The Last Starship From Earth (22 page)

“Oh, no. He’s dead… Isn’t that a lovely fire?”

She seemed hypnotized by the distant flames, a dream lost in a beautiful reverie.

“Hargood says he’s alive!”

“That’s Fairweather II.”

“That’s who I mean. Helix! He’s the brush they smeared me with.”

She seemed to snap out of her trance. “Of course, dear. But we were researching Fairweather I. I thought you were speaking of Fairweather I.”

Hargood returned and guided them into the dining room. To the right of the entrance was a bar and to the left was a stairway leading to a balcony which lined one side of the room. The gloom of the huge room was lighted by individual table lamps, and across was a cleared area with a hardwood floor adjacent to the fireplace and a second bar not being used.

Hargood steered them to the bar. “Hilda,” Hargood said, “meet Don and Helix Haldane, newly arrived newlyweds. Give them the bridal suite.”

“Welcome to Hell,” the woman said, turning to a board behind her and grabbing a key. She was a tall, lanky woman with cadaverous cheeks. Her hips were in a line with her waist, and the expression in her eyes when they fell on Haldane was one of carnivorous hunger. Though her breasts flapped like dewlaps and the twin plaits of her hair were streaked with grey, her hungry eyes created a weird eroticism in Haldane. He knew that if Helix had lot been there, he would have remained at the bar.

Hilda tossed the key before him in a manner casual but without insolence. “It’s room 204, straight up the stairs.”

She turned to Hargood. “Real nice piece of man you brought this time. Doc. Young one, too.”

She turned to Helix. “Most of the exiles we get here are n their forties, at least. Your man looks like a lot of action. He’s not as big as the average Heller, but he’s pretty tall for an earthman. And those arms look strong. If you get tired of him tonight, throw him down to me.”

“Funny thing”—her voice dropped an octave as she leaned over to Helix to talk woman-talk—“I get some of my best action from the small, shy men. You never can tell from just looking at them.”

Turning again to the trio in general, she said, “What will it be, folks? Drinks are on the house.”

“Beer for us all,” Hargood said. “And she isn’t being generous. For exiles, everything’s on the house.”

“Why take the wind out of my sails? I wanted them to think I was a philanthropist.”

“I ordered beer,” Hargood explained, “because I wanted you to taste it. Everything tastes better here.”

Hargood went in to a discussion of taste on the planet, attributing the flavor to the quality of the soil. As his attention was directed almost exclusively to Helix, Haldane’s eyes roamed the bar.

Near them sat a slender, dark-haired man, almost raptly sipping a drink as he cast an unbroken series of polite glances at Helix in the bar mirror. Farther down the bar was a giant wearing seaman’s boots and a sailor’s hat. His mouth was open, and his red beard bristled with a static electricity which Haldane assumed was generated by desire. Haldane’s assumption came from a glance at the man’s eyes—the most expressive eyes he had ever seen. At the same time they were undressing Helix, they were concocting thirty-six variations—Haldane counted them—on a single theme.

Haldane turned brusquely to Hargood. “Let’s go to a table.”

“Just a minute.” He leaned over the bar and called down to the genteel ogler. “Halapoff, how about fixing up a dinner for eight?”

“Sure, Doc,” the black-haired man answered. “When will they be here?”

“Right behind us.”

They took their glasses and walked across the room toward a table. There were more than a dozen couples in the dining room, and although the men were accompanied by women, there were low whistles of approval as Helix walked across the floor.

Haldane felt a flash of anger which focused on Helix. She was conscious of the raw undertones to the sound, and that beautiful, free-swinging stride of hers slowed to a mincing step and her face flushed. She was strutting.

His own beloved and pregnant bride enjoyed being whistled at!

Haldane’s rising anger was halted abruptly.

As they passed a table, he noticed a red-haired woman whose high cheekbones and erect carriage gave a regal touch to her undeniable beauty, which was accented by a full eight inches of cleavage above her low-cut gown. Her physical beauty was awe-inspiring, her cleavage an act of nature, but the attraction that emanated from her threw up such powerful fields of force that Haldane’s stride swerved in her direction.

From a casual conversation with her table partner, the woman looked up, saw Haldane’s glance, flashed him a radiant, appreciative smile, and whistled.

Helix caught the contretemps and flashed the woman a look that collapsed her force field and restored Haldane’s compass bearings. She reached back, grabbed Haldane’s arm, and practically shoved him toward the table. “You liked that!” she hissed.

“You were getting a few thrills yourself.”

Hargood selected a table near the fireplace.

Haldane asked what the open space with the polished floor was used for.

“Mostly for dancing. Unfortunately, not always. We’ve revived social dancing as a recreation because it is stimulating.”

Haldane exploded. “Do these people
need
stimulation?”

Hargood laughed. “It wouldn’t seem so to a citizen of earth. Hell is literally hell for some earthmen, but very few females from earth are ever unhappy here. All of them are loved and appreciated, especially appreciated. There’s not a female without attraction. Some simply have more attraction.”

He glanced at Helix.

Haldane sat brooding in his beer. He wasn’t a prude, but he certainly didn’t care to ride shotgun on his wife whenever she went to the grocery store. He intended to move fast on this planet, and he didn’t wish to divert any energies guarding his rear, or his wife’s.

“What sort of technology do you have on this planet?”

“Sufficient for our needs, and we have tremendous natural resources.”

“Could you build a starship?”

“That’s a little out of my line. But I’m sure we could. We siphon the best minds from earth. Why do you ask?”

“I’ve got an idea for a starship which can exceed simultaneity… go faster than now. Have you got a pencil?”

“Are you planning on going back to earth?” Helix asked.

“Not to the one we left.”

He took the pencil Hargood offered and began to sketch a design on the tablecloth. “Here’s a laser propulsion system. Light emitted from this source, here, streams forward to converge, here, allowing the stream of light to reinforce itself, here. As you can readily see, you’re exceeding the speed of light, as we know the speed of light, but the convergence principle, as you probably know, is limited by the focal length to the orifice from the lasers.”

“Don, I’m a gynecologist.”

“Now, this symbol represents simultaneity, a perfect function of the converging lines. In practice, that function is never reached. For instance, it took us, in actual time, six months to make the four million light years to Cygnus, which figures out at about .987643, considering S as 1.”

“But I’m a gynecologist!”

“I had this idea for a series of curved mirrors, arranged thus, in a circle, which would reinforce the original beam from the laser, emitting pulsations, which would reinforce the reinforced speed. A chain reaction… Follow me?”

“No.”

“Well, I think the idea’s valid, and certain remarks made at my trial reinforced my opinion.”

“Don, you’ve lost me. Mathematics is over my head.”

“Forgive me, doctor. I must remember that your interests lie in the other direction… But you can tell me this: what form of government do you have here?”

“We call it a ‘democracy,’ which is Greek, and it’s Greek to me. I don’t have a very abstract mind. If I can’t touch it, I can’t appreciate it. But we elect a president every six years, and he appoints advisers.”

“What gets him elected?”

“Wong Lee got in by promising to reduce the police force. Too many people were getting arrested for disturbing the peace… Helix, in planning your home on this planet, you’ll have to remember to allow for the construction of extra bedrooms…”

Haldane was thinking apart from Hargood and Helix as the two chatted.

If promises were the key to political power on this planet, he would have to find out what appealed to these people. He thought of setting up houses of recreation and installing professional recreational workers, but he immediately rejected the idea. Such sterile entertainment would not appeal to a population that wanted to fertilize and be fertilized.

“But doctor,” Helix was saying, “my most pressing problem is clothes. I didn’t bring a thing with me.”

“We’ll visit the clothing shops tomorrow.”

“I’ll need lingerie and pajamas tonight.”

“On your wedding night?”

He might offer state awards for bearing offspring. It wag an idea, but the problem there would be to prove the parenthood of the male.

Other exiles had arrived with their guides, had been treated at the bar, and were taking their tables. Apprehension was gone from their faces. On the way to their table, Harlon V and Marta stopped by at their table to exchange first impressions.

Marta had gotten a subdued form of the treatment that Helix had received on her walk across the room, and her air of dignified refinement had been replaced by vivacity and pleasure. Harlon’s air of dignified refinement had been replaced by one of hurt dignity. Harlon, Haldane figured, might not be able to stand the competition.

Halapoff, once started, moved fast. Some happy Ukrainian hiding in his ancestry must have directed his preparation of the shishkabob, and he glowed when Helix complimented him on the meal. “He’s an even better accordion player,” Hargood said, when any further remarks were shattered by a burst of sound.

Beginning on a low rumble and rising to a high-pitched quaver, the sound rose and fell in a prolonged series of whoops. Haldane turned and saw the giant red-bearded man from the bar strutting to the center of the dance floor, his head tilted toward the ceiling, the burls of his fist pounding a tattoo on the barrel of his chest.

“My name’s Whitewater Jones. I’m half horse and half alligator. I can walk barefoot on a barbed-wire fence and strike sparks with my feet. I’m a third generation Heller, and the day I was born I clawed out a bobcat’s eyes and chewed off its tail. I’m as fast as greased lightning and as strong as a mammoth bear. I’ve whipped every man and loved every woman between Marston Meadows and Point of Portage. I shoot nothing but live bullets.”

Beneath the roar from the dance floor, Haldane asked Hargood, “What’s the matter with him?”

“Alas,” Hargood answered, “as a nation of individuals, our people go to extremes. This man is a bully, and right now he’s going through a fertility ritual.

“He runs the riverboat between here and Point of Portage and only gets to town about three days out of the month. This is his way of working off steam by getting into a fight and getting himself a female.”

“Don’t you have policemen?”

“We only have nine in the whole town. If they tried to lock him up, they’d be hurt, and they’d have to let him out in a couple of days because he’s the only pilot on the river.”

It was difficult to talk beneath the roar, and the man’s claims were interesting. Haldane listened as he boasted that he had carried his steamboat across a sandbar on his back. Hargood tapped his shoulder. “Don, you’ll get two weeks on the house as a honeymoon gift from the pope—and by the way, it’s traditional for the groom to carry the bride across the threshold.”

Haldane tried to listen, but Whitewater Jones was demanding his attention.

“Halapoff, break out your accordion and play us a tune before I hit you so hard your freckles rattle. None of these earth fillies knows how to dance, and Whitewater Jones is giving them lessons. Get moving!”

Halapoff sprinted across the room to the bar, where Hilda handed him an accordion. It was the most amazing demonstration of persuasion by threat of force Haldane had ever seen. Halapoff was actually frightened.

Hargood made no attempt to discipline the man when he went swaggering around the arc of the tables, leering at all the women and sizing up, particularly, the women from earth.

“Whitewater Jones wants to dance, and when Whitewater Jones dances, he fondles. Any female who hasn’t been fondled by Whitewater Jones has the biggest thrill of her life coming up.”

His swaggering, salacious progress was incongruous against the background of Ukrainian folk music into which Halapoff’s frightened fingers were putting tremolos unscorable.

He neared the Hargood table, spotted Helix, and roared, “Doc, are you holding that little chestnut filly back? Let her out of the gate!”

“You’ve been drinking too much,” Hargood said.

“You hinting I can’t hold my liquor? I can lift a barrel of hooch and drink it dry without spilling a drop, eat a medic to settle my stomach, and pick my teeth with an earthman’s arm.”

He stopped and put a massive arm around Helix’ shoulder. His roar dropped to a thunderous coo as he said, “Ma’am, I know you earth women don’t know how to dance, but waltzing’s easy. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me give you your first lesson…”

Haldane rose quietly behind the love-smitten sailor and walked onto the dance floor as he heard Jones say, “I’m just an old country-boy sailor, and I don’t get into town much. I’d love to give you your first one…” He raised his voice and bellowed to Halapoff, “Play a waltz!”

In the silence, Haldane called, “Come, dance with me, you son of a bitch!”

In one of those flashes of inspiration he had never been able to analyze, it had struck Haldane that the red-bearded giant might be a mother-lover.

“What did you call me, son?”

From the hurt and disbelief in Jones’s question, he felt he might have hit pay dirt. As the sailor had requested, Haldane repeated the phrase and stressed the last word.

This was not mere pay dirt. He had hit the mother lode of mother-lovers. The incredible speed which galvanized the giant, drunken bulk as it charged across the floor at Haldane marked Whitewater Jones as the most affectionate son since Oedipus Rex.