Starfishers Volume 2: Starfishers (22 page)

Perchevski entered the barracks block. Generations of midshipmen had passed through it. The air was heavy with age. And human scent. He found A Corridor and followed it, glancing at the name tags on the cubicle doors. He located
HELSUNG, GRETA: HAMBURG, EARTH
, paired with
JAMES, LESLIE
from someplace on Sierra called Token Offering. No one answered his knock.

He followed the noise of a holoset on to the company commons. Some twenty youngsters were watching holo or playing games without enthusiasm. Homesickness thickened the air.

Greta sat in a vinyl-covered armchair. She had heels pulled up against her behind. Her arm embraced her knees. She had an air of infinite sadness, of unspeakable loneliness.

A ten-year-old with a boarding school voice snapped, “ ’Ten-shut!”

“As you were, people.”

Greta hurled herself at him. She flung her arms around his neck. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“Easy, girl. Don’t break anything.” He felt better about himself suddenly. It was great to have someone glad to see him.

“How come you’re here? I thought you were going to see your mother?”

“I did. We were both disappointed.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I didn’t expect much. Come on. Sit down. How’s it going? What do you think of the moon?”

“I haven’t seen anything yet. Everything’s bigger than I thought it would be. What’s happening back home?”

“Nothing new. Homesick?”

She shook her head.

“Fibber. I was here too, remember? And I still get homesick. That’s why I go back sometimes. Of course, I came up with Neil Armstrong . . . ”

“Don’t tease me.”

“All right. Tell you what. I talked to your company commander . . . ”

“Old Greasy Hair? I hate him already.”

Perchevski laughed. “You’ll hate him a lot more before you’re done. He’s going to be your father, mother, priest, god, and devil. Look, do you want to see the rest of the moon? You won’t have a chance after classes start.”

“Don’t you have something better to do? You’ve got your job, and your own friends . . . ”

“I’m on vacation. Sort of. And I don’t have many friends here.”

“I don’t want to put you out.” A skinny little black girl with pigtailed hair, wearing a ragged woolen smock, was staring at them. “Oh. Leslie. Come here. This is Leslie James, Commander. My roommate.”

“Hi, Les. Where is Token Offering? I visited Sierra once, but I don’t remember it.”

The girl said something into a mouth full of fingers and retreated.

“She’s shy,” Greta said. “Her parents must be dead. She came from an orphanage.”

“We’re all orphans, one way or another. Navy is our family.”

Greta looked at him oddly. Then, “Can we take her with us if we go?”

“Uhm. You’re starting to understand already. I don’t know. It might be complicated. I’ll ask if you want.”

“I think so.”

“Okay. I’d better go. It’s past visiting hours. I just wanted to see how you were. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

She squeezed his hand. “Thank you. For everything.” Her hands were soft and smooth and warm.

He spent the evening entertaining fantasies he would never pursue.

The inside man never ages. He spends the rest of his life in love with the soft, smooth, warm girls he knew when he was young and just becoming aware of what marvelous creatures females are.

“Where do you want to go, girls?” They were at Academy Station. Perchevski was watching Greta try to people-watch without being offensive. Oddly uniformed folks surrounded them.

“I don’t know,” Greta replied.

Luna Command was no sightseer’s paradise. It had no spectacular ruins or monuments. The real sights were outside, the mountains and craters of the surface.

He took the girls to Tycho Dome and for a ride on one of the surface trains. He treated them to the best restaurants and hotels. Greta’s response was gratifying, Leslie’s remote.

He ran out of ideas after two days. All but the alien digs, and he had promised those to Max.

Max could take the pressure off. She would have ideas . . . He took the girls to her shop.

“Hello, Walter,” Max said. Her voice was chilly. She stared at Greta. Greta did not notice. She was engrossed in the showcases.

“Hi, Lady. Anything for me?”

“Same old stuff. Is that what you’ve been doing since you got back?”

“Come on, Max! She’s sixteen. Greta, come here. I want you to meet Max. Max, Greta Helsung and her friend Leslie.”

Greta was not imperceptive. “Hi, Max. The Commander is my sponsor.”

“Your sponsor? You never told me you had a kid, Walter.”

“I’m a man of mystery, Love.”

“How come she calls you Walter? Your name is Cornelius.”

“Because he’s a man of mystery, dear,” Max replied. “Everybody has a different name for him. He’s some kind of spy. I don’t think he knows his real name himself.”

“Max . . . ”

“Wow! Really?”

“Yes. Really. Max, you talk too much. I came here to see if you still wanted to go to the Farside dig.”

Someone entered the shop behind him. Max said hello.

“Hi, tall, blonde, and desirable. Thomas? Is that you? What the hell are you doing here?”

Perchevski turned.

Mouse had come in. He gave Greta an admiring once-over. “That’s right. You know Max, don’t you? Max, I really want that Manchurian collection, but you’re going to have to come down on it. It’s just not worth twelve thousand.”

“I can see what you want. Hands off. She’s your buddy’s kid. And I can get fifteen if I send it out to Amonhotep.” To Greta she explained, “This is one of your old man’s buddies. He’s a spy too.”

Perchevski shook his head. “She’s in a Roman candle mood today, Mouse. I come in to ask her out and she plays mad dog with me. I didn’t know you were a collector.”

“Lot of things we don’t know about each other.” That seemed to close the subject.

“Mouse and I were in the same battalion in Academy,” Perchevski told Greta.

Mouse gave the girl another admiring look. She moved closer to Perchevski, as if feeling for a protective shadow. Mouse smiled gently and resumed arguing with Max.

Perchevski wondered how he could demonstrate, to her satisfaction, that she was not in competition with inconquerable youth.

“Max, you want to go to the Farside digs or not?”

“When it’s convenient.”

“Are you really a spy, Commander?”

“I guess you could put it that way, Greta. How about after work, Max?”

“You sure you won’t be busy?”

Perchevski closed his eyes, took a long, deep breath, released it. Be patient, he told himself.

“What’s your real name?” Greta asked. Mouse watched, his expression unreadable.

“Honey, sometimes I’m not sure myself. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter. If you need to get in touch, just call the number I gave you. If I can’t get back to you, one of my friends will.”

“But . . . ”

“Forget it. Subject closed. Max, are you going to the digs or not?”

“You don’t have to get snappy, Walter. Yes. I’m coming. What about you, Mouse?”

“Me?”

“Yes. You want to see that new chamber? They think it might shed some light on the Sangaree. There’re some primitive murals that might be of human origin. On a Noah’s ark theme, with spaceships. Or aren’t you the culture type?”

“Sure. Why not?” He looked at Perchevski as if in appeal.

“I don’t know, Mouse. Maybe it’s the change.” Why was Mouse attaching himself? Because of the Sangaree remark? Or because the Old Man wanted somebody to keep an eye on him? After what had happened on The Broken Wings, Beckhart would be wondering about him.

The girls slept during the tube trip. Perchevski and Mouse played chess on Mouse’s pocket set. Prodded by Max, Mouse related several anecdotes about Perchevski while saying nothing about himself. Perchevski let him set the limits.

Max did not seem the least interested in his former partner.

Both men loosened up on sips from a flask Max dug out of her jumpsuit. “Emergency rations,” she claimed.

“Good thinking,” Perchevski told her.

“What is this? A class reunion?” she demanded toward trip’s end.

Mouse and Perchevski had begun playing remember when. They were reliving the Great Sunjammer Race of ’29, in which they had crewed a ship and had beaten the best starwind yachtsmen in Confederation. That fluke victory was one of the brightest of Perchevski’s memories.

He and Mouse had been a team then, almost friends, and for a few days afterward they had been closer than ever before or since.

“Those were the days,” Mouse said, ignoring Max. “Wish we could be kids forever. Think we could do it again?”

“Getting too old.”

“Nah. I think I’ll check it out. Just for the hell of it. Want to try it? If I can find a ship?”

Perchevski laughed. “Better find the time off, first. We’re almost there.” The capsule had begun decelerating. “I’ll wake the girls.”

They reached the digs an hour later.

The one-time alien base was being unearthed, studied, and explored at a snail’s pace. The xenoarchaeologists had been working for decades, and might be at it for centuries. They sifted every grain of lunar dust, and preserved it. They did not want to miss a thing, even through ignorance.

Thus far the base had revealed more about humanity’s past than it had about its builders.

The scientists had concluded that the station had served both scientific and military purposes, and had been occupied continuously for at least ten millennia. It seemed to have been abandoned approximately eleven centuries before its discovery, just as Mankind teetered on the brink of its first tentative step into space.

Perchevski and his companions began with the museum of recovered artifacts, most of which were everyday items comparable to human combs, tableware, worn-out socks, pill bottles, broken furniture, and the like. The aliens had taken their fancy hardware with them.

“Ooh!” Greta said as they approached a group of wax figurines. “They were ugly.”

“Notice anything about them, Greta?” Perchevski asked.

“Besides ugly?”

“Yes. Look at how they’re dressed. Think. All the legends about little people. Gnomes, dwarves, elves, leprechauns . . . The kobolds, where you come from.” The largest alien figurine stood just a meter tall.

“Yeah. You’re right. You know there’re still people that believe in them? One time, I guess I was ten, we went on a field trip to the Black Forest. There was this old caretaker, a kind of forest ranger, who told us all these stories about the kobolds in the woods.”

Max interjected, “I think it’s more interesting that they resemble the spacemen of the UFO era.”

Everyone looked at her. “Oh, it’s not my idea. I just liked it. It was on the educational channel one time. In the old days people used to see what they called flying saucers. Sometimes they claimed that space people talked to them. They described them like this. But nobody ever believed them.”

“Where are they now?” Leslie asked.

“Nobody knows,” Perchevski replied. “They just disappeared. Nobody’s found any other traces of them, either. Ulant got into space before we did, and they never ran into them.”

“What if they’re still watching?” Mouse asked.

Perchevski gave him a funny look.

“Spooky idea, isn’t it? Let’s look at that new chamber. Max says they found some stuff there that isn’t just cafeteria or rec room equipment.”

Maybe not. Perchevski could not guess what it might have been. The chamber was large and well-preserved, with most of its furnishings intact and in place. “Parallel function ought to result in parallel structure,” he said. “Meaning you ought to be able to figure what this stuff is.” All he recognized were the faded mural walls, which looked somewhat Minoan. He would have bet his fortune they had been done by human artists. Those he could see seemed to tell some sort of quest story.

“It’s a solarium,” Greta said. “Without sun.”

“A hydroponics farm?”

“No. That’s not right. Hydroponics is different.”

“What?”

“What I mean is, it’s almost like the Desert House at the State Botanical Gardens in Berlin. See how the beds are laid out? And those racks up there would hold the lights that make plants think they’re getting sunshine.”

Mouse laughed. “By Jove, I think the lady has something.” He indicated a small sign which proposed a similar hypothesis. It also suggested that the painters of the murals might have been humans who had become proto-Sangaree.

Mouse suddenly gasped and seized his left hand in his right.

Perchevski nearly screamed at the sharp agony surrounding his call ring.

“What’s the matter?” Max and Greta demanded.

“Oh, hell,” Perchevski intoned. “Here we go again.”

“Let up, you bastards,” Mouse snarled. “We got the message. We’re coming, for Christ’s sake. Business, Max. We’ve been called in. And I mean in a hurry. Thomas?”

“I’ll kill him. Just when . . . Max . . . I’m sorry.”

“What’s going on?” she asked again.

“We have to report in. Right now. Could you take the girls back to barracks?”

“Business?” She sounded excited.

“Yeah. The bastards. Mouse, they said no more team jobs.”

Mouse shrugged.

“I’ll get them home,” Max promised.

Perchevski kissed her, turned to Greta. “I’ve got to run out on you, Honey. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Thomas, come on. The Old Man means it.”

“Wait a minute, damn it! I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, Greta. If you need something, call my number. Or get ahold of Max. Okay, Max?”

“Sure.” Max did not sound enthusiastic.

“Thomas!”

He waved a hand, kissed Max again, then Greta, and trotted off after Mouse. Greta called a sad, “Good-bye, Commander.”

He was angry. He was ready to skin Beckhart with a butter knife.

The chance never came. He and Mouse were seized by Mission Prep the instant they hit Bureau territory.

The training was intense and merciless, and the explanations impossibly far between. It went on around the clock, waking and sleeping, and after a few weeks Perchevski was so tired and disoriented that he was no longer sure who he was. Tiny, unextinguishable sparks of anger were all that kept him going.