Starburst

25

YOU KNEW THAT YOUR NEAREST AND DEAREST HAD FIRED A wad of devastation at the Earth. You knew that the consequences' had to be awful. But you didn't know, until you saw with your own eyes, that what resulted was not so much tragic as tacky. The majesty of the Presidency had boiled away with the nukes.

There was this matter of the parade, for instance. You want to talk about parades? Eve Barstow had seen real parades\ Dozens of them! Parades that took four hours to pass a given point, with regimental bands blaring in perfect sync and drum majorettes doing baton whirls and cart-wheels down the avenue, and the people lined up twenty deep for miles on end. Fourth of July parades and Pasadena Rose Bowl parades and Armed Forces Day parades, and the least of them could have swallowed this pipsqueak affair up in between a Boy Scout troop and a Lithuanian- American Ladies' Marching Society delegation and never noticed it. And yet, truly, this was parade enough for her to participate in. She got to the White House simply worn out, even though they had been in carriages most of the way, and the kids were worse off than she. Strength is not endurance. The man who can clip seconds off a four- minute mile may fall over in total exhaustion before he gets halfway through the Boston marathon. And although they had carefully strengthened themselves for the unforgiving pull of 32 ft/sec², they had not practiced long marches, because in the spacecraft where was there to walk to?

So some of the kids were carried into the White House, and even Jeron and Molomy limped, and none of them were really happy. "Aunt Eve! Why does anybody need a house as big as this?" "Aunt Eve! Can't they get rid of these 'bugs'?" "Aunt Eve, you won't believe the toilets!" She did, of course, because she had seen flush toilets before, but none of the children had ever experienced a waste-disposal system that did not recycle. Or spicy, humid breezes, or, above all, so many hundreds, even thousands, of people.

As soon as they were in the White House, the Vice President whisked them away to a private room, firmly barring the door on the guests and visitors outside. No doubt she had her reasons, Eve thought, but it was a kindness all the same. And when the President appeared, proudly holding a tray with two bottles on it, a J & B and a Jim Beam, Eve felt her heart flutter. Real drinking whiskey again! She let him pour her half a tumbler full of bourbon, accepted a splash of water, and had it halfway to her lips before her conscience stopped her. "President Tupelo," she said—

"No, no! Call me Jim," the President urged.

"Jim, then—the first thing we want is to have a word with Dieter von Knefhausen."

The President's face fell. Standing next to him, his wife reached out and took his hand. "Well, there's a problem there, honey," the Vice President said. "See, Dr. Von Knefhausen passed away a while back. He's got a real nice plot there, out in the old Rose Garden. I can take you to see it if you want to."

Eve looked over the glass, into the face of the woman, frozen in that position. Behind the Vice President Eve could see an agitated shimmering against the drapes; Uncle Ghost had heard it too. At length she sighed and took a sip of her drink.

"What a pity," she said. "Tell me, did he die peacefully?"

What a pity. ... An hour later, back out among the crowds of invited guests, Eve still had not got over what a pity it was. What she would have said to Dieter von Knefhausen had never been clear, but now she would not have the chance to say anything at all. It was strange that she should feel that as strongly as she did, considering that she seemed to be having a chance to talk to everybody else in the world at once. Or at least to listen, or to shake their hands. So many people! And every one of them, it seemed, with but one goal in life, and that to touch the visitors and talk to them.

It was a pity it was so warm, Eve thought; it made it hard for the children, some of whom seemed obviously unwell.

It was not just sweat. In the close confines of the ship all of them had been exposed to all varieties of natural odors, from the botanicals in the food chambers to the stinks of their siblings, friends, and selves. But there were smells here that were entirely new: Cigars. Charcoal fires on the patio. Above all, the many smells of cooking.

On the habitat, cooking was not very important, because most of what Eve grew could be eaten raw. Natural Earth foods were less kind. They had to be stewed or boiled or roasted or fried, and all processes seemed to be going at once. The immense meal was full of animal protein and saturated fats—right there, matters almost out of the experience of the children. The flavors were odd, the textures unfamiliar. The "meat," as the children learned to call it, was rich with blubber and laced with little cartileginous nuggets of gristle and, good heavens, they discovered, often fastened to a sort of gray-white stone called "bone" that nearly broke the teeth and was not meant to be swallowed at all. In theory the children knew what bone was, but it certainly was not the kind of thing you expected to find in your food!

The visitors were given a sort of corral to eat in, surrounded by Marine guards with flitguns, trying to keep the mosquito population down and visitors out at the same time. When the meal was over their protection vanished, and, one by one, the visiting dignitaries were brought up to the undignified visitors for introductions. Eve Barstow, who had washed down her spareribs with bourbon, found herself giggling out loud as she contrasted this reception with that long-ago one before the launch of the Constitution. Instead of the President of France, they had the Chairing Freeholder of the Carolina Confederacy; instead of the Russian ambassador, a slip of a girl from Puget Sound. Most of them brought gifts, the Amish a fletch of home-smoked bacon, the Puget girl a carved miniature totem pole, which she ceremoniously draped over Jeron's neck. By the time the sordid meal was over, the last bug picked out of the greasy food, the last plate picked up from the shrubbery and carried away, the last VIP greeted and dismissed, it was full dark, and Eve was feeling the bourbon. Her malt-nuts ran no more than six or seven percent alcohol; what she had been drinking was four or five times as powerful, even diluted, and she had been swallowing them pretty fast.

The realization came almost too late; Eve barely made it to the bathroom under the great carpeted stair.

Eve stayed in there for a long time, and when she came out the party was visibly dwindling. Not enough so. It was more than she wanted to handle. She turned away from the party sounds and wandered through the damp, shabby rooms, now deserted. None of this was the way she had planned it! Never mind that Kneflie was dead; that was probably better that way, since they really hadn't known what to say, or do, to him anyway. But the whole thing was a disappointment. She thought about the gifts she had planned so carefully, all of them still carefully wrapped in their moist seed pods and ready for germination or planting. Did she really want to give them to these people? There were fifty different kinds of wonders. The vegetable womb, to relieve women forever of the pains of parturition. The supercannabis, euphoria and analgesia without penalty. The bunny-fur plants, fibers with the porous structure of wool and the washability of cotton; the seeds were the size of peanuts and, as the gossypols had been bred out, they could be roasted to make a tasty snack. The malt-nuts, the squash-citrus­protein baby food, the meat substitutes—not to mention the ones that just looked pretty, or smelled sweet.

Not to mention the secrets of how to do all this, which she had once intended to share, the gifts that could change the genes themselves, and thus change the human race forever. But did she want to give all this to the likes of President James Tupelo?

A crash of china distracted her. A skinny young girl in Marine fatigues had entered the room, caught sight of Eve, and dropped the dirty dishes she was carrying to the kitchen. "You scared me," she said reproachfully. "How come you wandering here all by yourself?"

"I'm sorry," Eve offered.

"Sorry don't cut the mustard, miss. Listen. If you don't want to go back to the beer bust, why don't you let me show you upstairs? You got a real nice room. All ready for you. You only have to share it with one other person. Used to have the Carolinas in it, but they rousted them out this morning so's you could have it, and we changed the sheets and everything." Suddenly a bed sounded like a good idea, and Eve followed willingly enough.

The other person turned out to be Molomy, sound asleep in one corner of a huge bed. It was the only bed in the room. Eve sighed and climbed into it, trying not to disturb Molomy, who grumbled and thrashed over to a new position. Eve closed her eyes. The bed was impressive without being comfortable, far lumpier and damper than the flower sacks Eve had bred for herself, but the fact that she was exhausted made up for a lot—

It did not, however, make up for the noises on the other side of the plywood partition that divided the room. Eve listened, then became aware of motion beside her and opened her eyes.

Molomy was sitting up, grinning. "It's Jeron," she whispered. "And he's got somebody with him."

When Jeron noticed that Aunt Eve was missing he thought briefly of looking for her, then decided against it. He didn't need her. What he needed was to get away from all these people, not least the people he had flown four light-years with, and think things out. He found Molomy, glassy-eyed with fatigue, and set her to shepherding the smaller children, who were more exhausted still, off to bed. Then he returned to what was left of the party and stared out over the lawn, wondering if he could get away long enough to take a walk through the strange, oppressive city, and wondering even more if his legs were up to it.

He did not get the chance. The young woman who had looped that unpleasant carved-wood object around his neck came up to him. "I'm Darien McCullough," she said. "Would you like to dance?"

He looked her over carefully before he answered, because Jeron had learned his lessons well. Aunt Eve had explained to him that dancing was a social ritual in which young men and young women experimented with touching each other and arousing each other as a preliminary to sexual intercourse; and for a young man whose entire universe of possible lovers was limited to about thirty possible partners, almost all of them by now so familiar as to be tedious, the prospect was enticing. So was Darien McCullough. She was tall, dark, slim—and new. He did not have any way ot guessing her age, but it would not have occurred to him for that to matter. If they were big enough they were old enough. "Of course I can dance," he said. "Where shall we do it?"

Her expression faltered for a second. "Well," she said, her look strained, "the usual place is probably on the dance floor, you know."

Although he could see no reason for it, he was in no doubt. She was laughing at him. He nodded carelessly. "Of course," he agreed, "but at this moment I wish to remain here to study, ah, the incrustations on this pillar." He had in fact been looking at the white rime on the pedestals beside him, wondering if it were intended as art. For some reason that amused the woman even more.

"It's called bird lime," she said. "I wouldn't touch it, if I were you."

"I did not intend to touch it," he said frostily. "You speak of birds. Do you know that in my home there are no birds? I have never seen a bird until today," he went on, proud of his ability to make social conversation and pleased that she no longer looked as though she were laughing at him.

"Why don't we walk around the garden while you tell me about your home?" she suggested, and then, without pause, "Oh, hell." She was looking past him.

From behind him, the voice of the President of the United States (Washington, D.C.) said, "There you are, boy. Having a good time?"

Jeron said politely, "Yes, thank you. Darien McCullough and I were talking about these birds." He picked up an overlooked French-fried potato and tossed it toward a pigeon on the lawn, but, instead of eating it, the bird flew off to the top of the pillars. "They behave very strangely," he commented, craning his neck to stare up. He could hear a cooing sound from the birds overhead, but it was too dark to make out what they were doing.

"Ah, sonny," the President said diffidently, "I wouldn't gawk up at those pigeons so close."

"Would you not, then," Jeron said. To demonstrate his independence he found a fork in the grass and shied it at the pigeons overhead. The fork came nowhere near, but forty startled birds flew off in all directions, and Jeron felt something hot and damp strike down along his ear.

The President grinned broadly. "Now you know where all that white decoration comes from, Mr. Jeron. Well, I was about to invite you to come in for a little sit-down with the Vice President and me, so why don't we take you into the Oval Office and get you cleaned up a little? Nice to see you, Miz McCullough," he added politely, steering Jeron away. The woman looked angrily after them, to Jeron's great pleasure.

"She wanted to make love with me," he remarked to the President. "After I'm cleaned up, I think I'll come back and permit it."

"No, no," the President said earnestly. "Take my advice, boy, those wild people from the West are all full of the worst kinds of VD and everything. You just leave her be. There's plenty of nice American girls right here in Washington, D.C., that'd be proud to be with a man like you— but not that one, no sir!"

If there were indeed all these nice American girls lusting for his flesh, Jeron could find no sign of them in the Oval Office. Once he had got himself cleaned up he was led to a couch, the Vice President fluffing up pillows for him and offering a tray of sweet little cakes in paper wrappings and bottles of lukewarm, acidy, bubbly brown drinks. The President pulled up a chair to face him and said, "Now, my boy, let's you and me talk turkey. You didn't come here for nothing, right?"

Jeron nodded. "That is correct. What we want—"

"So we can make a deal," the President nodded. "I knew when I saw you that you were a reasonable man. You're the kind of person that puts your cards right on the table, just like me, right? Mae! Put a little sweetener in this good man's Coke while we talk us some business here."

"It is already quite sweet," Jeron objected, but the Vice President was already shaking her head.

"I don't believe he's much used to drinking, Jimbo honey," she said sweetly. "Isn't that right, Jeron?"

The President shrugged amiably. "Then let's get right to it. I imagine you folks came here with trading goods, right? Mind telling us what you've got to offer us?"

"Offer?" Jeron was finding the whole interview confusing, rather like a conversation in a foreign language that he barely understood.

"What you brought for us, son," the President amplified.

"Oh, to be sure," said Jeron, glad to have understood him at last. "Yes. Aunt Eve has a great many things for you. Different kinds of plants and vegetables—some of which I helped her breed," he bragged.

The President's expression seemed to turn in on itself. "Plants and vegetables?" he repeated.

"Yes. Of course, some of them might not grow properly here—the gravity is so strong, you see, and you do not maintain good control of temperature and humidity, I think."

"Uh-huh," the President said. "I see. Actually, I was thinking more of weapons."

"What would we be doing with weapons?" Jeron demanded, scandalized.

"What anyone else would be doing with them! You mean you don't have any? —No, don't say that, 'course you do. Why, that ship of yours all by itself would have pretty good military applications, used right."

"You want the ship?" Jeron thought for a moment, then shrugged. "We would have to send someone back to orbit to get the other one, but, yes, why not? And in return I have a list of what we require. It is in the lander, but as I remember it includes strawberry, coconut, papaya, tobacco, redwood, sugar maple—"

"Son, I don't know if we can exactly get you a whole redwood tree."

"Seeds alone will be adequate; there are about six hundred vegetable species, I think. Also animals, including possum, gorilla, rattlesnake, dolphin—"

"You gonna have a real Noah's Ark, boy," the President said uneasily, revising his estimate of the size of the ship in orbit.

"There too, genetic materials will be enough. We would prefer sperm and ova, though we can make do with other cells. I do not expect you to ask a female gorilla to let you investigate her private parts," said Jeron, laughing to notify them that that was a joke.

The President laughed too, but he looked at his wife and almost shrugged. "That's all you want? Just some livestock?"

"No, no. I also wish recent publications, on microfiche by choice. Philosophical Transactions, Science, the Journal of Astrophysics, and about one hundred fifty others."

The President's wife said, "We don't have much of that kind of stuff, Jeron. I think we got some copies of Popular Science Monthly down to the Marine dayroom, but they've mostly got pretty tatty by now."

"No, not Science. Or any equivalent journal of recent research in the physical sciences."

The President cleared his throat. "I think you better have a drink after all, son. There's no magazines like that coming out anymore."

"There must be! How else would scientists exchange information about available instruments, for instance?"

The Vice President put her hand on his arm in real sympathy for this young boy who was so evidently feeling frustrated and angry. "I'm real sorry, honey. We don't get any magazines like that—or, tell the truth and shame the devil, most any new magazines at all. Don't need that sort of thing anymore, you know. The only instrumentation we need's maybe a stick to measure how high the water's got."

Jeron scowled, rubbing the area around his navel. The thought of returning to Uncle Shef and Uncle Ski without the journals they had ordered was giving him a stomachache. He said stubbornly, "I just can't believe there isn't any scientific research going on."

"Oh, hell, 'course there is," the President said with pride. "I got over twenty-five people over to the Defense Department, making gunpowder and such, and Mae's got a whole bunch in the Department of Home Economics and Cooking, don't you, hon?"

"Well, yeah. But that's not quite what the young man means, Jimbo. There's none of that fancy stuff here. I don't think there's any of that anywhere in the world—" The Vice President hesitated. "Except maybe in Puget," she finished. "They're more into technology there. I mean, if that's really what you want," she added, catching her husband's chilly eye.

"What she means," the President explained, "is you don't want to mess around with the Pugets. They still take scalps, you know."

The Vice President had never had any children, but all that proved was that nature made some silly mistakes. She was as motherly a type as had ever occupied that high office, and she frowned, leaned forward, and pressed the palm of her hand against Jeron's forehead. "Jimbo," she declared, "this boy doesn't need any more talk of taking scalps and making deals. He's wore out. What he needs is to go right off to bed."

The President looked rebellious, but only for a minute; after all, he would have plenty of other chances. "One last thing," he said jovially. "And I'm gonna insist you put just a drop of this mountain dew in your Coke for it. You and me and Mae here are going to drink a toast. To our eternal friendship between planets! And to our common goal, the reunification of the U. S. of A., and then of the whole doggone world!"

Jeron had a flickering electric light in his room, but all the rest of the furnishings looked ancient. He pulled back the covers, regarded the narrow canvas cot he was supposed to sleep in with distaste, and climbed in. What a place! And what people!

There was hardly a word they said that did not seem to reflect so basic a difference in orientation and desires that communication was almost hopeless. That "toast" of the President's, for instance—was that what the President thought they were here for? To help him "reunify" something that Jeron really thought was a lot less troublesome left fragmented? There was really only one reason they were here—because he and Aunt Eve had idly dreamed up the trip, and Shef and Flo and Ski had seen enough practical value in it for themselves to help build the ship.

He sighed heavily and flounced over in the cot, trying to get comfortable . . . and then sat up.

Someone had opened his door.

"It's only me, Darien McCullough," whispered a female voice.

"How did you get in here? What do you want?" he demanded.

"You always ask at least two questions at once," the woman complained. He could hear her moving around, and then the light went on—she had known, he perceived, exactly where to find it. "Satisfied?" she asked, spreading her hands. "See, no guns, no knives. Now I better turn the light off again, so nobody will come up to see what's going on." As the light went off, she added, "I just wanted you to know. We aren't, and we don't."

"Aren't what? Don't what?" The only illumination now was misty moonlight coming in through the window, but Jeron could see her well enough as she came to sit on the edge of his bed.

"We aren't riddled with VD, and we don't take scalps. Jimbo's a liar, you see."

Jeron said, "Huh." He pulled his ankles up under his thighs and studied her. It was very hard to tell how old these Earthies were. She could have been anything from his own age to Aunt Eve's. Dressed simply in denim slacks and a patterned blouse, her fair hair short and curly, she looked principally female. She smelled that way, too, in ways that none of the women of his experience had ever smelled. Jeron knew it was called "perfume" from reading, but until now his knowledge of it had been entirely theoretical. "I think," he said, "that you could not know that the President had said such things of you unless you used electronic instruments. Is that correct?"

"It's none of your business, Jeron," she said, pleasantly enough. "We do know a lot of what the President says when he doesn't think we're listening. Some of it worries us, and it ought to worry you, too."

There was something about the way she averted her eyes as she spoke that made Jeron suspect he was violating her nudity tabus; he pulled the stiff sheet up over him, and she relaxed. "Jim takes that 'President' stuff pretty seriously," she went on. "He won't be happy until he's President of fifty states again, all the way to Hawaii, and I think you ought to know that he's counting on you to do it for him."

"That's silly," Jeron said dispassionately. "We would not involve ourselves in these petty disagreements."

"You may not have a choice, buster!" Her tone was suddenly sharp, but softened as she went on. "You ought to get out of here while you have the chance," she said seriously. "That's why I came trekking all across the continent. To warn you. And to invite you to Puget."

"Huh," said Jeron, sniffing a little more deeply. The smells of sex he knew and the scents of flowers he knew, but this combination was something new. He moved, and the sheet fell away, and Darien McCullough glanced down.

"Oh, for God's sake," she said, "shame on you. Why, I'm old enough to be your mother."

"So is my mother old enough to be my mother," said Jeron, "but that does not keep me from wanting—"

"I don't want to hear!" She was laughing, but she was embarrassed, too—one more way in which she resembled his mother, Jeron thought. She clung to her subject. "So will you come? To Puget, I mean?"

"Huh." Jeron pulled the sheet up again. "How far is it?"

"About four thousand kilometers, I guess, more or less." He scowled with the effort of trying to imagine four thousand kilometers in a straight line. "We'd have to go in your ship," she added, "but I guess there's room, and anyway you want to get it away from Jimbo as soon as you can. Unless you want to take the road, train, boat, and portage, the way I came?" She stood up, suddenly, and listened for a sound outside. Then, more softly, "I have to go. Think about it, Jeron. It's important. . . ."

When she was gone, leaving behind only that disturbing scent, a shimmer of moonlight told Jeron that he still had company. "I really thought you were going to get laid that time, boy," Uncle Ghost whispered from the draperies over the windows.

"I didn't know you were there!" Jeron said indignantly.

"No, I guess you didn't. Jeron? You know, I get the impression that she's telling the truth about this President person. I don't like this place."

"Fat lot of difference it makes to you," Jeron sneered. "You've been hiding the whole time."

"And I'm going to go right on hiding, and I don't want anybody telling these people I'm here." Jeron sniffed, rolling over and burying his head in the musty pillow. "You hear me, Jeron?"

"Of course I hear you," Jeron said into the pillow.

There was a pause, and then the faintest whisper of a sigh. "I thought," mused Uncle Ghost, "that it would be more fun than it is. I even thought that after we took care of Knefhausen, we could help these people. Now I don't know."

Jeron lay sullenly in the damp heat, waiting for Uncle Ghost to go on. When he didn't, Jeron said, "Help them how? And why?"

But there was no one there to answer anymore.