Kenmuir sprang after him and gave him a heel in the torso. He gasped, but rolled clear and bounded up again. Incredible strength, Aleka realized. Let him close in, and he would smash his opponent as a maul breaks a cup.
He must have been a little dazed, though. Fists doubled, he struck for the stomach. Instantly Aleka saw the mistake. Kenmuir’s hand darted like a knife to block the arm, which punched air. His shin made a sweep, and the mayor went back down.
Or so it seemed. Aleka had never studied combat. Her sports were gentle. She saw mostly a savage confusion.
Bruno tried once more, failed once more, groaned and shook. Blood smeared his face, matted his beard, dripped onto the street to shine luridly red. With an animal noise, he drew his knife. “No, can’t!” wailed Bolly. Bruno lurched to attack. Kenmuir captured the wrist with his right hand, stepped in sideways, and as he moved smashed an elbow to the neck. The knife clattered free. Bruno became a bag of flesh that lay on the pavement and fought for air.
Kenmuir walked over to Bolly. Sweat sheened on his visage. He breathed deeply and his smell was—powerful, male, Aleka thought as dizziness rushed through her head. Yet his movements were easy and his words calm. “I believe that takes care of the matter. Release the woman.”
Bolly did. He stared and stared.
“I’ll take that stick of yours, if you please,” Kenmuir said. He plucked it from unresisting fingers. “I’m not interested in anything else hereabouts, of course. Why don’t you help your master?” To Aleka: “Can you fetch our luggage?”
She could. She did. Not until she returned did she understand, clear-minded once more, that they were free.
Kenmuir had been talking further to the guard, who crouched over the fallen and pawed unskillfully. Aleka arrived in time to see the staff twirl. Kenmuir must have demonstrated he could use it, too, if need be. He nodded at her and took his suitcase. “Let’s be on our way,” he said.
His pace was brisk but not hasty. Not to show fear, Aleka realized. Their escape depended on an emotional equilibrium that could break at any instant. The walk to the airfield went on and on. Wind moaned, lightning blinked, thunder muttered.
—They were in her volant and airborne.
Uncontrollable shivering seized her. He held her close, stroked her hair, murmured. At last she could sit beside him and whisper, “I’m sorry. That was ch-childish.”
“Not at all,” he replied. “A very natural reaction. You were in trouble more foul than I was, and stayed in charge of yourself. That always carries a price.”
She glanced at him. By now they were above the clouds. His profile was etched against a sky going pale and the last few stars. “You don’t seem shook up,” she said low.
He turned to smile at her. “Oh, I am. Exhausted. Let’s stop over somewhere and sleep the sun down.”
Her body ached, but the clarity within had come back, sharper still. “No, better not. Every place we could be noticed is an extra danger. Have the flyer cruise around a few hours while we rest, then make straight for Prajnaloka.”
He slapped his forehead. “Q! You’re right. The Overburg service sophotect will hear of the set-to, investigate, report; and it’s met me, we talked.” That brain could project the moving, speaking image of him into the database.
At least it had not seen her. By lucky chance—some luck was about due, Aleka thought—she had given her name to nobody in the town. True, it would come to light that a second outsider had been there. After that, a check with Traffic Control could reveal that the vehicle had been hers, and its present whereabouts.
But why should the authorities take that kind of trouble over an incident with no particular consequences, in a society that as a matter of policy was pretty much left to itself? They didn’t know that a few among them were covertly hunting Kenmuir. They’d have no reason of their own to track him down. If he wanted to file charges, he’d call them; otherwise, it was logical just to leave what the sophotect related in the file. Maybe in due course that file would hold enough entries of this kind to make them take a closer look at Bramland. Aleka hoped so. But it wouldn’t likely happen soon.
Her companion was smiling again, with what she guessed was an effort, and adding, “You see, you are in full command of your wits.”
“You—” she marveled, “when you challenged him, I thought you were—pupule—crazy, suicidal.”
He shrugged. “Spacers have to spend a great deal of time exercising, if they’re to stay fit. Martial arts are a favorite program of mine. When I’m alone, I work against a generated image, which does wonders for developing the reflexes. Not that I ever expected to use them violently, but I’ve done fairly well in competitions. Bruno’s knowledge is rudimentary. I’d ascertained that in conversation.” Just in case he might find need for the knowledge, Aleka decided. A forethoughtful man. “Besides, he was drunk. I had no serious worry.
“He was stupid from the beginning, when he tried to kick. That’s powerful but slow, and by itself it leaves you open to several different counterattacks. My problem was simply to keep him ait a distance, unable to grapple or land a real blow, while I demolished him. And, yes, I had to try not to kill him, especially when under the circumstances that could well have been irreversible.”
Kenmuir grimaced. “Hateful. The arts had never been anything to me but exercise and recreation. I never wanted them to be anything else.” He sighed. “Well, I don’t imagine Bruno has suffered permanent damage, other than to his ego and perhaps his social position.”
She laid her hand over his. “Just the same, you were wonderful,” she said.
“I couldn’t have stood by. Could I? The more so when I was—not responsible for the mess, but a, a factor in it.”
“You did accept his hospitality pretty, uh, thoroughly, didn’t you?”
At once she knew the remark was illogical, unfair, something that slipped free before she in her exhaustion saw it coming. He looked away. “I didn’t know how I could well refuse,” he mumbled.
“I’m sorry!” she blurted. “None of my damn business.”
Although … had he enjoyed it?
“Shall we try to sleep?” he proposed.
Still calm, still judicious, still the captain. Why should she vaguely resent that? Better be glad she had such a man at her side. Were there many spacers like him? (No, spacers were few, few, and most of them Lunarians.) How much of him was not inborn but was Fireball, ideals, rites, trothdom, a tradition as old as its Guthrie House?
24
The Mother of the Moon
In summer the little Rydberg fleet lay at its dock when not in use, a ketch, a ten-seater hydrofoil, a dinghy for knocking about in the sheltering cove. Winter’s boathouse stood to one side. Behind it were an airstrip and a hangar that could accommodate three flitters. Lawn and flowerbeds led up to the dwelling. Stone-built, slate-roofed, it did not dominate the grounds with its size: for at its back the land rose beneath old fir forest, while westward the ocean swept across a fifth of the planet.
On this day a north wind blew strong. The treetops tossed and rustled with it, waves ran upward and inland through their murkiness, a hawk rode above the high horizon they made. Clouds flew in tatters, brilliant against the sun, gray when they passed over it and their shadows scythed below them. The sea ran steely in the distance, white and green where it roared into surf. Chop on the cove threw sunlight back and forth, blink-blink-blink, while boats rocked and their mooring lines creaked. Warmth still lay in the earth, but a chill went through the air, harbinger of autumn.
The flitter landed neatly. Lars and Ulla Rydberg waited nearby. They were clad much alike, in tunic and trousers over which they hugged cloaks. The wind fluttered stray locks of hair, his whitening blond, hers wheat-gold. The flitter door opened. A robot climbed out. It was a small multipurpose model, four legs under a cylinder which supported a control turret; two arms ended in hands, two in attachments for various tools. The optics in the turret gleamed about 130 centimeters above th
e ground. Ordinarily the computer inside would have been a neural net adequate for manual tasks that were not too demanding. This unit had been modified to hold a download.
The voice that rolled from it was Anson Guthrie’s: “Hola! Good seeing you again.”
“Welcome—” Ulla hesitated for an instant “—jefe.” The honorific did not yet come quite naturally to her. She had only been Fireball for seven years, mainly by virtue of her marriage, and resident in North America for three; the English she learned in Europe was not Hispanicized; her direct contacts with him had thus far been comparatively few and brief. “You honor us.” That was meant for courtesy. She was a big, bluff, handsome woman, no sycophant.
“Gracias.” Guthrie must have been scanning the scene. “Uh, aren’t your kids here? I’d’ve thought they’d come on the gallop, except the baby, and she’d crank up her buggy to full speed.”
“We sent them off on an outing, together with Señora Turner,” Rydberg explained. He referred to the single assistant he and his wife needed, aside from machines, to run house and household comfortably. “When you called, you gave me to understand you wanted a confidential meeting.”
“Oh, not that hush-hush,” Guthrie said, shaking hands. “We could go for a sail or a walk in the woods—I’d enjoy that—or just close the door to a room for a couple of hours. The reason I came in person, instead of squirting my image through the usual code, was that I’d like to be with you for a short spell.”
His tone was matter-of-fact. It generally had been too when Ulla saw the simulation of living Guthrie in her phone screen. Sometimes, though, it had gone soft, and the face had crinkled into a big grin, as when she showed him her children. “Stay as long as you want,” she told him. “Oh, please!”
“’Fraid that can only be overnight, querida. Too flinkin’ much to do. Also, if I was absent any length of time without carefully arranging it beforehand, the news pests would go into a feeding frenzy. I’m in this dinky body just so’s I could sneak off without them noticing. Give me a rain check for a proper visit sometime, okay?”
Lars smiled, a little stiffly. “Do you need one, for your own house?” he said. “We can take that walk now if you wish.”
“Aw, we might as well go inside. I’ve looked forward to poking around the old place on my personal feet.”
The house where mortal Guthrie spent his last years, and where he died.
Until then he had kept in touch with his great-grandson, especially after Lars was told of the kinship. It was never made public, and Guthrie never showed favoritism to him. In fact, they spoke less often than either did with Dagny Beynac. Yet theirs was a genuine bond.
The download continued it, and it strengthened after Lars perforce retired from piloting. Groundside, his experience soon joined with administrative talents he had not known he possessed, to make him more important—above all, to Fireball’s exploratory ventures—than ever when he ranged the Solar System.
Their images, the real and the synthetic, had chatted one evening in Stockholm, afternoon in Quito. “I gather you and your wife want to move,” Guthrie said. “May I ask how come?”
“We grow restless,” Lars answered. “I have found Europe is as I remembered. Too … too tame, everything too controlled. And if space, for me, will be no more than visits to Luna or L-5, well, then I would rather have the true Earth around me, Old Earth, as nearly as possible. Ulla agrees. She grew up in Lapland, a forest girl.” He paused. “Besides, we want a big family. That is frowned on here, you know, and heavily taxed. Already we have social problems. We think of North America.”
“Um-m, it’s a fairly free country these days, yeah. Dunno how long it’ll stay that way.”
“Oh? Why?”
“The Renewal pretty well destroyed its middle class. The Second Republic is tinkering too much, trying too hard to restore a productive society and bring the underclass into it, by actions from above, instead of letting people alone to heal things for themselves.” Guthrie projected a shrug. “But liberty ought to last a while yet. And whether it does or no, our company communities should stay autonomous, in fact if not in name.”
“Jefe, I said we would like nature around us, Northern nature, not an enclave. Most of the time, anyhow.”
“Hm-m … Hey, an idea! Listen, I once bought myself a beautiful preserve on Vancouver Island, Pacific Northwest, built a big house, spent as much time there as I could wangle. The poor thing’s stood empty ever since, aside from a caretaker. I bet it’d love some clatter and chaos.”
Lars stared. “What? But this is—is—”
“If you find you like it, I’ll make it over to Fireball and you the trustee, with the right to bequeath your position. It’s isolated, but a short hop by air to Victoria or Vancouver, not a lot longer by fast boat. The kids can go to school, call on their friends or invite ’em over, as often as you can stand. The winters are no worse than Sweden; or you can spend them in a southerly clime. Think about it, talk with your wife, make an inspection trip, let me know at your convenience. I hope you’ll give it a try.”
“This is, is very sudden.”
“When factors click together for me, I don’t stall around.” Guthrie’s created gaze gentled. “Keep things in the family, as near as may be, hm?”
Going up the path to the verandah, he remarked, “I’m glad to see how well you maintain things. You still like the place?”
“Oh, yes,” Ulla said passionately.
“So do quite a few of our consortes, I hear. Don’t you ever get tired of all those house guests?”
“No, no, they are friends. And it is good for the children to meet such different kinds of people, not in a screen but here, alive.”
“And they bring space home to us in a way that recordings, writings, nothing else can do.” Wistfulness tinged Lars’s voice.
“I understand,” said Guthrie quietly.
“Business as well as pleasure,” Ulla continued. “It is necessary to know everything one can, when so much is always unknown. The house is becoming a center for informal, rank-free conferences—But why am I telling you?”
“Because you’re feeling a tad nervous, ma’am. Don’t. This is not the boss coming to dinner.” Guthrie laughed. “Absolutely not.” In seriousness: “Lars and I are closer than you realize. I think the time’s ripe, you’ve proved you are reliable, for you to learn how close that is. But first, what I’ve mainly come about, I ask for your help.”
“Whatever we can do!”
They mounted the steps, crossed to the door, opened it, and passed through into the vestibule. A cloud left the sun. The colors in a window blazed, Daedalus and Icarus aflight.
Cloaks removed, Lars led the way to a room whose ceiling was the roof itself, beams two stories above a parquet floor, oak wainscots, stone fireplace where logs were burning. Light fell soft upon furniture ancient and massive, thick carpet and drapes, paintings from centuries ago, wrought brass and silver. Smetana’s “Moldau” flowed out of speakers. The robot entered like a spider into a sanctuary.
“Shall we talk here?” Lars proposed.
“Okay,” Guthrie said. “I see you haven’t changed anything to speak of. Do by all means, if you want. Isn’t the décor kind of heavy for you?”
“No, no,” Lars replied. “We have felt free to adapt the rest of the house, but this—it feels right as it is.”
“Not a shrine,” Ulla added. “We use it, it is the center of our home. But it is also like a heart or a root, not only for us but for Fireball.”
Neither of them mentioned the other unaltered chamber, the one where Guthrie died.
“Can we … offer you anything, sir?” she went on, suddenly awkward.
“Just your company,” Guthrie answered. “Wit and wisdom, or whatever else you’ve got in stock. Look, por favor, relax. Pour a Scotch or coffee or something, put your feet up, let’s be our plain selves.”
He guided them for a while through gossip and minor affairs: what had lately happened in
the Hawaiian compound where the Rydbergs spent some of their winters; their recent vacation in L-5, the burgeoning arts and amusements of variable weight; a carefully unpublicized comic incident at Weinbaum Station on Mars; mining operations on Elara, Jupiter XI; the new Lake Aldrin park in Luna—
“It is about Luna, is it not?” Lars asked. “Why you have come.”
By then he sat beside Ulla, a glass in his hand, a cup in hers. Guthrie faced them, standing before the hearth. Firelight shimmered on the metal of him. Words moved readily.
“Yeah,” he said. “I daresay you guessed right away when I called about getting together.” Lars nodded. “After all, Dagny Beynac is your mother.”
“And virtually coequal with the governor general,” Ulla observed.
“Not legally,” Lars reminded her. “She has no official position these days, aside from her berth in Fireball.”
“The much greater her power.”
“You’re a wise lady,” Guthrie said. “She’s only half concerned about Fireball these days.”
Shocked by the outspokenness, Lars exclaimed, “She would never break troth!”
“I didn’t say that. Of course not. On the contrary, you know how since her supposed retirement she’s stayed on tap as a consultant for us, but maybe you don’t know just how badly the outfit would hate to lose her advice.”
Guthrie fell silent for a span before he resumed, “However, like everything else human, ‘troth’ can be taken in a number of different ways.”
Lars went defensive. “Please, what do you mean by that?”
“Nothing bad. She doesn’t figure Fireball can be hurt by her Lunarians getting more of what they want, mainly home rule and scope for action. She claims we’d benefit. But she is more and more involved with the effort to get it for them.” Guthrie made a sigh. “As a result, we’re no longer as close as we used to be, we two.”
“Since—” Ulla broke off.
“Since my original cashed in his chips and I took over?” Guthrie replied. “Don’t be afraid to say it. Sure, that was bound to change the relationship, but it did less’n you might have expected. In the last several years, though, she’s—well, she’s gotten out of the way of sharing with me everything that’s big on her mind.”
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