Heechee rendezvous (4 page)

Walthers should have been easy to remember, because he looked rather unusual. He was short and not handsome. His face was wider at the jaw than at the temples, which made him look a little like a friendly frog. He was also married to a beautiful and dissatisfied woman less than half as old as he. Her age was nineteen; her name was Dolly. If Audee had asked my advice, I would have told him that such May and December affairs cannot work out-unless, of course, as in my case, December is remarkably rich. But he desperately wanted it to work out, because he loved his wife very much, and so he worked like a slave for Dolly. Audee Walthers was a pilot. Any kind of pilot. He had piloted airbodies on Venus. When the big Earth transport (which constantly reminded him of my existence since I owned a share in it and had renamed it after my wife) was in orbit at Peggy’s he piloted shuttlecraft to load and unload it, between times he piloted whatever he could rent on Peggy’s for whatever tasks a charter demanded. Like most everybody else on Peggy’s, he had come 4 X 1O’° kilometers from the place where he was born to scratch out a living, and sometimes he made it and sometimes he did not. So when he came back from one charter and Adjangba told him there was another to be had, Walthers scrambled to get it. Even if it meant searching every bar in Port

Hegramet to find the charter party. That wasn’t easy. For a “city” of four thousand, Port Hegramet was bar-saturated. There were scores, and the obvious ones-the hotel cafe, the airport pub, the big gambling casino with Port Hegramet’s only floorshow-weren’t where the Arabs who were his next charter were. Nor was Dolly in the casino, where she might have been performing with her puppet show, or at home, or at least not to answer the phone. Half an hour later Walthers was still walking the ill-lit streets in search of his Arabs. He was no longer in the richer, more Western parts of the city, and when he finally found them it was in a shebeen at the edge of town, having an argument.

All of the buildings in Port Hegramet were temporary. That was a necessary consequence of its being a colony planet; every month, when the new immigrants arrived in the big Heechee Heaven transport from Earth, the population exploded like a balloon at the hydrogen valve.

Then it gradually shrank for a few weeks, as the colonists were moved out to plantations and lumbering sites and mines. It never collapsed quite to the former level, so each month there were a few hundred new residents, a few score new dwellings built and a few old ones swallowed up. But this shebeen was most obviously temporary of all. It was only three slabs of construction plastic propped together for walls, a fourth laid over them as a roof and the street side open to the warm Peggy’s air. Even so it was smoky and hazy inside, smoke of tobacco and smoke of hemp laced with the beery, sour smell of the home-brewed liquor they sold.

Walthers recognized his quarry at once from his agent’s description. There were not many like him in Port Hegramet-many Arabs, of course, but how many rich ones? And how many old ones? Mr. Luqman was even older than Adjangba, fat and bald, and each one of his plump fingers wore a ring, many of them diamonds. He was with a group of other Arabs at the back of the shebeen, but as Walthers started toward them the barwoman put out a hand. “Private party,” she said. “They pay. You leave alone.”

“They’re expecting me,” Walthers said, hoping it was true.

“For what?”

“Now, that’s none of your damn business,” Walthers said angrily, estimating the chances of what would happen if he just pushed past her. She was no threat, skinny, dark-skinned young woman with great blue-glowing metal hoops dangling from her ears; but the big man with the bullet-shaped head who was sitting in a corner and watching what was going on was something else again. Fortunately Mr. Luqman saw Walthers and stumbled blearily toward him. “You are my pilot,” he announced. “Come have a drink.”

“Thank you, Mr. Luqman, but I’ve got to get home. I just wanted to confirm the charter.”

“Yes. We shall go with you.” He turned and gazed toward the others in his party, who were having a furious argument about something. “Will you have a drink?” he asked over his shoulder.

The man was drunker than Walthers had realized. He said again, “Thanks, but no. Would you like to sign the charter contract now, please?”

Luqman turned back to stare at the printout in Walthers’ hand. “The contract?” He thought it over for a moment. “Why must we have a contract?”

“It’s customary, Mr. Luqman,” said Walthers, patience ebbing rapidly. Behind him the Arab’s companions were shouting at each other, and Luqman’s attention was wavering between Walthers and the arguing group.

And that was another thing. There were four people involved in the argument-five if you counted Luqman himself. “Mr. Adjangba said there would be four of you altogether,” Walthers mentioned. “There’s a surcharge if there are five.”

“Five?” Luqman focused on Walthers’ face. “No. We are four.” Then his expression changed and he smiled fondly. “Oh, you are thinking that crazy man is one of us? No, he will not go with us. He will go to his grave, perhaps, if he insists on telling Shameem what the Prophet meant in his teachings.”

“I see,” said Walthers. “Then if you’ll just sign-“

The Arab shrugged and took the printout sheet from Walthers. He spread it on the zinc-topped bar and painfully began to read it, a pen in his hand. The argument grew louder, but Luqman seemed to have abolished it from his mind.

Most of the shebeen’s clientele was African, what looked like Kikuyu on one side of the room and Masai on the other. At first glance, in that company, the people at the quarrelsome table had seemed all alike. Now Walthers saw his mistake. One of the arguing men was younger than the others, and shorter and leaner. His skin color was darker than most Europeans’, but not as dark as the Libyans’; his eyes were as black as theirs, but not kohled.

It was none of Walthers’ business.

He turned his back and waited patiently, anxious to leave. Not just because he wanted to see Dolly. Port Hegramet was somewhat hostilely ethnic. Chinese mostly stayed with Chinese, Latin Americans in their barrio, Europeans in the European quarter-oh, not neatly, and certainly not always peacefully. The divisions were sharp even among the subdivisions. Chinese from Canton did not get along with Chinese from Taiwan, the Portuguese had little in common with the Finns, and the once-Chileans and former Argentines still quarreled. But Europeans were definitely not urged to come into African drinking spots, and when he had the signed charter he thanked Luqman and left quickly and with some relief. He had gone less than a block when he heard louder cries of rage behind him, and a scream of pain.

On Peggy’s Planet you mind your own business as much as you can, but Walthers had a charter to protect. The group he saw beating up one individual might well have been the African bouncers attacking the leader of his charter party. That made it his business. He turned and ran back-a mistake that, believe me, he regretted very deeply for a long time afterward.

By the time Walthers got there the assailants were gone, and the whimpering, bleeding figure on the sidewalk was not one of his charter party. It was the young stranger; and he clutched at Walthers’ leg.

“Help me and I will give you fifty thousand dollars,” he said blurrily, his lips thick and bloody.

“I’ll go look for a public patrolman,” Walthers offered, trying to disengage himself.

“No patrol! You help me kill those persons and I will pay,” snarled the man. “I am Captain Juan Henriquette Santos-Schinitz, and I can well afford to buy your services!”

Of course, I knew nothing of this at the time. On the other hand, Walthers didn’t know that Mr. Luqman was working for me. That didn’t matter. There were tens of thousands of people working for me, and whether or not Walthers knew who they were made no difference at all. The bad thing was that he didn’t recognize Wan, for he had never heard of him, except generally. That made a very big difference to Walthers in the long run.

I knew Wan particularly. I had met him first when he was a wolf-child, brought up by machines and nonhumans. I called him a non-friend when I was running through the catalog of my acquaintances for you. I knew him, all right. But he was never socialized enough to be a friend to anyone.

He was even, you could say, quite an enemy-not just to me but to the whole human race-in the days when he was a scared and lecherous youth, dreaming into his couch out in the Oort Cloud and neither knowing nor caring that his dreams were driving everybody else nuts. That wasn’t his fault, to be sure. It wasn’t even his fault that the wretched and raging terrorists had found inspiration in his example and were driving us all nuts again, whenever they could manage it-but if we get into questions of “fault,” and that related term “guilt,” we’ll be right back with Sigfrid von Shrink before you know it, and what I’m talking about now is Audee Walthers.

Walthers was no angel of mercy, but he couldn’t leave the man in the street. When he helped the bleeding man into the little apartment he shared with Dolly, Walthers was far from clear in his mind why he was doing it. The man was in bad shape, true. But that was what first-aid stations were for, and besides, the victim was singularly unwinning in his ways. All the way to the quarter called Little Europe, the man was reducing his cash offer and complaining that Walthers was a coward; by the time he sprawled on Walthers’ folding bed the cash promise was two hundred and fifty dollars, and the reflections on Walthers’ character had been incessant.

At least the man’s bleeding had stopped. He pushed himself up and stared contemptuously around the flat. Dolly wasn’t home yet, and she had, of course, left the place in a mess-undisposed-of dirty dishes on the fold-down table, her hand puppets scattered all over, underwear drying over the sink, and a sweater hanging on the doorknob. “This is a filthy

What Robin says needs some explication here, too. The Heechee were very interested in living things, particularly in life that was intelligent or had the promise of becoming so. They had a device that let them listen in on the feelings of creatures worlds away.

What was wrong with the device was that it transmitted as well as received. The operator’s own emotions were perceived by the subjects. If the operator was upset or depressed-or insane-the consequences were very, very bad. The boy Wan had such a device when he was marooned as an infant. He called it a dream couch-academics later renamed it the telempathic psychokinetic transceiver-and when he used it the events Robin so subjectively describes occurred.

place,” the undesired guest said conversationally. “This is not worth two hundred fifty dollars, even.”

A hot response came to Walthers’ lips. He pushed it back with all the others he had been repressing for the last half hour; what was the point? “I’ll get you cleaned up,” he said. “Then you can get out. I don’t want your money.”

The bruised lips attempted a sneer. “How foolish of you to say that,” the man said, “since I am Captain Juan Henriquette Santos-Schmitz. I own my own spacecraft, I have royalty shares in the transport vessel that feeds this planet, among other very important enterprises, and I am said to be the eleventh wealthiest person in the human race.”

“I never heard of you,” Walthers grumbled, running warm water into a basin. But it wasn’t true. It had been a long time ago, yes, but there was something, there was a memory. Somebody who had been on the PV news shows every hour for a week, then every week for a month or two. No one is more securely forgotten than the one-month famous, ten years later. “You’re the kid who was raised in the Heechee habitat,” he said suddenly, and the man whined:

“Exactly, ouch! You are hurting me!”

“Then just hold still,” said Walthers, and wondered just what to do with the eleventh wealthiest person in the human race. Dolly would be thrilled to meet him, of course. But after Dolly got over being thrilled, what schemes would she be hatching for Walthers to tap all that wealth and buy them an island plantation, a summer home in the Heather Hills
or a trip home? Would it, in the long run, be better to hold the man here under some pretext until Dolly got home-or to ease him out and simply tell her about it?

Dilemmas pondered over long enough solve themselves; this one solved itself when the door lock pinged and crackled, and Dolly walked in.

Whatever Dolly looked like around the house-sometimes with her eyes streaming from an allergy to Peggy’s Planet’s flora, often grouchy, seldom with her hair brushed-when she went out she dazzled. She obviously dazzled the unexpected guest as she came in the door, and, although he had been married to that striking slim figure and that impassive alabaster face for more than a year, and even knew the rigid dieting that produced the first and the dental flaw that required the second, she pretty nearly dazzled Walthers himself.

Walthers greeted her with a hug and a kiss; the kiss was returned, but not with full attention. She was peering past him at the stranger. Still holding her, Walthers said, “Darling, this is Captain Santos-Schmitz. He was in a fight, and I brought him here-“

She pushed him away. “Junior, you didn’t!”

It took him a moment to realize her misunderstanding. “Oh, no, Dolly, the fight wasn’t with me. I just happened to be nearby.”

Her expression thawed and she turned to the guest. “Of course you’re welcome here, Wan. Let me see what they did to you.”

Santos-Schmitz preened himself. “You know me,” he said, allowing her to dab at the bits of bandage Walthers had already applied.