The Last Starship From Earth (21 page)

“Unless the planet swings in an ellipse!” Haldane said.

“Exactly, son. Perihelion, summer. Aphelion, winter.”

Suddenly a look of confusion spread over Hall’s face. “But why hasn’t earth caught on to what’s happening?”

“Maybe somebody back there likes us,” Haldane said. “Unless the spacemen have an agreement with Hell… But no. Our boy Charlie… yes! Maybe the captain’s afraid to report…

“Oh, no.” Hall objected. “Spacemen are pit bulls. They don’t know fear… More likely the schedules… Yes, that would be a possible…”

“Of course it’s possible. They never deviate. But the schedules weren’t set on Hell…”

Their train of thought was broken by Charlie, who walked over and distributed cards, saying, “Fill these out.”

So, Haldane thought, they were even to be categorized, classified, and assigned slots on Hell. He was growing resentful until he glanced down at the card. All that the slip requested was his name, profession, and the reason for his exile. He filled it out, scrawling across the bottom, “The Fairweather Syndrome.”

As he finished, he heard a tinkle coming from the outside, drawing closer. He turned to Helix. “That sounds like sleigh bells.”

The guide collected the cards, stacked them in a pile on the edge of the table, and went outside to turn on flood lights. Through the opened door, Haldane could see a line of sleighs approaching across the tarmac, drawn by horses that resembled shaggy-haired Clydesides. Then the guide closed the door.

When the door opened again, five men entered, wearing parkas and fur boots. They walked over and picked up the cards off the table, throwing back their parkas. One of the men turned and said, “Haldane and Helix!”

“Here,” Haldane said.

The man walked over. He was sixty, with steel-gray hair and thin, strong features. There was friendliness and intelligence in his eyes, and the hand he extended to Haldane was cordial. “I’m Francis Hargood. I’m detailed to take you into town, get you located, and begin your orientation program. This, I take it, is your wife, Helix.”

Haldane had never heard the term “wife,” but Helix said, “I am, but he hasn’t quite adjusted himself to the idea yet.”

Hargood’s hand to Helix was very cordial. “Then drop him, by all means. It would be criminal to restrict yourself to an audience of one… Haldane, accept your marriage. A happy marriage gives you a good base for operations, and nothing attracts the female as much as a wedding band. Acts as a challenge… Take the first sleigh by the door.”

He stood aside as Haldane followed Helix through the doorway. Outside, he said to Haldane, “To my knowledge, which is very skimpy, you’re the first mathematician we’ve had with the Fairweather Syndrome. You’ll be welcomed to Hell.”

Haldane helped Helix into the sleigh as Hargood went around and solicitously tucked the lap robe under her. Then he got in on her side and slapped the rump of the horse.

“Was the horse imported?” Haldane asked.

“No, home-grown. The flora and fauna of Hell are much like those of earth’s temperate zones.”

With a toss of its head and vapor wreathing from its nostrils, the horse moved forward, the runners on the sleigh squeaking over the crusted snow, harness bells jingling, heading toward an avenue of lights in the distance that had not been lighted when the plane landed.

The lights illuminated a broad highway cut through what appeared to be a pine forest. When they entered the avenue, the horse broke into a trot. With the crisp air splitting on his cheeks and Helix’ hand in his under the lap robe, he felt a beginning joy that almost overrode his apprehensions.

True, the man at the field had been sullen, and the horse-drawn sleigh was a primitive mode of travel, but Hargood was friendly, and there must be a technology of sorts on the planet since there was electricity and radio.

There was another act on the part of Hargood which had not gone unnoticed by Haldane.

Back in the shack, when Hargood had finished reading the card Haldane had filled out, he had casually torn it up and thrown it into the wastebasket.

“I’m taking you into town and putting you up at the inn with the others,” Hargood explained, “but after you’ve bought clothes and gotten somewhat acclimated, you’ll be boarded out until your own home is built.

“By the way,” he added, “you two are fortunate. Your presence has been requested at the home of a university man who lives on the college campus. Most arrivals are assigned by lot.”

“How did he know we were coming?” Haldane asked.

“He didn’t know you by name. He merely asked for the youngest theoretical mathematician on the H drop. He’s a very distinguished old gentleman, but quite active. I think he has in the neighborhood of a hundred offspring, so don’t leave him alone too long with Helix.”

Hargood stroked his chin, “What confuses me is that he was able to figure I’d even have a theoretical mathematician on the H drop or the A or B drop, for that matter… You’re the first theoretical mathematician I’ve ever seen.”

“Our town is Marston Meadows on the mouth of the Redstone River; population, forty-five thousand; biggest industry, the university. Since the nearest population center is a copper-mining town two hundred miles upriver, you can see that we haven’t made a dent in the planet. But we follow the old Biblical maxim, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ Since we have long winters and no television, the population growth is coming nicely.

“It’s an interesting town, mostly because of the university crowd. Some real cuties out there. Head of Economics, otherwise rational, preaches that someday earth and Hell will reunite in the final synthesis of the thesis and antithesis.

“We have some beautiful beaches around here, and I’ll prophesy, right now. Helix, that when you walk out on them in a bathing suit, there’s going to be a riot.”

“Do the natives call the planet Hell?” Haldane broke in.

“Yes, out of deference to Fairweather I. Anyway, Hell means light in German.”

“Do you defer to the man who exiled his son here?”

“Our Fairweather II was rash in his youth, so his father sent him here to save his hide. Then he invented the pope to keep his son in high-level bridge partners… Do you swim, Helix?”

“It’s one of my favorite sports.”

“You’ll enjoy Marston Meadows, and Marston Meadows will enjoy you. Most Hell-born women are low-slung with broad bottoms. In a way, they tend to resemble wasps. They’re not unattractive; they simply have varying degrees of attraction, and you’ll be in the upper two per cent.”

“You mean the pope is a trick on the executive departments?”

“Yes… We have some very attractive women’s shops in Marston Meadows. They dress more provocatively here.”

“I’m sure I’ll love sleek gowns and glitter. I can hardly…”

“I cursed the pope!”

“We all did.” Hargood turned to Helix. “The fact that you two were mated by the pope doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re restricted to each other…”

“The planet moves in an ellipse around the sun, doesn’t it?” Haldane broke in.

“Yes, so we have four months of winter, three of spring and fall, and two of summer, each half year… Our summers never get tedious, and our winters can be very interesting.”

“What is your specialty?” Haldane asked.

Hargood laughed. “Calling a man a specialist on this planet is almost as bad as calling him a son of a bitch.”

“What’s that?”

Helix laughed. “It’s an old expression. It means your mother was a dog.”

Haldane fingered the expression in his mind. It was pungent, and he could see where it might react unfavorably on a man who had cultivated an undue affection for his mother.

“Actually,” Hargood continued, “I was a gynecologist on earth…”

“I thought you had more than a passing interest in such matters,” Haldane broke in.

“Here, I’ve branched out. I’m a cellist in the town orchestra, on the board of aldermen, and teach in the university.

“Very few men are specialists on this planet. I have eight children by my wife, and seven by the wives of other men, so I’m not even a specialist as a father. Rather unusual by earth standards”—he paused reflectively—“but we do have long winters.”

“What does your wife think of this?” Helix asked.

“She has twelve children.”

“Why haven’t the spacemen reported to earth that this is not a planet of ice?”

“When routine calculations were made by the probes, the exploring crew landed in the dead of winter and figured the planet had only minimal habitability. Fairweather I rechecked the calculations, discovered the error, and set up the schedules of the prison ships so that they always arrive in winter.”

They passed the first dwelling, a two-storied structure faintly visible in the light of road lamps. It was made of logs, and its pointed roof mantled with snow, the glow of light in its windows, seemed poignantly cheerful to Haldane.

After the horse clumped over a wooden bridge spanning a wide creek, there were more houses, and the pungency of woodsmoke in the air was exhilarating.

Helix pressed his hand. “It could be eighteenth-century England.”

They passed a church made of stone; lamps glowing in its vestibule illuminated scrollwork above the portal which read, “God Is Love.”

Haldane called Hargood’s attention to the sign. “So you worship a God of love, not of justice.”

“Emphatically,” Hargood said, “although we may use a rather loose definition of the word… Incidentally, if you were mated by the pope, there must have been a reason. If you need a gynecologist…”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Haldane broke in.

“You don’t seem to be very far advanced.”

“I was in suspended animation, voluntarily, waiting for my lover to be shipped out.” She looked over at Haldane.

“Incidentally, young man, you have a lot of explaining to do.”

“About what?” he asked in genuine wonderment, thinking there were quite a few unexplained details that she had to clear up.

“This is not the time or the place. But the place is close and the time is near.”

What caprice guided this girl he would never know. On earth he had once been bothered by the fear that he would never be able to plumb her infinite variety, and now the old uncertainties were returning. But of one thing he was absolutely certain with hackle-raising intuition: if the task of understanding her was beyond him, the good Doctor Hargood would be glad to give it a try.

Hargood was looking at her with eyes too openly admiring to be lecherous, giving her some fatherly medical advice. “Of course, at this stage of your pregnancy, your activities won’t be too hampered. You can have an uninhibited honeymoon.”

“What’s a honeymoon?” Haldane asked.

“It’s the period when the newly mated couples get to know each other. It’s an old earth custom we’ve revived on Hell.”

“I thought we’d already had our honeymoon,” Helix said, “but I’ve discovered differently… Look, the shops are still open!”

“We’re coming into the downtown area. I apologize for our lack of skyscrapers, but we don’t need them.”

Few of the buildings were more than three stories high. They were close together with brightly lighted show windows on the ground level, and there were a few heavily bundled pedestrians abroad, apparently shopping. Haldane’s eyes registered the panorama of lights, decorations and the abundance of goods in show windows, but his mind played almost lovingly over the purposelessness of the people who ambled along the sidewalks. There was none of the precise, straightline walking one met on the streets of San Francisco.

Hargood reined the horse down a narrow street that dead-ended in a courtyard before a two-story building which Haldane assumed, from its many lighted windows, was an inn. Here, the overhanging buildings and courtyard at the end of the lane were suddenly illuminated when a rift in the clouds let the moonlight through, and the glow on the snow gave a medieval quality to the scene.

“Looks like it’s clearing up,” Hargood said, driving the sleigh in a broad arc to bring it before the inn door.

A boy of about fourteen came running out of the inn to catch the reins that Hargood threw to him. “Hi, Doc,” the boy said.

“Hello, Tommy. If you get a chance, will you curry my horse? I’d certainly appreciate it.”

“Doc, I scraped that damned brute down to the skeleton this morning.”

“All right. Tommy,” Hargood said patiently. “Don’t curry the horse.”

As the boy led the horse across the courtyard to the stable and they walked toward the door of the inn, Haldane asked, “Is it customary for a hostler to deny the request of a professional?”

“That hostler’s name is Tommy Fairweather. And there aren’t any professionals, as a class.”

“I imagine his grandfather would turn over in his grave if he knew a Fairweather was working in a stable.”

“If he did, it would surprise a lot of people over at the university, because they don’t know he’s dead… Now, one last ritual, folks. Turn around!”

They had reached the lobby of the hotel, which was empty, and Hargood’s command was still a command. Haldane stopped, and did an about-face.

He felt Hargood’s hand rip the initial from his parka, the classification initial he had forgotten. Hargood was saying, “There goes your last earthly classification. There are no dynastic numbers on Hell. We use Christian names, old style. Helix is now Helix Haldane. You need a first name.”

“Don Juan,” Helix suggested.

Haldane was not thinking about names. He turned.

“Are you telling me that Fairweather II is still alive?”

“Certainly. He’s only a hundred and eighty.”

“How long do you live on this planet?”

“As long as you wish. There are methods of retarding cell destruction. They’re known on earth, but they can’t be indulged. Here, the prolongation of life is almost mandatory.”

Hargood was helping Helix take off her parka. Haldane slipped out of his and handed it to the doctor, who took it to a cloakroom behind the desk of the absent room clerk. “It’s almost fourteen o’clock, so Hilda, the barmaid, will be doubling as the room clerk.”

Through an open doorway, Haldane could see a large dining room; across it, logs were burning in a fireplace. He turned to Helix. “Did you hear that? Fairweather’s still alive.”