Frederik Pohl: Jem

The sky was bright pink, but the sun was just appearing; there was time if they hurried. She led him down the stairs — no waiting for the tiny cranked elevator — and out into the courtyard, then quickly away from the university to an intersection of two boulevards. She stopped and turned around.

“There, see?”

Ahmed squinted into the sunrise. “I see the cathedral,” he grumbled.

“Yes, that’s it. And the monster?”

“Monster? Is it in the cathedral?”

“It is the cathedral.”

“St. Stephan’s is a monster?… Oh! Yes, I think I see. Those windows up high, they are the eyes? And those windows lined up underneath. They are the teeth.”

“It’s smiling at us, do you see? And there are the ears, and the nose.”

Ahmed was not looking at the cathedral any more, but at her. “You are such a strange girl. I wonder what sort of Pakistani you would make.”

Nan caught her breath. “No! It’s too much. Please don’t talk like that.” She took his arm. “Please, let’s just walk.”

“I have not had any breakfast, Ana.”

“There’s plenty of time.” She guided him through the small park to the university, and down toward the larger one. She laughed. “Have you forgiven me for translating you so badly into Bulgarian?”

“I would not have known how bad it was if you had not told me.”

“It was bad enough, Ahmed. I was looking at you when you were talking about this Kung’s Star, and I forgot to translate.”

He glanced at her cautiously. “Do you know,” he said, “Heir-of-Mao is personally interested in this planet. It was he who chose the name for the quasi-stellar object. He was there at the observatory when it was discovered. I think—”

“What do you think, Ahmed?”

“I think exciting things will happen,” he said obscurely.

She laughed and lifted his hand to touch her cheek.

“Ana,” he said, and stopped in the middle of the boulevard. “Listen to me. It is not impossible, you know. Even if I were to be away for a time, after that, for you and me, it would not be impossible.”

“Please, dear Ahmed—”

“It is not impossible! I know,” he said bitterly, oblivious of the fact that they were standing in the middle of the road, “that Pakistan is a poor country. We do not have food to export, like you and the Americans, and we do not have oil like the Middle Eastern states and the English. So we join with the countries that are left.”

“I respect Pakistan very much.”

“You were a child when you were there,” he said severely. “But all the same it is not impossible to be happy, even in the People Bloc.”

A trolleybus was coming, three cars long and almost silent on its rubber-tired wheels. Nan tugged him out of the way, glad for the chance to change the subject.

The difficulty with international conferences, she thought, was that you met political opponents, and sometimes they did not seem like opponents. She had not meant this involvement with someone from the other side. She certainly did not want its inconvenience and pain. She knew what the stakes were. As a translator with four fully mastered languages and half a dozen partials, she had been all over the world — largely within the Food Bloc, to be sure, but even so, that included Moscow and Kansas City and Rio and Ottawa. She had met defectors from the other sides. There had been a Welsh girl in Sydney; there were two or three Japanese on the faculty of the university, her own neighbors in Sofia. They always tried desperately to belong, but they were always different.

Both the morning and Ahmed were too beautiful for such unhappy thoughts. That part of her mind which daydreamed and worried went from worry to daydream; the other part of her mind, the perceiving and interpreting part, had been following some events across the boulevard and now commanded her attention.

“Look,” she said, clutching at an excuse to divert Ahmed’s attention, “what’s going on over there?” It was on the Liberation Mall. The blond woman she had seen at one of the receptions was having an argument with two militiamen. One had her by the arm. The other was fingering his stun-stick and talking severely to a man, a youngish professorial type, also from the conference.

Ahmed said, uninterested, “Americans and Bulgarians. Let the Fats settle their problems between themselves.”

“No, really!” Nan insisted. “I must see if I can help.”

But in the long run all that Nan Dimitrova accomplished was to get herself arrested too.

It was the American woman’s fault. Even an American should have known better than to make chauvinist-filth jokes about the Red Army within earshot of the police of the capital of the most Russophile of nations. If she hadn’t known that much, at least she should have known better than to insist on her treaty right to have the American ambassador informed of the incident. Up to that point the militiamen were only looking for an opportunity to finish reprimanding the culprits and stroll away. Afterwards it was a matter with international repercussions.

The only good thing about it was that Ahmed didn’t get involved. Nan sent him away. He left willingly enough, even amused. The rest of them, the two Americans and Nan herself, were taken to the People’s Palace of Justice. Because it was a Sunday morning, they had to sit for hours on bare wood benches in an interrogation room until a magistrate could be found.

No one came near them. No one would have minded in the least, Nan was sure, if they had accepted the invitation of the open door and slipped silently away. But she did not want to do that by herself. The Americans were not willing to take the chance, the woman because she appeared to think some sort of principle was involved, the man evidently because the woman was involved. She eyed them with displeasure, especially the bleached blond, at least five kilos too well fed, even for the Food Bloc. You cannot choose your allies, she thought. The man seemed to be all right, if not too fastidious about whom he indulged his sexual pranks with. Still, as the time passed and the militiamen brought them croissants and strong tea, the confinement drew them together. They chatted cheerfully enough until the people’s magistrate at last arrived, gruffly refused to hear any talk of treaties or ambassadors, instructed them in future to use the common sense God had given them and the good manners their mothers had no doubt taught them, and let them go.

By then they had completely missed the 10:00 A.M. session of the conference. Almost as bad, they had missed the special lunches arranged for the delegates. As it was a Sunday morning in spring, every restaurant in Sofia was booked full with private wedding parties, and none of them got any lunch at all.

That was the first time the three of them met.

The second was very much later, and very, very far away.

Danny Dalehouse found that a colleague had read his paper for him. So missing the morning session turned out not to have been an utter disaster, and in fact looked like producing a hell of a big plus. Margie was bright enough to realize she’d been dumb, and ego-strong enough to admit it. However serious Margie had been about the grant while strolling down the boulevard, full of wine, pot, and roses, now she was rueful enough to remember her promise.

All the way home from the conference in the clamjet, Dalehouse sat with his notebook on his knee, drawing up a proposal, until it was time to go to his bunk. By dawn they were over white-and-brown Labrador, the jet moving more slowly through the cold night air. Dalehouse ate his breakfast alone, except for a sleepy TWA stewardess to scramble his eggs and pour his coffee, and looked out at the clouds as the clamjet roller-coastered in and out of them, wondering what the planet of Kung’s Star would be like.