The World at the End of Time (33 page)

“Of course,” the old woman said with pride. “I’ve had the instruments on
Mayflower
surveying every inch of Nebo, and I have the readings Mirian brought down with you. I can pinpoint exactly where they fired on you. There were three places; I’ve got them marked. I’m sure we can deal with that, and—what is it, Viktor?”

“The instruments,” Viktor said. “What do they say about that bright thing you call the universe?”

The old woman looked at him silently for a dangerous moment. “What do you want to know that for?”

Viktor blinked at her. It wasn’t that he couldn’t answer the question; he simply could not understand why she asked it. “Why, because—because it’s there, Tortee! That’s what science is all about, isn’t it? Trying to understand what’s going on?”

“What science is about,” Tortee proclaimed, “is making life better for everybody. That’s what you should be thinking about. Not just
theories.
Idle curiosity is the devil’s work; your job is to make this project succeed!”

She was looking not only angry but definitely dissatisfied with Viktor Sorricaine now. Fortunately the door opened then and a little girl staggered in with a tray. Although it was heavy laden—a pot of steaming tea, a platter of cookies, and one of sliced bread with what looked like actual butter on it—there was only one cup. The girl quailed under the imprecations Tortee hurled at her and retreated as fast as she could, but the old woman was already greedily cramming sweet biscuits into her mouth.

“There is one other thing,” Reesa said, while Tortee’s mouth was full. Tortee didn’t try to speak; she only raised an eyebrow at Reesa, still chewing.

“We should find a better place for us to live,” Reesa explained. “It would be better if we could be near you—for the work I mean. And so if you could have them give us a room of our own here—”

“Impossible!” the woman sputtered, crumbs falling onto the tray on her lap. “The Peeps would never agree to it. Dear Freddy, woman! Don’t you know how suspicious they are already? If we tried to move you in here they’d tell everybody that that just proved that the Greats were plotting to seize the ship for themselves—not that they aren’t saying it already, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Reesa said, nodding as though the woman’s babbling made perfect sense. “Here, let me pour some more tea for you.”

She gave Viktor a quick, meaningful glance which stirred him into action. He jumped gallantly forward to hold the tray while Reesa filled Tortee’s cup. The old woman watched critically, a slice of buttered bread ready in one hand, then seized the cup and sipped it cautiously.

“That’s better,” she said. “Now, what were we talking about?”

“You explained to us why it’s impossible for us to move into this sector permanently,” Reesa said. “You made it very clear thank you, Tortee. Still, I do have to come here every day to work with you, of course. I suppose that Viktor and I might have the use of some workroom together—so we could do our jobs without disturbing you?”

“Ha!” the old woman said. Her eyes were suddenly gleaming. “I thought that was what it was about. What kind of room did you have in mind for your jobs? One with a bed, maybe?”

“Nothing like that,” Viktor said, instinctively trying to shut the door on this invasion of his privacy; but Reesa was also speaking.

“Exactly
like that, if we possibly could, Tortee,” she said sweetly. “I knew you would understand.”

“Ha,” the old woman said again, eyeing them. Then she shifted her weight to a more comfortable position and grinned. “Why not? I’m going to work you harder than you’ve ever worked before, and I don’t mind paying a little extra for good work. Is this room more or less what you had in mind? Because I’m going to report to the council this afternoon, and I’ll be gone at least three hours.”

She gazed at Reesa, who only smiled, nodding her head. The old woman licked crumbs off her fingers as she nodded back. Then she looked wistfully at her bed. “It won’t do that old thing any harm to have somebody getting a little use out of it for a change—but I’m warning you! Be sure you change the sheets before I come back.”

Tortee did not only have a private bedroom, she had a private bath. With their first passion spent, Reesa’s second priority was a hot soak in the shallow metal tub. Viktor lay relaxed against the pillows while he waited his turn, nibbling on the staling bread and butter Tortee had left behind, listening to the faint splashing sounds from his wife’s tub. Thoughtfully he considered his existence. Things had begun to look up a little, no doubt of that. It was certainly fine to be off the shit detail. It was even finer to have a job that made some sense for a person with his skills, and finer still to have had a nice warm bed to share with his nice, warm wife—in actual privacy!

There was no reason, really, why he should feel discontented. The funny thing was that, all the same, he did. They were both alive—and reasonably secure for at least the near future—but what, he asked himself, were they alive for?

It was as disconcerting for Viktor as it had been for Wan-To to step back and look at his life like that. It made him wonder what the point was.

Viktor could not help feeling that there had to be
some
kind of point, or at least purpose, to it. After all, he had come close enough to losing his life often enough. He counted up: Three times frozen, three times successfully thawed without harm. He had taken three good cuts at those 180-to-1 odds; in fact, as far as the third time was concerned, you couldn’t really figure any realistic odds at all. They might have floated in space forever without being found, if it hadn’t been for someone coveting the old interstellar ship enough to spend prodigally of scarce resources to get it—and for Mirian succumbing to one of the few generous impulses in an ungenerous world when he revived them.

For what purpose? When you survived so much for so long, shouldn’t there be a
reason?

It couldn’t be just to shovel excrement, or, as Reesa had been doing, breeding cockroaches in offal to feed fish. Could it be to help Tortee in her plan? Because if that was it, Viktor told himself skeptically, whoever arranged purposes had picked a loser this time: there was no
way
old
Ark
could be turned into the kind of space battleship that could win a firefight with whatever it was on the planet of Nebo that killed people.

On the other hand—

On the other hand, Tortee was gone, and Tortee’s computers were right there in the room with him.

There might be a purpose to his life, after all! Galvanized at the thought, Viktor leaped out of bed.

When, minutes, later, Reesa came shivering back into the bedroom skimpily wrapped in a towel, he hardly looked up.

She stopped abruptly, astonished. “Viktor! What are you doing with those machines?”

He glanced at her blankly. “What do you think I’m doing? That woman’s got a data linkage—all the data banks from
Ark
and
Mayflower,
the copies are still intact! Now I’m looking for later stuff, trying to find out what kind of research anyone’s done on that fireball they call the universe.”

“Are you out of your mind?” she demanded. “We can’t push Tortee too hard, Viktor. If you use her things without permission . . .”

He focused on her, his expression suddenly wrathful. Then, slowly, he relaxed. “Oh, hell,” he said. “You’re right, of course. But, my God, Reesa, this is the most important thing that ever happened! Just from the little bit I’ve been able to dig up so far, I’m pretty sure my first guess was right. Somehow or other, we’ve been picking up speed.
Lots
of speed; nearly the velocity of light! And that fireball is the universe, all right, but we’re traveling so fast that all the light from it is concentrated in front of us!”

“Yes, Viktor. I see how important that is to you. But the most important thing is to stay on Tortee’s good side,” Reesa said firmly.

“Oh, Christ,” Viktor said in disgust. “She’s loopy, you know. She isn’t even doing what the council ordered—they think they’re going to get power out of
Ark,
and she wants to send it out to fight a war!”

Reesa was practicing patience. “Dear Viktor, that’s their business, not ours. They told us to work for her, so we’ll do what she tells us to do.”

“Even if she’s out of her mind? And—” He suddenly noticed that Reesa was shivering. “Hey,” he said. “don’t catch pneumonia on me!”

She pulled the towel tighter around her, looking demure. “Shall I get dressed?” she asked, but the mere fact that she had asked determined the answer; and, besides, he was suddenly aware that he was even barer than she, and equally cold.

“Well, not right away,” he said. “Why don’t you—we, I mean—why don’t we get back under the covers for a while?”

“Let’s just remember we have to leave time to change the sheets,” Reesa said practically; but then, when they were under the covers, spooned back to front with his arm over her, she waited for him to move or to speak. He didn’t.

“You’re thinking about that fireball,” she said into the pillow.

“I can’t help it, Reesa. I—I wish I’d paid more attention to my father when I had the chance. He would have known more about it. This would have been the most interesting thing in the world to him.”

“I never doubted it was interesting, Viktor,” Reesa said gently, “and I understand how you feel about solving it.”

“It’s not just like solving a puzzle! It’s important to everybody. It has something to do with what’s going on on Nebo, too, I’m sure of it!”

“That’s possible, Viktor. I don’t see how, but I’m willing to believe it. All the same, Vik, I wouldn’t try to convince Tortee, if I were you. All Tortee wants is to get
Ark
flying again, with guns blazing. And she’s got troubles of her own. She’s the one who wants to colonize Nebo, and she’s got the Great Catholics behind her—but whether they’ll stay that way depends on how fast she can show some kind of results. And the others—well, the Peeps are the ones who talked the council into trying to use the fuel for microwave power, and there’s talk in Allahabad that colonizing another planet’s a good enough idea, but it shouldn’t be Nebo.”

“Where then?” Viktor asked, startled.

“They’re not very clear on that. Some of them think that since
Ark’s
an interstellar ship basically they should try another star. Others have ideas about the moons of Nergal—they claim there ought to be enough heat from the brown dwarf to make something possible.”

“Shades of Tiss Khadek,” Viktor said, thinking. “Well, maybe that ought to be investigated, too. But that fireball—”

“Viktor, Viktor,” his wife said gently. “If you play your cards right you’ll have plenty of chances to see what you can find out about the fireball. In your spare time. When Tortee isn’t looking. But don’t push it, because she doesn’t want to hear.”

“I know, but—”

“Viktor. Did you know that both the Reforms and Allahabad are on overload, and the Peeps would be, too, if they hadn’t been lucky enough to lose six or seven people last week? That means the whole colony has more people than they’re allowed. So last week in Allahabad they froze three people for profaning shrines, and they’re still eleven over their proper number.”

“Profaning shrines! My God, Reesa, what kind of people are we living with?”

“We’re living with people on the edge of starvation, Viktor. That’s what you have to remember. All the time.” She hesitated. “Do you know what else I heard? Some of the Peeps don’t think even the freezers should be kept going. They’re revolutionary idealists—they think they are, anyway—and they’ve got some pretty nasty ideas. They think they might as well thaw out some of the freezers without reviving them.” She paused.

Viktor blinked at the back of her neck. “Why would they do that?” he demanded.

“Fodder,” she said briefly. “Protein sources. To feed to the chickens and the gerbils, to turn the corpses into useful food.”

“My
God!”
Viktor repeated, appalled.

“So go slow, my darling, please.” She was silent for a moment, reaching up to put her hand over his as it cupped her breast. Then she said, “Viktor? Now that I’m all sweet and clean, do you think you’d like to get me all sweated up one more time while we still have the use of the bed?”

And of course that was the best idea she’d had yet . . . only at the end of it, when she was shuddering and moaning, there was a timbre to the sounds his wife made that reached through to Viktor, even at the peak of his own orgasm.

He had heard sounds like those before.

Not from Reesa. He had heard them from Marie-Claude in their one coupling, when her husband had died. Like Marie-Claude, Reesa was weeping even as they made love.

She didn’t say anything in words. Neither did he. Only, when they were dressed again and making up the old woman’s bed afresh, she stopped and looked at him. “We have to make the best of things, Viktor,” she said harshly.

“Yes,” Viktor agreed; and that was the end of it. Neither of them needed to mention the names of lost Shan and Yan and Tanya, and little Quinn.

Making the best of things wasn’t easy. In this starved world there was hardly a “best” to aim for.

The project they were on promised more problems than rewards. Viktor had known all along that Tortee’s plans were going to be exceedingly difficult. He hadn’t known just how close they were going to be to outright impossible.