The World at the End of Time (42 page)

And then, stroking his thigh, she interrupted herself. “Hold still a minute, Viktor,” she ordered, leaning over to poke at his leg. “Does that feel all right?”

He craned his neck to peer at the pink sausage casing. “I guess so. I almost forget it’s there.” But reminded, he was aware of the smell. The wrapping was porous, to let the wound breathe as it healed, and odors did leak out.

Nrina didn’t seem to mind them. “I’d better take another look,” she decided. And then, “Oh, no, I’m meeting Kotlenny; well, Dekkaduk can do it. Go over and tell him to give you an examination.”

Dekkaduk was waiting for him when Viktor got to the examining room. His expression was hostile.

It was no worse than Viktor had expected. Dekkaduk did not seem to be a friendly man. Their first meeting had been when Dekkaduk had tattooed the fertility warning on Viktor’s forehead; all right, that was just a duty, and if it had been painful probably that couldn’t be helped. But ever since the time they had taken DNA samples from Nrina’s corpsicles, along with the departed Manett, Dekkaduk had given every sign of despising the man from Old Earth.

“Ouch!” Viktor exclaimed, as Dekkaduk peeled the dressing off his leg. (That might not have been on purpose. Still, removing the dressing didn’t hurt when Nrina did it.) Then as the full aroma of the healing wound floated to his nostrils, Dekkaduk muttered furiously to himself and ostentatiously turned the room’s ventilation higher. (Well, it did stink. But that much? Nrina didn’t appear to find the smell intolerable, after all.)

Dekkaduk hurt him (Viktor kept count) eight different times in the course of a two-minute examination. Even the healing, cleaning spray he used to cover the pink new flesh stung bitterly (Nrina’s hadn’t), and when he was through and the leg was rebandaged Dekkaduk simply said, “You’re healing. Go away now.”

Viktor went. Once away from Dekkaduk’s touch the leg hardly hurt at all anymore. As he strolled along the corridor he was thinking of possible explanations for the man’s hostility. It could, of course, be just his nature. Dekkaduk might simply have interests of his own and regard this rude survivor from prehistoric ages, Viktor Sorricaine, as an irritating irrelevance.

But there was another possibility that Viktor thought likely. What if Dekkaduk were not only Nrina’s assistant, but her lover? More likely ex-lover—and jealous. It was a quite plausible theory, Viktor thought. It was even one that gave him a certain amount of satisfaction, because there was enough rude, prehistoric carnality in Viktor’s genetic predispositions to allow him to enjoy beating out another male for a mate.

He had been walking without paying much attention to where he was going. He passed other people from time to time. Some he had met before, even spoken to; he was beginning to be on nodding terms, at least, with some of Nrina’s neighbors, and as he got used to the stretched-out, willowy shapes of these people he began to notice individual differences.

At first they had all looked alike, like members of some famine-stricken basketball team. Then he began to distinguish among them. Some were darker than others. Hair color varied from so pale and fine that it seemed almost transparent to coarse strands like charcoal-colored knitting wool. Both men and women might have facial hair, though women’s was usually only a pair of narrow sideburns. Quite a few of the people struck Viktor as downright ugly—noses that were splayed, hooked or reduced to the size of a shirt button; teeth that seemed too big for their mouths, or, in one particular case, a woman with vampire incisors that lay against her lower lip. (She had seemed more willing to be friendly than most. Viktor had not encouraged her.)

On Newmanhome, at least on the fat, rich Newmanhome of his youth, Viktor would have wondered why these people hadn’t had orthodontia or plastic surgery. Here he wondered even more, because those traits had to be
on purpose.
Some parents had gone to some genetic engineer like Nrina and
chosen
that receding chin, those pendulous ears for their child.

As Viktor strolled, idle and aimless, he saw the vampire-toothed woman coming toward him.

She was even taller than Nrina and—in the same ethereal way as Nrina, of course—quite as pretty. (Not counting those disconcerting teeth, of course.) The woman had let Viktor clearly know that strange, big-muscled primitives out of the freezatorium were in some ways quite interesting—though she had looked regretfully at the tattoo on his forehead. But Viktor only nodded to her now. It wasn’t that his fertility was a serious problem. If Nrina had some kind of contraception, this other woman could probably manage it, too, but that meant a different kind of problem.

Kept men, Viktor was nearly sure, were expected to be faithful to their keepers.

He was quite a bit farther away from Nrina’s area than he remembered going before. Ahead of him the corridor suddenly widened to an open space. There was a little pond, and around it were patches of growing things.

It was a farm.

Nrina had told him there was a farm on the habitat, though he’d never seen it before. It was really very pleasant. It wasn’t at all like any farm on ancient Newmanhome, because of the funny way it bent, pond and all, and the fact that the “sky” was almost within touching distance over his head. But there were growing things there. He recognized some of them as having been in Nrina’s locker, and was pleased to bend down and pick a—tomato? Something that tasted like a tomato, anyway, although it was a deep purple in color.

It occurred to him that it was possible these plants belonged to someone.

He looked around. There was no one in sight. He ate the tomato, nibbling around the stem, and tossed the little green remnant to the ground as he strolled. That was curious, too, he observed, for the ground wasn’t really ground. This was no plowed half acre of somebody’s produce garden; the tomato vines grew out of long, bulkheaded rows of something that was paler and spongier than any earth Viktor had ever seen, and between the rows were immaculately swept footpaths.

Someone kept this farm extraordinarily neat.

Then Viktor caught a glimpse of one of the “someones.”

He was at the far end of the open space, and as he turned to go back he saw some dark-skinned person at the edge of the pond. He didn’t actually see the whole person. The pond, and the land around it, had curved up until they were almost hidden by the bulge of the ceiling between. (So strange to look at! One wondered why the pond didn’t spill out.) What Viktor saw was someone’s feet, seemingly wearing dark, furry boots, and someone’s hands tipping a sort of bucket into the lake.

Immediately the surface of the pond at that point began to erupt into little spouts and fountains. Fish were feeding there. Pleased with the discovery, Viktor started back in that direction.

The fish feeder was faster than he. By the time he got to where he could see the whole other end of the farm enclosure there was no one there. But the splashes he had seen were definitely fish feeding. They were still swirling around, just under the surface of the water, rising to snap at little bits of something edible floating where the fish attendant had left them.

It would be nice, Viktor thought, to feed the fish himself some time. Feeling at ease after his stroll, he went back to Nrina’s home and busied himself with the teacher desk, awaiting her return from her laboratory.

She was later than Viktor expected, but he didn’t mind. His unreal mentor of the desk hardly ever had to correct his grammar anymore, but remained ready to help whenever Viktor got stuck. That wasn’t often. As Viktor gained skills he gained confidence. Apart from the fact that it taught him things he wanted to learn, just playing with the desk was fun; it was like an immensely complicated video game with real rewards for winning.

It was beyond his competence, or his mentor’s aid, to access the kind of cosmological data he really wanted. Simple astronomy was easy enough, though. With the mentor assisting, Viktor got a look at each of the stars that had accompanied their own sun through space; they had all been given names, but the names rolled off his mind. Then he looked at their own planets, one by one . . . and then he struck oil.

With the mentor’s help Viktor got a sort of travelogue of the mysterious planet of Nebo. Someone had done a flyby and deployed a robot shuttle. The shuttle didn’t land. It simply skimmed through the atmosphere of Nebo, taking pictures of the great metal objects that Viktor had seen from space. It seemed that its handlers had been interested in two particular areas. In one there was a protruding edge of worn metal that Viktor thought might have been what was left of
Ark’s
lander; there was nothing else of interest nearby. The other was in very bad shape. The buildings seemed to have been blown up by some powerful explosion; but what that was about, too, Viktor could not learn.

Viktor stopped for a moment, listening. “Nrina?” he called. He thought he’d heard a sound somewhere in the other room, but it wasn’t repeated and he went back to the desk.

Then Viktor switched views. “Habitats,” he commanded, and his mentor provided him with the fact that there were more than eight hundred of them circling sullen, swollen Nergal. Then there were the natural moons human beings had colonized: Mary, Joseph, Mohammed, and Gautama were the important ones. (Sudden thrill almost of nostalgia: so some of the religious differences of frozen Newmanhome had persisted even here!)

Then he switched again, to study the other planets once more. Nothing had changed on most of them. Ishtar was still Ishtar, Marduk Marduk—gas giants with nothing much to recommend them—and Ninih, of course, was still too small and too far from the primary to be of interest to anybody. He stared briefly at the surface of ruddy Nergal (nothing much to look at but storms of superheated gases), then turned to the planet that mattered most to him: old, almost abandoned Newmanhome.

He caught his breath.

Newmanhome had changed again. It was reborn, all rolling seas, empty meadows, and young forests where the ice had gone—but it was not the Newmanhome he had lived on. It was
scarred.
During the glaciation all the planet’s liquid water had been ice, covering the continents. As it melted, it formed huge meltwater lakes, blocked by ice dams. When the dams broke through, great torrents had scoured out scablands all the way to the sea.

There was no trace left that Viktor could find of the docks for the ocean-going ships or the town. True, in the hills near where he thought Homeport might have been, trying to translate the desk’s coordinate system into his familiar navigation numbers, there was a cluster of buildings. But whether that was related to the old city he could not say.

This time he definitely heard the sound, and he could tell that it came from the kitchen.

“Who’s there?” he cried. He heard the freezer door close, but there was no other answer. Puzzled, Viktor went to the food room.

Someone was leaving through the other door—hastily, as though not wanting to be seen. Viktor stood there, blinking. The bowls had been refilled with fresh fruit. The scatter of used dishes he had left was gone.

So that, he thought dazedly, was how the housework got done. But how peculiar that it was done by someone squatter and broader than himself, wearing a grizzled gray fur coat.

Half an hour later Nrina came back, to be greeted by his questions. “Yes, of course,” she said, surprised he should ask. “Naturally we have someone to do things like that. Who would do them, otherwise? You saw one of the gillies.”

“Gillies?” Viktor repeated, and then blinked as he connected the sound of the word with the glimpses he had caught. “Do you mean
gorillas?”

“They’re called ‘gillies,’ Viktor,” Nrina said impatiently. “I don’t know the word ‘gorilla.’ They are related to humans but without much intelligence—normally. Of course, we have modified them to be somewhat brighter—and quite a lot less belligerent and strong. Even so, they can’t speak.”

“You
modified
them?” he repeated.

“From genetic materials we found in the freezers, yes. Why not? Did you think I only made human beings?”

“I didn’t know what you made,” he said. He sounded aggrieved even to his own ears. He must have sounded so to Nrina, because she looked at him seriously for a moment.

Then she laughed. “Well,” she said, “why don’t I show you? Would you like to watch me work?”

Nrina was a creature shaper. Viktor began to realize that this woman was a major VIP, a star, famous through the habitats. She was remarkable even among the small number of greatly respected people who designed living architectures. The gorilla menials had come from their labs. So had the food animals and plants; so had the gorgeous and bizarre-smelling blossoms that decorated the spaces of their lives. Although their biggest business was making babies to order, she and her assistant, Dekkaduk, could make almost anything.

Dekkaduk was not pleased at Viktor’s visit. He insisted that Viktor wear the gauzy robe over his cache-sex, and then fussily demanded he wear a hat, too. “Who knows what parasites might be in that disgusting fur on his head?” Dekkaduk demanded. He was nearly bald himself.

“Why, Dekkaduk,” Nrina said, laughing, “probably about the same sorts of things as in my own hair. By now.” Dekkaduk flushed furiously.

Nevertheless, Viktor wore the cap.