The Seeds of Time (44 page)

“He bother you?” she asked Petya.

Petya pressed the probe into the circuit board, watching the monitor, which displayed the circuit layout. “I can fix this, no problem.”

Clio went over, drew a chair up next to Petya. “He bother you?”

“I don’t like to talk to him.” Petya looked up at her. “You shaved off all your hair?” He brought his hand up to
touch a shaving scar on her scalp. “And you cut yourself?” His eyes were better now, clear of meds—or clearer.

“I was in a quarry, Petya.”

Petya looked away, down to the probe in his other hand, unmoving. “I got lost on the road,” he said, “and Mrs. Looby picked me up in her ’83 Chevy Nova. I was lost. You were lost?”

“No. I waited for you by the water tower, waited a long time. I finally left, but I been waiting for you a long time, Petya. Then I’ve been flying these ships, but I never forgot you.”

Petya still hadn’t moved. “We were lost,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess we were.”

Clio rested her head on his shoulder a moment, wanting to be close, not wanting to push it.

“I’ve got to fix this,” he said.

“I know.” She drew back and smiled at him. “They shaved your hair, just like me. Looks like hell.”

“You
look like hell,” he responded, in the old repartee.

“Oh yeah? Well if your hair was any shorter, we could play pool with your head.”

A smile erupted on his face. “We look like hell,” he said, going back to his circuit board.

Clio watched him for a time, face hot in that way of unwanted emotions, stuff that comes bubbling up from way below the mantle. She swung her chair around.

“So, this is where you hide out?” she said to Ashe.

He brought his feet down, leaned elbows on the counter, watching her. “How long’s it been?”

“How long’s what been?”

His eyes flicked over to Petya.

She shrugged. “Long time.” She unraveled herself from the chair. “So you’re ship’s botanist, I hear.”

“Yes. They think I’ll come in handy when we find the crash site. ID the difference between plant growth and metal ship. Apparently there’s some confusion about that.”

Clio withheld an ironic smile. “Yeah. They get easily confused.”

Ashe leaned back in the chair again. “And you, I hear you’ve decided to Dive.”

“I guess so.”

“And cozy up to Colonel Tandy.” He smiled, making the comment rather more friendly than challenging.

“Not cozying up.”

“Oh. My mistake.” He stood, sauntered around the lab island, leaned against her side of it.

His dark features carried a smile in sharp relief, betraying an energy even when he was leaning, arms folded casually, against the counter. She felt something crouching in his shoulders, an impulse to run, a shout, some fullness about him.

“You got something against Tandy?” she asked.

He raised his hands in protest. “Got nothing against. Army’s a fine profession. Tandy’s a fine colonel. He may be a sly, subverted, posturing fool, but he’s a fine man, I’m sure.”

“So, he’s army,” Clio responded. “What’s new?”

“It’s new if you weigh in on his side.”

“How many sides we got here?”

“More than one. More than one viewpoint.”

Clio started to say something, stopped. Damned if she was going to speak up for Tandy. Damned if she was going to weigh in on any side when she didn’t even know there
were
sides. “You don’t think we should be going back to Niang, do you?”

He raised the good eyebrow. “Maybe I think we shouldn’t go blasting our way through the jungle until we know what we’re doing, what the stakes are. Maybe I think the colonel and his folks are quick to make a war out of anything they don’t understand. Maybe I’m just an old pacifist, lost in a world I don’t understand.”

Couldn’t miss the irony of that last. Clio found herself smiling, a real one. “Me too,” she said. “Lost in a world I don’t understand.” Getting to like the man, by God. She started to push back her hair, the old sensuous gesture, encountered plucked-chicken scalp. Saw herself, skinny and bald, wanting to flirt with a man whose sexual energy could flatten her, wanting to get naked with the first man she’d felt
friendly toward since Loren in the barracks, confusing, again, sex and comfort, confusing the basics once again. Jesus. Turned to go.

“You don’t have to leave,” he said. “Got plenty of paperbacks. Even some great war stories, right up your alley.”

She turned at the door. Looked him in the eyes. “Hey thanks. For letting Petya work here.”

She turned again, reached for the door.

“Clio,” Ashe said. “You always keep such a tight rein?”

She stopped, didn’t know what to say for once. Closed the door behind her, got into the corridor where she could breathe again.

Her stomach churning, and figuring it might be hunger, she headed for the galley on mid-deck. Found a tableful playing blackjack, crew mostly, but three army. Heads turned, and back to the game, ignoring her. In a voyage of more than a few weeks, tensions could build in the cheek-by-jowl crowding of a mission like this one. It helped that a third of the crew were on sleep shift at any one time, but crew pressed in on each other nonetheless. They respected each other’s silence, the only privacy most of them had. This might have been the reason the crew ignored Clio, respecting her privacy. Might have been. But hell, had to be dead or deaf or both not to have heard that Clio Finn ran rampant on the old
Starhawk
, brought down the ship and all its crew. How they reconciled that rumor with her co-piloting
Galactique
was anyone’s guess.

Clio made herself a meatloaf sandwich, squeezing a brown, ketchupy-smelling paste from the tube, flipped open a minicarton of protein gelatin, and settled in to her meal, leaning against the counter, watching the game. Dealer at her end of the table, army, had two eights, easy to beat, and sure enough lost the hand; paid off. Turned real slow to stare at Clio, and she obliged him by moving off to a side table, minding her own business.

“Getting sensitive, hey Lewis?” one of them asked the dealer.

“Try to blame her,” another one said, “but you a null-ass player, Lewis.”

“Just don’t like no quarry meat staring down my back,” Lewis responded.

Clio kept on chewing. Wished she had some water to wash the sandwich down with. Not going to get up now.

“Yeah, I heard she spent her vacation in a quarry after she had a little accident with a spaceship.”

“You in or out, Burks?” Lewis dealt another hand.

Money slid onto the table.

Clio ate her sandwich and thought of Timothy Ashe. Something disconcerting about him, couldn’t figure what. A man who might be flirting with her, but not coming on directly. A man who was taking Petya under wing … and why was that? A man who seemed to know things about her, like time spent with Colonel Tandy, and with a bone to pick against army. Irritated her, lecturing her about army. Holed up as he was in his botany lab and spouting pacifism, never having seen the army up close. Never having taken the army on. And lost. And lost all that she had lost. Damn intellectual fool.

Behind her, the hand played out, and Lewis lost the deal. “Hey, Finn,” he said. “I thought
army
barbers were bad. How much you pay for that haircut?”

Clio answered, not turning around. “Plenty.” Then she heard herself saying, “How much you paid so far to stay in that game, soldier?”

One of his buddies hooted. She heard a chair scrape back. Jesus Christ, here we go.

Lewis came around, grabbed a chair, and sat on it backward, leaning on its back. Long face, hatchet-thin. “Heard they got you set up for one more Dive, then they gonna use you for science experiments, Finn.” He got a better idea. “You and your retard brother.”

“Guess I’m just shit out of luck then, boy. Same as you.”

He swung out of the chair and pushed her, a warm-up slap to her shoulder. “You just don’t know when to shut up, do you, Finn?”

Clio carefully placed the sandwich back on the paper plate. Managed to swallow what she was chewing. Kept her eyes on the sandwich. Just let everybody cool down.

Somebody said, “Stow it, Lewis.”

He punched her shoulder again. “Heard you’re a good fighter, that right baldy?” Pushed her harder this time, sent the chair skidding back. Army buddies jumped up and grabbed Lewis, pinned his arms.

“Leave her the fuck alone,” one of them said. Lewis stopped struggling.

“Yeah.” Shook his head. “Guess I lost it.” Some tension eased. Clio picked her plate up from the table. Army started back to the gaming table. As Clio passed Lewis, he elbowed her in the stomach, and swiped his foot behind her, toppling her; the sandwich went flying. She scrambled into a crouch and dove for his knees, driving him back against the bulkhead, where his head slammed hard enough to bring down the fire extinguisher in a glancing blow off the side of his face. She was straddling him as Commander Singh appeared in the doorway, and crew fell to attention, the fire alarm wailing like an avenging ghost.

Clio slowly climbed off Lewis.

“See to this corporal who is bleeding,” Singh ordered, shouting above the fire tone. One of them went over to help Lewis. “This alarm is unnecessary?” Singh asked.

“The extinguisher fell off the wall, sir,” Clio said.

“You will be seeing to that,” Singh ordered.

Clio deactivated the alarm at the wall hookup.

“What is the cause of this?” Singh demanded.

The senior Biotime technician spoke up. “Lewis attacked her, sir. She insulted his card playing.”

Singh looked at her as though he were personally hurt.
God, the man wants me to do well
, Clio thought.
Poor son of a bitch
. She rubbed her midriff, which felt dented from Lewis’ elbow.

Singh scanned the group. “This galley will no longer be in disarray within a very few minutes.” Finally one of the crew figured that for an order, and responded, “Yessir.” Then Singh turned to Clio, nodded her out the door.

“He bashed me in the stomach, sir,” Clio said, following him to the God-loving bridge.

“This will be a story for Colonel Tandy, Miss Finn.” He did her the courtesy of climbing the bridge ladder first, not treating her like she was in custody. She followed him. So, Tandy will handle this. Didn’t know who she’d rather face, Tandy or Hocking. Tandy’d maybe be another one who’d be disappointed in her, and maybe it was easier to face somebody who despised her than somebody who liked her, and why
that
should be the way of the world was freeping well beyond her.

But she didn’t give a shit in any case; why should she?

She waited outside Tandy’s cabin while Singh went inside. Lieutenant Ryerson stood his post outside, saying nothing, eyes saying everything. Then Singh was waving her in, and she entered, met by Tandy’s lilting classical music. Tandy was at his desk in front of the viewports. While he left her standing there, she could hear his pen scratching, a fountain pen, in fact. Finally he looked up.

“Corporal Lewis slugged me, sir,” she said, “without provocation. Or not much, anyway.”

A fleeting smile, gone before it bloomed. “Clio, Clio.”

“I had to protect myself.”

He thumbed a switch, silencing the music. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“Nosir.”

“Then we will trust the medics will give their full attention to Corporal Lewis, and we will go on with more important matters.”

He raised a hand to fend off further discussion. “Corporal Lewis is of no consequence. Corporal Lewis is a moron who delights in baiting people, especially the less powerful. I think he sadly misjudged whom he had taken on.” He rose from his chair and beckoned her to the viewport. Before them the stars flecked the blackness in a sweeping vista of the far terrain.

He swung a hand out, encompassing the view. “What do you think of when you look at the stars, Clio?” They stood side by side, like the two explorers they were, viewing
as though from a promontory the harsh and thrilling territory beckoning them.

“Guess I don’t think, sir.” In the silence that followed she added, “Maybe it’s more something I feel.”

“Awe, respect, things like that?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Maybe longing. Don’t know why.”

“Longing, yes. I can see why you would. For myself, I look at these stars and I think of the future. The stars are the future. The Earth has had its day, its allotment of days, but the stars, the stars are an inexhaustible source of days.” He looked momentarily at her. “I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying. It’s as though the stars are
time
, time that represents the currency of our human lives, so that if we are to live we must have the stars—spend them wisely, of course—but we must reach out and grasp our days.” He turned to look at her, his face lit wanly by the ancient light piercing the viewports. “Do you see?”

Clio knew that he wished to be understood, so she said, “I think so, sir.”

“We deserve the stars, Clio. We aren’t ignorant shepherds herding our goats and marveling at the starry night sky. We are a great civilization on the brink of claiming the stars for our own, and all the planets they warm. Exploration and wealth and knowledge unlimited. Unlimited, Clio. But we are thwarted, confined by the minor technology of Dive, denied the freedom to roam the galaxy—and beyond—at will. It’s as though a magnificent stallion were tethered to a tree, and could only range in a limited circle. But cut that tether, and then you will feel the wind in your mane, by God, and the Earth crumbling beneath your hooves!” His eyes narrowed as he seemed to see, not the panorama of the Milky Way, but his vision of the liberated stallion thundering across the plains.

They were silent a long time then. Finally he said, in a lower tone. “I bore you with my musings.” He smiled at some private thought. Then: “I can talk myself into a sweat, Suzanne always said. My wife was a great listener. She put up with me, you see. Knew I had these high callings, to do and achieve great things, or be a part of them.” He smiled
again. “So she listened. Not that she didn’t have a thing or two to say for herself. She was brilliant, more brilliant than I, and light-years beyond me in reading and culture. She was a published poet, and … well, a great lady, as they used to use the term. A great lady.”