by Bob Shaw
Nicklin liked him immediately, and – against his expectations – felt considerable respect for him. "I'm Jim Nicklin," he said, extending his hand.
"Hello, Jim." Montane's handshake was firm and dry. "Danea has been telling me all about you. Would you like to come inside and have a cup of tea? We can talk better in the old bus and it's a lot cooler inside – at least it would be if the air conditioning was working properly."
"I can put it right for you," Nicklin said as he followed Montane into the vehicle. "It's probably just a matter of – " He broke off on seeing the long silvery box occupying the centre of the floor space.
Montane gave him an appraising, slightly amused glance. "Yes, it's just what it appears to be – a coffin. Temporary resting place for my wife. Didn't Danea tell you about my unusual domestic arrangement?"
"Ah … no."
"She probably didn't want you to think I was crazy." Montane nodded towards a cushioned bench, inviting Nicklin to be seated. "We run the mission on strictly democratic lines, you know. One of our principal rules is that accommodation has to be shared out equally, but although there's enough room in my vehicle for a few more people nobody ever suggests moving in. They pretend it's out of respect for me, but who would want to share with a casket? Especially one that was occupied…"
Nicklin tried to smile. "Not too many, I suppose."
"It's understandable, but my circumstances are far from being normal."
That has to be the understatement of the decade, Nicklin thought, an ambivalence creeping into his opinion of Montane. The initial instinctive respect was still there, but what man in his right mind toted his wife's dead body around everywhere he went? Or even anywhere he went? It was bound to be against some statute or other, and had it ever been possible to introduce effective law enforcement on the Big O – in place of the prevalent system of restrained anarchy – Montane would have been in trouble. Something else the man had said was causing tremors of unease far back in Nicklin's consciousness, but he had no time to identify it.
"This is a very big step you're contemplating," Montane commented as he began to prepare the tea. "You fully understand, I take it, that the money you transfer to the mission will be in the form of a donation?"
"What else could it be?"
"My point is that you won't be buying a holding in some kind of commercial enterprise – a starship construction company, let's say – a holding which you could dispose of at some future date should you wish to do so."
"You're saying I won't be able to get my money back."
"I'm saying precisely that." Montane set out two antique-looking china cups and saucers. "And the amount involved is bound to be quite large."
"Oh, well – in for an orb, in for a crescent," Nicklin said, immediately regretting his attempt at flippancy as he noted the seriousness of Montane's expression.
"There's a lot more than mere orbs and 'cents at stake here," Montane replied. "I'm very happy for Danea and you, of course, and I wish you every happiness together, but–"
"My feelings about her aren't going to change, and even if they did – which they aren't – I don't see that it would have any bearing on any financial agreement between you and me." Nicklin was surprised to hear himself speaking with a degree of forcefulness which he had rarely achieved before – especially with a stranger – and he tentatively identified the Danea effect again.
Montane halted in the act of opening a jar of milk capsules. "I apologise, Jim. I intended no slur on Danea or you. I accept that you love each other, although it was all rather sudden by my personal timetable, but will you give me a direct answer to a direct question?"
"Of course."
Montane set the jar down and turned to face Nicklin. "Are you a believer, Jim? Do you truly believe in God and in the message I bring to mankind on His behalf?"
"I … " Nicklin looked into the calmness of the grey eyes and for once in his life understood the futility of lying. He turned his head from side to side, slowly, once.
Unexpectedly, Montane gave him a broad smile. "If you had tried to fool me on that one, I'd have booted you out of here, Jim – regardless of how much money it cost the mission. I can only work with people I respect, and who respect me. Milk?"
"One," Nicklin said as Montane picked up the small jar. "I'm glad we cleared the air, but I'm a bit surprised."
"At my taking on a non-believer? These are very special times, Jim. Naturally, I would prefer it if everybody I came in contact with was a disciple of the Lord, but this is an imperfect world and I have to use any instrument that He sends in my direction. The mission will benefit in two ways from your joining us – firstly, from your generous donation to our funds; secondly, from your practical skills. Danea tells me you are an excellent engineer."
"Technician might be a better word, and only in a small way." Nicklin accepted a cup of tea, and as he sipped it the feeling that something was amiss returned to him. Was it that Danea had warned him about speaking of his atheism to Montane? She had indicated that Montane would be deeply displeased, but in the event the man had proved to be quite indifferent. She had also said that no "paying guests" were permitted to come along for the ride, and that too was incorrect. It appeared she was not as familiar with her leader's views as one might have expected…
"Well, I'm pleased to accept you into my team, and I'm sure you'll be a useful member regardless of whether we style you engineer or technician," Montane said. "And now we ought to sort out some necessary details – does it embarrass you to talk about money?"
"It's one of my favourite subjects."
"Good! Money is very important to us." Montane came to sit on an old adjustable chair opposite Nicklin, a move which brought him close to the metal coffin. He placed his cup and saucer on it while he angled the seat to a more comfortable position. As an avowed materialist, Nicklin tried not to show any reaction, but using a loved one's coffin as an occasional table struck him as being vaguely distasteful. Unfortunately for him, he also saw the little domestic absurdity as being very funny – especially for a religious leader – and he was not at all certain of being able to control his amusement.
"Milly would have liked being helpful around the place," Montane explained, apparently prompted by some kind of near-telepathy as he retrieved his tea. "This way we're still man and wife – if you see what I mean – until she is properly laid to rest."
"I quite understand," Nicklin muttered, staring fixedly into his cup and fighting the urge to laugh. Why, O Gaseous Vertebrate, does life never serve anything up to us absolutely straight? Why does every drama have to contain its element of the ludicrous? Why does every leader have to have a squeaky voice or a boil on his bum? Is it your way of hinting to us that everything might be part of a big joke?
"You're looking a bit pensive, son," Montane said. "Is there anything on your mind?"
"Nothing too weighty," Nicklin assured the older man. "Just odd thoughts about this and that. It isn't every day that a man begins a brand-new life, you know."
Although he had put just about everything he owned into the hands of the Portal One Bank, it took Nicklin longer than he had expected to vacate his premises. He kept finding last-minute jobs to do, personal minutiae to preserve or destroy, all kinds of trivial items which somehow could not be abandoned without leaving notes for future users. When he had arranged for Danea to pick him up at midday it had seemed that he was allowing ample time in which to pull out, but now a distinct undertone of panic was creeping into everything.
The weather had changed during the night. Opaque grey clouds had come sifting in from the west, and the breeze which had sprung up was strong enough to activate the whistle trees on the far bank of the stream. They had curled their leaves and were emitting a mournful, ruminative keening which reminded Nicklin of the sound effects in a bad melodrama. There had been no rain as yet, but the air felt cool, moist and heavy.
Luckily, this was one of the days on which Maxy Millom was not due to put in an ap
pearance, so Nicklin was spared the interrogation which would have been inevitable. He had the pleasure of penning Maxy a note which informed him that he was no longer in employment, then he concentrated on the series of less rewarding chores.
Everywhere he went he was conscious of being observed by Zindee. She had been in bed and asleep the previous night when he had paid the Whites a courtesy call to let them know he was pulling out. He had told Cham and Nora practically nothing about his true motivations, but on the instant of hearing the news from her parents Zindee would have understood that it was all to do with Danea Farthing. She was out there somewhere as he worked, near by, covertly watching him while she weighed up the changes that were going to be wrought in her life. He very much wanted them to part as good friends, but there was little point in his going to the Whites' house and trying to speak to her – if everything was going to be all right Zindee would come to him.
Fifteen minutes before midday, magically, all the necessary chores had been completed. He made one last lour of his apartment, the library and the workshop, then locked the place up. He put the keys and all documents required by Mr Figg into a pocket, carried his single suitcase across the footbridge and set it on the ground to await Danea's arrival. Zindee was bound to realise that he was on the point of leaving, but she remained out of sight. The first of the rain began to fall, huge tumbling drops which popped audibly into the dust, and he took shelter under a tree.
A moment later a blue car appeared in the distance. Nicklin picked up his case, but dropped it immediately as he saw Zindee running towards him from the direction of a clump of tangle-weed. He knelt and took the impact of her body full on the chest as she threw her arms around his neck.
"Thanks, Zindee," he whispered. "Thanks for coming."
"You're going to miss my birthday party." Her voice was reproachful. "It's the day after tomorrow."
"I have to miss this one – and I'm sorry about that – but there'll be lots of other birthday parties."
"They're too far off."
"I promise I'll come back and see you." Hearing the car approaching, Nicklin reached into his pocket and brought out a memento he had found in a drawer a little earlier – a bronze Roman coin – and pressed it into Zindee's hand. "Don't spend it all in one shop."
She gave a reluctant little snort of amusement, rubbed a moist cheek against his own and backed out of his embrace.
Nicklin stood up, brushing dust from his knees. "Wait and say goodbye to Danea," he urged.
Zindee set her tiny chin and gave the blue car a venomous glance, then turned and ran towards home. Rain was dappling the back of her light orange T-shirt with tangerine. Nicklin stared thoughtfully at the swiftly departing figure until the car had rolled to a halt beside him. When he looked around Danea had slid the Unimot's roof into place and was smiling at him from the vehicle's shaded interior.
"Don't stand there in the rain," she called out. "Otherwise you'll take root."
Nicklin's new home was a camper whose interior was almost completely filled by eight bunk beds. His initial glimpse of the layout, which he found rather reminiscent of a submarine, had produced a pang of depression which he had fought off by thinking hard about Danea. He had told himself he could put up with any kind of discomfort for the sake of what lay ahead, but had known that his prospects of sleep on that first night were not good. He was too keyed up and had too many thoughts clamouring inside his skull. It had come as a pleasant surprise, therefore, when he had been asked to drive the camper and to take what was referred to as the dead dog shift – four hours starting at midnight. For some ill-defined reason he had expected to be left to his own devices for the first day or two, and he welcomed the opportunity to do something which was guaranteed to tire him out.
Now, sitting on his own at the camper's wheel, he was in the kind of bemused philosophical mood in which ideas can be examined without being analysed. Processions of them rolled through his uncritical mind, reflecting the events of the last three days, to mental commentaries no more penetrating than Isn't life weird? or You never know what to expect, do you? or I wish I was back in old Orangefield right now – just to see their faces or Here's one for the books!
Physically, he was surrounded by the Orbitsville nightland – hundreds of indigo and sapphire ribbons arching across the heavens, narrowing and merging into a prismatic glow above the polar horizon, while the world beneath was an ocean of purest blackness. The vehicles ahead of Nicklin were the only things visible in the darkness. Their lights gave them the semblance of ships, and their wakes were the random whorls and feathers which patterned the fused-earth road.
The spectacle soothed and uplifted Nicklin, but at the same time it reminded him that his happiness was only complete when Danea was at his side. The night would have been perfect had she been with him right there in the driving cabin, but he had seen surprisingly little of her during the day and now she was asleep in the camper she shared with six other women. She was reluctant to make too great a display of her feelings for him, he guessed. He could understand that kind of reticence, which had always been part of his own make-up, especially as it rendered all the more precious the secret things that had passed between them.
When he had got into the car beside Danea that morning she had leaned across to kiss him, and in doing so had placed her hand squarely on his crotch. The little act of familiarity, unseen by the rest of the universe, had spoken volumes to Nicklin, and he was totally secure in their mutual love. Ahead of him lay a future which was mysterious and unpredictable in many respects, but he was sure of the fulfilment that Danea and he would bring to each other. All that was required of him was some patience until they had their own private mobile home, and then…
He frowned as a quirk of memory brought into sharp focus something which had cropped up during the conversation with Montane that morning, and which had been a burr in Nicklin's subconscious ever since. One of the mission's principal rules, Montane had said, was that accommodation had to be shared out equally. There had been no mention of special exceptions, and – now that Nicklin thought of it – he had not noticed any vehicles which appeared to be given over to couples, or even groups of couples. Did that mean that he and Danea were to be the first to live as man and wife?
"Why not?" He spoke the question aloud as he reminded himself that this was a time of upheaval for Corey Montane and his followers. Big changes were supposed to have taken place in the cosmos and they were being mirrored by radical new policies within the itinerant community. He had those selfsame changes to thank for his being allowed to join the caravan and take up the life of a … vagabond. Having dredged up the old word, he savoured its archaic and romantic flavour.
Now that he thought of it, a large proportion of Orbitsville's population consisted of vagabonds. The people he was accustomed to meeting in everyday life had stopped travelling, but nobody knew how many others had kept on moving, spreading from the triple ring of portals into the green immensities of the Big O. They could have travelled a long way in two centuries – splitting up into more and more divergent tribes, each claiming its autonomy and moving onwards for reasons that seemed less and less important to outsiders.
Nicklin had seen the powerful divisive force at work even within his own limited compass. It was, for example, practically impossible to find in the Orangefield area families which did not have Anglo-Saxon surnames. Given a telescope of limitless light-gathering power and resolution, it would have been possible to aim the instrument at any of the dark bands of the night sky and pick out the city lights, the village lights – or even the campfires – of those who had found new reasons to draw apart from their neighbours. He had little doubt that somewhere up there were communities which had chosen to separate from the rest of mankind over disagreements about how to prepare food, or the number of letters in their alphabet, or whether their deities should be portrayed with or without navels.
And the distant glimmers would betoken not only the presence of hum
ans. Alien races had discovered Orbitsville long before Vance Garamond's fugitive ship had come probing through the interstellar void. One of those vanished races had actually mustered the resources and sheer arrogance to try taking control of Orbitsville by sealing all but one of the 548 portals with diaphragms of steel. It had been an awesome attempt to monopolise the vastness of the Big O, and those who made it had flourished perhaps for millennia. But others had challenged their supremacy, unimaginable battles had been fought both inside and outside the great shell, and in the end there had been nobody left to claim victory.
What had happened, Nicklin wondered, to the descendants of those ancient, alien warriors? A few dozen extraterrestrial species – none related to any of the others – had been found in regions close to portals. The only traits they had in common were passivity and lack of curiosity, a willingness to go on for ever reinventing the steam engine, and Nicklin sometimes suspected that the same destiny was in store for humanity. The Orbitsville syndrome! The big question was: should he laugh or cry? Was it a matter for despair or rejoicing that the future promised to be an eternal Sunday afternoon?
The mood of gentle melancholia which had crept over him was suddenly dispersed by an unexpected event.
There were six vehicles ahead of the camper, and all the time he had been at the wheel they had maintained a fairly steady formation, the configuration of their lights changing only where the road dipped or turned. Now, however, brake warnings were staining the night with crimson and the line was compacting into an irregular group. Nicklin used his heel on the camper's single control pedal and brought the vehicle to a halt. Less than three hours of his shift had passed, so it was too soon for changeover, and as he descended from the cabin he surmised that somebody up front was having mechanical trouble.
