Friday (47 page)

“Stop right there. If you are going to talk about the late Dr. Baldwin, please do not use that dreadful nickname.”

“Sorry. You were thought to be an agent of System Enterprises, that is to say, of Dr. Baldwin, and you confirmed it by going to his headquarters—”

“Stop again. Were you part of the gang that jumped me there?”

“I am happy to say that I was not. You killed two and one died later and none of them was unhurt. Miss Friday, you’re a wildcat.”

“Go on.”

“Ket—Dr. Baldwin was a mugwump, a maverick, not part of the system. With Red Thursday being mounted—”

“What’s Red Thursday got to do with this?”

“Why, everything. Whatever it was that you carried was bound to affect the timing, at least. I think the Council for Survival—that’s the side Mosby’s goons were working for—got the wind up and moved before they were ready. Perhaps that’s why nothing much ever came of it. They compromised their differences in the boardrooms. But I’ve never seen an analysis.”

(Nor had I, and now I probably never would. I longed for a few hours at the unlimited-service terminal I had had at Pajaro Sands. What
directors
if any had been killed on Red Thursday and its
sequelae
? What had the stock market done? I suspect that all really important answers never get into the history books. Boss had been requiring me to learn the sort of things that would eventually have led me to the answers—but he had died and my education stopped abruptly. For now. But I would
still
feed the Elephant’s Child! Someday.)

“Mac, did Mosby hire you for this job? Guarding me in this ship.”

“Eh? No, I’ve only had that one contact with Mosby and that under a phony. I was hired for this through a recruiter working for a cultural attaché of the Ambassador for The Realm in Geneva. This job isn’t one to be ashamed of, truly. We are taking care of you. The best care.”

“Must be dull with no rape.”

“Ouch.”

“What are your instructions about me? And how many of you are there? You’re in charge, are you not?”

He hesitated. “Miss Friday, you are asking me to tell my employer’s secrets. In the profession we don’t do that…as I think you know.”

“Fiddlesticks. You knew when you walked in that door that your life depended on answering my questions. Think back to that gang that jumped me on Dr. Baldwin’s farm—think what happened to them. Then speak up.”

“I’ve thought about it, many times. Yes, I’m in charge…except, possibly, for Tilly—”

“Which one is Tilly?”

“Sorry. Shizuko. That’s a professional name. At UCLA she was Matilda Jackson. We all had been waiting in the Sky High Hotel almost two months—”

“‘We,’ plural. Name them. Ship’s roster names. And don’t try to stall me with guff about the mercenary’s code; Shizuko will be back in a few minutes.”

He named them—no surprises; I had spotted them all. Clumsy. Boss would never have tolerated it. “Go on.”

“We waited and the
Dirac
warped without us and only twenty-four hours before warping time for the
Forward
we were suddenly alerted to leave in the
Forward
. Then I was supplied with color holos of you for us to study—and, Miss Friday, when I saw your picture, I almost fainted.”

“Pictures were that bad? Oh, come, now.”

“Huh? No, they were quite good. But consider where I saw you last. I thought that you had died in that fire. I, uh, well, you might say I had grieved over you. Some at least.”

“Thank you. I think. Okay, seven, with you in charge. This trip isn’t cheap, Mac; why do I need seven chaperons?”

“I had thought that
you
might tell
me
. Not that it is any of my business why you are making this trip. All I can tell you are my instructions. You are to be delivered to The Realm in perfect condition. Not a hangnail, not a bruise, not a sniffle. When we arrive, an officer of the palace guard comes aboard and then you’re his problem. But we don’t get paid our delivery bonus until you’ve had a physical examination. Then we are paid, and we deadhead home.”

I thought about it. It was consistent with Mr. Sikmaa’s worry over the “most valuable package a courier ever carried”—but there was something phony about it. The old belt-and-suspenders redundant backups principle was understandable—but
seven
people, full-time, just to see that I did not fall downstairs and break my neck? It did not taste right.

“Mac, I can’t think of anything else to ask you now, and Shizuko—I mean ‘Tilly’—is due back. We’ll talk later.”

“Very well. Miss Friday, why do you call me Mac?”

“That’s the only name I’ve ever heard you called. Socially, I mean. At a gang rape we both attended. I’m reasonably sure that you are not ‘Howard J. Bullfinch.’ What do you prefer to be called?”

“Oh. Yes, I was Mac on that mission. But I’m usually called Pete.”

“Your name is Peter?”

“Uh, well, not exactly. It’s—Percival. But I’m not called that.”

I refrained from laughing. “I don’t see why not, Pete. Brave and honorable men have been named Percival. I think that’s Tilly at the door, anxious to bathe me and to dress me. One last word: Do you know why you are still breathing? Not dead?”

“??No.??”

“Because you let me pee. Thank you for letting me pee before you handcuffed me to that bed.”

He suddenly looked wry. “I got chewed out for that.”

“You did? Why?”

“The Major intended to force you to wet the bed. He figured that it would help to make you crack.”

“So? The bloody amateur. Pete, that was the point at which I decided that you were not totally beyond hope.”

Outpost isn’t much. Its sun is a G8 star, which puts it pretty far down the list of Sol-like stars since Sol is a G2. This is markedly cooler than our solar system star. But the star is not that important as long as it is a sol-type (G-type) star. (It may be possible to colonize around other types of stars someday but it seems reasonable to stick to stars with spectral distributions that match the human eye and don’t pass out too much lethal radiation—I’m quoting Jerry. Anyhow there are over four hundred G-type stars no farther from Earth than is The Realm—so says Jaime Lopez—which could keep us busy for a few years.)

But assume a G-type star. Then you need a planet the right distance from it for it to be warm but not too warm. Then its surface gravity should be strong enough to hold its atmosphere firmly in place. That atmosphere must have had time to cook, in connection with evolving life, long enough to offer air suitable for life-as-we-know-it. (Life-as-we-
don’t
-know-it is a fascinating subject but has nothing to do with colonization by Earth people. Not this week. Nor are we discussing colonies of living artifacts or cyborgs. This is about colonists from Dallas or Tashkent.)

Outpost just barely qualifies. It’s a poor relation. Its sea-level oxygen is so scanty that one needs to walk slowly, as on top of a high mountain. It sits back so far from its star that it has just two sorts of weather, cool and freezing. Its axis stands almost straight up; it gets its seasons from an eccentric orbit—so you don’t go south for the winter because the winter comes to you wherever you are. There is a growing season of sorts about twenty degrees each side of the equator but the winter is much longer than the summer—of course. That “of course” refers to Kepler’s Laws, the one about radius vectors and equal areas. (I cribbed most of this out of the
Daily Forward
.) When the prizes were handed out, Outpost was ahint the door.

But I was frantically eager to see it.

Why? Because I had never been farther away from home than Luna—and Luna almost is home. Outpost is over forty light-years from Earth. Do you know how many kilometers that is? (Neither did I.) Here’s what it is:

300,000 x 40.7 x 31,557,600 = 385,318,296,000,000 kilometers.

Round it off. Four hundred million
million
kilometers.

Ship’s schedule called for us to achieve stationary orbit (22.1 hours’ orbital period, that being the length of the day at Outpost) at oh-two-four-seven and for the starboard landing boat to drop away very early in the morning (ship’s time “morning”)—oh-three hundred sharp. Not many signed up for the ride—that’s all it would be since no passenger would set foot on the ground—as the midwatch isn’t too popular an hour with most of our passengers.

But I would as lief miss Armageddon. I left a good party and went to bed at twenty-two hundred in order to soak up several hours of sleep before rise and shine. I got up at two o’clock and ducked into my bathroom, latching the door behind me—if I don’t latch it, Shizuko comes straight in behind me; I learned that my first day in the ship. She was up and dressed when I woke up.

Latched the door behind me and promptly threw up.

This surprised me. I am not immune to motion sickness but I had not been bothered this trip. Riding the Beanstalk plays hob with my stomach and it goes on for endless hours. But in the
Forward
I had noticed one surge when we warped into hyperspace, then just before dinner last night when we broke into normal space I had felt a similar tremor, but the bridge had warned us to expect it.

Did the (artificial) gravity feel steady now? I couldn’t be sure. I was quite dizzy but that might be an aftereffect of vomiting—for I had certainly thrown up as thoroughly as if I had been riding that goddam Beanstalk.

I rinsed my mouth, brushed my teeth without dentifrice, rinsed my mouth again, and said to myself, “Friday, that’s your breakfast; you are not going to let an unexpected case of Beanstalk tummy keep you from seeing Outpost. Besides, you’ve gained two kilos and it is time to cut down on the calories.”

Having given my stomach that fight talk and then turned it over to mind-control discipline, I went out, let Tilly-Shizuko help me into a heavy jump suit, then headed for the starboard landing-boat airlock, with Shizuko paddling along behind, carrying heavy coats for each of us. At first I had been inclined to be chummy with Shizuko, but after deducing, then confirming, her true role, I tended to resent her. Petty of me, no doubt. But a spy is not entitled to the friendly consideration that a servant always rates. I was not rude to her; I simply ignored her much of the time. This morning I did not feel sociable at best.

Mr. Woo, purser’s assistant in charge of ground excursions, was at the airlock with a clipboard. “Miss Friday, your name isn’t on my list.”

“I certainly signed up. Either add it to your list or call the Captain.”

“I can’t do that.”

“So? Then I am going on a sit-down strike right in the middle of your airlock. I don’t like this, Mr. Woo. If you are trying to suggest that I should not be here because of some clerical error in your office, I shall like it still less.”

“Mmm, I suppose it is a clerical error. There’s not much time, so why don’t you go in, let them show you to a seat, and I’ll straighten it out after I get these other people checked off.”

He did not object to Shizuko’s following me. We went forward along a long passageway—even the landing boats of the
Forward
are enormous—following arrows that said “This Way to Bridge” and arrived in a fairly large room, something like the interior of an omnibus APV: dual controls up front, seats for passengers behind, a big windshield—and for the first time since we left Earth I was seeing “sunlight.”

The light of Outpost’s sun, it was, lighting a white, very white, curve of planet ahead, with black sky beyond. The sun-star was itself not in sight. Shizuko and I found seats and fastened seatbelts, the five-way sort used in SBs. Knowing that we were going by antigrav I was going to let it go simply with fastening the lap belt. But my little shadow twittered over me and fastened everything.

After a while Mr. Woo came looking, finally spotted me. He leaned across the man between me and the aisle and said, “Miss Friday, I’m sorry but you still aren’t on the list.”

“What did the Captain say?”

“I couldn’t reach him.”

“That’s your answer then. I stay.”

“I’m sorry. No.”

“Really? Which end are you going to carry? And who is going to help you carry me? For you will have to drag me kicking and screaming and, I assure you, I do kick and scream.”

“Miss Friday, we can’t have this.”

The passenger next to me said, “Young man, aren’t you making a fool of yourself? This young lady is a first-class passenger; I’ve noticed her in the dining room—at the Captain’s table. Now get that silly clipboard out of my face and find something better to do.”

Looking worried—junior pursers always look worried—Mr. Woo went away. After a bit the red light came on, the siren sounded, and a loud voice said, “Leaving orbit! Prepare for surges in weight.”

I had a miserable day.

Three hours to get down to the surface, two hours on the ground, three hours to get back up to stationary orbit—the trip down had music varied by an amazingly dull lecture on Outpost; the trip back had nothing but music, which was better. The two hours on the ground might have been okay had we been able to leave the landing craft. But we had to stay inboard. We were allowed to unbelt and go aft to what was called the lounge but was really just a space with a coffee-and-sandwiches bar on the port side and transparent ports on the after end. Through these you could see the migrants getting out on the deck below and cargo being unloaded.