by Jerry
A moment of frigid tenseness: good, good, fight or something. Shoot me again, Nita, it would be worth it, if only Barnabas would then go to Helen as he threatened.
She didn’t, and he didn’t. I smelled dust, smoke, and was that rocket fuel? The car stopped, and I slumped helplessly there until he hauled me out with a fair amount of grunting. True to her chosen style, Nita let Barnabas do the work: he was the man, after all. I was set down on a metal surface in what felt like an enclosed space. There was a nasty odor in the air.
Barnabas’ hands moved mine to set them comfortably under my cheek, as if I lay sleeping. He whispered in my ear. I shut out the words, knowing what they would be: that he was sorry, that the only way he could go out as a pilot again was to work for a foreigner like Netchkay; that this was his only chance. That he would be sure nothing terrible happened to me. And so on.
I didn’t blame him, exactly. I just felt sick and sorry. There isn’t a captain alive who wouldn’t understand the feeling of sitting on a planet for years, going soft in the head on a soft life, while good reflexes and knowledge soak away.
Nita was another story. I wondered if she hated me, if she meant to do me some hideous injury while I lay there defenseless.
“Please leave me alone with my sister, Captain,” she said. Barnabas made no more apologies to me; I heard his quiet steps recede.
Nita folded herself neatly, with poise, beside me. I didn’t see her, hurt knew, for her, there would be nothing so inelegant as a squat. Warm drops wet my cheek.
“You look awful,” she groaned. “Dressed like a fanatic of some skinhead sect and smelling like a savage—Honestly, Dee, you are so crazy! Why don’t you let us take care of you? Bob’s not a bad man. He did take the Steinway Line, but he saved it from ruin, won’t you credit him with that?”
She paused, snuffling forlornly. I wanted to cry myself. And in her accustomed manner, she was making it very hard for me to hate her. Nita never let anything happen the easy way for others, only for herself. It was very easy for her to betray me because she had fooled herself into believing she was doing the right thing.
“I hope there are no rats in here,” she said miserably. “But I had to talk to you. Once Bob comes, it’ll be all shouting and cursing and nobody getting in a sensible word.
“There’s going to be a war. The independent short haul traders have had enough of being wrung dry by the Chinese long haulers, and Bob has finally gotten them together on a plan to take the Chinese long haul trade into American hands. So for a while there aren’t going to be any nifty little short haul ships operating on their own, flitting around as they please, and calling themselves free-lancers—your way. It’s going to be too dangerous. Everyone will have to choose a side and stick with it. But you’ve got no sense. You’ll hold out on your own in some old ship and end getting blown up by us or the other side—and I’m not going to tolerate it.”
She patted my fuzz of hair and pulled at my wrap, arranging me as a more modest heap on the floor. She blew her nose and added resentfully, “Bob says it’s no more than you deserve, charging around the way you do. He should have known Aunt Juno, the awful example she set us—as if every girl could be like that, or should be! She may not have meant to get you killed, but that’s just what it will turn out to be by leaving you space ships to run. She thought you were tough as a man, like her.”
More sniffling. “She never thought much of me; but then I was always the realist.”
Sure, if realism means you just coast along looking for somebody to notice how pretty you make yourself so they take the burden of your own life off your shoulders for you. I almost told her that, before reminding myself that my best chance was to fake being more knocked out by the drug than I was, so she wouldn’t give me another shot. While I burned, she prattled on, fixing up my wayward life, and Aunt Juno’s wayward life too for that matter, her own way.
“You and Bob and I would make a great team, once you got off your high horse and left the strategy to him. Bob’s a natural leader. He’ll do well, you’ll see. But you have to come in with us, you have to stop fighting us and charging off in any crazy direction you feel like! Honestly, sometimes I think I must be the older one and you the younger.
“I haven’t had even a minute to sit down and talk to you in more than four home years, do you realize that? I bet you don’t even notice.”
So she shot me after all, if only with guilt, an old lambchop trick. I was the older sister; it was all my fault, whatever “it” happened to be. BULLSHIT, I yelled silently. HELP, SOMEBODY!
“I’m warning you, Dee; if you insist on bucking Bob, I’ll side with him. We’ll see that you spend the war out of harm’s way in nice, quiet seclusion somewhere, and so drugged up for your own good that you’ll never get your pilot’s license renewed again. Grounded forever. Think about it, Dee, please. This isn’t just what you want and what I want any more. You’ve got to be realistic.”
Then she leaned down and kissed me, my sister who knew how to set all my defense alarm systems roaring in a panic; and I swear the kiss was honest.
I was so glad when she got up and walked out that I nearly bawled with relief. A little while passed. I lay there trying to flex my sluggish muscles, thinking about being locked up, thinking about being grounded for good, so I shouldn’t worry Nita or inconvenience Bob. I wondered if Barnabas would repent and go tell Helen what had happened; and what, if anything, Helen would or could do about me.
The place had a real stink to it, laced with the faint pungence of Barnabas’ sweat and Nita’s perfumes. Later on there was another smell: stinky cat breath, by the stars!
“Ripotee.” I strained to see; by this time the drug had begun to wear off. There had to be some light in the place because there were the reflections in Ripotee’s eyes, not a foot from my face: just as Felicity had said, two burning red coins. I couldn’t reach out to him, and he came no closer. “Are you hurt?” I cried.
“I’m fine, but hungry. At your party someone tramped on my tail before I could get anything to eat, and there’s nothing here—they cleaned out my mice with the oatmeal.”
What a pleasure it was to hear his voice—any voice, most particularly two voices, instead of Nita’s sugary tones foretelling my ruin. I tried to sit up. My hand encountered a line of rivets in the wall beside me.
“What is this? Where has Bob had me locked up?”
Ripotee said, “We’re in the hold of the Sealyham Eggbeater.”
“Shit,” I said. Now I recognized the smell, pod rot plus cleanzymes. So Bob had the Eggbeater and he had me, and he had Ripotee too now; which made me feel very stupid, very tired, and a little mean.
Ripotee elaborated. “Bob is outside. He took the flagship up last night. Now he’s trying to buy clearance so he can take the Eggbeater up too, even though it’s still officially in the cleaning process.” He was angry. His tail kept slap-slapping the floor.
It annoyed me that he could see me in that darkness, and I couldn’t see him. Sitting there blind, holding myself up against the wall, I said, “How was the jungle, Ripotee?”
“Hot,” he said, “and tangled and full of bugs. Some of them are living in my ears. You smell of medicine.”
“Drug. It’s almost all worn off.” I could hear his tail flailing away at the floor and the wall, and the faint click of his claws as he paced. I said, “Why did you stay away like that? I was worried to death about you.”
“I just wanted to be on my own out there in the jungle, like the big cats used to be on Old Earth. It was lonesome. There was nobody there but chickens. I got mad and hungry and I ate some. People chased me.” He coughed, minute explosions. I could see the blurry red discs of his eyes again. “I wanted to land here, but there isn’t anything here for me; like there isn’t anything here for you.
“What I really wanted,” he added fiercely, “was a fight, as a matter of fact; another cat to fight with.” This was solid ground. I knew how he loved to go tomming it at any landf
all we made, coming home bloody and limping and high on adrenalin. I think he liked the instinctual speed and strength and ferocity of the contest, no chance to think, let alone talk. Which contradicted the last thing he’d said about the jungle, but he’s just as capable of wanting two opposing things at the same time as I am.
“You just couldn’t stand it that I was out there on my own,” he raged, “you were scared I’d turn wild or something—a fish dropping back into the water will swim away and forget, that’s all you thought I’d do. Well, even when my brain was just kitty brains it was bigger than that!”
“I was worried about you!” I yelled.
“Poor Ripotee, dumb Ripotee can’t possibly manage on his own.” He was pacing again. “In the jungle his ancestors ruled like kings, he needs his soft-bodied human to look after him and protect him! Go marry some rich man so you can retire from space and look after him!”
“Oh, Ripotee—”
“Don’t talk to me!” His agitated voice wound right up into a real old fashioned Siamese yowl.
That yowl was heard; the hatch was swung open, letting in a sweep of light, and Bob stood framed against the afternoon outside. What a blast of energy it gave me to see that tall, strong, masterful silhouette: just what I needed to nerve me up for a fight.
“If it isn’t the voice of the talking cat,” he said. “I’d know it anywhere, damned unnatural noise. Nita’s worried about the shot she gave you, Dee, but if you’re trading mouse stories with the jumped-up lap-warmer you must be okay.”
He didn’t seem to have people with him, but I thought I heard voices outside; or was it only the cackling of the inescapable chickens of New Niger?
He read my admittedly obvious thoughts. “I have friends with me. Oh, yes, your friends are here too, I wouldn’t lie to you, but there’s nothing they can do for a foreigner in the face of trade federation papers—except obstruct and annoy me. When your friends run out of obstruction and annoyance, my friends will be free to come in here where you can’t duck me again, and they’ll be my witnesses and hold you down while I serve you with these papers.”
One thing was certain, and that was that my friends couldn’t help me as long as they were outside and I was trapped in here.
I said, “Go to Hell,” while patting madly around on the floor in search of something, anything, to use as a weapon. All I had was the Holy Wholey sari; so I pulled that off and rested there on my knees with it in my hands, wondering how much Bob could see in the dimness of the hold.
I could see him fairly well. He was wearing one of those wide light capes popular in the upper ranks of federation office. It can disguise the fact that many of the members come from worlds where the human form has been pretty heavily engeneticked to fit alien environments. Bob let his hang loose to the floor so that anyone could see what a fine, straight figure of a man he was. And he was, too. Nita has good taste—in appearances.
Myself, I have good taste in disasters, which was what led me to be crouching naked in front of my enemy, nothing but a bunch of wrinkled cloth in my fists, nothing at all in my head.
Ripotee minced over and rubbed against Bob’s ankle. I held my breath. He said, “Something to tell you, Uncle Bob,” using the twee little voice and baby talk that Bob always wanted from him.
With his head up so that he could keep an eye on me, Bob sank onto his haunches. He wasn’t dumb enough to try to pick Ripotee up, something that even I seldom did and never without an invitation. He hunkered there in the doorway, one hand braced on the floor, the other hooked into his belt; a dashing figure even on his hams.
Ripotee said, “I want to go away with you, Uncle Bob; will you take me, for a secret? A secret about the Steinway modification?”
Bob bent a little lower, bringing his dark Byronic curls closer to Ripotee’s narrow face.
Ripotee did what a fighting tom does; he shot up so high on his hind legs that he stood for an instant on the tip of his extended tail, and he let go a left and right too swift to see. Bob screamed and reared up, both hands clapped to his face, and Ripotee leaped between his legs and out of the hatchway.
Holding my garment stretched out in front of me I flung myself at the light, bowling Bob out onto the ground with me, entangled in folds of cloth. I am not a giant, regardless of Ripotee’s opinion, but I am solid and I landed on top, knees and elbows first.
People came rushing over and pried us apart, lifting me to my feet and trying to wrap me up. I think some thought Bob had gotten my clothes off me for some nefarious purpose and were somewhat miffed by my own lack of concern. As I said, I float around naked in space a lot, and I carried it off pretty coolly.
When Bob panted that he was all right, his eyes hadn’t been touched, I thought, thank gods. It was enough to be able to laugh freely at the sight he made, scrubbing at his blood-smeared face with his prettily embroidered cuffs.
At my side Helen said rapidly, “He has a federation warrant to suspend your license and immobilize you pending mental exam. It applies at once, as you are not a citizen here.”
Shaking bright drops onto the soiled white cloth heaped on the ground at his feet, Bob groped for the paper held out by one of his minions.
I spoke first. “Helen, you’d make any girl a wonderful husband. Will you marry me?”
Helen swooped down on a chicken that was scrabbling around by our feet. She bit off its head and spit it out, held up the fluttering corpse and sprinkled us both with blood. Then she tossed the bird away, threw her arms around my waist, and announced loudly, “Robert Wilkie Netchkay Stein way—that is your name on those papers?—you and your people are invited to my house tonight to celebrate this wedding I have just made here with Dee Steinway. It is sudden, but here in New Niger we have very hot blood and we do things suddenly. I myself am surprised to find that I have married again.
“As for your papers, they cannot be executed on a woman of New Niger. Try going through the local courts if you wish. You will find many of my relatives there hard at work; just as I have numbers of cousins and grown children working also here at Singlet Port, where you docked your big ship illegally yesterday.”
“Docked illegally?” snapped Bob. “Your own port people let me in and let me out again.”
“Someone made a mistake,” said Helen blandly. “Your flagship was too big for our facilities. Some damage has been done and certain other traders were prevented from landing and have suffered losses on that account. There will be a large fine, I fear.
“If you do not come tonight,” she added, “I will be very insulted, and so too will all my hard-working relatives. Also you would miss a fine trade we are arranging for you, to make you happy at our celebration.”
As we walked away amid Helen’s voluble crowd of supporters, I looked back; there was the Eggbeater, freshly plated and rewired, ports open to let in the air. There was Bob, trying to push Nita off him as she clung and wailed.
And there was Ripotee, trotting along behind us, a few feathers stuck to his whiskers.
As the bride, I didn’t have anything to do at the wedding feast but dance around. Helen and a few of her kindred skilled in law and business sat at a table with Bob, Nita, a mess of papers, and a records terminal. They talked while platters of food were brought, notably the speciality of the evening. Yams Wriggly, an Oriental dish; the wrigglies came from a Red Joy tariff delegation. Bob himself didn’t eat much; his face looked as if whatever they served him was burnt.
I danced, badly, with Ripotee clinging to my shoulders. We threw the whole line of dancers off.
Our guests from the flagship got up to leave rather early, seen out personally by their host and the beaming bride. Bob looked at me coolly, with an unbloodied eye—he’d had fast, first rate treatment of the scratches and showed not a mark—and said, “If you ever grow up, Dee, you’ll be welcome at home.”
I laughed in his face.
He was trembling ever so slightly—with pure rage, I sincerely hoped. As he turned and started to ste
er Nita away with him in an iron grip, she burst into tears and cried, “Oh, Dee, what will become of your life? My sister has turned into a naked savage—”
I was wearing my jumper, as a matter of fact, trimmed with bright patterns that a couple of Helen’s junior wives had applied to the chest, back, and bottom. But I suppose Nita was still seeing me as I had burst from the ship that afternoon, bare and blood-spattered.
Other guests began leaving, hurried out by Helen’s loud, laughing complaints that she was being ruined by two parties on successive nights.
She drew me over to the long table where she and Bob and Nita had feasted. Ripotee jumped down from my shoulder.
“I’m going off for a walk. Don’t get worried about me this time. I’ll meet you in the morning at the, ah, hole for fowl.”
Helen called sharply after him, “Food will be left out for you. Please confine your eating to cold chicken.”
She turned to me. “Here are your ship papers and your debt agreements. Netchkay paid his fine with your ship, since that was the only currency the port would accept; and I did a bit of dealing so that the ownership papers end in my hands—and now in yours.”
I was pretty well bowled over by this; and I found that now that we had done it, diddled Bob and saved my neck, it wasn’t going to be so simple just to accept my salvation at the hands of an old trading rival. I was suddenly worried about some hidden twist, some pitfall, in the already odd situation in which I had landed myself.
Into the awkward silence—awkward for me, though Helen was grinning triumphantly—came noise from an adjoining courtyard, where many of the guests seemed to have congregated on their way out. Singing, it was, and loud laughter.
“They are sitting on Barnabas,” Helen said with relish.
“Helen, let him go work for Netchkay if that’s what he wants. He’s earned it.”
“His just desserts!” She laughed. “White people are terrible to work for. Of, yes, I worked for your Aunt Juno once, on the computer records of the Steinway Line—making sure they were fit for the eyes of certain officials. I learned a lot working for Juno, but she would not learn much from me, or even about me—she was so surprised when I went my own way, to make my own fleet! Perhaps she thought I would spend my life as a faithful retainer!”