Robert Heinlein - Variable Star

No, I couldn’t take that in just yet. “I really really wish I could think of something more intelligent to say than, ‘What do you mean, “here isn’t anywhere”?’”

She shrugged. “You tell me. If a place does not appear on any map, anywhere… if it doesn’t show in even the finest-grain satellite photos… if no wires or roads or paths run to it, no government takes mail to it or taxes from it, and nobody is from there… in what sense does it exist? There is no here. Just us.”

“Here.”

“Exactly.”

I nodded and dismissed the matter. “And this is your home?”

“One of them.”

I nodded. “And your apartment on Lasqueti, of course. It must be weird having two homes.”

She didn’t say a word or move a muscle.

I turned to look at her. “More than two?”

Silence. Stillness.

“How many homes do you have, Jinny?”

In a very small voice, she said, “Eight. Not counting the Lasqueti place.”

“So?”

“But three of them are off-planet!”

“Naturally,” I agreed. “One winters in space.”

“Oh, Joel, don’t be that way.”

“Okay. Let’s go in.”

She looked distressed. “Uh… if you are going to be that way, maybe it might be better to do it out here, before we go in.”

I nodded again. Mr. Agreeable. “Sure. That makes sense. Okay.” Then, big: “How could you do this to me, Jinny?”

She didn’t flinch or cringe or duck. “Think it through, Joel. Sleep on it. Tomorrow morning, you tell me: How could I have not done it?”

I began an angry retort, and swallowed it. I had to admit I had not begun to think this thing through yet, and Dad always drilled into me that the time to open your mouth came after that. Besides, I already had a glimmering of what she meant. I filled my lungs, emptied them slowly and fully, and said, “You’re right. Okay, I’m prepared to be polite, now. Let’s go inside.”

“You won’t have to be,” she said. “I promise you won’t see any family at all until tomorrow morning. I made them guarantee that. This is our Prom Night.”

I frowned. “I wish I had an overnight bag. Change of socks, fresh shirt, my razor—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, and unlocked the doors.

I let it go. Probably the contents of the slop chest here were finer than anything I owned. “All right. Invite me up to your place.”

“Down, actually.”

We opened our doors and got out. The roof of imaginary glacier did not exist from its underside; the moon and stars shone unimpeded overhead, a neat trick. But this was definitely not a natural ecology. The air was skin temperature, with an occasional breeze just slightly warmer. It smelled of dirt and green growing things, with just a little ozone tingle as if it had rained recently, though it had not. The loamy earth beneath my feet was rich, almost quivering with life; any farmer I knew back on Ganymede would have desperately envied it. Acres of it, at least a meter deep: wild, uncultivated, supporting nothing but trees, scrub, and inedible berries. Just lying there. Conspicuous nonconsumption. Start getting used to it, old son . I thought of saying something, but I knew Jinny would never understand. It’s funny: the very word “Terra” means “dirt”—and not one hungry terrestrial in a thousand has a clue how important, how precious it is. I shook my head.

The door in that huge rock ahead of the car was indeed an elevator. Back when I was four I’d been in an elevator that nice. In Stockholm, when Dad came Earthside to pick up the Nobel. Like that one, this elevator had a live human operator, of advanced age and singular ugliness, who made it a point of pride to remain unaware of our existence: he happened to be leaving as we stepped in, and took us down a good fifty meters with him. The car descended with unhurried elegance. It gave me time to think about the kind of people who would live deep underground, in a place that did not exist… and still feel the need to pull the sky over them like a blanket. “Paranoid” didn’t seem to cover it.

By happy chance the operator decided to pause and check the operation of the doors just as he was passing the floor we wanted; so intent was his inspection, we were able to escape unnoticed. This left us in a kind of reception room, so lavish as to remind me of the lobby of that hotel back in Stockholm. The carpet was grass. But I didn’t get time to study the room; nearly at once I felt a tugging and turned to see a man older and uglier than the elevator operator trying to take my cloak. With some misgivings I let him have it, and that seemed to have been a mistake, for he simply handed it off to a small boy who suddenly appeared in my peripheral vision, and then literally threw himself at my feet and began loosening my shoes. I… reacted. If we’d been under normal gravity, on Ganymede or Mars, I think I’d have kicked his teeth in; as it was he went sprawling. But he took a shoe with him as he went, a trick I admired as much as I resented it. Jinny giggled. I recovered, removed the other shoe myself with as much dignity as I could muster, and handed it to him as he approached again. He reunited it with its twin, bowed deeply, and backed away.

I turned to Jinny and forgot whatever I’d been about to say. Her own cloak and shoes had been magicked away by tall elves, and she looked… how do girls do that, anyway? One minute just be there, and the next, be there . They can do it without moving a muscle, somehow.

“Good evening, Miss Jinny,” said a baritone voice from across the room. “Welcome home.”

Standing just inside a door I had failed to notice was a man nearly as tall as me with a shaved head, wearing a suit that cost more than my tuition at Fermi Junior. Like us, and the various elves I’d seen, he wore no shoes. Presumably they would cobble us all new ones in the night.

“Thank you, Smithers. This is—damn. Excuse me.” She lifted her phone-finger to her ear, listened for a few moments, frowned, said “Yes,” and broke the connection. “I’ve got to go, for just a few minutes. Get Joel situated, would you please, Smithers? I’m sorry, Joel—I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Okay.”

She was gone.

Somehow he was at my side, without having covered the intervening distance. “Good evening, Mr. Johnston. I’m Alex Rennick, master of the house at present. Welcome to the North Keep. Let me show you to your room, first, and then perhaps I can give you the ten-credit tour.”

His eyes were gray, almost mauve. His head wasn’t shaved, it was depilated. Despite his height, a dozen subconscious cues told me he was earthborn. He was fit, and had an air of great competence and great confidence. I’m pretty good at guessing ages, given that everybody looks alike now, and I couldn’t pin him down any closer than the thirty-to-sixty zone. I found it interesting that he knew my last name without having been given it.

“Thank you, Mr. Rennick. You are most kind. Please call me Joel.”

“And I am Alex. Will you come this way, Joel?”

I thought of an ancient joke, put it out of my mind, and followed him from the room. As I did I promised myself, solemnly, that no matter what wonders I was shown here, I would not boggle. No matter how staggeringly opulent the place proved to be, I would not let it make me feel inferior. My father had been a Nobel laureate, and my mother a great composer—how many of these people could say as much?

“Do you have any questions to start?” he asked as we went.

“Yes, Alex,” I said, memorizing the route we were taking. “Why does Jinny call you Smithers?”

“I have no idea.” His tone was absolutely neutral, but somehow I knew I’d touched a sore spot. Either it bothered him not to know—or the answer was humiliating.