"Is this better?" he asked.
"Do you hear me complaining? It's fine." But then Grace added, "I'm sorry. You were quite right. I was upset, but I'm all right now."
"Do you want to tell me what happened?"
"No!" Her tension and stiffness returned. "I definitely do not."
"All right, then." But now Shelby was feeling angry. It hadn't been his idea to come to the stupid Confluence Center party, or to venture out onto the dance floor. He had been forced into it. If Grace was upset, it wasn't his fault. He glared over her shoulder, and noticed someone glaring right back at him.
It was a youth about his own age, but taller and thinner. Definitely not one of the people to whom he had been introduced. So who could it be?
Shelby struggled to make an identification, but then the slow rotation that he and Grace were making on the dance floor carried the youth steadily out of his field of view. He turned his head the other way and saw the stranger's back. He was moving rapidly away. In his place stood Doobie, waving energetically.
Shelby steered Grace carefully in that direction.
"You'll miss the beginning if you don't get a move on," Doobie called when they were still only halfway there. "Swaps start any minute. I wondered where you'd got to."
It was another Confluence ritual, and one that made a lot more sense to Shelby than dancing. Every ship in the Messina Cloud was liable to run short of some supplies, while having an excess of others. Sometimes the problem was known in advance and a deal cut ahead of time. That was the case with the pharmaceuticals that the Harvest Moon was carrying. They were already priced and promised to two rake-hells, the Godspell and the Once-Over-Lightly, who had stayed out in the Cloud through the off-season. More often, though, needs became clear at short notice. And then the bargaining began.
"Hurry up, Grace!" urged Doobie, ready to head for the trading area at the far end of the habitat.
But his sister was holding back. "I don't feel like trading right now. You carry on." She took Shelby's arm and gave him a little push toward Doobie. "Both of you. I'm going to get myself a drink. Maybe I'll join you later."
She didn't wait to see what the others would do but headed off toward the other end of the habitat.
Doobie stared after her, then turned to Shelby. "What have you two been doing? Fighting?"
"No. We've been dancing. At least, I thought we were dancing. I guess I must be pretty bad at it."
"You'd have to be, if you put Gracie off trading. She's the original Trading Queen." Doobie shook his head. "She'd trade her back teeth. I can't believe she's willing to miss the swap sessions. Before we get going, is there anything special you want? The rooms are organized by different departments, and you can start wherever you like."
Was there anything he wanted? It occurred to Shelby that back on Earth he had been given anything he desired, pretty much without limit. And yet within a day or two the coveted object, no matter what it was, had become dull and boring.
"I can't think of anything," he said. "Why don't we just start at the beginning and see what we see?"
"You can do it that way if you want to." Doobie pointed to an archway. "There's the beginning. Me, I want a carved belt. There's a woman on the Sweet Chariot who does her own designs, dragons and griffins and unicorns. The cosmetics machines can't touch her for quality. Her work gets snapped up in the first hour. I'll see you later."
Once again, Shelby was left to his own devices. He looked again for Grace, saw no sign of her, and walked forward through the archway. To his astonishment, the first person he saw was Scrimshander Limes. He was sitting behind a table covered with little carvings. At his side was Thurgood Trask.
Thurgood scowled when he saw Shelby. After an initial period of guarded neutrality, he had added Shelby to the list of his natural enemies and tormentors, as much of a menace and food pilferer as Grace and Doobie.
"Well, you can move right along out of here," he said. "Scrim, don't you trade nothing with Shelby Cheever, no matter what he offers. Anything he has he got aboard the Harvest Moon—and I'd not like to ask how."
"I'm not trading," said Shelby. "I'm just looking." He bent over to take a closer look at the carvings, astonished again by the detail and accuracy. He saw Doobie to the life, and Jilter, and Lana Trask, along with a carving of himself as he had first appeared on the Harvest Moon, hand in pocket and prominent belly stuck out as though he owned the whole harvester. He picked it up, inspected it, and finally laid it down again.
"Scrim, you know I don't look like that any more. You shouldn't be trading it. But you know what's really wrong with this display? You don't have any of Thurgood. Maybe you could do one of him—one where he's making giveaway pies."
He skipped through into the next room before the spluttering Thurgood Trask could rise and seek revenge. Somehow he felt a lot better. There was nothing like an encounter with Thurgood and Scrimshander to make you forget your other worries.
The room that he had entered was long and narrow and at first sight had no people in it. It did, however, have vegetation, tons of it—the first growing things that Shelby had seen since he left Earth. Big-leafed vines snaked and stretched across walls and ceilings. Potted shrubs and tall bamboo-like grasses covered the whole floor. Halfway along he could see a tall bed of familiar deep blue blossoms.
So it had been a bouquet that he had seen, and a real one. He walked over to the flower bed and smelled a powerful and heavy scent. Flowers had never much interested him, but he felt sure that he had seen nothing on the several Cheever estates of quite so deep a blue, or quite so strongly perfumed.
"No charge for sniffing," said a sharp voice. "But if you touch one, it's yours. Want to trade?"
He turned, and saw a brown-faced, gnomelike man, half hidden within a bower of flowering honeysuckle.
"I don't have anything to trade with." Shelby recognized an ironic truth. He might be one of the richest people on Earth, but here in the Messina Cloud he was one of the poorest. He had little but the clothes that he was wearing, and even they were not really his. The only thing he could claim as his own was the little figurine that Scrimshander Limes had given him. He was not about to trade that away for anything.
"You sure? Most people have something." The man emerged from the bower and walked forward to peer up into Shelby's face. "Aren't you the castaway that the Harvest Moon picked up six weeks back?"
"That's right."
"The one who found a Cauthen starfire, and a ton of shwarzgeld?"
Shelby nodded, and the man went on, "Well, then, you got more to trade with than anybody. Want some flowers? I grew them myself."
It was a temptation. Shelby could buy a great bunch of the blue flowers and present them to Grace as a surprise. It might bring her out of her bad mood.
A strange caution held him back. Grace had headed off earlier toward a bouquet of blue flowers, and when she came back she was right out of sorts. Maybe the flowers had had something to do with it.
He shook his head. "Not just now. But I might be back."
"Up to you." The gnome retreated into his leafy den. "Your risk. Not my fault if you come again and there's nothing left."
Twenty-seven light-years from Earth, and you meet a man who would be right at home as a gardener on the Cheever Virginia estate. Shelby wandered on to the next connecting room. It was empty, but it had a little side alcove with its own door.
He peered in. Three youths were sitting around a table, heads together. One of them was about Doobie's age, the other two a few years older. They all glanced his way when Shelby appeared, and one of them stood up.
He was at least as tall as Shelby, and he seemed taller because of his thin build and his long, rangy arms and legs. His face had high cheekbones and a long jaw, with dark eyes framed by bushy black eyebrows and a big nose.
It was an arresting face, but Shelby would have recognized it from the eyes alone. They had glared at him from the edge of the dance floor.
"Sorry,
" he said, and began to back out. "I guess I'm interrupting. I thought this room was part of the trading area."
"See what dropped in on us, Mooks," the thin youth said slowly. "Don't leave us, Shelby Cheever. We'd like to talk to you."
"You know who I am?"
"I used your name, didn't I? Everybody in the harvester fleet knows Shelby Cheever. Snatched up by a corry from open space. Says he's from Earth. Says he's a real big shot there. Says he has enough money to buy a piddling little fleet like ours ten times over. That sound like you?"
Unfortunately, it did. Shelby had said exactly that, six weeks ago. The fact that he wouldn't say it now didn't help— even though every word was perfectly true.
"People exaggerate." Shelby saw that Mooks and the younger boy were moving away from the table, as though they wanted to distance themselves from what was happening. "You know what rumors are like. I am from Earth, though. That part is quite accurate."
It wasn't an apology, but it was a disclaimer and a kind of peace offering. He didn't know these people, and nothing more should be needed.
But the tall boy in front of him was sneering in disbelief. "People exaggerate, do they? I see. Are you telling me that you didn't find a Cauthen starfire, along with a great lump of shwartzgeld? That you don't own a full quarter share in both of them?"
"Those happen to be true. No credit to me. I was just lucky enough to be there when it happened."
Shelby backed up a step. He wondered what was going on. The dark-haired boy was edging closer, and he seemed to be working himself into a rage for no reason. Was everyone in the harvester fleet so terribly envious of Shelby and Grace's good luck? Apparently they all knew about it. Was that why Grace had come back to the dance floor pale and distraught, and why she refused to visit the trading area—because she had suffered an encounter like this one and was afraid of another?
"If you don't mind, I'd like to see what else is being traded." Shelby and the youth were standing face to face, and he backed up another step.
"Oh, but I do mind."
"I'm going." Shelby started to turn.
"Not 'til I say so."
"Nicky!" the younger boy said. Mooks added nervously, "That's enough, Nick."
"You keep out of this." A strong hand seized Shelby's shoulder and held him where he stood.
He turned farther, feeling the fabric of his shirt rip. The other two were running past him toward the door. He tried to take a step that way, but before he could move he was grabbed by the shoulders and twisted violently around. A bony fist hit him under the base of his ribs. It drove all the air out of him. As he doubled over a knee came up to smash into his nose and right eye.
He fell to the floor and lay there, unable to breathe.
"Nick!" said a nervous voice from the doorway.
"He's all right, Mooks." Shelby's attacker stood over him. "He just got what he deserved."
"I'm getting out of here," said the younger boy.
"Me too," added Mooks. "Nick, let's go."
"Yeah. Okay." A foot poked Shelby in the ribs, adding to his multiple discomforts. "Don't worry about him. He's just winded."
Two seconds later the room was empty. Shelby lay on the floor in agony. There was a black curtain in front of his eyes, and his chest felt paralyzed.
As he took a first shuddering breath, blood came trickling down his cheek from his battered nose. He lifted his head and wiped his forearm across his face. The touch of the soft fabric made him wince with pain and brought him fully conscious.
Why? He sat up, slowly and awkwardly. The sleeve of his new shirt, the outfit that Grace had designed with so much pride, was a bloody mess. Why had someone he didn't even know started in on him and beaten him up?
It confirmed what Constance Cheever often said about people who didn't live on Earth. They were savages, primitive barbarians with no idea of how human beings ought to behave.
He climbed to his feet and leaned on the table until he could breathe easily again. His midriff ached, and his nose was still bleeding. All he wanted to do was get back to his bed aboard the Harvest Moon. But how was he going to do that, without everyone seeing him? He didn't want to be a public spectacle.
He dabbed his nose again with infinite delicacy using his sleeve—the shirt was past saving—and walked unsteadily to the door.
The youth called Mooks was hovering just outside it. Shelby eyed him warily.
"It's all right." Mooks came to his side. "I came back to see if you needed help. Can you manage?"
"Why did he do it?"
Mooks shrugged. "You got me. He was all right earlier tonight, but for the past half-hour he's been really weird. I've never seen him do anything like this before." He looked Shelby up and down. "You're a real mess."
"I feel like one." Shelby stared down at his trousers, grimy with dirt from the floor, and at his bloodstained shirt-front. "I want to get back to the Harvest Moon. Do you know any way I could make it to the airlock without going across the dance floor?"
"If you don't mind getting dirty." Mooks saw the look on Shelby's face and grinned for the first time. "I guess that's not a problem. I'll show you where to go. It will be good and messy, but you can clean up your clothes when you get there."
He led the way through two more rooms, both deserted, then along a corridor barely narrow enough to walk through. At last he pointed to a descending spiral staircase.
"Service level. Go to the left when you get to the bottom, and follow the line of the cylinder, until in about thirty meters you'll come to another staircase. That will take you up to the area of the big airlock. Watch your head when you go down there. And your balance."
The warning was necessary. The new level was closer to the outside of the rotating cylinder, and as Shelby descended he could feel his weight increasing. The ceiling of the service level was low, and made lower yet in places by the ducting, electrical circuits, and utility service points attached to the ceiling.
It was easy to understand why Mooks had drawn the line at coming along with him. No one but service technicians would come here normally, and apparently the Confluence Center was poorly provided with cleaning machines. Within a few steps Shelby's white suit, already marked at knees and elbows, bore a new layer of filth. He decided that he had nothing to lose. Rather than crouching and bumping his head, he dropped to his knees and scrambled the rest of the way on all fours.
No one was in the airlock when he got there. Although his right eye was swelling shut and he found it harder and harder to see, he refused to seek help. He climbed into the pinnace, flew it slowly and awkwardly to the Harvest Moon, and docked it there. Grace and Doobie would have to find another way to get home.
His nose was hurting more and more. He hated the idea of allowing a machine to touch him, but he seemed to have no choice. He headed for the ship's medical center and on the way was lucky—or unlucky—enough to encounter Uncle Thurgood in the crew's recreation and exercise room.
The old miner looked at Shelby and shook his head. "Brawling again! That's all the younger generation wants to do."
"I wasn't brawling. Somebody hit me when I wasn't expecting it."
"And how often have I heard that? Why did he hit you?"
"I don't know. I never met him before."
The bushy white eyebrows went up, but Thurgood Trask said only, "Where were you heading?"
"To the medical center." Shelby indicated his nose, which was throbbing with every heartbeat. "It's getting worse."
"I'm sure it is." Thurgood came close and inspected the damaged organ. "It's broken, you know."
"Can a machine fix it?"
"It could. But I can do a better job. I've done plenty in my time. Aye, and had it done to me a couple of times before I learned that brawling is stupid. Just a second." Before Shelby could reject the idea of anyone touching his nose, Uncle Thurgood threw back his head and bellowed. "Scrimshander! You stay right where you are. I'll be back in a few more minutes."
"No need
for him to be involved," he muttered to Shelby, as he took his arm in a powerful grip and led him willy-nilly along the corridor. "This is a one-man job."
Shelby looked at the hand that held his arm. It was meaty and thick-fingered, and no one in his right mind would let it touch a broken nose. He wished that gentle Scrimshander Limes, with his clever and sensitive fingers, were the one holding him.
He realized that he was wrong when Uncle Thurgood sat him down, administered an anesthetic spray, and deftly cleaned and set his nose and packed it with gauze. The whole operation took only a few minutes. It was unpleasant but painless.
The Billion Dollar Boy Page 14