Harbinger (18 page)

“With claws.”

“Gerry? Come on.” I laughed. “Anyway, I can take care of myself and him too.”

She looked doubtful.

“Something you’re not telling me?” I asked.

“No. Not really.”

“Dinner tonight?”

“Sure. Anyway, tell Niels I said hi.”

I promised I would, then exited the building. It was a lovely day, and Gerry was gone—which made it even lovelier.

I knew enough about The County to remember that the Mayor’s office in each of the towns had its own Core Access Interface. In fact, these were the only CAIs outside of the Command Level.

Twenty minutes later I was looking at the one in Niels Bradshaw’s office. It was kind of like an old-fashioned barber chair with an equally old-fashioned hair dryer attached. I knew from the CAIs on the Command Level that the interface apparatus needn’t be so clunky.

“May I?” I said, nodding at the barber chair.

“You want to interface?” He sounded a little put out. After all, wasn’t I there to talk with wonderful
him
?

“If you don’t mind,” I said. “I need to check something out.”

“Be my guest, Mr. Herrick.”

I sat down and performed a soft interface. The Super Quantum Core read me and produced a cloud. You never know what you’re going to get when you interface. It’s part of the charm, I guess.

My cloud was all puffy and white, and it drifted serenely in a blue sky. Probably it was the one I’d watched sail into the Scrim earlier.

You can see anything in a cloud. Dragons, whales, castles. I lay on my back and watched this one drift and subtly shift shapes. I felt sleepy and
there
, at the same time. My Rorschach cloud began to look a little like a two story house, circa 1970, with gables.

Come up here, Romeo
.

It was like shuffling through indexed memory files. I knew what I wanted, and now the SuperQuantum Core knew, as well. The desired Environment already existed, and if I was anybody else, that was the Environment that would now manifest. But since it was
my
consciousness that had provided the original memory materials, the computer now had a choice between dropping me into the old Environment or drawing out a new one from the original source: me.

I wanted to see the existent Environment. It was older and had been produced at a time when I had no particular expectations of the technology, and was less likely, therefore, to corrupt the process with an agenda. On the other hand it wasn’t necessarily a good idea to enter one’s own Environment. In fact, it was strongly discouraged, which is why I’d never done it. There had been cases of psychotic dislocations resulting in some very quirky mental rubbering. That happened rarely, though, and I was feeling reckless.

I came forward,
pushing
at the Rorschach cloud, making my preference known.

SuperQuantum accommodated my choice.

The cloud lost its white puffiness, flattened out, darkened, retreated into the distance, joined a night time overcast. Lightning flickered inside of it, and then I heard the rumble and felt it, and I was viewing the spring storm through the window of Nichole’s bedroom, post-coital.

She snuggled against me under loose sheets. Elton John’s gap-toothed grin on the poster over the Gerard turntable. I was inside of myself and outside at the same time, and that wasn’t altogether the quantum effect; it was true experiential recollection. Being myself remembering myself within a previously constructed personal Environment, I
knew
it was a true thing.

—what did you mean about knowing me before—

—like in a past life—

 . . . .

I stopped listening to what we were saying. I tried to turn up the gain on the feel of Nichole’s presence. It struck me forcibly, and I pulled abruptly out of the Environment.

The computer placed me under the drifty cloud again. I hovered a few moments. The cloud shifted subtly, suggesting various objects, various hooks into my memory pond.

When I was ready I came forward,
pushing
again. This time I rejected the existent Environment and let the computer resurrect it all out of my present conscious/unconscious paradigm. The cloud resolved itself into a house shape. I stood on a dew-damp lawn, looking up at Nichole in the window of her bedroom. Only it wasn’t Nichole but Delilah Greene leaning on the window sill/ gazebo rail.

—we meet again—

—we were bound to—

—come on climb up here romeo—

I withdrew from the interface, shaking and strangely enervated.

My visa had a one week expiration stamp. I ignored it. I not only ignored it, I buried it. Scooped a hole in the soil of somebody’s window box a couple of blocks from the hotel and pressed into the hole the wafer with it’s tiny blinking red expiration dot, and covered it over. Then I picked up my new overnight bag and Delilah and I strolled down to the monorail station.

Slipping along at a leisurely speed in the silver train I was again struck by the theme park ambience.
We are now departing Tomorrowland. Next stop: Frontierland
.

Actually the next stop was Waukegan, but Delilah didn’t want to go to that town where her “perfect” genetic match was doddering around the Mayor’s residence. So after another short ride we found ourselves standing on the platform in De Smet, watching a handful of passengers board the train heading back to Bedford Falls.

The object was to disappear for a while. Not an easy thing to accomplish inside the closed world of an interstellar vehicle, even one of the immense proportions of
Infinity
. Nichole knew the manager of the De Smet Hotel, Amy Granger, and she agreed to put us up as unregistered guests. That would do for the short term.

Delilah was a sport about it, but she did ask, “What’s the big deal? Won’t Ulin just extend your visa?”

“He might. But I don’t feel like asking him.”

“Why not?”

“It irks me.”

She laughed. “You’re easily irked.”

“Am I ever.”

I felt the way I’d felt during my final months in Blue Heron. I was weary of being Ulin’s personal organ bank. I was sick past the coping point of the invasive procedures and extractions. I knew it was the price of my ticket to another world (any other world, please) but I was still sick of it.

And then there was Delilah. I wasn’t a True Believer, not even after my experience with the Core interface. My unconscious mind could and probably did have an agenda. But I had an agenda of my own
conscious
devising. I’d enjoyed the comfort of girls on the Command Level. They were volunteers, carefully chosen by Laird based on psychological profiles, approached quietly and offered various inducements to be of  . . . service. My presence on board
Infinity
, more than a hundred years out, was still largely unknown by the general population. (Laird feared a repeat of the situation that had eventually occurred back on Earth, with my known status causing division and desperation). So I’d had girls, some of them very nice. But I hadn’t had
a
girl. As in girlfriend. Not even on Earth, not for uncounted decades. Lots of girls but no companion.

A human being (and I was still that) requires more than occasional sex to complete the male/female equation. He needs relationship. Like air or water. Even I needed relationship, as much as I tended to resist it.

A couple of days after our arrival in De Smet I decided to give Delilah a present. We were in the dining room of the hotel. I watched her unwrap it. She was at half-dimple then went to a full double when she saw what it was.

“Ellis, my
gosh
!”

A white gold ring on a fine link chain.

“It isn’t really gold, is it?” she asked.

“Bite it and see.”

“Huh?”

“Just a joke. Yeah, it’s really gold.”

“But where in the world did you get it? There’s nothing like this on
Infinity
.”

I brought it with me from Earth,” I said. “I guess you could say it has sentimental value. It used to belong to someone important to me.”

Nichole
hung between us like an exhaled breath, but neither of us said her name.

“Well, it’s beautiful,” Delilah said. “I mean, if you’re sure you want me to have it?”

“I’m sure.”

She ducked her head and slipped the chain around her neck. She held the ring for a moment, admiring it, then tucked it under her tunic where I generally wanted to be—in the warm and breastful place. Man.

“Come here,” she said.

I half stood, leaning over the table, and she kissed my lips.

Then Gerry walked in and more or less spoiled things. I saw him weaving through the tables of the sparsely populated dining room, zeroing in on us.

I broke the kiss and said, “Uh oh.”

“What?”

“The principal’s here and he doesn’t look like our pal.”

“Gerry?”

She turned and saw him. He appeared a little on the haggard side. Like he needed more sleep and less of whatever he had been drinking. Also a shave. He swaggered up to our table and, rather sneeringly, said:

“Mind if I join you two?”

“Did we forget to turn in an assignment?” I said. He ignored me, which was reasonable from his perspective.

“Dee?”

Dee
?

“Gerry, what are you doing here?”

He pulled a chair out noisily and dropped into it. “What I’m doing here is bringing you back to your senses, hopefully.”

“That sentence needs to be re-thunk,” I said. “It don’t parse. You did everything but dangle your participle, and for all I know you even did that.”

“You
shut up
,” he said, his face momentarily furious. Then to “Dee” he went on. And on.

“I could tolerate it with your gene match. That’s the way it has to be. But this man isn’t anybody’s gene match. He’s a genetic freak. I’ve been reading up on him. He can’t even impregnate you.”

“Gerry, do you want to keep your voice down, please?” Delilah said.

“Why should I? Are you so ashamed of your dirty affair with this—person?”

“Gerry,” I said. “Shut up.”

“Because otherwise,” he continued, “why would you run off in secret? Why would you want to hide?”

“We prefer to think of it as a romantic getaway,” I said.

“And I prefer for you to shut the hell up while I’m talking to my friend,
whom
you didn’t even know existed a week ago.”

“Whom yet.”

“Dee, I love you. That has to count for something. I know you don’t accept it but you have to believe me. Love matters, even here.”

He had a point.

“Gerry?” I said. “Go away now, okay?”

“Dee?”

No dimples for Gerry. Delilah closed her eyes and cradled her head in her hand.

“Dee,
please
.”

Delilah didn’t look up. Very softly, she said, “No, Gerry.”

Something collapsed behind Gerry’s face. Without visibly moving, he slumped. Delilah could collapse men as easily as Nichole used to. Gerry stood up, turned, and walked out.

“You okay?” I asked Delilah, touching her arm.

She nodded, then raised her head and wiped her red eyes.

“He’s really in love with me,” she said. “And I made the mistake of sleeping with him.”

“Oh.” A surprisingly robust current of jealously surged through me.

“How does that work,” I asked, “if you’re supposed to have somebody else’s baby?”

“It can work, just not with Gerry and me. Love isn’t outlawed. We’re talking about two parent homes, but they don’t have to be the biological parents. I’ll have Ben Roos’ baby, but that’s just the genetics. Obviously it can get complicated. Harmonious couplings are important, for a stabilizing family group. But sometimes somebody’s not so happy.”

“Or stable,” I said. “Who’s Ben Roos, by the way?”

“The mayor of Waukegan.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Love does matter, doesn’t it, Ellis?”

“Yes.”

She touched her chest, the ring under her tunic. For one craven instant I regretted giving it to her.

“Well,” I said, “if Gerry can find us I suppose anybody can.”

“You’re not going back already?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“But even if you do we could still see each other. Like I said, it’s not outlawed. It wouldn’t be every day, I know that. But sometimes. You could come back, and I could even visit you Overhead.”

“Sure,” I said. “But I don’t want to go back. I’m not ready. I—”

“What is it?”

“They do things to me. It’s not that far off from rape, what they do. I agreed to it. I signed aboard, just like I did with Langley all those years ago. But I hate it. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad, but it is. In a few days Laird will need me. I don’t want to be there.”

“What will happen if you’re not?”

“Nothing good, as far as he’s concerned. If his great grandfather’s experience is any indicator he’ll persist for a long time anyway, but there will be progressive degeneration. Then he’ll die, like everybody else. Almost everybody else.”

“But if he dies what happens to
Infinity
?”

“It goes on,” I said. “Laird’s one man. His wealth and vision got this ball rolling, but we’re on the downhill slope now. Whether Laird’s with us or not, this vessel will reach Ulin’s World.”

“Ellis, do you know what you’re saying? It’s like killing him on purpose, isn’t it?”

“No. His natural death would have occurred decades ago. He’s on borrowed time. Time borrowed from
me
. It’s more like pulling the plug.”

“Pulling the plug?”

“Old expression. It meant disconnecting a hopeless case from life supporting machines. It meant allowing a brain dead person’s body to die, too.”

“But Laird Ulin isn’t brain dead.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said.

We went upstairs to grab a few things before departing. There weren’t a lot of places we could go, but Delilah did have friends in Waukegan and she thought we could stay with them a short while. After that, we’d play it by ear. Maybe do some camping in the Oxygen Forest. I wanted to stay ahead of Laird for as long as possible; it didn’t have to be forever.