Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

There was a chance Baynes was back at the stadium, but I didn’t think it likely. If I was right he’d be at home and in touch with them by phone. It was his house I was headed for.

I stopped running at the far end of New Mall, across the street from the Mendoza Monument, and sat on the grass for a while to get my breath. It was a warm night; the ground was faintly damp and had that good Earth-grass smell. This grass was not going to say it loved me or feed me, but right now silence was all I wanted. The monument was lit and I lay on my elbow in the quiet for a while panting heavily and contemplated the heroic bronze of Guadelupe Mendoza, the first woman Chief Justice and one of my favorite people in history. When I was a kid I saved bubble-gum cards with her picture; I had always liked her motherly ways and her liberal decisions.

Baynes’s house was three blocks from Lupe, a fairly modest mansion—considering its owner’s wealth and power—at the eastern edge of the Congressional Compound. I was wary of guards, but there was no need to be; none were around. The place was lit up with the kind of candlepower only a senator could command; even the pair of metal deer on the front lawn had a spotlight.

I considered climbing through a bedroom window but rejected the idea. I hadn’t been reborn on Belson to get shot as a burglar. So I walked up the brickwork path and climbed the stairs to the broad porch. I knocked loudly on the door and then checked my watch. It was two-thirty. I knocked again.

The door opened and a young man was standing there blinking at me. I recognized him from a visit I’d paid Baynes a few years before. I gave him my steely, no-nonsense look. “Good evening,” I said. “I’m Ben Belson and I’m here to see the Senator.” I paused a second and then pushed past him into the enormous living room. On the floor at one end of the room a couple of small black boys wearing pajamas were playing with a modern rarity, an electric train. At the other end, half lying on a Chesterfield sofa, was a thin, elderly black man. He was smiling warmly at me. “Son of a bitch!” he said with a grin. He rose sleepily to his feet, jammed his hands into his bathrobe pockets, and looked at me as friendly as you please. “If it isn’t Benjamin Belson!” he said.

“Hello, L’Ouverture,” I said, not smiling. I have to admit that he’s a charming bastard. And nobody is going to outpoise him.

“They called me a few hours ago, Ben, when they found your ship on the radar.” He gestured toward the children and yawned. “Woke up my grandchildren too.”

There was a blue viddiphone on the table by the sofa. Just then it began to hum. “L’Ouverture,” I said. “Turn the video off and don’t tell them I’m here. It’ll be in your interest.”

He nodded, flicked off the camera switch and answered the phone. After a moment he said, explosively, “Ran away? How is it that thirty MPs can’t catch a running billionaire?” He smiled at me, and listened for a bit. Finally he said, “Well, he won’t get far. I’m going to bed. And for heaven’s sake don’t shoot him.” He hung up the phone.

“Thanks,” I said.

He smiled. “Nothing to thank me for, Ben. I’m curious to know why you came here.”

“Sure,” I said. “How about some coffee first?”

“Get us some coffee, Morton,” he said, “and something light to eat. Melba toast.”

Morton left for the kitchen and I looked around me for a moment. It was a homey place, sort of shabby-genteel, with beige corduroy-covered sofas and unmatching overstuffed armchairs. There were a couple of acrylic landscapes on the walls. Baynes was as rich as Croesus, but he lived like a college president. People said he had more opulent digs tucked away in the sun, that he didn’t want to put on a show in Washington. Maybe that was it. But I’ve known other rich people who won’t spend serious money on themselves, and I distrust them.

I seated myself in one of the overstuffed chairs and leaned back. I hadn’t realized until then how tired I was. Baynes remained standing, stretching now as if trying to wake up. He’d probably spent the evening berating his captive Energy Committee, gone to bed late and then was wakened by being told I was on my way to Washington. Would he have had cops sent to his home? I didn’t think so; he had no way of knowing I was coming.

“L’Ouverture,” I said, “what in heaven’s name made you do me that way? Taking away my citizenship . Why do a thing like that?”

“Nobody’s trying to hurt you, Ben,” he said. “And you’re a rich man. You have friends.”

I just stared at him. Such a cool son of a bitch. L’Ouverture is very good-looking. He is cheap about his household furnishings and I can’t remember his ever picking up a check in a restaurant, but he dresses gorgeously. He looked like an expensive whiskey advertisement in that bathrobe with the monogram over the pocket. The kids in the corner kept buzzing their little green train around its track; through silvery draperies I could see the ghosts of L’Ouverture’s lawn deer in frozen grazing; two miles away the Isabel was sitting, packed with uranium, waiting for the ground to cool. And here I was in this dumpy living room talking to this elegant man like an angry son just back from college. Somewhere in that sky out there, down south in Pisces Austrinus, shone Fomalhaut, no bigger than a bright pinhead. And Belson? Obsidian Belson, my heart’s quiet home? Too small to see from here. Too small and far away. I looked back to L’Ouverture.

Baynes was born in the twentieth century and is a fine grandfatherly figure of a man. Tall, purplish-black and shiny. In his seventies. He must be six feet six—nearly as tall as his celebrated father, one of the finest basketball players who ever lived.

I’m tall enough to be unused to looking up at the person I’m talking to. Napoleon claimed that being short was an advantage; it made others feel awkward to bend down to him. But I didn’t feel that way with Baynes. A part of me was like a kid with him and I didn’t like it. “Being a pirate has style,” I said. “It goes with my beard. But I resent the rest of it. And think of the money the government will lose on taxes alone if I don’t get my uranium to work.”

Baynes seated himself on the sofa and leaned forward, elbows on knees and chin on those big fists of his. It made our heads at the same level. “The Committee discussed that, Benjamin. The loss in revenue will be considerable.”

There was a clatter behind me as the toy train derailed. “Motherfucker!” squeaked one of the kids. Neither of them seemed to be more than five years old.

Baynes spoke sharply. “You ought to say ‘Goodness!’ when a thing like that happens.”

“ You don’t,” said the kid, matter-of-factly, and set the engine back on its track.

Baynes shrugged and spoke to me. “You went off to wherever it was you went in violation of the law. An act of Congress forbids space travel as wasteful of energy. You attempted to import a dangerous extraterrestrial substance…”

“Come on, L’Ouverture,” I said. “Why in hell did you throw the book at me? Are you afraid I’ll ruin you in the wood business?” I pulled a cigar from my shirt pocket and started getting it ready to light. “Are you still mad at me for bankrupting Exxon?” I’d bought what was left of some energy corporations a few years back, put them into receivership, and made a fortune on the tax losses. Baynes had put his money on the other side and lost.

He laughed pleasantly. “Not at all. Revenge is a waste of time. The Committee just can’t let you have a monopoly. There’s a delicate balance of energy use in the United States, Benjamin. We won’t have any one person disrupting it…”