“All right,” Katherine said, standing up. “I guess I’ll leave you to it. Anyway, congratulations on tying up all your loose ends.”
“All but one,” said Jeremiah.
“You mean Boyle? No one bats a thousand.”
But Jeremiah had not meant Boyle. He had not meant Boyle even remotely.
30
When Biscuits Bite Back
Sunday (day of arrival)
“Good morning, Jeremiah,” said Grubel. Have a seat."
Jeremiah did. Grubel’s office felt colder than ever, as if the spirit of the place sensed the tyrannical power it wielded out here in the void waning, and was lashing out desperately in response. The feeling gave Jeremiah some hope.
“Quite a show last night,” Grubel said. “Mr. Porter insists that he alone was responsible for what happened. In particular, he claims that you had no knowledge of his intention to use open flame. Is that true? Never mind—what’s done is done. Occasions like last night are what insurance is for. And sprinkler systems. Let’s take a look at your evaluations.”
Mr. Grubel poked at the screen of his desk a few times, dragged something from left to right with his index finger, and examined the results.
“I have to hand it to you, Jeremiah, I was not expecting anything like this. Highly satisfied, highly satisfied, highly satisfied, highly satisfied. Here someone has added a note complaining that there was no option for ‘Exquisitely Satisfied.’
“There are remarks about your talents at fostering romance, furthering the cause of social justice without bloodshed, and—ahem—procuring chemical refreshment of high potency. Presumably Jack did not realize that the survey on which he put his name was not anonymous.”
“They were iguana treats,” said Jeremiah.
“Even Mr. Wendstrom rates himself ‘somewhat satisfied’, and notes colorfully that—”
Mr. Grubel read from the screen.
“While Jeremiah is not yet a winner, if Michael L. L. Gregory had half his work ethic, he would have managed to finish Ultimate Battle Royale in the last 20 years instead of being on life support, paralyzed, typing it out letter by goddamn letter with some contraption they’ve hooked up to his eyelids.”
“Poor Mr. Wendstrom,” said Jeremiah. “He’s been waiting a long time to read that book.”
“A long, unbroken string of satisfied passengers. And then we get to Mrs. Mayflower.”
Jeremiah shifted in his seat.
“You have some sense of how important Mrs. Mayflower is to Golden Worldlines,” said Grubel. “You have seen the ample residence she maintains here on the Einstein IV, and can imagine how well she pays to do so. So it will come as no surprise to you that I—and Golden Worldlines—take her happiness and satisfaction very, very seriously. But it may come as a surprise to you—it certainly came as one to me—to see her evaluation.”
Mr. Grubel made a brushing motion with his left hand, as if waving off an overly eager waiter, and the evaluation leapt to the screen behind his desk.
Unconscionably slow servicing of antique musical instruments, read the evaluation, but a young banjo player of considerable promise. Il miglior fabbro. Somewhat satisfied.
Jeremiah’s heart surged into his throat. His eyes locked with Grubel’s.
“So that’s it?” he said. “I’m done? I can go?”
“Not quite,” said Grubel. He waved his hands again and another evaluation appeared on the wall behind him.
“Do you know, Jeremiah,” he continued, “I’m actually excited. I’m not trying to gloat, or twist the knife. At the beginning I was sure you would flame out in a day or two, but you have—despite some obvious character flaws—latent but undeniable talents. I consider myself something of an expert at ironing out character flaws. With the benefit of my close personal supervision, I believe you could offer valuable service to Golden Worldlines, and I think you’ll get something out of working with me, as well. When I look at you—I never thought I would say this—I see myself fifteen years ago. Searching for something that just isn’t there. Completely deluded about real life, and what it does and doesn’t offer. I learned to take life for what it is. I’m happier now, Jeremiah. Not happy. But happier. I think I can help you be happier too.”
Jeremiah did not fully absorb this speech, because he was busy reading and re-reading Mrs. Idlewhile’s evaluation, meanwhile cursing her, himself, and anyone else he could remotely bring to mind.
I’m not saying he stole my last package of chocolate biscuits, the evaluation read, but since he fixed my Relaxation Station I haven’t been able to find my last package of chocolate biscuits. Highly dissatisfied.
“We’ll have plenty of time to talk about deeper matters like this,” Grubel said. “Some administrative details: you have one month Earth leave. No later than 30 days from now you are expected back on the Einstein IV to prepare for her next journey. The space elevator takes a week each way, so I suggest you plan accordingly.”
The next shuttle is now boarding at bay … FOUR.
The familiar pair of calm voices made the announcement over the PA, one taking the words and the other swooping in to finish up with the number.
“Not to worry,” said Grubel. “The shuttles are for the passengers, then for their luggage, and only then for us. You still have plenty of time.”
* * *
“Jeremiah!” said Mr. Chapin. “Come in! Sara is getting her hair done before we board the shuttle, she’ll be sorry to have missed you. How did it go? Are you free?”
“Not quite,” said Jeremiah. “In fact—in fact I’m here to see if your offer still stands. I could pay you back—at least I hope I could, it depends on the ferrets more than me. But either way, I’d work for you, or for Sara, for the rest of my life—for free. Revolutions, espionage, whatever you want. I’m sorry, it kills me to even ask you this, but—well, there’s a girl.”
It took Mr. Chapin a moment to understand what Jeremiah was asking for.
“Damn,” he said when he had cottoned on. “Damn and double damn. Jeremiah, I wish you had asked me yesterday—we’ve just moved everything into a triple-blind trust. Given my prognosis, our money guy recommended it as a way to skirt some of the death tax. But there’s a 90-day cooling off period, during which we can’t touch the assets. I could ask him if we’re allowed to sell one of the houses…”
“No,” said Jeremiah. “Never mind—I’m sorry I even bothered you with this. It’s no big deal. I’ll work it out.”
* * *
Given that competence was one of Katherine’s defining traits, Jeremiah figured that she would have been on one of the first shuttles available to the crew. Eager to avoid her, he went to the cafeteria and sat for a while over the saddest bowl of ham soup he had ever experienced. He had managed about a spoonful and a half when Luis and Heriberto joined him.
“There you are,” said Luis. “I look all over for you.” Out of courtesy, he translated for Heriberto, who nodded in agreement.
“Where are Manny, Carlos, Carlos, Héctor, Adelfo, Humberto, Jesús, and Carlos?” asked Jeremiah.
“They are already getting ready for the shuttles, but I want to find you and offer you a job in the garage I will start with the credit from the necklace. You not allowed anywhere near the veecars. But you can work the desk and keep the books, sí?”
“I would love to,” said Jeremiah, “but I didn’t pass my review. Maybe if you still need someone in 20 years.”
“That sounds like—how you say?—a real banner. But at least you have Heriberto to keep you company.” Heriberto, hearing his name, grinned.
“Heriberto’s not going to work in the garage?”
“No, I already tell you, he want to stay on the E4. That way he get to read more physics papers. Heriberto is loco for the physics—every two years, he come back and gets 20 years of papers.”
“Physics?” said Jeremiah. “I didn’t know Heriberto liked physics.”
“He don’t like the physics. He love the physics.
He is the one invented the—how you say?—inertial pampers?”
“Wait,” said Jeremiah, “you mean the Inertial Dampers? Heriberto invented Inertial Dampers?”
“Dampers, that’s it. Well, he say he no build them, but he the one discover how they should work, because he want to stay on the Einstein and read more papers and he no like making the turn when the cruise is half done, so he invents the Inertial Pampers. I tell you, he loco for the physics.”
“Wow,” said Jeremiah to Heriberto, “I suppose you secretly speak English, too.”
He looked at Heriberto for a moment, who looked back at him cheerfully and with no visible comprehension.
“That don’t make no sense,” Luis said. “Of course Heriberto don’t speak no English. If he speak English, why I am translating for him all the time?”
The next shuttle is now boarding at bay … NINE.
“We going to take this one,” said Luis. He clasped Jeremiah’s hand. “Good luck, Jeremiah. If I continue alive in 20 years, and continue with the garage, and you continue need a job, you come find me on Earth. I wait for you there. And Heriberto sees you in a month.”
Heriberto saluted, and the two of them took their leave.
* * *
Still hoping to avoid Katherine, Jeremiah did not board the next shuttle, or the next, waiting for the warning that anyone who didn’t feel like hanging out on the E4 for the next couple days at least had better hurry on down and get a spot on this, the final shuttle, which he did. As luck would have it, that meant he ended up seated directly across from her.
As they detached from the Einstein IV, Jeremiah tried not to look at Katherine, tried not to notice how her hair began to float in a starburst around her face—tried not to think that this might well be his final memory of her. It was not the sudden desertion of artificial gravity that made his stomach lurch and turn.
Some 20 minutes later the shuttle docked at Tsiolkovsky Station, and as the landing clamps found their grip, Jeremiah felt his body fall back away from the restraint straps and into his seat. After a few minutes of the shuttle’s crew radioing cryptic arrival procedures to each other, the airlock clanged and banged and the shuttle door opened. Jeremiah sat and waited while the others—including Katherine—filed through. He was the last one out.
* * *
As long as he did not look up, Jeremiah was not unbearably dizzy, but he could not stop looking up. There above him, framed perfectly in the glass ceiling of the concourse, was Earth. The blue marble was merely thousands of miles away now—a stone’s throw compared to the light days and weeks tossed around over dinner on the Einstein IV. He was almost home, but he felt farther away than he ever had back on board the Einstein IV. Jeremiah was just managing to hold back the tears until he saw him.
Appleton was standing at the end of the concourse, huge arms folded over his massive chest. He had aged—he was finally old enough to look like the father he had always been to Jeremiah. But like a tree he had aged by becoming bigger and thicker, and now—in his mid 60s—he still looked like he could have lifted the rear of a pickup truck if mood or need struck him. His choice to go bald—which he had made as a young man, long before Jeremiah ever knew him—seemed wiser than ever. All the same there was no doubt that Appleton was older—that some of the weight he had added was not muscle but weight incurred by a slowing metabolism and 20 years of accumulated worry and trouble.
He stood, planted like an oak, at the end of the concourse, a full head above the next tallest friend or family busily greeting their loved ones, and as Jeremiah walked towards him, Appleton received him in his gigantic brown arms and gathered him in for a bear hug during which Jeremiah could not and did not wish to breathe. Appleton released him, and suddenly both were laughing and slapping each other on the shoulder, their eyes full of water. Appleton’s slaps stung.
“I was starting to think I had the wrong Einstein,” said Appleton.
“Your auto-responder said you were on vacation.”
“Where did you think I was vacationing? Didn’t you see my other response?”
“Other response?” said Jeremiah.
“When did you last check your waves? Never mind,” Appleton continued after Jeremiah had considered inconclusively for a stretch, “you were always shit about staying in touch.”
“I’ve been a little busy, you know.”
“Yes, a life of service, wasn’t it? The next elevator car doesn’t arrive for a few hours. Buy me a drink and tell me about it.”
“What’s a beer go for these days?” Jeremiah asked as they started to walk.
“Good beer? 75 credits. The stuff I drink is 50. Here in the bar it’s probably worse, with the space elevator prices. We’re a week away from the nearest competition.”
“Then you’re buying, because I’m destitute. I am destitute—right?”
“That kind of talk,” said Appleton, “is going to require beers safely in hand.”
31
Arrivals and Departures
Still Sunday (day of arrival)
Appleton drained his beer fully and put the empty mug back on the tray the waitress had just delivered it on.
“Another, please,” he said.
“Right,” said the waitress. “Just the one?”
“I’m still working on mine,” said Jeremiah, by which he meant he had not yet started it.
“I meant for him.”
“Let’s take it as it goes,” said Appleton. He wiped his chin with his napkin and smiled at the waitress as she left.
“Same old Appleton,” said Jeremiah. “I thought maybe the eighteen years I gained on you would give me a shot at out-drinking you for once.”
“Dream on, Bullfrog. At my funeral I’ll drink you under my coffin.”
“Tell me about your life. Tell me how you are, how you’ve been.”
“Thriving,” said Appleton.
“Details—I’m starved for details.”
“Let’s tackle the more pressing matters first. To your earlier question: yes, you are destitute.”
“But employed—or about to be.”
“Voluntarily?”
Jeremiah was taking a sip of beer, so he shook his head.
“On the ship?”
Jeremiah nodded.
“That’s going to be a bitch,” said Appleton. “The will isn’t going to be easy to break in the best of circumstances, but if you’re not in the same reference frame, it’s not even worth trying.”
“So what are my options?”
“Go back on board and work off your debt?”
“What are my options that are at least marginally more pleasant than a swift kick in the family jewels?”
“You could just refuse to leave Earth,” said Appleton. “Slavery hasn’t been legal for centuries, and I doubt Golden Worldlines is going to fly up in a veevan and put a bag over your head.”
“Sounds like a great way to end up in jail.”
“More like court. We’re talking breach of contract, not murder. But you’d lose everything.”
“Wait,” said Jeremiah, brightening, “that has some promise. My everything is nothing.”
“I don’t mean the everything you have now—I mean everything you ever earn in your life. They’ll garnish it till there’s nothing left for you to live on.”
“All right—option three?”
“You could throw yourself on the mercy of Golden Worldlines and beg them to let you stay on Earth while you contested the will.”
“Do you think it would work?”
“No,” said Appleton.
“Wait, which part do you think won’t work,” Jeremiah asked, “begging GW for mercy, or contesting the will?”
“Which part were you asking about?”
“Why did you answer if you didn’t know which part I was asking about?”
“Exactly,” said Appleton.
Low from Jeremiah’s throat came the sound—impossible to represent in the Roman alphabet—of a point being
taken but in no way enjoyed.
“Bad option four: you could just disappear. Like every big company, Golden Worldlines loves to litigate, but they’re not likely to send mercenaries to hunt you down in a foreign country and bring you back. They’ll write off the loss and nail you hard if you ever resurface.”
“Just so I understand,” said Jeremiah, “bad option four means fleeing creditless into the poorer regions of a world in which I already have no commercial prospects? Sweeping barroom floors for peanuts and sleeping in the park? That kind of thing?”
“It wouldn’t quite be creditless—I could give you some pocket credit. Otherwise, yes, you’ve got it.”
Appleton folded his arms, tucking his ham-hock hands beneath his boulder biceps. He looked miffed and slightly embarrassed with his inability to cut this knot. It was not an attitude Jeremiah had seen him strike often. He could remember only once, when Filibuster, Jeremiah’s first and only dog, had been hit by a veecar. Jeremiah liked to see Appleton like this even less than he imagined the big man liked to feel this way. It was disquieting to be reminded that there were powers in the world greater even than Appleton—forces as cold and impersonal as he was warm. Jeremiah wanted so badly to make him feel better that he almost mentioned bad option number five—turn in Reynolds for suspicion of murdering Boyle and earn such massive PR credit that Golden Worldlines would be unable to sue him. But Katherine’s decision to find a little lakeside cottage with John Battle could not change how Jeremiah felt about her, or how he wanted her to continue to feel about her adopted father.
“Stay on Earth and prepare myself for a lifetime of lawsuits it is, then,” he said.
“I’m concerned you’re still not clear on the drawbacks of that option,” said Appleton. “Let me run the numbers for you: from every ten credits you earn in the remainder of your natural life, Golden Worldlines will take eleven.”
World Enough (And Time) Page 33
