Larry Niven - Footfall

“Harry, goddammit, I never know when you’re bullshitting me.”

“Not this time. The guy’s name was Roger Brooks. I don’t know how he found out there was a story here, but he hired me to bring him here from Colorado Springs. Turns out he’d known Mrs. Gillespie a long time.”

“Jeez, and you brought him in here?” Janet didn’t sound very friendly.

“Yeah, well, I’d been told you weren’t hiding anything but snouts. And I’d captured a snout—”

“You what?” Janet demanded.

“Captured a snout.”

“He did, too,” Whitey said. “He’ll tell you about it if you ask. Or if you don’t ask.”

“Aw! Anyway, bringing Roger in seemed like a good idea at the time. But Roger figured out what Archangel was before I did, and he clipped me and stole the truck. Next thing I know I wake up in General Gillespie’s front yard with about a zillion Marines and Air Police. Every one of them’s pointing a gun at me, and here comes the General himself. He didn’t look too friendly.”

“I don’t reckon he would have,” Whitey said. “What did you do?”

“Do? I pleaded for mercy.”

“Must have worked …”

“Yeah. I had one thing going for me. I used to work for Congressman Dawson …”

“Right. You told me. The guy the snouts have making speeches for them. It was his wife you had ride the snout.”

Janet laughed. “Harry, you sound like a good man to know.”

“Oh, I am, I am. Anyway, since I knew his friends, it made the General a little more ready to listen. After a while he decided I wasn’t really a bad guy, so he made me an offer. I could go to work as a gofer, or they’d send me off to Port Angeles.”

“Better than Walla Walla,” Whitey said. “Port Angeles is where they send you if you quit.”

“Yeah,” Pat said. “But it’s a drag. I must know ten, twelve guys who went over there and decided they’d rather be back here. It’s not a bad place, but there’s nothing to do except grow vegetables, and they still censor any letters you want to send out.”

“That’s what the General told me,” Harry said. “I thought about it for maybe fifteen seconds. Christ, I was beginning to rust in Colorado Springs. I’d have gone nuts in Port Angeles.

“So they made me a gofer. I do what the General wants. They pay me pretty good, and — I’m in it, I’m where it’s happening. I’ve been all over that ship, I bet I know my way around inside the Brick as good as anybody except maybe Max Rohrs. I’ve worked on the steam lines for the attitude controls, and I helped the Navy guys install those big guns off the New Jersey, Jesus those are big, and the Army guys with their missile launchers.” Harry grinned wolfishly. “Shee-it, if we can get this thing up there, those snouts’ll think Mount Whitney is coming after them next!”

Whitey lifted his glass. “Bigger and better surprises.”

“Right. A willing foe and sea room!”

“What’s that?”

“Nelson. A British admiral—”

“Hell, I know who Nelson was.”

“Okay. It was his toast. And that’s the story.”

“Pretty good story. You fall in the shit and come up smelling like a rose.”

“I thought so. Now I don’t know! These twelve-hour workdays are killing me.”

Whitey nodded agreement. “Won’t last much longer, though.”

“No, I guess not. We still have to mount the Brick on the Shell and the Shuttles on the Brick. I wish there was more than just one way to test those shock absorbers.”

“How are they-?”

“Launch. What else is big enough for them? Christ, the ship’s just full of kludged-up stuff, it’s all we can do to get all the kludges put down on the drawings. I sure feel sorry for anybody who has to fix this sucker.”

“You, maybe.”

Harry laughed sardonically. “Not me.” He broke into song. “You can call out your mother, your sister or your brother, but for Christ’s sakes don’t call me!”

“They won’t call your sister,” Janet said. “No women on the flight crew at all.”

“Yeah, I know,” Harry said. “Matter of fact, I know most of the crew. Nice clean-cut young men—”

“Men’s right,” Janet said. “And it’s not fair.”

“Oh, come on,” Pat said. “Janet, you have to be crazy, why would anybody want to go up with that?”

“Well, they could ask!”

“It’s Gillespie,” Harry said. “He says women aren’t strong enough.”

“Stupid,” Janet said.

“It doesn’t have to be the truth. Look, those idealistic young men are supposed to be fixing what the snouts shoot. Gillespie may not want them rescuing idealistic young women instead, if you follow me. Anyway, they don’t want you. They don’t want me, either. What would either one of us do? I learned to do a lot of things when I hung around with the bikers. Little welding, electrical stuff, this and that. So that’s what I do. This and that. Whitey, you owe me a pitcher.”

The Dreamers’ Workroom was a chaos of tables, blackboards, maps, papers, and personal computers. One of the tables had been cleared of all such junk. A cloth was thrown over it, and an impressive array of bottles, glasses, mixers, and ice stood there.

Jack Clybourne had the bourbon. Jenny held out her glass for a refill.

“It was the ancient Persians. It’s in H-Herodotus.” Sherry Atkinson wanted to talk faster than her memory would serve her, and it caused a stutter. “There have been plenty of cultures that wouldn’t implement a decision they’d taken when drunk until they’d discussed it sober. Only the Persians wouldn’t do anything they’d decided sober until they’d discussed it drunk.” She poured herself another large glass of white wine, and drank half of it.

Her colleagues nodded in sage agreement. “Interesting philosophy,” Reynolds said.

Carol laughed. She was enjoying her role as the only fan in an endless science-fiction convention.

“We can discuss it all to death. The problem is, we don’t have any decisions,” Curtis muttered. “Not a goddam thing we can do but wait.” He was working on his fourth tall drink. His wife had long since gone to bed in disgust.

“Volunteer for Africa if you’re so eager to fight,” Sherry said.

Curtis laughed and poured another drink. “Hah.” He jerked his thumb toward Jenny. “The Colonel there is the only one they let out of here.”

“They don’t let me anywhere near Africa.” Jenny was about to say something else, but the door opened. Admiral Carrell came in. It took Jenny a moment for that to register through the bourbon. Then she jumped to her feet. After a moment Jack Clybourne stood as well.

Curtis looked at Carrell, then pointedly looked at his watch. “Off duty, Admiral, but we could sober up in a hurry. Something we’re needed for, I hope?”

“Not really. This is a social visit. May I come in?”

Curtis looked up and down the table. “I see no objections. Come in. This is Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard. What’ll you drink?”

“Scotch, thank you. And don’t drown it.” Carrell sat heavily at the table, then raised his glass. “Cheers.”

The others responded.

“Hope there’s something to be cheerful about,” Curtis said.

“Very little, I’m afraid. Angola just surrendered, and we’re pretty sure Zaire will when their eight-day ultimatum is up.”

Joe Ransom took a globe from another table and set it on theirs. Idly he spun it. “South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola — when Zaire goes they’ll have just about everything to the equator.”

“There was a sizable Cuban mercenary army in Angola,” Curtis mused.

“Yes. They’ll work for the Invaders now,” Admiral Carrell said.