Happiness: A Planet (13 page)

Again Tulla comfortingly hugged her.

During the night, lonely and friendless, Petre had placed a high value on friendship, had looked back with regret on those many friendships that she had so wilfully abandoned. Friendships that at the time had seemed as if they’d last forever; two years later and she couldn’t remember their names. Now she was within the embrace of a friend. And this friend’s name, she vowed, she would not forget.

Petre this time more quickly suppressed her tears. They sat either side of the dining table.

“What do you think could have happened to him?” Petre asked Tulla, “Why would he do this to me?”

“Didn’t the Inspector tell you?” Tulla regarded her carefully, “Munred’s dead.”

“Yes. He said as much. Do you believe it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Tulla rubbed a distracted hand through her ragged hair, reached a conclusion, “Do you know Happiness’s moon has gone missing?”

“The Inspector said. What’s that to do with it?”

“That’s why I went out to Ben. To discover what caused that moon to disappear. They have a better science library there. Took me longer than I expected. Do you know their Welfare and Leisure Director has built up one of the best science libraries outside the city? She’s justifiably proud of it. Trouble is she’s also jealous of anyone else using it. And all the data I wanted turned out to be classified. For every file I wanted I had to go through the rigmarole of getting her permission. And then she hung about so I couldn’t take copies. Irony is that I’ve got a higher security clearance than she has. And that galled her. Anyway, after a couple of days of this, I found out what time she went home and an hour after she went home I called her and asked for clearance of a file. Back she came to give it me. Soon as she got home again I called her for clearance of another file. She soon got fed up with that. Come the end she asked me for a list of all the classified files I wanted and cleared the lot in one go. Then I stayed up nights taking copies.” She patted the case on the table, “Honestly these Service types’ obsession with security.” Tulla was about to say more, but remembered that she had levelled a similar criticism at Munred the last time she had seen him; and Munred was now dead.

Petre didn’t notice Tulla’s hesitation. She was used to Tulla poking fun at the many sacred cows of Service: one of the reasons she enjoyed Tulla’s company — Tulla blew some of the stuffiness out of her life. Petre indicated the bag and the case on the table,

“So what did you find on Ben that makes you so certain that Munred is..?”

“I’m not absolutely sure yet. More work needs to be done. Need time to prepare my thesis if you like. And you mustn’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Petre asked impatiently.

“I’m ninety nine percent certain,” Tulla said, “that there are Nautili down there.”

Petre greeted this momentous news first with blank incomprehension, then with head-shaking incredulity,

“Not this close in.”

“Their boundaries aren’t the same as ours,” Tulla edged closer to the table, eager to submit her reasonings. Having anticipated such scepticism she was glad of this private opportunity to rehearse her arguments. “Believe me,” she said, “I thought it was just coincidence when my research first started turning them up. But it fits their every known pattern of behaviour.”

“And Munred’s been killed by them?”

“Looks like it.” Tulla adopted a saddened expression, but her excitement broke through it, “You
see the Nautili isolate any planet they’re about to colonise. According to the police reports, five ships from the planet, maybe six, were lost before Munred went there.”

“How come the police ship got back safely?”

“That’s the one percent I’m not sure about.”

“Did Munred know they were there?”

“Shouldn’t think so. I’m going to have a job persuading his replacement of it. That’s why...”

“You mean you haven’t told them yet?” The horror was apparent on Petre’s tear-sticky face.

“No.”

“But someone else could get killed.”

Tulla saw that Petre was about to hold her responsible for Munred’s death.

“Time I’d worked out the connection,” Tulla said, “I wouldn’t have got back in time to stop Munred going. And the Inspector’s already re-routed all ships bound for Happiness. For the moment there’s nothing else to do. And,” she said kindly as to a child, “at the moment I doubt that anyone would believe me.”

“I believe you,” Petre reached over and took Tulla’s thick-knuckled red hand.

“You know me. You know that Munred’s gone,” Tulla smiled on her. “I’m afraid others would just laugh at the notion. Or it would start a panic. I have to be sure.”

Tulla stroked Petre’s hand. Petre withdrew her hand to worry at a braid,

“They should be told.”

“Can you imagine Nero Porsnin listening to me? You know what they’re like. I’ll have to have hard and fast evidence. And that’s why,” she reached for her bag and case, “I’m sorry Petre, but I’ve got to go now.”

“Go? “ Petre looked at her with frightened eyes, all other considerations cast aside, “Now? Where? Back to Ben?”

“No, I’m going out to one of the platforms near Happiness. If I can’t prove what’s happened to the moon, which professionally is what interests me most; if I can’t satisfactorily explain what’s happened to that, no-one will believe anything else I have to say.”

“Be careful Tulla.”

“The platforms are plenty far enough away to be safe. Don’t worry about me. Now,” she opened her bag, “here’s the spare key to my apartment. You can stay there as long as needs must. They can’t force you to move off this station Petre.”

Petre took the key and, for that kindness, again wept. With more hugs they parted at the door.

No sooner had Tulla left than a motor reaction set Petre wandering from room to room throughout the apartment. She came to finally in the bedroom.

Dazedly wondering what had brought her into the bedroom, realising that there was no specific reason for her being there, she lowered herself wearily onto the edge of the bed. Thus, recovering from her shock, her mind took the first rational steps along the tortured path of the bereaved.

“No more Munred,” she told herself, turned it about, “Munred’s no more.”

That reality though, despite the Inspector, despite Tulla, was difficult to accept. She had only their word for it, had seen nothing herself. Nothing, except for Munred’s continuing and otherwise inexplicable absence, had physically happened to her to make her able to accept it.

“He is dead,” she told herself. “Nautili killed him.”

She tried to imagine Munred in his dying moment. All that came to her mind, though, were old film images, men clutching their chests and keeling over. She could not conceive of her suave Munred dying like that. Munred was too substantial.

“If I knew how I could I accept it,” she complained to the ceiling. But that was not true: she did accept his death.

Yesterday, before Tulla’s visit, when she had suspected that Munred may have deserted her, she had known the anger of the betrayed. That anger was missing today. Yesterday she had dreamt alternately of revenge or reconciliation. Neither this day figured in her thoughts. Because, in her acceptance of his death, Munred had removed himself from the possibilities of her future. And it is that death of a future, of a thousand possible futures, that we grieve for. All those maybe plans we make with and for someone; their death deprives us of every single one.

Dreams of the future had shaped Petre’s whole life. Those dreams for the last nine years had been embodied in Munred Damporr. With Munred gone the purposelessness, the hopelessness of her life was brought home to her. For the second time in her life, as when she had been an unsuccessful adolescent gymnast, she had no foreseeable future. As before, her present was suddenly shapeless, a void wherein she floated without substance, without reason. To regain an idea of herself she tried to think instead of the past; but she was unable even to recall her last words to Munred, his to her. Hopeless.

All grief is self-pity. Pity for us left here alive. And when two lives were as joined, were as interdependent as Munred and Petre’s, the loss truly is as of a limb. And no-one feels sorry for the arm or the leg that is missing, but for the living flesh that remains. Petre remained, feeling sorry for herself.

That is not to say that she did not also feel sorry for Munred. She had been genuinely fond of him. Friendship often overtakes the original cynical motives for beginning a liaison; and Petre had lost a friend and ally. Self-pity again.

She now had no foreseeable future save an anonymous station somewhere. That day, lying on the bed, she could conceive of no stratagem whereby she might now reach the city. Or even if she now wanted to go there. Yet she had had that dream for so long.... Though, even with Munred alive, the closer she had come to the city the more improbable her arriving there had seemed. Indeed the imminent fulfilment of that dream had actually frightened her: what would she do without her dream, without that to aim for? In achieving her dream she would have lost it.

For the last nine years every dream she’d had of the city had seen her there with Munred. Now she could not have the baby she had promised herself. In her dream that baby had been Munred’s and Munred’s alone. So for the loss of Munred, for the loss of her unborn and unconceived baby, she grieved dry-eyed the day long.

Unaware that she did so Petre moved from the bedroom to the kitchen. There, answering her body’s needs, she made herself a cup of coffee. She couldn’t bring herself to eat. Come that evening she was sitting at the living room table, empty coffee cup before her, when the doorbell rang, jangling her out of her stupor.

Petre rushed to the apartment door hoping to find Tulla there, that something unexpected had brought her back to XE2. In the eager hope also that it might be Munred, that it had all been a mistake, a misunderstanding, that he had been delayed. While telling herself at the same time that Munred wouldn’t have rung the bell, that he would have used his key.

Nevertheless she didn’t pause to switch on the viewscreen, but immediately flung open the door. To find standing there a small neat man with black shining hair and thin black eyebrows. He was vaguely familiar. Petre had seen him on other stations besides XE2. A trader, she thought.

*  *  *  *  *

At exactly the same time that Petre stood, doubly disappointed, staring at this small neat man Sergeant Alger Deaver and Constable Drin Ligure, having tested the various flight paths from Happiness, were preparing to leave Happiness for XE2.

Unlike this free-for-all cosmopolitan city, on the stations people tend to keep to their own; Service personnel and the business community rarely mix. One could go even further and say that station Service personnel and the local business community hold a mutual disregard verging on open antipathy for one another. Traders see the Service as nothing more than an unsophisticated and unnecessary hindrance to their legitimate transactions; while Service personnel regard all traders as being, if not downright dishonest, then as slick operators of very questionable practises.

“Yes?” Petre said to the stranger at her door.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the man gave a slight bow, “But I wanted to reach you before you were banished to obscurity.”

Over the years Petre had come to hold Service views, had by reflex come to look to Munred for approval. By the subtlest of expressions she knew of what Munred disapproved, by the tone of his greeting whom to befriend and whom to keep at a distance. So long had she known Munred, so long had her opinions been shaped by his,  that even in his absence all she had to do was to imagine him at her side to know how to comport herself. A dead Munred, however, could not be so easily conjured to her side; and this small compact man was so beyond her own experience that she was at a loss now how to react.

Seeing the case in his hand Petre suspected that he might be trying to sell her something.

“Why would you want to reach me?” she asked him.

“I was hoping that we might be able to help one another.” He looked up and down the corridor, “May I come in?”

Petre’s first impulse was to refuse. When Munred was away she didn’t allow any man into her apartment, no matter how seemingly innocuous the man. Station gossip would make too much of it; and trust between couples is based on appearances of, not avowals of, innocence.

But Munred was no more; and, without the barrier of the viewscreen between them, she could not so easily dismiss this stranger. Standing irresolute before him she could neither claim to be undressed, nor unprepared, nor busy. And he did not look the boorish type to come and try to collect on vaguely implicit invitations.

“Please do,” Petre stepped aside.

With another slight bow the man walked past her into the living room. Closing the door Petre followed him, indicated the chair where Munred had sat reading the newspaper. Today’s newspaper awaited Munred on the lobby table.

The man had been watching Petre move with a small confident smile. Petre began to be afraid. However the man obediently set his case on the floor and sat, his feet and knees precisely together, hands on his knees.