Voyage Across the Stars (49 page)

“Be that as it may,” Arlette said firmly. “A number of us believed it would be better to leave Stadtler’s Reach and found a new colony on Mirandola. The new government—”

“Thugs!”

“—was willing to support us in the endeavor, for their own reasons and in exchange for clear title to the property we left behind.”

Ned looked slowly around the room. Some of the women refused to meet his eyes, angry or embarrassed depending on their temperament. Others were speculative or more actively interested than even that.

The latter expressions were of the sort he’d noted often enough on the faces of soldiers on leave as they prepared to hit the Strip. He’d rarely seen a woman’s eyes with that particular blend of lust and intention, though.

The blonde in the front row looked anxious but determined.

“We knew we couldn’t go back to the government later,” Arlette said, “so we made sure we got everything we thought we might possibly need from the initial bargaining sessions. We have medical facilities every bit as advanced as those we were leaving behind. We were people of, well, influence. Power.”

“Where are your men?” Lissea demanded.

“I’m getting to that!”

Arlette cleared her throat. “Please,” she muttered softly, then raised her eyes to Lissea’s again. “We were inoculated against diseases which might transfer to humans from the Mirandolan biosphere. That’s quite possible, especially at the viral level.”

“They did it deliberately,” Talia snarled. “They were afraid we’d reproduce.”

“No!” Arlette said. “I believe—Sean believes, and he’s the medical researcher, Talia—that it was an accident. If it had been a deliberate plot, they would have attacked female fertility.”

She looked from Lissea to Ned. “Instead,” she continued in a voice combed to the bone by control, “the inoculations appear to have rendered every male in the community sterile. The situation might be reversible with the resources of Stadtler’s Reach tackling the problem, but the government has ignored our pleas.”

“Oh,” Lissea said. “Oh.”

Ned glanced at her. Lissea couldn’t have been more stonily embarrassed if all her clothing had vanished.

“Therefore . . .” Arlette said. She faced Lissea, but her eyes weren’t focused. The expressions of the two women were mirror images of one another. “. . . we were hoping that your crew might be able to help our colony. The male members of your crew.”

“We’re equipped to set up a sperm bank,” called an older woman in the back. “There needn’t be any . . . any contact.”

Lissea rose to her feet. “No,” she said.

Other women got up, scuffling the benches, but Arlette Wiklander remained seated. Her extended arms gestured down Talia and the softly attractive blonde on her other side. Ned didn’t move either.

“Wait!” Lissea continued. She held her arm out, palm foremost. “You’ll get your genes. But you’ll have to pay for them.”

She surveyed the room again. “I can’t demand that my crew masturbate in bags for you. I wouldn’t if I could. If you want sperm, you’ll have to collect them in the old-fashioned way. Whatever sort of medical procedures you indulge in then is your own affair.”

The blonde beside Arlette gave a smile, half real and half sad. “Live cover or nothing,” she said. “Well, we expected that.”

“Yes,” said Arlette to her hands as she folded them again in her lap. “Well, Captain Doormann, I’ve drawn up a series of—guidelines. Which I hope will be acceptable.”

She removed her hologram projector from its belt sheath and switched it on. Some of the women who’d risen were seating themselves again, trying to be unobtrusive about it.

“Wait,” said Ned. He hadn’t spoken since he entered the building, and his voice was much louder than he’d intended. Everyone stared at him, Lissea included. “Where
are
your men?”

Arlette nodded heavily three times. “We had a town meeting last night, as soon as we knew a ship had landed. We—all of us—decided it would be best if the men camped ten kilometers outside Liberty for as long as you stay. When your ship leaves, it’ll be—as if it never was. We’re a small community. We can’t afford to have . . .”

“Memories,” said the blonde beside her.

Arlette cleared her throat. “Now, about the guidelines . . .” she said.

“They’re coming!” Westerbeke called from a navigation chair. Liberty was three klicks away, but the
Swift’
s
sensor suite registered the vehicles as soon as they switched on. Half the men rushed toward the boarding ramp.

“Wait!” said Lissea Doormann. “Everybody back inside. I have things to say to you.”

She pushed through her crew and turned, facing them from the bottom of the ramp. Ned was at the back of the crowd. He put his boot on a bunk’s footboard and raised himself so that he could see as well as hear Lissea.

“You may have heard,” she said, “that the citizens have agreed among themselves that everyone is available to any crew member who wants to date her.”

“You bet your ass!” somebody said.

“Hey, that’s a thought!” another replied.

“Shut up, curse you!” Lissea’s face had gone from white to flushed. Men’s heads jerked back.

“What I’m telling you is this,” Lissea resumed in mechanically calm tones. “ ‘No means no.’ Maybe she thinks you’re ugly, maybe she thinks you’ve got the brains of a sea urchin—maybe she’s really got a headache. No means no!”

She glared across the men generally, then focused for a moment on Ned. He met her eyes, but he swallowed as soon as she’d looked away.

“There’s plenty of pussy out there for every one of you,” Lissea continued coldly. “Nobody’s going to have to date the five-fingered widow tonight. But if anybody pushes in where he isn’t wanted—
for any curst reason!
—I’ll leave him behind to explain himself to the colony’s menfolk when they return. Is that clearly understood?”

“I’m bloody well a believer!” Deke Warson said, and he sounded as if he meant it.

It was dusk. The lights of wheeled vehicles from the community glittered among the trees.

Lissea shuddered. She suddenly looked very small. “All right, boys,” she said, “have a good time. If anything breaks, Raff or me’ll give a buzz through the external speakers of your commo helmets, but you can pretty well expect to be clear till ten hundred hours tomorrow.”

“
Bless them all,”
Harlow sang. “
Bless the fat and the short and the tall
. . .”

The first vehicle pulled up at the base of the ramp. It was a tractor pulling a twin-axle flatbed trailer. A cab-over pickup truck followed, and there were two or three similarly utilitarian vehicles behind those.

Men piled onto the trailer. Toll Warson got up on the tow bar and began chatting with the driver.

Dewey and Bonilla headed for the pickup. “Hey, Dewey!” Westerbeke called. “Why’re you going along?”

“Hey, I’ve got nothing against women!” Dewey replied.

“
I
haven’t had anything against a woman in seventeen years,” Bonilla said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn down a chance at booze and a cooked dinner.”

The tractor pulled around to circle back. The motor had a heavy flywheel/armature to prevent it from stalling in a muddy field. It thrummed with a deep bass note.

“Lissea,” said Herne Lordling. “I want you to understand that I’m doing this only—”

“Get aboard, Herne,” Lissea said tiredly. She turned her back on the scene.

The pickup drove away with a full load. A jeep and another pickup took its place. Herne got into the jeep beside the driver. The Boxall brothers took the back pair of seats.

Arlette Wiklander drove the second pickup. She looked at Ned and said, “Are you the last, then?”

He nodded. “I guess,” he said. “I wasn’t sure, but I guess I am.”

He put a boot on the side-step and lifted himself into the back instead of riding in the cab with the driver. “Ready when you are,” he said.

Arlette turned sharply. The headlights flashed and flickered from the tree-trunks. Ned looked over his shoulder. Lissea was watching him. Her face was without expression.

The clear sky above Liberty was bright in comparison to the forest canopy, but at ground level the truck’s headlights slashed visible objects from a mass of blurred shadow.

Many of the houses had their porch lights on. In a few cases, mostly at the end of the street near the community building where the tractor-trailer was parked, the exterior bulbs were switched off but light glowed through heavy curtains.

Several houses were dark and shuttered; but as Lissea had said, there were still plenty of willing takers for the
Swift’
s
small crew.

Toll Warson stood on the porch of a house with blue trim. He was turning to leave. When he saw Ned in the back of the pickup, he called, “Hey Slade! This one says she’s waiting for you. Shag her twice for me, okay, handsome?”

Warson waved cheerfully as he walked toward the house next door. The brothers had bragged that they were going to fuck their way up one side of the street and down the other, but that was just the friendly exaggeration of men old enough to wonder secretly about their performance.

Arlette slowed the truck to a crawl. “Ah—sir?” she called out the side window. “Shall I stop?”

“Yes ma’am,” Ned said.
May as well.
“Please.”

He hopped down from the bed and dusted his palms against his utility trousers. There was a pistol in the right cargo pocket, not obvious to an outsider but a massive iridium pendulum every time his thigh swung.

He didn’t imagine the weapon would serve any practical purpose. It was a security blanket in a situation that confused Ned more than it seemed to affect the other mercs.

“Her name’s Sarah,” Arlette said quietly. “She sat beside me when we met with you and Captain Doormann.”

The blonde, then.

“I’m the community’s doctor,” Arlette said. “Well, Sean and I, though the hands-on side never appealed to him.” She looked down the street. Most of the mercenaries had disappeared within houses by now. “I’m going to be busy tonight.”

Ned walked up the three steps to the porch. The door was already open halfway. Behind him, Arlette drove off in the truck. As Ned raised his hand to knock on the jamb, Sarah appeared in the opening and swung the door wide.

“Will you come in please, Master Slade?” she offered. “I was hoping you might. . .”

Sarah’s dress was a lustrous beige synthetic, probably one of the cellulose-based polyesters. The cutwork collar was handmade but not particularly expert. She moved with a doelike grace and beauty.

How did she learn my name? Maybe from Toll Warson?

He stepped into a parlor furnished with a sofa and three chairs, all very solidly made from wood with stuffed cushions. Though they were all of similar design, the sofa’s cabinetry was of a much higher order than that of the smaller pieces. The differences probably indicated the learning curve of a white-collar professional finding a new niche in the colony.

The shaft of the floor lamp was a column of three coaxial helices. It was an amazing piece of lathework which would have commanded a high price on any planet with a leisure class.

Sarah closed and barred the door; there was no key lock. The windows were already curtained.

“I’m Ned,” he said. “And Dr. Wiklander said that your name is Sarah?”

Sarah looked up in startlement. “She told you that? Ah—but yes, I’m Sarah. I, ah . . .”

She looked away. The parlor filled the front of the house. Behind it was a kitchen/dining room with separate doorways from the parlor into either half, and a staircase to the second floor.

“I’ve made supper, it’s a game stew and vegetables or there’s cold ham if you’d like it,” she said in a quick voice like a typist keying. “And I have drinks, it’s all local but I’ve bought some whiskey from Juergen that’s supposed to be very—”

“Sarah.”

“—good!”

Ned put his hands on the woman’s biceps, just touching her, until she raised her eyes to meet his. She giggled.

“Look,” he said, “dinner later would be very nice. But you’re nervous and I’m nervous. Either I ought to leave, which wouldn’t be my first choice. Or we ought to make love.”

“You’re direct,” she said. “That makes it easier.”

She stepped away from Ned and turned off the lamp. The kitchen was still lighted. When Sarah came back, she pressed her body close and kissed him. He turned slightly to prevent her from noticing the pistol. He undid one of the front buttons of the dress. She wore no undergarments above the waist.

Sarah’s breasts were fuller than he’d expected beneath the slick, stiff fabric. Ned took off his commo helmet with his free hand and tossed it onto the shadowed sofa.

“Upstairs,” she said. She giggled again. “Maybe on the sofa later, if you like.”

She drew him after her up the narrow staircase. The open jalousies let in moonlight, though the sun was fully down. The upper story was a single room, narrowed by the roof’s pitch. The bed stood in the center, with storage chests lining the long sides.

Sarah turned at the head of the stairs. She kissed Ned again as he stood on the step below her. He slipped her puffed sleeves further down her arms to bare her breasts, then kissed them.

“Most of the colony came as couples,” she said, playing with his hair. “I was . . . Sean and Arlette are my parents. I married Charles here in Liberty.”

She twisted back into the room proper and began undoing the rest of her buttons. Ned took off his tunic. He slit open the pressure seal of his utility trousers with an index finger, then realized that he needed to take off his boots first. He undid them, glad of the semidarkness because he felt as clumsy as a mule in ballet class. After you knew somebody a while, you didn’t think about that sort of thing anymore; but he never would know Sarah better than he would this night.

He lowered the trousers carefully to keep the pistol from banging against the wooden floor.

“Come,” Sarah said, sitting on the edge of the bed and drawing him over on her as he knelt to kiss her, “later we can . . .”

Somebody began hammering on the front door.

“What?” said Sarah as she sat bolt upright.