Far From This Earth

by Chad Oliver

  It was Old Man Vandervort. His lined face filled the screen, the snow-white beard bobbing up and down to punctuate his sentences. “Hello, Ortega,” he said. “Out again, I see. If you should by chance show up in your office today, I want you to come out and see me personally before you go home. Something important has come up. That’s all.” The screen faded.

  “Damnation,” Ortega said aloud. “The master’s voice.”

  Well, there was no getting out of it. He would have to go hold hands with the old joker, even though he knew that the “something important” was probably nothing more than Vandervort’s wanting someone to talk to. This made the second time this week, but then Vandervort was paying the bills.

  He caught the elevator up to the main entrance at the thirtieth floor copter field and signed himself out in a Foundation copter. It was still raining hard enough to discourage traffic, but the wind conditions were not really prohibitive.

  He lifted the copter up to the five-thousand-foot lane and gunned her north at a modest two hundred per. He kept slightly inland from the coastline, and set his pilot to hold him well below the overland freight routes. There was very little traffic, since the subs were holding back from the unloading chutes until the weather calmed down a bit.

  In fifteen minutes, the copter veered off to the right and buzzed up Vandervort’s Canyon. He was challenged four times by the Old Man’s watchdog scanners, but managed to convince them that he was who he said he was. He made a wet, slippery landing on the patio field of the huge estate, activated his rain-bender, presented his credentials to a guard who should have known him by sight, and finally got inside the visitor’s wing.

  One of the butlers bowed, smiled, and said, “Right this way, Dr. Ortega. Mr. Vandervort is expecting you.”

  “So I heard,” Ortega said.

  He followed the anachronism through the familiar labyrinth of richly-carpeted hallways, his senses overwhelmed as usual by the sheer richness of the Old Man’s castle. It wasn’t really that the place was in bad taste, but simply that there was so confounded much of it.

  The procession of two moved sedately through the visitor’s wing and on into the private quarters, which were a trifle more elaborate, if possible. It marched up the marble stairs to the second floor, down the interminable gray passage, and finally came to a well-oiled halt before a fantastic mahogany door.

  Congratulations, thought Ortega. You have circled the globe on roller-skates.

  The butler knocked discreetly on the mahogany slab. A tiny green light blinked on in the center of the door.

  “You may go in now, sir,” said the butler, and bowed.

  Ortega resisted the impulse to bow back and stepped through the opening door. He was just in time to catch a glimpse of an exceedingly sensuous young woman making her swishing exit by means of another door.

  “Ah there, Ortega!” boomed Old Man Vandervort, straightening up in his chair. “What kept you?”

  The room, like everything else in the mansion, was big. It had a wall-to-wall brown rug that must have cost a fortune, and it was literally stuffed with tables, chairs, desks, fireplaces, books, paintings, tapes, flowers, gewgaws, drapes, and nameless shapes and sounds. As always, it was much too hot, like a greenhouse on a humid day.

  James Murray Vandervort was a small man, but he looked like what he was: the richest human being on Earth. He was dressed in a dark-green lounging robe. His face was red from too much brandy and his trim white beard was slightly askew. He was one hundred and five years old and he had a bad heart.

  Ortega said, “I was delayed by a typhoon. Sorry.”

  Vandervort laughed rather gaspingly and his face got still redder. “Well, well,” he said, “never mind about that. Have a brandy.” His voice was surprisingly loud, as though he were constantly shouting over great distances.

  Ortega accepted the brandy, personally poured by the Old Man, and wiped his already moist forehead. He figured that the room temperature must be close to ninety, and he also figured that he was in for at least an hour of it.

  The Old Man began, as was his custom, by energetically beating around some bushes. “How’s business?” he asked. “How many have we got for this load?”

  Ortega sank into a huge, soft chair that reduced his six feet of height to approximately pygmy stature. “It’s been a little slow today, Van. But we’ve got sixty-five so far. All healthy and yelling their heads off.”

  “Um-m-m. And the breakdown?”

  “Thirty-four set for the Foundation. The rest are already on the ship.”

  “Good. Splendid. Any problems?”

  “None to speak of. I’m still worried about parking that ship out in Arizona. If the government should stumble onto that crate—”

  Vandervort laughed his alarming laugh and clapped his thin hands together. “The government! How many times must I tell you, Keith—I’ll handle the government. Or anybody else, for that matter. More brandy?”

  Ortega could have struggled along without the brandy in the jungle heat, but he accepted another glass. It was part of the ritual. You simply had to wait the Old Man out. If he had something important to say, he would say it eventually. If not—well, Van was powerful enough to indulge in his whims.

  “I’m a big man, Keith,” Vandervort said, his pale blue eyes darting around the room.

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “I can buy and sell the government, and make money on the deal. I’ve got the best experts in the world faking those records at the Foundation. Half the babies stay here on Earth, and that’s enough to cover our tracks, I’m not worried about the government.”

  “So you keep saying. But I’m worried, just the same.”

  Vandervort talked for twenty minutes on how unworried he was by the world government. He pointed out again and again how careful they had been, how many senators he owned, and how what they were doing was not illegal—only extralegal. Finally, after Keith Ortega estimated that he had dropped about five pounds sitting in the sweat bath with the Old Man, he edged in again toward the subject.

  “How about our colonies?” Vandervort demanded, sipping his brandy. “How about the robots?”

  Keith shrugged. “O.K. as far as I know,” he said. “You know as much about it as I do. It’s still too early to get definite results. Culture A is only six years old, after all, and that’s the oldest one we’ve got.”

  Vandervort drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “In other words,” he said, “you don’t know.”

  Keith raised his eyebrows. “Van, we’re getting reports every week, and we’ve got twenty men and women up there—”

  “But you don’t know. And you’re the one who has to know.” The Old Man got to his feet with an effort and paced the floor. The slippers on his feet pad-padded as he walked. His eyes began to gleam with the strange fanaticism that Keith had never understood. He stopped and jabbed a finger at Ortega. “Can’t you see that, Keith? Can’t you?”

  Keith knew what Vandervort was talking about. He felt a vague unease stirring within him. “Spell it out, Van,” he said.

  Vandervort walked over and stood right in front of him, breathing hard. A too-prominent vein pulsed in his neck. The heat was stifling. “All right, Keith, I’ll be more explicit. We’ve been working together for ten years, ever since I yanked you off your soap box and put you back on the job. It was understood when you set up the colonies that you were to go out there yourself and supervise the project. I think it’s time you went, and I think you ought to stay at least a year. How about it?”

  “There’s no need—”

  “I think there is a need. Nothing must go wrong out there, do you hear? Nothing! You’ve master-minded enough from this end. I think you and Caroline should go out with the next shipload—and I’d hate to make that an order, Keith.”

  Keith smiled. “Sit down, Van. You’ll pop an artery. And don’t threaten me, please. I’m not your slave.”

  The Old Man frowned, considered, and sat dow
n again. A faintly baffled expression crossed his face. “I should think you would want to go, Keith.”

  “I’ll think it over.”

  “All right. Sorry. It’s just … well, never mind. You can go, Keith.”

  “Thanks. I’ll call you.”

  He left the room, anxious to get out of the heat, and saw the quite amazing girl come back in before he got out the door. The butler was waiting for him, and escorted him back to the patio field.

  It was night, and still raining. He lifted the copter out of the canyon and flew southeast toward his home on the desert. Far below him, almost hidden in a mask of rain, the lights of Los Angeles glittered like multi-colored diamonds embedded in black sand.

  A government airsign loomed up like a pale violet ghost ahead of him: DON’T ROCK THE BOAT. Keith flew through it and it reformed itself behind him, patiently.

  Carrie would be waiting.

  Keith looked up, into the darkness and the rain. Venus was invisible, and a long, long way from home.

  II

  They had real steak for supper that night, which was excellent, and when they were done they retired to the annex. They hardly ever sat in the glass-and-steel living room, unless they were entertaining guests, since both of them found it impossible to relax there. The annex was primarily a cozy room stuffed off in a wing—an artless conglomeration of books, tapes, half-finished paintings, old-fashioned furniture, and one small bar.

  Mostly, they lived in the annex.

  Carrie slipped a battered smock over her head and began to poke at her current artistic effort, an oil painting of a cactus in the desert sun. The subject, Keith thought, was none too original. He sprawled on a couch and pretended to read, watching his wife.

  She was a tiny blonde, barely five foot two, with a doll-like face that invariably earned her the designation of “cute,” an adjective she cordially detested. Ortega had married her twenty years ago, when she was twenty-five, and they were still comfortably in love with each other. They had had a good life together, and Keith found it hard to put his finger on just what had been lacking in it.

  Perhaps he was at fault. He was a big man, and she had tended to walk in his shadow, both mentally and physically. Twenty years ago, he had been a leading socioculturist for the world federation, but he had become bored with the exactness and easy predictions and trivial problems. He had quit his job and gone around the world in an astonishing sailboat, looking for something he couldn’t find. Carrie had adjusted without complaint. He had formulated his Dark Age thesis that had given him fame of a sort, and had lectured and written about his culture until he discovered that no one was taking him very seriously. He had drifted into an easy sarcasm that reflected an inner unease that he could not quite understand, and even the excitement of the Vandervort project had failed to satisfy him. He was not, he knew, the easiest man in the universe to live with.

  It would have been inaccurate to call Carrie depressed, but on the other hand he would have hesitated to say that she was happy. Restless. That was the word. She shifted from painting to writing, cheerfully admitting that she wasn’t much good at either, and from night-life in Los Angeles to long morning horseback rides across the desert. She seldom complained, and she never interfered. She seemed, somehow, to be waiting, always waiting, without knowing just what it was that she waited for.

  They had both wanted children, but the children hadn’t come. They had toyed with the idea of adoption, but had never taken any concrete steps in that direction.

  “I saw Van today, Carrie,” he said finally, lowering his book.

  “Oh?” She added a dab of yellow to the brown of the sand. “Is he still alive?”

  “He’ll go on forever. I wish I knew what he was after.”

  Carrie squinted at the painting. “Well, we don’t know, and that’s that.”

  “It’s a funny deal, Carrie. I’ve set this whole thing up with his money and his determination. I’ve spent ten years of my life on it, and I still don’t know why he’s doing it.”

  “You could always quit, Keith. We could haul the old sailboat out again.”

  “No, baby. I can’t quit this time.” He hesitated. “Carrie, Van wants us to go to Venus for a year to get the feel of what’s going on there.”

  Carrie put down her brush and turned around, eyebrows arched. “You mean, in person?”

  “In person. To Venus.”

  “What else happened today—war with Sweden?”

  “This is on the level, sugar. He wants us to go.”

  Carrie came over and perched on the edge of the couch, almost birdlike in her smallness. She kissed him, pleasantly. She lit a cigarette and looked around her at the books and paintings and friendly walls. “When do we leave, hon?”

  “Do you want to go? You know what Venus would be like. It’s a long way from everybody and everything—”

  “I think it might do us good, Keith,” she said slowly. She ran her slim fingers through her pale blond hair. “I’d like to go.”

  “You’d have to go to school for a while, baby.”

  “I’m willing.” Her blue eyes suddenly glowed with an unexpected, surprised hope. “Keith, you know what you were always saying about this Dark Age of ours? Well, I’ve often thought … I mean—”

  He looked at his wife and smiled. “You’ve thought that we’re caught in our culture, too,” he said. “We’re stale. I’ve thought the same thing. But somehow we just drift on—it isn’t easy to break away.”

  “We can, Keith. I know we can.”

  She wanted this. She wanted it desperately. Keith himself wasn’t sure, but he kept his indecision well disguised. He kissed his wife.

  “We’ll see, baby,” he said. “We’ll see.”

  The next few months went by in a hurry.

  Carrie was busy being indoctrinated into the Halaja culture pattern, but Keith Ortega had too much time on his hands. After he had thought himself into the same hole about one hundred times too often, he went back to see Vandervort.

  The Old Man, looking like a flushed, bearded gnome preserved for eternity in a stifling burial vault, seemed glad to see him, but slightly apprehensive. He was worried again, fretting over details. “To what do I owe the honor of this voluntary visit, Keith?” he boomed in his too-loud voice, pouring out a glass of exquisite but unwelcome brandy. “You haven’t changed your mind?”

  “No, Van. We’re still going.”

  “Good. Splendid!” The pale blue eyes in the red face darted nervously around the enormous room, lighting here on a vase, there on an ancient statuette, somewhere else on a rosy fireplace. Despite the terrific heat, his skin was dry and Keith knew that it was cool to the touch. The loud voice tried to fill up the room. “Well? Anything wrong?”

  That was unusual directness for Vandervort, who was usually more subtle than he appeared. Keith took advantage of it. “Nothing’s wrong, Van, except with me.”

  “Oh?” The Old Man hauled himself to his feet, heedless of his doctor’s instructions, popped a pill into his mouth, and washed it down with brandy. He pad-padded across the rich brown rug. The vein pulsed in his neck, feeding his brain with blood. “Well, well? Scared? Worried?”

  Keith took out his pipe, filled it, and lit it. The blue smoke curled up through the damp heat and filmed across the ceiling. “I’m worried about you,” he said.

  “Ah,” said Vandervort, sinking into his chair again and pouring more brandy. “You fear I may die and leave you in an … um-m-m … uncomfortable position. Is that it?”

  “No. It’s your motive I’m worried about, Van.”

  Vandervort narrowed his eyes to slits. “That doesn’t concern you, Keith.”

  “I think I’m entitled to know.”

  The Old Man seemed to shrink in his chair, looking smaller than ever. His white beard quivered slightly. Almost, he looked—what was the word? Afraid? What could James Murray Vandervort be afraid of? “Your salary has been good,” he said, his voice not quite so loud as befo
re.

  “I had money before I knew you. The money is secondary.”

  The pale blue eyes opened. “Why did you take the job, Keith?”

  Keith Ortega hesitated. Well, why had he? Or did he know, really? “The ideas were mine,” he said, feeling for words. “I thought it would be interesting. I guess I was bored.” He smiled. “Maybe I wanted to rock the boat a little.” The words did not satisfy him.

  “Good. Splendid. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I just might want to see what would happen? Maybe I’m bored. Give a man a few billion dollars and he’s still a man, Keith.”

  “I’m not questioning your humanity.” Keith puffed slowly on his pipe. “But I can’t buy that story about your just being curious. I’ve watched you too closely, Van. This is more important to you than life itself. Why, Van, why?”

  Vandervort looked away, into the filled emptiness of the great room, and said nothing.

  Keith Ortega watched him closely. The Old Man was one hundred and five years old. Like Keith, he had no children. He had poured a billion dollars into the secret Venus project, and he had turned into a fanatic. What was he after on Venus?

  Keith knew the old boy fairly well. He was certainly not just a humanitarian idealist; he cared very little about the human animal one way or the other. He wasn’t after commercial gain—after so many years, business bored him, and at best he regarded it as a means to an end. He was most emphatically not a dreamer.

  “Maybe,” Keith said finally, to break the long silence, “you want to kick man upstairs to the stars. Maybe you believe in destiny.”

  The Old Man laughed his booming laugh, his red face flushing with the strain. “Maybe I do, Keith,” he chuckled. “Maybe I do.”

  There was more talk, but it was singularly unproductive. Early in the morning, without finding what he had come for, Keith said good night and left. The Old Man stayed in his chair in the too-hot room, smiling a little, his eyes nervously peering into the shadows, sipping his brandy.

  Keith lifted his copter and flew toward home, with the lights of Los Angeles below him and a full moon above him. The night wind, deflected by the vents, was fresh and cold in his face. High over his head, the freight lanes were shadowed with ships.