The Billion Dollar Boy

by Charles Sheffield

  "Kind of." Two days ago Shelby would have raised his nose in the air and pointed out that there was no comparison to be drawn between the massive scale of J. P. Cheever's operations and the piddling little trading of one ship's cargo performed by Mungo Trask. Today he merely said, "Yeah, I guess you could say that. They're pretty much in the same line of work."

  "And talking of work." Shelby's plate was empty, and Doobie stood up. "We'd better get to it—soon as we've washed."

  "I'm not really dirty."

  "Doesn't matter. Ship's rule: wash before duties, even if you're going out solo on a corry. Didn't used to be that way, but two years back Nelly N'Gali shipped out with us." Doobie held his nose. "You've no idea. Three weeks of Dirty Nelly, and Muv made the rule. Nelly's still on one of the harvesters, the Sweet Chariot, and from what I hear she's filthy as ever. Maybe you'll meet her at Confluence."

  They had reached the bathing area. Shelby's wash was both rapid and superficial. Doobie's was more so. Shelby decided that Nelly N'Gali must have been something special.

  Grace was waiting impatiently in the main control room of the Harvest Moon when Shel and Doobie got there. Standing next to her was a tall, pale man. His straw-colored hair was cut short and it stood straight up from his scalp like wheat stubble. He nodded at Doobie and stared at Shelby, but he did not speak.

  "At last," said Grace. "You certainly took your time."

  "Not my fault." Doobie jerked a thumb at his companion. "Him. Harder to get up than I am."

  "Tell that to Uncle Thurgood. He's waiting for you on third deck. He's been calling down and shouting at us every two minutes."

  "Marvelous. So now he gets to shout at me." Doobie pulled a face and addressed the straw-haired man. "Jilter, this here is the jetsam, Shelby Cheever. Shel, this is the famous Jilter Clute."

  This time the man's nod was at Shelby, but still he did not speak. Instead he turned and led Doobie out of the control room. Finally, at the door, he paused and turned.

  "Good rolls," he said, and vanished.

  Shelby was left alone with Grace. "What's he mean Jetsam?" he asked.

  "Doobie's idea of a joke. Jetsam is something you throw overboard from a ship when you're running low on fuel and need to reduce mass. It's a word borrowed from Earth's sailors. They used to throw things overboard when the ship was in danger of sinking. Doobie is suggesting that somebody threw you into the Asteroid Belt node because they wanted to get rid of you." She eyed him curiously. "I assume he's wrong. But some time you'll have to tell me just how you did screw up enough to land out here instead of in the Kuiper Belt."

  "You already know. I got drunk."

  "Too drunk to think? Not very smart."

  "So? I suppose you've never done anything that wasn't very smart?"

  He was tired and crabby and willing to start an argument. But Grace just looked away and said in a worried voice, "I think I did, two months ago. But I've only just realized it. Hey!" She turned back to Shelby before he could ask her what she meant. There was a fake smile on her face. "Did you put something special into those breakfast rolls?"

  A deliberate change of subject. Shelby tucked her comment away for future reference. "A lot of sweat went into those rolls," he said.

  That remark sounded disgusting, and too close to his original thoughts about the raw materials of the food synthesizers. "I mean," he explained, "I worked on them for hours and hours, nearly all night. I recycled nine batches before they came out the way I wanted them. Why?"

  "Early this morning I arrived in the galley at the same time as Muv. She looked at all the rolls you made, and at the food synthesizer activity log. Then she ate two rolls, very slowly. And then she said something really weird. 'You and Doobie have been pestering me for a year to let you go out on a corry without Logan,' she said. I'm going to let you do it, on one condition. If either of you ever goes out without Logan, Shelby Cheever has to be with you.'

  "I said, 'But Shel doesn't know the first thing about the Cloud, or how to handle a corry, or transuranics, or anything!' And she said, 'He will. He'll learn. And I'll decide when he's ready. So if you want to go outside, it's in your interests to teach him as fast and as well as possible.' And she took four more rolls and walked out. I think I understand Muv as well as anyone, except for Dad. But this one threw me. Do you know what's going on?"

  Shelby shook his head. Add one more item to the mystery of Lana Trask. "Your mother's right about one thing. If I'm going to be stuck here for three months I'll go out of my mind unless I have something to do. I'm ready to learn—but I don't know what to learn."

  "I can help with that. So can Logan and Jilter. One warning: Don't listen to Uncle Thurgood."

  "He acts like he knows everything."

  "He does know everything—about Kuiper Belt mining. Twenty successful years there, tunneling and blasting and centrifuging for nickel and iron and platinum and iridium. Muv says there's not enough volatiles in the Messina Cloud to wash the ore dust off Uncle Thurgood's mining boots. But transuranics are a different game. Don't go out with Uncle 'less you want to eat tar. Then he's your man."

  "But if he was so good at his job in the Kuiper Belt, why did he come out here?"

  "He had—reasons." Grace read Shelby's suspicion. "Not what you think. There's no extradition to Sol from the Messina Cloud, and anyway he did nothing criminal."

  It occurred to Shelby that Grace could hardly complain if Lana Trask was not always forthcoming with information. Grace was her mother's daughter.

  "What about Jilter Clute?" he asked. "Can I rely on him?"

  "Like a rock. He's been on the Harvest Moon since day one. Jilter doesn't talk much, but he'll answer questions. What he knows, he'll tell you. When he doesn't know something he'll tell you that, and then he'll help you to find out."

  "Is he really famous, or was that another of Doobie's stupid jokes?"

  "Famous right through the Messina Cloud, harvesters and rakehells alike." Grace looked scrubbed clean and extra neat this morning, and her sudden smile lit up her face. "Just say 'Jilter' to anyone, and they'll grin."

  "Who did he jilt?"

  "Cynthia Wendover. But that's a long story." Grace glanced at the control room chronometer. "I guess this counts as learning, though I'm not sure it's what Muv had in mind. Tell you what. We'll talk about Jilter, then I'll give you lots of other stuff that you can learn when you're by yourself."

  "Thanks," Shelby said dryly. But it was lost on Grace.

  "You see," she went on, "Jilter's one hundred percent reliable, but he isn't a man to rush things. About twelve years ago, when he was still known in the Cloud as Rodney Clute, he decided that Cynthia Wendover, of the harvester Never-Say-Die, was a very attractive woman. I'm too young to remember it myself, but apparently it took him two years before he got up enough courage to speak to Cynthia. Then they hung around together through the whole of one Confluence, and according to Muv the two of them got along fine. But emotion, which he wasn't used to, just about blew Rodney's mind. For weeks afterward he had no more sense than a ball of steel wool. Muv had to tell him everything six times before it clicked. Cynthia's company had scrambled all his mental circuits—and they hadn't even touched each other.

  "After that it was nothing for a whole year, until the next Confluence. Rodney could have gone to see Cynthia when they were back Sol-side, but she was from a very big family and Rodney couldn't stand the thought of all that socializing. It wasn't until they met at the Confluence that he talked to her again. And again they got on very well.

  "By the third Confluence, Rodney still hadn't made a real move. Cynthia had been waiting two whole years, wondering where she stood. She had already told her family how much she liked Rodney. She hadn't told them that she'd have jumped right into bed with him if he'd so much as suggested it, because for one thing her family had very old-fashioned views and would have been shocked; for another, Rodney hadn't so much as hinted at it.

  "So at the Confluence, Cynthia took the lead�
��this is all from hearsay, you understand, but the whole fleet tells it this same way. It turned out that Rodney had been thinking along the same lines and hadn't dared to mention it. So Cynthia moved them from thought to deed, and again, things went just fine. They must have felt that they needed to make up for lost time, because although they were apparently present for the whole Confluence, no one else so much as saw them.

  "By the next Confluence, Cynthia was beginning to get a tiny bit impatient. It was obvious that Rodney was starry-eyed crazy about her, while she knew she didn't want any other man in her life. But he still hadn't said one word about any relationship that went beyond a couple of weeks in bed during Confluence, and letters and calls to each other for the rest of the year.

  "Cynthia pinned him down, so to speak, and wormed the truth out of him. He said he couldn't think of anything he'd like more than to be hitched permanently to Cynthia. The thing that he couldn't stand was the idea of a big ceremony, with what seemed to him like an endless army of relatives— I told you she was from a big family—breathing down his neck and watching his every move. He was particularly worried by Wendell Wendover, Cynthia's grandfather and the patriarch of the whole clan. When Rodney was younger old Wendell had pinned him in a corner during Confluence and given him a long lecture about the decadence of youth and the decline in modern morality. Rodney was convinced that Wendell Wendover knew what he and Cynthia had been doing and wouldn't hesitate to condemn Rodney to hellfire if they were both at the ceremony. Wendell was ninety years old but there was plenty of spark left in him.

  "By this time Cynthia was getting to understand Rodney pretty well. She knew what he could stand and what was too much for him. She suggested a compromise. They would have a small ceremony, just Cynthia and her parents and her brothers and sisters, plus anyone that Rodney chose to invite. No Wendell Wendover, or anyone else likely to cause trouble. They would record the event, and the rest of her family could watch that.

  "Rodney said he didn't want to invite anyone on his side. Cynthia said that was fine, then it would be just her immediate family. Not only that, since Rodney hated the idea of making the arrangements, she would handle them all. He could go off about his usual business, and his only task would be to show up for the ceremony and endure an hour or two with her parents, brothers, and sisters. Then he and Cynthia would go off together for a private celebration and live happily every after.

  "Rodney was pretty pleased with the idea. Much less pleased were Cynthia's family. The Confluence isn't the best place to keep a secret. Given the disappearance of Rodney and Cynthia for weeks at a time when the Confluence was taking place, her relatives were convinced that they knew exactly what had been going on. Not only that, word had leaked through to Wendell Wendover. He made his usual speech to the family about the decline in morality and pretty much blamed the whole thing on Rodney, the foul fiend of depravity who had ruined his innocent young granddaughter. Grandpa Wendell had every intention of attending the ceremony and telling Rodney what he thought of him—if the blackguard showed up, which Wendell was ninety-nine percent sure he would not. Men like Rodney used a girl, then abandoned her. Men like that deserved to be horsewhipped, though unfortunately there wasn't a horse or a whip within fifteen billion kilometers.

  "Cynthia learned that Grandfather Wendell planned on being there. She decided not to mention it to Rodney. It would only excite him, and he seemed quite agitated enough already. The big danger was that someone else in her family would mention Grandpa's intentions to Rodney, just in passing. The best way to make sure that didn't happen was to insulate Rodney as much as possible from every one of her relatives until the actual day and hour of the event. That ought not to be too difficult, because it fitted in with Rodney's own strong preferences.

  "The great day grew nearer. Rodney was in a state of nervous prostration, but Cynthia had expected that so she had everything organized. The ceremony would take place not in a public place, but on one of the Kuiper Belt's smaller planetoids. That was about as private as you could get. She did not propose to tell her family, despite their protests, of the planetoid's ID until the day before the ceremony. They would all travel there in one ship, and Rodney would be waiting. As soon as the ceremony was over, she and he would depart without notice in the ship that he had arrived in. The family could celebrate at the reception without them, and Grandfather Wendell could make as many speeches as he liked.

  "Cynthia's family didn't know where Rodney was, but of course she did. He was on one of the Belt's major mining worlds. Two days before the ceremony, she sneaked away from her family and paid Rodney a surprise visit. She had two motives. First, she had to tell Rodney where the ceremony was to take place, and she didn't trust the idea of sending him a message over the standard open channels. Second, Cynthia had been working very hard, and she felt in need of a little rest and recreation. Wendell Wendover's notion of who had led whom astray was about as far wrong as you could get, and Cynthia didn't see why all the R-and-R had to wait until after the ceremony.

  "Cynthia found Rodney in terrible shape, a mass of facial tics and bottled-up nervousness. You've seen Rodney. I know it's hard to imagine him like that. But a man whose idea of a crowd is one other person was facing the prospect of a sizable group, every member of which would be concentrating on him.

  "Well, she knew a guaranteed way to relax Rodney, one that had always worked in the past. And sure enough, it worked now. It also turned his brains to mush. Cynthia didn't realize how far gone Rodney tended to be after one of their friendly get-togethers, though she knew he got a bit woolly. She told him the ID of the planetoid where the ceremony was to take place, repeated it five or six times, and wrote it down on a piece of paper just to make sure. Then she hurried back to her family. They hadn't noticed her absence, because in spite of her instructions they were making a big thing of it, and when she arrived they were trying on outfits that wouldn't have been out of place at a coronation. There were also six times as many people as she had expected, because her brothers and sisters—did I mention that there were eleven of them?—had assumed that the invitation also applied to their wives, husbands, boyfriends, mistresses, children, and all combinations thereof.

  "They somehow squeezed on board the rented cruise ship and headed for Kuiper Belt Planetoid 1181. And there they waited. And waited. Rodney never showed. The male members of the Wendover family swore violent vengeance. Grandfather Wendell made a long speech and had a mild stroke.

  "And now you know why everybody calls him Jilter Clute."

  Grace paused, after what had seemed to Shelby like one continuous ten-minute sentence.

  "But what happened?" he said. "Did he just get too scared, and run for it?"

  "Not at all. Rodney had fortified himself with a little drink, summoned up his nerve, and flown off to meet Cynthia and her family. He waited for them for nearly twenty-four hours. The trouble is, he was on Kuiper Belt Planetoid 1811. In his muddled condition he had held Cynthia's note upside-down."

  "So they never did have a ceremony."

  "Oh, they did. It took a day or two to sort out the confusion, and then they went ahead. The second time was much better. Most of the Wendovers had gone home in disgust, and Grandpa Wendell was too sick to attend. Rodney and Cynthia got together, and they are still together, although she's back Sol-side at the moment having another baby—the Cloud isn't the best place to have kids. But I don't think anyone in the whole harvester fleet will ever call him Rodney Clute again. For the rest of his life he's Jilter Clute."

  She glanced at the control room chronometer. "I said it was a long story, but I didn't realize how long. We'd better get to work. For starters, you need to know more about heavy elements. Did you know that three-quarters of the universe is hydrogen, and almost all the rest of it is helium? Anything with atomic weight more than four is rare—and we're after elements with atomic weights above three hundred. Let's go over the list."

  That seemed to be the end of the story of Jilter Clute
; except that evening, when Shelby was briefly alone with Lana Trask, she said that if Jilter would agree to do a trip out with Shelby it would be educational.

  She didn't say "Jilter" the way that Grace and Doobie did. It sounded more like "Dyeelter." After she had said it like that a couple of times, Shelby found the nerve to ask why.

  "It's more correct," Lana said. "You'd never know it by looking at him, but Dyeelter's family is from central Asia and they have Turkic names. Jilter's just a lazy way of avoiding that difficult dyee sound."

  "But the jilting," protested Shelby. And as Lana listened in silence, he repeated as best he could recall it exactly what Grace had told him.

  At the end, Lana gazed at him with the wide-spaced eyes that she had passed on to both Grace and Doobie. "Yes, that's another version," she said. "I think I'd better have a word with Grace." And she walked away.