Hot Sky at Midnight

28

rhodes was clearing out his desk when the annunciator light went on and the android outside said, “Mr. Paul Carpenter is here to see you, Dr. Rhodes.”

It was Rhodes’ final day at Santachiara Technologies, and he had a million and a half things to do. But he could hardly tell Paul Carpenter that he was too busy to see him.

“Tell him to come in,” Rhodes said.

He wasn’t prepared for the change in Carpenter’s appearance. His old friend looked as though he had lost twenty pounds in just a matter of weeks, and aged ten years. His face was haggard, his eyes were vacant-looking and rimmed with red, his long yellow hair had lost most of its luster. Carpenter had shaved off his beard for the first time in Rhodes’ recent memory, and the look of the lower half of his face, gaunt and hard and outjutting, was altogether unfamiliar.

“Paul,” Rhodes said, going to him, wrapping his arms around him. “Hey, fellow. Hey, there!”

It was like embracing a sack of bones.

Carpenter smiled grimly, a ghostly burned-out smile. “A crazy time,” he said softly.

“I’ll bet it was. You want a drink?”

“No.”

“Me neither,” said Rhodes.

Carpenter flashed him that dead, practically expressionless little spectral smile again. “You didn’t give it up, did you?”

“Me? Not a chance. I’ve got a serious habit, fellow. But I can do without it right now. Sit down, will you? Relax.”

“Relax, he says.” Carpenter chuckled hollowly. He gestured at the packing crates, the stacks of cubes and virtuals. “You going somewhere?”

“This is the last day. I start at Kyocera on Monday.”

“Good for you.”

“I’ll be taking most of my people over with me. Hubbard, Van Vliet, Richter, Schiaparelli, Cohen—all the key personnel. Samurai is appalled, of course. They’re talking big lawsuit. Not my problem.”

“No?”

“Kyocera will indemnify.”

“Nice,” Carpenter said. “I’m very glad for you, Nick. Go over there and genetify the hell out of things. Fix everything the way it needs to be fixed. A new human race that can breathe methane and drink hydrochloric acid. Do it, Nick. You and Dr. Wu.”

“I haven’t talked with Wu yet. He’s still up there on Cornucopia, retrofitting the crew for the interstellar trip.”

“Cornucopia?”

“The Kyocera research satellite. Practically next door to the place that—”

“Ah,” Carpenter said. “Yes.”

Neither of them spoke for a time.

“What a shitty thing. Valparaiso Nuevo.”

“Yes.”

“Isabelle still hasn’t even begun to cope with it. Jolanda was her best friend.”

“I know,” said Carpenter. “What vitality that woman had! I can’t believe she’s—”

“No. Neither can I.”

“I saw it blow up. Sat there on the shuttle, watching it, thinking, Jolanda, Enron, Davidov. And all those thousands of other people. But mainly Jolanda. Jolanda. Jolanda.”

“Don’t talk about it, Paul. Don’t even think about it.”

“Sure.”

“You certain you don’t want a drink?” Rhodes asked.

“Listen, if you’d like to have one—”

“Not me. You.”

“I don’t dare touch it. I had a hyperdex overdose while I was up there. Only thing that saved my life, but it ruined my nervous system for a long time to come.”

“Hyperdex? Saved your life?”

“A long story,” Carpenter said. “Farkas decided he needed to kill me, and Jolanda tipped me off and gave me some of her pills, and—oh, shit. Shit, Nick I don’t feel like talking about it at all”

“You shouldn’t,” Rhodes said.

It was unbearable, he thought, to see Carpenter this way, this dazed, woozy shell of a man, this wreck. But Carpenter had been through so much, the iceberg thing, the firing, the trip across the country, the L-5 explosion—

They sat in silence again for a while.

The thing about a friendship that goes back this many years, Rhodes told himself, is that when a moment comes when it’s more appropriate not to say something than to say something, you can just keep your mouth shut. And the other one will understand.

But after a time it was impossible for him to sustain the silence. Quietly Rhodes said, “Well, Paul? What now? Do you know?”

“Yes. I do.”

Rhodes waited.

“Back to space,” Carpenter said. “I’ve got to get out of here. Earth is fucked, Nick. At least it is for me. I have nobody here but you. And Jeanne, I guess, but I don’t really have her. And I don’t want to mess her up any more than she already is, so the best thing I can do is to leave her alone, I don’t want to stick around and watch things continue to fall apart here.”

“They won’t,” Rhodes said. “We’re going to fix them. Or rather, we’re going to fix ourselves so that we can handle what’s about to come down.”

“Fine. You do the best fix you can, Nick, and more power to you. But I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Which habitat will you go to?”

“Not a habitat. Farther.”

“I don’t understand,” Rhodes said. “Mars? Ganymede?”

“Farther, Nick.”

Rhodes was baffled, at first. Then, gradually, he moved Carpenter’s words around in his mind and began to extract some sense from them.

“The starship project?” Rhodes asked, incredulously.

Carpenter nodded.

“For God’s sake, why? Aren’t the L-5s far enough away?”

“Not nearly. I want to go as far as it’s possible to go, and then go even farther than that. I want to get the hell away. Purge myself of all that’s happened. Start over.”

“But how can you? The starship project—”

“You can do it for me. You can get me in there. It’s a Kyocera thing, Nick. And as of Monday you’re a very high-level Kyocera scientist.”

“Well, yes,” Rhodes said, though he was taken aback by the idea. “I suppose—I will have some influence there, yes. But that’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean, Nick?”

Rhodes hesitated.

“You really want to be part of the crew?”

“Yes. Isn’t it clear that that’s what I’m saying?”

“Well, then,” Rhodes said. “Consider, Paul. The eyes—”

“Yes. The eyes.”

“You want to be turned into a thing like Farkas?” Rhodes asked.

“I want to get away from here,” Carpenter replied. “That’s the essential thing. All the rest is peripheral. Okay, Nick? You’ve got it now? Good. Good. I want you to help me. Pull strings for me, Nick Pull strings like you’ve never pulled before.”

There was passion in the content of what he was saying, Rhodes thought, but none in his tone. Carpenter seemed like a man talking in his sleep: his voice was flat, affectless, eerie in its tranquillity. Rhodes was frightened by it.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he heard himself saying.

“Yes. Do.” The ghost smile again. “It’s for the best, Nick.”

“If you think it is.”

“It is. I know so. Everything always works out for the best, Nick. Always.”