Seed of Stars (6 page)

"I know! Let's do it together. You said it was easy. What's first?"

The warmth of her love melted his fear, and he realized that he could not do less than measure up to her determination. He took up the instrument. "The freezer," he explained. "It cleans and anesthetizes, so that you won't feel the electric cutter. Are you sure you want to watch?"

And she laughed at the first touch of the freezer, and said that it tickled.

Soon the capsule was out, emptied of its estrogen solution and put back in place. When the neat incision was covered by a fast-drying plastiflesh spray he put away his instruments, and washed his hands again from habit.

Turning back to Mia he saw that she had removed her zipsuit and was lying on the bed, her exquisite, golden body completely naked.

"Now, Piet, love!" she whispered. "This time for real, with no barrier between your seed and mine."

It was not true, of course. The estrogens would remain in her bloodstream for several days until eliminated by the natural processes. But symbolically, at least, it was true.

Eager, thrilling to the promise of new-found experience, he removed his own clothes and slid into her waiting arms. Arriving there, he lay quite still, momentarily frozen by the shock of something that had never happened to him in his life before. He was utterly and completely impotent.

Although her need must have been great, Mia made absolutely nothing of his failure. She was gentle with him, holding him close, suckling him at her breast, soothing him until he slept.

And when he awoke he was a man again, and she received him with joy.

In the sickbay, Piet Huygens had just finished sterilizing the raw and bleeding arm of a huge brown crewman from Fiji who had been involved in a minor accident in number six storage hold. The crewman sat there, blinking with mild brown eyes and not feeling a thing, his mind more occupied with his inevitable pending appearance before Commander Bruce, and the tongue-lashing he would get for carelessness, than with his wound. Piet picked up the stitcher, set it for stroke, tension and width, and ran it up the numbed gash. Then, after the stitcher had tied itself off, he sealed the wound with a spray of plastiflesh.

Caiola came in with a small phone and plugged it in near Piet. "Message for you, sir—from bridge control."

Piet dismissed the crewman and moved to the phone, speaking his name.

"Huygens? This is Lieutenant Commander Lindstrom. Lieutenant Hoffman has cut the palm of her hand. I sent her off to her cabin. Could you attend, please?"

With a tight feeling in his stomach, Piet answered courteously. "Yes, ma'am."

Lindstrom had broken contact before he realized that he hadn't had the sense to ask .which cabin. So Lindstrom must know that he knew which cabin. So...

Grabbing his kit from a rack, he called to tell Caiola where he was going, and went out to the elevator. Arriving at the cabin door he hesitated for a moment before tapping on it. This was a place he had not been for almost two months, and inside ...

He knocked on the door, and heard her call him to come in.

She was seated on her bed, smoking one of the thin cigars she used in imitation of Lieutenant Commander Lindstrom. She wore an off-duty zipsuit and there was a clumsy plastiflesh patch on the palm of her right hand.

"Hello, Piet." Her voice was level and controlled, and he found himself thinking that she was good-look-ing, that she had a body which was both enjoyable and capable of enjoyment, and that life had been simpler when...

"Hello," he said. "Sorry to hear you hurt yourself." He sat down with his kit on his knee. "Let's have a look at it."

A spray of solvent removed the plastiflesh quickly. He probed gently at the open wound, and found that it was more of a scratch than a cut. "You must have told the commander that this was deep," he said, looking at her curiously.

"Yes." She spoke softly. "I did tell her that."

"Why? To waste the firm's time? No need to have come off duty . . ." He glanced at her zip suit. "And certainly no need to have got undressed."

"Yes! There was a need." she said sharply. She put her free hand on his shoulder, and what he had half-suspected was now confirmed. "Piet—haven't you any feeling for me now?"

He rose, awkwardly. "Look, Lieutenant Hoffman, I am on duty, you know. I'll just see to the cut and—"

"Piet!" Her voice was harsh and urgent now. "Don't you understand what you've done to me? We had a good relationship, the best. And then, suddenly, it

stopped, because you didn't come to me any more. And now I find that I can't do without you. There's nobody who gives it to me the way you did . . . no one who anticipates, understands, waits and hurries, takes time and lingers, changes and repeats the way you did. Don't you understand? I feel awful—but awful!" A note of hysteria had crept into her voice, her pale-blue eyes were staring widely. "Piet, for God's sake! Give me fifteen minutes of your time, now, now!"

Her hand wrenched at the fastenings and her zipsuit fell to the floor.

He regarded her nakedness calmly. "Well, if you've been round all the male officers and there's no phallus to suit you, you'd better start on the crew."

For a moment her pale body seemed frozen with the cold shock of his words, then, with a choking noise wrenching at her throat, she lunged forward, slapping his face with the full force of her rage. "You bastard, you supercilious bastard! You—you do as I say—
now,
or I'll let Bruce know that you've been crossing ranks and taking that damned little Japanese monkey into your bunk. Now—now, damn you! Do as I say!"

The blow he gave her in return sent her spinning. He dropped his kit to give her another one, and she staggered in the opposite direction with the force of it. Moaning, she collapsed on the bed, the cold light of the fluorotubes glinting on her broad, mare's buttocks.

He said: "You open your trap, Hoffman, and I'll fix " you. I'll put in a malingering report on you, and back it up with a charge of attempted sexual assault on a medical officer in the performance of his duty. That will get you a course of anaphrodisiac pills that'll fix the bite in your crotch for the rest of the voyage. You maladjusted cow! You don't just need a man; you need what you're never going to get, what you could never appreciate, even if you had it—
love!"

He left, slamming the door behind him.

Back in sickbay, Caiola said: "Was it serious, sir?"

"No," he said, tightly. "Not at all."

Caiola regarded him curiously. "Still, best to be safe."

"Yes—safe. . . ." He turned away deliberately, to examine some plates of intestines of a GD crewman. "Looks like a minor replacement job here ..."

But he was looking past and through the prints, back into his own mind. Despite his successful bravado of a few moments before, he could see that in the triangle of Trudi, Mia and himself, it was he and Trudi who were really alike. Trudi is me, he thought, we are male/ female, two of a kind, manufactured like plug and socket, nut and bolt. But there's one difference. She is content to be that way. Me, I want to be really alive, like Mia. But can I make it?

The thought was depressing, only to be assuaged, if not cured, by Mia herself, and turns off-duty would not coincide for another sixty ship hours. Until then, there was only work.

"Get this man up here," he said harshly, to Caiola. "We'll begin the op in half an hour..."

"But..."

"What the hell, man! Let's do it—
now!"
he snarled.

Venturer Twelve
sped on towards Kepler III at a speed which would have rendered her invisible to human eyes, had there been anyone to observe. Lights were brightened for "day" and dimmed for "night." Water and waste were recycled, and recycled again. Men and women worked and watched, and cleaned and controlled. They slept and pretended, as Dockridge said, that the big dark was outside, while in reality it ate a little into the normality of everyone. And Maseba, De Witt and Huygens watched this corrosion, dispens

ing antidotes for fear, depression and hysteria, so that all crew members remained well-adjusted and cooperative ...

And some remembered the words of Kavanin, poet of man's impudent, star-flung adventure:

 Here we work close together, or perish

On new lands a lifetime from home;

 All other men's skills we must cherish,

All other men's hearts are our own.

Fresh vegetables from the Hydroponics section became more precious, each leaf a reminder that Earth still existed, beyond the unimaginable gulfs of space, each mouthful a blessed sacrament, a renewal of faith in the reality of home.

Lindstrom and Maseba had played fourteen games of chess, not counting three which spectacularly aborted because of Magnus' ability to see twelve moves ahead, and his insistence on telling them, while steadfastly refusing to participate directly in the game.

There had been one "full alarm stations," plus sealing drill, while engines took in new reactor material.

Magnus conferred with his assistant Ichiwara, and they planned the routine of the coming investigation, with special reference to Ichiwara's personal assessment of certain cultural aspects of Kepler in. Magnus, in his off-duty periods, achieved much satisfaction from his recreative activities, and gave some in return.

Medic Lieutenant Piet Huygens struck up something of a friendship with Ichiwara, and showed a considerable interest in the work of the latter, who willingly provided him with what amounted to a crash-course in Japanese philosophy and culture.

The op theater did three appendectomies, one leg fracture, replaced a crushed hand, had three agonizing shots at an optic nerve before they got it right; the Chinese crewwoman from the
Wangituru
was given a new intestine, and was tearfully overjoyed to find that with a slight skin colorant her damaged half-face could now match the other. Astonishingly, Warrant Officer Panos had to be circumcised, and he begged the medic staff to let no hint of it come to the ears of the crew. Bull that he was, he could not have stood the laughter, though he could not subdue a smile himself when Maseba said, drily: "Somebody's sure to notice, aren't they?"

Lieutenant Wiltrud Hoffman performed her duties silently and efficiently, with darkness creeping behind her eyes.

Lee Ching put an armaments storeman on a charge for losing a forty mil shell warhead, producing a wrangle with Lieutenant Quat, who claimed that this was his department, and Bruce cursed them both for pettiness, while docking the storeman a week's pay.

Far, still far ahead, lay Kepler III, where people waited in happiness, in hope, in apprehension—and some in sadness and fear—for the arrival of the ship that would decide their destiny.

And within her womb, Mia Mizuno's child grew, filling the girl with throbbing happiness—the living proof of her and Piet Huygen's love.

Give me my eyes and ears;

Let me probe deeply, let me see

The shape of passing worlds,

The smell of danger.

Let me plot the meteor shower

Progressing at barely measured speed

Across the universe,

Whence coming, where going. . . . You asking me?

Brother, its there, thaf's all I know.

Never come to ask

How long if's traveled to this moment,

Or how long, into the recesses of the future,

It will travel, travel, travel,

Or turn to drifting dust in some red atmosphere

That's death to us, but spawns up things

Unguessable to earthman's sanity.

Let me talk subetheric to ships; and out to planets

Where earthman seed, precariously sown

Takes watchful root...

Telecoms
: I. Kavanin

Shanon Kido, president of the Kepler III colony, was a round man, his sleekness carefully controlled despite his voracious appetite by lypolitic drugs to a point just below that of obesity. Seated comfortably behind his huge, uncluttered desk he stared with some severity at his Minister of Health. "It seems to me that you would be better employed in searching for an effective vaccine against this disease than in attempting to persuade me into taking such panic measures."

"Then you refuse?" It was unthinkable that one should lose face by an unseemly display of anger, but Kenji Sato was very close to doing so. There were times when Kido was so much the politician that it was almost impossible to communicate with him on the level of common humanity.