The Billion Dollar Boy

by Charles Sheffield

  Shelby escaped and went to lie down on his bunk. Within two minutes he was asleep. His head had been filled when he lay down with awful memories of the wreck, but his sleep was easy and dreamless. When he was finally awakened by a rapping on his cabin door, he felt as though the whole terrible episode had itself been a dream.

  He went to the door, convinced that it would be Doobie—who else woke him constantly when he was trying to sleep? But he was only half right. Doobie was there, and at his side was the hesitant figure of Scrimshander Limes.

  "Told you," Doobie said. "All Shel ever does is snooze. Come on, Shel, you gotta get up. Scrim has something to show you."

  "Oh, please, it's nothing." Scrimshander looked pleadingly from Shelby to Doobie and back. "I didn't want to disturb you. I told Doobie I didn't want to disturb you, but he insisted we come."

  "You're not disturbing him—now." Doobie jerked his head toward Shelby. "See, he's up and wide awake. Let's go, Shel."

  It was almost a pleasure, after what had happened at Dodman's Reef, to find that Doobie at least was his usual self. With Scrimshander trailing along behind they headed for the galley, where Doobie halted.

  "All right, Scrim, over to you. It's your show."

  "Really, it's nothing." But Scrimshander looked around, as though to make sure that no one else was present, then went across to the locker where the plates were kept. He took something out. "I'd like you to have this, Shelby—if you want it, I mean."

  Shelby found himself holding a piece of white plastic about six inches long. He stared down and saw that it was a carving of himself, with every feature accurate from his pointed chin to his rumpled hair. The more he studied it, the more lifelike it seemed.

  "This is fantastic," he said—and meant it. "I've never had anything like this before in my whole life."

  He realized that his words were true in several different ways. He had been given plenty of things, many of them containing a lot of handwork. But never before had the present been made for him by the actual giver.

  "It's nothing." Scrimshander blushed and wriggled with pleasure and embarrassment. "I'm just glad that you like it. But I have to go. Thurgood will be waiting."

  He turned and hurried out before anyone could say another word. Shelby stared at Doobie, and then again at the little figurine. "Look at the detail on this! He could make a fortune back on Earth. I wonder why he doesn't go and do it."

  "Yeah, well, he has his reasons." Doobie gave a quick sideways glance at the figure. "Scrim might make a fortune—if people on Earth are as rich as you say they are. And provided he did with them like he did with you, and wasn't one hundred percent accurate."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look at the body. Is that you?"

  It was—but only in Shelby's own mental image. The body of the figurine was not overweight. It was lean and strong and muscular.

  "You're right. It is a bit thinner than me."

  "Yeah? Try about two tons thinner."

  "But why did he carve it this way? As flattery?"

  "Scrim don't know the meaning of the word. He carves people the way he sees 'em inside his head, not the way they are." Doobie must have somehow known who was coming into the galley, even though he had his back to them, because he deliberately added, "I mean, he don't care nothing about accuracy. Why, Scrim even carved Gracie to look beautiful."

  Shelby turned. Grace had entered with her mother. One thing she did not look at the moment was beautiful. There were frown lines in her forehead, and her mouth was compressed and downturned.

  "No, Doobie." Lana Trask sounded wearily impatient for the first time since Shelby had known her. "Saul Kramer lost his brother today, and Gunther Thorsten lost his daughter. This is a terrible time for them and for everyone. You'll show a decent sense of respect, or you won't remain on this ship."

  "It's all right, Muv." Grace sounded as tired and depressed as she looked. "Doob's upset, I can tell."

  "I know he is. But he has to learn to show it in a more suitable way."

  "Sorry, Muv," Doobie muttered. "Sorry, Grace."

  Shelby wasn't convinced for a second. Doobie was just a kid. Looking back from the advanced age of almost sixteen, Shelby remembered it well, how little the deaths of people you didn't know meant to you when you were twelve or thirteen. Doobie knew what had happened, and he surely wished it hadn't. But he didn't really care.

  Lana Trask, however, was satisfied—or pretended to be.

  "Go on, then," she said. "I don't want to see you until tomorrow morning."

  Her order wasn't addressed to Shelby, but he chose to interpret it that way. Although he still needed to have it out with Grace over her lying story about Jilter's name, this wasn't the time for it.

  "Guess it must have been pretty bad over there," Doobie muttered when they were out of Lana Trask's hearing. "Usually, when Gracie comes back from visiting the Coniscation she has a grin on her face wide enough to fly a corry through. Maybe she didn't see him, or maybe they had a fight. She's been funny the past couple of days."

  "Didn't see who?"

  "Nicky Rasmussen. That's Saul Kramer's nephew. Grace's been seeing Nicky the past couple of Confluences. Pretty mushy, if you ask me, but Muv approves. Says it would be a good match between the two harvesters."

  "Nicky Rasmussen," Shelby said slowly. "What's he look like?"

  "Tall and skinny, with a big nose. First-class freeball player. You'll see him for yourself at Confluence." Doobie, seeking a safe retreat where he could hide away without Lana Trask noticing him, paused. They were approaching a promising alcove furnished with a clutter of assay equipment, but even before they got there it was obvious that it would be no good. Thurgood Trask's voice could be heard, laying down the law.

  "Never heard of such a thing in my whole life. Why'd you even think you'd like to be heading outside, in the middle of all today's trouble?"

  There was the brisk click of plastic on metal, then Scrimshander's meek voice. "I don't know, Thurgood. I just thought if there was need of an extra pair of hands to do something, or if a person could help to search . . . Check, Thurgood."

  "Well, don't you ever start thinking any such thing. Extra pair of hands, indeed! Didn't Lana say as how you'd be more useful here? I bet you weren't even listening to her. Check, you say? Let me see now. Check it is."

  There was a long silence, then, "Why, tunnel and blast it, that's not check! It's checkmate. Scrimshander Limes, you've gone and checkmated me!—when I wasn't looking. If that isn't the most sneaky, duplicitous, underhand, unfair, backstabbing—"

  "I'm sorry, Thurgood. See, if you hadn't moved the bishop that was protecting your king . . ."

  Doobie chuckled and sneaked on past the alcove. "Happens all the time," he whispered to Shelby. "Uncle Thurgood can't stand it. Scrim beats him at chess every time they play. Pretty hard to take, when the way Uncle tells it he knows better than Scrim about everything."

  "So why does your uncle play him?"

  "Dunno. Maybe Uncle Thurgood thinks that one day his luck will change. Or maybe he can't believe he loses all the time to somebody who's not firing on all drive units. Either way, any chance they get, the two of them sit down at a board and have at it."

  "Your uncle treats Scrim horribly. He bullies him and orders him around all the time. Does Scrim work for him, or owe him something?"

  "No." Doobie eyed Shelby thoughtfully. "That the way it is on Earth? Anybody works for somebody else or owes them money, they get bullied and run around all the time?"

  "Sometimes." Shelby didn't like the way the talk was going. It was moving too close to home. "I've seen it happen."

  "Earth must be a strange place. Try anything like that in the Cloud and you'd get a quick mouthful of knuckles. Here, no one pushes anyone else around. We wouldn't let 'em."

  "But no one stops Thurgood, and he does it all the time to Scrimshander."

  "Maybe he does. But he has his reasons. Look." Doobie took Shelby's arm as though he was rea
dy to confide something. Then he shook his head and simply repeated, "Uncle Thurgood has his reasons. Good reasons."

  Shelby pressed for details, but nothing that he said could persuade Doobie to say more.

  Finally Shelby gave up. He decided that when Grace Trask stopped moping over her meeting with Nicky Rasmussen, he would ask her instead.

  Chapter Seven

  EARLY one morning, eighteen days after the loss of the Witch of Agnesi, Lana Trask was sitting in the Harvest Moon's control room. It was the nerve center of the harvester, linked to every docking facility and every exit point. Lana was staring at one of the displays, where a corry was preparing to leave the ship. Shelby, with Grace Trask's supervision, was in the final stages of departure countdown. He was swarming easily and confidently over the corry's latticework, checking that the top of the corry would fly open automatically upon sensing the presence of the harvester's hull.

  "What do you think?" said Lana. She was flanked by Logan and Jilter Clute, and could Shelby have heard her he would have been astonished by the tone of her question. If he had acquired her self-assurance, she had apparently traded it for his uncertainty.

  "He has been out in a corry with me five times," said Logan, "not counting the occasion of his original arrival." The robot was not capable of impatience, which was just as well. "As I said a few minutes ago, in all five cases Shelby Cheever performed in excess of expectations."

  "Three times with me, every one of them fine." Jilter sniffed. He was quite capable of impatience. "I'd have said something if there was any problem. Let 'em go."

  "I suppose you're right." Lana turned to another display, this one showing the input from the harvester's largest scope. "And he seems sane now. He's stopped spouting all that nonsense about his fame and fortune back on Earth. But I'd feel a lot better if that wasn't out there."

  The display showed, faint and far-off, the tiny image of another harvester.

  "Its presence is merely a tribute to your skills at locating transuranics." Logan was also incapable of envy; otherwise, this was the time when it would have been displayed. Lana Trask's inexplicable ability to find stable transuranics was something that even a robot might covet. "If the crew of the Southern Cross trail us everywhere, it is only because our leavings are superior to their own findings."

  "But is it the only reason?" Lana sat with her finger poised on the transmission circuit to Grace and Shelby's suits. "You believe that you know Pearl Mossman, Logan, but what you see is not the same woman as I see. I've watched her operate for twenty years. She and I came out together on our first trip to the Cloud. She's a very clever woman."

  "Obviously, or she would not be the captain of a harvester. But she is not so clever as you, Captain Trask. Otherwise, Pearl Mossman would not pursue our tracks in the hope of filling the cargo holds of the Southern Cross."

  "I wasn't using clever as a compliment, Logan. Quite the opposite." But Lana at last stabbed down with her finger and said over the open circuit, "Exit permission granted."

  "Yes, sir." Grace, knowing that her mother was watching, threw a quick salute. "Exit commencing, Captain."

  "And be careful."

  "Muv! I'm always careful."

  "I mean more careful than that."

  The corry began its slow ascent, out through the port and away from the body of the harvester. Before it had gone two kilometers, Grace leaned across to Shelby and gestured for him to switch to the suit's personal radio circuit.

  "What's wrong?" he said, as he made the change.

  "Nothing. But I know Muv. She's back there watching every move we make 'til we get out of range. If she could she'd listen in on every word we say, too. I don't want her to hear us. And this way if she changes her mind, she can order us to come back but we can honestly say we didn't hear her."

  Three weeks had been time enough for Shelby to learn a great deal about Grace Trask. On the surface she was cool and rational. Underneath she was wild and impulsive, with a crazy streak that could break out any time and in any direction. He had not yet forgiven her the spontaneous invention of Jilter Clute's colorful past.

  "Why should she order us back?" He was not exactly worried, but he suspected that he ought to be. "Where are you planning on taking us?"

  "Sightseeing."

  As an answer it was designed to be reassuring. Shelby projected their line of flight, and saw two reefs ahead. The corry's course would take them right between the pair, and already they were close enough to make out the black unwinking eyes.

  "The reefs . . ."

  Grace nodded. "Lizard Reef, and Portland Reef. Don't worry, we'll stay a long way from both of them. We're quite safe. Look ahead, though, isn't it great?"

  It was certainly that. The view forward of the corry was spectacular. Although Lizard Reef and Portland Reef were well separated, there was a constant flow of matter between them, and long iridescent threads of gas twisted their way across the sky ahead, coiled and braided and tangled like golden hair. Dense rings of ionized plasma formed glowing jewels within the strands.

  Shelby stared, shivered, and felt an almost superstitious awe. According to Lana Trask, some long-ago race of beings had, by accident or design, created the Messina Dust Cloud, space rivers and reefs and Confluence and all. It made everything that humans had ever done, perhaps all that humans would ever do, seem tiny and trivial.

  He glanced across to Grace, wanting to share the moment, and found her turning her head from horizon to horizon and even peering behind them over the wall of the open corry, as though seeking the vanished Harvest Moon.

  Had she seen all this so many times before that she was no longer overwhelmed?

  Hard to believe. Shelby felt that he could stare at this space vista forever and never get tired of it. He turned to Grace, and found her gazing fixedly at one point of the sky.

  "Grace—"

  She waved him to silence. "Don't speak. We're in luck. There's a sounder on the way. Look, and listen."

  The tenuous gases of the Messina Cloud seemed to have thickened around the place that she indicated. There was a curious silvery glitter there, tiny sparkles that dotted the near-vacuum with a billion flecks of light.

  Shelby stared, fell silent, and listened. He heard nothing and was all set to complain "Listen to what?" when his suit radio, at a sonic frequency so high that it was at the very upper limit of audibility, began to produce a thin bat-chirp. Shreep-shreep-shreep.

  "Is it a ship?" he whispered.

  Grace shook her head without speaking. The sound continued, becoming a little louder. Shreep-shreep-shreep. The corry, under Grace's control, made a sudden change of direction and moved at higher acceleration. She raised a gloved arm and pointed to the apex of the birdcage.

  Shelby, peering at and beyond the cage of narrow struts, watched the sparks of light at that point dwindle and fade to leave behind emptiness of a curious eye-drawing clarity. Moving in that space was something that he saw in a first moment of panic as a third reef, its black unwinking eye directly ahead of them.

  That couldn't be. Reefs were permanent and stable features of the Messina Dust Cloud. There was no way that a new reef could suddenly appear from nowhere. And with that thought Shelby began to see differences.

  The object in front of them had the same ring structure as a tiny reef, and at the center sat a similar dark pupil. But this central eye was not round. It had an octagonal shape. Around the perimeter of the ring sat eight ragged blue-white tendrils, pointing outward and thinning gradually to invisibility. Next to the tendrils the pattern of background stars was compressed and distorted, so that the whole object had a rough eightfold symmetry.

  And the thing was moving. Not toward the corry, but drifting sideways and slowly turning. As it rotated, Shelby saw that the octagonal ring was merely a part of something bigger, the head on a long, sinuous body. The body itself was black, visible as it occulted the glowing gas clouds behind it. Again, the star patterns nearby were twisted to map out a halo aroun
d the dark body.

  "Suit radio off," whispered Grace. "All channels."

  Shelby followed her instruction. As he did so she moved so that their suit helmets were in direct contact.

  "Better to talk like this." Her voice carried faintly from her helmet to his. "I don't want our radio signals to disturb the sounder."

  "Disturb it?" Shelby found himself shouting, his voice echoing within the hard helmet. "What do you mean, disturb it? It's not alive—is it?"