“I’ll help carry, son.”
“No, I can tote him easier than two could. Sharpie, where do you want to work?”
“It will have to be the dining table.”
“Aunt Hilda, I don’t want that thing on my—! I beg your pardon; it’s your dining table.”
“You’re forgiven only if you’ll concede that it is our dining table. Deety, how many times must I repeat that I am not crowding you out of your home? We are co-housewives—my only seniority lies in being twenty years older. To my regret.”
“Hilda, my dear one, what would you say to a workbench in the garage with a dropcloth on it and flood lights over it?”
“I say, ‘Swell!’ I don’t think a dining table is the place for a dissection, either. But I couldn’t think of anywhere else.”
With help from Jake, I got that damned carcass draped across my shoulders in fireman’s carry. Deety started up the path with me, carrying my belt and sword and my briefs in one arm so that she could hold my free hand—despite my warning that she might be splashed with alien blood. “No, Zebadiah, I got overtaken by childishness. I won’t let it happen again. I must conquer all squeamishness—I’ll be changing diapers soon.” She was silent a moment. “That is the first time I’ve seen death. In a person, I mean. An alien humanoid person I should say … but I thought he was a man. I once saw a puppy run over—I threw up. Even though it was not my puppy and I didn’t go close.” She added, “An adult should face up to death, should she not?”
“Face up to it, yes,” I agreed. “But not grow calloused. Deety, I’ve seen too many men die. I’ve never grown inured to it. One must accept death, learn not to fear it, then never worry about it. ‘Make Today Count!’ as a friend whose days are numbered told me. Live in that spirit and when death comes, it will come as a welcome friend.”
“You say much what my mother told me before she died.”
“Your mother must have been an extraordinary woman. Deety, in the two weeks I’ve known you, I’ve heard so much about her from all three of you that I feel as if I knew her. A friend I hadn’t seen lately. She sounds like a wise woman.”
“I think she was, Zebadiah. Certainly she was good. Sometimes, when I have a hard choice, I ask myself, ‘What would Mama do?’—and everything falls into place.”
“Both good and wise … and her daughter shows it. Uh, how old are you, Deety?”
“Does it matter, sir?”
“No. Curiosity.”
“I wrote my birth date on our marriage license application.”
“Beloved, my head was spinning so hard that I had trouble remembering my own. But I should not have asked—women have birthdays, men have ages. I want to know your birthday; I have no need to know the year.”
“April twenty-second, Zebadiah—one day older than Shakespeare.”
“ ‘Age could not wither her—’ Woman, you carry your years well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“That snoopy question came from having concluded in my mind that you were twenty-six … figuring from the fact that you have a doctor’s degree. Although you look younger.”
“I think twenty-six is a satisfactory age.”
“I wasn’t asking,” I said hastily. “I got confused from knowing Hilda’s age … then hearing her say that she is—or claims to be—twenty years older than you. It did not jibe with my earlier estimate, based on your probable age on graduating from high school plus your two degrees.”
Jake and Hilda had lingered at the pool while Jake washed his hands and rinsed from his body smears of alien ichor. Being less burdened, they climbed the path faster than we and came up behind us just as Deety answered, “Zebadiah, I never graduated from high school.”
“Oh.”
“That’s right,” agreed her father. “Deety matriculated by taking College Boards. At fourteen. No problem since she stayed home and didn’t have to live in a dorm. Got her BS in three years … and that was a happy thing, as Jane lived to see Deety move the tassel from one side of her mortar board to the other. Jane in a wheelchair and happy as a child—her doctor said it couldn’t hurt her … meaning she was dying anyhow.” He added, “Had her mother been granted only three more years she could have seen Deety’s doctorate conferred, two years ago.”
“Pop … sometimes you chatter.”
“Did I say something out of line?”
“No, Jake,” I assured him. “But I’ve just learned that I robbed the cradle. I knew I had but hadn’t realized how much. Deety darling, you are twenty-two.”
“Is twenty-two an unsatisfactory age?”
“No, my princess. Just right.”
“My captain said that women have birthdays while men have ages. Is it permitted to inquire your age, sir? I didn’t pay close attention to that form we had to fill out, either.”
I answered solemnly. “But Dejah Thoris knows that Captain John Carter is centuries old, cannot recall his childhood, and has always looked thirty years old.”
“Zebadiah, if that is your age, you’ve had a busy thirty years. You said you left home when you graduated from high school, worked your way through college, spent three years on active duty, then worked your way through a doctor’s degree—”
“A phony one!”
“That doesn’t reduce required residence. Aunt Hilda says you’ve been a professor four years.”
“Uh … will you settle for nine years older than you are?”
“I’ll settle for whatever you say.”
“He’s at it again,” put in Sharpie. “He was run off two other campuses. Coed scandals. Then he found that in California nobody cared, so he moved west.”
I tried to look hurt. “Sharpie darling, I always married them. One gal turned out already to be married and in the other case the child wasn’t mine; she slipped one over on me.”
“The truth isn’t in him, Deety. But he’s brave and he bathes every day and he’s rich—and we love him anyhow.”
“The truth isn’t in you either, Aunt Hilda. But we love you anyhow. It says in Little Women that a bride should be half her husband’s age plus seven years. Zebadiah and I hit close to that.”
“A rule that makes an old hag out of me. Jacob, I’m just Zebbie’s age—thirty-one. But we’ve both been thirty-one for ages.”
“I’ll bet he does feel aged after carrying that thing uphill. Atlas, can you support your burden while I get the garage open, a bench dragged out and covered? Or shall I help you put it down?”
“I’d just have to pick it up again. But don’t dally.”
XI
Zebadiah
Ifelt better after I got that “ranger’s” corpse dumped and the garage door closed, everyone indoors. I had told Hilda that I felt no “immediate” danger—but my wild talent does not warn me until the Moment of Truth. The “Blokes in the Black Hats” had us located. Or possibly had never lost us; what applies to human gangsters has little to do with aliens whose powers and motives and plans we had no way to guess.
We might be as naïve as a kitten who thinks he is hidden because his head is, unaware that his little rump sticks out.
They were alien, they were powerful, they were multiple (three thousand? three million?—we didn’t know the Number of the Beast)—and they knew where we were. True, we had killed one—by luck, not by planning. That “ranger” would be missed; we could expect more to call in force.
Foolhardiness has never appealed to me. Given a chance to run, I run. I don’t mean I’ll bug out on a wingmate when the unfriendlies show up, and certainly not on a wife and unborn child. But I wanted us all to run—me, my wife, my blood brother who was also my father-in-law, and his wife, my chum Sharpie who was brave, practical, smart, and unsqueamish (that she would joke in the jaws of Moloch was not a fault but a source of esprit).
I wanted us to go!—tau-axis, teh-axis, rotate, translate, whatever—anywhere not infested by gruesomes with green gore.
I checked the gauge and felt better; Gay’s inner p
ressure had not dropped. Too much to expect Gay to be a spaceship—not equipped to scavenge and replenish air. But it was pleasant to know that she would hold pressure much longer than it would take us to scram for home if we had to—assuming that unfriendlies had not shot holes in her graceful shell.
I went by the inside passageway into the cabin, used soap and hot water, rinsed off and did it again, dried down and felt clean enough to kiss my wife, which I did. Deety held on to me and reported.
“Your kit is packed, sir. I’m finishing mine, the planned weight and space, and nothing but practical clothes—”
“Sweetheart.”
“Yes, Zebadiah?”
“Take the clothes you were married in and mine too. Same for Jake and Hilda. And your father’s dress uniform. Or was it burned in Logan?”
“But Zebadiah, you emphasized rugged clothes.”
“So I did. To keep your mind on the fact that we can’t guess the conditions we’ll encounter and don’t know how long we’ll be gone or if we’ll be back. So I listed everything that might be useful in pioneering a virgin planet—since we might be stranded and never get home. Everything from Jake’s microscope and water-testing gear to technical manuals and tools. And weapons—and flea powder. But it’s possible that we will have to play the roles of ambassadors for humanity at the court of His Extreme Majesty, Overlord of Galactic Empires in the thousandth-and-third continuum. We may need the gaudiest clothes we can whip up. We don’t know, we can’t guess.”
“I’d rather pioneer.”
“We may not have a choice. When you were figuring weights, do you recall spaces marked ‘Assigned mass such and such—list to come’?”
“Certainly. Total exactly one hundred kilos, which seemed odd. Space slightly less than one cubic meter split into crannies.”
“Those are yours, snubnose. And Pop or Hilda. Mass can be up to fifty percent over; I’ll tell Gay to trim to match. Got an old doll? A security blanket? A favorite book of poems? Scrapbook? Family photographs? Bring ’em all!”
“Golly!”
(I never enjoy looking at my wife quite so much as when she lights up and is suddenly a little girl.) “Don’t leave space for me. I have only what I arrived with. What about shoes for Hilda?”
“She claims she doesn’t need any, Zebadiah—that her calluses are getting calluses on them. But I’ve worked out expedients. I got Pop some Dr. Scholl’s shoe liners when we were building; I have three pairs left and can trim them. Liners and enough bobby sox make her size three-and-a-half feet fit my clodhoppers pretty well. And I have a sentimental keepsake; Keds Pop bought me when I first went to summer camp, at ten. They fit Aunt Hilda.”
“Good girl!” I added, “You seem to have everything in hand. How about food? Not stores we are carrying, I mean now. Has anybody thought about dinner? Killing aliens makes me hungry.”
“Buffet style, Zebadiah. Sandwiches and stuff on the kitchen counter, and I thawed and heated an apple pie. I fed one sandwich to Hilda, holding it for her; she says she’s going to finish working, then scrub before she eats anything more.”
“Sharpie munched a sandwich while she carved that thing?”
“Aunt Hilda is rugged, Zebadiah—almost as rugged as you are.”
“More rugged than I am. I could do an autopsy if I had to—but not while eating. I think I speak for Jake, too.”
“I know you speak for Pop. He saw me feeding her, turned green and went elsewhere. Go look at what she’s been doing, Zebadiah; Hilda has found interesting things.”
“Hmmm— Are you the little girl who had a tizzy at the idea of dissecting a dead alien?”
“No, sir, I am not. I’ve decided to stay grown up. It’s not easy. But it’s more satisfying. An adult doesn’t panic at a snake; she just checks to see if it’s got rattles. I’ll never squeal again. I’m grown up at last … a wife instead of a pampered princess.”
“You will always be my princess!”
“I hope so, my chieftain. But to merit that, I must learn to be a pioneer mother—wring the neck of a rooster, butcher a hog, load while my husband shoots, take his place and his rifle when he is wounded. I’ll learn—I’m stubborn, I am. Grab a hunk of pie and go see Hilda. I know just what to do with the extra hundred kilos: books, photographs, Pop’s microfilm files and portable viewer, Pop’s rifle and a case of ammo that the weight schedule didn’t allow for—”
“Didn’t know he had it—what caliber?”
“Seven point six two millimeters, long cartridge.”
“Glory be! Pop and I use the same ammo!”
“Didn’t know you carried a rifle, Zebadiah.”
“I don’t advertise it, it’s unlicensed. I must show all of you how to get at it.”
“Got any use for a lady’s purse gun? A needle gun, Skoda flechettes. Not much range but either they poison or they break up and expand … and it fires ninety times on one magazine.”
“What are you, Deety? Honorable Hatchet Man?”
“No, sir. Pop got it for me—black market—when I started working nights. He said he would rather hire shysters to get me acquitted—or maybe probation—than to have to go down to the morgue to identify my body. Haven’t had to use it; in Logan I hardly need it. Zebadiah, Pop has gone to a great deal of trouble to get me the best possible training in self-defense. He’s just as highly trained—that’s why I keep him out of fistfights. Because it would be a massacre. He and Mama decided this when I was a baby. Pop says cops and courts no longer protect citizens, so citizens must protect themselves.”
“I’m afraid he’s right.”
“My husband, I can’t evaluate my opinions of right and wrong because I learned them from my parents and haven’t lived long enough to have formed opinions in disagreement with theirs.”
“Deety, your parents did okay.”
“I think so … but that’s subjective. As may be, I was kept out of blackboard jungles—public schools—until we moved to Utah. And I was trained to fight—armed or unarmed. Pop and I noticed how you handled a sword. Your moulinets are like clockwork. And when you drop into point guard, your forearm is perfectly covered.”
“Jake is no slouch. He drew so fast I never saw it, and cut precisely above the collar.”
“Pop says you are better at it.”
“Mmm— Longer reach. He’s probably faster. Deety, the best swordmaster I ever had was your height and reach. I couldn’t even cross blades with him unless he allowed me to.”
“You never did say where you had taken up swordsmanship.”
I grinned down at her. “YMCA in downtown Manhattan. I had foil in high school. I fiddled with saber and épée in college. But I never encountered swordsmen until I moved to Manhattan. Took it up because I was getting soft. Then during that so-called research trip in Europe I met swordsmen with family tradition—sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of maîtres d’armes. Learned that it was a way of life—and I had started too late. Deety, I fibbed to Hilda; I’ve never fought a student duel. But I did train in saber in Heidelberg under the Säbelmeister reputed to coach one underground Korps. He was the little guy I couldn’t cross steel with. Fast! Up to then, I had thought I was fast. But I got faster under his tutelage. The day I was leaving he told me that he wished he had had me twenty years sooner; he might have made a swordsman of me.”
“You were fast enough this afternoon!”
“No, Deety. You had his eye, I attacked from the flank. You won that fight—not me, not Pop. Although what Pop did was far more dangerous than what I did.”
“My captain, I will not let you disparage yourself! I cannot hear you!”
Women, bless their warm hearts and strange minds—Deety had appointed me her hero; that settled it. I would have to try to measure up. I cut a piece of apple pie, ate it quickly while I walked slowly through the passage into the garage—didn’t want to reach the “morgue” still eating.
The “ranger” was on its back with clothes cut away, open from chin to crotch, and
spread. Nameless chunks of gizzard were here and there around the cadaver. It gave off a fetid odor.
Hilda was still carving, ice tongs in left hand, knife in her right, greenish goo up over her wrists. As I approached, she put down the knife, picked up a razor blade—did not look up until I spoke. “Learning things, Sharpie?”
She put down her tools, wiped her hands on a towel, pushed back her hair with her forearm. “Zebbie, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
“Well … look at this.” She touched the corpse’s right leg and spoke to the corpse itself. “What’s a nice joint like this doing in a girl like you?”
I saw what she meant: a long, gaunt leg with an extra knee lower than the human knee; it bent backward. Looking higher, I saw that its arms had similar extra articulation. “Did you say ‘girl’?”
“I said ‘girl.’ Zebbie, this monster is either female or hermaphroditic. A fully developed uterus, two-horned like a cat, one ovary above each horn. But there appear to be testes lower down and a dingus that may be a retractable phallus. Female—but probably male as well. Bisexual but does not impregnate itself; the plumbing wouldn’t hook up. I think these critters can both pitch and catch.”
“Taking turns? Or simultaneously?”
“Wouldn’t that be sump’n? No, for mechanical reasons I think they take turns. Whether ten minutes apart or ten years, deponent sayeth not. But I’d give a pretty to see two of ’em going to it!”
“Sharpie, you’ve got a one-track mind.”
“It’s the main track. Reproduction is the main track; the methods and mores of sexual copulation are the central feature of all higher developments of life.”
“You’re ignoring money and television.”
“Piffle! All human activities including scientific research are either mating dances and care of the young, or the dismal sublimations of born losers in the only game in town. Don’t try to kid Sharpie. Zebbie, I hate these monsters; they interfere with my plans—a rose-covered cottage, a baby in the crib, a pot roast in the oven, me in a gingham dress, and my man coming down the lane after a hard day flunking freshmen—me with his slippers and his pipe and a dry martini waiting for him. Heaven! All else is vanity and vexation. Four fully developed mammary glands but lacking the redundant fat characteristic of the human female—’cept me, damn it. A double stomach, a single intestine. A two-compartment heart that seems to pump by peristalsis rather than by beating. Cordate. I haven’t examined the brain; I don’t have a proper saw—but it must be as well developed as ours. Definitely humanoid, outrageously nonhuman. Don’t knock over those bottles; they are specimens of body fluids.”
The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes Page 11
