Memories of the Future Page 16

  “But, Ciely, you’re not going to jail.”

  “The haute bourgeoisie are like that, you know. They don’t care about their children. All they care about is time-and-a-half on Saturdays and double-time on Sundays.”

  “Ciely, listen—”

  “My father is so hungry he works every Sunday they let him. He’s a brown-noser too. Every Christmas he gives the shift leader a case of Scotch.”

  “Ciely, I don’t have any choice. I have to take you home.”

  “I know. My debt to society must be paid.”

  “It has nothing to do with your debt to society. Anyway, there’s no longer any such debt. But I still have to take you home. You belong with your parents, with young people your own age. You can’t grow up in a spacewhale with no one to keep you company but an old man of thirty-three.”

  She begins to cry. The handle of her spoon protrudes forlornly from her forgotten bowl of cereal. Her glass of synthi-milk stands untouched by the synthi-sugar bowl.

  Starfinder is a great hand with children in distress. He sits there woodenly in his dazzling captain’s uniform, like a bemedaled bump on a log. Oh, he is a great hand with them, all right.

  It is up to the whale to save the day. With its usual savoir-faire, it does so:

  it says, signifying, by the juxtaposition of itself (*), Ciely (), and (space-time), that they will always be comrades no matter how far they may drift apart.

  “I know, Charles,” Ciely whispers. I know we will.” She dries her eyes with her napkin and stands up. “I’m ready, Starfinder.” And then, I love you, Charles. Goodbye.

  * * *

  The lifeboat lands in a big back yard beside an in-ground swimming pool. It is night, and there is the scent of new-mown grass.

  “Where are we, Starfinder? Whose house is that?”

  “Mine,” Starfinder answers.

  She stares at it. It is three-storied, cupolaed, multiwindowed. Behind it is a big double garage. A driveway winds around the house and down a grassy slope and joins hands with a highway. There are no other houses for miles around—only fields and trees. In the distance, the lights of a large city can be seen.

  Starfinder opens the garage door, pushes the lifeboat inside, next to a big, black limousine. Ciely helps him. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s your car, too.”

  “One of them. I loaned the other one to my lawyer.”

  “You’re putting me on, Starfinder. How can you possibly own a house in the country and two limousines when you just this minute set foot on Renascence for the first time?”

  “What makes you so sure it’s the first time?”

  Ciely gasps. “You pastbacked!”

  Starfinder nods. “And not just once, either. I tried to tell you at breakfast, but you wouldn’t listen. Come on, let’s go inside.”

  The downstairs lights wink on as they approach the house. A tall, spare man, clad in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers, meets them at the back door, and they step into a large, brightly illumined kitchen. “This is Arthur, my carkeeper,” Starfinder says. “Arthur, this is my niece, Ciely Bleu.”

  Arthur nods. He yawns. “I heard the grodge door open and figured it was prob’ly you.” He yawns again. “I’m goin’ back t’bed.”

  “Since when have I been your niece?” Ciely asks, after Arthur leaves the room.

  “Since two weeks ago, when I adopted your family.”

  “Starfinder, you take the cake.”

  “Speaking of cake, I had Arthur order one for the occasion.” He glances at the digital kitchen clock, which registers 4:57 A.M. “But I forgot we’d be arriving so early.”

  “What does our arriving here early have to do with it?”

  Starfinder doesn’t argue. He finds the cake in one of the inbuilt cupboards and sets it on the kitchen table. He takes a container of milk out of the refrigerator and gets together a plate, a glass, and a knife and fork. He and Ciely sit down across from each at the table. The cake is a chocolate one with white icing. Ciely cuts a big piece and puts it on her plate. “Aren’t you going to have any, Starfinder?”

  “No.”

  He gazes thoughtfully through the big picture window that the table adjoins. Dawn has daubed the eastern horizon with pastel pink. Against the pinkness the city of Kirth shows as a serrated silhouette. He stares at it for some time, then he returns his gaze to Ciely, who is starting in on her second piece of cake.

  “First of all, Ciely, from here on in you must call me ‘Uncle John.’ As you probably know, on Renascence a man of sufficient means and with no family of his own can adopt a family, if it has no objections, and assume an avuncular status. Two weeks ago, via my lawyer, I adopted yours. Subsequently, my lawyer informed your mother and father that I owned the eel you’d stolen and that in pursuing you in my whaleship I accidentally rammed the eel and destroyed it, imperiling your life in the process. I had to put in the last part, because my imperiling your life makes my adoption of your family seem like an act of contrition, and therefore believable. By the same token, it’s understandable why I’m not bringing charges against you for the theft, even though the OrbShipCo insurance underwriters probably won’t pay off.

  “My lawyer also informed your mother and father that you’re safe and sound and that I’m bringing you home. Ostensibly, I made all these arrangements via radio while still in space, traveling at minus-C velocities; actually, of course, I made them during my most recent pastback.”

  Ciely is staring at him. “You owned Pasha?”

  Starfinder nods. “But I didn’t know it, of course, before last night.”

  “But how could you possibly have managed to buy a star eel worth billions of dollars?”

  “I started out with a pair of telekinetic dice, way back when. I invested my winnings in OrbShipCo stock and arranged for the dividends to be paid into a trust fund for my ‘son.’ I was able to do this because there’s no ‘in-being’ law in the commonwealth of Kirth. I then returned twenty-some years later as my ‘son,’ invested the dividend earnings in more OrbShipCo stock and in various other corporations related to the star-eel industry, and set up a second trust fund for a second ‘son,’ and so on. Originally, to explain my periodic absences—disappearances, in the eyes of my ‘contemporaries’—I passed myself off as a space sailor. Lately, I’ve assumed the role of a whaleship captain. My name, incidentally, is no longer just ‘John Starfinder.’ It’s ‘John Starfinder VI.’ This house has been in the ‘Starfinder family’ for ‘generations.’ Arthur is the most recent of a long line of caretakers. I hired him when I hired Ralph.”

  “Ralph?”

  “He’s my chauffeur. It would look funny, don’t you think, to own two limousines and not have a chauffeur?”

  “Yes, I guess it would,” Ciely says weakly. She takes a deep breath. “Starfinder—”

  “ ‘Uncle John,’ ” he corrects her.

  “Uncle John, you did all those things, you went to such fantastic lengths, just to keep me from going to jail?”

  “I don’t think you’d have gone to jail, Ciely.”

  “But, just the same, you did them because you thought I might.”

  “Among other things.”

  “But if you could do all that, Starfinder—”

  “ ‘Uncle John.’ ”

  “But if you could do all that, Uncle John, why couldn’t you have fixed things so that I didn’t steal Pasha? So that he’d still be alive?”

  Starfinder shakes his head sadly. “I couldn’t, Ciely. You can add to the past, but you can’t subtract from it. The death of anything or anyone can never be deleted.”

  He looks through the window at the nascent day. The pinkness along the eastern horizon has paled and spread high into the sky. A band of saffron-yellow light has come into being just beneath it. The serrated silhouette of Kirth is more distinct now, and somehow sinister.

  He contacts the whale, which is in synchronous orbit. Is all well, whale?

  The answer comes back at onc
e:

  Yes, all is well.

  “Come on, Ciely, I’ll show you the rest of the house. Then, as soon as you’ve had a chance to digest your ‘breakfast,’ we’ll take a morning dip in the pool. Afterward, you can put on one of the new outfits I bought you and pack the rest. When Ralph shows up, I’ll have him bring the Car around to the front, and we’ll get an early start.”

  * * *

  The big, black limousine noses through suburban traffic, makes a right turn, then a left. Then another right. To a large extent, Renascence’s society is an atavism—a reversion to twentieth-century North America’s. Such atavisms are fairly common among terrestrialized societies and are generally the result of a similarity of ages and beginnings. It is true that on Renascence there were no Indians to contend with, but there were indigenes of like nature that had to be—and of course were—subdued.

  Ralph makes another right turn. “Are you sure you gave him the right address, Ciely?” Starfinder asks. “We seem to be traveling in a circle.”

  Ciely is wearing an azure dress, a little white tam with a blue pom-pom, and white platform sandals. On her lap rests a small, white handbag. “I’m positive, Uncle John.” Then, peering over Ralph’s shoulder, “There it is—just up ahead. That sort of squarish house.”

  The adjective is of next to no help, for all the houses on the block are sort of squarish. But Ralph has no trouble finding the right driveway and pulls into it and parks behind a cinnamon-colored runabout with a red roof. If any question exists in Starfinder’s mind that it is the right driveway, a cast aluminum sign placed conspicuously on the adjacent front lawn, reading THE BLEUS, dispels it.

  A little concrete walk leads up from the sidewalk, past a large flowerbed, to the front porch. Standing on the porch are a man and a woman. Both are about Starfinder’s age. The man is short and heavy-set and has a faint stubble of beard. He is wearing work clothes. The woman is svelte, and, at first glance, has eyes that are twins of Ciely’s. She is wearing an abbreviated housedress with little pots and pans printed all over it.

  Ciely, who up until a moment ago had not spoken since they left Starfinder’s house in the country, gives a little gasp, jumps out of the car and runs across the lawn. The man and woman come running to meet her, and the three of them embrace.

  Starfinder experiences a twinge of envy, but it is only a very faint one. After an appropriate interval, he gets out of the limousine and, carrying Ciely’s suitcase, skirts the flowerbed, which has a little white wire fence around it, and walks over to where the trio are standing and introduces himself. His first close-up impression of Mr. and Mrs. Bleu is that they have remarkably protuberant eyes. Then he remembers that he is wearing his captain’s uniform and that they have never seen such an ensemble before.

  All up and down the street, people are standing on their front porches, gawking. On two or three front lawns, small children are playing; the older ones, apparently, are in school.

  Mrs. Bleu kisses him on the cheek. Mr. Bleu shakes hands with him. “We sure appreciate you adopting us and bringing our dotter back safe and sound,” Mr. Bleu says solemnly.

  “From the bottoms of our hearts,” says Mrs. Bleu.

  “I just got off work” Mr. Bleu announces. “I’m on the night shift this week. After I get off work, I always have a couple of beers. Last night, that suckhole Skeechy Klodzow squawked about me getting so much overtime, and the shift leader told me to take tonight off, so I’m going to have more than just a couple. How about joining me, Uncle John?”

  “Sure, I’ll have a beer with you,” Starfinder says.

  “Mildred, open two tall, cold ones.”

  “I’ll do better than that,” Mrs. Bleu laughs, heading for the house. “I’ll open three.”

  Starfinder and Mr. Bleu follow, and Ciely, left alone on the lawn, hurries after them. As Starfinder is about to ascend the porch steps, someone taps him on the shoulder. Turning, he beholds Ralph, the chauffeur.

  “Yes, Ralph?”

  “You forgot to invite me, sir.”

  “Invite you? Invite you where?”

  “Along.”

  “What he means is,” Mr. Bleu explains, “is that according to the rules and regulations of the Personnel Carriers’ Union, whenever a carrier is going to be kept waiting more than five minutes he’s supposed to be treated as a social equal by his employer.”

  “But I can’t invite him into your house,” Starfinder objects.

  “What d’you mean, you can’t? Where you been living all these years, Uncle John?”

  Starfinder realizes he has stubbed his toe. During his pastbacks, he was so busy playing the stock market that he neglected to bone up on unions and union regulations, and on social customs in general. Now, it is too late.

  Ciely comes to his rescue. “Star—Uncle John spends most of his time in space. He is a whaleship captain, you know. He can hardly be expected to keep up to date on employee privileges and other such things.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Mr. Bleu concedes.

  “Will you join us for a beer, Ralph?” Starfinder asks.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  “Mildred” Mr. Bleu bellows. “Open up another tall, cold one for our friend Ralph.”

  * * *

  The three men sit down in the Bleus’ living room, Mr. Bleu in a commodious armchair, Starfinder on a settee and Ralph on a ten-foot-long sofa. The room is a pleasant one, with lace curtains frilling the windows and a staircase showing in the background. In addition to the aforementioned articles of furniture, there are a long, low coffee table, two end tables, a knick-knack cabinet, two floor lamps, two table lamps and a hassock. A huge holosole occupies almost an entire wall. Above the mantle of an electric fireplace hangs a romanticized painting of Armstrong taking his first small step on the moon. For some reason, Starfinder is reminded of an antique painting he once saw entitled Washington Crossing the Delaware.

  Mrs. Bleu enters from stage right, bearing four bottles of beer. She hands one to Ralph, one to Starfinder, and one to Mr. Bleu; then, retaining the fourth, she sits down on the sofa next to Ralph. All this while, Ciely has been standing off to one side. She looks first at her father, then at her mother, but neither seems to be aware of her. At length, she picks up her suitcase, which Starfinder has set down beside the settee, and disappears upstairs.

  Starfinder is about to ask Mrs. Bleu for a glass when he sees that she, her husband, and Ralph are drinking directly from their bottles. Remembering his faux pas of a few minutes ago, he hastily follows suit. Ever since he sat down, he has been waiting for someone to remark on the 2-omicron-vii scar on his cheek. Finally Mr. Bleu does so.

  MR. BLEU: That’s a nasty looking scar you’ve got there, Uncle John. Knife wound?

  STARFINDER: I was burned and blinded years ago when I was a cabin boy on a whaleship that hadn’t been deganglioned properly. I guess you could call the scar a sort of souvenir.

  MR. BLEU: You can’t trust those damned whaleships, I always say. You don’t see many of them around these parts. All they’re good for is freighters, anyway. You take an eelship now. They make good passenger ships and good practical freighters too, and they’re safe. I know. I work in the yards. Been there seventeen years—ever since I got my working papers and joined the union.

  RALPH (to Starfinder): How come you’re captain of a whaleship instead of an eelship? Seems to me a good, loyal Renascence citizen ought to stick to products made on his own planet, not somebody else’s.

  STARFINDER: Originally I’m from whaleship country. From Terraltair—Altair IV.

  RALPH: But Altair IV’s halfway across the galaxy. It’d take more years than you are old for you to get here.

  STARFINDER: My whaleship’s a special one. It exceeds standard ftl velocity.

  RALPH: Is that so?

  STARFINDER: Yes.

  Ralph makes a rat-a-tat-tat with his empty bottle on the coffee table, and Mrs. Bleu jumps up, dashes into the kitchen and returns with four full ones.
Ciely has come back downstairs and now begins collecting the empties.

  THE WHALE:

  STARFINDER: Never mind, whale.

  MR. BLEU (after, a mild eructation): I know it’s prob’ly none of my business, Uncle John, but that eelship of yours that you accidentally rammed with your whale when you went after that feather-brained dotter of mine must have set you back quite a bundle. Just how big a bundle, if I may be so bold as to ask?

  STARFINDER: Ten billion dollars, or thereabouts.

  MR. BLEU (in an awed voice): Ten billion dollars!

  RALPH (in an equally awed voice): Ten billion dollars!

  MRS. BLEU: Was it insured?

  STARFINDER: Naturally.

  MRS. BLEU: Are they going to pay off?

  STARFINDER: I doubt it. It’ll probably be classified as an “Act of God.”

  MR. BLEU: Ten billion dollars. Down the drain!

  STARFINDER (blandly): What’s ten billion dollars?

  RALPH: Dirty capitalist pig! (To Mrs. Bleu): Get me another beer, Mildred. (Mrs. Bleu heads for the kitchen again.)

  STARFINDER (calling after her): Skip me this time, ma’am.

  RALPH: Too good to drink with us common ordinary working-class people, huh, Starfinder?

  CIELY (again collecting the empties): He’s certainly too good to drink with a freeloading klutz like you. You aren’t fit to shine his shoes!