New Writings in SF 5 - [Anthology]

by Edited By John Carnell

  The Conveyor stopped, breaking his thought-stream. The door opened for him; he climbed out, his legs taking the strain of Earth G better now, and walked into the bustling confusion of the Customs shed. He hefted his grip, swung it on to the travelling counter-top. And Reb came running down the long bay, calling.

  He didn’t speak at once, and his face didn’t change. He’d had a while to get ready for this meeting and he was calm now, determined to play it by ear. She pulled up short of him, stood watching doubtfully, while his eyes looked her over.

  Somehow Kaufman hadn’t expected the deep blue of the Ranger uniform. He saw the ankle-high sandals, the short knife-pleated skirt, the neatly cut blouse with the twinkling meteor of the Service burning on the dark material just below the left lapel. The silver lanyard and the lacy silver on the wrist-strap of the standard radio/chrono unit. Silver everywhere, showing in flashes and darts; in the six tiny pips on her shoulder, one for each month of satellite service; and again, silver highlights in her hair. For a moment he knew, coldly and without emotion, that this wasn’t for him. Then he forced the thought out of his conscious mind. The bigger issues must wait; this was just a girl he knew, a girl called Rebel, someone he wanted more than he’d ever dared admit even to himself. He split his thin face, making the muscles grin. She laughed back then, and put her hands out simply. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome to Terra ...”

  A Customs-man scanned his bag quickly, snapped a twinkling clearance seal on the identity strap. “Your kit’s O.K., you’ll pick it up in Bay Seven; straight through the shed, and on your right.” He smiled, quickly and professionally. “Have a good leave, Spacer.”

  They found the rest of his baggage, what little he’d been allowed to bring under Rocket Poundage Regulations, waiting for them in charge of a luggage pup. The little machine scanned them industriously, fixed their silhouette data and set itself, snuffling, to follow at their heels. As they walked towards the autopark they saw other pups, scores of them, each attached to its temporary master as if by an invisible lead. Gerry grinned again, naturally this time; the pups were new since he’d left Mainport last, they were crazy but sort of cute.

  He’d only seen Reb’s new home in a stereo she’d sent him via the last mail-rocket, but it had looked fine in that. As they stood waiting for the car to ingest the luggage he said casually “The new place, Reb. Is it far?”

  She shook her head, making the honey-coloured hair swing. “Not so. About three hundred kilometres.” He thought of pumice dust grinding under the tracks of a Mooncat and three hundred kilometres seemed plenty. She chuckled, watching his face. “You’re back in civilization now, brother. Think nothing of it.”

  Way across the pads a feeder, maybe the delayed Athene, geysered brightness and noise. Subsonics thudded and grumbled, shaking the ground. Reb winced and Gerry put his hand out, gripped her shoulder; the automatic reaction of people everywhere to the voice of a rocket. The thing rose, tiny with distance, jacking itself up on a flame; climbed swiftly, fish-slim, the focus of a continuous thunderclap. Lost itself in the brightness of the zenith. The world was normal again. Gerry ran his tongue round inside his lips, touched the shoulder-high fin of the car. “She’s a great motor, Reb. You drive her down ?”

  “Heavens, no. She roboed. We can do that because Daddy’s a Group Leader now.” He nodded, remembering the restrictions on casual travel. He was back on Terra now, with a vengeance. Even on the twenty-lane turnpikes congestion could get severe round big centres like spaceports, though not so bad, so his history tutors had assured him, as during the grossly overpopulated twentieth century. But Spacers were of course exempt from all petty regulations; Reb’s father could send the motor to Timbuctu on robot control if he wanted. In a few short generations the Space Service had become the new élite, the new ruling class; the Spacers, and the girls of the Rangers were walking symbols of God alone knew how many years of man^ kind’s dreams and aspirations; the Word, perhaps, made flesh ...

  Reb was watching up at him, no longer smiling. He stopped the blasphemous thought-stream with an effort, knowing some part of its darkness had showed in his eyes. She put out her hands again, resting them lightly on his forearms. Her eyes were searching his face. She said hesitantly, “Was it a good tour, Gerry? Was it O.K?”

  He gripped her elbows. “Was great. It’s just ... things are moving a little fast, bunny, I guess...” He looked at her shoulder again and whistled softly. “Six satellite pips. Sure was some Hell of a ride on the porch swing... How was old Tinribs?” GX, kick-off plate for Moon and the planets, was always an object of mock contempt to Spacers. Good thing to see though, swimming up from the void...

  The car, luggage stowed to its mechanical satisfaction, had whispered open its doors. Reb said lightly, “Time for questions later. Once we get going we shan’t ever stop.”

  He stepped into the motor, and a half-acre of pure white upholstery. He looked out through the deeply curving windshield at the tangerine plain of the hood, touched the sill of the featureless dash coaming, pushed against it with his palms to force his back into the yielding leather behind him. He whistled again, gently, nodding his approval. “She sure is one Hell of a bitch of a motor ...”

  Reb didn’t answer and he turned to look at her. She was watching him, head laid back against the seat. He thought now as he’d thought two years before, that her jaw was firmly and delicately lined and just a shade too wide, thank God, to ever be called beautiful. She was brown, and soft, and like a very smart neat animal somehow. She said quietly, hardly moving her lips. “Welcome back ...”

  Then try it out, old son. Take something that doesn’t really belong, and never has, and never will. Take it and see just what in Hell it feels like... He reached across and pulled her into his arms, not hurrying, savouring the touch of hair and mouth, the muscles of her back moving under the thinness of the uniform blouse. She made a little noise while she was being kissed, and relaxed against him, and his mind wanted to scream Judas while his body lapped up physical contact, luxuriating in it after the thistledown unreality of zero G. He laughed when she pushed back, a little breathless in spite of himself, tasting her scent, still trying to stop a thought that wouldn’t be stopped but pursued its own way, dark as the rocket noise. “Reb,” was all his mouth could find to say. “Hell, you’re heavy ...”

  Above their heads a clear voice said softly, “California AX two one seven three A/T, you are cleared on Route Seventeen, will you authorize?”

  Reb sighed and stretched on the seat, watching him cheekily. “Even here we are automated” ... She leaned forward and touched a microswitch on the bulkhead. ‘Thanks, Tower, hope we didn’t hold you up. I’m authorizing now.” She turned the ride control to its positive position; warning lights flickered and steadied. The car trembled; a thin whine reached through to the cab, all that was audible of the blasting power of the turbine a few feet in front of their knees. Reb said over her shoulder, “We have a priority routing; personal control.”

  The speaker in the roof lining clicked again. “Thanks, Spacer ...” It chuckled. “Sorry if we broke anything up.”

  Gerry was startled. “This thing is bugged...”

  She shook her head serenely. “Nope. That’s Captain MacLeish. Daddy probably told him I was picking you up.” She clicked the talkback. “Thanks a lot. Captain, you can get us out of here as fast as you like.”

  Overhead, miles in the stratosphere, a feeder began a screaming rumbling descent. Behind Gerry’s back the cushions wheezed slightly as the car picked up speed, fleeing from the sound.

  The big vehicle streaked between the buildings of the perimeter, swung on to one of the multiple tracks and accelerated again. Within seconds it was across the port, slowing and weaving as it nosed into the traffic at Gate Seventeen. In a way that seemed slightly miraculous the vehicles ahead and to either side parted. The car slid into the momentary gloom of an underpass, flicked out into light; Turnpike Seventeen showed ahead, and the white cloverleaf of t
he approach roads. More traffic; the big soft hands of the brakes closed round the car’s nose, relaxed; then she was on the carriageway and building speed again. “Over and out” from the roof speaker; lights twinkled as Spaceport Manual handed the vehicle across to the Journey Control network. Reb glanced sideways and twisted the now-operative ride adjuster fully open. Something kicked Gerry in the chest, the near scenery became a racing blur. She said casually, “Overdrive cuts in about two hundred kilometres an hour.”

  He lay back, not answering for the moment, enjoying the sensation of matchless speed and power, sensing the flyovers that jumped past with a scarcely audible whooshing. Occasionally he felt the negative G of the brakes lift him, shuck off some of the Terrestrial weight he’d acquired, but the answering power surges from the engine were soundless. On his left, Reb had nothing to do; the machine was running by wire, controlled by pulses in the buried grid beneath its wheels. The girl took a cigarette from the dash, inhaled, held the thing out in front of her, vertical between her fingertips. “One quaint and insanitary left-over from the twentieth century ...” She glanced sidelong again, grinning. “One more quaint and insanitary left-over-”

  He moved restlessly, suddenly surly. “Cut this thing down to size, honey, will you?”

  “What...”

  “The car,” he said. “The car. Life goes fast enough.”

  She touched the dash and the hurtling speed eased. “I’m sorry,” she said. Nearly looked like she meant it. “I’m real sorry. You still space-dizzy?”

  “Could be ...”

  “Tired?”

  “I guess. A little.” Why doesn’t she turn it off, why does she have to push ... All I need’s a little time, he thought, time to sort this thing through. Only there had been time enough already. It never would get sorted. Not this way ... He settled back again, knowing she was watching him. Maybe he should make small-talk, only he wasn’t the type. She knew that already though, it was part of the deal. Nothing quite as bad as that swim across the pad. Wasn’t there, though? Oh, brother ... I’ll wake up soon, he thought, find this was all a way-out dream. Like the hallucinations the long-service boys talk about. Deepspace Jerks is the name for it...

  Stop that line of thought, stop it...

  Everything was above-board then. Fine and dandy. Home was the sailor, home from sea. Or the Woodcutter, how about that ? He was the Woodcutter and Reb the Fairy Princess. Yeah, and pigs were flying.

  He nearly laughed. These days pigs did fly. They had a herd of them up on GX. Fresh pork, bacon... Last he’d heard they were doing fine, had magnetic hooves clapped on their trotters to keep ‘em down on the decking, looked crazy... But this was the twenty-first century, anything could happen. Usually did.

  He thought about GX. They’d passed close on the way in, smoking on down in the worn-out Thunderbird. He remembered the functional, complex shape of it spinning in its orbit. Regular and delicate, holding above it the countless petals of the solar cells that turned automatically to light, soaking up its energy. Like a chrysanthemum a half mile across. GX exhibited tropism, like a flower; inside the bloom were workshops, schoolrooms, galleys and mess halls, StereoTele theatres. All the life of a tiny planet. There were men, and women. The Rangers... He’d heard some fancy stories about their Space-side dormitories. The yarn that guy Mitchellson used to tell up in the Asteroid Bar in Selena, about hammering a Ranger Captain under zero G, and the pair of them drunk as skunks ... Was that where they changed, turned into machines, learned to pull gags like this?

  Back to the present. Reb was checking her chrono. Nearly half-way there, he must have dozed... His brain still felt numbed with too much thinking. Maybe there was something in this Acclimatization routine after all. He remembered the fantasies that had started back at Main-port. Great stuff for his psycho charts. Humanizing the unliving. The feeders were machines, GX was a machine. The Space Service was a machine, was all. The rest was so much romantic crap, the stuff the Stereos slammed out round the clock on Terra, the kind of thing that sucked kids into the Service fast as they could be reared. He was surprised he’d let himself get caught up with it. I am a King who found thee, and I know ... He tried, again, to put it to the back of his mind. Live for the present, Kaufman. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow powee ... He sat up and Reb spoke for the first time in a long while. “Twenty minutes from grid end,” she said. “Then things get* interest-mg.

  He was glad of that, it would mean some real driving for a change. Outside the limits of the Journey Control network folk still relied on their feet and hands and reflexes, same as they always had. He looked round the car again. Wondered how she’d feel to drive. Probably lousy. Murder to hold. All these big turbo limousines were the same, too much weight ... The robos could hold them, on the hundred-mile straights of the Turnpikes; but try a dice outside the network and they’d slide out from under you, they had the cornering characteristics of a stack of Service flapjacks. Status symbols with wheels ... He’d taken a twentieth-century Sting Ray up the road once, pal of his had had her on Museum loan for his Space Cadets’ entrance thesis, that had taught him what driving used to be about. Gerry grunted. He still felt plenty sour.

  Five minutes afterwards Reb took points for a left turn and the car’s speed started to ease again. Perversely the noise of the turbine became more audible, dropping with deceleration to a throaty rumble. “Taking points” was another of those anachronisms with which the language was full; it had referred originally to mechanical control systems used in the time of rail travel. Gerry sat up and made himself take notice. In front of the car the Turnpike still stretched its set of white tapes into distance. They’d long since left the flat country round Mainport; they were climbing now, ahead mountains reared against the sky. The car, programmed for its turn, dropped to a crawling hundred kilos; soon an intersect showed ahead and the brakes came on, powerfully. The motor swung into the escape loop, steadied, accelerated. Now the road was no longer gun-barrel straight; it curved and dipped, following the contours of the foothills.

  The route shrank to twin track, and the warning buzzer for the end of the grid sounded its first beep. Close ahead the unseen circuits ended, leaving all traffic to manual control. A hundred metres on, and speed down to forty, the car warned again and gave over her dash. Gerry watched, interested in spite of himself. The instrumentation came sliding out of the plain coaming, the steering quadrant swung up from its floor recess, locked into place with a click. “Hallelujah,” said Rebel, faintly; she took the white horns lightly, testing from side to side against the strength of the still-active robot. A last buzz, the quick flashing of warners in the road surface itself and the electric fingers on the steering column relaxed. The girl’s feet touched throttle and brake bars; the car climbed, accelerating round the dished bends, while evening gathered in the sky above.

  A few minutes later he saw it. Nothing there at first but a brief yellow sparkle high on the mountain face ahead; the flash of the levelling sun on an aureolumin roof.. The motor dived into a tunnelled bend, eased over a long spur of rock and he could see the house, still infinitely small but detail perfect in the thin air. It seemed to hang out from a sheer rock-wall, clinging to the mountain in a way that took his breath. Reb followed his glance, flicking her eyes up then back to the snaking road. Pushed a strand of hair back.

  “Like it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly. “Yeah, it’s fabulous. Prettier than the pictures.”

  She spoke curtly, as if anxious to dismiss the subject. “I know. We’re pretty thrilled. Daddy says there’s no need to take cruises to see a bit of Space. We’ve got it all round us.”

  He nodded again, broodingly. “What keeps it up there?”

  She said “Glue.” Then laughed. “It’s true. The struts underneath it, they’re bonded somehow with the rock. Not to worry though, we’re insured. If it comes unstuck we get a million bucks ...”

  They were closer now, still climbing fast, and he could see the retractab
le windows of the observation galleries under the long eaves of the roof. He said sardonically, “You taking this can up there?”

  She shook her head. “Nope, there’s a garage in the cliff. Daddy could have had a shaft driven, but it wasn’t worth all the extra cost. The last stretch is strictly for the birds.”

  He lit another cigarette. “My,” he said through the smoke. “My, how we Spacers do live.” She looked at him sharply. Didn’t answer. The house was nearly overhead now, the car drumming heavily, tilting its nose at the steepest part of the trail. Gerry watched the girl’s brown hands on the quadrant. Way out on the right the sun was setting, pouring orange light through the side ports, warming the paleness of the upholstery. He reached for a button and slid his window down. The air was magnificent, rushing and sweet; the sound of tyres on grit came through the opening crisply. Reb edged the vehicle over a hump so steep that for a second the coaming of the hood pointed straight into the darkening blue of the sky. Waited with her foot poised over the throttle bar for the autobox to find bottom. She whined the car over the last few yards of flat, stopped outside the motorport in the hill and zipped up the two big linked levers of the handbrake. She slipped the authorization key into the pocket of her blouse and waited while the turbine growled into silence, through the disturbing subsonics below it, and stopped. She leaned back then, raising her eyebrows. “Boy,” she said lightly. “But have you got a chip ...”