Frederik Pohl - Jem

Dope, company, or whatever, Dalehouse was feeling better than he had all day. He laughed out loud, then skinned out of his own clothes and joined her.

Ten minutes later they were both back on the beach, lying not very comfortably on their clothes, waiting to dry.

“Ouch,” said Margie. “If I ever get any extra people for punishment detail, I think I’ll see if they can get the rocks out of this sand.”

“You get used to it.”

“Only if I have to, Danny. I’m going to make this a nice camp if I can — good duty. For instance, you know what we’re going to have tonight?”

He rolled his head to look at her. “What?”

“The first official Jemman Food-Exporting Bloc encampment dance.”

“A dance?”

She grinned. “See what I mean? Those turkeys who were running this place never thought of that. But there’s nothing to it: spread out some flats on the dirt, put a few tapes in the machine, and there you are. Saturday night special. Best thing in the world for morale.”

“You are probably about the US Army’s best colonel for having fun,” Dalehouse said.

“For all the rest of being a colonel, too, Danny. Don’t you forget it.”

“Well, I won’t, Margie. I believe it. Only it’s kind of hard to remember under the, ah, present circumstances.”

“Well, I’ll put my clothes back on if it’ll help you concentrate. This isn’t just fun and games. I wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Whatever you want to tell me. How you think things are going. What isn’t being done that ought to be. What you’ve learned being here that I haven’t found out yet.”

He propped himself up on an elbow to look at her. She returned his gaze serenely, scratching her bare abdomen just above the pubic hair. “Well,” he said, “I guess you’ve seen all the reports about making contact with the sentients.”

“Memorized them, Danny. I even saw some of the sentients at Detrick, but they weren’t in very good condition. Especially the Creepy.”

“The burrower? We haven’t had very good luck with them.”

“Piss-poor, I’d say.”

“Well — yes, that’s fair. But we did get about ten specimens, two of them alive. And Morrissey has a whole report on them not transmitted yet. He says they’re farmers — from underneath, which is kind of an interesting idea. They plant some kind of tubers in the roofs of their tunnels. He was planning to talk to that expert you were supposed to bring — I don’t know her name.”

“Sondra Leckler? She didn’t come, Danny. I had her scratched.”

“Why?”

“Political. She’s Canadian.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “Does that fact mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing.”

“No, I didn’t think so. Canada voted for Peru’s thousand-mile limit in the UN. That’s cozying with the Peeps, right there. And everybody knows Canada’s got the hots for the Greasies because of their goddam Athabasca tar sands. They’re politically unreliable right now, Danny. There were four Canadians scheduled for this shipment, and I scratched all their asses right off.”

“That sounds pretty paranoid,” he commented.

“No, realistic. I’ve got no time to teach you the facts of life, Danny. What else? I don’t mean about the burrowers.”

He regarded her thoughtfully. She lay on her back, hands behind her head, comfortable in her nudity as she squinted toward the glowing red Kung. For a slightly plump girl her waist curved beautifully into her hips, and her breasts were rounded even while she lay flat on her back. But under that blond hair was a brain Dalehouse did not fully understand.

He dropped back and said, “Well, there’s the balloonists. I know the most about them. Our regular flock is off toward the Heat Pole, but there’s another one out over the water. They’re basically territorial, but—”

“You were at the Greasy camp awhile ago, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. When we were still on visiting terms. Is that what you want me to tell you about?”

“Among other things.”

“All right. They’ve got a hell of a lot of stuff we don’t, Margie.” He described the machine that molded building blocks, the plasma generator, the farm, the air conditioning, the ice.

“Sounds pretty nice,” she commented. “We’ll have all that stuff too, Danny, I promise you. Did you see a plane and four gliders?”

“No. There was an airstrip — Gappy commented on it; it didn’t make sense, with just a helicopter. But they didn’t have a plane then.”

“They do now. I thought they’d sneaked a reinforcement in that you didn’t catch. Did you know about the base on Farside?”

“Farside? You mean the dark half of Jem? What the hell would anyone want there?”

“That’s what I need to find out. But they’ve got it. Why do you think I stayed four extra orbits before I came down? I made damn sure I photomapped and radar-surveyed everything I could; I know every satellite around Jem, I know every spot on the surface that’s using energy, and I don’t like all of what I know. The Farside base was a real shock. Did you see any children in the Greasy camp?”

“Children? Hell, no! Why would—”

“Well, I think they’re moving whole families in, Danny, which seems to indicate they’ve got more than an exploring expedition in mind.”

“How could you tell whether they had children from space?”

“No way, Danny. I didn’t say the orbital reconnaissance was the only way I knew what was going on with the Greasies. One other thing. No, two. Have they got a baseball field?”

“Baseball?” He was sitting up now, staring at her. “What the hell would they do with a baseball field? Cricket, maybe, and no doubt football, but—”

“That’s a break,” she said, without explaining. “Last question. Did you happen to run into a fellow named Tamil?”

“I don’t think so.” Dalehouse thought hard. “Wait a minute. Short fellow with a shaved head? Chess player?”

“I don’t know. He’s an Indonesian.”

“Well, I’m not sure, but I think there was a petrochemist with a name like that. I didn’t talk to him. I don’t think he spoke English.”

“Pity.” Margie ruminated for a moment, then sat up, shading her eyes. “Are those your balloonists out there?”

As Dalehouse turned to look, Margie was standing, taking a few steps toward the shore, and what he looked at was not the sky but her. The artist Hogarth had said that the most beautiful line in nature was the curve of a woman’s back, and Margie, silhouetted against the ruddy sky, was a fine figure of a woman. Half-amused, Dalehouse realized by the stirrings in his groin that he was beginning to display interest. But only beginning. The stimulus was that beautiful and remembered butt; the suppressant was the things she said. He would be some little while figuring out just how it was he did feel about Margie Menninger.

Then he got his eyes past her and forgot the stirrings. “There are ha’aye’i out there!” he said furiously.

“What’ys?”

“They’re predators. That’s not our regular flock; they just drifted in, because of the lights, most likely. And those clouds are full of ha’aye’i !” The flock was close enough to be heard now, singing loudly, only a few hundred meters away. And far beyond and above them three slimmer shapes were swooping toward them.

“That’s a what-you-call-it there? Jesus! Look at that mother,” she cried, as the first of the airsharks expertly ripped at the bag of a huge female, slipped past, turned end-for-end, and reversed itself. It came back ten meters lower to catch the deflated balloonist as it fell, braying its death song. “That’s a fucking Immelmann that thing just did! Nobody’s done that since World War One!”