“Joel,” Zog cut in firmly, “I understand that you’d rather have that conversation. First, though, we’re going to have the one where you tell me just what misunderstanding on my part needs to be corrected. Kathy, pipe down and let her go.”
She sighed in exasperation and released her hold on the goat, which sprang up and trotted to the far end of the small shed, limping slightly on its half-trimmed hoof. I turned to meet the Zog’s eyes. Irritation was in them, but compassion as well. “Well, look, what you have to understand—”
Kathy sneezed.
I think it was at least half deliberate, a gesture of defiance. Her hands were now free; she could have done as I’d just shown her. Instead she sneezed. And not just a ladylike little choof, either, but a breathquake that might have snuffed out a blowtorch.
Unfortunately, a human sneeze apparently sounds very much like the word for “Run for your life!” in Goat.
So we all got very busy there for a while.
When things settled down a bit, I poked my head up and found that I was in the corner of the shed farthest from the exit. The original exit. I had begun to congratulate myself on my good instincts when I realized there were now several brand-new exits, one of them less than a meter from my head. A goat hoof can be a weapon of terrifying power, and a partially trimmed goat hoof could only be worse.
Then I discovered Kathy, underneath me. Maybe my instincts were okay after all.
I rolled off her, intending to ask if she was all right. Instead I let out a squeal and kept on rolling. Killer monkeys—
But, no. Within a revolution or two I had seen that what was dangling from the ceiling was not the huge ape my brain had first decided it was seeing, but someone with considerably better instincts than mine. Only by luck had Kathy and I managed not to be in the path of a fleeing goat—but none of them had been running up. Zog let go of the rafter and dropped back to the floor. He landed just beside Kathy, and lifted her to her feet with one big hand. “Are you all right?” he asked, and she ran a quick inventory and assured him she was.
“I’m sorry if I squashed you,” I said, getting to my own feet.
She shook her head. “No problem. You know how to use your elbows.”
I found myself blushing.
And her blushing back. “Besides,” she went on quickly, “if I’d only listened to what you were trying to tell me—”
“No harm done,” Zog said. “Except to the shed.” He glanced around at the damage and sighed. “It was guaranteed goat-proof.”
“I’ll bring it back to the store,” she said.
He shook his head. “Traveling at relativistic speeds voids the warrantee.”
“Figures.”
“I’ll go round them up,” I said.
“We all will,” Zog said.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m the new guy. And I really should have taken the time to explain to Kathy why—”
“We all will,” Zog insisted. “Once we patch this shed together well enough to hold them again.”
And of course he was right. Catching a goat is just barely possible for three people working together; I doubt any two of us could have caught even one. The hairy little bastards led us a merry chase. A goat can leap pretty well even in terrestrial gravity; in one-third gee they begin to seem more like large birds than mammals. Large smart birds, with offensive armament.
By the time we were done, I was thoroughly exhausted, and quite understood why many cultures have used goats to represent Satan. I left the shed and flopped down not far from the entrance, with my back against an intact section of wall. Zog took a seat beside me—with noticeably less effort, even though he had nearly twenty years on me—and Kathy dropped into a tailor’s seat facing us. The three of us sat in silence for a while, Kathy and I because we were getting our breath back, and Zog because he had nothing to say.
Finally Kathy frowned, shifted position slightly, reached beneath her, and removed something. She held it out on her palm to examine it. A slightly squashed goat berry. I managed to choke off the giggle and to slap on my poker face, but it took me a few seconds, and I was sure she’d heard me at it. She looked up, our eyes met, I waited to see if she would flare up at me—
It so happens that the average goat turd is just the size, shape, and color of the data beads used to hold video or audio programming. When she took it between thumb and forefinger, and pretended to be trying to insert it into the docking slot on her wrist CPU, it wasn’t what you could call a hilarious jest. But it was excuse enough for a tension-releasing blurt of laughter from both of us.
“That music sounds like shit,” Zog said, and we laughed harder.
After a while we went back inside, and Zog had Kathy and me finish hooving that goat together, and pass out treats to all of them, to calm them down and by way of apology for our carelessness. Then we left, and Zog said, “Joel, I believe you were about to correct a small misunderstanding on my part about your background.”
Ah yes. “Well…” His eyes met mine, and I heard myself say, “Not a misunderstanding. I lied, Zog. Not about dirt farming—but pretty much everything I put down about my experience in hydroponics is pure goat berries. I’ll come in real handy in twenty years, when we all start doing this kind of farming on a large scale, at our new home. But right now, you’re going to need short words and long patience.”
He just nodded. “Why did you lie?”
“It was the only way I had to get a berth aboard the Sheffield. And I really wanted one.”
I’d been sweating this moment for days now. He nodded again, and that was the end of it. “We’ll begin your education in hydroponics tomorrow. For now follow me,” he said, and took us on a grand tour of that deck.
It really was a wonder, a Garden of Eden such as no planet had ever seen, designed and constructed so that the local light intensity of any given square meter of that vast area could be varied from zero to noon in Baghdad, with equivalent control of humidity, airflow, O2 and CO2 content, and some other factors I forget. Those crops that were able to thrive on a twenty-four-hour light cycle (or other variant) could do so, without disturbing the slumber of the ones nearby who liked things the old-fashioned way. Those that were reasonably happy in the different conditions that obtained on our destination planet were already enjoying them, and all the rest would, hopeably, be successfully reconditioned to enjoy them over the course of the next two decades.
The goats notwithstanding, the staple meat aboard the Sheffield besides chickens was not chevon but rabbit—low fat, a milder taste than chevon, and easier to cook. (You couldn’t subsist on rabbit alone—not enough vitamins A or C—but we weren’t trying to.) They’re less fussy eaters themselves, too, happy to live on alfalfa with a pinch of salt, which both upper and lower farms produced in plenty. Each doe and her litter took up about a square meter of living space—but a stackable square meter—and about twelve times that in alfalfa; the yield works out to about 150 kilos of boneless meat per hectare per day.
What was left of the rabbits was fed, along with each day’s dining-hall waste, to chickens. They too insist on a dark stinky home, like goats. But it’s safe to enter it even with a head cold, and the reward is four or more eggs per colonist per week, plus fried chicken.
And finally there was fish—the last stop on the tour. Marsbred fish, as productive as the rabbits in terms of protein, and less trouble to care for. As we were strolling there from the chicken run, Zog told us that one of the very few stabs at genetic manipulation the Prophets had ever approved was an attempt to breed a chicken that would reliably lay an egg a day—the Holy Ones liked eggs. “The Church’s breeders were successful, technically,” Zog said, “but unfortunately the resulting chicken was literally too dumb to eat. If you want to take that as a metaphor for the True Church’s whole approach to science, you’re pretty astute in my opinion.”
“God,” Kathy said, “what a shitstain in history.”
“Middle Ages were worse,” Zog said.
“Maybe—but we could have had immortality by now! We could have beaten cancer by now. We might have had telepathy by now.” She sounded angry.
“We have telepathy,” Zog said mildly.
“Sure, terrific. But only in identical twins, and fewer than four percent of them—and we don’t have the faintest idea how they do it, or why they can and the rest of us can’t.”
“True. There remain mysteries to be solved.”
“It’s infuriating.”
She really seemed upset. I decided to distract her with a diversionary anecdote. “Let me tell you both my very favorite mystery,” I said. “You reminded me of it just a second ago, Zog, and it’s related to what you’re talking about, Kathy. Kind of, anyway.”
She didn’t answer. “Go ahead, Joel,” the Zog said.
“I ran across this in a book. Just before the Hiatus, natal medicine got so good that they were sometimes able to save babies born so prematurely that they had not yet even developed the sucking reflex. And now that the Prophets are all finally holding services in Hell, we can do that again: rescue babies that are, in the Zog’s colorful phrase, too dumb to eat.”
“How?” Kathy asked. “Force-feed the poor things?”
The Zog shook his head. “They’d never learn, then.”
“No, they train them to suck,” I said.
Kathy frowned. “How? If something is too dumb to figure out that eating is pleasant, what the hell do you reward it with?”
I smiled. “Music.”
Her face smoothed over. “Oh, I love it.”
“Rhythm?” Zog asked.
“You’d think so, but no,” I said. “Melody. The little buggers will work hardest to bring about repetition of a favorite scrap of melody. That’s how hardwired love of music is, in the human brain. It predates survival instinct.”
“It doesn’t seem reasonable,” Zog said. “How would a brain evolve so?”
I spread my hands. “Ask God. I just work here. All I know is, it’s my very favorite mystery.”
“You like music, too?” she asked. “I like it a lot.”
“What kinds?”
The question seemed to puzzle her, but she gave it a try. “Audible.”
She liked everything? It seemed to me, in my sophistication, that people who liked everything must understand hardly anything. I was eighteen, all right?
“For the past hour I’ve been thinking this place could use a banjo player,” I said.
“There are two listed,” she said, “and one other who isn’t. They’re all pretty good.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I did a data search for musicians, way back on Terra, and listened to all their audition recordings. I also asked the ship to alert me anytime someone makes live music, and let me listen in if they haven’t put privacy seal on it. I discovered at least half a dozen unregistered musicians that way. In fact, the best musician I’ve heard aboard so far was unlisted. He came aboard at the last possible minute, so they waived his audition.”
I opened my mouth, closed it again.
“What’s his instrument?” the Zog asked her.
“Saxophone. I sat in with him, remote, for a few numbers. I wanted to introduce myself afterward, but by the time I got the system to give up his phone code, somebody he was sitting with put a heavy privacy shield on the whole table.”
“Have you tried him since?”
My kindly wristband produced the chip-chirp indicating a watch alarm. Today’s shift was over. Saved by the chip. “Zog,” I said, “I really hate to act like a clock-watcher on the first day I’ve bothered to show up, but I really do need to—”
“There are things we need to talk about,” he interrupted.
“I know. Uh… I could meet you somewhere in a couple of hours. Your office?” I shifted my weight from foot to foot as if I badly needed to pee.
“Go. Our AIs will work something out.”
“Thanks Zog nice to meet you Kathy see you both tomorrow.”
I fled.
9
One can travel this world and see nothing.
To achieve understanding it is necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see.
—Giorgio Morandi
“I don’t get it,” Herb said, squinting at images on his wristband’s monitor. “This girl is clearly much better-looking than you are, even with the baldness, string warts, and that glass eye. You raved about her piano playing—and you say she appears able to endure your own instrumental atrocities, so it’s certain she has a forgiving nature. Did she google up bad?”
“I haven’t tried yet. I mean, I haven’t tried. I’m not interested, I keep telling you.”
“Age, height, mass, marital status, economic status, state of health, attractiveness, talent, all apparently compatible within reason. And you can forget all those factors, and remember just the three important things.”
I rolled my eyes. “Go ahead.”
“She is a female mammal, she has a pulse, and she thinks you’re the best musician in the colony.”
I grimaced in exasperation. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m… not… interested. I told you: I took that class. I’m done with women.”
He put his own exasperation into a sigh instead of a grimace. “Joel, twenty years is a long, long time. And it’s going to seem even longer, with an attitude like that.”
“She and I have nothing in common. Didn’t I tell you what her greatest dream for mankind is? Telepathy, for Murphy’s sake!”
“Something wrong with telepathy?” he asked mildly.
I blushed. “Aw, you know what I mean. She’s talking about the kind where nobody has any secrets and yet we all love each other. Fantasy.”
Herb had successfully passed two other Secret Messages back to little Evelyn Conrad for me so far. Her replies always cheered me up. But they always came back via conventional electronic mail rather than telepathic courier; for some reason she was willing to accept information from a telepath but not give information to one. I was a little afraid she might be overestimating the security of whatever mail route she used. So I kept my own messages to her to a minimum, for fear of getting her in trouble with her elders.
Thinking about telepathy gave me an idea. “Hell’s bells, Herb, why don’t you take a run at Kathy?”
He looked at me strangely. “Really?”
“Well, you’re obviously interested in her. And she doesn’t find telepathy weird.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
I closed my eyes, counted to five, opened them again. “Why would I mind? Haven’t you been listening? I’m through with romance, I’m through with love, I’m through with counting the stars above.”
“You’re really serious about that, then.”
I rolled my eyes upward and asked the ceiling to bear witness to the tribulations I had to endure here below. “Yes, for the love of—is that you or me?”
He brought his wrist to his ear. “You. Go ahead.”
I tapped my own wrist. “Yes?”
The face on the screen was unfamiliar to me, as his first words confirmed. “Mr. Johnston, we haven’t met yet. My name is Paul Hattori. I am the colony’s banker. Forgive me for disturbing your privacy, but there is a matter we should discuss at your earliest convenience. A matter of some importance.”
I thought for a second. The day was young—hell, it was still before noon. But my morning had been overfull of stimulating inputs. I was tired, and confused, and wanted only to put my feet up and try to get some thinking done about everything that had happened that morning. “How about tomorrow?” I temporized.
He hesitated. “I will of course follow your wishes. But I have information you really should have as soon as possible.”
What could he possibly be on about? Was this some sort of pitch for investment advice or banking services? He had access to my financial records—record—surely he must know I was a dry hole. “Can you give me some i
dea what it’s about?”
He was smiling, but there was something odd about the smile, something I couldn’t put my finger on. It wasn’t phony, exactly. Just odd. “I can, but if you will forgive me, I would greatly prefer to tell you in person.”
I met Herb’s eyes, raised an eyebrow. He shrugged. “Are you sure you don’t want Communicator Johnson? Same address, he’s my roommate.”
“No, it’s you I need to speak with, Mr. Johnston.” He gave an address only one deck below the officers and crew. He was a VIP.
“All right, I’ll be there in half an hour. But I still think you have the wrong bloke.”
“Who was that?” Herb asked.
“Never mind,” I said. “It can’t be important.”
I started to change to better clothes—and changed my mind. Why should I dress up for this joker? I wasn’t the one who’d asked for this meeting. Showing up was courtesy enough; putting on formal tights and collar would be obsequious. I had no reason to impress the man… because I had absolutely nothing to impress him with. He had nothing I wanted. Pausing only to empty my bladder and comb my hair, I left dressed just as I was: like a man who had recently been in a goat shed when somebody sneezed.
I took my time on the way, too. So I had time to develop a dark suspicion as to what he might want to talk to me for, which quickly built itself into an ugly and plausible theory.
Hattori was a banker. Bankers know all about very large sums of money. Did I know anyone who was connected in some way with very large sums of money? Had I not, indeed, recently roundly pissed off some people of that description? If they took a notion to have some sort of heavy weight dropped on my scrotum in retaliation, might not a banker be their chosen instrument?
It was hard to sustain alarm. As far as I knew, I really was bulletproof, from a financial point of view: I had nothing to steal, no credit to ruin. If the Conrads wanted vengeance, they would just have to have me beaten or killed like civilized people.
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