E. von Wald - Runaway Home

Later and with childish delight, Sara showed him where she lived. Her apartment was festooned with the bright little ornaments that were so popular at that time in the Eighteen Planets. Everywhere he looked, Deitrich beheld some little glittering bauble.

There were stories for each, where it came from, how she happened to acquire it. Unmentioned but evident were the carefully nurtured sentimental bonds for each, and with the many little bonds, the growing fabric of emotional citizenship.

Everything had been shown and discussed, and she was smothering her face against his chest when he said, “You know, most TJ pilots carry their women with them, but I never had any.”

Immediately he could feel the tenseness creep into her body, and she looked quickly up at him. Her eyes glistened in the semidarkness. “Let’s not talk about leaving anywhere again, ever.”

He started to speak, but she put her hand 011 his lips. “Let’s pretend, just for a while, that we’ve lived here all our lives, that we belong here and love it.” She kissed him. “Two of us can pretend better than one of us.”

The business of disposing of his cargoes was brief and quickly dispatched into the government channels provided for such things. And the problem of loading the precious, clumsy transport cylinders with goods for the M33 systems was easily handled also by the government agencies. Deitrich soon found his time largely free, with little to think about other than the rapidly approaching date of his departure.

He was concerned. He could see the growing excitement and fear in Sara. There was no mention at all of leaving, but the sober chronometer mounted in the visiphone cabinet at her apartment solemnly measured off the pleasant interlude in little, sensible fragments. Somewhat against his better judgment, Deitrich decided to let things take their course.

One evening after she had proudly shown him the electro park at the Planet Center, the rigid defense she had built up crumbled and she wept.

She could not leave, she explained. She could not again go all through the agony of readjusting herself to a new culture. But now, after him, she could not stay, either. She said that when he left, she would die.

Deitrich had anticipated something of this sort, but suddenly and unexpectedly he was bitter. He muttered harshly, “The only thing you’re in love with is the past.”

“Why did you come,” she sobbed. “It would have been all right if you had not come.”

“Don’t blame me,” he shouted back at her. “It’s this play-acting you’ve been doing.”

“You must stay here,” she said. “You can’t go away and leave, me now.”

“What am I supposed to do,” he demanded angrily. “Leave twelve hundred men and women out there in orbit forever just because at your age you still can’t face reality?”

“You can’t leave,” she sobbed again.

Deitrich stormed out of the apartment. He took a cab to his office, snapped at his secretary, and then fell flat on his face over an unexpected cleaning roach.

He sat up with blood gushing from his nose down his tunic onto the floor. The startled machine limped over to a fresh spot of blood on the carpet, examining it with irregularly twitching antennas.

“Get out of here,” howled Deitrich. The robot scuttled obediently if unevenly back to the chute, dust wheezing from a ruptured sac, and disappeared.

Deitrich swore. The blood stopped gushing and became a flow. A doctor who had been summoned by his frightened secretary came in quickly and was amused. But he also made skillful repairs, and the only souvenir left of the accident was a bloodstained tunic.

After the doctor left Deitrich sat at his desk staring at the closed door. Gloomy and remorseful, he contemplated the situation. He felt that somehow he had been cheated again, and knew it was that which had made him angry with Sara. It had been a trap that he had helped to lay himself.

There was a soft buzzing from the intercom. He ignored it. It insisted, and he broke from his reverie. “Yes?”

“The man Tsuroak is here again, sir.”

Deitrich frowned, trying to place the name in his memory. The secretary, interpreting the hesitation, said, “He is the father of that boy who shipped illegally to M33.”

“Oh, yes,” Deitrich said. “Send him in.” He quickly changed his tunic, and with an effort cleared his mind of his troubles. This man had troubles of his own.

Tsuroak shuffled in as hesitantly and apologetically as before. He stood embarrassed until Deitrich motioned him to a seat.

“Well,” Deitrich asked kindly, “what did you decide to do?”

The man cleared his throat. “Sir, I explained to my wife what you told me, and we—” He hesitated, his miserable eyes seeking the floor. “We decided to stay here,” Tsuroak blurted out unhappily.

“I understand,” Deitrich replied.

“We thought that our responsibilities to our other children were too—I mean, after all, we would have had to take them with us, of course, and that would be pretty hard on them.”

“They didn’t want lo go, did they?”

Tsuroak shook his head. He looked imploringly at Deitrich. “The boy is twenty-seven. That’s pretty young, but it isn’t as if he were just a baby.” He declared with unconvincing defensiveness, “I could take care of myself pretty well at his age, and he follows me.”

“Of course,” Deitrich said sympathetically. “I think you are acting very wisely. I’ve been in this business a long time, and I know what happens.”

Tsuroak bobbed his head up and down gratefully. “Thank you,” he murmured.

He stood up, but immediately resumed his seat again, staring at the floor with his sad, helpless expression. He mumbled, “But we thought that something should be done to keep this sort of thing from happening again—to other people’s boys.”

“There are definite regulations,” Deitrich replied. “And I can assure you that the penalties are harsh. The investigation takes some time, but when it is completed they probably will have found the man who made the mistake. If he is suspected of doing it willfully, he will be prosecuted in a criminal court. You wouldn’t want them to convict an innocent man, would you?”

“Oh, I don’t—” Tsuroak sputtered his denial of such a desire.

“Of course you wouldn’t. And please be confident that steps are being taken to prevent its ever happening again.”

Tsuroak left, still protesting his gratitude.

After a moment, Deitrich drew out the little packet that held the departure schedule, the clearance capsule and the control tapes. He pensively studied the symbols on the outside of the packet and considered.

Impulsively he called his secretary. “See if you can get me Sara McGee on the phone,” he ordered. “And then get me a roof cab.”

“Sara who?” the secretary wanted to know, and Deitrich was forced to look up her visiphone code.

He spent another minute of gloomy staring at the capsule packet before he heard the secretary reply, “Sorry. There is no answer.”

“Then get the roofcab.”

He returned immediately to her apartment but she was gone. Although the visiphone had indicated this, her absence was a relief to Deitrich. He had had a few minutes with an unpleasant picture in his mind.

The chronometer blipped the hour in small, melodious chants. Deitrich went back to the roof again.

There was a hope that was almost an assurance that Sara would be at the port. He felt that it would be consistent with what he knew of her. But when he looked around, he could not see her anywhere. His search was interrupted by Tsuroak just outside the ship that was scheduled to take him out to his fleet.

This time the merchant had had his wife with him. She had been crying, and was making an effort to control her voice. “Would you tell him if you see him up there that… that—”