Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (51 page)

“Make the records nicely, please, Aaron.”

“I will, Soli, I will. For you.”

“Ha ha.”

He wants poignantly to turn back, forces himself to trot up a ramp at random and discovers he is heading again toward Lory’s dorm. Don must be long gone now, but still he reconnoiters the lounge area before going in. Lory’s head—and good god, Don is still there! Aaron retreats, but not before he has seen that the shoulders actually belong to Timofaev Bron.

Feeling almost ludicrously dismayed, like a character in a bedroom farce, Aaron strides through the mixed-dorm commons, vaguely aware of the number of couples among the shadows. What the hell is Lory becoming, Miss
Centaur
? They have no right to bother Lory this way, he fumes, not with that ulcer still unhealed. Don’t they know she needs rest?
I am the doctor. . . .
The inner voice comments that more than Lory’s ulcers are unhealed; he disregards it. If Tim is not out of there in thirty minutes he will break it up, and—what?

Sheepishly, he admits his intention to, well, question her, although he cannot for the moment recall the urgency of what he had to ask. Well, confession is good for ulcers, too.

The next turnoff leads to the quarters of his first patient, a member of Tim Bron’s crew who came back to
Centaur
in full depressive retreat. Aaron has worked hard over him, prides himself on having involved the man in a set of correspondence chess games which he plays in solitary, never leaving his room. Now he finds the privacy-lock open, the room empty. Has Igor gone to Commons? His chess book is gone. Another point for the planet, Aaron decides, and goes cheerfully on to André Bachi’s room.

Bachi is out of bed, his slender Latin face looking almost like its old self despite the ugly heaviness of glomerule dysfunction.

“To think I will live to see it,” he tells Aaron. “Look, I have here the actual water, Jan sent it to me. Virgin water, Aaron. The water of a world, never passed through our bodies. Maybe it will cure me.”

“Why not?” The man’s intensity is heartbreaking; can he live two years, assuming they do go to Lory’s world? Maybe . . . Bachi is the board’s only failure so far. Merhan-Briggs syndrome, exceedingly rare, Coby’s brilliant diagnosis.

“With this I can die happy, Aaron,” Bachi says. “My god, for an organic chemist to experience this!”

“Is there life in it?” Aaron gestures at Bachi’s scanning scope.

“Oh, yes. Fantastic. So like, so unlike. Ten lifetimes’ work. I have only two mounts made yet; I am slow.”

“I’ll leave you to it.” Aaron puts Bachi’s urine and saliva vials in his kit.

When he comes out he will not turn back toward Lory; instead he takes a midship passage toward the bridge.
Centaur
’s bridge is in her big, shielded nose-module, which is theoretically capable of sustaining them all in an emergency. Theoretically; Aaron does not believe that most of his fellow crewmen could bear to pack themselves into it now, merely to survive. Up here is most of their important hardware, Åhlstrom’s computers, astrogation gear, backup generators, and the gyros and laser system, which are their only link with Earth. Yellaston, Don, and Tim have quarters just aft of the bridge command room. Aaron turns off before Computers at a complex of panels giving access to
Centaur
’s circuitry and stops under the door-eye of
Centaur’
s Communications chief. There is no visible call-plate.

Nothing happens—and then the wall beside his knee utters a grating cough. Aaron jumps.

“Enter, Doc, enter,” says Bustamente’s bass voice.

The door slides open. Aaron goes warily into a maze of low music and shifting light-forms in which six or seven big black men in various perspectives are watching him.

“I’m working on something in your field, Doc. Comparing startle stimuli. Nonlinear, low decibels give a bigger jump.”

“Interesting.” Aaron advances gingerly through unreal dimensions; visiting Ray Bustamente is always an experience. “Which one is you?”

“Over here.” Aaron strikes some kind of mirrored surface and makes his way around it to comparative normality. Bustamente is on his lounger in a pose of slightly spurious relaxation.

“Roll up that sleeve, Ray. We have to do this, you know that.”

Bustamente complies, grumbling. Aaron winds on the cuff, admiring the immense biceps. No fat on the triceps, either; maybe the big man really does pay some heed to his advice. Aaron watches his digital readout swing, relishing his feelings for Ray, what he thinks of as Ray’s secret. The man is another rarity, a natural-born king. The real living original of which Yellaston is only the abstraction. Not a team-leader like Don or Tim. The archaic model, the Boss, Jefe, Honcho, whatever—the alpha human male who outfights you, outdrinks you, outroars you, outsmarts you, kills your enemies, begets his bastards on your woman, cares for you as his property, tells you what to do—and you do it. The primordial Big Man who organized the race and for whom the race has so little more use. Ten years ago it hadn’t been visible; ten years ago there was a tall, quiet young Afro-American naval electronics officer with impeccable degrees and the ability to tune a Mannheim circuit in boxing gloves. That was before the shoulders thickened and the browridges grew heavy over the watchful eyes.

“I really wish you’d come by the clinic, Ray,” Aaron tells him, unwinding the cuff. “This thing isn’t a precision instrument.”

“What the hell can you do if you don’t like my sound? Give me a stupid-pill?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m making that planet, you know, Doc. Dead or alive.”

“You will.” Aaron puts his instruments away, admiring Bustamente’s solution to his problem. What does a king do, born into a termite world, barred even from the thrones of termites? Ray had seen the scene, spotted his one crazy chance. And his decision has brought him twenty trillion miles from the termite heap, headed for a virgin planet. A planet with room, maybe, for kings.

A girl-shape is wavering among the mirrors, suddenly materializes into Melanie, the little white-mouse air-plant tech. She has an odd utensil in her hand. Aaron identifies it as a food-cooking device.

“We’re working on a few primitive arts,” Bustamente grins. “What’s it going to be tonight, Mela?”

“A tuber,” she says seriously, pushing back her ash-pale hair. “It’s sweet but not much protein, it would have to be combined with fish or meat. You’ll get fat.” She nods impersonally at Aaron, goes back behind the screens.

“She’s mine, you know.” Bustamente stretches, one eye on Aaron. “Is that air as good as it looks? Ask your sister if it
smells
good, will you?”

“I’ll ask her when I drop by tonight.”

“Lot of dropping by recently.” Bustamente suddenly flicks a switch, and a screen Aaron hadn’t noticed comes to life. It’s an overhead shot of the Communications office. The gyro chamber beyond is empty. Bustamente grunts, rolls his switch; the view flips to the bridge corridor, flip-flip-flips to others he can’t identify. No people in sight. Aaron goggles; the extent of Bustamente’s electronic surveillance network is one of
Centaur
’s standing myths. Not so mythical, it seems; Ray really has been weaving in
Centaur
’s walls. Oddly, Aaron doesn’t resent it.

“Tim dropped by the shop today. Just looking to talk, he said.” Bustamente flips back to the gyro chamber, zooms in on the locked laser-console. There is a definitely menacing flavor to the show; Aaron recalls with pleasure the time Frank Foy tried to set a scanner on Coby without clearing with the Commo chief.

As if reading his thought, Bustamente chuckles. “To quote the words of an ancient heavyweight boxing champion, George Foreman,
‘Many a million has fall and stumble when he meet Big George in that ol’ black jungle. . . .’
Plans to make, you know, Aaron? Melanie, that’s one. She’s tougher than she looks, but she’s kind of puny. Need some muscle. That big old Daniela, she’s my number two. Marine biology, she knows fish.”

He flicks another image on the screen. Aaron gets a flash of a strong female back, apparently in the Commons game-bay.

“You’re selecting your, your prospective family?” Aaron is charmed by the big man’s grab at the guts of life. A king, all right.

“I don’t plan to hang in too close, you know, Doc.” His eye is on Aaron. “Should have medical capability. You’ll be sticking with the others, right? So I figure number three is Solange.”

“Soli?” Aaron stares, forces himself to hold his own grin. “But have you, I mean what does she—Ray, we’re nearly two years away, we may not even—”

“Don’t worry about that, Doc. Just thought I’d warn you. You can use the time to teach Soli what to do when the babies come.”

“Babies.” Aaron reels mentally; the word hasn’t been heard on
Centaur
for years.

“Maybe time you did a little planning yourself. Never too soon, you know.”

“Good thought, Ray.” Aaron makes his way out through the light-show jungle, hoping his smile expresses professional cheer rather than the sickly grin of one whose mate has just been appropriated by The Man. Soli! Oh, Soli, my only joy . . . but there’s years yet, nearly two years, he tells himself. Surely he can think of something. Or can he?

A ridiculous vision of himself fighting Bustamente in a field of giant cauliflowers floats through his mind. But the woman they’re fighting for isn’t Solange, Aaron realizes. It’s Lory.

Shaking his head at his subconscious, Aaron goes on up to the command corridor, taps the viewplate at Captain Yellaston’s door. He feels a renewed appreciation for the more abstract forms of leadership.

“Come in, Aaron.” Yellaston is at his console, filing his nails. His eyes don’t flicker; Aaron has never been able to catch him checking on his loaded kit. The old bastard knows.

“That speech was a good idea, sir,” Aaron says formally.

“For the time being.” Yellaston smiles—a surprisingly warm, almost maternal smile on the worn Caucasian face. He puts the file away. “There’s a point or two we should discuss, Aaron, if you’re not too pressed.”

Aaron sits, noting that Yellaston’s faint maxillary tic has surfaced again. The only indicator he has ever given of the solitary self-combat locked in there; Yellaston has an inhuman ability to function despite what must be extensive CNS toxicity. Aaron will never forget the day
Centaur
officially passed beyond Pluto’s orbit; that night Yellaston had summoned him and announced without preamble, “Doctor, I am accustomed to taking an average of six ounces of alcohol nightly. I have done so all my life. For this trip I shall reduce it to four. You will provide them.” Staggered, Aaron had asked him how he had come through the selection year? “Without.” Yellaston’s face had sagged then, his eyes had frightened Aaron. “If you care for the mission, Doctor, you will do as I say.” Against every tenet of his training, Aaron had. Why? He has wondered that many times. He knows all the conventional names for the demons the old man must poison nightly. Hidden ragings and cravings and panics, all to be exorcised thusly. His business is those names—but the fact is that Aaron suspects the true name of Yellaston’s demon is something different. Something inherent in life itself, time or evil maybe, for which he has no cure. He sees Yellaston as a complicated fortress surviving by strange rituals. Perhaps the demon is dead now, the fort empty. But he has never dared to risk inquiring.

“Your sister is a very brave girl.” Yellaston’s voice is extrawarm.

“Yes, incredible.”

“I want to be sure you know that I appreciate the full extent of Dr. Kaye’s heroism. The record will so show. I am recommending her for the Legion of Space.”

“Thank you, sir.” Glumly Aaron acknowledges Yellaston’s membership in the Love Lory Club. Suddenly he wonders, Is this the start of one of Yellaston’s breaks? It has only happened a few times, the giving-way of the iron man’s defenses, but it has caused Aaron much grief. The first was when they were about two years out, Yellaston began chatting with young Alice Berryman. The chats became increasingly intense. Alice was star-eyed. So far nothing wrong, only puzzling. Alice told Miriamne that he spoke of strange strategic and philosophical principles that she found hard to grasp. The culmination came when Aaron found her weeping before breakfast and hauled her to his office to let the story out. He had been dismayed. Not sex—worse. A night of incoherent, unstoppable talk, ending in maudlin childhood. “How can he be so, so
silly
—?” All stars gone, traumatic disgust. Daddy is dead. Aaron had tried to explain to her the working of a very senior, idiosyncratic old primate; hopeless. He had given up and shamelessly narcotwisted her memory, made her believe it was she who had been drunk. For the good of the mission . . . After that he had kept watch. There were three more, periodicity about two years. The poor bastard, Aaron thinks; childhood must have been the last time he was free. Before the battle began. So far Yellaston has never used him for release. Perhaps he values his bootlegger; more likely, Aaron has decided, he is simply too old. Is that about to change?

“Her courage and her accomplishment will be an inspiration.”

Aaron nods again, warily.

“I wanted to be sure you understand I have full confidence in your sister’s report.”

She snowed him, Aaron thinks dismally. Oh, Lory. Then he catches the tension in the pause and looks up. Is this leading somewhere?

“There is too much at stake here, Aaron.”

“That’s right, sir,” says Aaron with infinite relief. “That’s what I feel, too.”

“Without in any way subtracting from your sister’s achievement, it is simply too much to risk on anyone’s unsupported word. Anyone’s. We have no objective data on the fate of the Gamma crew. Therefore, I shall continue to send code yellow, not code green, until we arrive at the planet and confirm.”

“Thank god,” says Aaron the atheist.

Yellaston looks at him curiously. It’s the moment for Aaron to speak about the Tighe-sightings, the dreams, to confess his fears of Lory and alien telepathic vegetables. But there’s no need now, Yellaston wasn’t snowed, it was just his weird courtesy.