Cosmonaut Keep (30 page)

"I do," Gregor said. "Or I bloody should -- I've seen their portraits often enough. Cairns, Lemieux, Volkov, Telesnikov, Driver ... "

A hairy gigant lurched around a corner and up the street, almost blocking it as he swayed back and forth, singing in a basso profundo whose sweetness made her shiver, drunk though he was. They pressed their backs to a wall, ducked under his arm as he passed.

"But will they still look the same?"

Gregor glanced at her sidelong. "So the story goes."

At the foot of the street they turned left, past the cable-car terminus and on to the main drag, the street which ran all the way around the island and debouched to the causeway at the shoreward end. Built along a thirty-meter-wide shelf, it sometimes passed behind the pillars of elegant esplanades, sometimes dived behind outcrops of rock, sometimes overhung the sea. Every couple of hundred meters a jetty fingered out from it, on stilts or stones.

Much of the traffic consisted of carts laden with meat or fish, being hauled toward the railhead by petrol-engined tractors or by massive, plodding quadrupeds. Their drivers, and the pedestrians who crowded the sidewalks, were a roughly equal distribution of saurs and the three most widespread hominid species: humans, gigants, and pithkies. Elizabeth had seen few members of the last two before, and it was hard at first not to stare. The gigants stood about three meters tall, naked but for their shaggy reddish body hair and their belts of tools and weapons. The pithkies, slim and lithe at a meter and a half, wore human styles of clothing over the silver or golden fur that covered all but their sharp faces.

"I thought the pithkies were kind of stockier than that," she remarked in an undertone to Gregor. "All the ones I've seen before were, you know, heavily muscled."

"That's because they were all
miners,"
he said. "But mining's just as unnatural to them as it is to us."

"So how come it's their specialty, huh?"

"Maybe the saurs gave them the mineral rights," he said. "Or the gods did." His glance indicated the god, clearly visible in the early evening sky. "Who knows?"

"But one day we'll find out?"

He turned a warm smile on her.

"Yes!"

His arm moved up and sideways, as though to fling around her shoulders; fell back. Awkwardly breaking stride, he fished in his pocket for Salasso's list, quite unnecessarily she thought; she and he both knew at least the first few names by heart.

"There it is," he said, pointing at a tavern sign ten meters away. "The Headless Chickadino."

"Bad
taste," she said.

"No, no," he said. "Tastes like chicken."

Her yelp and skelp followed him through the door.

The tavern was high-ceilinged, bright and airy, with tall windows, seafaring scenes in their stained glass. Perhaps it once had been a house of philosophy, and later desecularized. The landlord was a gigant, the barmaids pithkies, the crowd mostly human and taking a break. For many people work here went on through the evening; at this time of year, through the night.

"What do you want to drink?" Gregor asked.

"Maybe guava juice, for now."

"Aye, I guess so," he grudgingly allowed.

They sat on stools at the bar, sipping the iced drinks and chatting idly as Gregor eyed the crowd. Most of them were local: sun-darkened men in workclothes, still grubby from cart or quay; a few sailors from Kyohvic, identifiable by their lighter skin and softer accents -- one or two of them nodded to him. He presumed they recognized him no more than he did them.

But there was one man, sitting by the window talking to some old seamen or dockworkers, who did look familiar. Gregor couldn't place him at all. Red-haired, pale and freckled like a northerner, very relaxed. Very openhanded -- after a few minutes Gregor saw him wave and nod for another round, and pay for a tray laden with tall and short glasses.

"What are you doing?" Elizabeth asked. "Ogling pithkies?"

"They do look a bit sexy," Gregor admitted, grinning. "Foxy ladies ... "

Elizabeth kicked his shin, not very hard.

"Don't look around," said Gregor, stoically ignoring the sharp pain. "Count to thirty in your head and look in the bar mirror at the young bloke with the old men at the window."

When she turned to the mirror she rather cleverly faced straight ahead, as though at herself, flicking at a stray strand of hair.

"I've seen him before," Elizabeth said, turning back.

"Me too, but where?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "Some guy we see every day without noticing -- a docker, someone at the university ... "

Gregor was shaking his head. "Nah, I'd remember that. We must have both seen him once -- "

"The party!" Elizabeth said. "At the castle. Remember?"

Gregor did remember him, in a very similar pose but splendidly dressed, listening to some Kyohvic merchants.

"Oh, right. Yeah, that's it. He's a trader. So much for that mystery." He looked at her, puzzled. "You were at the party after all?"

As soon as he'd said it, he realized he shouldn't have. He could all too clearly imagine how the party had gone for Elizabeth. He also realized that he couldn't let Elizabeth know that he did realize, because she didn't know that he knew.

She looked away, her cheek reddening, sharp and sudden as though slapped. Then she looked back at him with a forced cheerful smile that raked his heart.

"Yes, I was!" she said. "I guess we just missed each other in the crowd. I doubt you'd have noticed me anyway -- that was where you met Lydia, wasn't it?"

"Yes," he said. He drained his glass and stood up.

"Time to wander on? And we could get something to eat at the next one if the name's anything to go by."

"The Hot Squid? Yeah, okay, I'm starving."

Out on the street the crowd had thickened. The next place was a few tens of meters on, its sign a lurid scene of cephalopodan coupling, the artist's interpretation of the relevant anatomy owing nothing to marine biology. It was, however, genuinely a bar and grill, much smokier and noisier than the Chick. And larger, with more than one room, impossible to take in from a single vantage.

Stuffed swordfish and sea reptiles hung among the lamps on low rafters. Seafood sizzled on a broad hotplate; mussels, squids, scallops, and fillets of fish were flipped and turned, doused with sauce and sprinkled with herbs in seconds or minutes by a gigant whose long, strong arms made him seem preadapted to the job. Very little grease was involved in the cooking, so the air was fragrant rather than heavy -- the smoke came from hemp, not burnt oil, and the whole combination made Gregor's mouth water and belly ache with hunger. Pithkie waiters and waitresses yelled orders in rapid contralto Trade Latin or English; the short-order cook rumbled his responses and grumbles back. In a raised alcove at the back the saur manager or owner, clad improbably in a black business-suit and white shirt, clattered and fretted over a calculator, looking as though he'd be tearing his hair if he'd had any. The crowd was likewise mixed, saurs and hominidae rubbing shoulders, drinking and talking loudly, some half listening to a pithkie soprano at a microphone, her silver satin shift flowing over her silvery fur, her Latin torch-song keening above the babble.

"Bet
she
incites a few cases of hopeless love," Elizabeth said, with a kind of vehement flippancy. Gregor, swinging into a seat at a small table covered with sticky plastic, chose to take her literally.

"Gods, do you really think -- " He shook his head with an exaggerated shudder.

"It's no crazier than what people really get besotted with," said Elizabeth, facing him boldly, then turning to wave at a waitress.

"Think we can risk a beer or two with this?" asked Gregor.

"Wouldn't dream of drinking anything else."

"How about white wine?"

She brightened. "Yes, thanks. A small one."

There was a moment of awkward silence after they'd placed their orders. The waitress returned with a brace of beer bottles.

"Do you think we have much of a chance?" Elizabeth asked. "Of finding them."

Gregor scratched at his beer bottle's damp label, then stopped as though catching himself doing something obsessive.

"Salasso seems very confident, and I think -- "

"What?"

"He's not just blundered into this. Our squid research, for example. I'll have to check through the university's admin when we get back, but I suspect he had something to do with initiating the project in the first place. And he's a bit odd, for a saur."

Elizabeth laughed. "They're all odd."

"Yes, but he's a lot more open to humans than most. Maybe the ones on the ships, and old Tharovar in the castle, are as friendly. But not many."

"Hmm," said Elizabeth. "He seemed to know a lot about the First Crew, how they went to the saurs to help them hide."

"Maybe he was there at the time," said Gregor. "Why not?"

The waitress arrived with a tray of food and a bottle of wine. Elizabeth put down her half-finished beer as the glasses were filled.

"Speculation," she said. "Let's eat."

They ate and drank for a while, too hungry to talk much.

"Why," Elizabeth asked, "did the old crew go off to live incognito in the first place?"

"I don't know. My guess is that they didn't want to hang around and become a focus of resentment or undue respect. Not much fun being ageless if everybody envies or worships you."

"Or if you have to watch your children growing old and dying ... but why couldn't they have used whatever it is they had on the rest of us?"

"Perhaps they didn't have the technology to reproduce it for anyone else."

"They could have left us some lines of research!"

Gregor shrugged. "Maybe they did. We're on the way to developing a worldwide biotech industry, eventually."

"Yes, eventually! And the saurs have one already! Why not get them to work on it?"

"Ah," said Gregor. "That's a different question: What the saurs are and are not willing to do for us, and share with us. I'm sure if the saurs wanted to, they could have given us everything they have, from a cure for aging -- if they have it -- to gravity skiffs. But they don't."

"It might have something to do with what Salasso said; that they don't want to merge our societies."

Speculation seemed fruitless, and Gregor had no wish to take the conversation further in that direction, well aware that he as much as Elizabeth was evading what they really wanted to talk about.

"Finished?"

"Yes." Elizabeth sighed contentedly and wiped her lips. "Let's circulate."

They stood up.

"Together, or separately?" she asked.

"Oh, together," Gregor said. "People are more likely to talk to us that way."

Elizabeth smiled at him defiantly. "We could pretend we're a couple."

"I'm sure everyone will assume we are anyway."

They had reached the third room in the place, and talked to a few men off the boats about their idea for scientific expeditions, without attracting much interest.

"It's like fishing without getting a nibble," Gregor was grumbling, when somebody slapped his back.

"Hi, Matt, what are you up to?"

Gregor turned to see a tall man in seaman's garb, a grin slowly fading from his ruddy face.

"Sorry, mate," the man said. "Mistook you for someone else." He frowned, shook his head, smiled apologetically and walked off through the crowd to the next bar counter.

Elizabeth caught Gregor's arm. "Let's ask him!"

Gregor shook his head. "Wait a minute. Don't want to warn them off."

He took a minute or two to finish his half-pint, and raised the empty glass to Elizabeth.

"Same again please?"

"Okay."

"Back in a tick." She turned back to order the round, her mouth narrowing.

Gregor edged his way between swaying bodies and balanced, brimming drinks, and walked blinking into the brighter light and thicker smoke of the next lounge. The man who'd accosted him was back at a table with some pals, evidently fellow seamen, with three young women wedged in between them. All were talking loudly, and being listened to by the trader Gregor had recognized earlier.

It wasn't that recognition, however, which made Gregor stop and turn away to lean his forearms on the bar and gaze into the mirror under the thin pretense of eyeing the inverted bottles of spirits racked above it. He'd recognized one of the seamen.

Unless he was making the same mistake as the back-slapping chap had done, he was looking sidelong at the mirrored image of the crewman and Cosmonaut Grigory Volkov. The broad features might be a family resemblance, but the blond buzz-cut seemed a little too distinctive for that. The man's face had acquired a few creases and many faint scars, but otherwise was just as it appeared in the paintings, and in photographs in old books.

Gregor felt as though he needed a stiff drink from one of those racked bottles. His knees were rubbery. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself and returned to Elizabeth. She regarded him quizzically, a little sourly, and shoved the half-pint along to him as he sat up beside her.

"Found one," he said. "One of the crew."

"Seems to have shaken you up a bit."

"Yes." He put down the glass, more carefully, and smooched a splash of beer from the back of his hand. "Grigory Volkov. I was named after him. Famous cosmonaut in his own right. There were
books
written about him."

"Never heard of him, myself."

"Ah, well." Gregor smiled. "Being the first man on Venus probably didn't seem such a big deal after he got here. Anyway, there he is, talking to the trader we saw earlier."

"Any bright ideas about what to do next?"

"No. I can't think of a way to approach him while pretending not to recognize him."

"Well, I can! Come on."

She picked up her drink and slid off the stool. Gregor decided that he might as well take his turn at following. Again the drinkers' walk, threaded with subtle moves and etiquette, like an elaborate dance. As soon as Elizabeth was in fair view of their targets' table, she waved with her free hand and called out a bright hello. Gregor sidled and dodged after her, as all the people at the table turned to look at them.