Charles Sheffield - Aftermath

“He’s not biased, you see. No, not him.” Ed addressed Art as though Joe Vanetti were not present. “You’d never guess his second wife was Jewish.”

Art did not bother to reply. He didn’t need to, because the line of conversation was on a well-worn track. On cue, Joe said, “She certainly was, the bitch. Hey, do you know why Jewish divorces cost more?”

He looked at them expectantly. Art had heard the joke a hundred times, but it was Joe’s punch line. He and Ed remained silent.

“Because they’re worth it,” Joe went on. “But I don’t think I’ll marry again.”

“No?” Ed poured brandy from the jar into his glass, drank some, and pulled a face. “Phew. I was in rare form when I made that lot. So what will you do, Joe?”

Within two years of buying the place on the mountain and meeting neighbors Ed and Joe, Art had learned the rules. If you wanted to be accepted you didn’t step on someone else’s joke, no matter how often you had heard it. The other two had been playing the game forever, and for this bit he was a member of the audience.

“I won’t marry,” Joe said. “I’ll just find a woman I don’t like, and give her a house.”

“Does Anne-Marie know that?”

“Not from me she don’t.”

“I can’t see why that woman puts up with you.” Ed turned to Art. “She’s twenty-five years younger than he is, she’s good-looking, and she has her own place. She doesn’t need an old wreck like him. She could get somebody handsome, like me, only I’m married. Why does she bother?”

Art had been asked the question, so he was now in the game. “You have to know how it works, Ed. As far as you and I are concerned, Joe here is a poor old crock with hardly enough strength to stagger from his place to yours. He’d never get back home from here without your brew. But as far as older women are concerned, any single male under ninety who’s not actually terminal is an eligible bachelor. They outlive us, so there’s not enough of us to go around.”

“It’s not like that with me and Annie.” Joe was com-

placent. Among male friends, insult was the only acceptable expression of affection. “She says I’m dynamite.”

“She means you’re always going off at the wrong time, I’ll bet. I don’t see you walking over to her place, now that the truck don’t work.” Ed had the bottle in his hand. “Another? One for the road.”

Art shook his head. “Not me,” Joe said. “Your liver will be in a museum when you die, Ed. It won’t need to be pickled, neither. And I don’t need to walk to Annie’s place. She knows I’ve got the gammy leg. She’ll be up here about five.”

“How would you be knowing that? You using telepathy?”

“No. Telcom.” Joe took the bottle. “Maybe just a drop after all. I think this batch is better than the usual bat piss.”

Neither he nor Ed seemed to realize the significance of what he was saying, but the words jolted Art’s nervous system into overdrive. He could feel his heart racing.

“You made a telcom call today ?”

“Sure.” Joe was pouring a closely calculated measure of liquor, and he did not look up. “Tried this morning before I came over, and got a dial tone. First time for a week. So I talked to Annie, and she said she’d be over. Stands to reason, things had to come back to normal before too long.”

“Ed?”

O’Donnell went across to the chest where the communications unit was sitting and pressed a button. He shook his head. “Not my telcom. Dead as Lincoln. Never a light on the board.”

“Told you that was a piece of junk when you bought it.” Joe stood up and went over to stare at the unit. “You had a perfectly good phone already.”

“Couldn’t get a replacement when part of it busted. You know that. Goddam companies, always pushing what you don’t want.” Ed lifted the headphone. “Got a tone, though. Sounds funny. Here.” He held the set out to Art. “You’re the communications wizard.”

Art took the headset and listened. It was a dial tone all right, but behind the rhythmic pulse was a strange and distant singing, the sound you might get if you had no in-line amplification and were placing a call to the Mars expedition. He performed the standard repertoire of tests and obtained no response. He examined the program board more closely. The unit was relatively new, certainly no more than three years old.

“I think you’re out of luck, Ed. The control chips are blown.”

“Figures. The warranty ended in January. The bastards.”

“I don’t think you can blame the company.” Art turned to Joe. “My unit’s newer than this one, and it’s dead, too. Could I make a call on yours?”

“Out of region?”

“Yes.”

“Sure you can.” The question had been automatic — Joe would have been outraged if Art made any move to pay. “Now?”

“Anytime that’s convenient.”

“Now’s as good as any.” Joe stood up heavily, favoring his leg. “Otherwise this old bugger will want us to help him with the clearing up.”

Ed said nothing, until the other two were at the door. Then he shook Art’s hand, ignored Joe, and said, “Help the poor man, will you, in case he falls over. When Annie says she’s coming over, all the blood runs from his brain down into his pecker. I’m still not sure it’s enough for action.” And when the other two were twenty paces away, “Hey, Joe. Helen’s been telling me to ask you this. Do you love Anne-Marie?”

Joe turned and gave him the single sideways glare that said no sane male ever asked another man a question like that. O’Donnell laughed and retreated into the house. Joe and Art continued their slow progress, limited by two bad right knees.

If it had been up to Art he’d have walked faster, no matter how much it hurt. He was desperate to try that call. It was pointless to explain why to Joe. A lot more depended on it than his friends would be willing to believe.

The dogs came to meet them midway between the two houses, wagging their tails wildly and rearing up on Joe with their muddy paws while he cursed and tried to push them away.

“Down, Rush,” he said to a large white mutt. “I’ve got nothing for you out here, you silly bugger. Down, I said, until we get home.”

It was the best diversion that Art could have hoped for. While Joe was feeding the dogs in the back of the tidy and well-organized house — whatever Anne-Marie was coming over for it wasn’t to do cleaning — Art went straight to the telcom set. It wasn’t merely old, it was antique. An actual telephone. There was no store-forward, no video plugs, no conferencing, no min-rate path finder, and pathetic internal storage. A bit more primitive, and you’d be back in the era of analog signals and rotary dials. But when Art picked up the handset he heard a treasured pulse tone, though again it was overlaid on a background hiss like interstellar space.

Another side effect of Supernova Alpha?

A dial pulse was a good start, but no more than that. Art held his breath and hit buttons.

He had spent a lot of time in the past week, trying to remember and write down the thirty-odd numbers that he needed. In the past he had relied on his personal secretary to store them, despite his preaching to others — “We’ve become too dependent on interconnected technologies. One day the information system will be hit and come down like a house of cards. We’ll have a devil of a time putting it back together.”

Do as I say, not as I do.

His half sister’s number was firmly in his head. He called that first, though she was not the reason for his awful feeling of urgency. The attempted connection to her California number produced a series of strange clicks that ended in the odd, open silence of a lost line.