The Billion Dollar Boy

by Charles Sheffield

  Shelby ignored her. "And jobs back on Earth, too, for all of you that want them. I'm talking good jobs, places within Cheever Enterprises. Maybe on one of the estates, maybe in a factory. I'm sure my old man will swing for that."

  Lana Trask's face had tightened when he spoke about her ship. Now she frowned. "Your old man?"

  "My dad. I'm talking about J. P. Cheever. I'm his only son."

  "Is that right. And you say you're from Earth?"

  "You better believe it."

  Lana Trask turned away from Shelby. "Thurgood? You've been there. Does the name Cheever ring a bell with you?"

  Thurgood Trask rubbed at his white side-whiskers. "Cheever, Cheever. Let's see. It's been a while—near seven years. Wait a minute, though." He frowned at Shelby. "What kind of business you say your father is in?"

  "All kinds. Manufacturing, transportation, health care, agriculture, recreation, computers, minerals, sea farms—"

  "Sea farms. Seems to me . . ." Thurgood's brow was furrowed. "Seems to me there was a Cheever."

  "Rich enough to buy a ship like the Harvest Moon?" Lana Trask asked.

  "No, no." Thurgood Trask snorted, as though at the very idea. "I remember him now. He ran a fish supply house. Hardly made enough to live on, never mind enough to buy anything. And now I think of it, his name wasn't Cheever at all—it was Seever."

  "Did you ever meet anyone on Earth rich enough to buy a ship like this one?"

  "Never did. Lana, people on Earth aren't like us. They're poor. There's fourteen billion of the poor devils, and nine out of ten of 'em go to bed hungry and wake up worse."

  "That's what I've heard." Lana Trask turned to Grace and Doobie. "You sure he was all right when you picked him up. No head injuries, no drugs or drink?"

  "No injuries." Grace spoke reluctantly. "Drink, though. He stank of it when we opened his suit."

  "Drunk, and sick," added Doobie. "But he's all right now. He had a shower and a meal."

  "Now just one minute!" Shelby had listened to all the talk about him as though he wasn't there, and he was not going to tolerate any more of it. He stepped closer to Lana Trask. "I'm telling you, my father is J. P. Cheever. He's the head of Cheever Consolidated Enterprises! That makes him one of the richest and most powerful people on Earth. He could buy you and your crew and this crummy old ship a hundred times over, and never even notice. If you know what's good for you, you'd better head back to the node this minute. You'd better send me home, too, just as soon as you can—or you'll regret it. And that's an order."

  "Is it now?" Lana Trask said quietly. She was half a head shorter than Shelby, and she had to tilt her face back to stare into his eyes. "An order, you say. Well, you may not know much about life on a harvester ship like this, and you may still be half-drunk. So I'll be easy on you. But here's a free lesson: Only one person on the Harvest Moon gives orders; and that person is not an accidental new-aboard, whether he's called Shelby Cheever or anything else."

  She took a deep breath and seemed to grow a couple of inches. "And while I'm making a speech, which anyone here will tell you is not my natural habit, I'll point out something else to you. Do you have any idea how lucky you are just to be alive" From the speed that Logan logged you at when you were first spotted, you must have whistled out of the Messina node a thousand times as fast as it's safe to do it. Who calibrated your source and destination node velocities before you entered back at Sol? Was it you? And were you too reeling drunk to get it right?"

  Shelby stared at her.

  "I thought so," she went on. "It was sheer dumb luck that you didn't die right then and there as you came out of the node. And more dumb luck that Logan saw you and was in a position to rescue you. But it wasn't dumb luck for me and for everyone else on the Harvest Moon. It was pure dumb bad luck, because to save you I had to hold our position fourteen extra hours. That means we've lost our advantage over the other harvesters—all thanks to Shelby Cheever.

  "And here's one final piece of learning for you, before you go and sleep it off and wake up rational and reasonable: I can't return you to Earth through the node network at this time, for three good reasons. First, we're heading in exactly the wrong direction. We're on the outward sweep, following the cloud currents with the rest of the harvesters. Our fuel budget doesn't permit the sort of wild maneuver that you're asking. Second, we're carrying a load of pharmaceuticals. I promised to make a drop-off of them when we reach the Confluence, and two ships coming from the more distant reefs will be depending on us. And third, there are mouths to feed on this ship. Who's going to do that if we don't find and take aboard a load of transuranics? Not you, that's for sure. You'll be looked after here, but I didn't ask you to come aboard and I can't risk other people's livelihoods for the sake of an extra unwanted passenger.

  "You'll get to Earth right enough—if that's where you really come from. I'll take you back through the node. But I'll do it on our schedule, not one made up to suit the whim of the sainted only-son-of-his-father Shelby Cheever."

  "When?" Although Lana Trask had never once raised her voice, Shelby felt crushed by the flow of words. "How long before you take me back to the node?"

  "That depends on you as well as me. We return to the node as soon as we have a full hold. That's going to be at least a couple more months, probably three, but if you work really hard with us it could be less." Lana Trask nodded to Grace and Doobie. "Take care of him. Help him to sober up. And we'll talk about the rest of it later."

  Maybe it was the aftereffects of the drink, but Shelby felt like crying. He was very on edge, and try as he might he couldn't repress a sniffle.

  Oddly enough, Grace and Doobie seemed to find that neither odd nor disgraceful.

  "It's Muv," Doobie said. "You know what mothers are like."

  Shelby thought of his own mother, vapory and nervous and apparently afraid of everything. He remembered Constance Cheever waking Branton in the middle of the night to come to her suite and remove a small spider, and recalled her screams and wails of terror when Shelby fell off a horse during a riding lesson.

  Spiders and falls from horseback might not occur aboard the Harvest Moon, but Shelby couldn't see Lana Trask being worried by them if they did. That thought did nothing to make him feel better.

  "We don't notice it, of course." Grace was responding to his silence. "Because we've known her all our lives. She's our muv. But others say that the first time you meet her she runs right over you."

  "She said I was an idiot," Shelby said sullenly. "And that I was drunk. And she implied I was a liar."

  There was another long silence, while Grace and Doobie stared at each other.

  "Were you?" Grace asked at last.

  "No! It's all true, every word of it. I'm sorry I said the Harvest Moon is a piece of junk, but my father has enough money to buy a thousand ships like this. Hell, I could buy this ship, ten times over."

  "But everybody knows that people on Earth are poor," said Grace. She looked as though she wanted to believe Shelby but didn't quite see how she could. "Uncle Thurgood was there for a year, and he says there are people starving in the streets. Are you telling us that he's lying?"

  "No." Shelby had heard the same thing, but he had never seen it. No one that he knew went into the middle cities or anyplace else where the general public had access. The nearest thing to poor people he had ever encountered was in airports, where passengers of the private aircars and the public planes might share a concourse. But anyone who flew was not likely to be going hungry.

  "Your uncle isn't lying," he said at last. "There are lots of poor people on Earth. And I guess some of them might be starving. But remember, Earth supports fourteen billion people. Somebody is bound to go short."

  "Nobody in space starves or goes short of food," Doobie said flatly.

  "They would, if there were enough of you."

  "No. We wouldn't let it happen, no matter how many of us there were. We look after each other."

  "But it's not Shel's fault
if it happens on Earth." Grace sensed a rising tension and tried to deflect it. "Is it true, you really are rich enough to buy this ship?"

  "I assume that I am. I don't know how much something like this costs."

  "Four or five trillion cumes," said Doobie. "That would be buying the ship new, of course."

  "I don't know what a cume is."

  "A cume—you know, C-U-M-E. Cubic meter. Of helium-3, at standard temperature and pressure."

  "But I was talking about how much the ship would cost in money."

  "Cumes are money." Doobie stuck his chin out. "The only sensible standard of money. Everybody uses cumes."

  "Not on Earth they don't. Sounds dumb to me. What about dollars?"

  "What can you do with dollars, even if you have 'em? They're just useless mass to lug around with you. Helium-3 is rare enough to be valuable, and everybody uses it for the fusion drives."

  "I didn't mean actual dollars. I never carry them around, even on Earth. I meant electronic dollars, transferred from one computer to another."

  "You can't run a ship's fusion drive on an electronic transfer. You need something real—like cumes of helium-3."

  "Real physical money is something out of Noah's Ark. Out-of-date for centuries on Earth."

  "Yes, and just look at Earth. People starving there. Even you admit it."

  "All right." Grace had to step in again. "If you two want to fight, I can't stop you. But you won't do it on my time. Look, Shel, it's getting late and you're pretty wasted. You said earlier that you'd like to meet Logan again. Do you want to do that tonight, or would you rather wait until tomorrow morning?"

  The word was slipped in so naturally that Shelby almost missed it. "What do you mean, meet Logan again? I haven't met Logan at all."

  "Of course you have."

  "I haven't. I know I haven't."

  "You have."

  "Now it's you who's at him instead of me," said Doobie. "There's an easy way to settle this. We'll go see Logan and find out who's right."

  "I am," said Grace.

  "No, I am," said Shelby. He had been sneered at and put down by everybody from the moment that he arrived on the Harvest Moon, but at last he had something that he was sure about.

  But he wasn't sure five minutes later, after Doobie and Grace had led him on a sinuous path from the central habitat of the Harvest Moon to one of the outer cargo holds, dim and cavernous.

  "Meet Logan—again," said Grace.

  And Shelby did meet Logan again. For Logan was the multi-armed, wire-headed, bottle-shaped oddity that he had last seen as the birdcage ship docked at the Harvest Moon.

  Chapter Four

  SHELBY woke up bit by bit, body before brain, memory before mind. Everything seemed like a bad dream, starting from the moment when he had stepped on board the transfer vessel to take him up to the Bellatrix. As soon as he opened his eyes he would surely find himself safe in his own bedroom in the Cheever mansion, with Branton and the other staff waiting downstairs to fill his order for breakfast. He opened his eyes. He was staring up at a ceiling of grey plastic no more than two feet above him. Sit upright, and he would bang his head. The bunk that he lay in was adequately soft, but it was barely long or wide enough to contain him.

  Shelby sighed. For the first time in days he felt concern for his mother. She must know by now that he had vanished into the node network. Since he had not appeared in the Kuiper Belt as planned, she probably assumed that he was dead. And according to Grace and Doobie, until he returned through the node in three months' time there was no way to reassure her.

  He sat up carefully and swung his legs over the side of his bed. He had slept in a tiny grey-walled cabin, hardly longer than the bunk and only twice as wide. The entire furnishings were a locker underneath the bunk, a little desk and chair and terminal, and a solid plastic door that could be locked from the inside.

  Three months. He was supposed to live like this for three whole months? He would go crazy.

  He went outside, unsteady on his feet. The Harvest Moon must be under way, because a gentle but steady acceleration provided a sense of up and down and held him to the slightly tilted floor.

  Which way to go? He stood in a featureless curving corridor with walls, floor, and ceiling made of the same drab plastic. He could not remember how he had got there the previous night.

  With sight and memory of no use, he followed his nose. He could smell food. Sure enough, after following the corridor through a ninety-degree turn and passing four closed doors, he came to a wide opening. It led into the same crowded galley that he had eaten in the previous night. Now that he was less overwhelmed by the strangeness of his surroundings, he could see unfamiliar appliances and gadgets on every wall.

  Grace Trask was sitting at the table opposite Thurgood Trask and Scrimshander Limes. They had apparently just finished eating, and Scrimshander was working with a small knife at something in his left hand. He lifted his head as Shelby entered, smiled shyly, and at once hid away what he was holding.

  "Good morning, young man," Thurgood Trask said briskly. "Or should I say good afternoon? Come on, Scrimshander, come on. Work's a-waiting and time's a-wasting."

  He rose from the table and led the other man out, while Grace sat grinning.

  "Good morning, young man," she said, as soon as they had gone. "Or should I say good afternoon? How do you feel today, Shel?"

  Shelby dropped into the seat opposite her. "What was all that about?"

  "Oh, it's just Uncle Thurgood." Grace pushed the dirty plates to the middle of the table. "He overslept, and now he's all bluster. He blames it on me and Scrim for not waking him. If he could he'd blame it on you too."

  "But what was Scrimshander doing? He hid something when I came in, as though he didn't want me to see it."

  "He didn't. Don't worry. It was nothing bad. He just didn't want you to look at the carving before it was finished."

  "That's what he was doing? Carving?"

  "How do you think he came to be called Scrimshander? It's not his real name. Scrimshander is an old word for the fancy carving that sailors used to do when they were on long voyages on Earth's seas. They used wood and bone and ivory, but you won't find any of those here. Scrim uses plastic. He's very good at it. He does it all the time when he and Uncle Thurgood aren't playing chess together."

  "I've never in my whole life seen anyone doing that sort of handcraft work. What was he carving?"

  "You'll see it soon enough. Are you hungry?"

  "Starving." The change of subject told Shelby that Grace had said as much concerning the carving as she was going to say. He sat waiting, until he realized that she was not about to move.

  "What's holding you?" she said at last.

  "You asked if I was hungry. I am. I'm waiting for you to give me breakfast."

  "Why should I?"

  "You fed me last night."

  "That was a special case. You seemed sick and lost." Grace put her elbows on the table. "Look, I hope you don't have the crazy idea that I or anyone else here is going to feed you regularly." She waved a hand across to the array of appliances. "Go ahead."

  Shelby stared at the strange machines. "I don't know how."

  "You don't know how to use a food synthesizer? I don't believe it. What do people do when they want breakfast on Earth?"

  "In my house, the kitchen staff makes it. I've never cooked a meal for myself in my whole life."

  She was staring at him in disbelief. "I see," she said at last. "You know, I daren't tell Muv this, but I think I'm beginning to share your fantasies. The kitchen staff cooks your breakfast. So who cooks their breakfast? The kitchen elves? I'd heard about Earth people not using machines much, but I thought it was just spacer talk." She stood up. "Come on. You have to learn sometime. It might as well be now."

  She showed Shelby how to program a food synthesizer, first giving him a quick overview and then taking each step in more detail.

  "That's just a beginning, of course," she said wh
en she was done. "The food machines are capable of much more than I've shown you. We don't usually cook for ourselves, but we take it in turns. Doobie's the worst cook—or he was, until you came along. Sometimes I think he's bad on purpose, so no one will ask him to do it. When it's my turn I like to produce something really fancy. Of course, I practice the meals on myself first. You'll probably want to do the same."

  She returned to the table. Shelby realized that she had meant what she said. He was now supposed to program the synthesizer and eat whatever came out of it. He tentatively made his data entries and at last told the program to execute. The food machine began to gurgle and sizzle.

  What emerged didn't look or smell too great. But a person who was really hungry could eat grey bread and purple sausage—especially if he wasn't willing to admit to Grace Trask that he hadn't known much about what he was doing.