The Venus Belt (7 page)

Click!
The bathroom was at the opposite end of the cabin, as far from those goddamned windows as I could get. I decided I could use another shower. Maybe three or four, if the microminiature bar of soap held out.

***

Half an hour later, the sack lunch I’d forgotten about until now demo
n
strated another verity of space travel, to wit: six gees and soft-boiled eggs mix
entirely
too well. I found a disposal chute and co
n
signed my erstwhile nutriment to the furies of the engine room.

This reminded me of my going-away presents. Captain Forsyth’s was right in character: half a dozen fully-stuffed, rechargeable Webley mag
a
zines. Good old Forsyth. I plugged a pair into the wall and let their gu
c
cione cells juice up on Captain Spoonbill’s tab.

Next I carefully undid Clarissa’s giftwrapping. (She always saves it.) A paperback-sized brick of the same flat white pseudoceramic Telecom screens are made of. No instruction booklet, no nothing. Just a manufactu
r
er’s card advising me to punch the single activating button on the edge, then type out K-E-Y.

Nice trick, without a keyboard.

At the bottom of the card, in her professionally indecipherable scrawl, my wife had added,
Type out W-I-N first!
Same problem, dearest. Oh, well, I pushed the little button. The image of a keyboard materi
a
lized across the surface of the gadget. Okay, I touched each phantom le
t
ter in succession: W-I-N.

The keyboard vanished. Clarissa’s picture appeared, dressed in the same golden-brown outfit she’d been wearing this morning to see me off. She stretched sexily across our emperor-size bed like an aftershave co
m
mercial; the fact that she was five months pregnant, and the homey sight of my age-stained shoulder holster hanging from the cornerpost, may have spoiled the effect—for anyone but me.

“Have a good trip, darling, and hurry home. While you’re gone, I hope this gimmick keeps you entertained almost as well as I could!”

She glanced over her shoulder as the bathroom door swung open b
e
hind her. I recognized the hairy body that emerged, dripping wet. “Did you say something, dear?” The naked figure had a towel draped over his face, ru
b
bing his hair dry. I really do need to lose some weight.

“Bye!” Clarissa winked conspiratorially, grabbed a corner of the duvet, and flipped it over the pickup. Shucks—I’d thought she’d been ma
k
ing the bed. The underside of the quilt lingered for a moment on the screen, then faded.

I was already homesick.

This time I punched out K-E-Y: “
Congratulations!
”
congratulated a co
n
gratulatory congratulator.
“You
have acquired the
latest
in nanoele
c
tronic
miracles
, the [blare of trumpets, followed by angel chorus]
Helmers Gigacom 67G!
Contained within its sixty-seven gigabyte memories are movies, books, audio recordings, interactive games, and plenty of room for any audio or visual information you might wish to store. The 67G also functions as co
m
puter, calculator, encyclopedia, alarm clock, cig
a
rette lighter...”

I let the unnecessary sales pitch run down. Nice picking, sweetheart, and thanks. I punched out I-N-S-T-R and, as soon as I felt competent, very carefully lifted Clarissa’s message from temporary storage, where she’d modestly recorded it, burning it permanently into the machine where it would stay like the inscription on a watch.

Thumbing through the contents, I found hundreds of films, tho
u
sands of novels and records, a good many of them custom-selected. She’d inclu
d
ed all the Mike Morrison movies I’d learned to love, and a surprising nu
m
ber of my favorites from the States: Cornell Wilde’s
The Naked Prey; Thirty-six Hours
with James Garner. I conjured up a particularly cherished Maria Muldaur album and let it fill the cabin with weird and lovely music while I finished unpacking. Some call it corn, but others call it heart.

First thing to attend to: alterations and familiarization on the Webley. All I got when I tried calling Koko was an animated cartoon, a little green chimpanzee, antennae and all, informing me the line was busy. Probably out of bananas and calling room service. Next, another try at Lucy. No go. I wired her a note, care of General Delivery, Ceres Central, and called Clari
s
sa. “Hi! It’s me!”

“Hi, me!” She was still wearing that hormone-inspiring outfit. “Gee, I’m glad to see you. The house feels lonely already. Like my present?”

“Give a listen to the background—’Midnight at the Oasis.’ Where’d you dig up all the American flicks?”

“Jenny Noble, bless her, those Propertarians have quite a library. How was the shuttle ride?”

“Koko enjoyed it.
You
wouldn’t have, and neither would our prospe
c
tive offspring. Olongo get back to his office all right?”

“I guess so, he took off in some kind of big hurry. Listen, do you think our budget could stand it if you called me every day? Why I ever let you talk me out of—”

“Baby, it was
awful
getting up here. You should see my lunch.”

“Oh dear, you didn’t—”

“I never had the chance. You take care of yourself, now.”

“I promise. See you tomorrow, then?”

“You got it, kiddo, every day until the lightlag gets impossible.”

Her image disappeared, leaving behind that slightly better/slightly worse feeling you get from such conversations. I holstered my Tom Swift Electric Popgun and went out to find a drink.

***

Saturday, February 27, 223 A.L.

It took an amazing amount of shiptime to get the hang of the
Bonavent
u
ra.
The layout was simple in conception, all but impossible in pra
c
tice: take four old-fashioned U.S. pennies—the copper kind, I mean—and a
r
range them in a square, edges touching a quarter in the center. That’s a cross-section of the ship. Now place all five coins on a pack of cigarettes, and convert them into stacks, say fifty quarters and forty pennies high: five enormous towers planted kitty-corner on a blocky rectangular base. The outer cylinders are mostly staterooms, arranged in wedges, so that ever
y
body gets a chance at tossing his acrophobic cookies. The center tower, all seven hundred and ninety-two stories, is services, shops, restaurants, recre
a
tional facilities, with a slowly revolving saloon at the top, just beneath Ca
p
tain Spoonbill’s domain, the bridge.

Three elevators ran up and down in tracks along each connective stru
c
ture between cylinders, a dozen captive miniature rocket ships in all. I didn’t discover until the final day of the cruise that there’s an internal transport system for us craven yellowbellies. Each residential tower is coded inside, mine gold, the others blue, green, and orange. The center column’s white—another thing I didn’t notice until a few days out; kept turning the wrong way from the elevators and winding up lost.

One such occasion proved intriguing. Koko was at a beauty shop, ge
t
ting covered with plastic curlers from sagittal crest to prehensile toes. Kil
l
ing time before lunch, I misnavigated into the bar on the 790th floor, and when it rotated around sufficiently, I could see Earth dwindling steadily through the glass, and a bright yellow splinter surging gamely toward the
Bonaventura
at what must have been eight or nine gees. Somebody was d
e
termined not to miss the boat. I finished my Coke and hurried to an elev
a
tor like a Rocky Mountain yokel heading downtown to watch the traffic lights change.

From a porthole above the hangar deck, I watched the speedy vessel come alongside, too big for the liner to take aboard, very long and slen
d
er, her reentry-blackened nosecone and glowing pink stern drives co
n
trasting brightly with her yellow-painted hull. Along her fuselage, in striking metallic green, the lettering stood out clearly:

TICONDEROGA

JERSEY CITY, N.A.C.

She locked fast to the outside of the giant ship.

They brought her passenger aboard through the extended accordion tube. Whoever it was—an auburn-coated elderly gorilla, it appeared—he looked the way I’d felt the morning they relieved me of my appendix, lying on a gurney, swathed in pale-green drapery that matched my co
m
plexion. His limbs were festooned with plastic tubing and telemetry, an oxygen tent obscured his features further. Going to the asteroids for his health? Maybe the high-acceleration rocket ride had proven more than he’d bargained for. At least it’d be something interesting to tell Koko about over lunch.

I met her, as agreed, at a little hamburger joint two or three overhangs above the lobby floor, where we could watch the finny folk cavorting b
e
low. The proprietor leaned casually on the counter, joshing with the cu
s
tomers.

“—so I finally gave up trying to make money,” he was telling Koko. “It wasn’t worth anything once I got it, and the IRS took it anyway, ev
e
rything, including the royalties on my books. Learned welding and bartered my se
r
vices for what I needed.” The husky bearded hash-slinger was apparently a fellow refugee. Somehow, he looked familiar.

“Unbelievable.” Koko shook her head. “Good thing for you the Propertarians— Win! Karyl Hetzer, this is Win Bear, a United Statesian from Saint Charles Town. Win, Karyl.”

“That’s Denver, my dear Whatsit. Hey, guess what I just saw arri
v
ing!”

“Er, Karyl’s got a son who lives in Denver, don’t you, Karyl?”

“No, Koko, Laporte—the
little
Laporte, just outside Fort Collins. You know the place, Mr. Bear?”

“That’s Win. Yes, I know it—know about
you,
too:
Government, The Mindless Maw,
by Karyl Hetzer. I thought you looked familiar; Jenny Noble gave me a copy. How’d you wind up taking short orders aboard the
Ente
r
prise
,
here?”

“Welding. I helped build her, had a little money to invest—for once—and decided to stay on. What’ll it be, Win?”

I looked the menu over as it flickered on the countertop. Either of the Jennies would’ve loved this place. “Think I’ll try a Spoonerburger, and pour me out a shot of Scotch and a glass of milk.”

“It’s your stomach,” Karyl observed, punching in the order.

“And a Free System. What have
you
been up to, faithful simian compa
n
ion?”

“Uh, not much,
kemo sabe—
getting beautifuller, didn’t you notice?” She spun around on her stool, showing off her freshly curled pelt. “Never know aboard these cruises, I might run into a handsome young ape who’s a ca
p
tain of industry or something. Say, did you know there are seven hu
n
dred and ninety—”

“I read the brochure, too. Here’s our food, let’s eat.”

Monday, March 1, 223 A.L.

A couple of days later, I finally found the gunsmith. He was listed under
Ranges, shooting
.
There were also
Ranges, cattle and sheep
(breeding stock for the colonies), and
Ranges, golf
—the kind where you use a little white ball. Never touch the stuff, myself.

The sign taped to his window said:

THERE’S ONLY 24 HOURS IN A DAY

THERE’S ONLY 1 OF ME

YOU CAN HAVE A
FAST
JOB OR A
GOOD
JOB

YOUR CHOICE

The overweight unsanitary-looking character behind the counter folded his muscular arms, cultivating the sour-looking expression creased perm
a
nently into his face. “You wanna ruin a fine piece of ordnance, dontcha?”

I’ve never run across one of these characters who wasn’t like this. I think they take classes in it at trade school: Cranky 201, hr. arr. “Look, the cu
s
tomer is always right—”

“Except sometimes.” Two inches of ash fell from the butt screwed into the corner of his mouth and rolled down his greasy shop apron. “Friend, you’ve gotta perfectly good coaxial sighting-laser built into that piece. Just haul up on the trigger slack, and the needles’ll land wherever the little red dot is pointing. Iron sights? Downright medieval!”