Gateways (54 page)

“Boojum, stop that!” He bent down to feel what was going on, and his hand was captured and severely beaten up. Ardway swore, hopping around as he pulled on sweatpants while the cannoning body floated around, banging into him occasionally. “Knock it off!”

The familiar shape thudded into his chest. Ardway reached out automatically to catch him, and was rewarded with the deep vibration as the cat’s head scraped against his neck and chest. He stroked the soft, furry body. “Oh, baby, I have missed you!” The purr resonated through the receptors, vibrating deeply. Ardway sighed with delight.

Plaintive stropping at his ankles surprised him so much he flutter-kicked away in the air. He reached out a tentative hand, and felt another feline body, programmed into space just like the first. This one was smaller and slimmer, with shorter fur and larger ears.

Another cat?

It was! Completely at home in zero gravity, the newcomer walked up his body and snuggled into his arms, shoving Boojum to one side. Ardway felt the contented rumble turn to a growl deep in the first construct’s chest, but it quickly turned to a resigned purr. Two cats! He had
two
cats!

He kicked across space and hit the intercom.

“Johnson!”

“Hey, Ardway, good morning,” the hearty voice said.

“The program’s back, but it’s got a hiccup. There’s a second cat walking around in here.”

Johnson sounded smug. “Yep, I know. It’s a surprise, kind of a thank-you from the crew for pulling so hard when we knew it was killing you. You did good, boy. Even the captain approves. He gave the go-ahead for the extra data space. We’ve been calling the second kitty cat Snark. Enjoy.” The intercom clicked off.

“Snark, huh?” Ardway said, bringing his hand around the bulge in his arms to scratch the top of the smaller cat’s head. “Hey, baby, nice to meet you.” An approving rumble said he had found just the right spot. The head tilted under his hand until he was massaging a tufted ear and a sharp slash of cheekbone. He wished he could see it, but he imagined Snark to be a female. Maybe a Jellicle cat, with black and white fur and big gold eyes. Boojum wriggled, trying to get at the petting hand, and captured it between two big paws. Ardway shifted so he could stroke both of them at the same time. They all floated in the middle of the cabin, Snark massaging his side with her small paws, and Boojum lying with his head on Ardway’s shoulder.

Two cats! He had never been so happy. There might have been a couple of gas giants circling Gliese 86, but as far as Benny Ardway was concerned, the most important pair of satellites in space was right here.

I offer this story in tribute to Fred because one of the facets of his work that I always appreciated was how his characters struggled to remain human while confronting the strangeness of the universe around them. I admire the scope of his imagination. His stories postulate the large changes of which we human beings are capable when called upon to make them.

“Virtually, A Cat” is a small story by comparison, but my main character, Benny, also has to reach deep inside himself to cope with the effects of living in deep space without one’s usual defining comforts.

—J
ODY
L
YNN
N
YE

Fred came into my career at an important turning point. I had just begun to publish short stories when in 2000 he judged the Sturgeon Award and awarded it to my novella, “The Wedding Album.” I was very disappointed that illness prevented Fred from attending the award ceremony in Kansas, but I was delighted to meet him not long after at a Worldcon. The attention the award brought me has helped me clamber one or two rungs up the endless ladder of literary success.

This week marks the first fifty years of humanity walking on the planet Mars. As yet, a better and more peaceful culture has to establish itself, but that the settlements still exist is a matter for congratulation.

Fadrum and his buddy Reet were kicking a ball against the alley wall, Fadrum to Reet, Reet back to Fadrum.
Thud bump thud bump
, went the echoing ball, in terms of complaint. They seemed never to tire, those two bored boys, but suddenly ceased their game.

Reet made off, ball under arm.

“You don’t say much these days,” he shouted back at Fadrum.

“Gotta study,” was his response.

Fadrum, before heading for his house, launched a jet of urine against the wall, that wall like most others made of processed rock and fabric-blend.

He trotted right, right again, then left, into a small courtyard. Blind eyes of windows faced each other, dung-colored.

He entered the block, where Gadramm, his father, sat with others watching
Three Down, One to Go
on his tiny screen. “Hello, lad,” said Gadramm, cheerfully, keeping his gaze on the screen.

“Ho,” Fadrum replied. There were sixteen other men in the room.

A square electralite on the table served to illuminate photocuts on one wall.

OFF-PLANET POPPET DOING GREAT
FIRST EVER MARTIAN MUM!
MIRACLE BIRTH BOOSTS BUM WORLD
BABY BURSTS FROM THE BARRENS

And so forth.

The mother of this headline-grabbing child was Cauley Gore. She sat upstairs in a hard-backed chair, unmoving hands folded on her lap. Cauley was alone in the room.

That in itself was remarkable. This building was crowded with people, mainly men. Certainly, they understood that the birth of a living baby on Mars was a noteworthy event, unique, almost a miracle. But all of them had practical work to do, whereas looking after a baby—even this marvelous baby—was regarded as woman’s work.

Fadrum kept out of the way of both his father and his mother. He had not seen Cauley, his mother, for some days: not since that day, now a week past, when the baby—that most famous baby on the planet—the baby whose birth had been announced all ’round the Earth—had died. Then Fadrum had wept secretly.

They had called this amazing baby Snooks during its brief life. Drina, its sister, had liked to cuddle it. The little baby whimpered and never smiled.

Snooks had lived only for eight days—just long enough to hit the world’s headlines.

Directly it had shown symptoms of illness, the doctor had come in his crawler. He was a doctor of works, still in his overalls.

“Congenital heart disease,” he said. He hardly made an examination of the little body. “Epstein’s anomaly. All too common on Mars.” He shook his head. “Hard luck on the mothers . . .”

“Is that all you got to say?” Gadramm demanded. “This is my kid that’s died!”

“No, it is or was my ‘
kid
,’ ” said Cauley, and was ignored as the two men confronted each other.

The doctor backed away. “Look, it’s the lighter gravity. Bones don’t build up like they should. Heart don’t kick in like it should. Pregnancy has got big problems on this planet.”

“Oh, shit,” said Gadramm, and to his wife, “Stow that crying, will you, girl? We already got three kids and that will have to be enough for anyone . . .”

Cauley already had three children, born on Earth before the family took the subsidized trip to Mars. They were Drina, the oldest and a girl, Leen, a boy, eighteen months younger, and Fadrum, the youngest, fifteen years old. They were all in the little tinpot room, standing upright and silent.

Fadrum followed the doctor from the house. As the latter climbed into his crawler, Fadrum asked him hesitantly, “So was this death of the kid anything to do with the—well, let’s say the guy who humped her?”

“
Her? Your mother?
You heard what I said. It’s a gravity problem, okay?”

“Couldn’t be a problem with—for instance, the immaturity of the donor semen?”

The doctor scowled down at him. “Did you hear what I just said? We aren’t adapted. The womb is not adapted. It don’t properly realize there’s a fetus in it needing support. Not that I know much about it. I ain’t that kind of a doctor.” He revved the electric engine and the crawler crawled off down the street.

Building was in progress. Fadrum stuck hands in pockets and stared at the dreary scene. This was the city. Their block was finished and had the sign saying
TAMPA
over the door. Most of the blocks were unfinished. It was this that caused Tampa, Gadramm’s block, to be so overcrowded. Gadramm was i/c Diggers and had been forced to house all his team until they set off on their next operation.

The Chinese block opposite Tampa was finished. Fadrum envied the Chinese expeditionaries. They were financed by the Chinese government back on Earth, making them comparatively wealthy. And they concentrated mainly on developing soils and growing things that passed for food—even occasionally sending over edible dishes to Tampa, as a token of goodwill.

Fadrum went back into his own building. It was full of clatter. Another Digger expedition was getting underway. The amalgamation of North Florida universities going under the name of Tampa subsidized everything in this block they liked to call their Mars extension. But a new American/world recession had hit their generosity; now they needed results to perk up funding contributions.

Gadramm was in the forum with other men, struggling into his exo-boots, looking angry.

“Where you been?” he asked his son.

“Where do you think? Jupiter?”

“Look, I don’t want no lip from you. I need your help. Come nearer, will you?”

Fadrun moved two inches nearer to his father and to those boots, designed to act not only as footwear but as containers for bodily excretions.

“Pa, why you always so angry with me?”

Angrily, Gadramm explained that the Tampa sentry had died. It was up to him as leader to act as guard and sleep by the door, armed, to prevent anyone trying to escape in the night. His men had been known to sneak out and take refuge in the European or Chinese outposts, where life was supposedly more easy.

“We’ll be away two weeks, maybe more. Your brother Leen is coming with us. I want to toughen him up. There will be about fifteen guys and the women left here. The rest will be with me in the Hecates Tholus region. That’s our instructions from Tampa . . .”

“You go on about Tampa. I reckon they’re a stingy bunch,” said Syril, who often sat chatting with Gadramm through the long evenings.

“Tampa saved me,” said Gadramm. “I used to be a regular boozer. It was my brother. I blame him. He introduced me to the hard stuff. He’s dead now, God rot his soul. We stowed away on a trade ship and ended up in a place called Jamaica. It’s an island. Tropical. An island. We slept on the beach.”

“We’ve heard all this before. You seem to think it’s to your credit,” said a tall man by name of Dak Doran. He got up and walked away.

Gadramm pointed a thick finger at the retreating back. “I heard he was a schoolteacher. A superior sort, yet they still gave him the push. That’s where we end up, on this miserable dump of a world. You can’t get booze on Mars . . . Sounds like a line from a tourist attraction; ‘You Can’t Get Booze on Mars.’ Well, there’s this weak piss Tampa occasionally ships in. Hardly worth drinking. ‘You Can’t Get Booze on Mars’!” He roared with laughter at his own joke.