by Janet Morris
"Iffen I can't get yer permission, li'l lady, then the Pioneer, Valued Friend o' the Council of the Unity, is goin' to hafta tell them aliens how y' been mistreatin' me."
She wanted to tell Keebler to shut up. Instead she told the receptionist to send in South.
"Now it's a quorum," she said as he entered.
Had she and South really...? Yes, of course they had. So now he thought he could come up to see her whenever he chose, no appointment necessary.
As he saw Keebler he shot her a frankly interrogatory glance. Proprietary, as if he were a husband questioning her judgment.
She ran a hand through her hair. Those aliens had turned her nice orderly life into a free-for-all.
"South, would you help me explain to Mr. Keebler that— no matter what his lawyers say, and no matter what his friends, the aliens, say—there are certain technicalities involved in admitting heretofore uncategorized substances into Threshold? Such as the substances in this box."
She tapped the box.
South started toward it. So did Keebler. Both men reached the box on her desk at the same time.
"Southie," Keebler said. "You been a valued friend. How about I give ye—"
Keebler opened the box. Out of it he took one of the jewellike snails that almost seemed to move. He held it up. "—give ye this here token of m' esteem. Come on, South, hold out yer hand."
South said, "Look, Keebler, I don't want anything. . . But he held out his hand.
Keebler put the snail shell shape into it and then turned on Riva: "Ah-ha! See? You ain't objectin' when you see me givin' a treasure to a friend of yourn! I don't hear no talk o' the technicalities involved now. No I don't."
She sat back down and resisted with difficulty the impulse to cover her ears with her hands. "Mr. Keebler, I was just about to say you can't distribute any of these items. Not for free. Not under any circumstances. Joe, put that back."
The order snapped out of her mouth and took physical form. It lashed around the room as if it were trying to find a way out. It wrapped around South's neck like a snake. She shook her head and the vision faded.
South was putting the snail back in the box. It glowed with a blue/red/green/yellow light.
He closed the box. She took a deep breath and started to speak.
South spoke first: "Keebler, why don't you go take a bath? Get a couple beers. Count your blessings. Prep for a vid-show. This stuffs all logged in, right?"
"That's right, sonny. An' appraised and in-sured, to boot."
"Then what have you got to lose?"
"Well, Southie, c'mere. I'll tell ye what." Keebler crooked a finger mysteriously.
South went over into the corner and huddled with Keebler, leaving her sitting there, clearly excluded from the confidence. She was affronted, so she tapped a key that would change the acoustics of the room slightly. One had certain requirements, in her job.
Keebler was whispering to South: "Y'see, sonny, that stuff—it comes and goes. Sometimes there's more of it. Sometimes there's less. The wand brings it back, mostly, if the box empties out. But I wanta sell it while it's still in this continuum, or whatever you want to call it."
"Uh-huh," South said commiseratingly. "Well, it'll be around for your trip to the aliens' universe. Which is probably where it's slipping off to, anyhow. Don't worry, Keebler. It's safe here. I promise. Now let me and the lady talk, okay? I'll find you later."
"Do I hafta leave m' property here?"
Riva Lowe took a deep breath and said, "Mr. Keebler, I'm going to tell you one more time: These items which you keep claiming as your property are unique and as yet unclassified as to suitability for importation into Threshold. If you—"
"But I didn't import 'em. The aliens did. I didn't see you givin' them your Witch-of-Endor hard time,"
"—if you must have physical possession of these items before we make a decision, then we won't be able to study them well enough to make the sort of decision you'd like." She continued doggedly. She would treat this fool better than he deserved, because Mickey wanted her to. Because he had alien friends in high places. And because, damn it, South was watching. That shouldn't have mattered. But it did. "If you insist on having physical custody, we will deliver the items to you aboard your ship. As long as you keep them aboard ship, Mr. Keebler, and don't try to smuggle them into Threshold or into any other UNE-controlled territory or space, then you're beyond our jurisdiction."
"But that's not fair!" Keebler whined loudly. "We'll see what the Council of the Unity has to say about this!"
"Fine." Her temper, long straining at its leash, slipped its collar and was gone. "Good. You do that. Try to pressure me. But get out of my office. And leave those things here until you come to your senses." Or until Mickey truly loses his and lets those bits of Somewhere Else loose on the habitat.
Keebler stamped his foot like an enraged child. "Get outta m' way, Southie! Outta m' way, I say!"
South moved aside and Keebler charged the door, which withdrew hastily from his path.
When it had closed in the Scavenger's wake, Riva Lowe put her head in her hands and slowly let her splayed elbows separate, so that head and hands sank gently to the desk top. She closed her eyes and merely breathed.
Then she heard South say, "Sorry. He'll get over it. He's not really a bad guy, under all that bluster. Honest."
South! How had she forgotten that he was still here? She sat up jerkily and resumed a cool, authoritarian demeanor. She hoped.
The pilot was sitting on the edge of her desk. How dare he?
No, he wasn't. She imagined it. He was over by the office couch, looking at views of Earth she'd chosen before she'd been there. How could she have thought he'd dare to sit on her desk? How could she have chosen those views of Earth?
Who cared, anyway, about Earth? It was dirty. It was made of dirt. There were bugs in the dirt. And flying ones in the air. They got in your nose. Little bugs. Thousands of them. A plague of nearly invisible bugs. "Gnats," she'd been told. The atmosphere of Earth reverberated with the chirping of insects. It was nerve-wracking. She couldn't imagine how people had built up the romantic image they had of the planet. Like any planet, it was full of things eating each other and trying to bite you. It was completely uncontrolled. It was noisy. The atmosphere blew around at odd times. The climate was uncontrolled. The surfaces weren't level. Creatures went to the bathroom in the grass and you stepped on the offal. Flying ones went to the bathroom on you as they passed overhead.
Something had gone to the bathroom in her hair and on her shoulder. There had been black-and-white . . . stuff . . . all over her. South had thought it was funny.
South was—still here. Still in her office, waiting patiently for her to notice him. She said, "And what was it you wanted, Commander South?" She was uncomfortable beyond measure with the memory she had, so disjointed, of having cuddled him, slept in the same bed with him—maybe done more with him.
And he was definitely proprietary. Why did a little bit of sex change a relationship?
Why, now, was he not behaving toward her as he always had?
He said, "Came to show you something." He turned from the view of Earth and tossed a pilot's license onto her desk.
So? So what? She'd known he could pass the exam. That was never in doubt. Qualifying him to take the exam had been the difficult part.
But of course, he didn't understand that. She said, "Wonderful. Congratulations."
"You bet. I'd like to take you out, to celebrate."
Had he forgotten that he worked for her? He was her junior, her subordinate. But he was, of course, a man. She said, "I'm snowed under here."
"I'll wait. Maybe I can help."
She looked at her watch. It was late. Time to go home. He was here because he expected to take her home.
Now what was she going to do?
"I can't leave." Then somehow she was at the closet, and she knew she hadn't walked there.
She'd zoomed there.
&nbs
p; His head was still swiveling. He said, "I'm going on a little trip. I need to clear it with you, maybe. Or at least give you a heads-up. And I don't want to do it here."
Or had he said that before she'd gone to the closet?
She got her briefcase and filled it, saying, "I hope it's something Mickey's going to like." The room started whirling, streaming by her. Then she was sliding through the reception area. Nobody was there to notice.
South was right beside her. He had something in his hand: Keebler's box.
"Mickey will like it, I promise," he said. "I also want to get a little advance. I need to get my ship a couple more upgrades. Since this may be my last chance for some—"
He stopped. Stopped talking. Stopped physically.
She stopped too, with difficulty. She felt a jolt, as if her need to stop had had inertial consequences.
Now they were at the lift. What was happening? "How—" But she couldn't ask if he was aware that spacetime was sliding and jolting around them. All of this distortion was happening inside her skull. Wasn't it? "W—why'd you take that? You shouldn't have taken it."
South looked at the box in his hand. "Couldn't leave it there. Not safe."
"How do you know that?"
He pushed the lift button and shrugged.
"Not safe for what? For who? For us?"
"You like this timeslip?"
She didn't want to meet his eyes. But she did, and everything started to twist around her as if she were in a maelstrom. The next thing she knew she was sliding down the curving sides of the lift, and he was with her.
Talking calmly: "The stuff from there's screwing things up some. Better not leave it in your office. If you ever want to find it again."
His voice came from a deep well. At the bottom of the well was her personal Customs car, with its AI driver.
The well poured them both into her car from above, as if it were a convertible.
She grunted when her buttocks hit the bench seat. She was panting. "This is—it's got to stop."
He put the box on the floor, between his legs, and looked at it. "I'm not so sure that it has to. Or will." He turned to her in the car. "I want to go open the Ball. Maybe I should take Keebler's box with me. Maybe we don't want a lot of this stuff floating around Threshold."
Floating. Bad choice of words. The tubeway was running together outside the car windows, and the car was behaving as if it were a sponge vehicle. It was popping in and out of the tubeway, making progress in leaps and bounds, as if it were attached to a deadbeat second hand on some giant clock.
It seemed like years since he'd said he wanted to go into the Ball. Matter-of-factly. They'd wanted to try that once, before the aliens changed everything. . . .
"I can't let you."
"Can't let me what?" he asked.
Maybe he hadn't said anything about the Ball. Maybe she'd imagined it. She enunciated clearly: "Try to open the Ball. Take Keebler's gift out there."
"I don't have to try. I did it once before. And I don't need Keebler's animal farm. Just don't let them get loose. They might multiply."
"They?"
"The creatures in the box."
"They're not."
"Not what?" Outside, the tubeway stopped flickering into being and there was total blackness. She said, "God, where are we?"
"Probably somewhere we don't want to be. Think of where you do want to be. Don't think about the inside of the damned Ball. Especially if you don't know what's there, okay?"
His voice sounded very serious, very far away.
She thought about her apartment. Him, in it, in her bed. She didn't know if it was a good thought, or an appropriate one, but it certainly was a clearly defined one.
And they were sucked there. She was wrestling with sheets that had wound around her.
He was still fully dressed. So was she. And there was Keebler's box in his hand. "See?" he said, with a dark' triumph. "Told you."
"It's the box, doing this?" she gasped.
"It's stuff from their spacetime that's alive—stuff in the box; more than the box itself." South picked up the box from among her maroon sheets, and opened it.
She hadn't really looked inside. At first you saw gems, and then you realized that the glowing things were moving. Climbing over one another, or through each other. And that inside them, other things were moving.
She remembered seeing microphotography of exotic things like this, things that lived inside other things. But there were galaxies spinning in one of the gems. Riva thought that if she could just stop it from spinning, her head would stop spinning.
"Don't," South said harshly.
She pulled her finger back.
They were standing in the tubeway, and the car was purring beside them. He shut the box with a snap and handed it to her. "I'm going."
Had they been tangled in her sheets, with the box between them, a moment before?
"I—good luck."
"Just transfer some credit to my account, okay? I've got to buy some stuff. Tell Mickey I think this is the only way."
She opened her mouth to ask, "The only way to what?"
But he wasn't there. He hadn't left. She didn't see him walking away. He simply wasn't there. She was standing by her car with Keebler's box in her hand.
Guiltily, she stuffed the jeweled box into her briefcase, dispatched the car, and took the lift straight up to her apartment, without stopping in the lobby.
When she got there she went into the bedroom to put away the briefcase, with the contraband stowed inside.
Her bed was a wreck. Maroon sheets were tangled and humped. She'd made the bed this morning.
She knew she'd made her bed. She always did.
Without putting the briefcase away, she went back into the living room and sat down. She clutched the briefcase against her stomach and closed her eyes and concentrated, very hard, on making things be just the way they always had been.
She wanted the moments to proceed one after the other, without any skipping or flipping or twisting. She wanted everything to be predictable. She wanted events to occur in a stable realm of physical reality.
She wanted a cup of coffee.
She'd have to make one.
But of course, she must have made one.
She reached up and took the glass of hot coffee from where it hovered before her face, in thin air.
Don't get hysterical. Call Mickey. And get rid of this damned box.
Maybe she should give it to Keebler.
Let Keebler have it back.
Of course, that was it: Give Keebler back the box.
This was Keebler's gift, not hers. Not anyone else's. Threshold would only be safe from Keebler's gift when it was back in his possession.
How stupid she'd been.
She reached into her briefcase to get the box.
It wasn't there. It was gone!
Don't panic. She got up, very slowly. She imagined every step she must take to cross the room and call Security.
The box was gone. You can take one step at a time. She took one step at a time.
But then she got excited and slid the rest of the way. South knew she'd been exposed to the aliens without a suit. Everybody had on Earth, South included. So what?
He was paranoid.
She had the receiver in her hand. She told the handset she wanted Remson.
When Vince's face blossomed in her monitor, she told the flower with the Remson-faced center: "Vince, we've got to give the Scavenger back his box. I mean, I think I did do that. We've got to get those gifts, and Keebler, off Threshold. Now."
CHAPTER 26
Compromise
Standing above the crowd in the main function room of the Secretariat, Croft said, "Vince, Cummings is raising so much hell about his missing son that I've decided to talk to the aliens about it now—before they leave."
His assistant replied, in a low voice, "I must agree that's probably wise, sir. Cummings has done a good job of poisoning the atmosphere in he
re. Nobody down there, not even an Epsilonian lady who hopes to weave Unity jewels down the fur along her hump, wants a Unity embassy here. Not even out at the Ball. If there ever was consensus in this body, we've got it now."
Croft sighed heavily. He'd tried everything he could think of to block Cummings's attempt to sabotage the establishment of a Unity mission. To no avail.
He was so tired from trying he could barely think. But there was no rest for the wicked. This endless ambassadorial function was turning out to be one of the most perilous— and draining—of his career. A few ice sculptures of teardropshaped vessels, and the occasional alien anecdote, had done nothing to allay the fears of the worried diplomats whom Cummings had stirred up.
Nor had honesty helped. Or pressure. Or promises of advantage. Now his Secretary General's bag of tricks was nearly empty. And the situation before him had improved not one whit.
And it was a "Situation" with a capital "S." Growing worse with every passing moment. Growing more volatile with every contact Cummings made down there on the embassy floor.
Yet Croft couldn't bring himself to truly enter the fray—to perambulate through the crowd and by so doing clearly and openly contest with Cummings for adherents. He wouldn't do it.
It would do no good. If he tried he'd manage only to support suspicions, exacerbate doubts, and give credence to Cummings's accusations. He must remain calm. Or at least maintain a semblance of calm. Do nothing out of the ordinary. Appear to be in control.
That was a joke. He'd never been less in control of events, or of himself, in his entire life.
Remson said, "I had a call from Riva Lowe. She's released the Council's gifts into Keebler's custody. And Keebler has agreed to keep the gifts on his ship and not disperse them, for the nonce. I talked to him myself. He's mollified, if that's any help. He's not screaming for his lawyers, anyway."
"Good," Croft said softly. Not because he cared about the Scavenger's incessant threats of legal action. Not because he worried that the gifts from the Council to their Valued Friend had some ulterior purpose or posed some hidden danger, the way Lowe did. But because Vince had worked hard on the Keebler problem. "Good work, Vince."