Against Infinity (22 page)

Manuel said, “She was making sure you hadn’t given her a tip.”

“Well, I would have, but the sight of those—that dead animal flesh—”

“No, look. Here nobody takes tips. It’s a point of honor. They know Earthers leave something extra, so she was checking.”

“Ummm. Curious idea.” Piet sipped his beer cautiously and wrinkled his nose. “On Earth the bars are large, the seats far apart. A thousand customers, perhaps. Economies of scale.”

“Cheaper this way.”

“A passing phenomenon,” Piet said. “Like the Settlements themselves.”

Manuel avoided that with “Uh-huh. Beer’s not bad here. Lot of malt.”

“Quite.” Piet pursed his lips and said carefully, “I wanted to inquire about a man named Matthew Bohles.”

“Yeah?”

“You knew him?”

“Some.”

“I came across some material on him in my investigations. On Earth we received only the scientific reports, you understand. The people behind the facts…that is another matter.”

“You been a scientist all your life?”

“Yes, of course. I conducted the original laboratory study of many of the outer-system artifacts. My isotopic analysis gave the first reliable dating of them. Also, my team discovered the inlaid circuits that allowed the artifacts to function whenever the sun struck them. I am Chairman of the Institute now, but I keep up my research. Lately I have been interested in certain mathematical properties of the artifacts. Aspects bearing on pure number theory.”

“You came out here to have a firsthand look?”

“Yes. Someone with the proper credentials had to lead. It was also useful in acquiring funding. My wife died two years ago, and I had few ties remaining. My life’s work is actually centered out here. All my research had been done secondhand, so to speak.”

“Uh-huh.” Manuel was drinking his big mug of beer steadily, trying to finish it off quickly without being obvious. “How do you live down there, in all those crowds?”

“Easier than you do here, in these extreme conditions.”

“They’re not so tough.”

“Life seems difficult for some. For Bohles, I would say it was.”

Manuel took a long pull of beer and said nothing.

“You are waiting to get approval of the Settlement for the inheritance of your father’s estate, correct?”

“
Sí
.”

“Why should you get anything at all?”

“My father wanted us to.”

“This dynasty-forming—it is not allowed on Earth.”

“Dynasty! Spare equipment, tools, some shares in the machine shop where he worked part-time, the apartment—”

“Private wealth in the long run will—”

“You don’t hand down anything, how you going to remember who the hell you
are
?”

Piet raised his hands, palms out. “I assure you, I meant no offense. Truly. Ah, would you like more of this beer?”

Manuel shook his head.

Piet said carefully, “I noted in my researches that Matthew Bohles had no estate.”

“He never bought into the Settlement.”

“So he did not share in the profits? Inexcusable.”

“His choice, Dr. Arnold.”

“Surely no one chooses to die in poverty.”

“Old Matt just spent his money different.”

“On what?”

“I don’t know. Spent time out on the ice by himself a lot. Contract hunting for muties, I guess.”

“That paid adequately?”

“He never poormouthed.”

“Never protested?”

“Wasn’t his way.” Manuel noticed that these few days in Sidon had restored to his sentences a cagey slowness, a stubborn calm which withdraws before the rapid rhythms of the city.

“You did not exclude him from your, your hunts. Even though he was not of your class.”

“Never thought of it.”

“Perhaps his age? A sort of elder of the tribe? At any rate, there are a few details in the reports from the early sightings of the Aleph, suggestions that Bohles was there. I gather you relied on his knowledge?”

“Sure.”

“Did he tell you of his past?”

“He taught me things, that’s all. Look—”

“I found records of him from long ago—more than a century old. He grew up on one of the first Jovian orbiting stations—did you know that? After that, few traces. I surmise he came here. I must say you keep rather poor records in the Settlements.”

“We’re not clerks.”

“Still, the evidence suggests that Bohles knew a great deal. Nothing quantifiable, nothing of direct scientific use, but perhaps if we could pinpoint—”

“Look, I got to go. Thanks for the beer.”

“I see. You Settlement men drink quickly.”

“Part of the diet.”

“Yes, the cold requires many calories in your intake.”

“No, we just enjoy it.” Manuel grinned nervously.

“Matthew Bohles was an interesting person. Perhaps sometime I can ask you further about him.”

“Lots of people knew him.”

“Fewer than you might imagine. Or so they say.”

“Plenty here in Sidon.”

“I won’t be in Sidon. We are working out in the field. I’m going back there today.”

“Good luck, then. I’ll be back at Hiruko in a few days. Got a woman waiting for me,” he said with hollow heartiness. He murmured goodbye quickly, awkwardly, and left the bar.

The rain was ebbing into drizzle outside. It had drained the clouds so that now no haze collected in the crown. Following the winding avenue back to the Council building, he noticed a large mottled brown animal shuffling along, patiently sweeping the slick street. As Manuel watched, the bearlike thing upended a garbage can into a cart it pulled. It had a stolid, earnest drive to it, oblivious of the passersby. It sniffed noisily, as though it had a perpetual head cold.
Looks like Petrovich’s old idea,
Manuel thought.
Wonder if it still knocks people out of its way. No, they’ve probably worked the bugs out of it by now.
He went on.

Beneath the wrought-iron bulk of the Council building the attendant sat on a stool, reading a manifesto. As Manuel approached she held up a crimson admittance pass.

“You’re lucky. The Schlickeiser family finally gave in. Got a unanimous vote two minutes ago. You can go on in.”

Manuel took the pass and pushed open the massive door. He swallowed, still tasting the dark beer, and walked into the strong, enameled light of the Council chamber, already feeling the weight of the past beginning to lift from him as he prepared to end in a formal way the echoes of his father.

M
ANUEL KNOCKED ON
Major Sánchez’s door. He heard slow bootsteps coming and then the familiar bronzed face appeared, lighting up when the Major saw who was there. The Major slapped Manuel on the back and offered him a drink, and they talked the slightly loud, boisterous way men do when they are not totally at ease with each other but know they should be.

They had another drink of the concentrated brown whiskey that made the breath warm and burned the back of the throat. The Major took him away from the living area, after Manuel had paid his respects to the women and answered the usual questions and eaten something although he wasn’t hungry, and nodded and smiled. The two of them went back into the Major’s own office—the big, airy, picture-lined space Manuel remembered playing on the floor of when he was a small boy. His father, out for a walk with him in the terraces, had often stopped by for a talk on the long summer afternoons and, of course, for some of the whiskey. Beyond the curtained windows, he knew, lay a railed balcony overlooking O’Hara Square; he had discovered the fact while crawling back there one day, when he was scarcely able to walk. Why the Major kept the curtains drawn he never knew. This time he asked. The Major shrugged.

“I like to look at the pictures there”—he gestured, mouth twisted into a grin—“and the people outside, always at my back, it disturbs my concentration.” Then he gave a little laugh. “Crowds. You see them all day. Seems there should be a place where you don’t have to.”

Manuel nodded. The Major asked the questions he had expected about how his mother was doing and what he planned, and Manuel got through them all right. Then he said, “I’ve been going over my father’s accounts.”

“Good. Try to keep the Settlement from getting it all.”

“Not much I can do about that. They get half of the property, my mother the other half. She gets to live in the ’partment.”

“How they expect a man to feel he’s done anything when at the end they snatch it all away from his widow…” The Major’s face clouded, and his eyes glinted.

“Can’t allow private property to accumulate,” Manuel said mechanically. “You should see what they take in Hiruko. And back Earthside—”

“I know, it’s incredible. We had some of those passed through last week, you know. Earthers. Funny-dressed.”

Manuel nodded again. “They came out with me from Hiruko.”

“They talk to you any?”

“Some.”

“About the Aleph?”

“Not much.”

“They sure talked a lot
about
you while they were here.”

Manuel blinked. “They did?”

“I heard them.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I suppose they want testimony from everybody who was there.”

“They come to see you?”

“No.”

“Who’d they talk to, then?”

“Some of the guys who were there. Petrovich, mostly. With the Colonel and Old Matt gone, he knows more than the rest of us. I was way back in the rear most of the time, y’know.”

“You know plenty.”

Major Sánchez smiled. “Well, I must admit I wasn’t home a few times when they called.”

“Ha! I’d do the same.”

They drank some more. “I talked to one of them on the train,” Manuel said. “They think we’re a bunch of uncivilized capitalists.”

“
Mierda.
Earthers, so pious about their social justice. Wouldn’t know a syndicalist if they saw one.”

“Thought we were capitalists.”

The Major shrugged. “
Sí.
We have a few regs, like not letting inheritance build up—not that I think it should apply to your father, y’understand. But the Earthers would rather think we’re throwbacks than admit somebody doesn’t love their bureaucracy. No”—he slapped his knee—“we’re small-scale anarchists, like the old Spanish syndicalists of Barcelona.”

Manuel didn’t know where Barcelona was, or even if it was a city or a country. All these old names and places, cultures exploded out from old Earth—they confused him. Pieces of a continent separated by mere hundreds of kilometers were projected out into the solar system, enlarged into whole worlds.

“You should come to the
bourse du travail,
Manuel. You’re old enough. The syndicate, it needs—”

“Yeah, maybe after things settle down…”

The Major nodded. He let it go. He had known Manuel long enough to see what was possible with him and what was not. They talked for a while and gradually the older man’s face grew somber. After a pause he said, “I guess you heard they’ve been working on the carcass.”

“An Earther told me. Who’s been doing it?”

“A team out of Hiruko. They hired some local people, too.”

“Huh. Who?”

“Petrovich, for one.”

“Goddamn. What’s he do for them?”

“Works out at the site. He’s a pretty fair engineer.”

“Huh. You and him arrange any more pruning trips?”

The Major sighed. Manuel noticed that Sánchez was getting a little plump in the middle. The man he was used to seeing in stained overalls or a pressure suit, unshaven, two weeks from his last bath, was wearing a handsome broadcloth shirt woven in Hiruko, and pants with a crease. “No. Not really. We had a few, after you left, sure. But we all got pretty busy then. It’s been a tough go around here, what with the McKenzies revving up.”

“I was looking over the accounts my father kept on the prunings. Big file on it.”

“
Sí.
He ran them all. Don’t know what the communality will do without that man, putting himself out the way he did for ever’body.”

“He kept good books, too. I checked them over. Did you know the Settlement lost money on every pruning?”

“It did?”

“Every year. Hiruko paid us some, sure. But by the time it worked through all the off-shift time for the men, and the supplies, the Settlement lost.”

“Well, I’ll be.”

“Sure you didn’t know?”

The Major paused. “Well… I might have suspected, sometimes. It took a lot of time.”

“Why do you suppose he did it, then?”

Major Sánchez leaned forward in his chair. “I figure, he thought we needed it.”

“Needed what?”

“The going out. Out there. You can’t just sit in a hole in the ground all your life. Or under a dome.”

“That was all?”

“No. No, it was the thing itself. It was…” The Major rubbed his jaw, distracted, staring off into space. “So the Colonel ran it at a loss all that time, eh, over forty years? And the Settlement never caught on, eh? Damn!”—he slapped, his knee, face suddenly bright—“I like that!”

They had taken several more tumblerfuls of the dark brown whiskey when Madam Sánchez came in and whispered, embarrassed, in the Major’s ear. Her dress crinkled as she bent over the big chair the Major filled. He muttered something to her, frowning. He gazed up at the pictures on his wall, big glossy ones of domes half-completed and crowds of workers and, nearer the heavy metal desk, lonely vistas of ice and rock framing the pink and white bands of Jupiter.

“It’s Petrovich.”

“Come to visit?”

“Not me. You. He found out from your mother where you were.”

Manuel was puzzled. He took another sip of the smoldering brown liquid and suddenly Petrovich was there, bigger than Manuel remembered him, his burly chest well defined by the well-fitting jump suit he wore. He was boisterous and beaming and more outgoing than Manuel remembered him. He laughed and clapped Major Sánchez on the shoulder.

“So I’ve tracked you down!” he cried, seizing Manuel’s hand and shaking it powerfully. “I was to the funeral, of course, but I hoped to be seeing you before you return.”

“Ah, sure. I’ve been busy.” Manuel noticed that Petrovich’s voice was deeper, more assured, and he did not have the same rough accent as before.

Petrovich became solemn. “I know. A terrible thing, to have to do all these business things so soon. But tell me, what have you been doing off at Hiruko? We hear reports, your mother says a few things…” He shrugged.