Armor (21 page)

“Here you go, Stra. . . Hey, what is your name, anyway?” he asked.

One of the kids, pulling up beside us in a spray of muddy water, broke in:

“I know you. Aren’t you. . . Yeah! You’re Jack Crow!” he exclaimed. The other kids loudly echoed this. “Don’t you recognize him, Lewis?”

Lewis peered up at me. “Nope.”

The kid looked embarrassed. “Well, he’s heard of you though,” he said quickly to me. “You’ve heard of him, haven’t you?”

Lewis thought a minute. He shrugged. “Maybe,” he allowed with a slow nod.

I’d have bet a hundred credits on the spot, a hundred credits I didn’t have, that he hadn’t.

“Why are we stopping here, anyway?” someone wanted to know.

Lewis brightened. “I thought I’d give you boys a chance to count sailboats while I take a small piss on the nice fish.” He trotted around the buttresses as he spoke, opening up his fly. His voice faded as he descended to the river’s edge. “Here, fish! Here, nicelittlefishiesthatwon’t takemyhook! Here, you contrary little bastards! Come and gettt ittt!” From over the railings came the sound of him pissing merrily, the way he laughed, into the water. The kids and I sat there on the backs of the horses sipping from the jug and watching the swiftly passing current. The one who recognized me began a halting and involved question about some exploit or another be had heard that I’d done. He seemed embarrassed to be asking it. I let him be, thus avoiding the need to give a civil reply.

Lewis returned shortly. He hopped up onto the railing and motioned for the jug. I tossed it to him. He drank, frowned at the amount that was left, drank again.

“C’mon, Lewis,” complained someone, “let’s go.”

Lewis shook his head sadly. “Ah, youth! What’s the hurry?

Didn’t I promise you that puberty would come? Trust me.”

Several of them laughed. So did 1. But the impatient one was insistent. “How long are we gonna be here?” Lewis shrugged. “Dunno. You in a hurry. Jack?”

“I’ve got an hour or so.”

“Splendid. I’ll see you young bucks later on.”

In a few seconds they were all gone, even the ones in no hurry. It had been a dismissal.

“Take a load off. Jack,” he said to me when we were alone, “and let me explain to you the real reason why I never catch any of these little fishies.”

I slid off the horse and joined him on the railing. He handed me the jug. “Tell me everything about it,” I urged.

He feigned shock. “Everything? You mean everything?

Where oh where shall I begin? “

“How about the beginning,” I suggested, burping softly.

The syntho was getting to me.

“Nope. Not the beginning. I’ve been there already. It was worse then than it is now and I want to tell you. Jack, right now is a dark, dark time.”

“What seems to be the problem?” I asked, all sympathy. “The real problem. Jack? Or,” he struck a tragic pose, “the
REAL
problem?”

I pretended to give it some thought. “The
REAL
problem, “ I said at last in a hushed whisper.

He eyed me narrowly, as if judging my trustworthiness. Then he glanced around us to be sure he wasn’t overheard, just as if we weren’t really half a kilometer from anyone. “The real problem with these fishies and me is: personality conflict.”

I laughed.

“That’s it,” he said, “laugh. But I will bet you that I can prove to you right here and now, using logic, insight, and … syntho, that what I’m saying is true.”

And damned if he didn’t do just that. His way, anyhow. The man was an absolute marvel. Talked for over an hour the most convoluted, contrived and contradictory horseshit I had ever heard. I could follow maybe half of it and I can’t remember any of it. But I do remember having a hell of a good time listening to it all. He never hesitated once during the entire lunatic harangue, never lost his place, never stopped grinning.

Or drinking. He pulled a fresh jug out of his saddle case and went to work on it like it was his first in a standard month.

He closed with what he referred to as “critical advice” on how to catch the local fish, which he never, or rarely, seemed to do himself. The finale consisted of a rousing demonstration of what songs to sing (and, vastly more important to him) or not to sing, while fishing. Had a rotten sing ing voice. Knew it. Didn’t care. But I cared. It hurt to listen to him.

He said I wasn’t a true fisherman. True fishermen, it seemed, didn’t care about such frivolous details as musical notes. Not a bit. True fishermen care about volume. True fishermen “sang loud.” Then he threw his head back to show me, cocking that awful noise muscle of his. . . and fell backwards into the river.

I was afraid he would drown, drunk as he was. And drunk as I was, I raced down around to the bank to help. He was okay by the time I got there. He was kneeling on the bank with his back to the water looking over his shoulder at the rushing current. On his face was a comic-opera expression of suspicion.

“Did you see who it was?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the water.

“What?”

“Did you see which one did it?” he insisted.

“Did what?”

“Pulled me into the water,” he said gravely, looking at me at last. “Which fish.”

A marvel. By the time he dropped me off at the dome I was semi sober and thoroughly cheered. We had already said our goodbyes and I was halfway up the ramp when his name finally sank in. Lewis! He was. . . .

I turned around and searched the landscape for him. I heard him before I saw him, galloping lazily out of sight over the gentle grassy slope that rose away from the river and the city, and loudly practicing what he had referred to as “scream singing.” This was supposed to be the guy that owned Sanction?

Nooo. . . Couldn’t be. There had to be another Lewis.

Surely….

But, of course, there wasn’t. He was it, that lightweight drunk. He was the owner, ruler, master, of everything in sight.

I laughed on my way up the rest of the ramp. And then I

stopped laughing. Because it wasn’t really funny. I suddenly appreciated Borglyn more than ever. For this place had been a perfect choice. It was just what he needed. Distant, alone, and utterly helpless.

No. It really wasn’t funny at all.

XI

It was, I knew, incredibly stupid of me to feel as I did after that dinner with Holly and Lya. After all, it had gone very well for me. Perfectly well, in fact. Not only had their suspicions been relieved, they had ended up practically encouraging my little machinations. Hell, they had encouraged me! Without having any idea what I was up to! By the time that dinner was over they had opened up completely to me, given me free rein, unchecked and unhindered.

And why? Why did they welcome the wolf into their midst? Why did they succumb to such insanity?

Simple. They trusted me.

Madness.

But that wasn’t what made me feel as rotten as I did. What really bothered me was not simply their trust. It was their faith. The two of them looked at me with it shining from their eyes. They looked at me like, well. . . .

Like I knew what I was doing. Madness!

On a distant planet all but lost on the outskirts of the spread of Man, a man who is both highly disreputable and a total stranger suddenly appears and crowds you for company. He provides no explanations for his actions and no clue to his motives. He is at best a rogue, at worst a psychotic, and in any case a known powderkeg. Yet you not only accept his good intentions, you trust his aim! From this gypsy you expect. . . control.

Why? Why, from such as he, do you assume accuracy?

From where do you sense this precision, anyway, the fable?

Can no one imagine an incompetent Legend?

It started off predictably enough. The three of us sat eating and chatting alone in the main dining room. We smiled fiercely at one another while nervously pursuing a hundred avenues of small talk and in all ways avoiding until the last minute the point.

We talked about the food and how good it was and we talked about the food we missed, our favorite foods and our favorite places to eat our favorite foods. We talked about the rotten weather that had been about recently and about the good weather they had had before that and about the good weather we hoped we would get in the future. We talked about Sanction, me mentioning that I thought I had met Lewis, the owner, if it was the same guy. And they said oh yes it was in fact the owner I had met and oh yes he did drink a great deal, always had. Lya mentioned some gossip she had heard about Lewis’s having been sent here by a wealthy and influential earth family who had been embarrassed by the scandal of having what was, face it, an alcoholic son. And we all agreed as to how that made some sense or it was a good story anyhow, ha ha and then Holly told me about the strange thing that happened when they got an uncontrolled mutation once and had to shut down the syntho vats completely. Seemed that Lewis had simply stopped drinking until the syntho was ready again, refusing to accept their offer of real liquor from the Project stores and thereby forcing himself to go over two standard months without a drink. And we all agreed that that was certainly unusual behavior for an alcoholic, yes it certainly was, by golly and then we sat there staring at one another and still smiling like crazy.

Then Holly spoke up at last. Speaking of Sanction, he began, and then talked about what a nice place it was, how Earthlike and so on. Lots of planets like that, Lya added and then we played the game of naming all the other places like that we could think of. How convenient for us, somebody said and we all laughed. I mentioned something about it bothering me, all those man places, how I thought it was a little spooky and we all laughed again, ha ha, stringing it out as long as we could to avoid that damned silence but still ending up staring and smiling for several seconds until Holly cleared his throat and talked about an interesting item he had read off the Fleet Beam on that very subject and I said, oh what was that? And he said it was very interesting, really, that it seemed there was some sort of religious cult that believed that all these planets had been designed just for us. Oh really? That is interesting. Yes, isn’t it, these people think there is a trail of these planets and if we follow it to the galactic core we will find and meet the builders, meet God himself, I guess they meant ha ha ha! How about that? Yes, how about that? Uh, huh. . . .

I could see how nervous they were. More, I could see how embarrassed they were. And I could see that they wanted me to start it all off, had seen that in their eyes from the beginning. And I wanted to. I wanted to lead into it myself so that I would seem more upfront while at the same time controlling the discussion somewhat.

Only I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not a thing. It was inexcusable. What I needed, and quickly, was an extremely plausible and not too elaborate lie or set of lies and why, for God’s sake, didn’t I have it ready? Why hadn’t I taken the time to think of something instead of wasting my day with two different kinds of idiots, fighting idiots and drinking idiots, the way I had? Damn!

I had thought, initially, of trying to get Holly off alone to pull it off. I knew I would have a much easier time with him alone. He would have been even more nervous by himself. He would have been eager to glide past those anxious moments, perfectly willing to buy my non-answers. Anything to avoid turmoil. And damn near anything to keep palling about with the Great & Exciting & Romantic (and just a wee bit Notorious for spice) Jack Crow.

But Lya would have squashed it all if we had left her out.

Not that he couldn’t have ignored his own doubts without help. It’s just that he could never stand up to her actual opposition. If she wasn’t satisfied, he couldn’t be. Sooner or later make that simply soon we would be sitting there again with Holly reluctant to demand more and me reluctant to give it but both of us having to. By the strength of her will alone, she could force us to both do the one thing we dreaded most: get to the Point. Just what was I up to?

It wasn’t that she didn’t like me. She did. I liked her, too. But it was a bigger decision than that. I was an unknown, potentially destructive element in a situation already far too sloppy. And something else: the decision was her decision. For, if Holly was their focus, Lya was the Couple.

I sat there watching the two of them together, thinking about that and thinking about how, well, sweet they looked together. He was young and warm and brilliant. She was young and strong and wise. And, of course, lovely. They fit.

And all I could think of was the truth that would get me hung. Truth, a real burden against people who fit, especially for someone like me who hardly fit myself. . .

I had it then. If the truth was all I had, then that was all I could share. So share it I would. Generously, equitably. . . . I’d give ‘em half of it.

I cleared my throat. Firmly. They saw the cue, sat up a little straighter, just managed to avoid the impulse to trade a brief glance. “Holly, you’ve been most kind and very patient. Both of you have,” I added with a quick smile for Lya. She responded in mechanical kind without blinking a lash or easing back one bit. “But I know you want to know: just what does someone like meinterstellar piratewant here?” They smiled a little at the pirate part. Not enough. “Well, the fact is. Holly,” I continued and then stopped, took an obvious breath, shined what I hoped was a conspiratorial smile, and said, “. . . I can’t tell you.”

I saw them, felt them freeze, counted a single beat, then jumped in to thaw them out.

Of course, I wanted to tell them and of course there was something in the works, but then I was sure they had suspected that, knowing me as they did (sigh). I followed that crap with more crap just like it on the principle that lots and lots of nothing can sound like something. And then on to the obligatory truth part about how I wouldn’t want to do anything to damage their situation; how I didn’t expect that I would but that (also obligatory); I would certainly understand if that was unacceptable to them, I certainly would, and if they wanted me to stay oat of their way and move to the City all they had to do was say the word and out I’d go, yes sir!