Robert Heinlein - Variable Star

I think I made a small moaning sound. His eyes refocused past the holo and locked on to me, and the holo vanished. His hands drifted at waist level, but somehow less like they were poised over an invisible keypad, and more like they were poised over the controls of an invisible weapon.

“Johnson,” he called.

I shook my head. “Johnston,” I corrected.

He shook his head. “No,” he insisted. “Johnson.”

“I’m pretty sure,” I said.

“I’m positive,” he said.

I closed my eyes and opened them again. “One last time: who ’s on first, what ’s on second,” I said.

He frowned thunderously. “I don’t understand you.”

“My point exactly. Let’s start this routine over from the top, and see if we can identify just where gangrene set in. Ready? Straight man: Say, who’s that handsome bastard floating outside the doorway? Talent: Joel Johnston, junior agronomist. Honest, I really am.”

His brow and hands relaxed. “You got a corrupted copy. My script reads differently. Dipshit: Say, whose work am I interrupting? Talent: Herb Johnson, the writer. Dishonest, but I really am.”

Light dawned. We had been talking at cross-purposes. “Glad to know you. Which one am I, again?”

“The other one. You coming in? I’m losing smoke.”

I was starting to enter when the choice was taken from me. Three men arrived behind me, all talking loud and fast, and I found myself swept into the room before them. I grabbed the nearest handhold, which turned out to be what would be an overhead light once we were under acceleration.

The loudest voice was holding forth on English history, I’m pretty sure, though I don’t know which period. “—that not many people realize is that the dukes of hazzard used up nearly three hundred dodge chargers.”

“So it wasn’t a total loss, then,” one of his companions replied.

“Right. And who is this before me?”

“Johnston,” I said.

He shook his head. “Close. Johnson. And who are you?”

Herb and I exchanged a glance. “My name is Joel Johnston.”

“He’s the new guy we heard about,” Herb said.

“Ah,” said the third arrival. “John’s ton . You are him, plus T.”

“Actually,” Herb said, “he’s me, minus coffee.” He turned to me. “It’s going to be a long twenty years, isn’t it? They’ve got me doing it.”

“Welcome to Rup-Tooey, Joel,” the second newcomer to speak said to me. “Home of the Lost Boys. I’m Pat Williamson, one of your new roommates.”

We did the free-fall equivalent of shaking hands: approach, squeeze both hands briefly, release. “Hi, Pat. Why do you call it Rup-Tooey?”

The history expert snorted. “Because he’s a phlegm-ing idiot.”

“You saw it on the hatch,” Pat said. “Residential, Unclassified Personnel, cubic 0010-E. RUP-0010-E… Rup-Tooey.”

“Ah.” I could think of nothing to add.

“That’s your bunk over there. You’ll have to tell me all about yourself.”

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time to talk,” I said politely.

“No, I mean you’ll really have to tell me all about yourself.”

“Professor Pat is ship’s historian,” the third arrival explained. “Thinks this makes him biographer. I tell him is dangerous: he should let sleeping bags lie. But he is encouragable. Glad to please you, Joel. Well come on the board of Sheffield .” He pronounced it like “shuffled.” “Am Balvovatz, of Luna. Am miner.”

“He looks like an adult,” the loud expert on ducal matters said. “They age fast in Luna.”

“Give to me a fracture.” Balvovatz glared at him, and turned back to me. “Balvovatz mines . In mine . You got rock, give you ore. You understand?” I managed a nod. “So when Shuffled reach Immega 714, am big shoot. Till then, like teats on male person: no more use than historian or writer. That is why slum here in UP dump with you bowl budgers.”

“Dole bludgers,” Williamson corrected gently.

I had to admire his restraint. And his optimism in even trying.

“I think I see,” I said. “A pattern begins to emerge. How about you?” I asked the loud expert. “What’s your line? Horse whispering? Weatherman?”

It is difficult to smirk without being offensive, but he managed it somehow. “I’m a Relativist,” he said. “My name’s Solomon Short.”

My mouth slammed shut. I had just met my second wizard, in my first half hour aboard. And this one I had actually heard of. Maybe you have, too. That arrest record.

He was smirking at himself, that was why. “Yeah. You remember the headline they all used. Short grounded. They loved that one. I keep meaning to bisect a baby; they’d all die of biblical ecstasy. Solomon subdivides tot. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate a donor. Was your father—?”

“Yes.”

He nodded and stopped smirking. “Well chosen, sir. May I ask your own line of interest?”

It was diplomatically asked. Most people said, “Are you a physicist like your father?” and thought themselves tactful because they hadn’t said “great physicist.” So instead of giving my standard deflective response (“I’m involved in pneumatic generation of sequences of higher order vibratory harmonics designed to induce auditory maximization of local endorphin production”), I just told him, “I’m a composer and musician.”

He smiled—no smirk component at all, this time. “This voyage has just become distinctly less intolerable. And what is your axe?”

“Saxophone.”

Now he beamed . It made him look like a cherub who you do not yet know has just lifted your wallet. “Which one?”

“Well, since they didn’t count against my mass allowance, I brought the standard four. Soprano, tenor, alto, and baritone.”

He shivered with joy. “I often wish I could manage to make myself believe in a god, but hardly ever so that I can thank him for something. Welcome aboard, Maestro.”

“You haven’t even heard me play, yet.”

He nodded. “And the agony is delicious. I’ll leave you to sett—oh, my word! I don’t see them!”

“What?”

“Tell me you didn’t entrust your instruments to your luggage?”

“I didn’t have any oth—”

“Don’t panic yet!” he cried, sprang for the door so fast it barely had time to iris out of his way, and used both hands to swing himself out into the direction of traffic. “There may still be time,” his voice said as it dopplered away.

A hand closed on my shoulder. The bone held. “Do not worry, friend Joel,” Balvovatz said. “A snitch in time saves mine.” He let go before I would have had to scream, whacked me on that shoulder blade, and drifted away again. Somehow I retained my grip on the overhead light, but it took me a moment to stabilize again.

“He’s right,” Herb assured me. “It takes time to wreck luggage, and they always save the best stuff for last.”

“And they’re all afraid of Sol,” Pat put in.

“They should be,” Herb said. “They’re staying behind—so he doesn’t need them alive.”

“This is your bunk over here, Joel,” Pat told me. “Right above my own. Unless you care to discuss the matter with pistols?”

“Knives better,” Balvovatz said.

“Fine with me,” I said. Once we were under way it would be the upper bunk on the right. “I’ve had a preference for the upper ever since I figured out that farts are heavier than air.”

He grinned evilly. (I don’t care what my spell-checker says, of course there’s such a word. “In an evil manner”—okay?) “Not mine.”