Stopping at Slowyear Read online

  "I know," she admitted. "But I need a witness. Now. I'm supposed to be in the execution hall in about half an hour. I've been waiting and waiting for you, Blundy--"

  "They sentenced you already?" he asked, suddenly fearful for her.

  She nodded. "They gave me another poison pill," she said. "I have to take it today."

  * * *

  It was, Blundy counted as he glumly accompanied his friend, the third time he had gone with Petoyne to the execution chamber. He was getting really fed up. Not just with the nasty business of poison pills itself, but with Petoyne for her dumbness, for the demands she made on him when he had more important things to keep him busy. "But I just got back," he complained to her as they walked, and, "I could be seeing Murra now instead of wasting my time on this crap," and, "Can't you just stay out of trouble for a while?"

  Petoyne didn't answer, not directly anyway. She just stretched to look up at him, shivering in the wind that came down from the ice, her face woebegone, with sorrowful eyes and trembling chin. She didn't say that the law required her to have a witness for her execution date, because everybody knew that, or that they had long ago agreed that they were best friends, because she'd said that already. Instead she mentioned a fact:

  "You know you're getting pretty tired of Murra anyway." And she complained: "Who did it hurt if I just let Barney live a little longer?" And she mourned, a couple of times, in different ways, "But, Blundy, don't you see what this means? If I die of this business I could miss the ship. I've never seen a ship. By the time this one lands I could be dead."

  He didn't respond. They walked in silence, Blundy nodding to people who recognized him, while the girl thought hard. Then an encouraging thought struck her. "One good thing," she said. "People will see you on the TV."

  He gave her a scowl, intending to show that that wasn't the kind of publicity he sought, and even more to show that he didn't care what she said because he had one answer for all. "Quit complaining. It's your own damn fault," he told her judgmatically. Petoyne had known what the price was going to be, just as she had known all the other times she'd broken the laws-the two times she'd been caught and the dozens of times she hadn't.

  All the same, Blundy knew how the kid felt. Petoyne wasn't just afraid of dying-well, of course she was afraid of that. Who wouldn't be? But worse than just the normal fear of dying was that nobody, not anybody, least of all an almost-one-year-old like Petoyne, wanted to be left out of that special once-in-a-lifetime excitement, both thrilling and bleak, that only happened when some wandering spaceship came along. And even "once in a lifetime" was an exaggeration. It wasn't that often; ships didn't usually happen along even once in a normal lifetime. There was hardly a soul alive on Slowyear who remembered the last time a ship had called, apart from the tiny and dwindling handful of five- and six-year-old dodderers.

  You got to the summer execution chamber by a pebbled walk through a garden. Ribbonblossoms and roses were in bloom, thousands of them, already halfway up their two-meter trellises though spring was only five months old. The flowers didn't quite hide the chamber from people going by on the summer town's streets, but they at least kept it decently remote.

  Most people didn't look, though a child of thirty months or so stopped as they passed, leaning his bike against the gate to follow them with his fascinated eyes.

  The marshal at the door nodded respectfully to Blundy as they entered the hall. Inside, generic music was playing in the waiting room for the execution chamber, the kind of low-pitched whispery strings Blundy associated with funerals and his almost-wife, Murra. (Funnily, at first he had loved Murra's taste in music.) The waiting lounge smelled as flowery as the grounds outside. There was a pot of babywillows in the center of the room, honey-sweet, and minty greenflowers hung from ceiling baskets.

  Blundy and Petoyne weren't the only ones waiting. There were four couples ahead of them, sitting quietly on the comfortable benches or pretending to be conversing with each other. They would have to wait, Blundy saw with resignation. The waiting was an extra burden, because Petoyne was getting nervouser and nervouser as she came closer to the deed itself, gripping tight Blundy's hand even though she was still technically short of her first birthday, and thus was only going to take from the children's jar.

  They sat down in the waiting room, nodding politely to the ones ahead of them. The execution clerk wasn't at his desk, but almost as soon as they sat he came back in, looking around impatiently. Petoyne clutched Blundy's arm and took a quick breath, trying to read the man's face.

  There wasn't much on it to read, though, because the clerk was a hard-bitten old guy, easily five, maybe more, had seen everything and was surprised at nothing.

  He did blink in recognition as he saw Blundy there, and quickly glanced at the monitor on his desk. Then he called a name and read a sentence:

  "Mossriker Woller Duplesset, for falsification of taxtime records, one in fifty." A man not much older than Petoyne stood up, hanging his head.

  The woman with him was nearly three-his mother, Blundy supposed-and she was the one who was weeping as the executioner escorted them out to a chamber. He paused in the doorway to give Blundy a friendly nod, then closed the door behind them.

  There was a moment's silence, then the ones left began to talk. The old man got up from beside the woman who seemed to be a daughter.

  Wandering around the room, he paused and absently stroked the soft, downy pods of the babywillow. Then he looked more closely and frowned at what he saw. He got a cup from the water cooler and carefully moistened the roots of the plant. "They should take better care of their plants," he said severely, to no one in particular. Then his eyes focused on Blundy.

  "You were just coming in this morning, weren't you?" he asked politely,

  "I thought so. Those were nice-looking herds you brought in." Blundy agreed that, for late spring herds, the sheep had fattened up nicely.

  Another-a middle-aged woman, there with a younger woman who could have been her daughter-what crime could she have committed to bring her here?-said, "They've started taking the shuttles out of mothballs," and then a couple of them began talking about what their parents, or their grandparents, had told them about the way it was the last time a ship came to call. What they did not talk about was why they were here.

  Petoyne didn't join in the conversation, but she was obviously beginning to get her nerve back. "They're all adults," she told Blundy, looking around at the others in the room. "I guess they've really got something to worry about."

  "You'll be an adult pretty soon," Blundy reminded her.

  "But I'm not now," Petoyne said, managing a smile for the first time.

  "What I am is hungry. Are you?" And then, without waiting for an answer:

  "I bet you don't want any more lamb chops, anyway. Listen, Blundy. Let me tell you what I had last night. I made myself a scogger-broiled; a big one, with plenty of melted butter, the way you like it. And I've got a couple more in the freezer, if you wanted to come over tonight-I mean," she added, glancing at the door, "if everything, uh, if everything goes all right here." He shook his head. "Well, Murra's expecting you, I guess." She might have said more but then, much sooner than any of them expected, the clerk was back for another condemned and escort. The charge was assault this time, one in forty, and, surprisingly, the convict was the middle-aged woman.

  "Looks like there's life in the old girl yet," Petoyne whispered, almost giggling.

  Two other couples were coming in, but Blundy didn't get a good look at them because the old man was standing up and coming toward them. "I guess it's my turn next," he said apologetically. "I didn't recognize you before, but-you are Irakaho Blundy Spenotex, aren't you? I thought so. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your show last winter, and, well, I might not get the chance to tell you later on."

  "Of course," Blundy said, professionally warm. "Nice of you to say it."

  The old man stood there, nodding like any fan who had made the approach and
didn't really know what to say. "My wife really loved it. It was about the only thing that kept us going, the last couple of months," he said.

  "Well, that's what it was supposed to do," Blundy said politely. "Do you recognize Petoyne here? She played Liv on Winter Wife. The younger daughter, remember?"

  "Really?" The man seemed quite interested as he studied the girl up and down. "I wouldn't have known her," he marveled, "but then, I guess everybody says that, don't they? The augmentation and all. Well, I'm sorry to see you here, Petoyne, but you're still under age, aren't you? So it won't be so-oh," he said in a different voice, as the door opened, "I guess it's my turn. I hope I see you again."

  And as the door closed behind him, the executioner and his witness, Petoyne said, "Hopes to see you again! I bet he does! Did you hear that? He got a one in five! For murder. Do you know what I think, Blundy? I think it probably was his wife he murdered, don't you think?

  Who else would an old guy like that kill? So maybe the show didn't keep him going all that long, after all."

  * * *

  Then there was another wait.

  The wall screen was showing a musical group, which was getting on Blundy's nerves. He got up. "Mind if I try to get some news?" he asked.

  No one seemed to care, though they all looked docilely at the screen when it came on. The oilwells on Harbor Island had been successfully uncapped, the pipelines to the refineries on the continent checked and reopened-but Blundy already knew that, because he'd seen the smoke on the horizon. The warmspring census, taken after the first crop ofpost-winter babies had had a chance to be born, showed a planetwide population of 534,907, the highest for that season in nine years. The water temperature in Sometime River was up to 3.5 C, and there was an 80% chance of rain-And then the woman came back in. She was alone.

  She looked very sober as she made a phone call to the crematorium. It only took a moment to arrange for the disposition of her father's remains.

  Then, long before they were ready for it, it was their turn.

  Inside the room Blundy sought out the cameras and found them, discreetly inconspicuous in corners of the room; the carrying out of sentences was a matter of public record. Few bothered to watch unless some relative was at risk, but Blundy squared his shoulders and assumed a properly grave expression.

  The clerk looked directly at Petoyne and then looked down at his charge sheet. "Larasissa Petoyne Marcolli, first year, for wilfully failing to destroy a surplus animal," he read. "Sentence is one in thousand. Come on, and hurry up," he said, "because I want to get home sometime tonight."

  Blundy rose with the girl. He took her arm firmly, though she didn't resist.

  They didn't say anything to the newcomers they had left behind in the waiting room, though Blundy could almost feel the resentment the adults felt toward a mere one-in-a-thousand.

  The execution room was the one for children, with pretty pictures on the walls. The room itself was not much bigger than a closet, no chairs, just a sort of metal bench along one side of it and a low table that contained the urn. "Up on the table, Petoyne," the executioner ordered. "You've been here before." Petoyne climbed up, looking woebegone at Blundy, uncomfortable on the cold metal. There were drains around the edge of it to carry off the involuntary excretions an executed criminal often could not help but release, and there was a faint shit smell in the room to show that some had. The executioner turned to take a jar off its shelf, saying chattily over his shoulder, "I was surprised to see you out there, Blundy, but of course I knew you were just being a witness. I would have been sorry if it had been the other way around, because I really like your work."

  "Thank you," Blundy said automatically. He was mildly annoyed, though; Winter Wife was only a minor work in his eyes. His social, political and philosophical contributions were what he really prided himself on, and yet it was the video plays that everyone praised him for. Then he blinked. "I beg your pardon?" he asked.

  "I said, do your job, Blundy," the executioner repeated, and obediently Blundy bent to check the jar with its thousand little jellybean pills. The seals were intact. When he said so, the execution clerk said fretfully,

  "Well, then, break it open, man!"

  And he then took the lid off the jar, and offered it to Petoyne, who unhesitatingly thrust her little fist in, pulled out a pill, popped it in her mouth, swallowed.

  She looked suddenly lost and fearful for a moment. Then she gave Blundy a broad, happy smile.

  "Open your mouth," the executioner commanded, and rummaged around inside it with his forefinger. Then he nodded. "Sentence carried out,"

  he said. "Try not to come back here again, will you? Next time you'll be grown up," And opened the back door to let them out into the warm spring afternoon sun.

  * * *

  "You know, I'm getting to like the taste of those things," bragged Petoyne, almost skipping along beside Blundy. "What do you want to do now?

  Have a drink somewhere? Go check on the slaughtering? Get something to eat? No," she said, watching his face, "you're off to see Murra, aren't you? Why don't you break it off with her, Blundy? She's such a pain."

  He stopped and glowered down at her. "Leave Murra out of it," he ordered. "And, listen, I'm not going to this place with you again, Petoyne.

  You're going to be a one-year-old pretty soon, and then you won't be getting any one in a thousand shots any more. So straighten out if you want to live to see that ship come in."

  Chapter 3

  When Mercy MacDonald came looking for Betsy arap Dee, she found her friend in the Lesser Common Room of the starship, working with her fingers on a scrimshaw sampler but her eyes on the picture of their next planet that was displayed on the wall screen.

  "We're getting good pictures now," MacDonald commented, looking for a good way to start a conversation. They were only a couple of light-days out now; four or five more weeks and they would be in orbit, and then the frenzy of transshipping and dealing would start.

  MacDonald stretched to reach up and trace the outlines of Slowyear's single great continent with a fingertip. It was more or less pear-shaped, with the widest part of the pear right around the planet's equator. "Where do you suppose the landing parties will touch down?" she asked. Betsy didn't answer, except possibly with the faintest of shrugs, so MacDonald answered herself: "Probably right near their city, here-" putting her finger on the place the radio signals came from. "It ought to be nice by the time we get there. They say it's their springtime."

  Betsy finally found some words worth saying. "That would have been nice for the baby," she said, bending her head back over her sampler.

  MacDonald bit her lip and tried another tack. "How about giving me a hand?" she suggested. "I need to check the special-interest programs in the store so we can see what we've got to sell."

  Betsy glanced up at her. "Why? We already did that, Mercy."

  "So I want to do it again. To make sure. It's no good if we suddenly discover something we overlooked after we've left, is it?"

  Betsy sighed and put her sampler down. She gave her friend a level gaze.

  "I know what you're doing. You're just trying to keep me busy so I won't be depressed, aren't you? But you don't have to bother. I'm keeping myself busy, can't you see?"

  "But you're still depressed," Mercy said reasonably.

  Betsy nodded. "Of course I am. I'm still on this damn ship. Once I get off I'll perk right up, I promise."

  MacDonald lifted an eyebrow. "You really think a few weeks on a planet will straighten everything out?"

  "Who said anything about a few weeks. I'm staying."

  MacDonald blinked at her in surprise. It wasn't really astonishing that Betsy arap Dee was thinking of jumping ship at Slowyear-almost everybody thought such thoughts, almost every time they made a planetfall. The unusual thing was that she was talking about it out loud. Even to her best friend. "Horeger wouldn't like to hear you say that," she offered.

  Horeger had devoted no less than five of h
is all-hands broadcasts to the reasons why no one should leave the ship on Slowyear, along with threats of what would happen if anyone tried.

  Betsy laughed. It was a curiously somber sound. "Do you think I care what Hans likes any more?" she asked. "Do you?"

  * * *

  When Mercy MacDonald had a problem that needed talking over, her confidant of first choice was of course Betsy arap Dee. But when Betsy herself was the problem, she had to turn to someone else. That somebody else had to be a friend. A real one.

  The list of possible candidates was not long. The little universe of Nordvik was far too small to hold any strangers, but the bulk of them weren't friends, either. Not friends of Mercy MacDonald's, anyway. Betsy was certainly a friend, moody as she was since the loss of her baby. Another definite friend was the captain of Nordvik-by which she certainly didn't mean nasty, grabby Hans Horeger but the real captain, Arnold Hawkins. So were the three old navigator/astrographers, Moira Glorietti, Yahouda ben Aaron and Dicke Dettweiler. They'd all come aboard together on Earth, like the captain and Mercy MacDonald herself; like MacDonald and Captain Hawkins they'd voted against Hans Horeger's takeover. Also like the captain, they were getting a little elderly to be close friends any more.

  Then there was the larger number of those who used to be friends, of one degree or another, but had voted for Horeger and so weren't friends any more. That included most of the engineers and the bio people, both the medics and the ones that cared for their biological stocks. And then there were the handful of those who had never been friend of Mercy MacDonald's at all. That wasn't a long list, though. Most of the time there was only one person on it, that person of course being Deputy Captain Hans Horeger. There had never been a time when MacDonald thought of Horeger as a friend (though, she was ashamed of herself to admit, for a time she had been feeling low enough to accept him as a lover.) There were quite a few times when she wished him off the ship, if not actually dead-because of his crude and meaningless sexual advantages; because he had unseated old Captain Hawkins; and most of all because of what he had done to Betsy arap Dee.