Variable Star (15 page)

The same seemed to hold true for Mama Sol. She was prettiest just before I passed out, as a single pixel of pure white in a sea of ink.

W
e did
not really achieve enough initial velocity for the sun to show detectable shrinkage, that first day: that last view was an effect of my vision graying out. A matter/antimatter torch is not something you want to start up quickly and max the throttle—certainly not in the vicinity of an inhabited planet! We left High Orbit under conventional fusion drive, albeit a hellacious big one. Even in my stupor, it seemed noisy.

Unsurprisingly, the menu of recreational drugs obtainable on board was considerably shorter and tamer than what I’d had available to me back in Vancouver. A man who wished to stupefy himself pretty much had to rely on alcohol and/or marijuana. They did the job, in combination.

But once you used your month’s ration of either one it was
gone
, so the binge burned itself out faster than it might have if I’d had more powerful tools. By the time I had binged, crashed, died, revived, and been restored to feeble continued interest in events outside my own skull and thorax and indigestive system, the Captain had just throttled the fusion plant back from a space drive to a mere power plant, and things got much quieter again for a while. The sun looked just perceptibly smaller in disk size, there in my simulated window…and considerably dimmer than normal, even though all the other stars now seemed
brighter
than usual. I thought of trying to locate Ganymede by eye, to bid farewell to my birth planet, but it was already way too late; she was in opposition.

Within an hour, the Old Man had gotten the antimatter torch lit, and some noise and other vibration did resume, but by no means as much, or as loud. Or as unpleasant. Less like an ongoing earthquake, more like a waterfall, or rapids in a stream.

Then
the sun’s dwindling could be detected, if you had the patience to watch long enough.

I did. For far longer than made any sense I can explain. There could he no Key West sunset, no final Last of the Light. I knew that even by the end of my journey I would not have traveled so far that Sol’s light could not still reach me. It would be old light, that was all.

And still I watched, until Herb came and dragged me off for dinner. I felt so weary, it was a noticeable strain to be back in normal gravity again, for the first time in so many months. Free fall is as addictively comfortable as the womb.

T
hree kinds
of gentleman adventurers participated in the
Sheffield
’s voyage. The real gents, senior partners, invested very large amounts of money, and remained behind at Sol System to see how it all worked out. Just below them were the limited partners, who put in considerably less money, but tossed their personal bodies and futures into the pot as well. At the bottom rung were the provisional partners, whose entire stake was their head, hands, and health.

Chumps like me.

My father died thinking he had provided well for me, because he had. But such provisions don’t always last. By the time my orphan’s allowance had run out at eighteen, market shifts (as always, unexpected) had all but wiped out the value of the stock Dad had left me; I’d had to sell nearly everything to finance that last semester at Fermi. After that, I’d been pinning all my hopes on the scholarship that Conrad had blocked.

Now my only remaining assets were nominal: some shares in one of the very earliest starships—which had vanished in the Big Deep years ago. They were worth so little I’d instructed my guardian not to bother selling them; the income would scarcely have covered the assorted charges and taxes. They weren’t worthless, quite: there was always the infinitesimal chance that the
New Frontiers
might be found and rescued one day. But no missing starship had ever been heard from again. Only once had they even been able to establish just what had gone wrong.

So I took my meals with most of the others, in Stark Hall, one of the ship’s three mess halls, designed to accommodate up to a third of us at any one time with good solid unspectacular food, drink, and ancillaries, without charge. But for those who had the money and inclination, there were also alternatives. Such as the Horn of Plenty, the
Sheffield
’s equivalent of an upscale nightclub, with four-star food and more expensive amusement options, open all three shifts.

I had not expected to ever set foot in the place, unless a live waiter’s job should open up, but it was there that Herb insisted on dragging me for my last dinner in the Solar System.

I did try to resist. I had known several novelists, but none with even as much money as I had. “Herb, I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford this. There’s an old PreCollapse blues song that goes, ‘If money did my talkin’/I couldn’t breathe a sigh—’ and that’s…”

And my voice trailed off, because the next lines of the song suddenly loomed up out of memory and clotheslined me: “But my baby’s love is one thing/even money can’t buy/Ain’t that fine?”

Herb said, “This meal is on me. You have almost nothing in your system but poisons and toxins. The food you take on to absorb it all should be of the highest quality.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay you back.”

“I know: you probably won’t, and I’ll get to hold it over you forever. Cheap dominance. Come on, it’s right up ahead.”

I stopped us at the door and tried to thank him, but he brushed it away “Sheer self-interest. I have to live with you.”

They seemed to know him inside. As we were conducted to our booth, I had that weird feeling you get entering a place that’s a little out of your reach, the irrational sensation that everyone is looking at you and can tell you’re out of place, which is caused by everyone looking at you and knowing you’re out of place. Herb had a way of walking as though
they
were out of place, but he was a broad-minded man. Jinny had had it, too…

A dance performance was in progress on a cleared area of the floor, something classic-modern, I think, though I have trouble keeping the distinctions straight. I don’t think ballet is ever done in silence. Serious dance, at any rate, not mating dance, and apparently very well done, by three energetic people a little older than me. They finished to thunderous applause as we crossed the room, and sprinted backstage.

I did notice a bandstand, an interesting one, just beyond the dancers’ Marley floor. It was powered down at the moment, unoccupied, but it looked nicely equipped. The keyboard system was built into a very good replica of a Pre-collapse grand piano; it looked as though the player could produce “real,” mechanically produced acoustic sound with the thing if he chose. The drum kit too could have produced reasonable accompaniment for most purposes even powered down. The stringed instrument cases I saw were all obviously for either acoustic or hybrids. I mentioned that to Herb as we were seated.

“You watch,” he said, “pre-electric music is going to become very popular in this ship over the next twenty years. We all know deep down we’re going to a place where we may not have power to spare for luxuries for some time to come. Subconsciously we’re preparing. Brunch menus, coffee and orange juice for two, please.”

I hadn’t noticed the waitress approach until he spoke, and she was gone by the time I turned around. Yet I later learned she was human. “Brunch?” I asked, checking the time.

“In a restaurant that never closes, in a ship with three shifts, it’s always brunchtime. Or dinnertime. Or midnight snacktime, or tea. You need serious food that doesn’t challenge digestion; ergo, brunch.”

The food was indeed wonderful. It penetrated my depression, forced me to concede to myself that I did have some interest in continued life, even if I had no idea why. I was continually conscious of a sensation of having gnawed off one of my feet to escape a trap, a pit-of-the-stomach feeling that wouldn’t go away. But for some reason it didn’t interfere with my appetite much, or even my mood.

Herb, I was very gratified to learn, was the kind of man who did not chatter over his food. Save for a handful of conversational politenesses, he used his mouth for intake only. It gave me permission to do the same. We already knew we were going to be friends. And there was going to be plenty of time to use up our conversation stores.

When he did speak, it was with a friend’s directness. “So,” he said, setting down his fork, “have you decided whether you’re going to cut your throat or not? Inquiring minds want to know.”

“No.”

He relaxed slightly. “Yes, you have. You’re not.”

“I really hate it when somebody tells me what I’m thinking. Or are you a telepath?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, but not the way you mean. A real one.”

I snorted. “Right.
Your
mind isn’t fast enough.”

In fiction, a telepath can read minds. A real telepath is just a glorified radio, with a single receiver. But
really
glorified—way faster than any radio. Our time rate and the System’s were already diverging very slightly under the constraints of Einsteinian physics, and would get steadily worse for the next twenty years. Every day, radio and laser signals took just a tiny bit longer to cross the widening gulf between us, and by the time we reached our destination it would take them the greater part of a century. But telepathy, for reasons nobody understands, takes place
instantaneously
, across any distance yet measured. That single perverse exception to the laws of the universe, and the fact that the gene for it is dominant, make a star-traveling civilization just barely possible. Our ship, like all of them, carried several people capable of telepathic rapport with a partner back in the System, usually, but not always, their identical twin. With luck, their children would be able to maintain the link.

Herb was looking at me strangely.

At first, the way his jaw was squared off, and his eyes seemed to have receded deeper into their sockets, and his shoulders were slightly raised, all combined to tell me he was
angry
. That was odd. Then a second later I saw I had misread the signals completely: he was
amused
, trying his best not to laugh in my face. At something I had done in the last few moments, apparently. Or said…

He saw me start to catch on, and let the laugh out.

“Are you
kidding
me?”

“Did you really think I was accepted into this company because I’m a
writer
? You figure a fledgling colony, fighting to stay alive and establish a foothold, has a lot of use for fiction?”

“You never mentio—”

“You never asked.”

“Who—?”

“My sister Li,” he said. “In Oregon. The one on Terra. Two hours a day, we handle message traffic between Kang/da Costa HQ and the colony, and we’re available freelance for private communications.”

“I never noticed you doing that!”

“How would you? I stare into space, and then start typing like crazy. It must look exactly like I’m writing a story. Sometimes I am, if what I’m supposed to type annoys me enough.”

“Holy shit.” I was so busy rearranging my presumptions and misconceptions in my head, I forgot I had not yet expressed an opinion. “I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it. I’m a telepath. A communicator.”

His voice cued me. A lot of people are weirded out by telepaths. A
few
people call them the kind of names that cause a proctor to show up. I le was waiting to learn whether or not his new friend and roommate for the next two decades was one of those people.

Quickly I said, “No, I mean I can’t believe there’s some poor girl back in the System who looks just like you.”

His shoulders dropped. “Back to our argument—I was winning. How can you stay a bachelor? Have you no appreciation for fine womanhood? No sense of obligation—”

My mind took a left. Talking about Jinny and the Conrads had reminded me of something, a small burr under my saddle. An unfulfilled obligation behind me. “As a matter of fact, I do. Both. So much so that I’m going to presume on our friendship and ask you for a favor.”

“What friendship?”

“I know, but it’s all I’ve got. I want to send a private message back to Terra.”

He frowned. “Phone still works. So does mail.”

“No, I mean
private
. I need to thank a young lady for defying her grandfather to help me out of a tight spot, and I don’t want to risk getting her in trouble.”

His frown deepened. “Just tell me one thing. Is this young lady rich and beautiful?”

“That’s two things. And yes to both.”

“Maybe there’s hope for you yet. Okay, this once, I’ll do it. You want visual, or just voice?”

“Voice is fine.”

He shook his head. “Hopeless. Name?”

“Evelyn Conrad.”

“How do you want to route it to her?”

“Through an intermediary I think I can trust. Can your sister put a really serious privacy shield on a message?”

“Yes,” was all he said.

“Okay. Ask her to get it to a Dorothy Robb, two b’s.”

“Address?”

“Ms. Robb is the Chief Enabler for Conrad of Conrad.”

Herb came as close as I would ever see him come to betraying surprise. His nostrils flared just perceptibly for a moment, as if he had begun to doubt his deodorant. His eyes did a funny little thing where for just an instant they tried to widen and narrow at the same time. There was maybe a quarter-second hitch in the soundtrack, and then he said, “I take it back. There
is
no hope for you.”

I spread my hands. “When did I claim there was?”

“You know a Conrad. Well enough that she defied…oh. Kindly tell me her granddad is not—”

I nodded. “Conrad.”

“Of course. She defied Conrad of Conrad for you. And you’re
here
.”

“Herb, she’s seven years old.”

He smiled broadly. It had taken him about ten seconds to gear up and start
enjoying
this. “To be thoroughly sure. Say no more. Unless you want to live.”

So I told him the whole damned story.

I
’d always
known I would,
some
day. It was going to be a long voyage. But not in the first year. I probably couldn’t have told it yet to anyone who didn’t listen as well as he did. He didn’t mind if I needed a couple of minutes of silence to get a sentence completed.