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Brenda?"
"Yeah."
"She went through a hell of an experience. We don't talk about it. So how's
the work coming?"
"I'll go to the Purser tomorrow. I want all my ducks in a row, but I don't
want everyone getting their requests in ahead of me either. I made a list of
things we could give up to other ships. That might help."
"Good idea. Very Eskimo."
"Charley, it isn't really. The old traditions have us giving a stranger what
he needs whether we need it or not."
He noticed Brenda staring at him. She said, "How strange."
He laughed a little uncomfortably. "I suppose a stranger wouldn't ask for what
the village had to have.
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Anyway, those days are almost gone."
Brenda listened while they talked about the ship. She wouldn't understand much
of it, though both men tried to explain from time to time. "The Langston Field
is your reentry shield and your weapons shield and your true hull. We'll
never get it repaired, but Firebee could still function in the outer system.
I'm trying to get the shuttles rebuilt. Maybe we can make her a trader. She
sure isn't part of a Navy any more."
Charley said, "The Tanith asteroids aren't mined out."
"So?"
"Asteroids. Metal. Build a metal shell around Firebee for a hull."
"Charley, you'd double her mass!"
"We could still run her around the inner system. If we could get a tank from
some wrecked ship, a detachable fuel tank, we'd be interstellar again." His
eyes flicked to Brenda and he said, "With more fuel we could still get to the
Jump points and back. Everything'd be slower, we couldn't outrun anything . .
.
have to stay away from bandits ..."
"You're onto something. Charley, we don't really want to be asteroid miners
for five years. But if we could find two good tanks - "
"Ahhh! One for a hull. Big. Off a battleship, say."
"Yeah."
"Terry, I'm tired," Charley said suddenly, plaintively. "Take Brenda to
dinner? They let her out."
"Brenda? I'd be honored."
She smiled one-sided.
November was twelve days long on Tanith, and there wasn't any December. Every
so often they put the same number on two consecutive years, to stay even with
Spartan time.
In November Dagon City was dark eighteen hours out of twenty-one-plus. The
street lighting was back, but snatchers were still a problem. Maybe Terry's
uniform protected him; and he went armed, of course.
He took her to a place that was still passable despite the shortages.
He did most of the talking. She'd never heard of the Nuliajuk
migration. He told her how the
CoDominium had moved twenty thousand Eskimos, tribes all mixed together, to a
world too cold for the comfort of other peoples.
They'd settled the equator, where the edges of the ice caps almost met. They'd
named the world for a myth-figure common to all the tribes, though names
differed: the old woman at the bottom of the sea who brought game or withheld
it. There was native sea life, and the imported seals and walruses and bears
throve too. Various tribes taught each other their secrets. Some had never
seen a seal, some had never built an igloo.
The colony throve; but the men studied fusion and Langston Field engineering,
and many wound up on
Brenda
Navy and merchant ships. Eskimos don't really like to freeze. The engine room
of a Navy ship is a better place, and Eskimos of all tribes have a knack with
tools.
Nuliajuk was near Sol and Sparta. It might still be part of the shrinking
Empire, but Terry had never seen it. He was a half-breed, born in a
Libertarian merchant ship. What he knew of Nuliajuk came from his father.
And Brenda had lived all her life on a Tanith farm. "I took my
education from a TV wall. No hands-on, but I learned enough to fix our
machines. We had a fusion plant and some Gaineses and
Tofflers. Those are special tractors. Maybe the Saurons left them alone."
"Saurons?"
"Sorry." Her grimace twisted her whole face around. "I spent the last four
days talking about nothing else. I own that farm now. I don't own anything
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else." She studied him thoughtfully. Her face in repose was symmetrical
enough, square-jawed, strong even by Tanith standards. "Would you like to see
it?"
"What?"
"Would you like to see my farm? Can you borrow a plane?"
They set it up for two days hence.
2656, June (Tanith local time)
Brenda's face lit when she saw him. "Terry! Have you gotten rich? Have you
saved civilization? Have you had fun?"
"No, yes, yes. How are you?"
"You can see, can't you? It's all over, Terry. No more nightmares." He'd never
seen her bubble like this. There was no slur in her voice . . . but he could
see the twitch at the left side of her mouth. Her face was animated on the
right, calmer on the left. Her hair bloomed around her head like a
great black dandelion, teased, nearly a foot across. The scar must
have healed completely. She'd gained some weight.
He remembered that he had loved her. (But he didn't remember her having
nightmares.)
"They tell me you opened an orphanage."
"Yeah, I had twenty kids in one schlumph," she said. "The city gave me
financing to put the farm back on its legs, and there were plenty of workmen
to hire, but I thought I'd go nuts taking care of the children and the farm
both. It's easier now. The older kids are my farmers, and they learn to take
care of the younger ones. Two of them got married and went off to start their
own farm. Three are in college, and the oldest boy's in the Navy. I'm back
down to twenty kids."
"How many of your own? I met Reseda." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]