Variable Star (7 page)

We came to a large door that looked like a polished slab of real wood. It lacked the customary ID scanner, but at about the same location it had an antique fitting I guessed at once must be the fabled doorknob: a flattened toroid like a brass onion, sticking out from the door on a short horizontal stalk. I wasn’t quite quick enough to catch the procedure Rennick used to operate it. It was hard to follow: some sort of small probe, a quick torquing motion, and a small
clack
sound. Cued by the sound, I was not too surprised when the door swung inward away from us instead of dilating: it actually
was
a polished slab of real wood, a good fifteen centimeters thick. I followed him through the doorway, and had to step out of the way so he could swing it shut behind us. I was sure we had reached the Holy of Holies, at last.

Wrong again.

It certainly
looked
very like what I had been expecting to see: the serious working office of a major CEO or senior politician, tastefully decorated and lavishly equipped. It had every imaginable sort of monitor screen, display, input device, peripheral or other gadget, but the utilitarian effect was softened by a carefully chaotic profusion of exotic and lovely plant life. Dominating the room was a huge piece of furniture as obsolete as the doorknob, for some reason called a desk even though it had no graphic interface or surface icons—not even a trash can. It was basically an elaborated table intended to provide a stable flat work surface plus storage drawers. In films, such a desk is usually covered with items: a primitive telephone, a keypad and monitor, family flat photos, styli, and so on. This one was as austerely, majestically bare as I would have expected from a man of great power.

Two things immediately spoiled the picture, though. First, the absence of any men in the room. And then, the presence of a woman behind the desk. Her apparent age was five years higher than my own, and the fake was very impressive, but there were at least seventy years of skepticism in those eyes and the set of her mouth.

“Morning, Dorothy,” Rennick said. “This is Joel Johnston. Joel, Dorothy Robb.”

“Good morning, Alex,” she greeted him. “Relax: you’re early. And good morning to you, too, Mr. Johnston.” She offered me her hand. Her voice was wonderfully husky, like a great jazz singer near the end of her career; I wondered if she sang.

In my social circle, my move would now have been to shake her hand firmly and release. I had no idea what was done at this altitude—even if I’d had a clue what our relative status was. Deep breath. What would Dad do? “Good morning, Ms. Robb,” I said, did my second-best bow, and kissed her hand.

She removed it quickly and said, “Dorothy!” sharply, but I knew she was not offended because almost at once she softened it by adding, “‘Ms. Robb’ sounds too much like—”

I nodded. “A Victor Hugo novel. In that case, I’m Joel.”

Those cynical eyes opened a bit wider. “You read!”

“My parents infected me before I knew any better. There was no bedtime, as long as I was reading a book.”

“What splendid parents.”

Suddenly I felt myself blush. My multitrack mind was still playing with our pun, and it had suddenly realized that the full title of the book we were discussing would have been
Lay Ms. Robb
. Her sharp eyes caught me blushing, and twinkled. I realized I’d made no response to her compliment, and was too flustered to formulate one.

She saved me. “Do you know the story of the American farm wife who wrote a letter to Victor Hugo, Joel?”

“No, I don’t,” I said gratefully.

“She wrote, ‘Dear Vic—’” I couldn’t help smiling; her accent and deadpan delivery were good. “‘We shore liked that book you wrote there, Less Miserables’”—I began to grin broadly, and Rennick did, too—“‘but we wanted to ask you one thing we cain’t figger out: which one o’ them characters was Les?’” I broke up, turned to Rennick, and saw that he was chuckling, too—and had absolutely no idea why. Oops. Oh, well—no reason his education should include period French literature. No reason anyone’s should, really.

“What a glorious story,” I said to Dorothy “Is it apocryphal?”

“Oh, I hope so. Imagine the poor man trying to compose a response.”

I decided to take the bull by the horns. “May I ask your job title, Dorothy?”

She snorted. “Professional bureaucratic-gibberish composers have wept with frustration over that one. There doesn’t seem to be an adequate descriptive that any of them liked. For accounting purposes we finally settled on Enabler, which they simply hate.”

“Like a personal secretary, sort of?”

She did not smile. “Mr. Conrad has
seven
personal secretaries. One executive secretary, two research secretaries, a social secretary, a scheduling secretary, a record-keeping secretary, and a personal private secretary. Plus assorted personal executive assistants and chiefs of staff and first facilitators and chief counselors and senior advisors and legal counsels and a personal physiotherapist and several personal physicians and psychiatrists—a clinic, really—plus an incredibly complex impossibly sprawling extended personal family. And then of course there is the empire itself, with its hundreds of CEOs, comptrollers, and so on. And finally there are the various executives, and executive, legislative, and judicial branches, of a great many governments. I am one of two people through whom he accesses all those people. And vice versa. I have the 6:00
A.M.
to 6:00
P.M.
shift—or 1:00
P.M.
to 1:00
A.M.
Greenwich.”

I blinked. “And you have time to tell me Victor Hugo jokes?”

“No. That’s why I enjoyed it so much. You looked like you needed relaxing.”

“I still do! How much time do I have?”

“None,” she said. A previously unsuspected door occurred behind her. “Good luck, Joel.”

Rennick stepped forward and entered. I didn’t. The powers of motion and speech had deserted me.

“You’ll be fine,” she murmured. “The suit looks terrific on you.”

When you’re too scared to move, there’s a simple fix. I’m not saying
easy
—but simple. Just lean forward. That’s all you need to do. Keep it up long enough and you’ll fall on your face—but your body won’t let you. It will automatically put a foot out…and now you’re moving forward. Repeat as needed. Remember to alternate feet.

Before I knew it I was passing through the doorway, lurching only slightly.

T
he room was not small, but smaller than I had expected, and further surprised me by being furnished more like a den or a study than an office. At the far end of the room was a conversational grouping of four chairs. Rennick was just reaching the leftmost of the two that faced away from me. The two facing toward me were already occupied. In each sat a man who appeared to be approximately Rennick’s age. The fourth chair, its back to me, was obviously the hot seat.

My feet wanted to stop in their tracks again. But I managed to keep leaning forward. As I headed for the death chair, I invoked my very sharpest self-criticism.
You have not thought this through
.

Myself replied with some asperity,
And how the
hell
was I supposed to do that, chum? Using what data?

Social customs on Ganymede are considerably simpler and more direct than those on Earth: a frontier society is just too
busy
for indirection, innuendo, and ceremony. Nevertheless, I had, under Jinny’s tutelage, gradually managed to soak up enough Terran manners to get by, in the sorts of social situations in which I found myself. It had been some time since I’d heard anyone mutter, “Hayseed!” under their breath after a conversation with me.

But college life had not prepared me for this. I was in a milieu where I knew I had no faintest idea what constituted correct behavior—and I was already saddled with some complex and difficult social problems that I had about a dozen steps to solve, for the toughest audience on the planet.

When in doubt, I decided, fall back on analogy. Okay…royalty always takes precedence, that gets you started. Which one next? And how…?

I’d expected those twelve steps would seem to take forever. They turned out to be just long enough.

Part of what threw me was the apparent ages. Both men I was here to meet seemed to be middle-aged, somewhere between thirty and sixty. Neither visibly deferred to the other by body language or chair placement. Both were dressed equally well, which was very well. Both carried themselves with authority and confidence, and had “the look of eagles”—a constant hyperalertness I had seen before only in certain very good bodyguards like the Gurkhas out in the hallway, and in a Zen priest I met once.

So which one was Jinny’s dad…and which one merely owned half the inner Solar System?

When I reached the decision point, I put down my money, made my bet, and quit worrying. The rest of the necessary choices seemed to have been made while I was busy.

I stopped in front of the man to my right, bowed
almost
as deeply as I would have for the Secretary General or for Jinny, and said, “Good morning, Conrad. I am Joel Johnston. Thank you for taking me into your cubic. Your home is most gracious. Pardon me a moment, please.”

Without waiting for a response I turned on my heel and gave Rennick my warmest smile. “It was very kind of you to escort me here, Alex. I’m sure with Leo’s help I’ll find my way back to my quarters.”

His own smile congealed slightly at the edges, and he opened his mouth as if to reply.

“Thank you,” I said pointedly.

After an instant’s hesitation, spent in reappraisal of me, he did a little indescribable thing with his mouth that was a rueful salute, and nodded. He said, “You’re welcome,” on his way to the door.

Again without pausing, I turned to the second man, bowed almost as deeply as I had to the first, and said, “Mr. Albert, I am Joel Johnston of Lermer City, Ganymede. My parents were Ben and Evelyn Johnston of that city. I am a recent graduate of Fermi Junior College. I love your daughter Jinnia—more than I can say!—and she loves me. I’m declaring now my intention to ask you for her hand as soon as I can. I will supply Dorothy Robb with what is necessary to allow you to inspect my background and records.”

I was done. I had shot my bolt—nothing to do now but wait and see just how badly I’d screwed things up. The door whispered shut behind Rennick, and sealed me in here in the lions’ den.

The man last addressed stared up at me, absolutely expressionless, yet with an attention that was almost a physical force, as if any slightest muscle twitch on my face might tell him something crucial. He stared for so long I began to suspect that I had botched the whole thing, guessed wrong—that he was not Mr. Albert, but the Lord God Conrad himself. I wished I could sneak a glance at the other man for a clue, but did not dare take my gaze away from his.

“Well and boldly spoken,” he said at last. “My daughter has made an interesting choice, Mr. Johnston. Good luck to you.”

It wasn’t until I exhaled that I realized I’d been holding my breath. Those were the last words he said to me.

“How did you know which of us was which?” the other man asked. “You can’t have seen a picture of me. There are none.”

For a split second I thought about claiming to have had the foresight to google up a picture of my fiancée’s father, last night. Rennick’s advice came back to me.
Don’t bullshit
. “I did
not
know, Conrad. I was forced to guess.”

He nodded. “On what basis?”

I didn’t have a clue. But my mouth did. It opened, and out came, “Jinny’s cheeks.”

“What did you say?”

Why, yes. I could see what my mouth meant, now that I looked. “Jinny’s cheekbones, s—Conrad. Cheekbones and ears. They’re distinctive. Mr. Albert has them, too.”

He mimed the word “ah,” without actually emitting sound. Mr. Albert was poker-faced.

I was beginning to understand why there were no pictures of Conrad of Conrad. There’s an expression actors use: “He can’t wear the clothes.” Meaning that actor, however talented he may be, just isn’t right for that part. No one would have cast this man as Conrad.

Not that he was in any way unimpressive, quite the contrary. He just didn’t look nearly heartless or soulless or ruthless enough to fit my preconceptions of the head of a multiplanet empire. He looked…learned, and wise, and kind. He would have been excellent casting for, say, a brilliant college professor. In some warm, fuzzy subject, like ecology, or sociobiology, or poetry, or even theology. His students would all love him, and write him letters years later to tell him he’d changed their lives. But he would never make department chairman because he wasn’t willing to kill for it.

I knew this impression had to be utterly false. This was Conrad of Conrad. But he did not bear the kind of face that would inspire the countless armies of remorseless sharks in suits who constituted the Conrad empire. He had the kind of face that would reassure their mothers. He was more effective as a Man of Mystery, never seen.

“Have a seat, Joel,” Conrad said.

It was a superbly comfortable chair, and became more so the longer I sat in it. This wasn’t going so badly…

“I am informed that my granddaughter Jinnia Anne has revealed her true identity to you, and you have accepted her proposal of matrimony—”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out.

He went on quickly, as one who is determined to get through his little speech however banal it may be. “I commend you heartily on your good fortune, Jinny on her good sense, and both of you on your good taste; I wish you both every happiness; I am confident you will prove a welcome and valuable addition to our great family; we will now define the terms and conditions under which that may occur—”

I opened my mouth even farther. Even less sound came out.

His eyes narrowed very slightly. The department chairman reluctantly suspected me of plagiarizing my thesis. “—unless you would feel more comfortable represented by counsel?”