A World of Difference (22 page)

Pat touched his arm and held out her hand for the radio. When he gave it to her, she said, “Sarah, I’ll bet they’re as sick of that as we are of freeze-dried waffles.”

“You are only too right,” Rustaveli said. Under the rueful amusement in his voice, the Russian—no, Georgian—sounded perfectly serious. “A pity we have no better way to meet than
this
Damselfly
of yours. Who knows what I might do for a freeze-dried waffle?”

Louise Bragg grabbed the radio. “Sarah, did you check that one for brain damage, too?” The humans on both sides of Jötun Canyon laughed together.

“People, I think the best thing we all could do now is rest,” Sarah said. “We’ve had a long day, and another one is coming up tomorrow.” She switched from pragmatic physician to wife, but only for a moment. “Love you, Irv. Out.”

“Love you, too. Out.” Irv fired up the portable stove to melt snow and then boil water for the dinner packs he, Pat, and Louise had brought along. The chicken à la king, he knew, wasn’t really bad. But that was the trouble—he
knew
it.
Damlama khasip—
such an exotic name. What would it taste like? He was intrigued enough to wonder out loud.

“Like making love with a stranger after being married for years,” Pat suggested. She dug a spoon into her own food, tasted it, and sadly shook her head. “Married to somebody boring,” she amended. No one argued with her.

It was nearly dark by the time they were done.

“We’d better keep watch through the night,” Irv said, “or your husband, Louise, who I hope is not boring”—she stuck out her tongue at him—“will have our hides when we get back to
Athena.
”

He tore three scraps of paper off a notebook page, kept one, and handed the others to the women. “Write a number between one and ten,” he said, “and then show it.” He scrawled a 5 himself. Louise revealed an 8, Pat a 2. “All right, I’m odd man out; I’ll stay awake a while. Who shall I roust when I sack out?”

Pat and Louise looked at each other. After a few seconds, Pat said, “I’ll take the middle watch.”

“If you’re silly enough to volunteer, I’m silly enough to let you,” Louise said at once. “I hate sleeping in shifts.” Yawning, she unrolled her sleeping bag. “And I am beat.” She climbed in and zipped the bag up so little more than her nose showed.

“G’night.”

Pat got into her sleeping bag, too. “I’ll wake you about ten, Minervan Standard Wristwatch Time,” Irv said. She nodded. Louise was already breathing slowly and regularly.

Irv walked around, wishing for a big blazing campfire; as night fell, the horizon seemed to close in on him, until the unknown lay hardly farther away than his outstretched fingertips. City boys like me don’t really realize how dark night can be
without street lights and such, he thought. It took a distinct effort of will not to turn on his flashlight and wave it about, just for the sake of something to see.

Stars would have helped, at least to ease his mind, but the clouds wrapped them away in cotton wool. Once, for a moment, he saw a wan smudge of light in the sky—one of the three little Minervan moons, though without a set of tables he had no idea which. Thicker clouds soon drifted over it and made it disappear.

That left Irv his ears and nose, left him a wolf pacing a prairie not his own. He was not evolved to know which little innocuous night noises were not innocuous after all, which of the scents on the chilly breeze would have sent any sensible Minervan beast running for its life. The local odors reminded him of nothing so much as how an organic chemistry lab smelled from a good way down the hall.

Something crunched behind him. He whirled, one hand grabbing for the flashlight, the other for the .45 on his belt. “It’s only me,” Pat said softly. “I can’t sleep.”

“Jesus.” Irv felt himself getting angry. He knew it was his adrenaline all dressed up with no place to go, but knowing that did not make the anger any less real. “Good thing you didn’t try sneaking up on Emmett like that,” he said, inhibited in volume because he did not want to wake Louise. “He’d’ve handed you your head instead of going into palpitations like me.” His heart was still thumping in his chest.

“Sorry.” Pat made her whisper sound contrite. She stepped closer to him. “I just figured I’d wander over and keep you company for a while, that’s all. If you want, I’ll go away again.”

“No, never mind. Now that you’re here, I’m glad you’re here—but damn, Pat!” They both laughed. Remembering his earlier thought, Irv went on, “We’ll have to keep it down so we don’t bother Louise.”

“Sure, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem. She sleeps like a stone—must be a clear conscience or something.” Was that bitterness there? Hard to be sure, with only a whisper to go on. Hard to imagine anyone having anything against Louise, too.

Irv’s brain finally paid attention to what his nose had been telling him. He scratched his head. Odds were, knowing him, that he had just missed it before, but still … “Did you have perfume on while we were biking up?” The sweet muskiness cut through the strange Minervan odors and struck deep into his senses.

“No,” she said.

He scratched his head again. “Don’t tell me you put it on just for me. I’m flattered, but—”

Pat interrupted him, but not with words. Her mouth was soft against his and clung with something close to desperation when he started to pull away. She was almost as tall as he and just about as strong. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” she murmured.

“Have you?” Irv said, amazed. Even through his protective clothing and hers, he could feel her breasts press against him; his gloved hand found itself at the curve of her waist. “You’ve done a good job of hiding it, then.”

“I’ve done a good job of hiding lots of things. The worst part is, Frank doesn’t even notice.” Her low-voiced laugh had knives in it. “And don’t tell me you’ve been getting all you want from Sarah, either. There isn’t enough privacy on
Athena
to let you get away with a lie. There isn’t enough privacy on
Athena
for anything.” She made it into a curse.

What she said was true enough, he thought dizzily as Pat kissed him again. No privacy … He knew, for instance, that she had a tiny brown mole just under her right nipple, that the hair between her legs was a couple of shades darker than the tarnished gold curls of her head. Till this moment, he had not spent much time thinking about any of that, but he knew.

He also knew that Sarah had told him no more times lately than he had been happy with. It was hard to think of Sarah right now, with Pat’s tongue, agile as a serpent’s, toying with his, trailing warmly over his cheek and sneaking under the flap of his cap to tease his ear.

He felt his body respond. So did Pat. Her hand pressed him through his trousers. For a moment, his hands pressed, too; the firm flesh of her buttocks yielded beneath his fingers. She arched her back, thrusting her hips against him.

At last their mouths separated. The chill of the long breath of air Irv gulped in helped him bring his body partly back under the control of his will. Trying to make light of what was happening, he said shakily, “God, Pat, if I were twenty-one again I’d haul your pants down and screw you right here, even if we both froze our asses off.”

“Do it,” she said. “I want you to.” She was still rubbing him, stroking him, trying to goad him to action.

“Pat, this is foolish,” he said as gently as he could, reaching down to take her hand away and suppressing a spasm of regret
almost before he knew it was there. “I’m not twenty-one anymore; I don’t let my cock do all my thinking for me. You’re not twenty-one, either. Don’t you think we’re too far from home to do anything that would hurt any of us?”

“I hurt now,” Pat retorted. “You would, too, if you’d been faking it all the way out from Earth orbit. And the only way Sarah’d be hurt is if she found out.”

“She would. I’m a lousy liar about that kind of thing.” Not, Irv thought, that I’ve ever had much to lie about. His one brush with infidelity had come at a drunken party a few years back. He and a girl—God, he’d forgotten her name—were fooling around in a walk-in closet when he passed out between second and third base.

He had always reckoned the next day’s killer hangover punishment to fit the crime. He had not been seriously tempted to wander since. Come to think of it, he had not been seriously drunk since, either.

“You don’t want me.” Pat’s voice was flat, despairing.

“You know better than that—you damn well ought to.” Though subsiding, Irv still stirred at the memory of her touch. “But what I want and what I’m going to do are two different things. Pat, jumping on you is tempting as hell, but it’s just more trouble than it’s worth—for me, for Sarah, for Frank, and for you. For Louise, too, if she happens to get up to pee at the wrong moment.”

“She won’t,” Pat said, but Irv saw her sag.

He nodded slowly to himself. If privacy was her hang-up, reminding her she didn’t have it seemed like a good idea—assuming, of course, that he really didn’t feel like getting laid. Well, that was the assumption he had made, and he still thought it was the right one. “Pat, if what you need is being alone, you should have had a good time on the collecting trips you took with Frank.”

“I hoped that, too,” she said bleakly. “Didn’t work, not for me, anyway. Frank, now—Frank had lots of fun. It’s easy for a man—you get your jollies every time.”

“Frank doesn’t know you don’t?” he asked. She shook her head. “Maybe you ought to let him know.” Maybe I ought to shut up, too, he thought. A marriage counselor I’m not.

“How am I supposed to do that?” she demanded, setting her hands on her hips. “ ‘Gosh, I’m so sorry, honey, but for the last year you haven’t turned me on at all’?” Her voice was a dangerous parody of sweetness.

Irv winced. Definitely I ought to shut up, he thought. “There are probably better ways,” he said carefully.

To his surprise, she started to laugh, and even sounded as though she meant it. “Do you know, Irv, you may be too sensible for your own good. It’s hard to be sensible when you’re horny.”

“Tell me about it,” he said. “It’s hard to be sensible when a fine-looking wench tries to kick your feet out from under you, too.”

“Hmm. I didn’t think of that. You suppose it would have worked?” Pat leaned toward him. “No, don’t run away,” she said when he started to pull back. “Now the only question is, should I kiss you or punch your lights out?” She ended up doing a little of both, pecking his cheek and tromping on his foot hard enough to hurt. “There. That’ll keep you guessing. Now, what time has it gotten to be?”

He blinked at the change of subject, then pulled back his sleeve so he could check his watch. “A little before nine.”

“Go to sleep,” she told him. “I’m too wound up to sleep now, so I may as well start my stretch early.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Go on, will you? I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Irv took a couple of steps, then looked back doubtfully. Pat sent him on with an impatient wave. He got out of his shoes, climbed quickly into his sleeping bag, and zipped it up. Sleep took a while coming, though.

Louise lay a few feet away. From the way she was snoring, she was out like a light. Irv suspected that he could have led a brass band past her without waking her up, let alone playing slap and tickle with Pat. Suddenly he wanted her more than he had when she was in his arms.

He shook his head. Turning down a woman who offered herself like that was not one of the easier things he had done. He laughed at himself. “It’s not as if I’ve had a lot of practice,” he said under his breath.

“What’s that?” Pat asked.

“Nothing. Just brain-fuzz.” He rolled over and eventually went to sleep.

“
Adin, dva, tri!
” Rustaveli shouted. At “three,” he and the American doctor pushed on the rover with all their might. She was even smaller than Katerina, but determination and no little strength made up for her lack of size. Grunting and swearing,
she and Rustaveli fought the rover’s weight until it overbalanced and flipped back onto its wheels. It jounced a couple of times, then sat still.

“Well done!” Valery Bryusov cheered from a few meters away. His left arm was splinted and in a sling rigged from a piece of blanket. He made a rueful gesture with his good hand. “I wish I could have helped.”

“Never mind, Valery Aleksandrovich.” Rustaveli sprang onto the rover and tried the motor. The vehicle rolled ahead. He stopped it and grinned. “Thanks to Sarah, ah, Davidovna, you are fixed, now it is fixed, and we will be going back to our comrades.”

“Carefully, I hope,” Sarah said. She picked up the blankets she used to supplement the flimsy costume that was all she wore inside her pedal-powered plane and started to redrape them.

Bryusov stepped forward to help her, but Rustaveli beat him there. After so long with just Katerina to think about, he was astonished at how much the mere sight of a different woman excited him. But when his hands “accidentally” started to slide down from her shoulders, the flinty look she gave him stopped him in his tracks. “Excuse me,” he muttered, surprised at how embarrassed he was.

“All right, then,” she said. But her voice did not imply that it was all right; her voice warned him not to try it again. This, he thought, could be one seriously stubborn woman. Maybe he should be just as well pleased not to be spending three years of his life in close company with her. Nevertheless—

“Sarah Davidovna, we are in your debt,” he said.

“I especially,” Bryusov agreed. “The more so as you had to make a journey dangerous to yourself to help me, and our nations are not the best of friends.”

Under the awkward blankets, she shrugged. “There aren’t any nations here, just people—and not very many of us. Compared to anyone or anything else on Minerva, we’re all closer than brothers. If we don’t help each other, who will?”

“You are right,” Rustaveli said, though he knew Oleg Lopatin would have hurt himself laughing at such a notion—and perhaps Colonel Tolmasov, too. For that matter, he doubted that all the Americans on Minerva were as altruistic as this Dr. Levitt; otherwise, for instance, Tolmasov would have been happier dealing with Emmett Bragg.