Time lag

538 A. C. C.

When she couldn’t stand the apartment any more, Elva went out on the balcony and looked across Dirzh until that view became unendurable in its turn.

From this height, the city had a certain grandeur. On every side it stretched horizonward, immense gray blocks among which rose an occasional spire shining with steel and glass. Eastward at the very edge of vision it ended before some mine pits, whose scaffolding and chimneys did not entirely cage off a glimpse of primordial painted desert. Between the buildings went a network of elevated trafficways, some earning robofreight, others pullulating with gray-clad clients on foot. Overhead, against a purple-black sky and the planet's single huge moon, nearly full tonight, flitted the firefly aircars of executives, engineers, military techs, and others in the patron class. A few stars were visible, but the fever-flash of neon drowned most of them. Even by full red-tinged daylight, Elva could never see all the way downward. A fog of dust, smoke, fumes and vapors hid the bottom of the artificial mountains. She could only imagine the underground, caves and tunnels where workers of the lowest category were bred to spend their lives tending machines, and where a criminal class slunk about in armed packs.

It was rarely warm on Chertkoi, summer or winter. As the night wind gusted, Elva drew more tightly around her a mantle of genuine fur from Novagal. Bors wasn’t stingy about clothes or jewels. But then, he liked to take her out in public places, where she could be admired and he envied. For the first few months she had refused to leave the apartment. He hadn’t made an issue of it, only waited. In the end she gave in. Nowadays she looked forward eagerly to such times; they took her away from these walls. But of late there had been no celebrations. Bors was working too hard.

The moon Drogoi climbed higher, reddened by the hidden sun and the lower atmosphere of the city. At the zenith it would be pale copper. Once Elva had fancied the markings on it formed a death’s head. They didn’t really that had just been her horror of everything Chertkoian. But she had never shaken off the impression.

She hunted among the constellations, knowing that if she found Vaynamo’s sun it would hurt, but unable to stop. The air was too thick tonight, though, with an odor of acid and rotten eggs. She remembered riding out along Lake Rovaniemi, soon after her marriage. Karlavi was along: no one else, for you didn’t need a bodyguard on Vaynamo. The two moons climbed fast. Their light made a trembling double bridge on the water. Trees rustled the air smelled green, something sang with a liquid plangency far off among moon-dappled shadows.

“But that’s beautiful!” she whispered. “Yonder songbird. We haven’t anything like it in Ruuyalka.”

Karlavi chuckled. “No bird at all. The Alfavala name — well, who can pronounce that? We humans say ‘yanno.’ A little pseudomammal, a terrible pest. Roots up tubers. For a while we thought we'd have to wipe out the species.”

“But they sing so sweetly.”

“True. Also, the Alfavala would be hurt. Insofar as they have anything like a religion, the yanno seems to be part of it, locally. Important to them somehow, at least.” Unspoken was the law under which she and he had both been raised: The green dwarfs are barely where man was two or three million years ago on Old Earth, but they are the real natives of Vaynamo, and if we share their planet we’re bound to respect them and help them.

Once Elva had tried to explain the idea to Bors Golyev. He couldn’t understand at all. If the abos occupied land men might use, why not hunt them off it? They'd make good, crafty game, wouldn’t they?

“Can anything be done about the yanno?” she asked Karlavi.

“For several generations, we fooled around with electric fences and so on. But just a few years ago. I consulted Paaska Ecological Institute and found they'd developed a wholly new approach to such problems. They can now tailor a dominant mutant gene which produces a strong distaste for Vitamin C. I suppose you know Vitamin C isn’t part of native biochemistry, but occurs only in plants of Terrestrial origin. We released the mutants to breed, and every season there are fewer yanno that’ll touch our crops. In another five years there’ll be too few to matter.”

“And they’ll still sing for us.” She edged her hailu closer to his. Their knees touched. He leaned over and kissed her.

Elva shivered. I'd better go in, she thought.

The light switched on automatically as she re-entered the living room. At least artificial illumination on Chertkoi was like home. Dwelling under different suns had not yet changed human eyes. Though in other respects, man’s colonies had drifted far apart indeed...The apartment had three cramped rooms, which was considered luxurious. When five billion people, more every day, grubbed their living from a planet as bleak as this, even the wealthy must do without things that were the natural right of the poorest Vaynamoan — spaciousness, trees, grass beneath bare feet, your own house and an open sky. Of course. Chertkoi had very sophisticated amusements to offer in exchange, everything from multisensory films to live combats.

Belgoya pattered in from her offside cubicle. Elva wondered if the maidservant ever slept. “Does the mistress wish anything, please?”

“No.” Elva sat down. She ought to be used to the gravity by now, she thought. How long had she been here? A year, more or less. She hadn’t kept track of time, especially when they used an unfamiliar calendar. Denser than Vaynamo. Chertkoi exerted a ten percent greater surface pull; but that wasn’t enough to matter, when you were in good physical condition. Yet she was always tired.

“No. I don’t want anything.” She leaned back on the couch and rubbed her eyes. The haze outside had made them sting.

“A cup of stim, perhaps, if the mistress please?’’ The girl bowed some more, absurdly doll-like in her uniform.

“No!” Elva shouted. “Go away!”

“I beg your pardon. I am a worm. I implore your magnanimity.” Terrified, the maid crawled backward out of the room on her belly.

Elva lit a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked on Vaynamo, but since coming here she'd take it up, become a chain-smoker like most Chertkoians who could afford it. You needed something to do with your hands. The servility of clients toward patrons no longer shocked her, but rather made her think of them as faintly slimy. To be sure, one could see the reasons. Belgoya, for instance, could be fired any time and sent back to the street level. Down there were a million eager applicants for her position. Elva forgot her and reached after the teleshow dials. Something must be on, loud and full of action, something to watch, something to do with her evening.

The door opened. Elva turned about tense with expectation. So Bors was home. And alone. If he'd brought a friend along, she would have had to go into the sleeping cubicle and merely listen. Upper-class Chertkoians didn’t like women intruding on their conversation. But Bors alone meant she would have someone to talk to.

He came in, his tread showing he was also tired. He skimmed his hat into a comer and dropped his cloak on the floor. Belgoya crept forth to pick them up. As he sat down, she was there with a drink and a cigar.

Elva waited. She knew his moods. When the blunt, bearded face had lost some of its hardness, she donned a smile and stretched herself along the couch, leaning on one elbow. “You’ve been working yourself to death,” she scolded.

He sighed. “Yeh. But the end’s in view. Another week, and all the damn paperwork will be cleared up.”

“You hope. One of your bureaucrats will probably invent nineteen more forms to fill out in quadruplicate.”

“Probably.”

“We never had that trouble at home. The planetary government was only a coordinating body with strictly limited powers. Why won’t you people even consider establishing something similar?”

“You know the reasons. Five billion of them. You’ve got room to be an individual on Vaynamo.” Golyev finished his drink and held the glass out for a refill. “By all chaos! I’m tempted to desert when we get there.”

Elva lifted her brows. “That’s a thought,” she purred.

“Oh, you know it’s impossible,” he said, returning to his usual humorlessness. “Quite apart from the fact I’d be one enemy alien on an entire planet —”

“Not necessarily.”

“— All right, even if I got naturalized (and who wants to become a clodhopper?) I’d have only thirty years till the Third Expedition came. I don’t want to be a client in my old age. Or worse, see my children made clients.”

Elva lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. She drew in the smoke hard enough to hollow her cheeks.

But it’s fine to launch the Second Expedition and make clients of others, she thought. The First, that captured me and a thousand more (What’s become of them? How many are dead, how many found useless and sent lobotomized to the mines, how many are still being pumped dry of information?)... that was a mere scouting trip. The Second will have fifty warships, and try to force surrender. At the very least, it will flatten all possible defenses, destroy all imaginable war potential, bring back a whole herd of slaves. And then the Third, a thousand ships or more, will bring the final conquest, the garrisons, the overseers and entrepreneurs and colonists. But that won’t be for forty-five years or better from tonight. A man on Vaynamo... Hauki... a man who survives the coming of the Second Expedition will have thirty-odd years left in which to be free. But will he dare have children?

“I’ll settle down there after the Third Expedition, I think,'’ Golyev admitted. “From what I saw of the planet last time. I believe I'd like it. And the opportunities are unlimited. A whole world waiting to be properly developed!’’

“I could show you a great many chances you'd otherwise overlook,” insinuated Elva.

Golyev shifted position. 'Let’s not go into that again,” he said. “You know I can’t take you along.”

“You’re the fleet commander, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I will be, but curse it, can’t you understand? The IP is not like any other corporation. We use men who think and act on their own, not planet-hugging morons like what’s-her-name — ”he jerked a thumb at Belgoya, who lowered her eyes meekly and continued mixing him a third drink. “Men of patron status, younger sons of executives and engineers. The officers can’t have special privileges. It'd ruin morale.”

Elva fluttered her lashes. “Not that much. Really.”

“My oldest boy’s promised to take care of you. He’s not such a bad fellow as you seem to think. You only have to go along with his whims. I’ll see you again, in thirty years.”

“When I’m gray and wrinkled. Why not kick me out in the street and be done?”

“You know why,” he said ferociously. “You’re the first woman I could ever talk to. No, I’m not bored with you! But —”

“If you really cared for me —”

“What kind of idiot do you take me for? I know you’re planning to sneak away to your own people, once we’ve landed.”

Elva tossed her head, haughtily. “Well! If you believe that of me, there’s nothing more to say.” “Aw, now, sweeping, don’t take that attitude.'’ He reached out a hand to lay on her arm. She withdrew to the far end of the couch. He looked baffled.

“Another thing,” he argued. “If you care about your planet at all, as I suppose you do, even if you’ve now seen what a bunch of petrified mudsuckers they are... remember, what we’ll have to do there won’t be pretty.”

“First you call me a traitor,” she flared, “and now you say I’m gutless!”

“Hoy, wait a minute —”

“Go on, beat me. I can’t stop you. You’re brave enough for that.”

“I never —”

In the end, he yielded.