by Glen Cook
"What are you into?" he asked. "I don't recognize the period."
"Beatles and Twiggy."
"Eh?"
"Twentieth century. Seventh decade. Anglo-American, with the beginning in England. One of the light periods."
"Youth and no philosophy? I gathered that much, though I'm not familiar with it."
"It's all the rage now. It's so very outré. So clish-clash with itself. So schizophrenic. You speak English, don't you?"
"We have to learn. Most of the First Expansion worlds have some memory of it."
"Why don't you stop all that foolishness? All those ugly Outsiders... You could do well teaching English here. Everybody wants to learn."
Here we go, he thought. She's picking up where she left off eight years ago. It'll only get worse. Why did I come here? To punish myself for getting out of this hell-hole?
She recognized the look on his face. "It's news time. Let's see what's happening." She whistled a few bars of a tune he did not recognize.
The editing was unbelievable. This Archaicist group had done this. That one had done that. The Bay Bombers had beaten the Rat Pack 21-19. There wasn't a word about von Drachau, or anything else offworld, except mention of a Russian basketball team trouncing the touring team from Novgorod.
"Big deal," he muttered. "Novgorod's gravity is seventy-three percent of Earth normal. They'd have to play midgets for it to be fair."
His mother flared up. She hated foreigners almost as much as she hated Outworlders, but the Russians were, at least, good Old Earthers who had had the sense to stay on the mother-world...
He tuned her out, again wondering if he had a masochistic streak.
Would she try to understand if he explained how much in the middle he was? That Outworlders disliked Old Earthers just as much as she loathed them? That he had to reconcile those attitudes both within himself and with everyone he met?
He did not think she would help. He knew her cure. Give it up. Come back home. To squalor and hopelessness...
"Mother, I am what I am. I won't change. You're wasting your time when you try. Why don't we go out somewhere? This place is depressing."
"What's wrong with it? Yes. All right. It's a little old. And I have the extra credit over S.I. basic to move. But it's so big... I like having all this room to knock around in. I wouldn't have that in a new place."
Perchevski groaned to himself. Now came the Mama Marx self-criticism session during which she would confess all her failings as a Social Insuree. Then she would segue into her shortcoming as a mother, ultimately taking upon herself all responsibility for his having gone wrong.
He shook his head sadly. In eight years she should have found a new song. "Come on, Mother. We did this last time. Let's go somewhere. Let's see something. Let's do something."
She dithered. She fussed. It was getting dark out. Only rich Old Earthers, who could afford the armor, went out after the sun went down.
"Here," he said, opening his bag. "I've got my own house now. I brought some holos to show you."
The pictures finally penetrated her façade.
"Tommy! It's beautiful! Magnificent. You really are doing all right, aren't you?"
"Good enough."
"But you're not happy. A mother can tell."
Holy shit, he thought. I'm grown up twice over. I don't need that. "You could live there if you wanted."
She became suspicious immediately. "It's not in some foreign place, is it? Those mountains don't look like the Rockies or Sierras."
"It's on a world called Refuge."
"Omigod! Don't do that! Don't talk that way. My heart... Did I tell you that the medics say I have a weak heart?"
"Every time you've ever needed an excuse for... " He stopped himself. He refused to start the fight.
"Let's don't fight, Tommy. We should be friends. Oh. Speaking of friends. Patrick was killed just last week. He went out after dark. It was so sad. Nobody can figure out what made him do it."
"Patrick?"
"That red-haired boy you were friends with the year before you... You enlisted. I think his last name was Medich. He was living with his mother."
He didn't remember a Patrick, red-haired, Medich, or otherwise.
He did not belong here. Even the memories were gone. He had changed. The kid who had lived with this woman was dead. He was an impostor pretending to be her son.
She was bravely playing the game, trying to be his mother. He was sure there were other things she would rather be doing. Hadn't she been expecting a Harold?
Maybe that was why they tried to keep people from going. They became somebody else while they were gone.
"Mother... " His throat clamped down on the word.
"Yes?"
"I... I think I'd better go. I don't know what I came looking for. It's not here. It's not you. It's probably something that doesn't exist." The words came rumbling out, one trampling the heels of the next. "I'm not making you happy being here. So I'd better just go back."
He tried to read her face. Disappointment fought relief there, he thought.
"I'm an Old Earther when I'm out there, Mother. But I'm not when I come back here. I can see that when I'm here. I guess I should just stop remembering this place as home."
"It is your home."
"No. Not anymore. It's just the world where I was born. And this is just a place where I lived."
"And I'm just somebody you knew back when?"
"No. You're Mother. You'll always be that."
Silence existed between them for more than a minute.
Perchevski finally said, "Won't you even consider coming to my place?"
"I couldn't. I just couldn't. I belong where I am, being what I am. Useless as that is."
"Mother... You don't have to get old out there. We have a rejuvenation process... "
She showed genuine interest when she asked, "You've recovered the secrets of the immortality labs?"
"No. They're gone forever. All this process does is renew the body. It can't stop nerve degeneration. It's been around for centuries."
"How come nobody's heard about it?"
"Here? With Earth overpopulated and everybody doing their damnedest to make more babies? Some people probably know, though. Some maybe even benefit. It's not a big secret. But nobody here ever listens about Outside. Everybody here is part of this big conspiracy of blindness."
"That's not fair... "
"It's my world. I have the birthright, if I want, to point a finger and call names. Are you going to come with me?" He had begun to think about Greta. That was making him mad.
"No."
"I'll leave in the morning, then. There's no sense us carving each other up with knives of love."
"How poetic!" She sighed. "Darling, Tommy. Keep writing. I know I almost never answer, but the letters... They help. I like to hear about those places."
Perchevski smiled. "It must be in the genes. Thanks. Of course I'll write. You're my number-one lady."
Thirteen: 3048 AD
Operation Dragon, Danion
BenRabi muttered: " ‘Aljo! Aljo! Hens ilyas! Ilyas im gialo bar!... ' " Over a joint with stripped threads.
"What the hell?" Mouse asked.
"A nonsense poem. By Potty Welkin. From Shadows in a Dominion Blue. Goes:
" ‘Nuné! Nuné! Scutarrac... ' "
"Never heard of it. Think we ought to cut new threads?"
"Let's put in a new fitting. It was a political protest thing. Not one of his biggies. It was a satire on Confederation. The poem was his idea of what a political speech sounded like."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"It's just the way I feel this morning. Like a poem without sense or rhyme that everybody's trying to figure out. Including me. There. That's got it. What do we do next?"
Beyond Mouse, Amy consulted her clipboard. She had been staring at him with questioning eyes. "A cracked nipple in a lox line about a kilometer from here."
"Uhn." BenRabi tos
sed his tool kit into the electric truck, sat down with his legs dangling off the bed. Mouse joined him. Amy took off with a lurch that bounced spare fittings all over the truckbed. She had been angry and uncommunicative all week.
Moyshe had been as wary himself, as unsure. He thought she was upset because he had not tried to seduce her.
Mouse had let it be for three days. Now, whispering, he asked, "What happened between you two?"
"Nothing."
"Come on, Moyshe. I know you better than that."
"Nothing. Really. That's the trouble." He shrugged, tried to change the subject. "I still can't believe we're inside a ship. I keep feeling we're back in the tunnels at Luna Command."
"What did you mean by that poem?"
"What I said. People keep trying to figure me out. So they can use me."
The ship was a lot like Luna Command, with long passageways connecting the several areas that had to be big to function.
"I don't understand," Mouse said.
"Who does? No, wait. Look. Here's Skullface, trying to get me to cross over... "
"So? He tried me too. He's trying everybody. Looks like part of their plan. I just told him I couldn't meet his price. I don't know anything that would be any good to him anyway. So what's the big deal? It's all part of the floor show. We've been through it before."
But there's something different this time, benRabi thought. I've never been tempted before. "Why was she hustling me?" He jerked his head toward Amy.
Mouse laughed wearily, lowered his head, shook it sadly. "Moyshe, Moyshe, Moyshe. Does it have to be a plot? Did the Sangaree woman burn you that bad? Maybe she likes you. They're not all vampires."
"But they'll all get you hurt," benRabi mumbled.
"What? Oh. You ever stop to think maybe she feels the same way?"
BenRabi paused. Mouse could be right. Mouse knew how to read women, and it paralleled his own impression. He wished he could assume a more casual, no-commitment attitude in his personal relationships. Mouse managed, and left the girls happy.
"Speaking of women. And her." The Sangaree woman gave them a bright gunmetal smile and mocking wave as they glided past her work party, "What to do?" She had been less obnoxious since Mouse's recreation-day demonstration, but had not abandoned her plot.
"Just wait. We're making her nervous. You think old Skullface knows about her? We might make a few points by stopping her when she moves."
"It's a notion," Mouse said, becoming thoughtful. As they rolled to a stop, he suggested, "Why don't you come by for a game tonight?"
His partner was still very much devoted to the mission, Moyshe realized.
Amy plugged the truck into a charger circuit. "That woman. Who is she?"
"Which woman?" Mouse countered, tone idle.
BenRabi scanned the area. It looked like the site of a recent elephant riot. The passage had been open to space. Liquids had frozen and burst their pipes.
"Well be here a week, Amy. How come we didn't bring any replacement pipe?"
"They're sending a Damage Control team up after lunch. They'll bring what we need. We just worry about the lox line now. It's got to be open by noon. You didn't answer my question, Mouse."
"What's that?"
"Who's that woman?"
BenRabi shrugged, said, "Maria Gonzalez, I think."
"I know her name. I want to know what's between you three."
BenRabi shrugged again. "I guess she hates spies. A lot of people have scratched us off their Christmas lists." Avoiding her eyes, he handed Mouse a wrench.
"Who does she work for?"
The question took him by surprise, but he was in good form. "Paul Kraus in atmosphere systems. He could tell you whatever you want to know."
Mouse chuckled.
A muscle in Amy's cheek started twitching. "You know what I mean. Answer me."
"Take it easy, Amy," Mouse said. "Your badge is showing."
‘What?"
"A little professional advice, that's all. Don't press. It puts people off. They clam up. Or play games with you, leading you around with lies. A good agent never pushes unless he has to. You don't have to. Nobody's going anywhere for a year. So why not just lie back and let the pieces fall, then put them together." He had selected the tone of an old pro advising a novice. "Take our situation. Give me a twenty-centimeter copper nipple, Moyshe. You know we're Navy men. We know you work for Kindervoort. Okay... "
"I what?"
"Don't be coy. Torch, Moyshe. And find the solder. You give yourself away a dozen times a day, Amy. The greenest apprentice wouldn't have fallen for that left-handed wrench thing."
BenRabi chuckled. Amy had torn through all three tool kits trying to find the mythical wrench. Then she had gone down to Damage Control and tried to requisition one. Somebody down there had gone along with the gag. They had passed her on to Tooling...
Amy had been given a crash course in plumbing, but she had not learned enough to fool the initiate.
Fury reddened her face. It faded into a soft smile. "I told him I couldn't pull it off."
"He probably didn't expect you to. He knows we're the best. Doesn't matter anyway. We're out of it now. Just a couple spikes here working. Okay, we know where we stand. Where's the flux, Moyshe? So why don't you do like we do? Don't push. Pay attention. Wait. It'll come in bits and pieces. No hard feelings that way. And that closes Old Doc Igarashi's Spy School and Lonely Hearts Club for today. Be ready for a surprise quiz tomorrow. Ow! That's hot."
"Watch the torch, dummy," Moyshe said. "This T pipe is an odd size. We'll have to choke it down to two centimeters somehow."
"Here," Amy said. She made a checkmark on one of the sheets on her clipboard, handed Moyshe a reduction joint with a number tag attached. "Special made. See. I'm learning." She laughed. "No more questions. Mouse. Moyshe. I feel better now. Not so sneaky."
"Good for you," Mouse said.
Danion suddenly groaned and shivered. BenRabi whirled, looking for a spacesuit locker. Mouse crouched defensively, making a sound suspiciously like a whimper. "What the hell?" he demanded. "We breaking up?"
Amy laughed. "It's nothing. They're shifting mindsails and catchnets."
"Mindsails?" BenRabi asked. "What's that?"
Her smile vanished. She had, evidently, said too much. "I can't explain. You'd have to ask somebody from Operations Sector."
"And that's off limits."
"Yes."
"Got you."
The shuddering continued for a half hour. They lunched while waiting for the Damage Control people. Amy began to lose her reserve toward benRabi. Soon they were chattering like teenagers who had just made up.
Mouse did a little poking and prodding from the sidelines, as skillfully as any psychologist, maneuvering Amy into inviting Moyshe out next recreation day.
BenRabi went to Mouse's cabin after supper. They played chess and, lip reading, discussed what Moyshe was putting down, using the venerable invisible ink trick, between the lines of his drafts of Jerusalem. They also attacked the problem of the Sangaree woman, and found it as stubborn as ever.
Recreation day came, with all its mad morning chess tournaments and its afternoon sports furor, its Archaicist exhibitionism, and its collectors' excitement. BenRabi concluded some business with Grumpy George, got deadlocked over some stamps, and managed a handsome cash settlement on some New Earth mutant butterflies he had brought along for trading.
That evening he and Amy attended another ball. This one was Louis XIV. He went in his everyday clothing. Amy, though, scrounged a costume and was striking. From the ball they went to her cabin so she could change. They had been invited to another party, by the same cousin.
"How did you people get involved in the Archaicist thing?" Moyshe asked while she was changing.
"We're the originals," she replied from her bathroom, her voice light with near-laughter. She had been mirthfully happy all day. Moyshe, too, had been feeling intensely alive and aware. "It starts in creche. In school.
When we act out history. We haven't really been around long enough to have any past of our own, so we borrow yours."
"That's not true. We all have the same history."
"I guess you're right. Old Earth is everybody's history if you get right down to it. Anyway, it's a creche game. A teaching method. And it carries over for some people. It's fun to dress up and pretend. But we don't live it. Not the way some people do. Know what I mean?"
"You remember Chouteau? That Ship's Commander who brought us here? He had as bad a case as I've ever seen."
"An exception. Look at it this way. How many people go to these things? Not very many. And they're most of the Archaicists aboard. See? It's a game. But your people are so serious about it. It's spooky."
"I'll buy that." Curious, he thought. In these two weeks he had seen nothing culturally unique to the Seiners. They lived borrowed lives in a hash that did not add to a whole. His expectations, based on landside legends, rumors, and his Luna Command studies, had been severely disappointed.
But Amy had a point. He had encountered only a narrow selection of her people. An unusual minority. The majority, remaining aloof, might represent something different.
She came from the bathroom. "Zip me up, okay?" Then, responding to a question, "We're not complete borrowers. It's partly because you're just seeing a few people, like you say. And partly because this is the fleet. You wouldn't judge Confederation by what you saw on one of your Navy ships, would you? The Yards and creches are different. Except when we're working, we try to make life a game. To beat the boredom and fear. Can't be that much different for Navy men. Anyway, you're not seeing the real us, ever. You're just seeing us reacting to you."
What were these Yards? They kept slipping into Seiner conversation. Did the Starfishers have a world of their own, hidden somewhere out of the way? It was not impossible. The records revealing the whereabouts of scores of early settlements had been destroyed in the Lunar Wars... He was about to ask when he recalled Mouse's advice about pressing.
There was much, much more to the Seiner civilization than anyone in Confederation suspected. The bits he and Mouse had collected already would be worth fortunes to the right people. If he kept learning at this rate...
