Pallas (20 page)

“In the second place, whatever his age, he had no right to opt out of the Greeley Utopian Memorial Project in violation of the binding and pe
r
petual articles his parents signed on his behalf years ago under the United Nations Charter.”

Now there was no mistaking the reaction of the audience. Emerson hadn’t met an Outsider who wouldn’t have enthusiastically razed every UN building in Sri Lanka so that “not one stone was left standing on another, and salt sown on the ruins.” The words had been those of Alo
y
sius Brody, quoting William Wilde Curringer.

“I see,” Brody replied in what Emerson knew was his most nonco
m
mittal tone. “And now will y’kindly be satisfyin’ me personal curiosity as t’why y’waited so long t’come after Emerson? It’s been a trifle more than a year, as I recollect.”

“Well, until recently, Your Honor, we didn’t know for certain where he was, and while it’s true that the number of places he could have been on this asteroid was limited, I’m an extremely busy man with no admi
n
istrative staff to speak of. You see, there are over ten thousand other lives at the Project—and numerous other important tasks—for which the United Nations holds me personally responsible. Also, Emerson’s parents persuaded me to wait, hoping his experiences here would help him d
e
velop sense enough to return where he belongs on his own.”

“I do see,” Brody replied, “indeed. And how did y’happen t’find out where he was?”

Altman cleared his throat again, embarrassed color visible in his face. It was clear he’d rather have not been asked this question. “Er...from my son, Your Honor, Gibson Altman, Junior, who learned of it from a casual remark made by a girl in town he happens to have been, er...dating. That’s her over at that table, isn’t it, Junior? Gretchen Singh, I believe she calls herself.”

Gibson Junior nodded, but his eyes were on Emerson, who felt a sudden unpleasant tightness spread through his body. It wasn’t fear, of the Altman boy or of anybody else. Inexperienced and self-conscious, he’d completely failed to notice that Gretchen had been trying to resolve a personal dilemma. He wasn’t altogether aware of it, even now. All he knew was uncertainty and a bitter feeling of betrayal.

What did it mean,
dating?

Were he and Gretchen
dating
now, too?

Ignoring the personal implications of what the Senator had said
,
Brody turned to the principal subject of the conversation. “And what have ye got t’say fer yerself in this, young fella? Can y’give me one good reason why I shouldn’t simply hand ye over t’this man—actin’ fer yer parents as he is an’ all?”

With difficulty, Emerson wrenched his mind back to the matter at hand. Naturally, he’d thought a great deal over the past two hours about what he intended to say at this point. He hadn’t discussed it with Gretchen or her mother. It was his life that was up for grabs. Nor did he want to talk about what was likely to happen if he did go back—Brody knew about that, in any case. In the end, knowing what he knew about the Outsiders, he settled on the simplest truth possible.

“Yes, sir: I don’t want to go.”

Brody turned back to the Senator and sighed, his customary brogue all but inaudible as he spoke. “Chief Administrator Altman, although it may not meet the eye at first, I happen t’be a man of no small number of r
e
sponsibilities, meself. One of ’em is operatin’ in a manner consistent with
Mirelle Stein’s Hyperdemocratic Covenant, under the terms of which, I’m happy t’point out,
the
notion of a ‘legal age’ is a fallacious concept which the Pallatians wisely left behind on Earth.”

The table Brody was sitting at may have been worse for the wear, but it contained a number of surprises. The arbiter lifted a section immediately before him and punched a number of keys. Instantly the wall behind him became a communications screen displaying a body of text prominently labeled at the top. Brody gave his hidden control board a few more keystrokes and the display scrolled down to the section he was looking for, which he blocked off and highlighted.

“As y’can see, Emerson Ngu’s autonomy is fully established by the fact that he’s self-supportin’. It has nothing whatever t’do with where or when he
happened
t’be born.”

Outrage on his face, Altman opened his mouth to speak.

Brody stopped him with an upraised hand.

“Moreover, Senator, I vehemently deny the legal or moral power of anyone to bind their children, their heirs, their posterity, to any sort of contract, business, social, or otherwise, in perpetuity—and so does this agreement, which, unlike the benighted and downtrodden denizens of your domain, fer whom a tragic misinterpretation of the terms allowed ye t’sign collectively, each of us ‘Outsiders’ signs on his own hook as soon as he or she feels responsible enough t’do so.

“I might add, somewhat parenthetically, that I don’t believe for a minute the reasons y’had t’give me fer waitin’ so long t’come after Emerson. I suspect it’s because things are goin’ badly for ye inside the Project and you wanna arm these goons of yours with real weapons, usin’ us Outsiders as an excuse.”

He slammed the gavel on the tabletop.

“But that’s irrelevant an’ immaterial. I hereby rule meself outa order an’ warn me not t’let it happen again. In the meantime, Senator
darlin
’, I support the right of this individual to’ve refugeed outa your Greeley Utopian Memorial Ant Farm and t’remain on the Outside or anyplace else fer as long as he wishes.”

The gavel came down again.

“Case dismissed. Emerson wins.”

“Just a minute!”
The Senator, still on his feet, somehow appeared to have just stood up. “I want you—all of you—to understand clearly the implications of what this man Brody has just done, the consequences he and his supporters may have to pay for failing to send Emerson Ngu back to his family.”

He turned a threatening expression on the entire room.

“I tried a peaceful, orderly approach to this matter. Legally I could have sent my entire force of United Nations Education and Morale counselors
Outside
and seized Emerson Ngu, wreaking God only knows what havoc in the process. But I gave you people an opportunity, and now I’ve been rewarded for my restraint.”

Brody shrugged. “Well, Chief Administrator, if y’should happen t’change yer mind, I cordially invite ye not just t’send yer goons, but t’come out an’ play yerself. It’s only fair t’remind ye, though, that I don’t know a soul in Curringer or anyplace on this rock excepting yer own stompin’ grounds who doesn’t own a gun an’ know how t’use it. Even young Mr. Ngu here,” he observed, “seems to’ve become a pretty fair shot, an’ I plan t’be right beside him with both hammers back and both index fingers on the triggers. I’ll also point out that UN blue’s a mighty conspicuous color against the brown-green background of Pallas.”

A low fire burned behind the Senator’s eyes as he curtly signaled his party to get up and follow him out. From their expressions Emerson couldn’t tell what his parents were thinking.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Altman replied. “Rest assured, Your
Honor
, that the next time I appear in Curringer, I’ll have the requisite resources to make good
any
claim.”

Across the room, Junior caught Emerson’s eye again, grinned mal
i
ciously, and made a throat-cutting gesture with his thumb. Then he turned and followed his father out. Emerson turned for a glance at Gretchen, only to discover that she was gone.

Unfortunately, the dramatic exit Altman had apparently intended was about to be spoiled by the fact that he and his companions would be spending another uncomfortable night in town, crowded together in the
rollabout, waiting for their “solar” vehicle’s batteries to recharge for the long trip back to the Project.

...when Rene relaxed his grip upon her—or when she imagined he had—when he seemed distracted, when he left her in a mood which she took to be indifference or let some time go by without seeing her or replying to her letters and she assumed that he no longer cared to see her and was on the verge of ceasing to love her, then everything was choked and smothered within her. The grass turned black, day was no longer day
nor
night any longer night, but both merely...part of her
torture...She felt as though she were a statue of
ashes—bitter, useless, damned...

—Pauline Reage,
Story of 0

F
or as long as he lived, the remainder of that afternoon and most of the next day were nothing more than a blur to him, filled with indisti
n
guishable noises echoing as if in a tunnel and the inexpressible pain of betrayal. Even the stuffed game animals mounted on the walls around him seemed to be leering.

Before Emerson knew what was happening, people all around were on their feet and heading toward him. In other circumstances it might have been a frightening experience for the boy. Those already close were laughing, cheering,
clapping
him on the back. None of their congratul
a
tions meant a thing.

All he knew or felt was a loss he couldn’t quite define. For a few sweet hours he’d believed, without ever consciously realizing he believed it, that Gretchen had given herself to him. Now, suddenly, he was learning, and in the hardest way possible, the second-hardest lesson prerequisite to growing up—that no one ever truly belongs to anybody else. He’d long since learned the hardest lesson, and far less painfully, that other people were as real as he was.

As if in a nightmare, he looked around for Gretchen, every muscle in his body straining with an anguish that was more than physical, trying to
see over and between the people mobbing him. She had disappeared and was nowhere to be seen. Preoccupied, he didn’t notice the way Mrs. Singh was watching him, half analytically, half in sympathy, unde
r
standing at least a part of what he was going through.

“Whatya say we get the hell outa this riot?” she shouted over the noise, directly into his ear, and seized him by one arm. “I suspect we got a lotta talking to do!”

Several members of the unruly crowd of well-wishers pushing in upon them began to protest. Almost anything constituted a good excuse for a party among this frontier community, especially at the Nimrod, and Emerson’s victory, although it had come as no surprise to any of them, was a better excuse than most. They didn’t intend to let such an oppo
r
tunity slip through their fingers.

Emerson never knew why he shook his head at his well-meaning landlady and gave in to the demands of those around him. Probably he dreaded hearing from her more unpleasant truths that should have been plain to him if only he’d opened his eyes. In any case, he shook her hand off and let himself be buried in the crowd.

The last thing he remembered clearly—after that it only came in bits and pieces—was being hauled by both wrists to the table where he’d seen that little blond and the other professionals from Galena’s. Come to think of it, it was the little blond who’d done the hauling, aided by a dark-haired girl with freckles and startlingly blue eyes. Now that the tension of the hearing had begun to dissipate, and despite his personal concerns, he was noticing more about those around
him,
and one thing he noticed right away was that the girls all smelled strongly of perfume, a dozen varieties competing violently with one another.

Under the circumstances, especially in a hot, crowded, smoky room and wearing a hot, uncomfortable woolen suit, it was almost enough to make him sick.

It didn’t help that they were all laughing and talking noisily and seemed to be making jokes at his expense. Although he thought they were speaking English, for some reason he couldn’t understand a fraction of what they were saying. Perhaps it wasn’t English. There appeared to be as
much variety in the colors of their skin, and therefore possibly their n
a
tionalities, as in their costumes. The former occupied considerably more surface area than the latter. Only a couple of the girls were like the little blond and her blue-eyed friend. A couple more were black. Others were of various shades between the extremes. One had the same a
l
mond-shaped eyes he did and her skin was the same color as his own, but it was the little blond who seemed fascinated with him.

Maybe she thought he had some money.

If so, she had been misinformed.

Someone, the little blond again—why couldn’t he remember her name?—shoved a long-stemmed glass under his nose, filled with som
e
thing fizzy like a pale golden softdrink. Preoccupied with the sight of what seemed to be acres of half-clothed flesh all around him, he gulped it down. It tasted like a softdrink, too, its flavor somewhere between that of green grapes and fresh apples.

And it only made him thirstier.

He thought—although the actual memory was only a vague impre
s
sion—that he drank a lot more of it. All he could hear in the background, above the babble of what seemed like thousands of other people in the room, was Aloysius Brody’s mechanical piano, the one with thumbtacks set in the felt of hammers driven by heavy punched-paper rolls, playing “Old-Fashioned Rock and Roll.” At least the taxidermized animal heads seemed to be enjoying the music
..

They were smiling at him now.

Emerson’s next memory was of lying on a squeaky white cloud with a golden lining, still slightly sick to his stomach, having just been bathed by someone in a way—and at an anatomical location—that he hadn’t ever been before by anybody but his mother. There was an angel looking over his shoulder—she was deeply tanned and there seemed to be something wrong about her feet—and another perched on his legs. There seemed to be something wrong about her robes. The sky above his head was pink and filled with floating purple orchids. Whenever he made the mistake of closing his eyes, the cloud whirled around and around.

He strained against the aching in his head and became aware, after a
fashion, that the cloud was actually an overstuffed mattress and quilt on a spindly brass bedframe with squeaky springs and that the sky was g
a
rishly printed wallpaper. The angel at his shoulder was a small bronze statue of a mermaid, sitting on a night table beside the bed.
The someone
who’d bathed him—only in one critical spot—and now sat on top of him, straddling his ankles, was the ubiquitous little blond. Somehow—he had no memory of the intervening period—she’d gotten him to her room on one of the upper floors of Galena’s.

And now she was wearing only long mesh stockings and a bright red, satiny, corsetlike thing which was apparently designed to hold her stockings up but in the process left her round, firm breasts—and almost everything below her navel—exposed.

“Good morning, Sunshine!” She grinned down at him, nodding toward a window somewhere behind him. “Actually, it’s only about one o’clock, and the night is young.”

He tried to struggle up to his elbows, but she was too heavy and the bed was too soft. Also, his head hurt too much. He thought it must have been all the perfume. “I don’t have any money.” His voice came in a croak but he was quite sincere about what he said next, especially from the waist down, where—unlike from his neck up—everything still seemed to be working. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“You keep on saying that,” she replied with a momentary frown, then brightened. “If I cared about that, silly, we’d be in one of the cribs downstairs instead of here in my own room. We’re gonna have fun. Pallas is a small world, and we can make the round trip as many times as you’re up to it—and I can be a lotta help in that department, believe me. I liked you the first time I laid eyes on you, and I wanna help you celebrate how your hearing came out. Besides, who knows? You might turn out to be a steady customer someday.”

“I, er...”

She frowned again, perplexed. “You know, you may be a grown man legally, Emerson Ngu, but you still smell just like a little boy. You don’t smoke, do you?”

“Uh, no—” He was relieved. He’d thought she’d been about to ask if
he were a virgin, and the only clever comeback he’d ever thought of to that question scarcely applied.

“Or drink coffee?”

“A little.
Not really. I—”

“I thought so. Well, it’s nice doing somebody who smells clean for a change.” She grinned,
then
leaned forward so that he could only see the top of her head.

To his relief and disappointment—he’d never been aware before that a person could feel both of those emotions at once—everything went black again after that.

“Jealousy’s a perfectly proper emotion,
Emerson,
don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”

He shook his head, which still hurt, but didn’t disagree with Mrs. Singh, although what she said was the opposite of what he’d been told all his life. In a Utopian community where everybody was supposed to love everybody else—something told him that something may have been wrong with the terminology and that he wasn’t dealing with the same kind of love in this instance—jealousy was at the top of a long list of unforgivably individualistic sins. Nor did it occur to him to question her assumption that jealousy was what he was feeling.

It was morning again, the day after the hearing at the Nimrod. He’d managed to stagger to the boardinghouse from Galena’s an hour after sunrise, hung over (although he didn’t know it) and aching severely from just below his navel to just above his knees. The worst was that he felt as though someone had punched a huge, hard, hairy fist into his bladder. The little blond—he still didn’t know her name; after their third or fourth ultimate intimacy, he’d been too embarrassed to ask her—had been as good as her word about helping him.

She’d been a lot of help.

Probably too much, from the way the insides of his thighs chafed whenever he took a step.

She’d also been kind enough to let him shower at her place, help him to restore his suit to some semblance of decency, and even feed him a
lavish breakfast. She’d have kept him even
longer,
she’d informed him sometime during the half hour she’d taken to kiss him good-bye, if she hadn’t needed her “beauty sleep” for the long work night ahead. Som
e
thing deep inside told him that he ought to have skulked back to Mrs. Singh’s much earlier, in the dark, shamefaced and laden down with guilt, but, among other things, he was far too tired for that. And he’d had a
l
together too good a time—parts of him had, at least.

And Gretchen wasn’t back yet, herself.

Mrs. Singh didn’t know where she was.

In some ways, it was like that first day he’d come to this house. Mrs. Singh, who seemed to be as worried about him as she was about her own daughter—perhaps even more so; he suspected she thought Gretchen better able to take care of herself—had made hot chocolate and they sat together now in her living room. Only the lighting was different. He’d arrived at night, in a rainstorm. Now the only dark clouds and freezing drizzle were inside of him.

“It’s a species survival trait,” she was going on, “which, among other functions, protects the home, the family, and insures the healthiest offspring possible.”