Homegoing

Chapter 17

New York city’s central island of Manhattan does not have many hills. It used to have them, long ago. The English colonists and the Dutch before them, the Indians who were there first of all—they all spoke of hills, valleys, ridges, wide streams, and ponds big enough to sail on. Only vestiges have remained of any of these. When New Yorkers began the task of covering their island with concrete, they didn’t want any grades steeper than a horse could pull a wagonload of bricks—or, later, than an eighteen-wheeler tractor could pull twenty tons of steel girders. So they lopped off the tops of all the hills, and they filled all the ravines, and they piped all the streams into sewers underground. They did not count on what might happen to that flattened island when the carbon-dioxide warmup began. When it happened, their descendants tried diking the island to keep the rising waters out. But storms overrun dikes when the storms are big enough . . . and the storms of the Age of Warmup are definitely big enough.

“I should have brought your bathing suit,” Marguery sighed when Sandy came out from behind the shelter on the building roof in only his bright green underwear. She inspected him absently. Her mood was still curiously detached, almost somber—considering, Sandy thought resentfully, that she had all but promised that they were going to do it. She concluded, “I guess you look all right. Nobody’s here to see, anyway. Here, put these on.”

He took the inflated rubber thing she handed him and managed to squeeze his head through the hole, tying the tabs at his waist as ordered. They were on the roof of a low building—the water level was only feet below. He could not help being distracted as he saw Marguery peel off her slacks. She had her bikini bathing suit on underneath her other clothes and looked quite ready for anything.

Sandy was a long way from ready—for anything. All this equipment was bafflingly new. There was not just the air-filled rubber thing to get on, there was a backpack tank to strap into place, and a mask to try to learn to breathe through, and weights to hang on his belt for what Marguery called “neutral buoyancy.” Sandy scowled. “Can’t we just let a little of the air out?” he asked.

“I don’t want to drown you. No,” she said shortly. “Let’s get in the water. We really shouldn’t stay exposed to the sun this far south.”

She sat on the edge of the roof and eased herself over, floating easily in the water just below him. “Well?” she called, waiting.

Sandy took a deep breath and followed her example.

He didn’t do it as rapidly as she. He took a firm grip on the parapet and lowered himself, inch by inch, into the water. As soon as his legs were in he gasped in astonishment; it was cold. Well, not really cold, he conceded; it wasn’t really unpleasant, except at the first unprecedented shock. But it was water rather than air that his legs were in, far quicker than any gases at soaking heat out of his body.

If Marguery Darp could stand it, he could. Grimly Sandy lowered the rest of his body into the unfamiliar medium. It took an effort of will to make his fingers release the edge of the wall.

Then he was floating.

It was a queer sensation. It was a dozen different queer sensations, none of them ever experienced before. When he moved his arms through the water his body moved in the other direction—just like the main drive engines on the interstellar ship; action and reaction held here, too! The first chill disappeared as his skin got used to the surrounding liquid. It felt, actually, rather nice. When he ducked his face under the water experimentally, some got into his mouth; it was salty, but not at all unpleasant.

He called to Marguery, floating watchfully a yard away, “I think I like it!”

“Let’s get your weights adjusted,” she said.

That didn’t take long. Marguery had made a good guess, and only two small ones needed to be added to counteract the buoyancy of his floats, so that his whole body, flesh, floats, tanks, weights, and all, added up to just about the density of the water he was in.

Then there was the necessity of learning to breathe out through his nose and in through the rubber tube held in his mouth. Sandy choked and strangled half a dozen times before he finally got the hang of the breathing procedures.

Then he peered down into the water. It was less clear here than it had been in midtown, or perhaps simply deeper. “What’s down there?” he asked.

“You’ll see. Nothing to worry about. There’s not much that can hurt you around here, outside of the occasional shark.”

“Shark?” Sandy gasped.

“They won’t bother us,” she promised. “You just keep an eye on the little fish; as long as you see them, there aren’t any sharks around.”

Sandy wanted to believe her. He tried to believe her, but he couldn’t help ducking his head underwater to see if some great, gray, mean thing was down there.

She stopped him. “Don’t go all the way under yet.” She meditated for a moment, then said, “I guess you’re as ready as you’re going to be. Is that hearing-aid thing of yours waterproof?”

Sandy considered. “I don’t think so.”

“Then give it to me,” she ordered. “Will you be able to hear me at all with it out?”

Glumly, he said, “No.”

“Then, when I give you the sign, spit on your faceplate like this—” She demonstrated. “—and follow me down.” She carefully stowed the little button in a pocket in her scuba gear, sealed the pocket, and gave Sandy a meager smile. She said something. He knew she was saying something because he could see her lips move, but he didn’t hear a sound.

“What?” he bellowed.

She frowned, shrugged, and pointed to the face mask. When he followed her example and spat in it before pulling it on, she looked as though she were sighing, but only waved to him and fell backward into the water beside him.

And they were on their way down, into the dimness of the Wall Street underwater canyon.

He clung to one of Marguery’s heels, letting himself be towed as he stared at marvels. He almost forgot to breathe properly and found himself coughing and gagging before he got the procedure right. But it was worth it!

At street level there were abandoned cars, tossed at crazy angles by the tides. It was twilight there, the sunlight dwindling, but Sandy could pick out objects: a fire hydrant, a bent bicycle frame, a garishly painted cart on which the words “PRETZELS * FRESH JUICE * TOFU” were still visible.

Marguery tapped his shoulder, pointing to a great doorway. Once a revolving door had been the way of entrance, but its wings were folded back. She swam inside, towing Sandy.

They were swimming through what seemed to have been one of those places that the humans called a “bank.” Inside, things became both easier and more difficult. Easier because there were railings and counters to cling to, so that Sandy’s amateurish efforts at swimming weren’t needed. Harder because there was no sunlight at all inside the great room, only diffuse, pale light from outside.

Marguery didn’t seem to mind. She did something to an object on a band around her head, and a beam of light sprang out. Then she swam ahead, beckoning Sandy to follow, right through the doors of a vault. Sandy’s eyes began to compensate, and he could see that inside were cabinets, their doors broken and hanging loose, all empty. At the far end of the vault was a spidery spiral staircase. Marguery pulled herself up it, Sandy following; and at the top of the staircase—

Marguery wasn’t swimming any more. She was walking up the staircase. The water level stopped just before the ceiling of the vault, and the staircase opened into a dark chamber that was not flooded.

When Sandy poked his head out of the water to follow her he saw that she had flipped her breathing mask off. Wondering, he followed her example and found that he was in a room with couches and chairs—all moldering, with a not wholly unpleasant smell of damp.

Marguery was moving around, touching things, the beam of her headlamp picking out walls, ceiling, fixtures—a pole light went on, and they were in a chamber with its own bubble of air trapped under the surface of the flood. She was speaking to him over her shoulder, as he saw when the light came on, but he couldn’t hear anything. “I . . . can’t . . . hear . . . you,” he said.

She paused and opened the pouch on her belt. She unwrapped the little hearing-aid button, rubbed it dry on a cloth over the table, and handed it to him. As soon as he had screwed it into his ear she said, “Do you like this place?”

He looked around. “What is it?”

“It was where the old people kept their valuables. It’s what they call safe-deposit boxes.” She waved at the walls lined with little doors, most of them open. “They kept money here, and jewels, and their wills, and their divorce papers, or anything they wanted to make sure wouldn’t get lost. Then they’d come in here and go into one of those little rooms and clip their coupons, or whatever.”

“What is ‘clip their coupons’?”

She laughed. “Well, that’s a long story. They all had ‘stock’ and ‘bonds’—the rich people did, the kind that used a place like this—and so if they had money it made more money for them, only every once in a while they had to cut off a piece of one of the ‘bond’ certificates and mail it in and then they would get the money.” While she was talking she was taking towels off a rack, tossing one to Sandy, and drying her hair with another. The towel was musty, but dryer than his body. He found himself shivering. Marguery noticed. “Ah, wait a minute,” she said. She touched another switch, and a ring of orange-red light began to glow in a round metal reflector on the floor. “It’s always wet in here,” she said, “but I like it anyway. The electric heater will dry us out a little. Every once in a while I have to recharge the batteries, but they’re good for a few hours yet.”

“Why do you need ‘batteries’?”

“There isn’t any other electrical power down here, of course. There isn’t any communication with the outside world at all.”

Sandy sat down on the leather couch, testing it to make sure it would support his weight. It creaked, but it was a sturdy piece of furniture. He looked around curiously. “What do you use this place for?”

She hesitated. “Well,” she said slowly, “mostly it’s just a place I use to get away to.” She looked at him for a moment. Then she added, “Also it’s about the only place in the world where I can be absolutely sure nobody is watching me or listening to me. Give me your tank, will you?”

He unbuckled it and handed it over, while she opened the valve on her own to just a hiss. “We do need to bring in a little more oxygen now and then,” she said. “Outside of that, it’s a real home away from home, don’t you think?”

Sandy didn’t answer. He was wishing his skills at reading human expressions and tones of voice were a little more highly developed. Marguery seemed different, somehow—her conversation a little forced, and her movement rapid.

“I didn’t know you spent much time in this city,” he said, watching her.

“InterSec’s headquarters is in Hudson City,” she said. “I just like to have a little private place of my own.”

The word “private” again. And she seemed so agitated—almost as much, Sandy thought, as he himself felt in her presence.

Was it possible that human females and Hakh’hli were not so different after all? Could she be reacting to his own growing horniness?

There was only one sure way to find out. It was a risky way, but at that point Sandy’s need to know exceeded his fear of being rejected again. He sat down on the couch beside her and put his arms around her. She stiffened. “Wait a minute, Sandy. Do you think I got you here for some kind of romance?”

He kissed her ear. “Think? No,” he said, trying to be exact. “More like ‘hope.’ ”

She squirmed away. “Cut it out! You’re just as childish as the Hakh’hli.”

He was offended. “The Hakh’hli are not childish,” he protested.

“Well, what do you call it? It’s like boys’ camp, or—” She hesitated. “You know, we used to have things called armies here.”

“I’ve heard of armies, of course,” Sandy said, trying to get closer to her again.

“Of course you have. You probably know more about them than I do, but my grandfather was in one. The way they did in the army, it seems to me, is a lot like you people do on the Hakh’hli ship. In the army they got up at reveille and fell out to go to breakfast, and that was how they did everything all day long. Like, they were ordered. Granddad called it doing things by the numbers. And that was like, I don’t know, like treating all the soldiers like they were children. And because they were treated like children, that’s how they behaved. Do you see what I mean?”

“No,” said Sandy, putting his arm around her again. “The Hakh’hli don’t have armies.”

“But they act that way, don’t they?”

“If you say so,” he said, kissing her on the mouth.

Almost at once she pulled her lips away—almost. “But really—” she began, and then he was kissing her again.

She kissed him back, and then suddenly threw her arms around him. She was strong for a human being, and he was surprised at the power of her grip.

“Oh, hell,” she whispered into his neck. “After all, why not?”

It was not in the least like amphylaxis; there was a lot more moving around, just as the bumpy lumps in the television-film blankets had promised.

It wasn’t very much like masturbation, either. It was a great deal better. It was so much better that Sandy howled like a slaughtered hoo’hik at the moment of climax, and Marguery was not silent herself; and when it was over they both lay back, spent, on the musty, soggy old couch that seemed to Sandy as though it had been covered with rose petals.

Jubilant and at peace, Sandy turned his head to gaze at the woman he had just successfully made love to. He studied her face carefully. As he had never before seen a human female immediately after sexual intercourse, he did not know how to read her expression. Her face wasn’t as sweaty as he had expected—nothing like his own—but there was a blotch on her cheek that he didn’t think had been there before.

He searched his scant store of knowledge for the right thing to say. “Was it all right for you?” he asked anxiously.

She surprised him. She gave him a penetrating look, as though to try to see if he were joking. When she decided he wasn’t she laughed out loud.

“Dear boy,” she said fondly. “When I moo like a cow, that’s the same as saying, ‘yes, sir, it was dandy.’ Only next time maybe you shouldn’t squeeze quite so hard,” she added, squinting at her shoulder to inspect for bruises.

In the heat of the moment it had not occurred to Sandy to remember how much stronger he was than any normal Earth human. When he looked he saw that the bruises were there, all right. And his fault! “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Quit saying that, will you?” She stood up, wincing slightly, and reached for one of the towels to wrap around her. “Hand me that air tank,” she ordered.

When Sandy picked it up he noticed that it was no longer hissing. Marguery took it from him, glanced at the gauge, and shook it, looking annoyed. She scrabbled around until she found the other one, which was still venting gas into the room.

She turned it off and grinned. “I guess it’s a good thing we left them going,” she said philosophically. “We probably used up a lot of oxygen. Anyway, I can hold my breath long enough to get out of here.”

“Hold your breath?” Sandy was astonished.

“I’ve done it before,” she said. Then she sat down, regarding him. “That,” she said, “isn’t why I brought you here. Although it was very nice. I wanted to talk to you.”

He stared at her. In the vagrant light the blotch on her face seemed both brighter and larger. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for days now?”

She shook her head. “We’ve been talking, all right,” she said grimly, “but every word we said was recorded by InterSec. Wherever we were. Whatever we were doing. I wanted to talk to you in private, where there isn’t anybody listening, because there are some things I’m not supposed to talk to you about.”

Alarmed, he started to speak, but she laid her finger over his lips. “I’ve already been reprimanded for telling you that we’d spotted your ship,” she added. “And I didn’t tell you all of it.”

He stared at her. She looked flushed but determined as she went on. “As soon as the first observers reported the gammas from your ship’s engines everybody began checking their old sky photographs, and we backtracked it to, I don’t know, I think it’s what they call three hundred AUs out. They knew right away it had to be a ship. They began analyzing the spectrum of discharges from your ship. We know what fuels your engines; it’s what they call ‘strange matter.’ We knew that, and the mass of it, and the size, and everything else; and we were ready to meet your lander when it came down. If it hadn’t been for the hurricane, we would have been there in twenty minutes instead of ten hours.”

The exuberance of after-sex was draining away. “You didn’t tell us all that.”

“No. We didn’t. We decided to watch you. There hasn’t been a minute since you got to the dairy farm that you haven’t been watched and recorded.”

“But I thought you liked me!” he wailed.

“Damn your soul, Sandy, can’t you tell I like you? Would I make love with somebody I didn’t like? I’m not some kind of Mata Hari.”

“Mata—”

“Oh, skip it,” she said impatiently. “Let’s get real. Let me ask you something. Have you said anything to Polly about the things I told you?”

“You mean about why I didn’t remember Alpha Centauri?” He looked both baffled and resentful, but finally said, “To Polly, yes. She said to talk to ChinTekki-tho, but I didn’t do that.”

“Ah.” Marguery looked pleased. “Why didn’t you?”

The good after-making-love feeling was dissipating, and Sandy began to feel belligerent. “Do I have to have a reason why not? I just didn’t, that’s all.”

She nodded, gratified. “I was hoping you wouldn’t, Sandy.”

He said logically, “If you didn’t want me to tell them, why didn’t you say so?”

“I wanted to see if you’d do it by yourself. Because—” She hesitated, shifting position uncomfortably, and then finished reluctantly, “Because there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

He looked at her with concern. All he knew about love-making suggested that she should have been relaxed and happy now, but she seemed both ill at ease and uncomfortable. “Are you all right?” he demanded.

“Of course I’m all right! Why wouldn’t I be all right? It’s just—” She grinned at him. “Maybe it’s just that you’re a little stronger than I’m used to, you know what I’m saying?”

Sandy accepted that to be a compliment and allowed himself to preen a bit. But the good feeling didn’t last. He said, aggrieved, “You didn’t really have to spy, you know. You could have just asked.”

“We did ask, Sandy. We’re still asking. I’m asking. But what if there was something the Hakh’hli didn’t want to answer?”

Sandy shrugged. She said, her tone wheedling, almost as though she were asking to be forgiven, “So we simply took normal precautions. We’ve bugged your rooms, wherever you were. We’ve taped everything you’ve said. We’ve listened in on the landing craft’s transmissions to the ship—”

Sandy looked at her, amazed. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“As a matter of fact, we almost couldn’t. That’s some tight beam the Hakh’hli’ve got. We can’t pick it up more than a mile from the lander, but we’ve got our own ground stations right there. And just to make sure we have a high-altitude aircraft orbiting overhead to hear what the lander is sending back.”

“But it’s in Hakh’hli!”

“It’s in Hakh’hli, right,” she agreed grimly. “That makes it tough. We’ve picked up some words from you, and we’ve got a whole bunch of linguistics people analyzing and correlating. We can’t read it all. Just enough to be worrying.” She peered at him. “We have to, don’t you understand? Wouldn’t the Hakh’hli have done the same thing?”

Sandy remembered the hundreds of Hakh’hli who did nothing else—who, for half a century, had done nothing but to pore over every scrap of data from Earth’s broadcasts, trying to penetrate every hidden part of human activities. “Well, maybe so,” he said reluctantly. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to find out anything bad.”

“We’re not?” Marguery said sadly.

He stopped short, struck by her tone. “What are you trying to say?” he demanded.

She said unhappily, “Start with your mother. That picture Ham Boyle borrowed from you.”

“What about it?”

“Well—” She hesitated. “Do you remember your mother at all?”

“No. I told you that. She died when I was born.”

“But you did have that picture of her. Well, Ham put it on television to see if anyone would recognize it. A lot of people did. But that picture isn’t of an astronaut, Sandy. It’s of a movie actress from the last century; her name was Marilyn Monroe.”

“That’s impossible!” Sandy shouted.

“It’s true, Sandy. And there’s more. You said she and your father were American astronauts, and they were stuck out in space because of the war.”

“I said that, yes. It’s true!”

She sighed. “Sandy,” she said, “it didn’t happen that way. InterSec has checked the records really carefully. Every space flight was recorded, even during the war. We know for a fact that there weren’t any manned American rockets in space at the time of the war.”

“But,” Sandy said reasonably, “there must have been. That’s where the Hakh’hli found my parents.”

She shook her head. “The records show that there was one spacecraft that was out at the time,” she said. “Just one. It was a Mars orbiter. They had sent a probe down to the surface of the planet, and they were waiting for it to come back with samples. But it wasn’t American. It was Russian.”

He gaped at her. “Russian? Oh, no. That has to be wrong. The Hakh’hli told me my parents were American. The Major Seniors wouldn’t make a mistake like that. I mean, by the time the big ship got here the Hakh’hli had been monitoring broadcasts for fifty years. They’d know the difference.”

“That’s true,” Marguery agreed.

“So my parents couldn’t’ve been Russian!”

“Well,” she said sadly, “I would tend to agree with you about that. That was the only Russian spacecraft out, and it had only two people in it. I don’t see how they could have been your parents, though, because InterSec has double-checked the records and the cosmonauts were both men.”