleas and carving each other's tripes out?"

The host came up with a dirty old bottle, which he cradled like a precious child. "And here . . . the climax! But it'll cost you. Chateau d'Yquem '83, the famous Lost Vintage of the Metapsychic Rebellion year."

Richard's face, furrowed with old pain, was suddenly transformed. He studied the tattered label with reverence. "Could it still be alive?"

"As God wills," shrugged mon hote. "Four point five kilo-bux the bottle."

Stein's mouth dropped. Richard nodded and the host began to draw the cork.

"Jeez, Richard, can I hit you for a little taste? I'll pay if you want. But I never had anything that cost so much."

"Landlord, three glasses! We will all drink to my toast."

The host sniffed the cork hopefully, gave a beatific smile, then poured three half-glasses of golden-brown liquid that sparkled like topaz in the lantern light.

Richard lifted his glass to the other two.

A man may kiss his girl goodbye. A rose may kiss the butterfly. A wine may kiss the crystal glass. But you, my friends, may kiss mine ass!

The ex-spacer and the cafe proprietor closed their eyes and sampled the wine. Stein tossed his down in one gulp, grinned, and said, "Hey! It tastes like flowers! But not much sock to it, is there?"

Richard winced. "Bring my buddy here a crock of eau de vie.

You'll like that, Steinie. Sort of akvavit without the seeds... You and I, landlord, will continue to bless our tonsils with the Sauternes."

So the evening wore on, Voorhees and Oleson told each other edited versions of the sad stories of their lives while the proprietor of the café clucked in sympathy and kept refilling his own glass. A second bottle of Yquem was called for and then a third. After a while, Stein bashfully told them what Georgina's other farewell presents had been. His new friends demanded that he model them; so he went out into the darkened egg park, got the stuff from the boot, and stalked back into the cafd resplendent in a wolfskin kilt, a wide leather collar and belt studded with gold and amber, a bronze Vikso helmet, and a big steel-bladed battle-axe.