The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (18 page)

It was after ten the next morning before we suited up and climbed into the rolligon—me in Jinx’s second best, Gwen in Ingrid’s not-pregnant suit, and Bill in a restored antique that had belonged to the founder of Dry Bones Pressure, a Mr. Soupie McClanahan, who had come to Luna long, long ago, before the Revolution, as an involuntary guest of the government.

The plan was for each of us to get other temporary coverings at Lucky Dragon Pressure, wear them to HKL, and send them back via the public bus, while Gretchen took these suits back to her father after she let us off at Lucky Dragon. Then, tomorrow, we would be in Hong Kong Luna and able to buy pressure suits to fit our needs.

I spoke to Jinx about payment. I could almost hear the numbers clicking over in his skull. Finally he said, “Senator, I tell you what. Those suits that came in your heap—not worth much. But there’s some salvage in the helmets and in some of the metal fittings. Send my three suits back to me in the shape in which you got ’em and we’ll call it even. If you think it is.”

I certainly thought it was. Those Michelin suits had been okay—twenty years ago. To me, today, they were worth nothing.

It left just one problem—Tree-San.

I had thought that I was going to have to be firm with my bride—an intention not always feasible. But I learned that, while Jinx and I had been working out what to do about pressure suits, Gwen had been working out what to do about Tree-San…with Ace.

I have no reason to think Gwen seduced Ace. But I’m sure Eloise thought so. However, Loonies have had their own customs about sex since back in the days when men outnumbered women six to one—by Lunar customs all options in sexual matters are vested in women, none in men. Eloise did not seem angry, just amused—which made it none of my business.

As may be. Ace produced a silicone rubber balloon with a slit through which he inserted Tree-San, pot and all, then heat-sealed it—with an attachment for a one-liter air bottle. There was no charge, even for the bottle. I offered to pay, but Ace just grinned at Gwen and shook his head. So I don’t know. I don’t care to inquire.

Ingrid kissed us all good-bye, made us promise to come back. It seemed unlikely. But a good idea.

Gretchen asked questions the whole trip and never seemed to watch where she was driving. She was a dimpled, pigtailed blonde, a few centimeters taller than her mother but still padded with baby fat. She was much impressed by our travels. She herself had been to Hong Kong Luna twice and once all the way to Novylen where people talked funny. But next year, when she would be going on fourteen, she was going to go to Luna City and look over the studs there—and maybe bring home a husband. “Mama doesn’t want me to have babies by anyone at Dry Bones, or even Lucky Dragon. She says it’s a duty I owe my children to go out and fetch in some fresh genes. Do you know about that? Fresh genes, I mean.”

Gwen assured her that we did know and that she agreed with Ingrid: Outbreeding was a sound and necessary policy. I made no comment but agreed; a hundred and fifty people are not enough for a healthy gene pool.

“That’s how Mama got Papa; she went looking for him. Papa was born in Arizona; that’s a part of Sweden back groundhog side. He came to Luna with a subcontractor for the Picardy Transmutation Plant and Mama got him at a masked mixer and gave him our family name when she was sure—about Wolf, I mean—and took him back to Dry Bones and set him up in business.”

She dimpled. We were chatting via our suit talkies but I could see her dimples right through her helmet by a happy chance of light. “And I’m going to do the same for my man, using my family share. But Mama says that I should not grab the first boy who’s willing—as if I would!—and not to hurry or worry even if I’m still an old maid at eighteen. And I won’t. He’s got to be as good a man as Papa is.”

I thought privately that it might be a long search. Jinx Henderson né John Black Eagle is quite a man.

When at last we could see the Lucky Dragon parking lot, it was nearly sundown—in Istanbul, that is, as anyone could see by looking. Earth was almost due south of us and quite high, about sixty degrees; its terminator ran through the north desert of Africa and on up through the Greek Isles and Turkey. The Sun was still low in the sky, nine or ten degrees and rising. There would be nearly fourteen days more sunlight at Lucky Dragon before the next long dark. I asked Gretchen whether or not she intended to drive straight back.

“Oh, no,” she assured me. “Mama wouldn’t like that. I’ll stay overnight—bedroll there in the back—and start back fresh tomorrow. After you folks catch your bus.”

I said, “That isn’t necessary, Gretchen. Once we’re inside this pressure and can turn our suits back to you, there’s no reason for you to wait.”

“Mr. Richard, are you yearning to have me spanked?”

“You? ‘Spanked’? Why, your father wouldn’t do that. To
you?
—A grown woman, almost.”

“You might tell Mama that. No, Papa wouldn’t; he hasn’t for years and years. But Mama says I’m eligible until the day I first marry. Mama’s a holy terror; she’s a direct descendant of Hazel Stone. She said, ‘Gret, you see about suits for them. Take them to Charlie so they won’t be cheated. If he can’t supply them, then see to it that they wear ours to Kong and you dicker with Lilybet to fetch ours back later. And you had better see them off on the bus, too.’”

Gwen said, “But, Gretchen, your father warned us that the bus doesn’t move until the driver has a load. Which could be a day or two. Even several days.”

Gretchen giggled. “Wouldn’t that be terrible? I’d get a vacation. Nothing to do but catch up on the back episodes of
Sylvia’s Other Husband
. Let’s everybody feel sorry for Gretchen! Mistress Gwen, you can call Mama this minute if you wish…but I do have firm instructions.”

Gwen shut up, apparently convinced. We rolled to a stop about fifty meters from Lucky Dragon airlock, set in the side of a hill. Lucky Dragon is in the south foothills of the Caucasus range at thirty-two degrees twenty-seven minutes north. I waited, on one foot and leaning on my cane, while Bill and Gwen gave unnecessary help to a highly efficient young lady in spreading an awning slanted to keep the rolligon from direct sunlight for the next twenty-four hours or so.

Then Gretchen called her mother on the rolly’s radio, reported our arrival, and promised to call again in the morning. We went through the airlock, Gwen carrying her case and purse and babying me. Bill carrying Tree-San and the package containing Naomi’s wig, and Gretchen carrying a huge bedroll. Once inside, we helped each other shuck down; then I put my foot back on while Gretchen hung up my suit and hers, and Bill and Gwen hung theirs, on long racks opposite the airlock.

Gwen and Bill picked up their burdens and headed for a public ’fresher around to the right of the airlock. Gretchen had turned to follow them when I stopped her. “Gretchen, hadn’t I better wait here till you three get back?”

“What for, Mr. Senator?”

“That suit of your papa’s is valuable, and so is the one Mistress Gwen is wearing. Maybe everyone here is honest…but the suits aren’t mine.”

“Oh. Maybe everybody here is honest but don’t count on it. So Papa says. I wouldn’t leave that darling little tree sitting around but don’t ever worry about a p-suit; nobody ever touches another Loonie’s p-suit. Automatic elimination at the nearest airlock. No excuses.”

“Just like that, eh?”

“Yes, sir. Only it doesn’t happen as everybody knows better. But I know about one case, before I was born. A new chum, maybe he didn’t know any better. But he never did it again because a posse went after him and brought the p-suit back. But not him. They just left him to dry, there on the rocks. I’ve seen it, what’s left of him. Horrid.” She wrinkled her nose, then dimpled. “Now, may I be excused, sir? I’m about to wet my panties.”

“Sorry!” (I’m stupid. The plumbing in a man’s p-suit is adequate, although just barely. But what the great brains have come up with for women is not adequate. I have a strong impression that most women will endure considerable discomfort rather than use it. I once heard one refer to it disparagingly as “the sand box.”)

At the door of the ’fresher my bride was waiting for me. She held out to me a half-crown coin. “Wasn’t sure you had one, dear.”

“Huh?”

“For the ’fresher. Air I have taken care of; Gretchen paid our one-day fees, so I paid her. We’re back in civilization, dear—No Free Lunch.”

No free anything. I thanked her.

I invited Gretchen to have dinner with us. She answered, “Thank you, sir; I accept—Mama said I could. But would you settle for ice-cream cones for now?—and Mama gave me the money to offer them to you. Because there are several things we should do before dinner.”

“Certainly. We’re in your hands, Gretchen; you’re the sophisticate; we’re the tyros.”

“What’s a ‘tyro’”

“A new chum.”

“Oh. First we should go to Quiet Dreams tunnel and spread our bedrolls to hold our places so that we can all sleep together”—at which point I learned for the first time why Gretchen’s bedroll was so enormous: her mother’s foresight, again—“but before that we had better put your names down with Lilybet for the bus…and before that, let’s get those ice-cream cones if you’re as hungry as I am. Then, last thing before dinner, we should go see Charlie about p-suits.”

The ice-cream cones were close at hand in the same tunnel as the racks: Borodin’s Double-Dip Dandies, served by Kelly Borodin himself, who offered to sell me (in addition to lavish cones) used magazines from Earth, barely used magazines from Luna City and Tycho Under, candy, lottery tickets, horoscopes,
Lunaya Pravda
, the
Luna City Lunatic
, greeting cards (genuine Hallmark imitations), pills guaranteed to restore virility, and a sure cure for hangovers, compounded to an ancient Gypsy formula. Then he offered to roll me double or nothing for the cones. Gretchen caught my eye, and barely shook her head.

As we walked away, she said, “Kelly has two sets of dice, one for strangers, another for people he knows. But he doesn’t know that I know it. Sir, you paid for the cones…and now, if you don’t let me pay you back, I’ll get that spanking. Because Mama will ask me and I will have to tell her.”

I thought about it. “Gretchen, I have trouble believing that your mother would spank you for something
I
did.”

“Oh, but she would, sir! She will say that I should have had my money out and ready. And I should have.”

“Does she spank really hard? Bare bottom?”

“Oh, my, yes! Brutal.”

“An intriguing thought. Your little bottom turning pink, while you cry.”

“I do not cry! Well, not much.”

“Richard.”

“Yes, Gwen?”

“Stop it.”

“Now you listen to me, woman. Do not interfere in my relations with another woman. I—”

“Richard!”

“You spoke, dear?”

“Mama
spank
.”

I accepted from Gretchen the price of the cones. I’m henpecked.

The sign read:

THE APOCALYPSE AND KINGDOM COME BUS COMPANY
Regular Runs to Hong Kong Luna
Minimum Run—twelve (12) fares
Charter runs
ANYWHERE
by dicker
Next HKL run not before
Noon tomorrow, July 3rd

Sitting under the sign, rocking and knitting, was an elderly black lady. Gretchen addressed her: “Howdy, Aunt Lilybet!”

She looked up, put down her knitting and smiled. “Gretchen hon! How’s your momma, dear?”

“Just fine. Bigging up by the day. Aunt Lilybet, I want you to meet our friends Mr. Senator Richard and Mistress Gwen and Mr. Bill. They need to go with you to Kong.”

“Pleased to meet you, friends, and happy to tote you to Kong. Plan on leaving noon tomorrow as you three make ten and if’n I don’t get two more by noon, likely I can make it with cargo. That suit?”

I assured her that it did and that we would be here before noon, p-suited and ready to roll. Then she gently suggested cash on the counter by pointing out that there were still seats on the shady side as some passengers had made reservations but had not yet paid. So I paid—twelve hundred crowns for three.

We went next to Quiet Dreams tunnel. I don’t know whether to call it a hotel or what—perhaps “flophouse” comes closest. It was a tunnel a little over three meters wide and running fifty-odd meters back into the rock, where it dead-ended. The middle and left-hand side of the tunnel was a rock shelf about a half meter higher than a walkway on the right. This shelf was laid out in sleeping billets, marked by stripes painted on the shelf and by large numbers painted on the wall. The billet nearest the passageway was numbered “50.” About half the billets had bedrolls or sleeping bags on them.

Halfway down the tunnel, on the right, the customary green light marked a refresher.

At the head of this tunnel, seated and reading at a desk, was a Chinese gentleman in a costume that was out of fashion before Armstrong made that “one small step.” He wore spectacles as old-fashioned as his dress and he himself appeared to be ninety years older than God and twice as dignified.

As we approached he put down his book and smiled at Gretchen. “Gretchen. It is good to see you. How are your esteemed parents?”

She curtsied. “They are well. Dr. Chan, and they send you their greetings. May I present our guests Mr. Senator Richard and Mistress Gwen and Mr. Bill?”

He bowed without getting up and shook hands with himself. “Guests of the House Henderson are most welcome in my house.”

Gwen curtsied, I bowed, and so did Bill, after I dug a thumb into his ribs—which Dr. Chan noticed while declining to notice it. I mumbled an appropriate formality. Gretchen went on,

“We would like to sleep in your care tonight. Dr. Chan, if you will accept us. If so, are we early enough to be given four places side by side?”

“Indeed yes…for your gracious mother spoke to me earlier. Your beds are numbers four, three, two, and one.”

“Oh, good! Thank you. Grandfather Chan.”

So I paid, for three, not four—I don’t know whether Gretchen paid, or ran a bill, or what; I saw no money change hands. Five crowns per person per night, no extra charge for the refresher but two crowns if we wanted to shower—water not limited. Soap extra—half a crown.