The Last Starship From Earth (23 page)

Seemingly as slender and as ineffectual as a gazelle before a charging rhino, Haldane awaited the charge as Halapoff’s accordion broke into a syncopated version of the “Valse Macabre.”

When the hurtling Jones passed the spot where Haldane had stood, Haldane tripped him and he skidded the full width of the waxed floor. His head struck the row of empty stools along the service bar and scattered them in a manner so reminiscent of a ball striking bowling pins that someone in the dining room shouted, “Strike!”

There was a scattering of polite applause from the spectators.

Whitewater rose to his feet, felt a cut on his lip, and looked at the blood on his hands. The sight of his own blood must have driven him berserk. Yet, despite the added impetus, Haldane scored only three tables, plus occupants, on his toss into the dining area.

Applause, however, continued in volume.

More important, he had maneuvered Jones into position. On the third charge, he grabbed an extended arm, levered the sailor over his shoulder, and sent him flying through the air to land on his hocks, bounce once, and skid, feet first, into the fireplace, and the roaring flames.

Screams of pain from the fireplace brought prolonged applause from the dining area and the strains of “Waltz Me Around Again, Willy” from the accordion.

Apparently Jones had rudimentary educability. Using his head instead of his scorched feet, he hobbled slowly toward Haldane, making no sudden movement that could be used against him. He advanced on the earthman, his arms extended as pincers, and slowly they encircled Haldane.

He had put his head into the maw of the lion. An audible intake of breath from the audience testified to his mistake and to the fact that he had gained audience sympathy.

Gently, the arms drew Haldane toward the great chest as the massive legs spread apart to give a solid base for the crushing action. But Haldane was not crushed in the slightest.

He lifted his kneecap with explosive force.

With a yowl that exceeded the fireplace whoop by several decibels, Jones dropped Haldane and clutched for his offended area. Haldane delivered a karate blow to the base of the neck. Jones shook the floor as he fell into a fetal ball, clutching two spots, bleeding, and whimpering, “Calf rope Calf rope.”

Haldane had never heard of a calf rope.

He circled the fallen hulk, which had, fortunately, fallen on its right side, leaving the chin open for a kick from a right-footed kicker. He carefully sighted his toe with the point of the chin, and drew back a pace to deliver the
coup de grâce
as Halapoff played “Auld Lang Syne.”

Olé
’s were issuing from the crowd.

“Stop it, Haldane!”

It was the imperious command of a professional. Years of discipline froze Haldane.

Hargood strode into the arena bloodied by the drippings from Jones’s mouth, “When he yells ‘calf rope,’ that means he’s beaten.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Haldane apologized. “I’m not familiar with the customs of the country.”

“Stand up, Jones. I want to look at that mouth.”

Slowly, first to one knee, Jones struggled to his feet and obediently opened his mouth.

“You may lose a tooth, and you’ve cracked a lip. Go to your room and sleep it off. I’ll see you at ten o’clock in the morning.”

Shaking his head and mumbling, the half-horse half-alligator stumbled toward a rear door marked with an exit sign.

“Something tells me you’re going to adjust well to Hell, Haldane.” Hargood took his arm and steered him back to the table.

Haldane was shaking slightly, but not from his exercise, which had been minor.

That jury on earth had been correct in their evaluation of him. Beneath the thin shell of civilization, he was a brute rampant, and tonight the egg had cracked. He felt as if he had staggered from some desert of restraint to plunge into the cool, clear waters of violence. He had intended to kill Jones, and he would have enjoyed doing it.

Before they were seated, Helix said icily, “Did you have to do that?”

“I’m always irritable right after I wake up.”

“That poor man only wanted to dance with me. I admit he was rough and crude, but he talked with a kind of poetry.”

“Only wanted to dance with you!” Haldane stared at her incredulously. “Are you
that
naïve? If you’re that taken with his poetry, I’ll go drag the bum back, and you can spend my wedding night with him.”

“Yes, you will adjust well to Hell,” Hargood said, with sad certainty.

“You’re very aggressive, aren’t you?” Helix was chiding him, but there was an admiration in her eyes which revealed an animalism to match his own. She was the one who had adjusted to Hell. She had adjusted so rapidly that it was as if she were a native of the planet.

“Doctor Hargood, I know you’re tired and want to get home to your wife and twelve children, eight by you, so Helix and I will excuse ourselves and retire.”

“I don’t know if I should go up there with you or not,” she said. “You’re so physical.”

“As the good doctor has pointed out, there’s an old custom in which the groom carries the bride across the threshold. I’d like to remind you that there’s an older custom in which the groom drags his bride to his cave by her hair.”

“I come, master,” she said, rising.

Again, that unpredictable inspiration struck.

“I’ll carry you,” he said, “to make sure.”

He threw her, squealing and squirming in feigned anger and true delight, over his shoulder and carried her across the dining room and up the stairs, while the enchanted audience arose and gave him a standing ovation. At the top of the stairs, he turned, waved to the crowd, and patted her protruding rump.

The audience stamped, cheered, and whistled.

He shoved open the door and carried his sizzling bride into a room where a fireplace with a roaring log fire cast lights over a lavish fourposter bed, canopied and curtained. “You crude beast,” she hissed, “I felt you do that! I’ll never be able to hold my head up on Hell again.”

“It was nothing personal,” he assured her, pulling aside the curtains to toss her on the bed. “I was keynoting a political campaign, my opening gun in a run for the presidency… It doesn’t matter on this planet whether your head is up or down. Three-fifths of the population never look that high… These brutes have a primitive energy which I intend to control, and with a unifying command whipping them into conformity, they can produce the technology my idea will need.”

She lay back, tilted on her elbows, and looked up at him in amazement. “Conformity! You fought it on earth… The pope was right! You would have wrecked earth if I hadn’t got you off the planet.”

“Listen, Helix,” he sat down on the bed, intensity etched in every line of his face. “Here’s where the end justifies the means. I would be able to free the earth from the stranglehold of the sociologists.

“That chain reaction of light, triggered by a laser source, would mean speeds of infinite acceleration. You see, it’s like a pinwheel of light generating within itself such a tremendous force that the propelling orifice need be no larger around than this.”

“Quit making lewd gestures!”

“And the thrust delivered through that orifice would be no bigger than a pinpoint of light, but that pinpoint would be so powerful no rocket-assisted take-off would be necessary… Why are you taking off your tunic?”

“It’s getting too warm.”

“The fire will die down… What I’m suggesting, in practice, is a taxicab through time. It’s self-evident that motion in excess of the speed of light will exceed the flow of time, but the flow of time is in only one direction. Ergo, if I jumped ten minutes within the next five minutes, I’d be where I am now; but if I could jump fifteen minutes, I’d be hauling you up the stairs five minutes ago.

“You’d need no cumbersome life support system in the cab, for at infinite speed you could time your arrival at the place you wish to reach before your oxygen’s used up… Why are you taking off your skirt?”

“It’s getting cooler.”

“That’s an opposite reaction, which reminds me: Newton’s Law—for every action an opposite and equal reaction—still holds. You could reduce the weight of the cab until you’d need a power plant with no more energy than a storage battery.

“You see, Helix, that’s the beauty of the Haldane Theory from a classical viewpoint. It unifies the Quantum Theory, Newtonian Physics, Einstein’s energy theory, Fairweather’s Simultaneity—they’ll all dance on the grave of Henry VIII, and I’ll join in, waltzing to the strains of LV
²
= (−T). Where are you going?”

“Down to the kitchen, to pick up a few recipes from Halapoff.”

“I’ve just presented you with the greatest formula since E = MV
²
and you are going down to talk to a cook… Say, you’re wearing nothing but your boots!”

“That’s the idea.”

A great nonmathematical truth dawned on him. “Come here, girl.”

With hand on hip, leaning nonchalantly against the door, she asked, “Are you jealous?”

“Very much so, of a man named Flaxon, the smartest man I’ve ever met.”

“I’ll come,” she said, “if you’ll promise…”

“All right! All right! I won’t talk about the Haldane Theory with you any more tonight… I should have been a gynecologist.”

“That’s not the promise I want at all,” she said, not moving from the door. He picked up her skirt and tunic and tossed them into a corner. Opening wide his arms in entreaty he said, “Speak.”

“Tell me, what is the Haldane ‘swizzle-stick’ technique?”

He closed his eyes and threw his palm to his forehead in a gesture of despair. “Out of five thousand three hundred and eighty lines of transcript, you pick out that one phrase. Come, Helix, I’ll explain its meaning, and I’ll explain why I never attempted to demonstrate it to a tender young virgin, I thought, in a crowded city such as San Francisco.”

When he opened his eyes, she was standing very close to him, looking down with love, admiration, and repressed eagerness. He put his arms around her to prevent her escaping to Halapoff.

“When I first met you,” he said, “I thought your beauty and grace were unearthly, but I was sorely puzzled by your analytical, rational, unfemalish mind. My father warned me you were not of my time and place. My lawyer hinted that yours was a diabolical intelligence in the form of a woman. Now one question regarding a gossipy tidbit, irrelevant and nongermane, has convinced me you’re a woman. Gone forever is my hope of a romance with some eternal Lilith.”

“Quit shilly-shallying. Out with it, Don. What’s this…”

“Why does everyone call me Don?”

“That’s what I named you, Don Juan.”

“Oh, for Byron’s romantic hero?”

“Not exactly. I was thinking more of G.B. Shaw.”

“Who’s he?”

“Oh, he was nineteenth century. You wouldn’t know him.”

“That’s right I started at the eighteenth and went the other way.”

“We’re not gathered here to discuss literature…”

There was a rap on the door, and Haldane tossed his nude but booted bride over his shoulder onto the center of the bed, saying, “Keep behind the curtains till I get rid of this stupid bellhop.”

“Give me my clothes,” she whispered. “That’s no bellhop, and you won’t be getting rid of him.”

“Are you extrasensory as well as extrasensual?” he said, pulling the curtains together.

Vexed by the interruption, he stalked to the door and threw it open.

His caller, a tall, auburn-haired man, spoke hardly above a whisper. “May I come in for a moment, Haldane IV? My name is Fairweather II.”

Haldane fell back and caught himself in the manner of a basketball player making a fall-away jump shot. “By all means, sir. I’m honored.”

“I hoped to get here before your mate commenced the nuptials, but I had to interview Hargood before I could come up. He tells me you’ve inadvertently passed the physical competence and bravery tests. I’m proud of you, son. You’ll pardon my familiarity, but by now you must know that you and I have more in common than most old friends. Hargood was telling me that you’ve even stumbled onto my Negative Time Theory?”

“LV
²
= (−T)?”

“Exactly!” The compliment in Fairweather’s smile almost overcame Haldane’s disappointment in relinquishing authorship of the Haldane Theory.

“Won’t you have a seat, sir? My mate is a little indisposed at the moment.”

Fairweather’s gray eyes swept the room as he drew up a chair before the fire. As he thanked Haldane for his invitation, he said, “Still wears those boots…” Then he raised his voice to the curtained bed. “Come on out, woman, and pick up your clothes. Your nudity holds no charm for me.”

“Sir, it might be a little embarrassing… I’ll get them.”

“Don’t bother, Haldane. I’ve seen her behind as often as I’ve seen her face. Her mother is one of my lazier wives, and I was frequently called upon to change her diapers.”

“You mean, sir, that you’re her father?”

“Don’t hold it against me, son. I was old and tired when she came along. Besides, out of eighty-one there’s bound to be a bad one now and then.”

“Daddy,” Helix squealed from behind the curtains, “I wanted to tell him myself.”

“Sir, I’m honored to be your son-in-law, and you have a very unusual daughter, but…” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Helix scamper from behind the curtains to grab her clothes. “I have grave doubts about myself. I’m the prize pigeon of the universe. I loved the girl, and she tricked me. Your daughter, sir, is a confidence woman. She conned me with honest trifles to betray me in deeper consequence…”

“Honest trifles!” There came a beldame shriek from the corner. “Papa, he’s dragged the name of Fairweather through the mud. He stole my virtue. He drove me to ruin. He’s the father of my unborn child. Are those trifles?”

Tucking her tunic into her skirt, she was striding toward the fireplace. “Father, this man betrayed me. I had to marry him to make an honest man out of him.”

“That wasn’t in our agreement, child,” Fairweather chided her. “It’s customary for a father to approve of his daughter’s suitors.”

He turned to Haldane. “She wasn’t supposed to marry you, but I suppose it’s all right since she was in line to be an old maid when she undertook the assignment…”