Robert Heinlein - Variable Star

“We do indeed,” I said. “How many passengers will your husband’s vessel carry?”

“Ten,” she said.

“Damn.” I felt sharp disappointment. I’d been hoping against hope for some vastly higher number. Twenty-one c was definitely an impressive velocity, but even at that barely imaginable speed, Peekaboo was nearly four years away. I doubted we’d be able to get four hundred and something of us to Brasil Novo before the stellar shitrain arrived, even with a magic carpet to help.

I wasted a few seconds trying to work out how many of us could be saved, and how many would die of old age aboard the derelict Sheffield before a seat became available for them on the shuttle, and how they would be chosen. The maths were way beyond me, even if I’d known exactly how many of us were still alive. And so were the ethics.

It was not just a terrible letdown—it was also puzzling.

“What is it, Joel?” Evelyn asked.

How to put it? “I’m a little confused,” I admitted finally.

“We’re all confused,” Dorothy said. “Which confusion troubles you now?”

If there was a way to say it pretty, I couldn’t find it. “There really isn’t any way you can be of much help to us with a ten-seater, even if it is twenty times faster than a speeding photon. Is there?”

Dorothy began to say something, but was overridden by Jinny. “There is a plan. As we speak, Grandfather and Andrew are discussing with your Captain Bean and his own advisers the feasibility o—”

“You’re forgetting something,” I said.

“What?”

“Jinny Hamilton,” I said carefully, “you are one of the best. But I know exactly how you look and act and sound when you are lying.”

Her control was excellent, but she could not stop her skin from reddening. She started a bluff but got only two chilly words in before giving it up and doing an instant one-eighty, so that the sentence came out, “How dare all right damn it, I was trying to keep this focused on the positive.”

“That doesn’t leave much to talk about,” I said. “What I’m trying to understand is, since there doesn’t seem to be any practical way to rescue us… why the hell are you here?”

“Joel!”

“There’s damn little you can do for us—and for the life of me, I can’t figure out anything we could possibly do for you.”

“The whole Solar System just died!” she said. “Naturally we headed for the first—”

“If your grandfather just wanted company for comfort, why in Sol’s name would he pick hundreds of doomed souls he can’t help, with only a temporary ecology? It makes a million times more sense for him to make a beeline for someplace like Aradia or Hippolyte—they’ve both been thriving for decades. Or any of the self-sustaining colonies. Any technology we could possibly give you, any asset we could have aboard, you could get much better elsewhere, and without the social awkwardness of having to interact with dead people.”

I stopped and waited for a response, but Jinny made none.

“It’s a simple question. Why are you—”

Dorothy Robb said, “Joel, don’t be dense.”

I stared at her.

Neither of the others had anything to say. They were both just looking at me. As if I had two—

“Covenant’s sake! We’re here because of you , you idiot.”

I lost my handhold and went free.

I wasted seconds uselessly fanning air as if to agree I was an idiot, and then gave it up, surrendered to free fall, and tried to get control of my breath.

Nobody seemed to have a problem letting me take as long as I needed to think it through, so I did, eyes shut tight. It probably took a good thirty seconds to slow my spinning mind down from dynamo speed to something more like the cyclic rate of a prayer wheel.

I opened my eyes in time to see a thick cable within reach and docked on it.

“I don’t believe it,” I said slowly to Jinny. “Are you seriously telling me that you came all this way, played with the hopes of all these people, all my friends… just to give me the finger, one last time?”

“ I made them come!” Evelyn cried.

“Evelyn, what—?”

That was as far as I could go. I could not even form a rational question.

No, wait. Yes I could.

“Evelyn, why? ”

She had just let me think over an answer for a good half a minute. I gave her the same. So did the others. Jinny watched her intently, with no expression.

When she was ready, Evelyn said, “Joel, you were the first person I ever saw defy my grandfather. You are the only one I know who ever got away with it. You gave me the inspiration to become a musician—the only one in four entire generations of my family—in case perhaps that was the source of your courage. And it was! You’re the only man I’ve ever known who thought it was a great thing to go to the stars—and went.”

“But—”

“Shut up. That’s part of it. You were the very first adult I ever met who took me seriously. Who did not talk down to me, because I was small. You treated me as an equal with an unfortunate height problem you were too polite to notice.”

“That was—”

“I asked you to shut up. Because of that, you were the first adult I ever allowed to have any faintest idea how smart I was. Previous experiments had worked out badly. But it didn’t bother you a bit to need my help, or to get it. It didn’t even surprise you much.”

“That’s how my father always treated me at that age. I didn’t know any other way to react.”

“You were the first grown-up to remember my name the second time he saw me. And before you let me help you, you asked if it would get me in trouble.”

I tried to remember. Was all this true? It had been a long time ago.

But then, it had been longer for her than for me: thirteen years to my six since we’d cannoned into each other in the corridors of the North Keep—how could she remember so much better than I?

“You didn’t laugh at me.” She hesitated, then went on more softly, “Even when I told you I was going to marry you.” Then far more softly, “And you were engaged then.”

Jinny snorted, but did not speak.

Evelyn made a small measured movement, and began to drift toward me. Snow used to fall at about that speed in the low gravity of Ganymede, once. She came with infinite grace, and her eyes seemed to get larger faster than the rest of her.

“Joel Johnston, you were the first man ever to write to me. You’re the longest pen pal I ever had. You are the only man who ever kept writing to me after it was clear that I was not going to have sex with him. No one else of either sex, ever, has given me their attention without expecting anything in return. My letters ended up having to be a tenth the size of yours, and carefully edited, thanks to Gran’ther Dick … and yours kept on coming anyway. And you are the only man I have ever known in my life or expected to who did not care one single solitary molecule of a damn how much money I had!”

She gently collided with me, for the second time in six of my years and thirteen of hers. She was taller, now. Her eyes were only decimeters from mine, this time. So was her mouth. Both her arms were around me. I had both of mine around her. I must have let go of my handhold again. The room literally spun around us. She twined her calves around mine, completing the free-fall embrace. Our bellies touched, and we both discovered my waxing erection.