Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

Nearby, Hellespont du Kane began chatting cheerfully with the physician the starship captain had thoughtfully sent down in the shuttle to attend his unexpected, famous passenger. Colette stood watching him, responding perfunctorily to September’s gruff and somewhat obscene good-bye and Williams’ more polite, deferential one.

Then there was nothing else to do, no one else to talk to, and Ethan found himself walking over. She moved to meet him.

Several silent moments passed. Perhaps the fact that his mind was now made up enabled him to match her stare more resolutely.

“How’s your father?” he finally said lamely.

“As well as can be expected.” She had to force herself to blunt her natural sharpness. “I keep trying to get him to consent to a body switch… he refuses additional revivifications. He won’t do it. I don’t think it’s a death wish. The psychostics say it’s not. But he won’t agree to it even when he’s senile, let alone during his occasional bursts of full lucidity. Keeps telling me it’s time I took over, that he’s held the reins long enough.”

“You are ready to take over, Colette.” Ethan spoke softly yet with enthusiasm. It was extremely difficult to sell Colette on herself. “I know how the merchant families work. I have to. I work for one myself.”

“Ready or not, I have to.” Her reply was so soft it was hard to believe it came from her. “What do you have to do, Ethan?”

He smiled. It wasn’t easy. “I’m sorry, Colette. Truly I am.”

“First they say they’re telling the truth, then they always say they’re sorry.”

“Colette,…” Ethan fought for words. “I’m not a teller, I’m a told. You were raised, trained to give orders. I’ve matured learning to take them. Advice I can offer, but never orders. I don’t think I’d be any good at it. I’d mess up any executive position you gave me, and then you’d be forced to cover for me. You’d have to explain me to my colleagues, the really qualified executives and compusymbs.” He shook his head dolefully. “I couldn’t handle the kind of snickering I’d be subjected to. And I won’t accept a life as an ineffectual parasite.”

“You have a peculiar conception of what being mated means.” She sounded almost desperate without appearing to beg. “You could do whatever you wanted to, anything at all. Travel, hobbies… it doesn’t even have to be with me.” The gaze lowered just a little. “You could… even have other women on the side, if you so desired. I’d fix it so you could afford the best.” She looked up again.

“You’re a good man. You could do what you wish, so long as you…” she hesitated, “came back to me.”

“No, Colette. I have something I have to see through, here.”

For an instant something flared in her eyes. “It’s that muscular teddy bear, isn’t it?”

“No.” Ethan’s denial gained strength from his honest, obvious surprise. “Elfa’s not a factor. I don’t know what she sees in me, but she’s a member of another race.”

“That hasn’t stopped people in the past,” she countered accusingly.

“It stops me. Where Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata is concerned, any interest other than anthropological is strictly one-sided. Her side. I gave you the real reason. I could never be a professional student, professional traveler, professional hobbyist. Or a professional husband.”

She seemed ready to leave, then grasped him so suddenly and hard he had to fight to regain his balance. She broke away just enough to plead, speaking so softly no one but Ethan could have heard. He found himself momentarily mesmerized by those metal-bright green eyes.

“You’re the first man I ever met who treated me like a human being. You were good to me, and you were honest with me. I know I’m ugly.”

“You’re anything but that, Colette.”

Her smile was full of pain. “For months I was the only human woman around. I enjoyed the isolation. I’m conversant enough with physiopsychology to read in your eyes my loss of five kilos for every month of that isolation. As soon as we reached any outpost of human civilization you’d see me for what I am, for what no doctor can correct. It’s happened since we’ve been here, at this outpost. I’m obese, sarcastic, and bitter to the point of dissolution.”

“The last two you need to survive the important position you’re going to assume,” Ethan told her. “As for the first, that’s an image you have of yourself.” He thought of something September had told him. “Physical shape and attractiveness have little to do with each other. In the dark, all mankind looks alike.

“No, the reasons I can’t marry you have to do with our mental makeup, not our physical.”

She let go of him. His arms would show red where she’d gripped him. “House du Kane has businesses and branches on most of the populous worlds and many of the colonies. If you ever change your mind, Ethan Frome Fortune, you can get in touch with me.” She grinned tightly. “Twenty-two double R, Ethan. It’ll expedite anything.”

“You’ll find someone else.”

“With my attractions? I can offer my cardmeter balance and my position. Those won’t buy what I want. I’ve asked and pleaded, Ethan. I won’t beg.”

“I know. Begging’s not part of your makeup, Colette.”

A steward was gesturing from alongside the motion lounge her father was strapped into. A faint voice called her name. It came from the throat of a powerful human relic.

“Time to go. Good-bye Ethan. Remember me if you change your mind. Remember me if you don’t.”

She spared him the worry of whether or not to kiss her by turning and striding purposefully toward her father, toward the people and machines helping him stay alive. He watched as the motion lounge maneuvered itself up the rampway leading into the access tube of the shuttlecraft. Snow speckled the window he stared through.

Fifteen minutes died. Then the exchange of cartons and packagings was complete. A muted chemical bubbling sounded through the thick glassalloy window. Red-orange streaks, like spilled oil paint, emerged from the stern of the shuttle. It rose rapidly until it had shrunk to a size no bigger than any of ten thousand other bright ice flakes swirling through Tran-ky-ky’s cold, cold atmosphere.

He rubbed his right arm where she’d clasped him, and thought.

SEPTEMBER LET HIM STAND like that for nearly an hour. Then he moved to join him.

“Not easy, feller-me-lad?”

“No, Skua. Not easy.”

“Better this way, though,” the giant said cheerily. “Money’s not everything. She would have gotten tougher before sweeter as the years roll down. There’s a universe full of fledglings waiting to try their wings who are a good deal softer.”

“Skua.”

“What is it, lad?”

“Shut up.” He walked away, moving rapidly down the port corridor, hands jammed deep into his pockets. After a shrug, September followed, keeping the distance between them constant. There was a dark muddy wall raised around the young salesman, and it could only be taken down from within.

Sir Hunnar and his two squires were waiting patiently for them outside the shuttleport building. September had tried to argue them into coming inside to watch the liftoff of the shuttle from closer range. But the Tran had elected to forgo that pleasure, since it meant enduring the unbearably high temperatures inside.

“We saw it rise from out here, Ethan,” the Tran knight said. “It was bigger than the skyboat you came to us in.” A note of childlike wonder crept into his voice. “Does it truly chivan to a ship bigger still?”

“Much bigger, Hunnar.” Ethan was reminded by the Tran’s curious, open stare of the reason for his remaining here. One of those reasons, anyhow. “Let’s find a place in town and have a tankard of reedle.” At least the super pseudomead would salve his throat, if not his confused conscience.