by John Varley
"Party's over!" he yelled. "Come back later. You, would you hold the door for them?" Vaffa held it open, and the man herded the children. They giggled, and lunged at him, but he held out an arm and they fell back, laughing. He seemed to have an almost magical power over them. Soon they were all in the corridor.
"You'll have to come back later," he was telling the woman. He took her hand and guided her to the door. Lilo looked at her bare belly. It couldn't be many more days.
When she was gone, the man looked at them and shrugged.
"She wants a bootleg teacher," he told them. "Some foul-up. She didn't get an ironclad contract with the teacher she picked out, I guess. I get them all the time."
"You'd think that with only one chance, people would be more careful," Lilo said.
"Ain't it the truth? She could have at least had someone explain the contract to her, even if she is illit. I..." He looked at her, and smiled. He held out his hand, "I'm Cathay."
"Lilo." She took his hand. He glanced at Vaffa.
"I know you," he said, evenly.
"Nevertheless, we've never met," Vaffa said.
"Then it was your brother. Your clone. I know you." He seemed about to say more, but left it at that. "Well, have a seat, I guess. Whatever looks comfortable. Can I get you anything?" He was looking at Lilo.
"Something mildly intoxicating," she said. "I'm not choosy."
"Got just the thing." He disappeared into another room. Vaffa waited a moment, then got up and followed him. They came back one at a time, Vaffa with one drink, Cathay with two. Both seemed tense. He handed her a glass of green liquid.
The drink made her feel better. She relaxed into her chair and studied Cathay. He had a lot of curly brown hair, long legs, and a boyish face. He was handsome without overdoing it, and Lilo liked that. She felt a physical attraction without having touched or smelled him, and that was rare for her.
"To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this visit?" Cathay asked. "Wait, let me guess. Tweed's pregnant, and he's looking for a bootleg teacher."
Vaffa, who had taken a seat facing the door, sat even straighter in her chair. Lilo felt herself tensing, and realized how attuned she was to the other woman's moods. On the trip from Luna to Mars she had become adept at staying out of Vaffa's way in the small ship.
"I will warn you once," Vaffa said. "I won't listen to jokes about the Boss." She glared from Cathay to Lilo, and back again. Lilo looked helplessly at Cathay, wanting to tell him what form the second warning would take. To her surprise, he seemed to understand. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod, and sat back in his chair.
"Okay. Go on. It's about the Hotline, isn't it? What else could it be? The Boss is scared, and I don't blame him."
"You are aware of the content of the message?" Vaffa asked, half rising from her seat. "I think I would have been told if you were authorized to read it."
"Well, I don't know if I was authorized or not," he said. "But it was already translated when I got it. Did the Boss tell you my source is in the translation department? I can't get the raw data."
Vaffa relaxed a little. "Yes, he did say that. But you shouldn't have read it. Your function is to pass it on to the Boss."
Cathay shrugged. "I had to encode it to send it to him, and I'm as curious as the next fellow. No one told me to forget what I'd read. But I'll bear it in mind. What I still can't understand is what you're here for. I don't know what the Boss thinks you can do that I can't do better. I have contacts out here. I know my way around. You... well, you're muscle, I know that. Does he plan to have you bully the Hotline into a deadline extension?"
Lilo shifted nervously in her chair, but apparently Vaffa was not insulted.
"No. Our mission will be simple. You said the Boss is scared. That isn't quite right, but it's fair to say he is concerned. The message seems to be quite important, and potentially dangerous."
Lilo couldn't help laughing. "I guess you might say that. It's got to make you wonder, if nothing else."
"The way I read it," Cathay said, seriously, "is that we've been presented with a phone bill."
"But we never subscribed," Vaffa pointed out.
"That's an evasion," Cathay said. "It's true we never asked for the service. But we used it. We've been using it for centuries, and as far as I know no one has ever tried to send anything back in return."
"The costs..."
"That's beside the point. I've been thinking about this ever since I saw the message. What amazes me now is that no one ever saw this possibility. We've treated the Hotline as a natural resource, like vacuum. We wondered what the Ophiuchites might be like, but when they didn't volunteer anything about themselves I guess we just wanted to believe it was a... a sort of interstellar welfare program."
"When it was really more like cultural exchange?" Lilo suggested.
"Maybe. If that's it, they must be insulted that we never sent them anything."
"But what do we have that they could want?" Lilo asked. "They're so far ahead of us."
"Who knows? Listen, they probably asked themselves the same question. And what they did, apparently, was to send everything. We've used the new inventions, the biological engineering techniques and so forth. But we still can't tell what ninety percent of it is. Maybe it's art, or philosophy. Or gossip. Or nine billion Ophiuchites advertising for sex partners. But I don't really think the Hotline is cultural exchange. I think it's just what the message implies; it's a commercial venture. We're expected to pay for what we get, value given for value received. I wish I knew what the 'extreme penalties' business is all about, though."
Vaffa's brow had wrinkled as she followed Cathay's reasoning. Now her face smoothed as she got back on more familiar ground.
"We've drifted away from the subject," she said. "We were talking about our mission, why Lilo and I were sent to join you. It's simple. In a matter as potentially serious as this, the Boss feels the need of further information. It's impossible to know how to meet this on the information we have so far. Since it is impossible to ask the Ophiuchites the questions he must find answers for, we must try our best to find them in the original message."
"That makes sense," Lilo said. Vaffa looked at her, and Lilo knew Vaffa was grateful to hear that. It had not made much sense to Vaffa. She had been accepting the Boss's judgment of the situation largely on faith.
"What I mean," Lilo went on, "is that it's hard to imagine they wouldn't have put everything we need to know into the message. Even if we could ask them questions, it would take thirty-four years for a reply."
"Exactly. You notice the message contains many words which are assigned a translation probability."
"That's normal in Hotline data," Cathay put in.
"So I understand. But all we have to go on is the translated message you obtained. What we need is the raw data. The Boss wishes to have it so he can analyze it independently."
Cathay frowned. "That's not going to be easy. In fact, it's not possible."
"Explain that, please."
"Well, I... all right. My source works in the translation department of StarLine. She... you know how they get their data?" He looked at the two women, nodded, and went on. "StarLine has a station out in the zone of maximum signal strength of the Hotline. There used to be several other stations out there. Now Star-Line has a monopoly charter from the Pluto government. Luna's challenged it a couple times... but I guess the political situation isn't important to this. Practically, Pluto controls everything outside its orbit.
"The people on the station don't broadcast anything back to Pluto because the signal could be pirated. They record everything that comes over the Line, and send it in drone rockets, high-gee jobs, that are retrieved here under tight security.
"Back when there was competition, they had some extremely fast drones. The people at the station acted as filters. When they saw something in the preliminary computer translation that might be valuable, they put it in one of these rockets to try and edge out the competit
ion in patents, marketing, so forth. That doesn't matter now, but they still had one of the special delivery rockets. When they got this message, they used it. My contact told me how it came in, and that she didn't think she could get this one to me. I applied all the pressure I could, and she managed it. But she says that's strictly it. Security's so tight on this thing that no printout exists of the original data. It's stored in StarLine's computer, and if you think you can break in there and rob the memory, good luck."
Vaffa frowned. "No, that's out. The Boss explored that avenue before he dispatched us to Pluto. He's still working on an information raid, but the defense programs are formidable."
"The best on Pluto," Cathay said. "I don't know what you have on Luna."
"What about having your contact do the raid for us, from the inside?"
Cathay considered it. "This is restricted to the top four or five people. Only about twenty even know of the existence of the message. She wouldn't be given the top-rated access codes, and would have no way to get them."
"What is your means of pressuring this woman?"
"I... uh, her child is one of my students. She got herself in a bind, like that woman who was just here. Pregnant, and no teacher lined up. She came to me, and I cleared it with the Boss. Also, and I guess this is pretty important, I had to give her a lot of Tweed's money this time, for this message. In addition to threatening... well, to telling her I'd walk out on her child." He looked away from them. Lilo was embarrassed for him. The only acceptable reason for abandoning a child in the middle of the educational process was the death of the teacher.
Vaffa seemed not to have noticed. "Why won't that work again?"
"She made enough money last time to hire a licensed teacher, under the table. It can be done, no matter what the EA tells you."
"Still, you'd better explore it with her."
"Okay."
Vaffa frowned again. "In the meantime, we'll have to assume your estimation is accurate, and look into the alternative."
Lilo glanced at Cathay; he looked as puzzled as she felt.
"What alternative?" she asked. "You said the only copy of the original message is in the StarLine computer. What other way is there to get it out?"
"None. Oh, the Boss made inquiries, but has found no one placed even as well as Cathay's source. And work will go on toward gaining access to the computer itself via its regular output channels. But none of that is likely to work. So we'll have to get it directly. We'll buy a ship and go to the Line."
Cathay had not taken it well, once it became clear that Vaffa meant for all three of them to go. He argued for hours, and finally reached a position he swore he would not abandon.
"It's just not possible. I can't leave for at least three years, even if I don't take on another child. The youngest one I have now will be needing me for that long."
"You were not authorized to enter into any educational contracts," Vaffa pointed out. "That you did is your own affair, but your first loyalty—your only important loyalty—is to the Boss."
"Crap. You can't ask me to abandon those children. It's a sacred trust. When you take on a contract, you finish it."
"You will not finish these." Lilo noticed Vaffa's carefully formal speech and the complete calm that had settled over her. Look out, she thought.
"I will finish them. Nothing you can do will—" Vaffa delivered a chopping blow to the side of his neck, and turned in a crouch to face Lilo, who was sitting very still. Vaffa gradually relaxed and sat down, brooding. She ignored the unconscious man on the floor. Lilo picked him up and staggered into his bedroom. She put him on the bed and sat down beside him in the darkness.
"Lilo, come in here." She got up and went back to the main room.
"I think I'll have to kill him," Vaffa said.
Lilo sat down slowly. "Why? He hasn't done anything, has he?"
"It's what he's likely to do that bothers me." She sighed and rubbed her neck. She looked as though she might be unhappy about what she was going to have to do, but she also looked determined to do it.
"It was a mistake to send just me out here," she said. "I can't trust either of you, and I can't watch both of you at the same time. One of you will have to go."
"Why can't he stay behind? He's been here alone all this time, hasn't he?"
"The Boss is worried about what he might do. He knows too much now about this Hotline message. Aside from the company people, he's the only one on Pluto except you and me who knows about it."
"But isn't he... I mean, like me? A condemned criminal?"
"No. He's nothing but a disbarred teacher. The Boss contacted him when he was on the skids, and promised that if he'd do some work for the party, he'd get a chance to teach again with a new identity. He's supposed to wait another couple years. We didn't know about this bootleg teaching. It looks like he's getting restless, and he shouldn't be doing that according to what we—" she stopped abruptly, looked helplessly at Lilo, and put her head in her hands.
Lilo suspected Vaffa had been getting into an area she wasn't supposed to talk about. But she clearly wanted to talk.
"I can't help you make a decision if you won't tell me all the details."
"Who said I was asking for your help?"
"Nobody. But you said you'd trust me. We made a deal."
"I know. I want to trust you. I'll have to trust you if I'm going to let him live."
"But you don't know if you can. And it's no good telling the Boss that you made a deal with me. You went beyond your orders on that, didn't you?"
"Yes." She looked miserable. Vaffa's life was based on following orders; it disturbed her deeply to do something on her own.
"You'd better check with the Boss first, anyway," Lilo suggested. "See what he thinks about Cathay. Maybe he still needs him. You don't have to tell him about the deal we made."
Vaffa thought about it a long time, then nodded. Lilo relaxed. There would be at least twelve hours before Vaffa could get an answer from Tweed.
Cathay was still out. Lilo got a basin of water and sat on the bed beside him. She sponged the mark on his forehead where he had hit as he fell. He moaned, opened his eyes for a moment, then closed them again. Lilo plugged him into the bedside medical monitor and was told that he was sleeping, and did not have a concussion.
She undressed and got into bed with him. She put her arms around him from behind and hugged him close.
For an hour she stayed perfectly still. She tried to drift off to sleep, but her mind kept coming back to Cathay and what she could do about him.
Eventually she decided to wake him. She moved her hands slowly down his chest, over his belly. It was flat and hard. He had an erection. She grasped it and ran her thumb lightly over the rubbery glans. He stirred.
"How's your head?"
He felt it carefully. "Not so bad, I guess. My cheek's tender."
"Keep it quiet," Lilo cautioned. "Do you know anything about fighting?"
He turned onto his back. "Well, I think I could do a little better than what you saw. She got me completely by surprise. But no, I'm not a fighter. She'd demolish me. What about you?"
"No. You're going to have to go with us, you know. She has a direct order not to leave you here. There's only one alternative."
"I know. I guess I knew it from the start, with her."
"So what are you going to do? Uh, would you like me to stop this?"
"No, please. It feels wonderful." He turned to face her and began stroking her body. "I don't want to talk about this, anyway. It's too painful."
"We have to talk a little more. I need to know what you're going to do. We have about a day."
He rolled onto his back again. She was still gently rubbing his penis; now he put his hand over her hand. They were both still for a long time.
"Why?" he said, at last.
"If you're staying, she's going to kill you. You'll want to do what you can think of to stop her. I... was thinking. Oh, hell. What I wondered was if I should... should take
a chance with you and maybe together we—I'm not proposing this, mind you, I just thought we ought to discuss—"
"Would you trust me that far? You don't even know me. If I decided to stay, I don't have anything much to lose by plotting with you. Maybe I'd even have a chance to stay alive. Buy why should you get into it?"
"It may be the last chance I'll ever have. Do you know anything about me?"
He faced her again. "Nothing specific, and I don't want to. It doesn't matter to me what you did. I know you're one of his cloned criminals." He noted the surprise on her face. "Yeah, I've learned a few things about him. Enough to get him into big trouble. He's right to want to get rid of me." He sighed, and rolled onto his back again, away from her. He laced his fingers behind his head.
Lilo thought he was through talking, and found that she really didn't mind. They could talk afterward. Right now she was getting aroused. He was a beautiful man. She liked his smell, and the feel of his hands on her. She scooted down the bed and raised herself up one elbow, then bent over him.
"He collects them," Cathay said, absently massaging her scalp with one hand. "He's got dozens of them on a secret base somewhere, poor bastards. They're plotting the overthrow of the Invaders." He laughed bitterly, and looked down at her. "But if you are a Free Earther you wouldn't be so afraid of that woman. I mean, you'd be afraid, but you'd be respectful, you know what I mean?"
She let her breath out slowly and rested her cheek on his belly. All right, he wanted to talk after all.
"I've seen what she can do. I also think I know some of her weaknesses. She's very confused right now. Tweed should never have sent her on this trip alone."
"He didn't," Cathay said. "He sent you, too."
"What do you mean by that? You think I'm a Free Earther?"
"No. But he sent you. He would have a reason."
She lifted her head to look at him. "My being here seems to be an accident. We were on the way to Titan when he got word of this message you sent—"