The Ophiuchi Hotline (21 page)

“And the second reason?”

“I don’t know if you’ll believe this one, so you’d better think hard about the first. But for the record, I’m worried, I don’t like the sound of that Hotline message. I don’t like it at
all.
I think someone had better look into it, and it might as well be me. So I want to go out and hear it for myself.”

Vaffa lowered her eyes for a moment and rubbed her bare scalp. Then she nodded, and sat down cross-legged on the tree limb.

“All right. I’m…I’m sorry. I said I’d trust you, and I will from now on. On the same terms as before, though, don’t forget that. If you betray me, I’ll hunt you down and kill you, no matter how long it takes.”

“That’s all I’m asking for.” Lilo sat beside her. She stretched out with her arms behind her head.

“So how did it go with the holehunter?” Vaffa asked.

“Washed out. He won’t do it.”

“
What?
”

“Put your shirt on. That’s why I’m late. I had him
that
close. We were talking terms.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You. Oh, not you personally. You and Cathay. He flatly refuses to take more than one passenger. None of us can go alone, for obvious reasons, so the deal had to fall through.”

“But why? I checked him out. His ship would handle four easily over that distance.”

Lilo sighed. “I know. You have to try and understand what these people are like. They don’t
like
people. It was
torture
for him to consider taking me alone. Three people scared him so badly he could barely talk.”

“I guess I still don’t understand.”

Lilo tried again, because she didn’t, either. “Put yourself in his place. He’s spent most of his life alone on
that ship. It’s like part of his body. He’s slowly going insane here on Pluto, and he knows it. To him, sharing his ship is as repulsive as…” she flailed her hands helplessly, “…I don’t know. Sharing a toothbrush. Think of your own metaphor. He just won’t do it, not for anything.”

“Then we’re back where we started.”

Lilo pursed her lips, then turned her head and smiled.

“Nooo. As it happens, we’re not. I hired him as an expert consultant. Gave him enough for a stake at the tables. Asked him the big question: Is there
anyone
who might do what we need, do it faster than we could do it ourselves by buying our own ship? Or was it hopeless? Would every hunter react as he did?”

“Go on. What did he say?”

“He gave me a name. No promises, you understand. But if anyone will do it, she will. She’s crazy, even by holehunter standards. And I’m going up to see her in two hours, on the next shuttle.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first…no, never mind. I suppose I can’t go.”

“That’s right. No sense in spooking her with the three of us right off. This will take finesse.”

“Then that’s you, obviously.”

Lilo turned her head, looking to see if the other woman had been trying to make a joke. That would be a first. But Vaffa’s face was as stolid as ever.

“What’s her name?”

“Javelin.”

The singular personage named Javelin lived in her ship, the
Cavorite
, which was currently stationed at the Pluto spaceport—the real one, as opposed to the vast plain over Florida which was the landing facility for shuttles. It was a vast zone of space, but rather crowded, as the radar screen of Lilo’s scooter showed. There were a thousand factories, power stations, mirrors, and farms; nearly all the heavy industry and a lot of the agriculture of Pluto. She was happy to leave the driving to the traffic-control computer.

The scooter mated with the lock of the
Cavorite.
Lilo was surprised at the size of the other ship as she climbed over the struts of the scooter toward the open door. It had looked strange coming in; most of it was engine and fuel tank, like any holehunter ship, but even that looked oversized. As for the lifesystem…could that be
brass
?

The lifesystem was streamlined, for no apparent reason. It jutted like a golden nipple at one end of the massive fuel-tank cylinder. It had none of the haphazard, strung-together look Lilo associated with deep-space vessels. It was a fat bullet, blunt at the nose and tapering slightly at the end. Four stubby fins were positioned equidistantly around the stern, where it sat on the fuel tank. The nose had a lot of glass in it, and round portholes were visible in a line down one side.

The lock seemed ordinary enough until she saw the big brass air-pressure dials with scrollwork needles spinning rapidly. She pulled open the inner door and cracked her helmet seal at the same time.

She sat in a small room, about three times the size of the airlock. There was plush purple carpet on two facing walls, while the other four were paneled in mahogany. Bolted securely to each of the carpeted walls was a deep leather-covered chair with a carved ebony table beside it. On the tables were Tiffany lamps, crystal ashtrays, and an assortment of magazines. Lilo stared at the dates; the newest one she could see was two hundred years old.

There was no way out of the room except the door to the lock. In the wall opposite the lock was a circular hole large enough for Lilo to put her head through. Not that she was about to do that. She sat in one of the chairs, making that wall her temporary “floor,” and looked up at the other chair on the “ceiling.” She didn’t care for the effect.

She had not recognized the square pane of glass in the wall opposite her chair for what it was: a scanning, electron-gun, flat black-and-white television screen. Javelin must have blown the tube herself; Lilo was sure none existed outside of museums. Now it lit up with the life-sized face of a woman. She was attractive, though more mature than was fashionable. Lilo seldom saw anyone who kept her apparent age above twenty-five. Javelin looked more like the middle thirties. The picture was head only, and Lilo felt vaguely disappointed.

“So you want to charter a spaceship,” Javelin said. “It’s a novel request, I’ll grant you that. I’m probably the only holehunter who might be intrigued by it. But I’m not intrigued enough, at this moment, to do business with you. Let’s hear it, and it’s going to have to be awfully good.”

Lilo had been prepared for a long, circuitous discussion. The holehunters she had met seemed to operate that way. Javelin caught her a little off balance.

“Uh, could I ask one question? I thought you wanted
me to come here so you could see me face-to-face. But it looks like I can’t even get into your ship.”

“This
is
face-to-face,” Javelin said. “I’ve never bothered to install video transmission equipment. For me to see you, you had to come to this room. Now, where were you planning to go? And I’ll give you another hint. Lay it on the line. Don’t back into it; tell me exactly what you want.”

“All right. I…that is, me, my wife, and…let me start over.” Lilo was sweating. She had the uneasy feeling Javelin knew something about her, and it was obvious she wanted the truth. Maybe Quince had called and told her something.

“Me and two other people need to get out to the Hotline.”

“Where on the Hotline? Are you talking about the transmitter at…70 Ophiuchi? That would be quite a trip. But I suspect you mean you want to get to a point on the line that marks the area of strongest signal strength as it passes the Solar System.”

“Exactly. Could you get us there?”

“Certainly. Why do you want to go?”

“I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

“That’s all right. You’re entitled to your little secrets.” She looked thoughtful, and Lilo was worried. She sensed she was up against a shrewd person, possibly a very old one. There was no way to tell for sure; but she always got a strange feeling when she was around someone who was over three hundred.

“Where are you from? And what are the names of the other two who would be going?”

“Luna. Vaffa and Cathay. How old are you?” She had not meant to ask it.

“If I don’t mind your asking?” She made a small smile. “Old enough to be the missing link in your family chain, Lilo. I was born in 1979, Old Style. My name at that time was Mary Lisa Bailey. I was the first woman on Mars, if you’re interested. It was my only footnote in the history books.”

Lilo was not sure if she was being lied to. She had run
into extravagant claims of age before, and generally discounted them. As far as she knew, there were no Earthborn people still alive. The Invasion had been five and a half centuries ago, after all, and biological science had been in its infancy. Still…

“That would make you—”

“The oldest living human. Don’t spread it around. The last thing I need is to be discovered again as a human interest story on the news. By the way, I’ve decided to take you and your friends. When can you be ready to go?”

“You’ve…uh, let me see. This is going a little too fast for me.” She never thought she’d say that to a hunter.

“Well, get thinking, woman. You don’t need any shots or passports where we’re going. I’ll allow each of you thirty kilos of luggage. When can you be packed?”

“How about tomorrow? Don’t you have to—”

“We burn in eighty-four-thousand standard seconds, then. Have your boarding passes ready. You do your own cooking and cleaning. I’m signing off now. There’s some structural changes I’ll have to make if you people are going to move around inside the ship. Walls to knock out, that sort of thing. You bring the champagne, okay?”

The screen went dark.

“I don’t know why she caved in so fast,” Lilo said. “Will you quit bothering me about it? Maybe she’ll tell us.” The three were approaching the vast bulk of the
Cavorite
in a scooter, a larger model that allowed them to carry their helmets. Each had a suit and a small suitcase.

Lilo had been replaying her conversation with Javelin all day long. She had told Vaffa that she was not worried about anything, that Javelin was just eccentric and probably didn’t
have
a reason for taking them other than her own amusement.

But privately, Lilo was disturbed by several things, all of them so ephemeral she could barely define them. Of
course there was the large question of why Javelin had agreed in the first place. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced the deciding factor had been the mention of being from Luna, and the name of Vaffa. Something had happened just behind Javelin’s impassive face when Lilo had said that.

Then there was the talk about the Hotline itself. Had there been a reason for Javelin being so specific about the destination? It
had
to be just her peculiar sense of humor, suggesting they might be considering a trip to 70 Ophiuchi. The deepest penetration by a human into interstellar space was no more than half a light-year; 70 Ophiuchi was seventeen lights away. But she had paused—hadn’t she?—before mentioning the star.

The reception room was changed from her earlier visit. The wall opposite the lock had been knocked out, and the chairs were no longer bolted to the walls. The room was crowded now with odds and ends of antique furniture, so much that they could not see how to get to the other end.

Javelin appeared on the other side of the jumble. It was the first time any of them had seen her, but their view was impeded.

“Hello there,” she called, peering at them through the furniture. “You’ll have to help me load this stuff into the scooter before you get settled in. I won’t be able to boost it with the three of you along.” Then, quicker than the eye could follow, she was beside them.

“Holy Mother Earth, don’t
do
that!” Vaffa seemed genuinely shaken. Lilo was a little dizzy herself. It was uncanny, beyond belief, how Javelin had threaded herself through the seemingly impassable maze.

Lilo looked at Javelin and saw a two-meter cylinder, swelling gently from the extremities to a fatter part in the middle, with a hand at each end. The cylinder was flexible at four points, which were her knee, hip, shoulder, and elbow. Growing from her “shoulder” at a slight angle from the rest of the cylinder was her head, with brown hair cut efficiently short. She wore a simple blue tube of cloth that left her arm and leg bare.

That was Javelin, with her arm held straight up. When she put her arm at her side, she looked like a jackknife.

What she had done was not a simple matter of getting rid of her right arm and left leg. Dispensing with two limbs—usually the legs—was common among spacers. But rib cage, right shoulder, and left hip had been redesigned with plastic structures replacing the bones. She had got rid of her left kidney, right lung, and a lot of intestine. Her elbow and knee had been reengineered with ball and socket joints.

She was limber as a snake. What was left of her could wriggle through a hole twenty centimeters in diameter.

“Do what?” Javelin asked, innocently.

“…
that.
What you did. I don’t like people coming up on me that fast.”

“I’ll bear it in mind. Now will you lend a hand?”

They got the items moved into the scooter. It might have gone faster, but all three were fascinated by Javelin’s movements. She would grab a handle at the side of the lock with one hand, reach out with her leg and use the hand on that end to snatch a piece of furniture, pull, and bend like an eel as she guided it through the hatch.

“This way,” she said, when it was done. They followed her out the door, all of them moving awkwardly in zero-gee. There was a long hallway, two walls carpeted and two paneled in oak, with ornamental brass rails on each of the paneled walls.

“Life-support equipment back here,” she said, indicating the walls. “Living quarters are forward.” She started off, hand over hand, which in her case meant grabbing the rail and swinging her body in an arc until she could make contact with the other hand on the end of her ankle. Three swings like that and she was arrowing down the center of the corridor, leg first, looking back at them with a broad smile on her face. She hit the far end, soaked up momentum with her leg, and vanished around the corner.

“What will modern science think of next?” Cathay said.