Acts of Conscience (20 page)

The voice of the spacesuit whispered,
I’d help you if I could, but she’s not logged on anywhere that I can detect
.

I had a momentary spark of wondering just what the AIs made of all my obsessions and useless dreams. They’ve never said, merely done what they could, with the netvid, negotiating with other people’s AIs, with... Brief memory of Rua Mater, always logged on, always sunk in dreams of her own. They could’ve... done something there. I wonder why not. I...

Gretel turned and looked down at me, smiled, turned again and sank down gracefully beside me. You know she must be able to see you’ve got a nice little erection bulging down there in the front of your pants. Does she expect me to... do something? Or should I just wait and see?

Silence in my head.

Wait and see, of course.

She said, “What’s it like out there?”

Out there? Gretel Blondinkruis gesturing at the sky.

I fumbled for words, wanting to tell her how it
felt
, but nothing would come. What then? Tell her lies? Make something up? Recount whatever I could remember from all the viddies I’d seen, all those old movies and books and... I said, “It’s different.”

Silence. Then a sigh, almost like the women sighing in my dreams. “
Different
.”

I felt my heart go bump in my chest, suddenly understanding what I’d heard in her voice. This is, I told myself, an open door. Rouse yourself. Walk on through. I actually had my mouth open, formulating lies, getting my story ready. But there was something else in there as well, something reluctant, holding me back. A little voice, so far away and weak: If you buy her with the coin of your dreams, then she’s
bought
. Just that and nothing more. And you
know
how that feels.

Sure do.

Why the hell does it matter?

Then it was too late. Gretel Blondinkruis got to her feet, dusting off her shapely backside, looking down at me, smiling. She said, “I’d like to get away from Green Heaven someday. Get out there and... see what there is to see.”

An invitation. For God’s sake, make up your mind asshole. Say something. Tell her who and what you are. Tell her about
Random Walk
. Tell her... tell her you’ll take her to the stars! She’ll make a deal with you. You know she will.

Wasn’t that one of your oldest dreams, recurring in endless variation? The dream in which you had a little ship, sometimes a sailboat with which to cruise the South Seas. Sometimes a systemic yacht, cruising the moons of Saturn, the Piazzi, the Kuiper, the Oort, the...

Always. There was always a girl. A pretty girl. An innocent girl. A girl who was willing to... do whatever you wanted. Gaetan. Oh, Gaetan...

Idiot.

She said, “Well. We’d better get back down to camp. Mr. DenArrie will start to worry.”

Eight: Somehow, I got through the rest

Somehow, I got through the rest of the trip, simply by not thinking about it anymore perhaps, and went on back to my little hotel room in Orikhalkos, where I could watch the sun rise over a squalid cityscape through the convenient frame of my sliding glass door.

One night, I found something interesting to do. I’d been exploring down by the dockyards, Orikhalkos being a coastal city, and really having a pretty good time. There are probably still ships on the Earth’s oceans, but nothing like these. Big ships of steel and composite, some of them propelled by giant versions of the automobiles’ gas turbine drives, others running on nuclear-thermal steam.

Something I hadn’t noticed before was that all the Compact Cities of Green Heaven, with the sole exception of Vapaa, a small city at the head waters of the Somber River, lie on the ocean. Over the centuries a sea trade has grown up, sea trade, tourism, island hopping in the remote northern hemisphere—I’d heard of
Les Iles des Français
, but there were others...

I found myself standing in the darkness atop a narrow caisson wall, my back toward the quietly slopping seawater, looking down into a concrete drydock lit by long, dim strings of electric bulbs. The ship, resting on heavy keelblocks, was a dark shadow, rounded, looking at first glance like some old-fashioned spaceship. I could imagine I was on Earth, maybe five hundred years ago, in the days before interstellar travel perhaps. Down there, just maybe, those men and women were repairing a freighter that would one day be bound for red Mars, or faraway Jupiter, where the first volatiles plants were even now being set up.

I could see them down there, little mannequin shadows moving about, backlit by the blue flare of carbon arc torches. Hear distant voices, snatches of Greek words, too indistinct for the translator to pick up. Probably talking about the work.
Careful with that coverplate, Basil
.
Line’s still pressurized and
...

I walked away into the darkness, hungry, and went to a little restaurant not far from the dockyard, sat and ate among tired working men and women, and thought about it. I could stay here. I could be part of this.

Or go somewhere else. Somewhere where I’m needed. Hell, there are starship yards on Kent. I could do my familiar work, work among funny double shadows cast by Alpha Centauri’s twin suns, hanging, brilliant, in the sky. That’d be interesting, wouldn’t it?

The library said, In time, the FTL ships will come.

So they will. And I’m trained for that work as well. Should I just go home then? What’s going to happen, when people can get out among the worlds and come home again, to the same world, all the same people that they left behind? Will it make a difference?

I finished my meal, got up and walked on in the darkness, cutting through a very dark, empty-looking part of town, on my way back to the brightly-lit city center, glow on the sky beckoning me back to my hotel. Found myself standing in front of a building that looked like a warehouse.

People coming here, by ones and twos and little groups. Drunken men and women. Laughing men and women. The same sort of men and women who’d decorated my other life. The same sort of men and women I’d left behind me at the midnight diner, at the graveyard shift of the dockyard.

Inside, the place was brightly lit and full of people, concentric tiers of level floors descending to a dirt-lined pit, ceiling high overhead not domed, but rather unfinished girders from which electric lights hung in a mess of wiring. More or less, I thought, like the commonplace small sports stadia you see on Luna, places where you see
sumo
and
pelota
, or maybe the little illicit
pugildromes
of Mars.

Something like that here? Maybe, though the tiered floors were lined with cafe tables rather than inward-facing seats. Dinner theater in the round? Maybe I can get a nice desert here while I watch Aristophanes in the quasi-original. Something about the crowd... unlikely as all hell these boys and girls are here to see
Frogs
.

I walked down a narrow flight of stairs, cutting through tier-arcs to the lowest level, standing at a brass rail, looking down onto the dirt covered... well,
ring
is the only appropriate word. Not really common dirt either. More a nice, absorbent sand, like high-class kitty litter. Little doors in the side wall, low and wide. A man would have to stoop to get out, maybe even crawl.

“
Kali mera
!”

Soft female voice at my elbow, making me jump a bit, making me look. She was small and thin, dark eyes set in a dark, narrow face framed with shiny black curls that fell almost to her shoulders. Narrow smile, no more than a rim of even white teeth, smiling up at me.

I smiled back. “Is it morning already?”

She started to glance at some kind of chronometer strapped to her wrist—yet another reminder of just how antique this world, remote in time and space, could be—when a tall, heavyset, beady-eyed man standing behind her said, “Sunup’s in just under two hours...”

Short nights here.

He held out his hand, took mine firmly, and said, “My name’s Telektasos...” translator whispering softly under the words,
This may be a nickname
, telektasos
means “dilator” in Greek
. “My coworkers at Porphyrion Iron Works, Melîna...” a nod at the small woman who’d spoken to me first, then, putting his arm around a short, broad woman at his side, “and my girlfriend Mira.”

Melîna said, “We noticed you standing on the caisson wall at Porphyrion, just as we were coming off shift.”

“And again later, eating by yourself at
Spartákili
,” said Mira.

Telektasos motioned with a broad hand. “We’ve got a table here. Want to join us?” Grinning, Mira elbowing him in the ribs, translator speculating that he’d made some crude double entendre or another.

I said, “Uh. Sure.”

I told them my name and we sat down. pulling our chairs around to one side of the table, so we were all facing the dirt arena, Mira sitting close beside Telektasos, Melîna squeezing in next to me, her thigh pressed against mine. I could feel my heart starting to go thump in my chest, a little prickle of anticipation in the back of my neck, but... A soft sigh, my own, well concealed. Starting to come out the other side, are we? Maybe so.

Melîna said, “Du Cheyne... You don’t look French. More like some kind of Koromalisto. They all have that pale skin and dark hair. And your eyes are such a light brown they’re almost yellow.”

Right. Especially in certain kinds of spectrum-limited artificial lighting, I look like some kind of spook. People have been telling me that all my life.

Mira said, “We could tell you were some kind of foreigner. The way you were eating.”

“What do you mean?”

Melîna said, “Keeping your fork in your left hand and knife in your right like that. People here only do that to cut up meat, then we put down the knife and hold the fork in our right hands.”

The waiter came then and took our orders, drinks only just now, and I was pleased to realize I’d been here long enough that I knew the brand names of several rather nasty beers. I ordered a
retsîna
instead.

Telektasos, once the drinks had been served and sipped: “So, where
are
you from, Gaetan?” His pronunciation made it sound a bit like
hhay-tawn
.

I sat blinking for a moment, wondering what to tell them, even where to begin, as if it were complicated, but... why not the simple truth? So I said it.

Moment of silence, then Melîna leaned in close, looking right into my face, and said, “Earth? You mean,
the
Earth?” Wide-eyed astonishment, as if I’d said I was from some other galaxy or something.

Then Telektasos, voice rather gruff, said, “So. What is it you do for a living, Mr. du Cheyne?”

Mr. du Cheyne. Right. “I’m a mechanic. Same as you.”

“Not the same as
me
, brother. Hell, I can’t even afford a vacation in the islands!”

And here I am, come all the way from some glittery paradise among the stars, huh? I said, “Well, a spaceship mechanic. I’m sort of retired.”

Melîna whispered, “
Spaceship
mechanic...”

Mira: “When the day comes that I’m good enough, if it comes, I’d like to work at the Géricault-Boeing Aerospaceworks on Malakandra...” translator reminding me
Malakandra
was the next planet out, Tau Ceti 3, an abiotic juvenile terrestrial icehouse of a world, where, apparently, the Cetian in-system spacecraft were built.

Telektasos said, “I guess every technical worker has that dream.” A long look, then, “Why the hell are you
here
, Gaetan?”

Good, back to Gaetan again. No pause this time, no dissembling thoughts. This is... yet another open door. So I told them a little bit about those childhood dreams, watched their interested, understanding eyes. And I said, “I was... thinking of settling here.”

Melîna said, “But you’ve got a round-trip ticket home, don’t you?”

I hadn’t gotten around to telling them the rest of it yet, so... I said, “Sure.” Leave it at that. Plenty of time later to...

Telektasos said, “You show up down at the Porphyrion personnel office, they’ll probably put you in charge.”

“Or,” said Mira with palpable envy, “You could go right to Malakandra.” As if I could elect to ascend straight to God in Heaven, no Purgatory in between. What will these people think when the
real
starships come?

The waiter came again and took our food orders and, as we ate and talked, the lights slowly went down, all but the bright lights lining the inner walls of the little dirt arena, which I’d almost forgotten. Now, in the gloom, Melîna was tight against my side. I could hear her soft breathing, feel the in-out movement of her ribs, sense the rapid beating of her heart.

Well. That being so, doubtless my own pounding pulse...

My left hand, done with its fork-wielding duties, had slipped off the table, was resting on Melîna’s thigh. Not bare skin. She was dressed in a short, pleated black skirt over some kind of opaque hose, tights maybe, possibly even a body stocking. Is this what these women wear to work?

Telektasos, leaning back in his chair, had his arm around Mira’s shoulders now, was talking almost nonstop, mostly about the world, his work, and the place of one in the other. A commonplace memory, these rough-hewn philosophers of hard work. I’ve known a thousand like him.

Melîna now was leaning against me, head almost down on my shoulder, silent, her right hand having slipped around the back of my waist, resting on my opposite hip, thumb tucked through one of my belt loops. All right, I know this game, and if what’s happening down in my pants is any indication, perhaps I’m ready to resume... all the rest of my life, at last.

Cold wash of blessèd relief, a little bit like religious ecstasy. Just maybe, I haven’t made a mistake after all. I let my hand slide up her thigh, under her skirt, and felt her other leg move out of my way. Smooth muscle under tight hose. That nice tendon, like a guideway, leading my fingers in to the flat place between her legs. Melîna scrunching down a little bit in her chair, so she could rock her hips back...