Poul Anderson: The Star Fox

“So I have convinced one man,” Vadász said bitterly.

“More than that.” Heim drew a long breath. “Look, friend, with due respect for you—and I respect anyone who’s had the guts to go out and make his own kind of life—I’m not a raggedy-ass self-appointed troubadour. I’m boss and chief owner of Heimdal.”

“The nuclear motor makers?” Vadász shook his head, muzzily. “No. Non. Nein. Nyet. You would never be here. I have seen your motors as far from home as the Rigel Domain.”

“Uh-huh. Damn good motors, aren’t they? When I decided to settle on Earth, I studied the possibilities. Navy officers who’ve resigned their commissions and don’t want to go into the merchant fleet have much too good a chance of ending down among the unemployables. But I saw that whoever was first to introduce the two-phase control system the Aleriona invented would lock gravs on the human market and half the non-human ones. And… I’d been there when Tech Intelligence dissected an Aleriona ship we captured in the set-to off Achemar. My father-in-law was willing to stake me. So today I’m—oh, not one of the financial giants. But I have ample money.”

“Also, I’ve kept in touch with my Academy classmates. Some of them are admirals by now.

They’ll pay attention to my ideas. And I’m a pretty good contributor to the Libertarian Party, which means that Twyman will listen to me too. He’d better!”

“No.” The dark tousled head moved from side to side, still drooping. “This cannot be. I cannot have found someone.”

“Brother, you have.” Heim slammed a fist into his palm with a revolver noise. A part of him wondered, briefly, at his own joy. Was it kindled by this confirmation that they were not dead on New Europe? Or the chance that he, Gunnar Heim, might personally short-circuit Alerion the damned? Or simply and suddenly a purpose, after five years without Connie? He realized now the emptiness of those years. No matter. The glory mounted and mounted. He bent down, scooped up the bottle with one hand and Vadász with the other. “ Skål!” he shouted to Orion the Hunter, and drank a draught that made the smaller man gape. “Whoo-oo! Come along, Endre. I know places where, we can celebrate this as noisily as we damn please. We shall sing songs and tell tales and drink the moon down and the sun up and then shall go to work. Right?”

“Y-yes—” Still dazed, Vadász tucked his guitar under an arm and wobbled in Heim’s wake.

The bottle was not quite empty when Heim began “The Blue Landsknechts,” a song as full of doom and hell as he was. Vadász hung the guitar from his neck and chorded. After that they got together on “La Marseillaise,” and “Die Beiden Grenadiere,” and “Skipper Bullard,” and about that time they had collected a fine bunch of roughneck companions, and all in all it turned out to be quite an evening.

1700 hours in San Francisco was 2000 in Washington, but Harold Twyman, senior senator from California and majority leader of United States representatives in the Parliament of the World Federation, was a busy man whose secretary could not arrange a sealed-call appointment any earlier on such short notice as Heim had given. However, that suited the latter quite well. It gave him time to recover from the previous night without excessive use of drugs, delegate the most pressing business at the Heimdal plant to the appropriate men, and study Vadász’s evidence.

The Magyar was still asleep in a guest room. His body had a lot of abuse to repair.

Shortly before 1700 Heim decided he was sufficiently familiar with the material Robert de Vigny had assembled. He clicked off the viewer, rubbed his eyes, and sighed. An assortment of aches still nibbled at him. Once—Lord, it didn’t seem very long ago!—he could have weathered twenty times the bout he’d just been through, and made love to three or four girls, and been ready to ship out next morning. I’m at the awkward age, he thought wryly. Too young for antisenescence treatment to make any difference, too old for—what? Nothing, by Satan! I simply sit too much these days. Let me get away for a bit and this paunch I’m developing will melt off. He sucked in his stomach, reached for a pipe, and stuffed the bowl with unnecessary violence.

Why not take a vacation? he thought. Go into the woods and hunt; he had a standing invitation to use Ian McVeigh’s game preserve in British Columbia. Or sail his catamaran to Hawaii. Or order out his interplanetary yacht, climb the Lunar Alps, tramp the Martian hills; Earth was so stinking cluttered. Or even book an interstellar passage. He hadn’t seen his birthplace on Gea since his parents sent him back to Stavanger to get a proper education.

Afterward there had been Greenland Academy, and the Deepspace Fleet, and Earth again, always too much to do.

Sharply before him the memory rose: Tau Ceti a ball of red gold in the sky; mountains coming down to the sea as they did in Norway, but the oceans of Gea were warm and green and haunted him with odors that had no human name; the Sindabans that were his boyhood playmates, laughing just like him as they all ran to the water and piled into a pirogue, raised the wingsail and leaped before the wind; campfire on the island, where flames sprang forth to pick daoda fronds and the slim furry bodies of his friends out of a night that sang; chants and drums and portentous ceremonies; and—and—No. Heim struck a light to his tobacco and puffed hard. I was twelve years old when I left.

And now Far and Mor are dead, and my Sindabans grown into an adulthood which humans are still trying to understand. I’d only find an isolated little scientific base, no different from two score that I’ve seen elsewhere. Time is a one-way lane.

Besides— his gaze dropped to the micros on his desk— there’s work to do here.

Footfalls clattered outside the study. Glad of any distraction, Heim rose and walked after them. He ended in the living room. His daughter had come home and flopped herself in a lounger.

“Hi, Lisa,” he said. “How was school?”

“Yechy.” She scowled and stuck out her tongue. “Old Espinosa said I gotta do my composition over again.”

“Spelling, eh? Well, if you’d only buckle down and learn—”

“Worsen correcting spelling. Though why they make such a fuss about that, me don’t know!

He says the semantics are upwhacked. Old pickleface!”

Heim leaned against the wall and wagged his pipe stem at her. “ ‘Semantics’ is a singular, young’un. Your grammar’s no better than your orthography. Also, trying to write, or talk, or think without knowing semantic principles is like trying to dance before you can walk. I’m afraid my sympathies are with Mr. Espinosa.”

“But Dad!” she wailed. “You don’t realize! I’d have to do the whole paper again from go!”

“Of course.”

“I can’t!” Her eyes, which were blue like his own—otherwise she was coming to look heartbreakingly like Connie—clouded up for a squall. “I got a date with Dick— Oh!” One hand went to her mouth.

“Dick? You mean Richard Woldberg?” Lisa shook her head wildly. “The blaze you don’t,” Heim growled. “I’ve told you damn often enough you’re not to see that lout.”

“Oh, Dad! J-j-just because—”

“I know. High spirits. I call it malicious mischief and a judge that Woldberg Senior bought, and I say any girl who associates with that crowd is going to get in trouble. Nothing so mild as pregnancy, either.” Heim realized he was shouting. He put on his court-martial manner and rapped: “Simply making that date was not only disobedience but disloyalty. You went behind my back. Very well, you’re confined to quarters for a week whenever you’re not in school. And I expect to see your composition tomorrow, written right.”