Search the Sky

8

"STUPID old bat," Ross muttered. They were walking aimlessly down Fifteen Street, the nicely-landscaped machine tool works behind them.

Helena said timidly: "You really shouldn't talk that way, Ross. She is older than you, after all.

Old heads are——" «——wisest," he wearily agreed. "Also the most conservative. Also the most rigidly inflexible; also the most firmly closed to the reception of new ideas. With one exception."

She reeled under the triple blasphemy and then faintly asked: "What's the exception?"

Ross became aware that they were not alone. Their very manner of walking, he a little ahead, obviously leading ths way, was drawing unfavorable attention from passers-by. Nothing organized or even definite—just looks ranging ' from puzzled distaste to anger. He said, "Somebody named Haarland. Never mind," and in a lower voice: "Straighten op. Step out a little ahead of me.

Scowl."

She managed it all except the scowl. The expression on her face got some stupefied looks from other pedestrians, , but nothing worse.

Helena said loudly and plaintively: "I don t like it here Fafter all, Ross. Can't we get away from all these women.' Should the impulse seize you, placard ancient Brooklyn with twenty-four sheets proclaiming the Dodgers to be cellar-dwelling bums. Mount a detergent box and inform a crowd of Altairians that they are degenerate slith-fondlers if you must. Announce in a crowded Cephean bar room that Sadkia Revall is no better than she should be. From these situations you have some chance of emerging intact. But never, never pronounce the word "women" as Helena pronounced it on Fifteen Street, Novj Grad, Azor.

The mob took only seconds to form.

Ross and Helena found themselves with their backs to the glass doors of a food store. The handful of women who had actually heard the remark were all talking to them simultaneously, with fist-shaking. Behind them stood as many as a dozen women who knew only that something had happened and that there were comfortably outnumbered victims available. The noise was deafening, and Helena began to cry. Ross first wondered if he could bring himself to knock down a woman; then realized after studying the hulking virago in their foreground that he might bring himself to try but probably would not succeed.

She seemed to be accusing Helena of masquerading, of advocating equality, of uttering obscenely antisocial statements in the public road, to the affront of all decent-minded girls.

There was violence in the air. Ross was on the point of blocking a roundhouse right when the glass doors opened behind them. The small diversion distracted the imbecile collective brain of the mob.

"What's going on here?" a suety voice demanded. "Ladies, may I please get through?"

It was a man trying to emerge from the food shop with a double armful of cartons. He was a great fat slob, quite hairless, and smelling powerfully of kitchen. He wore the gravy-spotted whites of any cook anywhere. - The virago said to him, "Keep out of this, Willie. This fellow here's a masquerader. The thing I heard him say———!"

"I'm not," Helena wept. "I'm not!" The cook stooped to look into her face and turned on the mob.

"She isn't," he said definitely. "She's a lady from another system. She was slopping up triple antigravs at my place last night with a gang of jet pilots."

"That doesn't prove ^ thing!" the virago yelled.

"Madam," the cook said wearily, "after her third antigrav I had to trip her up and crown her. She was about to climb the bar and corner my barman."

Ross looked at her fixedly. She stopped crying and nervously cleared her throat.

"So if you'll just let us through," the cook bustled, seizing the psychological moment of doubt.

His enormous belly bulldozed a lane for them. "Beg pardon. Excuse us. Madam, will you—thank you.

Beg pardon——"

The lynchers were beginning to drift away, embarrassed. The party had collapsed. "Faster," the cook hissed at them. "Beg pardon——" And they were in the clear and well down the street.

"Thank you, Sir," Helena said humbly.

"Just 'Willie', if you please," the fat man said.

One hand descended on Ross's shoulder and another on Helena's. They both belonged to the virago.

She spun them around, glaring. "I'm not satisfied with the brush-off," she snapped. "Exactly what did you mean by that remark you made?"

Helena wailed, "It's just that you and all these other women here seem so young."

The virago's granite face softened. She let go and tucked in a strand of steel-wool hair. "Did you really think so, dear?" she asked, beaming. "There, I'm sorry I got excited. A wee bit jealous, were you? Well, we're broad-minded here in Novj Grad." She patted Helena's arm and walked off, smiling and jaunty.

Virgin Willie led off and they followed him. Ross's knees were shaky. The virago had not known that to Helena "young" meant "stupid."

The cook absently acknowledged smiles and nods as they walked. He was, obviously, a character.

Between salutes he delivered a low-voiced, rapid-fire reaming to Ross and Helena. "Silly stunt.

Didn't you hear about the riots? Supposed to be arms caches somewhere here on the south side.

Everybody's nerves absolutely ragged. Somebody gets smashed up in traffic, they blame it on us. Don't care where you're from. Watch it next time."

"We will, Willie," Helena said contritely. "And I think you run an awfully nice restaurant."

"Yeah," said Ross, looking at her.

Willie muttered, "I guess you're clear. You still staying at that hot pilot's hangout? This is where we say good-by, then. You turn left."

'Te waddled on down the street. Helena said instantly, "I oon't remember a thing, Ross."

"Okay," he said. "You don't remember a thing."

She looked relieved and said brightly, "So let's get back to the hotel."

"Okay," he said. Climbed the bar and tried to corner the ... Halfway to the hotel he slowed, then stopped, and said, "I just thought of something. Maybe we're not staying there any more. After last night why should Breuer carry us on her tab? I thought we'd have some money to carry us from the Cavallos by now———"

"The ship?" she asked in a small voice.

"Across the continent. Hell! Maybe Breuer forgave and forgot. Let's try, anyway."

They never got as far as the hotel. When they reached the square it stood on, there was a breathless rush and Ber-nie stood before them, panting and holding a hand over his chest "In here," he gasped, and nodded at a shopfront that announced hot brew. Ross thoughtlessly started first through the door and caught Bernie's look of alarm. He opened the door for Helena, who went through smiling nervously.

They settled at a small table in an empty corner in stiff silence. "I've been walking around that square all morning," Bernie said, with a cowed look at Helena.

Ross told her: "This young man and I had a talk yesterday at the plane while you were eating. What is it, Bernie?"

He still couldn't believe that he was doing it, but Bernie said in a scared whisper: "Wanted to head you off and warn you. Breuer was down at the field cafe this morning, talking loud to the other hot-shots. She said you—both of you— talked equality. Said she got up with a hangover and you were gone. But she said there'd be six policewomen waiting in your room when you got back." He leaned forward on the table. Ross remembered that he had been forced to sell his ration card.

"Here comes the waiter," he said softly. "Order something for all of us. We have a little money.

And thanks, Bernie."

Helena asked, "What do we do?"

"We eat," Ross said practically. "Then we think. Shut up; let Bernie order."

They ate; and then they thought. Nothing much seemed to come from all the thinking, though.

They were a long, long way from the spaceship. Ross commandeered all of Helena's leftover cash. It was almost, not quite, enough for one person to get halfway back to Azor City. He and Bernie turned out their pockets and added everything they had, including pawnable valuables. That helped.

It made the total almost enough, for one person to get three-quarters of the way back.

It didn't help enough.

Ross said, "Bernie, what would happen if we, well, stole something?"

Bernie shrugged. "It's against the law, of course. They probably wouldn't prosecute, though."

"They wouldn't?"

"Not if they can prove egalitarianism on you. Stealing's against the law; preaching equality is against the state. You get the maximum penalty for that."

Helena choked on her drink, but Ross merely nodded. "So we might as well take a chance," he said.

"Thanks, Bernie. We won't bother you any more. You'll forget you heard this, won't you?"

"The hell I will!" Bernie squawked. "If you're getting out of here, I want to go with you! You aren't leaving me behind!"

"But Bernie——" Ross started. He was interrupted by the manager, a battleship-class female with a mighty prow, who came scowling toward them.

"Pipe down," she ordered coarsely. "This place is for decent people; we don't want no disturbances here. If you can't act decent, get out."

"Awk," said Helena as Ross kicked her under the table. "I mean, yes ma'am. Sorry if we were talking too loud," They watched the manager walk away in silence.

As soon as she was fairly away, Ross hissed, "It's out of the question, Bernie. You might be jumping from the frying-pan into the fire."

Bernie asked, startled, "The what?"

"The—never mind, it's just an expression where I come from. It means you might get out of this place and find yourself somewhere worse. We don't know where we're going next; you might wish to God you were back here within the next three days."

"I'll take that chance," Bernie said earnestly. "Look, Ross, I played square with you. I didn't have to stick my neck out and warn you. How about giving me a break too?"

Helena interrupted, "He's right, Ross. After all, we owe him that much, don't we? I mean, if a person does that much for a person, a person ought to——"

"Oh, shut up." Ross glared at both of them. "You two seem to think this is a game," he said bitterly. "Let me set you straight, both of you. It isn't. More hangs on what happens to me than either of you realize. The fate of the human race, for instance."

Helena flashed a look at Bernie. "Of course, Ross," she said soothingly. "Both of us know that, don't we, Bernie?"

Bernie stammered, "Sure—sure we do, Ross." He rubbed his ankle. He went on, "Honest, Ross, I want to get the hell away from Azor once and for all. I don't care where you're going. Anything would be better than this place and the damned female bloodsuckers that——"

He stopped, petrified. His eyes, looking over Ross's shoulder, were enormous.

"Go on, sonny," said a rich female voice from behind Ross. "Don't let me and the lieutenant stop you just when you're going good."

"It must have been that damn manager," Bernie said for the fifteenth time.

Ross uncrossed his legs painfully and tried lying on the floor on his side. "What's the difference?" he asked. "They got us; we're in the jug. And face it: somebody would have caught us sooner or later, and we might have wound up in a worse jail than this one." He shifted uncomfortably. "If that's possible, I mean. Why don't they at least have beds in these places?"

"Oh," said Bernie immediately, "some do. The jails in Azor City and Nuevo Reykjavik have beds; Novj Grad, Eleanor, and Milo don't. I mean, that's what they tell me," he added virtuously.

"Sure," Ross growled. "Well, what do they tell you usually happens next?"

Bernie spread his hands. "Different things. First there's a hearing. That's all over by now. Then an indictment and trial. Maybe that's started already; sometimes they get it in on the same day as the hearing, sometimes not. Then— tomorrow sometime, most likely—comes the sentencing. We'll know about that, though, because we'll be there. The law's very strict on that—they always have you in the court for sentencing."

Ross cried, "You mean the trial might be going on right now without us?"

"Of course. What else? Think they'd take a chance on having the prisoners creating a disturbance during the trial?"

Ross groaned and turned his face to the wall. For this, he thought, he had come the better part of a hundred light years; for this he had left a comfortable job with a brilliant future. He spent a measurable period of time cursing the memory of old Haarland and his double-jointed, persuasive tongue.

Back in the days of Ross's early teens he had seen a good many situations like this in the tridis, and the hero had never failed to extricate himself by a simple exercise of superhuman strength, intellect, and ingenuity. That, Ross told himself, was just what he needed now. The trouble was, he didn't have them.

All he had was the secret of faster-than-light travel. And, here on Azor as on the planet of the graybeards, it had laid a king-sized egg. Women, Ross thought bitterly, women were basically inward-directed and self-seeking; trust them with the secret of F-T-L; make them, like the Cavallos, custodians of a universe-racking truth; and see the secret lost or embalmed in sterile custom. What, he silently demanded of himself, did the greatest of scientific discoveries mean to a biological baby-foundry?

How could any female—no single member of which class had ever painted a great picture, written a great book, composed a great sonata, or discovered a great scientific truth—appreciate the ultimate importance of the F-T-L drive? It was like entrusting a first-folio Shakespeare to a broody hen; the shredded scraps would be made into a nest. For the egg came first. Motherhood was all.

That explained it, of course. That, Ross told himself moodily, explained everything except why the F-T-L secret had fallen into apparently equal or worse desuetude on such planets as Gemsel, Clyde, Cyrnus One, Ragans-world, Tau Ceti II, Capella's family of eight, and perhaps a hundred others.

Ragansworld was gone entirely, drowned in a planetary nebula.

The planet of the graybeard had gone to seed; nothing new, nothing not hallowed by tradition had a chance in its decrepit social order.

His home, Halsey's Planet, was rapidly, calmly, inevitably depopulating itself.

And Azor had fallen into a rigid, self-centered matriarchal order that only an act of God could break.

Was there a pattern? Were there any similarities?

Ross searched desperately in his mind; but without result. The image of Helena kept intruding itself between him and his thoughts. Was he getting sentimental about that sweet little chucklehead? Who, he hastily added, had come near to criminally assaulting him, who had climbed the. . . .

He turned to the little waiter and demanded: "Will she —Helena—be on the orbital station with us if we're all convicted?"

"Hmm—no, I should think not. As a responsible person, she gets the supreme penalty."

Ross numbly asked after a long pause, "How? Nothing —painful?" It was hard to think of Helena dangling grotesquely at a rope's end or jolting as she sat strapped in a large, ugly chair. But there were things he had heard of which were horribly worse.

Bernie had been watching him. "I'm sorry," the little man said soberly. "It's up to the judge.

She's a foreigner, so they may consider that an extenuating circumstance and place some quick-acting poison aboard for her to take. Otherwise it's slow starvation."

A faint, irrational hope had begun to dawn in Ross's mind. "Aboard what? Exactly how does it work?"

"They'll put her aboard some hulk with the rockets disabled, fire it off into space—and that's that. I suppose they'll use the ship she came in———"

Ross was frantically searching his pockets. He had a stylus. "Got any paper?" he briskly demanded of Bernie.

"Yes, but———?" The waiter blankly passed over an order book. Ross sprawled on the floor and began to scribble: "Never mind how or why this works. Do it. You saw me work the big fan-shaped computer in the center room and you can do it too. Find the master star maps in the chart room. Look up the co-ordinates of Halsey's System. Set these co-ordinates on the twenty-seven dials marked Proximate Mass. Take the readings on the windows above the dials and set them on the cursors of the computer——" He scribbled furiously, from time to time forcing himself deliberately to slow down as the writing became an unreadable scrawl. He filled the ruled fronts of the order pages and then the backs—perhaps ten thousand closely-written words, and not one of them wasted. Haarland's precise instructions, mercilessly drilled into him, flowed out again.

He flung the stylus down at last and read through the book again, ignoring the gaping Bernie. It was all there, as far as he could tell. Grant her a lot of luck and more brains than he privately credited her with, and she had a fighting chance of winding up within radar range of Halsey's Planet. GCA could take her down from there; an annoying ship-like object hanging on the radarscopes would provoke a reconnaissance.

She knew absolutely nothing about F-T-L or the Lyesley drive, but then—neither did he. That fact itself was no handicap.

He might rot on "Minerva," but some word might get back to Haarland. And so would the ship. And Helena would not perish miserably in a drifting hulk.

Bernie saw the mysterious job was ended and dared to ask, "A letter?"

"No," Ross said jubilantly. "By God, if things break right they won't get her. It's like this——"

He happily began to explain that his F-T-L ship's rockets were only auxiliaries for fine maneuvering, but he counted on the court not knowing that. If he and Helena could persuade. ...

As he went on the look on Bernie's face changed very slowly from hope to pity to politely-simulated interest. Correspondingly Ross's accounting became labored and faulty. The pauses became longer and at last he broke off, filled with self-contempt at his folly. He said bitterly, "You don't think it'll work."

"Oh, no!" Bernie protested with too much heartiness. "I could see she's awfully mechanically-minded for a woman, even if it wouldn't be polite to say so. Sure it'll work, Ross. Sure!"

The hell it would.

At least he had disposed of a few hours. And—perhaps some bungling setting would explode the ship, or end a Wesley Jump in the heart of a white dwarf star—sudden annihilation, whining Helena out of existence before her body could realize that it had died, before the beginning of apprehension could darken happy absorption with a task she thought would bring her to safety.

For that reason alone he had to carry the scheme through.

The courtroom was a chintzy place bright with spring flowers. Ross and Helena looked numbly at one another from opposite corners while the previous order of business was cleared from the docket. A wedding.

The judge, unexpectedly sweet-faced and slender though gray, obviously took such parts of her work seriously. "Marylyn and Kent," she was saying earnestly to the happy couple, "I suppose you know my reputation. I lecture people a bit before I tie the knot. Evidently it's not such a bad idea because my marriages turn out well. Last week in Eleanor one of my girls was arrested and reprimanded for gross infidelity and a couple of years ago right here in Novj Grad one of my boys got five hundred lashes for nonsupport. Let's hope it did them some good, but the cases were unusual. My people, I like to think, know their rights and responsibilities when they walk out of my court, and I think the record bears me out.

"Marylyn, you have chosen to share part of your life with this man. You intend to bear his children. This should not be because your animal appetites have overcome you and you can't win his consent in any other way but because you know, down deep in your womanly heart, that you can make him happy. Never forget this. If you should thoughtlessly conceive by some other man, don't tell him. He would only brood. Be thrifty, Marylyn. I have seen more marriages broken up by finances than any other reason. If your husband earns a hundred Eleanors a week, spend only that and no more. If he makes fifty Eleanors a week spend only that and no more. Honorable poverty is preferable to debt. And, from a practical standpoint, if you spend more than your husband earns he will be jailed for debt sooner or later, with resulting loss to your own pocket.

"Kent, you have accepted the proposal of this woman. I see by your dossier that you got in just under the wire. In your income group the antibachelor laws would have caught up with you in one more week. I must say I don't like the look of it, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I want to talk to you about the meaning of marriage. Not just the wage assignment, not just the insurance policy, not just the waiver of paternity and copulation 'rights', so-called. Those, as a good citizen, you will abide by automatically—Heaven help you if you don't. But there is more to marriage than that. The honor you have been done by this woman who sees you as desirable and who wishes to make you happy over the years is not a sterile legalism. Marriage is like a rocket, I sometimes think. The brute, unreasoning strength of the main jets representing the husband's share and the delicate precise steering and stabilizing jets the wife's. We have all of us seen too many marriages crash to the ground like a rocket when these roles were reversed. It is not reasonable to expect the wife to provide the drive—that is, the income. It is not reasonable to expect the husband to provide the steering—that is, the direction of the personal and household expenditures. So much for the material side of things. On the spiritual side, I have little to say. The laws are most explicit; see that you obey them—and if you don't, you had better pray that you wind up in some court other than mine. I have no patience with the obsolete doctrine that there is such a legal entity as seduction by female, despite the mouthings of certain so-called jurists who disgrace the bench of a certain nearby city.

"Having heard these things, Marylyn and Kent, step forward and join hands."

They did. The ceremony was short and simple; the couple then walked from the courtroom under the beaming smile of the judge.

A burly guard next to Ross pointed at the groom. "Look," she said sentimentally. "He's crying. Cute!"

"I don't blame the poor sucker," Ross flared, and then, being a man of conscience, wondered suddenly if that was why, on Halsey's Planet, women cried at weddings.

A clerk called: "Dear, let's have those egalitarians front and center, please. Her honor's terribly rushed."

Helena was escorted forward from one side, while Ross and Bernie were jostled to the fore from the other. The judge turned from the happy couple. As she looked down at the three of them the smile that curved her lips turned into something quite different. Ross, quailing, suddenly realized that he had seen just that expression once before. It was when he was very, very young, when a friend of his mother's had come bustling into the kitchen where he was playing, just after she had smelled, and just before she had seen, the long-dead rat he had fetched up from the abandoned cellar across the street.

While the clerk was reading the orders and indictment, the judge's stare never wavered. And when the clerk had finished, the judge's silent stare remained, for a long, terrible time.

In the quietest of voices, the judge said, "So."

Ross caught a flicker of motion out of the comet of his eye. He turned just in time to see Bernie, knees buckling, slip white-faced and unconscious to the floor. The guards rushed forward, but the judge raised a peremptory hand. "Leave him alone," she ordered soberly. "It is kinder. Defendants, you are charged with the gravest of crimes. Have you anything to say before sentence is passed on you?"

Ross tried to force words—any words, to protest, to plead, to vilify—through his clogged throat.

All he managed was a croaking sound; and Helena, by his side, nudged him sharply to silence. He turned to her sharply, and realized that this was the best chance he'd be likely to get. He clutched at her, rolled up his eyes, slumped to the floor in as close an mutation of Bernie's swoon as he could manage.

The judge was visibly annoyed, and this time she didn't stop the attendants when they rushed in to kick him erect. But he had the consolation of seeing a flash of understanding cross Helena's face, and her hand dart to a pocket with the paper he had handed her. In the confusion no one saw.

The rest of the courtroom scene was kaleidoscopic in Ross's recollection. The only part he remembered clearly was the judge's voice as she said to him and Bernie,

"——for the rest of your lives, as long as Almighty God shall, in Her infinite wisdom, permit you the breath of life, be banished from Azor and all of its allied worlds to the prison hulk in 'Orbit Minerva.' "

And they were hustled out as the judge, even more wrathful than before, turned to pronounce sentence on Helena.