The Last Starship From Earth (24 page)

“Phooey on you. Father,” Helix said indignantly. “You know I turned down four hundred and twenty proposals As for you, Haldane, out of sixty-five thousand possible M-5s on the planet, you were hand-picked by me. If you’re a pigeon, you’re a very rare bird.”

“I can always count on my daughter to do what I want her to do,” Fairweather said, “as long as it does not conflict with what she wants to do. She undertook the mission with half an eye out for a specimen such as you; don’t say it isn’t so, daughter.”

“It is, but quit telling my secrets.”

Haldane’s mind was spinning from the implications of what he had heard, but one implication stuck out in his mind like an Annapurna rising from the Salisbury Plains. “Sir, if she has turned down four hundred and twenty proposals, she must be a very experienced woman.”

“Rather,” Fairweather nodded, “but she was too selective for a Hellion. Besides, she was only twenty-two when we regressed her back to six for the trip to earth. Counting the twelve years she has relived on earth, she’s only thirty-four. Organically, of course, she is only eighteen.”

Bluntly, Haldane turned to her and exploded. “And you were questioning me about my experiences! Why, you were playing around when I was still flying kites, and on this planet. Oh, you must have had some laughs at my experienced conduct… Lighting cigarettes from the wrong end… Practicing yoga.”

He was genuinely chagrined, and she placed an arm on his shoulder. There was tenderness and compassion in her voice when she said, “Please don’t feel inadequate or inferior, darling. We older women put a far greater value on youthful enthusiasm than we do on practiced skills. And nowhere on Hell is there a man who could raise the general average by .08 of one percent.”

Mollified by her contriteness, he grinned. “You Hellion.”

“But sir,” he turned to Fairweather, “how did you get her back to earth?”

“A device for exploiting the capabilities of the negative time formula. It’s not a spaceship, really. More a space dinghy. I’m sure you can deduce the type of vehicle we used.”

“But how did you fit her into the time pattern, logically?”

“A transcontinental rocket crashed in the South Pacific. Her parents were killed. There were no survivors, unless you account for the child found miraculously floating on a life raft near the scene… We had to wait for an A-7 couple, you see, for Helix is something of a poetess.”

“But how did you know that rocket would crash…” He paused. A time taxicab could cruise forward as well as back. “Strike that question, sir.”

“Now, young lady, if you’ll hug your father’s neck and go sit silently in a corner, you may soon return to your hymeneal rites, if I’m not abusing the term.”

After the ceremony of greeting, Helix sat down and Fairweather turned to Haldane. “If I read your syndrome correctly, you would be willing to help us overthrow the Department of Sociology and set free the human spirit on earth.”

“Sir, I was formulating independent plans to throw a wrench into their machinery, when your daughter threatened to walk out on me. She had some business in the kitchen.”

“Throwing a wrench is of little value unless you know where to throw it,” Fairweather said. “There are few periods in history, and those come early, when one man could alter the course of nations. To eliminate the power of the sociologists, we must destroy the seeds of that power, which were planted before the sociologists came into being.

“We needed a theoretical mathematician to make the drop, because hairline adjustments will have to be made during the approach to earth. Coming back is no problem. You merely click the activating switch.

“We had to send Helix to earth to get you because we never get any theoretical mathematicians among the exiles. Those people are so absorbed in their problems that they care nothing about the government; in fact, they aren’t even aware that there is a government. Helix was to plant the seeds of deviationism. Your syndrome is a bonus no one expected.

“For the historical period our experts have chosen, you should not have to stay more than eight years on earth, at the most. If it takes longer, you will be embarrassed, because you will not grow older. We have to stabilize your cellular balance to prevent disease. Also, we’ll teach you self-hypnosis to control pain and yoga to control bleeding in the event you break a limb or are cut. Naturally, you’ll have to be taught to self-administer certain medical aids.

“A homing device in a filling in your tooth will guide you at night or in heavy weather to the escape vehicle, which will transmit constantly from solar power, so you’ll be comparatively safe from harm.

“It will take fourteen weeks of intensive training, after your honeymoon is over, to ready you for the drop.”

“But, sir. Helix is… I want to be with her when the child is born.”

“You’ll not be gone over three days, her time. The mechanism is programmed to make up the lost time on the return trip.”

“Of course,” Haldane said. “I can increase V
²
.”

“Your capsule is very small, and it’s designed to resemble a boulder, but it’s too heavy to be moved and can’t be split open by any device known to that period in history.”

“I’ll be given background material on the time and place?”

“Intensively. You’ll be given sleep-teaching, hypnotic implants, the entire gamut.

“Language will be no problem. We have scholars who speak it on practically every incoming starship.

“Once you’ve made the drop, you should take no longer to get adjusted than it would take you if you moved from San Francisco to Chicago.”

Fairweather paused and looked into the fire. “One problem puzzles me, because I can’t answer it for myself, and you and I are alter egos.”

He turned, and a quality in his voice commanded Haldane’s absolute attention.

“The method of throwing the wrench will be left solely up to you, because you’ll be on the spot and will have to evaluate the situation. You’ll be given alternate plans of action at the university, and suggested approach methods, but the final solution will be yours.

“There’s a possibility that you might have to choose assassination as a method. Is there anything in your experience that leads you to believe that you are capable of committing murder for your principles?”

Haldane remembered the lethal kick which would have ended Whitewater Jones if Hargood had not stopped him.

“I could murder,” he said flatly.

“This is highly personal, son, but I ask it from a knowledge of my own personality: do you feel that your love for Helix could hold you to your purpose, despite the blandishments of females who might seek to dissuade you?”

“Sir, I’m on to their tricks. I learned about women from her.”

“There’s one final question, an important one: is your resolution deterred when I tell you that the language you must learn is Hebrew?”

Inwardly, Haldane whistled.

He had never considered deicide.

Sitting here on another planet, it was easy enough to contemplate. But lining that Figure up in the sights of a crossbow would be a far different matter when the time came to do it.

Oh, hell, he remembered, the crossbow wasn’t even invented until He was sixty-five, only five years before He died, He would have to get to Him before He was forty, and that would mean using a knife or a spear.

But it didn’t have to be by assassination, he reminded himself.

He was going to make very sure that it wasn’t.

He raised his eyes to Fairweather. “The resolution is modified, but it’s not deterred.”

Suddenly he smiled. “Sir, if I had the training, I’d be ready in three hours for the Israel drop.”

“Braggart,” Helix said.

“Then that clears up the excuse for my rather unusual call.”

He rose, shook hands, bent to kiss Helix, and paused at the door.

“After your honeymoon, drop on over to the university. We’ve reconstructed a Hebrew village with the gear they used and the food they ate.

“Your instructors will be Pharisaic Jews for the most part, unreconstructed, and they’ll be fighting the Battle of Jerusalem all over again. Don’t get involved with their political bias, because you’ll probably be on the other side.

“They’ll call you by your cover name, which will be Judas, a rather common name for the area at that time, and one that doesn’t figure in His annals. The full name, I remember, is Judas Iscariot.”

He detested campus rallies with their lank-haired girls and bearded boys. No self-respecting student of mechanical engineering would be seen at one. But he was cutting across campus to the Student Union, and he saw the girl when he had to skirt the edge of the crowd.

She was standing apart from the other listeners, her dark hair flowing back from a high forehead, looking at the speaker with amused contempt in her brown eyes. From her coloring and the soft curves of her body, he figured she was Lebanese.

He recalled the words of a long-dead friend: “In one corporeality, the inscrutable Orient, the lush and perfumed South, the crisp and sparkling North, and the audaciousness of the West. Aye, Hal, the vintage wine of love is quaffed only from Levantine tuns.”

Usually William Shakespeare knew what he was talking about, but at just about that time, Hal remembered, Bill had a thing going with a girl from Aleppo. Nevertheless, he stopped beside her, pretended to listen to the speaker, and turned to her. “What’s the protest this time.”

“Tuition again,” she answered. “The speaker’s trying to organize a boycott of the university.”

“A Roman student named Junius tried that once, and Domitian Flavius had him drawn and quartered in the Forum.”

“For all of his effectiveness, this one could be Junius. I hunger to teach these students basic organizing techniques.”

“Since you hunger,” he said, “and I’m on my way to the cafeteria, I’ll treat if you’ll teach.”

She turned and looked at him more closely. “Are you trying to impress me with your heavy spending?”

“No. I won at gin rummy, last night, and I’m trying to get rid of some loose change.”

“Usually I charge more than thirty cents, but I go at bargain rates on Friday.”

With few students in the cafeteria line during class period, she had a chance at a leisurely pick of the tarts.

Taking a poll of her profile, her skin coloring, and her thin Semitic brow, he came up with the concensus—lovely. And her languid alertness as she haggled within herself over a choice of doughnuts was an expression straight from the bazaars of the Middle East.

“Are you Lebanese?” he asked as they threaded their way to a table.

“No. Greek. My name is Helen Patrouklos.”

’Twas not so far south as Aleppo nor so far east as Baghdad, but ’twas enough, ’twould serve.

“Since we’re reviving ethnic jokes,” she remarked, “are you a Dutchman?”

“No,” he said. “I’m a Hebrew, Hal Dane. D-a-n-e.”

“That’s an unusual name for a Jew.”

“It wasn’t the original name. My Hebrew name was Iscariot.”

“Judas Iscariot, no doubt,” she said, selecting a table. “And no doubt you’re pulling my leg.”

“Would I could experience such delight.”

“That’s just an expression, silly.”

“But pithy and earthy,” he said, “I love your modern slang.”

“Modern! That one’s as old as twenty-three skiddoo.”

“I know,” he said. “I first heard it from an old love of mine who was interested in such antiquities.”

“Where is your old love, now?” Her question was edged with personal concern, and he thought, This girl is smitten with me.

“Lost in the wastes of time,” he assured her, “somewhere beyond Arcturus.”

“You are a weirdo!… May I dunk?”

“Pray do.”

She was the first girl he had seen since the dawn ot the Christian Era who dunked a doughnut into coffee with charm. “If I may get personal,” he said, “I admire your grace of hand and wrist as you sweep into the final movement of the dunk.”

She raised her eyebrows and looked at him over the lifted doughnut. “Don’t tell me you’re a Lit major?”

“No. Mechanical engineering.”

“You sound like a poet
cum
historian.”

Something about this conversation reminded him of one occurring almost at this place and this time on his first trip around, when he had initially underestimated the power of a woman.

“I was turned against poetry by that ungrateful John Milton,” he said, “who painted Satan in such an epic manner that people aren’t able to recognize him anymore. He’s got too much sense to pose as a Prince of Darkness. For all we know, Satan may be a typical father-in-law with nothing more unusual than a peculiar brand of wit.”

“You are a nut, Hal, but I like you.”

He could not tell whether she was sincere or pretending, but that distinction would always remain one of the mysteries of life to a male burdened with the honesty of the maladroit.

“What’s your major?” he asked.

“Social science.”

“I should have guessed. You’re always found at rallies.”

“Not I,” she said. “You don’t organize with television publicity, student sit-ins, boycotts. It’s not that easy. You form organizations by creeping from mind to mind, convincing as you go.”

“Are you organizing something?”

“Yes. An international organization of students to foster world friendship on the young-adult level. In addition to the exchange students on campus, I’m writing to students in England, Russia, Argentina. I have an eager young fellow in Haifa who’s burning to organize Israel. But he writes in Hebrew and I write in English… Do you speak Hebrew?”

“Fluently,” he said, “in several dialects.”

“Are you serious, Hal?”

“Absolutely. I also speak Arabic, Greek, Italian, French, German, Spanish, and Russian.”

“Say something in Greek,” she challenged.

“Pure Athenian or with a Cretan accent?”

“Speak in Athens Greek,” she said, “but speak slowly.”

He was positive she was bluffing, but he did not speak slowly. He spoke in a conversational tempo, and he spoke the truth: “You are one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen, and though I know that beauty and virtue are seldom found together, with you it would make no difference. Literally, I could make love to you for one hundred years and not grow tired, if you should last so long.”