You're so afraid of using that word, you're afraid to talk at all.»
«So tell me.»
«Coward.»
Elephant wrinkled his brows, then snapped off the screen. «All right, Bey, we'll talk about it. First of all, you said it, I didn't. Right?»
«Right. Have you been thinking it?»
«No. I've been thinking euphemisms like 'overcautious' and 'reluctance to risk bodily harm. But since we're on the subject, why were you so eager to turn back?»
«I was scared.» I let that word soak into him, then went on. «The people who trained me made certain that I'd be scared in certain situations. With all due respect, Elephant, I've had more training for space than you have. I think your wanting to land was the result of ignorance.»
Elephant sighed. «I think it would have been safe to land. You don't. We're not going to get anywhere arguing about it, are we?»
We weren't. One of us was right, one wrong. And if I was wrong, then a pretty good friendship had gone out the air lock.
It was a silent trip.
We came out of hyperspace near the two Sirius suns. But that wasn't the end of it, because we still faced a universe squashed by relativity. It took us almost two weeks to brake ourselves. The gravity drag's radiator fin glowed orange-white for most of that time. I have no idea how many times we circled around through hyperspace for another run through the system.
Finally we were moving in on Jinx with the fusion drive.
I broke a silence of hours. «Now what, Elephant?»
«As soon as we get in range, I'm going to call that number of yours.»
«Then?»
«Drop you off at Sirius Mater with enough money to get you home. I'd take it kindly if you'd use my house as your own until I come back from Cannonball Express. I'll buy a ship here and go back.»
«You don't want me along.»
«With all due respect, Bey, I don't. I'm going to land. Wouldn't you feel like a damn fool if you died then?»
«I've spent about three months in a small extension bubble because of that silly planet. If you conquered it alone, I would feel like a damn fool.»
Elephant looked excruciatingly unhappy. He started to speak, caught his breath –
If ever I picked the right time to shut a man up, that was it.
«Hold it. Let's call the puppeteers first. Plenty of time to decide.»
Elephant nodded. In a moment he'd have told me he didn't want me along because I was overcautious. Instead, he picked up the ship phone.
Jinx was a banded Easter egg ahead of us. To the side was Binary, the primary to which Jinx is a moon. We should be close enough to talk … and the puppeteers' transfer-booth number would also be their phone number.
Elephant dialed.
A sweet contralto voice answered. There was no picture, but I could tell: no woman's voice is quite that good. The puppeteer said, «Eight eight three two six seven seven oh.»
«My General Products hull just failed.» Elephant was wasting no time at all.
«I beg your pardon?»
«My name is Gregory Pelton. Twelve years ago I bought a No. 2 hull from General Products. A month and a half ago it failed. We've spent the intervening time limping home. May I speak to a puppeteer?»
The screen came on. Two flat, brainless heads looked out at us. «This is quite serious,» said the puppeteer. «Naturally we will pay the indemnity in full. Would you mind detailing the circumstances?»
Elephant didn't mind at all. He was quite vehement. It was a pleasure to listen to him. The puppeteer's silly expressions never wavered, but he was blinking rapidly when Elephant finished.
«I see,» he said. «Our apologies are insufficient, of course, but you will understand that it was a natural mistake. We did not think that antimatter was available anywhere in the galaxy, especially in such quantity.»
It was as if he'd screamed. I could hear that word echoing from side to side in my skull.
Elephant's booming voice was curiously soft. «Antimatter?»
«Of course. We have no excuse, of course, but you should have realized it at once. Interstellar gas of normal matter had polished the planet's surface with minuscule explosions, had raised the temperature of the protosun beyond any rational estimate, and was causing a truly incredible radiation hazard. Did you not even wonder about these things? You knew that the system was from beyond the galaxy. Humans are supposed to be highly curious, are they not?»
«The hull,» said Elephant.
«A General Products hull is an artificially generated molecule with interatomic bonds artificially strengthened by a small power plant. The strengthened molecular bonds are proof against any kind of impact and heat into the hundreds of thousands of degrees. But when enough of the atoms had been obliterated by antimatter explosions, the molecule naturally fell apart.»
Elephant nodded. I wondered if his voice was gone for good.
«When may we expect you to collect your indemnity? I gather no human was killed; this is fortunate, since our funds are low.»
Elephant turned off the phone. He gulped once or twice, then turned to look me in the eye. I think it took all his strength, and if I'd waited for him to speak, I don't know what he would have said.
«I gloat,» I said. «I gloat. I was right; you were wrong. If we'd landed on your forsaken planet, we'd have gone up in pure light. At this time it gives me great pleasure to say, I Told You So.»
He smiled weakly. «You told me so.»
«Oh, I did, I did. Time after time I said, Don't Go Near That Haunted Planet! It's Worth Your Life And Your Soul, I said. There Have Been Signs in the Heavens, I said, To Warn Us from This Place —»
«All right, don't overdo it, you bastard. You were dead right all the way. Let's leave it at that.»
«Okay. But there's one thing I want you to remember.»
«If you don't understand it, it's dangerous.»
«That's the one thing I want you to remember besides I Told You So.»
* * *
And that should have ended it.
But it doesn't. Elephant's going back. He's got a little flag with a UN insignia, about two feet by two feet, with spring wires to make it look like it's flapping in the breeze, and a solid rocket in the handle so it'll go straight when the flag is furled. He's going to drop it on the antimatter planet from a great height, as great as I can talk him into.
It should make quite a bang.
And I'm going along. I've got a solidly mounted tridee camera and a contract with the biggest broadcasting company in known space. This time I've got a reason for going!
GHOST: FOUR
«But he never went back,» I said.
«It happens I know why,» Ander said, and then the crowd drowned us out.
Administration and Structure swirled together; Entertainment saw a chance and arrowed into the dance behind its dolphin. The depleted fourth team, Police, hung back in a nervous arc. All the teams looked to be milling without purpose, and from listening to Sharrol I could guess why.
So I said, «Prey submerged.» The last of the prey turtles must have escaped into the sand. For the next few minutes I watched the game with a concentration that would have surprised Sharrol.
This was the story I was telling Ander: If I hadn't been led here by a woman, why was I here? I must love the game! «There! Yellow prey!» I shouted as sand stirred. An instant later the glowing mock turtle emerged outside the melee and flapped clownishly toward safety. A Police swimmer dove to capture it, his dolphin keeping station to block for him, and everyone converged too late: he was swimming like mad, and so was the prey; he was through the yellow arch at the point of a great angry cloud –
And that was the end. I bellowed over the crowd's roar: «Dinner!»
«Oh?»
«I missed brunch. I'm starving.»
I didn't want to fight the crowds trying to leave. We crossed the slidebridge instead, this time in comparative quiet. The booths lined below us were whirlpools in a surging sea of escapees.
Ander's hand was above my elbow, companionably. I was a prisoner, and that was hard to ignore. Make conversation? I asked, «Did you know there's an ice age going on Earth?»
«Sure.»
«Well, I never even wondered. I did wonder why Cuba wasn't much hotter than Nome.»
Ander said, «The whole planet's a web of superconductor cable. We had to restart the Gulf Stream five hundred years ago, and it just went from there. Nome imports heat; Cuba imports cold. Even so, Earth would be pretty cold if we weren't getting so much power from the orbiting satellites.»
«Uh huh. What are you going to do when the ice age turns off?»
«Move.» Ander grinned. «Where did you go after the antimatter system?»
«I moved in with Sharrol in Nome.»
He looked at me. «You? Settled down like a Grog on a rock?»
Maybe he had the right to sneer. Ander and I had toured singles nodes together on two worlds, blowing off steam after marathon work sessions. I held my temper and said, «You can spend a lifetime seeing Earth.»
«Where do you want to eat?»
I said, «The Pequod Grill is good.» Good and expensive, and an offworlder would have heard of it. Just the place a destitute B. Shaeffer might pick if someone else was paying. And nobody would ask me where Sharrol was.
We had almost reached the transfer booths. Just to pull Ander's chain, I turned suddenly into the phone booth to see if I could break his grip.
He pulled me back effortlessly. «What?»
«I thought I'd phone and see if the Grill's full up,» I said, and remembered. I couldn't use my pocket phone. It was in the wrong name.
«I'll do it.» He used a card. It took him ten seconds to get a reservation. There are mistakes you don't pay for.
We pushed into a transfer booth. He said, «So there you were, nesting —»
I said, «It was love, stet? We weren't lockstepped … well, we were, a little. I didn't know any women on Earth. Sharrol had some playmates, but a lot of the men she knew were moaning and clutching themselves.» I grinned, remembering. «Rasheed. 'Lockstepped, sure, but you can't mean me! with a great dramatic wave of his arms, like he could have been joking. There were some couples we played with, but not so much of that, either, after a while. We talked about having children. Then we looked into it.»
Ander said, «You?» I wasn't sure how to read his expression. A little disgust, a little pity.
I dialed the Pequod.
* * *
We flicked in on the roof, under a rolling curve of greenblack water. The daylight was fading. Ander led off toward the restaurant twelve floors down. He seemed to be familiar with the Pequod. Might even be registered here.
Test that. «I need to visit a 'cycler, Ander. Long day.»
«Me, too,» he said. «This way.»
In the 'cycler he maneuvered himself between me and the door, and I let him. Amusing scenarios came to mind: If I needed a booth, he could watch the door, but what if he needed a booth? Not that it mattered. I didn't want to escape, not until I could know I was loose. I wanted to speak of lost treasure.
But I needed to know how much he already knew. Why was I here? Who had come with me? How? How was I surviving? I waited in the hope that he might speak of those things, and of Carlos Wu's autodoc, too.
So we didn't talk much until we were settled at a table, with drinks. Ander wasn't interested in local cuisine. He ordered beef — no imagination. I found crew snapper on the menu, billed as an order for two. Heh heh.
I asked, «What happened to Greg Pelton's expedition?»
Ander said, «Antimatter planet. The more he thought about it, the more he needed to know. He kept expanding his plans until some government gnome took notice. After that it just inflated. Government projects can do that. Everyone wants in; they always think there's infinite money, and suddenly it's gone from science fiction to fantasy.
I don't even know if Pelton's still involved. The UN has probes in the system. Meanwhile the current plan calls for a base on the planet.»
I laughed. «Oh, sure!»
He grinned at me. «Set on a metal dish in stasis, inside a roller sphere also in stasis. It is antimatter, after all.»
He wasn't making it up. He was too amused. «Civil servants love making plans. You can't get caught in a mistake if you're only making plans, and it can pay your salary for life. And I shouldn't have heard that much, Beowulf, nor should you. If a terrorist knew where to find infinite masses of antimatter, things could get sticky.»
«And that is why you weren't asked to ghostwrite the tour guide,» I surmised.
Ander smiled. He said, «Back to work. You've met Outsiders. Would you consider them a threat?»
«No.»
He waited. I said, «They're fragile. Superfluid helium metabolism and no real skeleton, I think. Any place we consider interesting, they die. But never mind that, Ander —»
«They've got the technology to take accelerations that would reduce you or me to a film of neutrons.»
«Not the point. Can you tell me why they honor contracts? They've got ships to run away from any obligation. I think it must be built into their brains, Ander. They honor contracts, and they keep their promises. They're trustworthy.»
He nodded, in no way dissatisfied. «Grogs? Are they dangerous?»
«Tanj straight they're dangerous.»
He laughed.