I made a beeline for the food table, looked over the hors d’oeuvres—most of which I couldn’t identify—and settled for a handful of crackers. As I was standing there, a young woman came over and touched me on the elbow. “I recognise you. You were on the news.”
She wasn’t exceptionally pretty, but she had a front porch like a cantilever bridge, and I get nervous when people stand that close.
I stepped back a pace. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Ensign Ken MacKay at your service.”
“Christine,” she said. She had on a white scarf and one of those simple white dresses, cut low off the shoulder, that probably cost more than I ever expect to earn. She had thick auburn hair and wore a gold chain, gold earrings, and more makeup than I care for.
“I’m not half as bad as the reporters would have you believe.”
“What a shame,” she said, smiling.
I didn’t realise that she was moving forward every time I stepped back until I felt the hors-d’oeuvres table in the small of my back.
“The battle you fought sounded so exciting.”
“All in a day’s work,” I tried to make a joke out of it. “You know how dangerous it is to fly into black holes.”
“No.” She laid her hand on my arm. “Tell me all about it.”
I blinked, momentarily at a loss for words. Then I told her three stories, all of which may have actually happened to somebody else.
“But that’s enough of talking about me. What do you do?”
“Oh, things,” she said. “I have my hobbies, and my interests.”
She noticed I was staring in the general direction of the little jewel she had suspended from the chain around her neck, and she held it up for me to see.
“This is my crystal. I use it to focus my psychic energy.”
“Oh,” I vaguely recalled seeing ads for crystals. For $69.95, you, too, could master the secrets of the universe.
“It has healing powers.” She let the crystal fall and reached up and used both hands to straighten my tie.
“Oh. I may need your help about the middle of next week,” I said, trying to keep the conversation alive and idly wondering if she did resurrections.
“You will?” Her eyes brightened and her voice softened.
“I’m sorry, that was a dumb thing for me to say.”
“No, Ken, don’t say that. I can feel your aura drifting on me. Try to loosen up. We were so close. Do you like children?”
“Oh, I guess they’re all right in small doses, although I still think King Herod got bad press.” It occurred to me to check whether she was wearing a ring. She was not.
She touched my arm again. “Ken, don’t be so rigid. We’re so close. lean feel it.”
With the table pressing into the small of my back, I said, “Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too.”
She half closed her eyes. “Are you really a pirate?”
A man with an angry look on his face started walking toward us at a rapid pace.
Christine took a quick look over her shoulder. “I think my father wants to talk with me. I’ll find you later.” She blew me a little kiss.
Her father took her by the hand and jerked her away with an angry look in my direction.
I stayed where I was for a few minutes until I saw a familiar figure wandering my way. “Dr. Beaver! How have you been?”
“Friend Ken!” Bucky scooped up a handful of canapés and stuffed his face. “I must say, these little spinach things with caviar are superlative. Your friend, Miss Christine, the one who is so apparent, all of the females are complaining about her. Is she really a floozy? Everyone is saying so. What is a floozy?”
“It’s a little tricky to explain.” As far as I was concerned, between Genghis and Bucky, human-!Plixxi* relations were going downhill fast.
“Then we shall speak of it another time. I must go pay my respects to Mayor Feldman, but I shall return. Have you met the mayor?”
“No. I missed the receiving line. I don’t know anything about the local politics. Is he a liberal conservative, or a conservative liberal?”
Bucky tilted his head. “That is hard to say. He seems to switch. I could ask. Oh, there is someone I absolutely must talk to, but I shall certainly find you later. Ta-ta!” Bucky waddled off in the direction of the punch bowl.
Catarina must have been watching, because she slipped up beside me and put her arm in mine. “Just remember, as Bucky says, ‘A clean mind and a strong heart weather every storm.’ “
“What would one out of two get me?”
“What thoughts are running through your mind?”
“You’re the second person to ask me that. Right about now it’s beginning to hit me that there is a substantial likelihood that when Genghis gets here, we are going out in the proverbial blaze of glory.”
Catarina pulled out a handkerchief to hide her smile. “As Commander Hiro enjoys pointing out, it beats retiring and having to sell life insurance for a living.”
“Or entering a convent,” I said in a neutral tone of voice.
She appraised me coolly. “Beam squealed. It’s one option. A blaze of glory is another.” She smiled and began twirling her handkerchief. “You look nice in your dress uniform.”
“It’s the one you had Sheriff Jamali’s brother-in-law make for me under duress. The shoes feel about a half size too small.”
“The trousers also look a bit snug.”
“Not a bit,” I assured her.
“What are your plans for the evening?”
“Ah, have you met Miss Christine whatever-her-name-is?” I asked, trying to figure out what to do with my hands.
Catarina nodded. “I met her briefly. She puts up a good front. Goon.”
“Well, she’s been making sheep’s eyes at me, so I thought I’d get sloppy drunk and do something about it.”
“Ken, I hate to say this, but she’s been making sheep’s eyes at everything else in trousers.”
“I realise this. But the opportunity might not recur, so I thought I’d give it a try. I never would have believed it, but that line about black holes really does work.”
“As a pickup line, it’s marginally better than ‘Do you like children?’ “ Catarina said amiably. “Did you have a particular plan in mind?”
“Well, I’d rather not get grass stains on my uniform. I’m hoping I can talk her into a motel.”
“You’re going to hate yourself in the morning.”
“I know, but I figure that won’t last long, under the circumstances.”
“I’d also prefer to have you sober. We’re going to need to spend as much time shaking down as we can,” Catarina said solicitously.
“It might not work the other way,” I said after reflection.
“Not exactly your type of girl?”
“Hmmm. Catarina, can crystals focus your psychic energy?”
“Nooooo,” she said. “Why?”
“In that case, she has meringue upstairs.” I tapped my forehead. “She’s working off spun sugar, egg whites, and lots of air pockets. So I guess the answer to your question is no.”
“Are you sure that I can’t talk you out of this?” she asked, coiling her handkerchief around her ring finger.
“Afraid not.”
“Okay,” she said and lost control of her handkerchief, which slipped out of her fingers and fluttered away. “Oops!”
“I got it,” I said, and squatted down to grab it before it reached the floor. It was a serious mistake.
I stood up stiffly. “Here!” I handed her back the handkerchief. Then I moved a few steps closer to the wall and assumed a parade rest position.
Catarina waited a moment or two and then moved in next to me and slipped her arm back into mine.
“Shall we dance?” she cooed.
I shook my head solemnly.
“Trousers a little too tight?”
“Not any more.”
“Can Miss Christine sew a stitch?”
“I doubt it. I seem
to have altered my plans for the evening.”
“Why? You weren’t planning on keeping them on anyway.”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
“How long are we going to stand here by the wall?”
“Until we have a power failure or everyone else leaves. You realise that God is going to punish you and the sheriff’s brother-in-law for this.” I thought for a minute. “How old is Miss Christine, anyway?”
“Fifteen or sixteen, I think.”
I shuddered. “I think maybe I ought to call it a night. You want to see me to the door?”
“I’m about ready to quit myself. I have a change of clothes out in Piper’s car. I’ll run you back, and we can both change and take a walk somewhere. There are a few things I need to talk to you about.”
“Good plan.” We edged out the door sideways, and Catarina left me to get Piper’s car. While I was waiting, the Mall World guy came by. He must have been hitting the punch because he kept singing, “It’s a Mall World After All,” over and over and over.
Catarina headed out to Clyde’s place to change. On our way in the door, I grabbed the mail and tossed it in the trash. Catarina rescued one really thick envelope. She opened it and started reading while I went into the bedroom and threw on denim pants and one of my less obtrusive shirts. When I came out, she was still reading.
“Aren’t you going to change?” I asked.
“In a minute.” She handed me the document she was holding. “This changes what I was planning to say to you.”
She walked into the bathroom and shut the door while I immersed myself in the details of yet another legal complaint against me.
“Catarina! What is a temporary restraining order?” I yelled through the door.
“It means the bank is asking the court not to let you do something because it will cause them irreparable harm.”
I read a little further. “What do they mean they want the court to prohibit me from leaving the planet’s surface?”
She stepped out wearing slacks and a cotton blouse. “It means the Second Bank of Schenectady doesn’t want the court to let you leave the planet’s surface. This latest suit is on behalf of the people left holding the mortgage on your ship. I think they’re arguing that if the judge lets you leave, you’ll flee the jurisdiction or get yourself killed, and they’re afraid that if you do, they’ll have trouble collecting the money they claim you owe them. I have some chocolate out in the car if you’re still hungry. Last one out the door is a groundhog!”
I was a groundhog. As we drove off, I tapped the piece of parchment. “According to this, my hearing is set for tomorrow afternoon in front of Judge Osman. If Osman grants this, how long can he keep me on the ground? “
“Until the bank gets their case against you settled.” She grinned and shook her head.
“You have got to be kidding.”
“No, I’m not, and neither is the bank. If Osman grants this, the California Kid isn’t going to fly you up unless you take over his shuttle at gunpoint.”
“I have the distinct feeling you don’t want me to take over the Kid’s shuttle at gunpoint.”
“No, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said judiciously. “It could lead to problems.”
“Why isn’t everybody else named?”
“Probably because McHugh and Spooner have already flown the coop, and nobody else is going up.”
“It occurs to me that there is a war on, and it might be inconvenient for the navy not to be able to move me. Isn’t there a federal law covering this situation?”
Catarina paused. “Actually, there are two, wherein lies the problem. One law that’s been on the books forever says that Confederation law preempts local law, and the navy can move you. Now, some of our people aren’t very good about paying their phone bills, so Parliament passed another law to keep the navy from rotating service personnel until they settle their debts. Unfortunately, the staffer who drafted it was in a hurry, and left out a few small considerations, like the possibility that we might want to go to war. The navy is still working on getting it fixed.”
“I know. You’re going to tell me that this is my tax dollars at work. Let me get this straight. I have to hire a lawyer—”
“I’ll loan you money.”
“And I’ve got to go to court, so I can persuade Judge Osman to let me go and get myself killed with you and Hiro.”
“That’s a fair summation.”
For at least half the year at Schenectady’s latitude, Schuyler’s World enjoys long twilights. Tonight was no exception. There was plenty of light to see by, and you could almost make out the stars. It was like being under a bright full moon on Earth. We stopped at the Ijamsville municipal park and pulled a blanket out of the car, along with the half-kilo chocolate bar Catarina had brought to nibble.
She straightened the blanket and motioned me to sit. “I owe you an apology for keeping you out of a motel.”
“But you’re not going to apologise because you know I really didn’t want to go through with it anyway.”
“Correct.” She peeled the wrapping off the chocolate bar, took a bite, and handed it to me. “Ken, I’m not handling this right. I meant to straighten out our personal relationship before we got up to the ship. Now it doesn’t look like you’re coming up with me.”
“Catarina, look,” I protested between bites of chocolate, “that’s my ship up there, and the people on board her are my friends, especially you, although that may say something about me. You need me up there. Nobody knows how to fly that ship better than I do, and you’re short of people to begin with.”
“Ken, don’t do this to me.” She took hold of my wrist. “The Scupper is hopeless as a warship, and using her to decoy Genghis into the minefield and then into a line of fire from the space platform is probably going to get her atoms spread over three parsecs. I want you to stay here, and if Osman rules against you, you’ll stay alive. Don’t make this hard.”
“Catarina, I’m in this up to my neck! If I’m not up there with you, Genghis is going to come looking for me.”
“Ken,” she said gently, “if Genghis blows your ship away, he is going to assume that he blew you away with it. And if I speak with Genghis before we start shooting, I intend to foster that assumption.”
“Oh,” I said, swallowing.
We sat there without saying anything for a few minutes, watching the chocolate shimmer in the twilight. Half the fun of eating chocolate is the abstract holographic patterns they transfer onto the candy when they cool it. I broke off a chunk and handed her back the bar.
She started picking apart a fallen leaf. “This is a really awkward way to say goodbye, isn’t it?”
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, you had to walk into mine.” I shook my head. “How long have you known you were a vamp?”
“About five months now.” She shredded the leaf, exposing its delicate veins before discarding it.
“I really messed up your career by making it public, didn’t I?”
She shrugged. “It would have come out eventually.”
“How do you feel? About being a vamp, I mean?”
“If I don’t eat right and avoid doing things to shove my endocrine balance out of whack, it’s like being on a roller-coaster ride.” She grinned. “But like anything, you discipline yourself and come to terms with it. Or you don’t.”
“Despite the thing with the cookies, I still have trouble seeing you as Count Dracula.”
She got serious. “I think that the vampire legends have more to do with the way corpses decay than they do with McLendon’s Syndrome. In Slavic legend, vampires have ruddy faces— ‘bloodred as a vampire’—so Bram Stoker got that part of the story wrong. Harry looks more like a vampire than I do.”
“Explain the part about the corpses,” I said, finishing off my chocolate and looking around the forest for more.
“Well, for one thing, rigor mortis is a temporary condition, so after a
period of time, bodies get supple again and a fair amount of blood stays liquid inside. As gases from decay build up, the corpse bloats and forces blood from the lungs out the mouth and nose. Dead bodies are funny—if the temperature and humidity are right, they won’t decay for a fairly long time.”
“So that somebody’s dead body looks like it’s been out for a stroll drinking blood. Go on.”
“Well, another thing, the skin shrinks away from a corpse’s fingernails, which makes them look like they’ve been growing until they finally fall off.”
“I remember reading somewhere that corpses also make noises.”
“As any pathologist will tell you, when you force a stake into a corpse, you compress the corpse’s chest cavity and force air past the glottis.” She smiled, recollecting. “You wouldn’t believe the sick jokes that pathologists make in books they write for other pathologists to read.”
“If you think the jokes are sick, they must really be bad.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Anyway, I resent being thought of as a vampire. Vampires are supernatural creatures. There is nothing supernatural about having McLendon’s, although there’s a lot that isn’t pleasant. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking about how impossible it would have been to have a conversation like this with my ex-wife.” I stretched my feet past the end of the blanket and wiggled my toes in the funny grass. “People who get married usually deserve what they get, I guess. I must have been pretty obnoxious when she latched onto me.”
“I thought about getting married for a while.” She looked past me into the twilight.
“Oh?”
“I don’t know how much Beam let slip, but I went with one man for eight years. I figured out I had McLendon’s a few months after I was exposed and broke up with him. After that, I put in for deep-space duty.” She wrapped what was left of the chocolate.
“It seems to me that after putting eight years into it, having McLendon’s would be something that you could work out,” I said, putting my foot right into it.
Catarina looked at me directly. “Ken, there were other, serious problems with the relationship. Think about who I caught McLendon’s from and try subtracting five months from eight years.”
“Sorry. That was stupid, wasn’t it?”
McClendon's Syndrome (v1.1) Page 24
