The first one was the most disturbing. All his clothes were neatly sliced away and removed from his body. He stood naked and covered with goose bumps, wondering what would have happened if Grace had entered the machine with him.
Then scores of delicate fingers were exploring his bare body, feeling his head and fingers and toes, wandering around his arms and legs, measuring his belly and buttocks and chest. He cringed, but he dared not move a millimeter—the touch was far too intimate. Something was snipping at his hair, something was nibbling at fingernails and toenails, and something else was laving and massaging and blow-drying every inch of him with warm air.
It took a few minutes to realize a strange truth: He liked the feeling. His personal servants back home had done their best, but they had never operated with such gentle precision; and despite their title, they had never been nearly as personal.
Just as he was beginning to relax, another sequence began. His arms and legs were manipulated into new clothes. Invisible fingers tightened and straightened and made minute adjustments. There was a pause, as though for evaluation. And at last he heard the door behind him slide open.
He turned, stepped out, and saw Grace standing at the door. She had on her face a look of worried anticipation that exactly matched his own feelings.
He stood motionless, waiting, until he saw her smile and heard an explosive "Well! That's more like it."
"Is it all right?"
"All right? It's great. You can be a dancing fool all night long in that rig. Come on, Muv has to get an eyeful." She grabbed his hand and towed him away, while he stared down at his new clothes. He was dressed in a uniform of dazzling white, snug across the shoulders and wrinkle-free at the waist. His scuffed and down-at-heel loafers, the same ones he had been wearing inside his suit when he left the Bellatrix, had been replaced by uncreased shoes of bright synthetic leather.
Lana Trask was not given to statements of wild enthusiasm. But her cool evaluation, followed by a quiet "Yes, I think so. Now we have a new hand that the Harvest Moon can feel proud of," was enough for Shelby. He left the control room as nervous as ever about his ability to dance, but now it might not matter. If nothing more, he could at least stand to one side and hope to be inconspicuous.
"Don't wear them again 'til the dance," were Grace's last words as he left the control room. "I programmed that outfit special, but I designed you casuals as well. Get a set of those out of a laundry machine. Your new size is on file. Take good care of what you're wearing—and whatever you do, don't sleep in 'em!"
Shelby didn't sleep in them. But he did go and find a full-length mirror and spent a few minutes admiring his reflection.
He assured himself, as he prepared for bed and carefully folded his new outfit, that he had no interest in clothes and never would have. But it did seem to him, as an objective and unbiased observer, that he looked pretty damned sharp.
A week or two earlier, Jilter had mentioned to Shelby that on the morning of the arrival at Confluence, it would be "worth getting to an observation port by four in the morning."
Given Jilter's laconic style, that amounted to a major pronouncement. Shelby had made a note of it, and he struggled out of bed bleary-eyed at three-thirty. The corridors of the Harvest Moon were silent and deserted as he made his way to the ship's forward observation platform.
He reached it, expecting to be alone so early in the morning. To his surprise, someone was already sitting on the padded bench.
It was Scrimshander Limes. Shelby muttered an awkward "Good morning," then for the next three minutes sat there tongue-tied. Speaking to Scrim used to be no trouble at all. Now he didn't dare to open his mouth.
He was saved by the arrival of Grace Trask. She took in the situation, squeezed onto the bench between him and Scrimshander, and whispered in Shelby's ear a fierce "Act natural, bonehead!" And then in the other direction, "Where's Uncle Thurgood, Scrim?"
"I am not sure. I expected him to be here." Scrimshander frowned. "Oh dear. I wonder if perhaps I was supposed to wake him?"
Grace was right. Scrim was his normal, slightly puzzled self. The problem was with Shelby. He had to learn to behave as though he knew nothing of Scrim's history. With that thought, he was at last able to pay attention to the scene beyond the observation port.
He had been told that the Confluence had to be seen to be believed. It was an understatement. Ahead of them the great space rivers of the Messina Cloud met and merged and swirled about each other, to break the sky into a thousand different shapes. He could see castles and birds and harps and snakes, there a bright-green Christmas ornament, there a pale human face, there a spectral dog chasing after an orange octopus. Friction between gas streams caused ionization and huge potential differences, creating lightning discharges that flickered and danced continuously across the sky. They transformed whatever they touched. A flowering bush was now a dancing bear, now a grinning red demon with horns and forked tail, now a tornado or a crimson flame-wrapped tower.
Shelby sat and marveled. At the same time he puzzled. Surely the sights in front of him were a permanent part of the Confluence, available to be viewed by the harvester crews at any time. Why rise so early in the morning to see them?
As Uncle Thurgood swept in behind the others, puffing and grumbling, Shelby's question was answered. A new pattern, dozens of clusters of white sparks of light, suddenly sprang into existence. They were like new constellations against the dimmer Cloud background.
The other people in the observation room murmured in pleasure. They began to talk all at once.
"There's the Dancing Lady," said Grace. "They made it on time, and Doobie loses. I guess that duff drive unit is holding out all right."
"Don't see the Hope and Glory anywhere." Uncle Thurgood was scanning the patterns ahead. "Oh, wait a minute, there we are. Now what in Charon's hold are they doing there, back of the Sweet Chariot? Bad harvest haul, for a bet, and trying to skulk."
"I think that must be the Balaclava," Scrimshander murmured. "Or is it the Never-Say-Die? I am never sure."
"How can you possibly tell who's who?" Shelby asked Grace.
"From the pattern of lights." She pointed. "See. That's The Pride of Dundee. No one else has that group of crowns picked out in lights. Every harvester and every rakehell is different. We have our own, too, of course, on the Harvest Moon. You'll know all of 'em before Confluence is over. Sometimes it gets tricky, though. Over there is the Avalon, but they've lost a few of their lights on the right side and so they look different. Sloppy, to let that go 'til they're right at Confluence. Doob and I will josh them about it at the dance, you wait and see."
She must have been doing a silent count as she spoke, for she frowned and went on, "There's a couple missing— not counting the Witch of Agnesi. Wonder if somebody else hit a problem and we never heard about it."
"No problem." That was Jilter, who had quietly entered just after Uncle Thurgood. "It's a full house. The Coruscation and the Southern Cross arrived late, but they're here and behind us. You can see them from the aft observation port."
He stood in silence, counting and confirming. "Yes," he said at last. "Every one, except the Witch. That's good enough for me. I'm for an early breakfast."
He left, soon to be followed by Thurgood Trask and Scrimshander Limes.
"Worth getting up for?" Grace asked Shelby, when just the two of them were left.
"Easily. The thing I don't understand, though, is why. I mean, it should be easy to send radio signals to each other, if you want to be sure that every other ship is here."
"Oh, Muv does that. She'd know and tell us as soon as it happened if something disastrous happened to another ship."
"So what's all this business of counting, and identifying the harvesters from their lights, just as though you don't know who's here?"
"It's a ceremony, Shel. Don't Earth people understand what a ceremony is? The lighting of the harvester fleet. Always at the same time, and exactly synchronized the way you saw it. It's a sign—a
sign that we're here at Confluence, that the season is half over, that we're ready and waiting to meet each other. Everybody on every ship gets up to see the lights go on. I should say, nearly everybody. Doobie will still be snoring his head off."
She stood up from the bench. "That's it for the moment. Next item on the agenda, breakfast. Then we take a good long break—no duties at all today. Then we get ready. And then"—she did a tricky little crossover step that Shelby was sure he could never imitate—"then it's nighttime, and we go wild at the Confluence Center dance."
Chapter Ten
GRACE had described the dance to Shelby in glowing terms. It took him about two minutes from the time they arrived inside the rotating cylinder of the Confluence Center to realize that she had left out a very important fact: He was going to be stared at.
They had flown over, he and Grace and Doobie, in a special little pinnace that he had never seen before on the Harvest Moon. Unlike the corries, this ship maintained its own atmosphere. They could put on their dance gear before leaving the harvester, certain that it wouldn't be crumpled and ruined inside a suit. Grace's Cauthen starfire she had left behind, after many agonized attempts to find a place on her where she could fix it without looking ridiculous. A starfire was simply too big for personal adornment. Maybe it could form the jewel centerpiece in a large crown, or, as Shelby suggested, the prize decoration on an elephant's forehead. Grace had frowned and said "Elephant?" as though she suspected a hidden insult.
The habitable cylinder of Confluence Center was huge, about fifty meters long and sixty wide. The pinnace docked inside a big airlock at one end, from which the three passengers could stroll straight out onto the curved inner surface. The effective gravity was a bit low by Shelby's standards, maybe a quarter of a gee. He hoped that might help him to dance better. He had tried a few steps, secretly, on the Harvest Moon. Compared with graceful Grace, he felt that he was the lumbering elephant.
They emerged onto Confluence Center's polished floor, which was dotted with small clusters of people from the harvesters and rakehells. Doobie at once headed off toward three other boys of his own age. Shelby stared all around him, fascinated by everything from the glowing light fixtures along the cylinder's central axis to the curved floor that made people halfway around the giant room seem to be standing on their heads. Already self-conscious, he noticed that as soon as anyone looked in his and Grace's direction they would say something to the rest of their group. Then all heads would turn his way. After that there was a louder buzz of conversation that he couldn't make out.
He looked down at his clothing and could see nothing out of the ordinary.
"Grace!" He tried to point out what was happening, without making it too obvious. "Why are they doing that?"
She glanced at a couple of the groups. "It's nothing. Better get used to it, Shel. You're famous."
"Famous? They don't even know me."
"They certainly do. You're famous two ways. First, they know you were picked up in open space, which is unheard-of out here in the Cloud. Second, you're famous because you're rich."
"I thought nobody believed I was rich. I didn't even think that you believed me."
"Off and on. But I'm talking real and certified rich. Like you and me. Between us we own half of a Cauthen starfire and a big lump of shwartzgeld, and word on that has spread around the fleet. It's the sort of wealth that people here care about—not the only-son-of-Jerome-Prescott-Cheever sort." She took his arm. "Now, don't get peeved. You know I don't mind one way or the other how rich you are. You're going to meet people, and you have to look pleasant. Can you make idle conversation?"
"Try me." For the first time since arriving at the Messina Cloud, Shelby felt confidence in his abilities. In the social stratum occupied by Constance Cheever, platitude-training preceded potty-training.
Grace did try him. She introduced him randomly to people from the other harvesters. He listened carefully to everyone's name and tried to use it, allowed others to set the direction of the conversation, and restricted his own contribution to occasional harmless comments. After a few minutes with any group he saw the interest in him turning off. He could read their minds as they bade him goodbye: "Just a kid who came here by accident, got lucky, and picked up a starfire."
By the fifth group he had his routine down pat. He hardly needed Grace. So he felt no qualms when she, as another man and woman came strolling toward them across the polished floor, stared off to one side and muttered, "Oh, Lordie. I was afraid of this. Shel, I have to leave you for a while. You're on your own."
As she hurried away he looked after her. He saw her approaching a long-legged male figure whose face was obscured by a large bouquet of blue flowers. That was strange, because Shelby didn't think there were any flowers within light-years. But before he could see what happened next to Grace he had to face the two new arrivals, now standing right in front of him.
"You're Shelby Cheever, aren't you?" the woman said. She was tall and slender and elegantly dressed and about the same age as Lana Trask.
"That's right." He took the hand that she held out toward him.
"I'm Pearl Mossman." She released him and waved to her companion. "And this is Knute Crispin." She added, just as Shelby was convinced that he ought to recognize those names, "We are from the harvester the Southern Cross."
That closed the circuit. "You're the captain, aren't you?"
"As a matter of fact, I am. And Knute is my chief assistant." She made a small gesture to Knute Crispin and he nodded at Shelby and left, as Pearl Mossman went on, "But how do you know who I am?"
"Lana Trask has mentioned you a couple of times. She says you are very smart." Shelby was diplomatic enough not to offer the rest of Lana's occasional remarks, that she wished the Southern Cross would stop chasing the Harvest Moon around the Cloud.
"I can return that compliment, with conviction." Pearl Mossman smiled. "Lana Trask is an exceptional captain and the best sniffer in the Cloud. But I don't want to talk about me and Lana. I want to ask about you. Your name, Cheever. Are you by any chance related to J. P. Cheever, of Cheever Consolidated Enterprises?"
"I am." There was a temptation to shout with delight and respond with a great flood of words—someone has heard of me! At last! Hooray! But the experience of the past weeks had made Shelby cautious.
"How do you know about Cheever Industries?" he asked.
"From the time I was on Earth, nine years ago. But tell me, how are you related to J. P. Cheever?"
Talking about your family when no one seemed to know or care that they existed was one thing. Answering questions that someone asked you was another.
Shelby began to explain: who he was, where he really lived, how he had come to be in the Messina Dust Cloud. Pearl Mossman made a fine audience, nodding or murmuring sympathetically at all the right moments. Shelby didn't realize how long he had been talking, until he noticed that the dance floor had filled with people and he saw Grace hurrying back toward him. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, and beneath the makeup her face seemed pale.
"It's all right, my dear," Pearl Mossman said as Grace joined them. "I'm not trying to keep him all to myself. Over to you." She turned back to Shelby. "I've really enjoyed talking with you. Maybe we can do it again some time."
Shelby recognized one of his own standard closing lines. He nodded and allowed Grace to lead him away. "What now?" he said. "And what's wrong?"
"Not one single thing is wrong." Grace's hand that held his was trembling. "But I don't want to meet any more people. I want to dance. Come on."
She led him out onto the curved floor, where scores of other young couples were already moving to the music. Shelby had time for one backward look, to see Pearl Mossman and Knute Crispin standing together and talking, and then all his attention had to be on what he was doing.
Or failing to do. At first he could tell himself that their lack of coordination was at least partly Grace's fault. No matter what she might say, her mind was somewhere e
lse. But gradually she relaxed, and as she began to move less stiffly her attention turned to their awkward progression around the dance floor.
After a few more minutes she shook her head. "You've got it all backward. You're leading with your left leg, and you keep turning widdershins when you should be going clockwise."
Shelby gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed that her words probably made sense in some language unfamiliar to him.
"Want to tell me what all that means?" he said.
"Never mind." Grace shook her head impatiently. "Forget that we're supposed to be dancing. Just go any way you like, and I'll follow your lead."
Even that was easier said than done. Somehow, no matter how Shelby moved, they came dangerously close to colliding with other couples. The dance floor formed a broad strip that ran most of the way around the curved cylinder, but there never seemed to be enough room. Finally he gave up any attempt at real dancing. He stood, holding Grace close, and made the smallest movements with his feet consistent with not actually standing still. They remained in one spot and they turned, very slowly, but that was all.
The Billion Dollar Boy Page 13