Double Star

Five

Mr. Commissioner Boothroyd was a Humanity Party appointee, of course, as were all of his staff except for civil service technical employees. But Dak had told me that it was at least sixty-forty that Boothroyd had not had a finger in the plot; Dak considered him honest but stupid. For that matter, neither Dak nor Rog Clifton believed that Supreme Minister Quiroga was in it; they attributed the thing to the clandestine terrorist group inside the Humanity Party who called themselves the «Actionists» — and they attributed them to some highly respectable big-money boys who stood to profit heavily.

Myself, I would not have known an Actionist from an auctioneer.

But the minute we landed something popped up that made me wonder whether friend Boothroyd was as honest and stupid as Dak thought he was. It was a minor thing but one of those little things that can punch holes in an impersonation. Since I was a Very Important Visitor the Commissioner met me; since I held no public office other than membership in the Grand Assembly and was traveling privately no official honors were offered. He was alone save for his aide — and a little girl about fifteen.

I knew him from photographs and I knew quite a bit about him; Rog and Penny had briefed me carefully. I shook hands, asked about his sinusitis, thanked him for the pleasant time I had had on my last visit, and spoke with his aide in that warm man-to-man fashion that Bonforte was so good at. Then I turned to the young lady. I knew Boothroyd had children and that one of them was about this age and sex; I did not know — perhaps Rog and Penny did not know — whether or not I had ever met her.

Boothroyd himself saved me. «You haven't met my daughter Deirdre, I believe. She insisted on coming along.»

Nothing in the pictures I had studied had shown Bonforte dealing with young girls — so I simply had to be Bonforte — a widower in his middle fifties who had no children of his own, no nieces, and probably little experience with teen-age girls — but with lots of experience in meeting strangers of every sort. So I treated her as if she were twice her real age; I did not quite kiss her hand. She blushed and looked pleased.

Boothroyd looked indulgent and said, «Well, ask him, my dear. You may not have another chance.»

She blushed deeper and said, «Sir, could I have your autograph? The girls in my school collect them. I have Mr. Quiroga's ... I ought to have yours.» She produced a little book which she had been holding behind her.

I felt like a copter driver asked for his license — which is home in his other pants. I had studied hard but I had not expected to have to forge Bonforte's signature. Damn it, you can't do everything in two and a half days!

But it was simply impossible for Bonforte to refuse such a request — and I was Bonforte. I smiled jovially and said, «You have Mr. Quiroga's already?»

«Yes, sir.»

«Just his autograph?»

«Yes. Er, he put “Best Wishes” on it.»

I winked at Boothroyd. «Just “Best Wishes” eh? To young ladies I never make it less than “Love.” Tell you what I'm going to do — » I took the little book from her, glanced through the pages.

«Chief,» Dak said urgently, «we are short on minutes.»

«Compose yourself,» I said without looking up. «The entire Martian nation can wait, if necessary, on a young lady.» I handed the book to Penny. «Will you note the size of this book? And then remind me to send a photograph suitable for pasting in it — and properly autographed, of course.»

«Yes, Mr. Bonforte.»

«Will that suit you, Miss Deirdre?»

«Gee!»

«Good. Thanks for asking me. We can leave now, Captain. Mr. Commissioner, is that our car?»

«Yes, Mr. Bonforte.» He shook his head wryly. «I'm afraid you have converted a member of my own family to your Expansionist heresies. Hardly sporting, eh? Sitting ducks, and so forth?»

«That should teach you not to expose her to bad company — eh, Miss Deirdre?» I shook hands again. «Thanks for meeting us, Mr. Commissioner. I am afraid we had better hurry along now.»

«Yes, certainly. Pleasure.»

«Thanks, Mr. Bonforte!»

«Thank you, my dear.»

I turned away slowly, so as not to appear jerky or nervous in stereo. There were photographers around, still, news pickup, stereo, and so forth, as well as many reporters. Bill was keeping the reporters away from us; as we turned to go he waved and said, «See you later, Chief,» and turned back to talk to one of them. Rog, Dak, and Penny followed me into the car. There was the usual skyfield crowd, not as numerous as at any earthport, but numerous. I was not worried about them as long as Boothroyd accepted the impersonation — though there were certainly some present who knew that I was not Bonforte.

But I refused to let those individuals worry me, either. They could cause us no trouble without incriminating themselves.

The car was a Rolls Outlander, pressurized, but I left my oxygen mask on because the others did. I took the right-hand seat, Rog sat beside me, and Penny beside him, while Dak wound his long legs around one of the folding seats. The driver glanced back through the partition and started up.

Rog said quietly, «I was worried there for a moment.»

«Nothing to worry about. Now let's all be quiet, please. I want to review my speech.»

Actually I wanted to gawk at the Martian scene; I knew the speech perfectly. The driver took us along the north edge of the field, past many godowns. I read signs for Verwijs Trading Company, Diana Outlines, Ltd., Three Planets, and I. G. Farbenindustrie. There were almost as many Martians as humans in sight. We ground hogs get the impression that Martians are slow as snails — and they are, on our comparatively heavy planet. On their own world they skim along on their bases like a stone sliding over water.

To the right, south of us past the flat field, the Great Canal dipped into the too-close horizon, showing no shore line beyond. Straight ahead of us was the Nest of Kkkah, a fairy city. I was staring at it, my heart lifting at its fragile beauty, when Dak moved suddenly.

We were well past the traffic around the godowns but there was one car ahead, coming toward us; I had seen it without noticing it. But Dak must have been edgily ready for trouble; when the other car was quite close, he suddenly slammed down the partition separating us from the driver, swarmed over the man's neck, and grabbed the wheel. We slewed to the right, barely missing the other car, slewed again to the left and barely stayed on the road. It was a near thing, for we were past the field now and here the highway edged the canal.

I had not been much use to Dak a couple of days earlier in the Eisenhower, but I had been unarmed and not expecting trouble. This day I was still unarmed, not so much as a poisoned fang, but I comported myself a little better. Dak was more than busy trying to drive the car while leaning over from the back seat. The driver, caught off balance at first, now tried to wrestle him away from the wheel

I lunged forward, got my left arm around the driver's neck, and shoved my right thumb into his ribs. «Move and you've had it!» The voice belonged to the hero-villain in The Second-Story Gentleman; the line of dialogue was his too.

My prisoner became very quiet.

Dak said urgently, «Rog, what are they doing?»

Clifton looked back and answered, «They're turning around.»

Dak answered, «Okay. Chief, keep your gun on that character while I climb over.» He was doing so even as he spoke, an awkward matter in view of his long legs and the crowded car. He settled into the seat and said happily, «I doubt if anything on wheels can catch a Rolls on a straightaway.» He jerked on the damper and the big car shot forward. «How am I doing, Rog?»

«They're just turned around.»

«All right. What do we do with this item? Dump him out?»

My victim squirmed and said, «I didn't do anything!» I jabbed my thumb harder and he quieted.

«Oh, not a thing,» Dak agreed, keeping his eyes on the road. «All you did was try to cause a little crash — just enough to make Mr. Bonforte late for his appointment. If I had not noticed that you were slowing down to make it easy on yourself, you might have got away with it. No guts, eh?» He took a slight curve with the tires screaming and the gyro fighting to keep us upright. «What's the situation, Rog?»

«They've given up.»

«So.» Dak did not slacken speed; we must have been doing well over three hundred kilometers. «I wonder if they would try to bomb us with one of their own boys aboard? How about it, bub? Would they write you off as expendable?»

«I don't know what you're talking about! You're going to be in trouble over this!»

«Really? The word of four respectable people against your jailbird record? Or aren't you a transportee? Anyhow, Mr. Bonforte prefers to have me drive him — so naturally you were glad to do a favor for Mr. Bonforte.» We hit something about as big as a worm cast on that glassy road and my prisoner and I almost went through the roof.

«Mr. Bonforte!» My victim made it a swear word.

Dak was silent for several seconds. At last he said, «I don't think we ought to dump this one, Chief. I think we ought to let you off, then take him to a quiet place. I think he might talk if we urged him.»

The driver tried to get away. I tightened the pressure on his neck and jabbed him again with my thumb knuckle. A knuckle may not feel too much like the muzzle of a heater — but who wants to find out? He relaxed and said sullenly, «You don't dare give me the needle.»

«Heavens, no!» Dak answered in shocked tones. «That would be illegal. Penny girl, got a bobby pin?»

«Why, certainly, Dak.» She sounded puzzled and I was. She did not sound frightened, though, and I certainly was.

«Good. Bub, did you ever have a bobby pin shoved up under your fingernails? They say it will even break a hypnotic command not to talk. Works directly on the subconscious or something. Only trouble is that the patient makes the most unpleasant noises. So we are going to take you out in the dunes where you won't disturb anybody but sand scorpions. After you have talked — now here comes the nice part! After you talk we are going to turn you loose, not do anything, just let you walk back into town. But — listen carefully now! — if you are real nice and co-operative, you get a prize. We'll let you have your mask for the walk.»

Dak stopped talking; for a moment there was no sound but the keening of the thin Martian air past the roof. A human being can walk possibly two hundred yards on Mars without an oxygen mask, if he is in good condition. I believe I read of a case where a man walked almost half a mile before he died. I glanced at the trip meter and saw that we were about twenty-three kilometers from Goddard City.

The prisoner said slowly, «Honest, I don't know anything about it. I was just paid to crash the car.»

«We'll try to stimulate your memory.» The gates of the Martian city were just ahead of us; Dak started slowing the car. «Here's where you get out, Chief. Rog, better take your gun and relieve the Chief of our guest.»

«Right, Dak.» Rog moved up by me, jabbed the man in the ribs — again with a bare knuckle. I moved out of the way. Dak braked the car to a halt, stopping right in front of the gates.

«Four minutes to spare,» he said happily. «This is a nice car. I wish I owned it. Rog, ease up a touch and give me room.»

Clifton did so, Dak chopped the driver expertly on the side of his neck with the edge of his hand; the man went limp. «That will keep him quiet while you get clear. Can't have any unseemly disturbance under the eyes of the nest. Let's check time.»

We did so. I was about three and a half minutes ahead of the deadline. «You are to go in exactly on time, you understand? Not ahead, not behind, but on the dot.»

«That's right,» Clifton and I answered in chorus.

«Thirty seconds to walk up the ramp, maybe. What do you want to do with the three minutes you have left?»

I sighed. «Just get my nerve back.»

«Your nerve is all right. You didn't miss a trick back there. Cheer up, old son. Two hours from now you can head for home, with your pay burning holes in your pocket. We're on the last lap.»

«I hope so. It's been quite a strain. Uh, Dak?»

«Yes?»

«Come here a second.» I got out of the car, motioned him to come with me a short distance away. «What happens if I made a mistake — in there?»

«Eh?» Dak looked surprised, then laughed a little too heartily. «You won't make a mistake. Penny tells me you've got it down Jo-block perfect.»

«Yes, but suppose I slip?»

«You won't slip. I know how you feel; I felt the same way on my first solo grounding. But when it started, I was so busy doing it I didn't have time to do it wrong.»

Clifton called out, his voice thin in thin air, «Dak! Are you watching the time?»

«Gobs of time. Over a minute.»

«Mr. Bonforte!» It was Penny's voice. I turned and went back to the car. She got out and put out her hand. «Good luck, Mr. Bonforte.»

«Thanks, Penny.»

Rog shook hands and Dak clapped me on the shoulder. «Minus thirty-five seconds. Better start.»

I nodded and started up the ramp. It must have been within a second or two of the exact, appointed time when I reached the top, for the mighty gates rolled back as I came to them. I took a deep breath and cursed that damned air mask.

Then I took my stage.

It doesn't make any difference how many times you do it, that first walk on as the curtain goes up on the first night of any run is a breathcatcher and a heart-stopper. Sure, you know your sides. Sure, you've asked the manager to count the house. Sure, you've done it all before. No matter — when you first walk out there and know that all those eyes are on you, waiting for you to speak, waiting for you to do something — maybe even waiting for you to go up on your lines, brother, you feel it. This is why they have prompters.

I looked out and saw my audience and I wanted to run. I had stage fright for the first time in thirty years.

The siblings of the nest were spread out before me as far as I could see. There was an open lane in front of me, with thousands on each side, set close together as asparagus. I knew that the first thing I must do was slow-march down the center of that lane, clear to the far end, to the ramp leading down into the inner nest.

I could not move.

I said to myself. «Look, boy, you're John Joseph Bonforte. You've been here dozens of times before. These people are your friends. You're here because you want to be here — and because they want you here. So march down that aisle. Tum tum te tum! “Here comes the bride!”»

I began to feel like Bonforte again. I was Uncle Joe Bonforte, determined to do this thing perfectly — for the honor and welfare of my own people and my own planet — and for my friends the Martians. I took a deep breath and one step.

That deep breath saved me; it brought me that heavenly fragrance. Thousands on thousands of Martians packed close together — it smelled to me as if somebody had dropped and broken a whole case of Jungle Lust. The conviction that I smelled it was so strong that I involuntarily glanced back to see if Penny had followed me in. I could feel her handclasp warm in my palm.

I started limping down that aisle, trying to make it about the speed a Martian moves on his own planet. The crowd closed in behind me. Occasionally kids would get away from their elders and skitter out in front of me. By «kids» I mean post-fission Martians, half the mass and not much over half the height of an adult. They are never out of the nest and we are inclined to forget that there can be little Martians. It takes almost five years, after fission, for a Martian to regain his full size, have his brain fully restored, and get all of his memory back. During this transition he is an idiot studying to be a moron. The gene rearrangement and subsequent regeneration incident to conjugation and fission put him out of the running for a long time. One of Bonforte's spools was a lecture on the subject, accompanied by some not very good amateur stereo.

The kids, being cheerful idiots, are exempt from propriety and all that that implies. But they are greatly loved.

Two of the kids, of the same and smallest size and looking just alike to me, skittered out and stopped dead in front of me, just like a foolish puppy in traffic. Either I stopped or I ran them down.

So I stopped. They moved even closer, blocking my way completely, and started sprouting pseudo limbs while chittering at each other. I could not understand them at all. Quickly they were plucking at my clothes and snaking their patty-paws into my sleeve pockets.

The crowd was so tight that I could hardly go around them. I was stretched between two needs. In the first place they were so darn cute that I wanted to see if I didn't have a sweet tucked away somewhere for them — but in a still firster place was the knowledge that the adoption ceremony was timed like a ballet. If I didn't get on down that street, I was going to commit the classic sin against propriety made famous by Kkkahgral the Younger himself.

But the kids were not about to get out of my way. One of them had found my watch.

I sighed and was almost overpowered by the perfume. Then I made a bet with myself. I bet that baby-kissing was a Galactic Universal and that it took precedence even over Martian propriety. I got on one knee, making myself about the height they were, and fondled them for a few moments, patting them and running my hands down their scales.

Then I stood up and said carefully, «That is all now. I must go,» which used up a large fraction of my stock of Basic Martian.

The kids clung to me but I moved them carefully and gently aside and went on down the double line, hurrying to make up for the time I had lost. No life wand burned a hole in my back. I risked a hope that my violation of propriety had not yet reached the capital offense level. I reached the ramp leading down into the inner nest and started on down.

* * * * * *

That line of asterisks represents the adoption ceremony. Why? Because it is limited to members of the Kkkah nest. It is a family matter.

Put it this way: A Mormon may have very close gentile friends — but does that friendship get a gentile inside the Temple at Salt Lake City? It never has and it never will. Martians visit very freely back and forth between their nests — but a Martian enters the inner nest only of his own family. Even his conjugate-spouses are not thus privileged. I have no more right to tell the details of the adoption ceremony than a lodge brother has to be specific about ritual outside the lodge.

Oh, the rough outlines do not matter, since they are the same for any nest, just as my part was the same for any candidate. My sponsor — Bonforte's oldest Martian friend, Kkkahrrreash — met me at the door and threatened me with a wand. I demanded that he kill me at once were I guilty of any breach. To tell the truth, I did not recognize him, even though I had studied a picture of him. But it had to be him because ritual required it.

Having thus made clear that I stood foursquare for Motherhood, the Home, Civic Virtue, and never missing Sunday school, I was permitted to enter. `Rrreash conducted me around all the stations, I was questioned and I responded. Every word, every gesture, was as stylized as a classical Chinese play, else I would not have stood a chance. Most of the time I did not understand my own replies; I simply knew my cues and the responses. It was not made easier by the low light level the Martians prefer; I was groping around like a mole.

I played once with Hawk Mantell, shortly before he died, after he was stone-deaf. There was a trouper! He could not even use a hearing device because the eighth nerve was dead. Part of the time he could cue by lips but that is not always possible. He directed the production himself and he timed it perfectly. I have seen him deliver a line, walk away — then whirl around and snap out a retort to a line that he had never heard, precisely on the timing.

This was like that. I knew my part and I played it. If they blew it, that was their lookout.

But it did not help my morale that there were never less than half a dozen wands leveled at me the whole time. I kept telling myself that they wouldn't burn me down for a slip. After all, I was just a poor stupid human being and at the very least they would give me a passing mark for effort. But I didn't believe it.

After what seemed like days — but was not, since the whole ceremony times exactly one ninth of Mars' rotation — after an endless time, we ate. I don't know what and perhaps it is just as well. It did not poison me.

After that the elders made their speeches, I made my acceptance speech in answer, and they gave me my name and my wand. I was a Martian.

I did not know how to use the wand and my name sounded like a leaky faucet, but from that instant on it was my legal name on Mars and I was legally a blood member of the most aristocratic family on the planet — exactly fifty-two hours after a ground hog down on his luck had spent his last half-Imperial buying a drink for a stranger in the bar of Casa Mañana.

I guess this proves that one should never pick up strangers.

I got out as quickly as possible. Dak had made up a speech for me in which I claimed proper necessity for leaving at once and they let me go. I was nervous as a man upstairs in a sorority house because there was no longer ritual to guide me. I mean to say even casual social behavior was still hedged around with airtight and risky custom and I did not know the moves. So I recited my excuse and headed out. `Rrreash and another elder went with me and I chanced playing with another pair of the kids when we were outside — or maybe the same pair. Once I reached the gates the two elders said good-by in squeaky English and let me go out alone; the gates closed behind me and I re-swallowed my heart.

The Rolls was waiting where they had let me out; I hurried down, a door opened, and I was surprised to see that Penny was in it alone. But not displeased. I called out, «Hi, Curly Top! I made it!»

«I knew you would.»

I gave a mock sword salute with my wand and said, «Just call me Kkkahjjjerrr» — spraying the front rows with the second syllable.

«Be careful with that thing!» she said nervously.

I slid in beside her on the front seat and asked, «Do you know how to use one of these things?» The reaction was setting in and I felt exhausted but gay; I wanted three quick drinks and a thick steak, then to wait up for the critics' reviews.

«No. But do be careful.»

«I think all you have to do is to press it here,» which I did, and there was a neat two-inch hole in the windshield and the car wasn't pressurized any longer.

Penny gasped. I said, «Gee, I'm sorry. Ill put it away until Dak can coach me.»

She gulped. «It's all right. Just be careful where you point it.» She started wheeling the car and I found that Dak was not the only one with a heavy hand on the damper.

Wind was whistling in through the hole I had made. I said, «What's the rush? I need some time to study my lines for the press conference. Did you bring them? And where are the others?» I had forgotten completely the driver we had grabbed; I had not thought about him from the time the gates of the nest opened.

«No. They couldn't come.»

«Penny, what's the matter? What's happened?» I was wondering if I could possibly take a press conference without coaching. Perhaps I could tell them a little about the adoption; I wouldn't have to fake that.

«It's Mr. Bonforte — they've found him.»