Harry Harrison - The Daleth Effect

It was practically a convoy, three large black cars, pulling into the drive and stopping before the house. A police car and another car parked at the curb beyond them. They were here. She ran, getting there ahead of Skou, throwing the door wide.

“Martha!” he shouted, dropping his bag and sweeping her to him, kissing her so hard she had no breath, right there on the porch. She managed to push free, laughing, when she realized that a small circle of men was waiting patiently for them to finish.

“I’m sorry, please come in,” she said, aware that her hair was mussed and her lipstick probably smeared, and not giving a damn. “Arnie, it is wonderful to see you. Come in please.” Then they were in the living room, just the three of them, with the sound of heavy feet stamping through the rest of the house.

“Fm sorry about the honor guard,” Nils said. “But it was the only way we could get Arnie back to Earth for a holiday. It was time for us all to have a break, and I think maybe him most of all. Watchdog Skou agreed on it as long as Arnie stayed with us, and Skou could make all the security arrangements he wanted to.”

“Thank you for having me,” Arnie said, leaning back wearily in the upholstered chair. He looked drawn and had lost a lot of weight. “I am sorry to impose…”

“Don’t be silly! If you say another word I shall throw you out and make you stay at the Mission Hotel which, as you know, is absolutely non-alcoholic. Here you get drinks. To celebrate. What would you like?” She stood and opened the bar.

“My arms feel heavy as lead,” Nils said, scowling as he moved his hand up and down. “I’ve barely enough strength to lift a glass to my mouth. That gravity, one-sixth of Earth’s, it ruins the muscles.”

“Poor dear! Shall I bottle feed you?”

“You know what you can do to give me strength!”

“You sound too exhausted. Better have a drink first I’ve made a pitcher of martinis—all right?”

“Fine. And remind me, I have a bottle of Bombay go in my suitcase for you. We have it tax-free on the Moon since they have decided to call it a free-port area until someone comes up with a better idea. The customs men, very generous, allow us to bring one bottle back. An 800,000 kilometer round trip to save twenty-five kroner in duty. The world’s mad.” He took a deep drag on the chilled drink and sighed with pleasure.

Arnie sipped at his. “I hope you will excuse all the guards and fuss, but they treat me like a national treasure—”

“As you damn well are!” Nils broke in. “With all the Daleth equipment on the Moon, you are worth a billion kroner on the hoof to any country with the money to buy you. I wish I weren’t so patriotic. I would sell you to the highest bidder and retire to Bali for life.”

Arnie smiled, almost relaxing.

“They had a conspiracy. The doctors, Skou, your husband, all of them. They thought if they made an armed fort of your home that I could come here. The weather could not be better.”

“Sailing weather,” Nils said, and drained his drink. “Where’s the boat?”

“In the water, like you asked, tied up on the south side of the harbor.”

“What a day for sailing! Why don’t we all go down there—no, damn, Arnie’s supposed to stay in the house.”

“You two go, I will be fine right here,” Arnie insisted. “I will get some sun in the garden, that is what Nils promised me.”

“No such thing,” Martha said. “Nils is going to the harbor and get all hot and tarry. He never sails the boat, just caulks seams and things. Let him get it out of his system while we loaf in the garden.”

“Well—if you don’t mind?” Nils was already leaning ›ward the door.

“Go on,” Martha laughed. “Just come back in time for inner.”

“I’ll find Skou and tell him where Fm going. Not that hey care about me, since all I know about a Daleth drive s how to push the buttons.”

Martha had to find him his work trousers, then a paint-stained shirt, then his swim trunks before he was ready and slammed out of the house. Arnie had gone to his room to change and, at the sight of all the delicious sunlight, Martha put on a bathing suit too. All Danes were sun worshipers on a day like this.

Arnie was on a lounge on the patio, and she pulled the other one up next to him.

“Wonderful,” he said. “I did not realize how much we miss color and being out of doors.” The shadow of a gull slid across the grass and up the high wooden fence. The air was still. Someone laughed, far away, and there was the distinct plock-plock of a tennis ball being played.

“How is the work going? Or as much of it as you can tell me about.”

“The only secret is the drive. For the rest it is like running a steamship company and opening up the wild West at the same time. Did you read about our Mars visit?”

“Yes, I was so jealous. When do you start selling passenger tickets?”

“Very soon. And you will have the very first one. There really are plans being made along those lines. In any case, those surface veins of uranium on Mars made the DFRS stock soar tremendously on the world markets. Money is being poured into the super-liner that the Swedes are building, mostly for cargo, but with plenty of cabins for passengers later. We will lift her by tug to the Moon and put the drive in there. The base is almost a city now, with machine shops and assembly plants. We do almost all of the manufacturing of the Daleth units there, except for standard electronics components from here. It is all going so well, no one can complain.’* He looked around for a piece of wood to touch, and found none among tf chrome-and-plastic garden furniture.

“Shall I bring you a board or something?” Marth asked, and they both laughed. “Or better yet bring you , cold drink. The yard, closed in like this, cuts off th‹ breeze, and you can actually work up a sweat in this kinc of weather.”

“Yes, please, if you will join me.”

“Try and stop me. Gin and tonic since we already started on gin.”

She came back with the drinks on a tray, silently on her bare feet, and Arnie started when he saw her.

“I didn’t mean to surprise you,” she said, handing him a glass.

“Please do not blame yourself. I know that it is I. There has been a great deal of work and tension. So it is really very good to be here. In fact it is almost as hot as Israel.”

“Do you miss Israel?” she asked, then quickly said, “I’m sorry. I know that it’s none of my business.”

The smile was gone, his face set. “Yes, I miss the country. My friends, the life there. But I think that I would do the entire thing over again in the same manner if I were given a second chance.”

“I don’t mean to pry…”

“No, Martha, it is perfectly all right. It is on my mind a good deal of the time. Traitor or hero? I myself would rather die than cause injury to Israel. Yet I had a letter, in Hebrew, no signature. ‘What would Esther Bar-Giora have thought?’ it said.”

“Your wife?”

“Yes. She looked very much like you. The same kind of hair and”—he glanced at her figure, more flesh than fabric in the diminutive bathing suit, and looked away and coughed—“the, what you might call, the same sort of build. But dark, tanned all the time. A sabra, born and grew up in Israel. One of my graduate students. She married the professor, she used to always say.” His eyes had a distant, haunted look. “She was killed in a terror raid.” He sipped his drink. In the silence that followed the distant louring of children could be heard.

“But do not let me sound too gloomy, Martha. It is too ice an afternoon. I would like to have known who sent lat letter. I wanted to tell whoever it was that I think isther would have been angry at me, but she would have aderstood. And in the end she might even have agreed with me. There must be a time when the issue of all nankind should come ahead of our concerns with our own country. You should know about that, what I mean. Born in American, now a Dane, a real citizen of the world.”