by Kate Wilhelm
“You’d think we were conspiring to blow up the Pentagon,” Cluny said in disgust.
“It’s almost that bad,” Murray admitted reluctantly. “Sid’s right about this; it’s dynamite. If I had strychnine capsules I’d hand you one. Anything to keep it out of Luther’s hands. Well, isn’t life interesting, old buddy?” He remembered his drink and lifted it in a salute. “Back to work. On home with you. See you, Cluny.” He picked up the tab and they left the bar together, to part on the street.
Cluny had no realization of the politics behind the agency, Murray thought, watching him walk away. Cluny hated Luther, but that was a visceral reaction, not political. The real battle was going on within the agency day after day, week after week; in that battle he was a general, as was Zach, and the goal was to keep Alpha neutral, an international scientific venture, and not let it become the newest weapon in an arsenal he suspected no one could comprehend any longer. And the message might blow it all up. Real or fake, it could be the fuse. He scowled at the sidewalk. It had to be fake, but why? Who? How? How did they, whoever they were, intend to use it? And how could he stop them?
He often thought of Alpha as his child, the fruit of his own labor. While Sid and Cluny had been able to go up there and do the things the three of them had dreamed about, he had been committed to the home base, the controls, and he knew his was the more important operation. He had put it there and was keeping it there, almost singlehanded, he thought often, and tried to laugh at the nearly paranoid delusional system he was constructing, with him as the master of the universe. The laugh always sounded hollow, forced. Only because he was in reality one of the two most important men in the agency, who knew exactly what was at stake up there, and how fragile it was, he admitted to himself at those times. He had given up everything for Alpha, he had no life of his own beyond it, no interests, nothing else at all. Everything else paled to insignificance beside it. And now this damned message that was almost certainly a fake.
Item, he thought. It’s not a joke. The cost of the scroll and capsule could have been managed, but not the delivery. Twenty-five thousand to make, couple of million to deliver. Not an individual joke. No way. And goverments don’t make jokes. He nodded to himself.
Item. Not France or England. Neither could win anything through such an elaborate scheme. They could gain only if the status quo was maintained.
Item. Russia or the U.S. Us or them. Them or us.
He remembered the eagerness of the various intelligence agencies to sponsor the reopening of the station, and he knew it had been the same in the USSR. The army had been behind them from the earliest days also. Somewhere men had sat and talked—over vodka or bourbon—and the outcome of that talk had been a gold capsule and a message, and a spook to deliver it. The opening gambit had been played; it had to be answered. He didn’t understand the rules of this game, or who the players were, or what the game strategy would be, but he knew the goal: Alpha. Who controlled Alpha could control the world.
He knew also that any attempt to change the status quo, any attempt to affect the neutrality of Alpha would be followed by war practically instantly. And whoever had planted that capsule knew it too.
Did they know it had been found? Were they waiting for the answer to their opening? He understood that it was not the opening that determined the course of the game, but rather the response to it. Somewhere men were waiting, pretending not to know, pretending to believe in the neutrality of the science laboratory, pretending to believe in the benefits to everyone and all the while planning their next move. If they do this, we do that. If they announce it to the world, we say this, go to Game Plan A . . .
If we simply sit on it? He shook his head. That was probably Game Plan C, or D. And the clock was running.
He had dismissed the possibility of an actual message from the start, without really considering it. Now he made himself think of that, and found that he could not. It was too big, too awesome. If they were capable of traveling through the galaxy, what would be denied them? He could think of nothing. Would they be to us, he thought, as we would be to knights in the middle ages? He turned away from those thoughts with a disquieting unease. Schemes of men, Machiavellian as they might be, he could contemplate, even admire, but aliens able to travel through the galaxy, a thousand years of technology behind them? His head was starting to ache mildly. It had to be a hoax, he muttered.
But what if it wasn’t? He made himself return to that line of thought, and found he could not think of aliens in terms of their effect on Earth, only how it would affect him personally. What if they came? He would be in the frontline. One of the first to deal with them, make the first contact with an alien race. He felt his heart skip, then race, skip again. He dug a pill box from his pocket and took out one of his nitroglycerine pills, swallowed it. Calm, calm, he told himself. Easy. You’re a young man, Murray, with many years ahead of you. They’ll know how to fix a bad ticker, cure it, operate on it. Make it a superheart. He caught himself in the fantasy and cursed briefly, but the vision was pleasant and would not fade.
CHAPTER
10
AS he approached the house, Cluny heard children’s voices raised in shouts and wailing. It was nearly ten at night. He hesitated momentarily, then opened the door and entered. There were three youngsters in short yellow pajamas rolling on the living room floor in a fight, a girl and two boys, none of them more than eight years old.
“Lynette, Michael, Jason, stop this at once! You hear me— at once!” Lina appeared in the doorway from the hall, carrying a tray of cookies and glasses of milk. She saw Cluny and nearly dropped the tray on a table.
“Cluny! Mother—he’s here!” She ran across the room and threw herself at him. “Cluny! You’re home! You’re really home! You’ve grown! I never knew you could keep growing after you get to be thirty. You look so tired. . . .”
He held her hard, with his eyes closed. He was swaying with fatigue, and he wanted to weep although he did not quite know why. He heard the children’s voices again, and opened his eyes. His mother was making the kids take the cookies and milk to the kitchen. She came to him and hugged him and kissed his cheek.
“Sit down, both of you,” she said. “I’ll bring you a drink. And make the children go to bed.” She did not look at Lina, but he felt she was directing the remark to her in spite of that.
“At least let them come in and meet Cluny,” Lina said quickly. “I promised them they could stay up and meet you. You’re a hero, a real hero, and children all need heroes, don’t you think? I mean, it’s important for them to have models, someone they can aspire to emulate. They know all about space. . . .”
“Tomorrow,” Cluny said quietly, nodding at his mother. Ramona left and soon there were sounds of children being sent upstairs, protesting loudly. One of them started to cry again.
“Who are they? What are they doing here?”
“Orphans from Newtown,” Lina said, tears in her eyes. “Aren’t they the most pitiful things you ever saw? We just got them last week. You have no idea how it is in the Newtowns. Their mothers were all murdered. Raped and murdered! That’s all they do over there. They begged people to take some of the children, one, two, three, as many as you can, because otherwise they’ll probably all just die. Lynette is pretty, isn’t she? And Michael . . .”
“Lina, why now? You knew I’d be here. Why couldn’t you wait?”
“How could you even ask! Orphans! They need someone to take care of them and give them milk and cookies and take them for walks and read to them. . . .”
“It could have waited a couple of months. My mother isn’t able to take care of them. She’s too old, it’s too hard on her. I don’t want to share you with three strange kids. Do you have any help with them?”
“Of course! There’s a girl who comes in every day to help, and they go to school and all. It isn’t like they’ll be underfoot all the time. Except it’s summer vacation now, but they can go to the park and let you get some rest. . .
.”
He drew her down on the sofa beside him and put his arms around her, his head against her breast. It was ridiculous how he had to fight back tears, he thought angrily. It was fatigue, of course; they warned everyone returning after a tour of duty. Earth gravity would be hard to get used to again, and until they did, they could expect serious problems with fatigue. This was not the homecoming he had anticipated day and night for months, he kept thinking.
His mother returned with the same tray, now holding three tall fruity drinks. He remembered his mother’s mixtures of fruit juices and rum; nourishment and degradation, his father had said of them; they sneaked up on you because they tasted like something you would gulp down for breakfast.
His mother looked exhausted, he was exhausted; only Lina looked radiant and as lovely as ever. Perhaps she was even more beautiful than she had been when he met her; maturity was adding grace and charm in subtle ways—the slight curve of her lips, where she used to grin like a jack-o’-lantern. Also she now glanced at him from the corner of her eye instead of straight on, and that was new and different, and charming.
She was talking about the children, how they wanted to help with the garden, but pulled out all the wrong things and didn’t seem aware of new seedlings until after they had trampled them. “It isn’t as if they were trying to get out of their share of the work, nothing like that, but they’ve been in Newtown for so many years, they’ve forgotten how to behave in company and everything. And Lynette, she breaks my heart crying for her mama. Sometimes I just have to leave for an hour or two because I can’t stand it any longer. Isn’t that right, Mother?”
Ramona nodded, tight-lipped.
Cluny could feel the tangy drink bubbling in his head pleasantly, easing the strain of muscles long unused to such hard work as it was to stay upright. He finished off the drink and put the glass down on the table. Lina was talking about her father now. Gently he put his fingers over her mouth.
“Listen, honey, we have to place those kids in some other house. You and I deserve a vacation and we can’t leave them here with Mother. Day after tomorrow I want to take you to New York for a couple of days, do some shopping, and after that I want to go to a sunny beach where we can lie all day, paddle a little, eat fabulous food, sleep. . . .”
Lina pulled away. “I can’t do that!” she cried. “It would be criminal to let those children start to feel a touch of security after so many years and then snatch it away from them again. You have to think of someone besides yourself, Cluny. I’m devoting myself to them. I’ve dedicated myself to helping out these three little orphans. . . .”
Very gently Cluny said, “Tomorrow, honey. I’m too tired to talk tonight. Tomorrow. Let’s go to bed.”
She continued the argument in their room, and he tried to turn off her voice, but this time he could not do it. One of the children began to cry; she left to see about it. Cluny undressed and waited in bed for Lina’s return. He felt himself drifting off to sleep and started to sit up, but it was too great an effort, and he turned over instead, burying his face in the pillow, and without moving again fell asleep.
“It isn’t as if you never went away before,” Lina said the next day. “You’re acting as if this was the first time you just took off and stayed for weeks and months at a time.”
“Never this long and never this far,” he said. “Lina, we have to get away to be together. I have to have the right kind of exercise and enough rest and food. It isn’t just a whim of mine. You said I’d grown, remember? I have. Joints have a way of stretching a little in space, and muscles atrophy a little. We’re sent home for a period of rest and rehabilitation and the rehab is just as important as the rest.”
“You just don’t care a bit about those little children.”
“I care in principle. I care about them all in general, but I don’t care about these three in particular. How could I? I don’t even know them. All I can see is that they are standing in the way of our being together. And my God, Lina, I can’t bear that! I’ve dreamed of you, of being with you. Night after night I dream of your body, your hair, your mouth. I love you so much it drives me crazy!”
“All right, Cluny honey. We’ll go to New York for a week. Is that all right? I can bring in Dolores for a week so Mother won’t have to do anything at all. And we’ll pretend it’s like it was when we first got to know each other. Remember how you’d get an erection every time you saw me? It was so pathetic and touching and beautiful.”
The children came through the house like a whirlwind then, ending their talk.
They took a taxi from the airport to Manhattan. Taxis and buses were the only traffic, it always seemed at first glance, but then the limousines became noticeable, and the expensive imported sports cars. The city was crowded, as always, and there were more refugees than ever, all out on the streets now that the weather had turned warm. Cluny felt their hostile stares as the taxi crept along, slower than the passengers could have walked. He felt himself cringing inwardly at the noise level, and every muscle in his body was tense. New York was an endless horn and scream. It had been a mistake to come here, he knew. This was a nightmare of noise and filth and crowds.
Lina’s eyes were bright with excitement; she had been ticking off the excursions she had planned for them. Museums, theaters, movies, shopping, cocktails with old friends, bookstores . . .
The doorman of the Park Plaza opened the taxi door for them, nodded to a bellhop to get the luggage, and then ushered Cluny and Lina inside the hotel. There was a heavy barred door that was never left unguarded. Only guests with reservations were accepted, and they were admitted by the three doormen, who worked in shifts. Cluny and Lina had stayed here many times; there was no delay in checking their identification, or passing them through security to their rooms.
A whisper-quiet elevator deposited them before their suite on the fifth floor. Within the building the carpeting was very deep, the doors heavy, all the walls thick enough to be virtually soundproof. It was an oasis of peacefulness after the insane cacophony outside.
Cluny got rid of the bellhop and locked the door, bolted it, and attached the chain lock. Then he looked at Lina. She was nearly undressed already, leaving a trail of clothes on the floor of the sitting room. He remembered that first time in his one-room apartment, and suddenly he was seized with the same frenzy he had experienced then. They fell onto the bed together in a heap and their lovemaking was explosive and almost violent. Then, exhausted, Cluny lay on his back holding her in the crook of his arm, waiting for the wild thumping of his heart to subside before he tried to talk.
“I knew it was temporary, Cluny baby,” she was saying. “I mean, anyone could come home from space with something not working exactly right, you know? It didn’t even surprise me. . .
He did not argue with her. Both nights he had fallen asleep waiting for her to come back from doing something with the kids, and throughout the day there had been no time. She had been busy with the children all day long, taking them here and there, getting Michael’s hair cut, shoes for Lynette. . . .
It was a honeymoon again, better than the first one had been.
The first day they slept late, went to an art show, had lunch, back to their room to make love and nap. Then shopping, dinner, back to bed for a celebration, sleep. The next day was a repeat with only the minor details different: a museum instead of an art show, cocktails with friends instead of shopping. They spent hours in bed, recapturing the past. Cluny had never been so content. For hours at a time he forgot completely the envelope he carried. When he was with Lina everything else always faded, became insignificant and hard to recall in any detail. If she was on the phone, or in the bathroom, or busy with her nails, his thoughts were on Alpha, the scroll, the message, and sometimes he caught a visceral twist of excitement that echoed palely the feeling he had had when he stood in the observatory looking out the wide windows at space. Then she came back and the other thoughts were wiped out of existence once more. He was Jekyll and Hyde,
he thought; sometimes the bright, not so young any more astronomer doing great work in the space station; then again a lovesick boy who forgot to tie his shoelaces when his lover was near. He veered away from such thoughts forcefully, unwilling to follow them through, bewildered by them, by the duality he found in himself which seemed able to separate him into halves so thoroughly.
On the third day they went to a matinee, shopped for books for the children, returned to their room and made love, then went to dinner. At ten, as they were leaving the restaurant, Murray and Zach were entering.
Zach Greene was an ageless, narrow man with white hair and a pink complexion. His face was unlined, his eyes very knowing, and few people had ever seen him react with surprise at anything that happened.
“For God’s sake!” Murray exclaimed. “The lovebirds! Lina, you’re the most beautiful woman on God’s earth. You still have my number? When you get tired of him, remember me. I’ll be waiting, if it takes forever.”
Zach shook hands with Cluny, bowed slightly to Lina. “Will you folks join us for a drink?”
“Lina?” Cluny glanced at her.
“Tell you what, honey. Just put me in a cab and I’ll go on home now. You won’t be long, will you?”
He couldn’t believe it was going to work out like this: a chance meeting, Lina so cooperative. They would get it over with in ten minutes and he would be out from under the weight of the envelope that suddenly was hot against his chest.
“You sure you won’t mind?”
“Don’t be silly. I’d be bored to death listening to the three of you talk about spaceships and shuttles and stuff like that.”
Cluny turned to Zach. “Suppose I join you in a couple of minutes. I’ll just get a cab first.”
He saw Lina off and returned to his friends. Murray looked worn and worried and Zach was glum. “It has to be a hoax,” Zach said. “But why? And who?” He fell silent as the waiter appeared with their orders. “I told him Scotch and water for you. Is that all right?”
