Stopping at Slowyear Read online

  * * *

  The chops, really, were quite all right, and so was the salad and old Varion, sampling the bottle of wine he had opened, pronounced it first-rate. So the picnic was a success after all, though Verla was still shaken.

  When they had settled down after the meal Murra sat next to her husband, watching the others clean up. Lowering her voice, she said, "Oh, Blundy, Vincor had an idea he wanted to talk over with you. Summer Wife. A new series for the hot time; what do you think?"

  Blundy pursed his lips. Then he shrugged. But he hadn't said no. "Of course," she went on, "we wouldn't have to have the same cast, exactly, I mean if you think it's worth doing at all. For instance, maybe I'm getting a little too, well, mature for the wife's part-"

  And waited for him to say, "That's ridiculous. I wouldn't do anything like that without you, you know that," and found the day quite spoiled for her when he didn't.

  Chapter 5

  Mercy MacDonald was nothing if not fair, so fair that she even gave Deputy Captain Hans Horeger credited when he had earned it-even him. As a human being he was scum and nothing would change her mind about that.

  Still, she admitted to herself that he was a first-class ship handler. The way he eased Nordvik into its capture orbit around Slowyear was optimal.

  Nothing shuddered or jerked. The thrust just dwindled, and dwindled more, until they were there.

  It was the slowest part of the long journey. MacDonald spent it lying in her bed, trying to make herself sleep. She failed. There were too many thoughts and memories and sudden starts of apprehension to wake her right up again every time she came close. They had to do with the decision she would have to make (jump ship or stay?), with the barren wasteland that was her life up to this moment (tedium punctuated with blazing flareups of anger-at, for instance, Hans Horeger) and, most of all, with the worry about what these Slowyear people were going to be like.

  Would they be friendly? Even welcoming? Would they at least not be unkind?

  There were things she had learned about them which were, to say the least, not reassuring. For instance, their criminal law. What kind of human beings punished every infraction of the law with the chance of instant death?

  What people would simply cut themselves off from communication-however tenuous or difficult, or even pointless-with the rest of the galaxy?

  For that matter, what kind of people could go on living in so mean an environment? (And could she herself possibly live as one of them?) Then the last little gentle nudge of thrust was gone. They had arrived.

  It was a critical moment, a moment to reflect, a transitional moment. But there wasn't much chance for reflection. What there was was pandemonium. With Nordvik at relative rest, nothing weighed anything any more and everybody was scurrying around the ship chasing the floating pens, dishes, books, keys-chasing down and capturing the thousand little items that somebody should have secured, but hadn't.

  They should have remembered what zero thrust was like, of course, but years made you forget even that. What Mercy MacDonald had forgotten was to put the lid on a jar of hard candies. She'd taken them out to have one to suck as a prophylactic against no-weight nausea. Then the whole jarful had followed her out the door and halfway down the hall, bright little balls of colored sugar that were sure to raise hell with the air pumps or the light fixtures if she didn't track them down.

  So in that very significant moment all she was seeing of the planet they had come to visit was a quick glimpse out of the corner of her eye now and then.

  In fact, it didn't look like anything special anyway. It looked a lot like every other habitable planet in the universe, naturally enough. Blue sky, white cloud, dappled land, bright blue seas-that was pretty much what a planet had to look like, if any human being was going to be able to spend much time there. And when she finally got the last peppermint-green candy back in the jar and the lid on tight this time, when she finally was able to race down to the lock room, it didn't look much different even in the big screen.

  Except for one thing. It was hard to get a good look at the screen. There was too much in the way. Every one of the fifty-six people of Nordvik had huddled there, floating every which way in a thicket of arms and legs and torsos in the microgravity. Still, MacDonald saw the one thing that was different at once. Something new was in the picture. Coming up toward them out of the rim of the planet's dark side was a tiny diamond-bright point of intense white light.

  A shuttle was already rising from the planet.

  "I told you they'd be eager," Hans Horeger said happily. "See that?

  They couldn't even wait for us to come down in our own shuttle. They had to launch their own shuttle right away." But then, out of loyalty to the ship, he added, "I'll bet it's a piece of junk, though. A place like this, hardly sees a ship every fifty years. We don't want to depend on them." He peered around the crowded lock room for the engineering officer, pushing stray limbs out of his way. "Dave? Is our own shuttle ready?"

  It was, of course, and Horeger had known all along that it was, because he'd been driving the poor engineers crazy for a month, testing every circuit to make sure no part of the shuttle had broken or rotted away since the last time they'd used it.

  Horeger's wife, hanging to her husband's shoulder for a better look, said disgustedly, "That's pretty ancient, Hans."

  He frowned. "It's bigger than I expected, though. And they're really pouring on the power."

  His wife turned her look of disgust to him. "There you go again, worrying," she scolded. "What does it matter if it's big? The important thing is it's old. It's a fossil. I bet no one's visited this place in a good long time."

  Old Captain Hawkins cleared his throat. From the wall-hold where he was hanging, he said mildly, "We don't know that. All we know is that nobody's come back from it for a long time." But no one listened. No one listened because they couldn't; his deputy had quelled his wife and begun to shout to everyone in general. "All of you," he cried, "pay attention! Quiet down! Do you all remember what your orders are?

  Nobody goes down to the surface of the planet without my permission! No one's allowed into their shuttle unless I order you there. And when Nordvik leaves for its next port of call, no one's going to stay behind unless I say you can-and I won't. Do you all understand that?"

  He raked his crew with his eyes, one by one, craning and twisting to make each eye contact. Satisfied, or as satisfied as Hans Horeger ever got, he finished, "And if any of you forget what I'm saying, I promise you I'll make you regret it."

  But MacDonald noticed that he didn't say how.

  * * *

  Nordvik was a hundred times the size of the shuttle, but they could feel the whole vast starship shuddering as the Slowyear shuttle nuzzled in. Then there were long seconds of squeaking and rasping while the shuttle's portal seals felt the outlines of Nordvik's, and slowly adjusted themselves to fit.

  Then the lock opened.

  Nordvik's whole crew moved forward as one as the shuttle people pulled themselves in, hand over hand. Through the tangled crowd MacDonald could see clearly enough that they were carrying no weapons. There were only three of them. One was a slim young girl who held a briefcase, the second a tall, lean man who had nothing at all in his hands, the third a squat, good-looking one who held only a flower. The man with the flower peered in, at and around the various faces, in all their angles of presentation, taking his time. Then he settled on Mercy MacDonald. He grinned at her and handed her the flower. "My name's Blundy. Welcome to Slowyear," he said.

  The young girl gave him a quick, angry look, then turned it on MacDonald.

  "Are you the governor?" she demanded.

  Her accent was odd, but MacDonald understood her easily enough. "We don't have a governor. I guess you mean the captain. That's him over there on the wall," she said, pointing-to the real captain, of course.

  "But I'm his executive, so I'm the one you have to talk to," Horeger said quickly. And belatedly added, "Uh, welcome to Interstellar Shi
p Nordvik."

  The girl bent to her briefcase and pulled out a thick sheaf of papers. The man named Blundy still had his eyes appreciatively on Mercy MacDonald.

  She stared right back. He was, she thought, the smallest person present-well, the shortest, anyway (though even that was hard to be sure of, with everyone floating in odd directions). There was nothing small about his body, especially the thick muscles in his bare forearms. And his eyes did not leave Mercy MacDonald.

  He was interested, she thought, liking the fact that he was showing interest, even liking the feelings inside her that came from enjoying it. She was sorry when he turned his gaze to Hans Horeger. "The kind of thing we want-" he began.

  "Visas first, Blundy," the girl interrupted. "I've got my orders."

  "Sure, Petoyne," the man said indulgently, "but they don't have to have visas until they come down, do they?"

  "They're all probably going to want to, won't they? So they have to fill out the forms." She cleared her throat and addressed the group: "On behalf of the governor general, I welcome you all to Slowyear-"

  "I already said that, Petoyne," said Blundy.

  "I'm saying it officially. -And ask that you fill out these forms and sign them. Then we can get on with the business we're all really interested in.

  Each of you take one, please-have you all got pencils? Well, get some, will you?"

  While someone was hurrying away to find things to write with, MacDonald took her eyes off the squat man long enough to read one of the forms.

  The people of this backwater planet didn't seem to have much regular use for such things, she saw, because these were just photocopied printouts, headed "Planet of Slowyear, Department of Trade and Immigration," with the impromptu look of something somebody had remembered to whomp up at the last minute before Nordvik arrived. There was an awful lot of tiny type. When she signed that form she would be relinquishing any claim for liability for almost any kind of ill that might befall her on the surface of the planet or on the way to it-from mechanical failure of the planet's ancient shuttles or their own; from navigation errors; from disease or attack by animals . . . but there weren't any dangerous animals on Slowyear, Mercy MacDonald knew very well; they must have copied the thing out of an old lawbook. Really, it amused her. She looked up at the girl named Petoyne. "I didn't know you had lawyers on Slowyear," she said.

  The Slowyear girl gave her an impatient look. "Did you sign it? All right, you've got your visa. Next!"

  And the man named Blundy was saying, "Who's in charge of selling stuff?"

  MacDonald raised her hand. "I am. Mercy MacDonald. Purser."

  He looked at her again. "That's nice," he said, approving. "Then let's find some place where we can go, Mercy MacDonald, so we can talk business."

  * * *

  Business was business, and this Blundy man didn't waste much time getting down to it. He perched companionably next to her at her display screen, one hand lightly holding her shoulder, and frowned at the readout.

  No seeds, ova or sperm right now, he said; not on this first trip. "We came up light so we could carry a max load back, so there's no refrigeration on board this time." No living plants right now, either, not until that other man, whose name was Gowen, finished checking them. "He's our health officer," Blundy explained. "He'll stay on board until he quick-cultures everything-so you won't bring anything nasty down with you, you know."

  "He's going to check everything? Even us?"

  Blundy looked surprised. "Hasn't he done you yet? No, of course not; well, give him a drop of blood as soon as you can. You're coming on the first trip, of course."

  "I am?"

  Blundy grinned at her. "Of course you are-I'm glad to say. We'll only take two of you this time-to have as much cargo mass as possible, you see-and that deputy captain of yours insists on being one of them. So you're the other."

  MacDonald just smiled at that, not having made her own mind up yet-though actually there wasn't any real doubt about it-and he got back to business. Scrimshaw? Sure. A lot of people would like that sort of stuff, he conceded, though only heaven knew why. Books? Certainly; and music and dramas and dance recitals, too, why not.

  But the big thing, he told her, was datastores. "Science, history, medicine-especially medicine; we'll buy copies of everything you've got about medicine or biochemistry. Diagnosis, therapies, pharmaceuticals, surgical procedures-you name it, we'll buy it. Can you get all that in the first load? I assume all this stuff is electronic, so it won't mass much-Fine! Now, what are these Hades artifacts I see on the list?"

  He kept her jumping, but it wasn't all business. She could see that. She didn't miss the way he was looking at her, even when what he was talking about was merchandise. It was exciting.

  It gave her pleasure. The excitement was good for her. She could feel it in her groin, an almost sexual tingling-no, she corrected herself fairly, not "almost" at all. It was defnitely sexual, all right. And Blundy's interest in her was not just for generic sex, as it always was with dirty Hans Horeger, because when she took the stranger to see Betsy arap Dee she observed carefully that, although he gave Betsy a thoroughly assessing look, his eyes returned to MacDonald herself.

  Betsy, of course, assessed him right back. It didn't seem to be serious, though, because the other stranger, Gowen, had obviously already taken a lien on Betsy's interest when he took her blood sample. The four of them went over Betsy's datastores rapidly, and before they were halfway through MacDonald made a surprising discovery.

  The surprise was that Betsy wasn't moping. More than that, for the first time since the death of her baby, Betsy looked not only alert but actually happy. There was no other word for it. Her face was flushed and her eyes sparkled; she smiled; she even laughed out loud.

  Then MacDonald made the even more surprising discovery that she was quite happy too. She was eager to board the shuttle and find out what this forbidding, but also intriguing, new planet had to offer her.

  Of course, that was the point at which Hans Horeger came bustling into the datastore room, radiating officious authority and orders. MacDonald didn't let even that puncture her mood. She let him strut for a few minutes.

  Then, "Come on, Hans," she said, pulling him by the sleeve as she invented an errand to get him away from Betsy and the new man-realizing with astonishment that it was the first time in a good long while that she had deliberately invited Horeger to do anything with her-"come on, help me pick out the first load of scrimshaw and start loading the shuttle."

  That kept them both busy for half an hour. Then, with the selections made, she left Horeger to round up a loading crew, shouting more orders that no one either heeded or needed, and she went looking for the "health officer".

  He wasn't in the datastore room, wasn't even with Betsy arap Dee, who was back in her own room dreamily changing into more interesting clothes.

  MacDonald finally found all three of the Slowyear people together, hanging onto wall holds and talking quietly together. For a moment she thought they might not want to be interrupted, but as soon as Blundy caught sight of her he beckoned her over.

  "I thought you could take my blood sample now," she explained to Gowen, holding out her wrist. The girl, Petoyne, sniffed at that, but Gowen immediately dug into his pouch and pulled out a tiny syringe. It didn't hurt.

  It only took a second-long enough to pull a thin streak of red into an ampoule-but also long enough for Petoyne to turn away in a marked manner and leave.

  "Gowen'll put your sample in a culture box," Blundy explained. "By the time we land we'll know for sure if you have to go into quarantine or anything. But you look pretty healthy to me."

  She smiled back at him, but said, "Are you sure I should go on the first trip? That girl didn't look as though she wanted me to."

  "Oh," he said dismissively, "Petoyne. Don't worry about Petoyne.

  Pack a bag, and don't be too long, please-you don't want to miss the flight!"

  * * *

  She didn
't, though. Didn't pack just one bag; at least, did pack one, and then bit her thumb for a moment, and went on to pack a second, and a third, until everything she really wanted to preserve of all her life to date was packed.

  It took up more space in the shuttle than she had planned, but Blundy only grinned and, although Hans Horeger certainly saw it and was not pleased at all, his wife, who was complaining about being left on the ship, was a more immediate problem for him. And then they were inside, and the hatches were closed, and they were on their way.

  Chapter 6

  Not even Murra stayed home on the day the first shuttle came back from the ship. She dressed herself in her prettiest robes and perfumed herself with an extra bit of her special (if no longer unique) essence, since she would be outdoors. Before leaving the house she studied herself in the mirror for several minutes. Then, regretfully, she took off the pretty bugsilk slippers that became her feet so well and replaced them with sheepskin half-boots. The boots were beautifully ornamented of course, but so rugged. She didn't have any choice about that. Practicality had to triumph over looks because, even though warmspring had begun to dry out the landscape, there would surely be mud and puddles near the landing strip.

  There were. She was lucky enough to get a ride up the slope on a flatbed.

  Although it was packed she wasn't refused, since everyone was kind enough to make room for Blundy's Murra. The landing strip was on the far side of the pass, five kilometers of meadow bulldozed flat, and at least five thousand other people had already gathered there. Scores of armbanded marshals were herding them behind a roped line away from the stirp itself, but even the marshals were looking up half the time in the hope of catching a glimpse of the shuttle through the clouds. Heaven knew how many thousand others were up in the hills, watching with binoculars or simply their unaided eyes. Everybody was bouncing with anticipation. Children ran and shouted. Vendors were all through the crowd, selling cold drinks and sandwiches.