Joan Vinge - Heaven Chronicles

Clewell rubbed his beard. “Then why act like one, Betha? That was a little too convincing for me, too. Or isn't it an act anymore?”

Shame warmed her face, drove the coldness from her. “You know it is, Pappy! But that damned Abdhiamal—”

Clewell lifted his head slightly, unfastened his seatbelt. “He's not such a bad sort … for a ‘damned fop.’ He's held up pretty well under one gee … under everything he's been through.” Meaning that she hadn't made things any easier.

“He's a phony; he's lucky he didn't cripple himself.” She looked away irritably.

“He's a proud man, Betha. He might not call it that … but anybody who can stand straight and smile while gravity's pulling him apart—or loyalty is—has my admiration. In a way, he reminds me of—”

“He's not at all like Eric.”

His eyebrows rose. “That wasn't what I was going to say. He reminds me of you.” He held up a hand, cutting off her indignation. “But now that you mention it, there is something about him … a manner, maybe; even a physical resemblance. Maybe it's why I like him in spite of myself; maybe it's what bothers you. Something does.”

“Oh, Pappy …” She lifted her hand, pressing her rings against her mouth. “It is true. Every time I look at him, anything he does, he reminds me—But he's not Eric. He's not one of us, he's one of them . How can I feel this way? How can I stop wanting … wanting …” She reached out; Clewell's firm, weathered hand closed over her wrist.

He smoothed her drifting hair. “I don't know. I don't know the answer, Betha.” He sighed. “I don't know why they claim age is wisdom. Age is just getting old.”

Shadow Jack moved restlessly, trapped in the too-empty box of the room where he slept, haunted by the ghost of a stranger: manuals on economics, a nonsense song lyric, a hand-knit sweater suspended in midair—a dead man's presence scattered through drawers and cupboards in the clutter of a life's detritus. Rusty clung to his shoulders, her mute acceptance easing the shame of his exile. He stroked her mindlessly, hearing only the ticking of the clock; meaningless divisions marking the endless seconds. He wondered whether they would get what they wanted from the Ringers, wondered how he could face Betha Torgussen again … wondered how he would face the rest of his life.

Rusty's small, inhuman face rose from his shoulder, her ears flicking. “Bird Alyn?” He pushed to the doorway, saw Wadie Abdhiamal disappear into another room. He heard Abdhiamal's voice, almost inaudible: “Damn that woman! She'd spit in the eye of God.”

Shadow Jack moved along the hall, stopped at Abdhiamal's doorway, staring. “What's the matter, she spit in your eye?”

Abdhiamal twisted, a split-second's exasperation on his face. He smoothed his work shirt absently, smoothed his expression. “Yeah … somethin' like that.”

“What happened up there? Did we get the hydrogen?”

“Probably …. Why weren't you in the control room?”

He grimaced. “I couldn't do it. I—I called the captain a pervert.”

“You what?” Abdhiamal frowned in disbelief.

Shadow Jack caught the doorway to move on; desperation turned him back. “Can … I talk to you … man to man?”

Abdhiamal gestured him into the room, no trace of amusement on his face. “Probably. What about?”

Shadow Jack cleared his throat; Rusty pushed off from his shoulder, rose like a lifting ship, and swam toward Abdhiamal. “How come you never married?”

Abdhiamal laughed, startled. “I don't know.” He watched the cat, reached out to pull her down to his chest. “Maybe because I never met a woman who'd spit in the eye of God.”

Shadow Jack's eyes widened; and looking at Abdhiamal, he wondered who was more surprised.

Abdhiamal laughed again, shrugged. “But somehow I doubt it.”

“I mean … you said before, that now you never would get married. I thought there was—some other reason.” He reached for the doorframe.

“There was.”

He stopped, holding on.

“I've traveled a lot. That means I've been exposed to high radiation levels and potential genetic damage. We have ways of preservin' sperm so men at least can travel and still raise healthy children. But with the bill of attainder, I'm legally dead now. They'll destroy my account.” Abdhiamal took a deep breath. “And I've been sterilized.”

Shadow Jack looked back, letting the words come, “I'd be happy if I was sterile!” He shook his head. “I didn't mean … I didn't mean it like that. But we can't ever get married. Bird Alyn and me, because I'm not sterile and she's not. We are defective. We shouldn't ever have children, but we would.…”

Abdhiamal scratched Rusty under the chin. “It's a simple operation. Can't they perform it on Lansing?”

“They could … but they won't.” Misery hung on him like a weight. “If you're a Materialist, you're supposed to take responsibility for your own actions. You're supposed to take the consequences, not expect anybody else to do it for you. Like my mother, when my sister was born an' they said she was too defective … my mother had to put her Out.… She wouldn't let my father touch her anymore.” He looked down at his hands. “But the medical technology's bad anyhow. Sometimes I think they just don't want to waste what's left.”

Abdhiamal's voice was gently professional. “How were you judged defective? You look sound to me.”

Shadow Jack's hands tightened on metal. “Maybe I wasn't defective, then. But my sister was. And they needed more outside workers, so they told me I had to work on the surface. That's what you do if you're marginally damaged, like Bird Alyn. That's where I met her.…” Where he had discovered what life must have been like once, lived in the beauty of gardens and not the blackness of stone. And where he had discovered that his own life did not end because he had left the shielding walls of rock; that feeling did not, or belief, or hope. But he had spent too many megaseconds mending a tattered world-shroud, too many megaseconds in a contaminated ship.… And there were no miracles to heal a crippled hand or mend a broken heart.

He struck the doorframe. “Everything goes wrong! I didn't mean to call Betha … what I called her. But she had so many husbands; she even has children! When Bird Alyn and I can't even have each other … it just made me crazy. Betha lost so much, and I said—I said that to her. She helped us after we tried to take her ship just like everybody else—”

“You did? And she let you get away with it?”

He nodded, feeling ridiculous. “All we had was a can opener—I guess she thought we were fools.”

“And—you said she has children?” Abdhiamal looked down at the wide leather band circling his wrist

“Yeah. Goin' into space is like … like doing anything else to them. It's not the end of anything.” He bit his tongue, remembering that it had been for the crew of the Ranger .

“If she forgave you for trying to steal her ship, I expect she'll forgive you for callin' her a pervert. Sooner than she'll forgive me for makin' remarks about engineers.”

Shadow Jack frowned, not understanding.

Abdhiamal's smile faded. “It seems you and I have more than one problem in common. Like every group in Heaven Belt shares the problems of every other one. And I'm not so sure any more that there's an easy answer for any of us.”

Shadow Jack turned away, saw Bird Alyn watching him from the end of the hall. He met her eyes, hopelessness dragging him down like the chains of gravity. “There aren't any answers at all. I should have known that. Sorry to take up your time, Abdhiamal.”

Wadie closed the door, still cradling the cat absently against his side. In his mind he saw the future on Lansing, grief and death among the gardens—and saw in Lansing the future of all Heaven.… The future? Silence pressed his ears, deafening him. The end. The Demarchy was only one more fading patch of snow. There was no answer. Nothing he could ever do—nothing he had ever done—would hold back Death. He had made himself believe that his work had some relevance and worth, that a kind of creation existed in his negotiations, a binding force to keep equilibrium with disintegration and decay. But he had been wrong. It had always been too late. He was a damned fop, living at the expense of everyone else … and wasting his life on the self-delusion that he was somehow saving them all. Wasting his life: he had thrown away his last chance of ever having a life of his own, a home, a family, any real relationship. And all that he had ever done, been, or believed was meaningless. It had all been for nothing—and it would all be nothing in the end. Nothing.