Crashlander

GHOST: FOUR

«But he never went back,» I said.

«It happens I know why,» Ander said, and then the crowd drowned us out. Administration and Structure swirled together; Entertainment saw a chance and arrowed into the dance behind its dolphin. The depleted fourth team, Police, hung back in a nervous arc. All the teams looked to be milling without purpose, and from listening to Sharrol I could guess why.

So I said, «Prey submerged.» The last of the prey turtles must have escaped into the sand. For the next few minutes I watched the game with a concentration that would have surprised Sharrol.

This was the story I was telling Ander: If I hadn't been led here by a woman, why was I here? I must love the game! «There! Yellow prey!» I shouted as sand stirred. An instant later the glowing mock turtle emerged outside the melee and flapped clownishly toward safety. A Police swimmer dove to capture it, his dolphin keeping station to block for him, and everyone converged too late: he was swimming like mad, and so was the prey; he was through the yellow arch at the point of a great angry cloud –

And that was the end. I bellowed over the crowd's roar: «Dinner!»

«Oh?»

«I missed brunch. I'm starving.»

I didn't want to fight the crowds trying to leave. We crossed the slidebridge instead, this time in comparative quiet. The booths lined below us were whirlpools in a surging sea of escapees.

Ander's hand was above my elbow, companionably. I was a prisoner, and that was hard to ignore. Make conversation? I asked, «Did you know there's an ice age going on Earth?»

«Sure.»

«Well, I never even wondered. I did wonder why Cuba wasn't much hotter than Nome.»

Ander said, «The whole planet's a web of superconductor cable. We had to restart the Gulf Stream five hundred years ago, and it just went from there. Nome imports heat; Cuba imports cold. Even so, Earth would be pretty cold if we weren't getting so much power from the orbiting satellites.»

«Uh huh. What are you going to do when the ice age turns off?»

«Move.» Ander grinned. «Where did you go after the antimatter system?»

«I moved in with Sharrol in Nome.»

He looked at me. «You? Settled down like a Grog on a rock?»

Maybe he had the right to sneer. Ander and I had toured singles nodes together on two worlds, blowing off steam after marathon work sessions. I held my temper and said, «You can spend a lifetime seeing Earth.»

«Where do you want to eat?»

I said, «The Pequod Grill is good.» Good and expensive, and an offworlder would have heard of it. Just the place a destitute B. Shaeffer might pick if someone else was paying. And nobody would ask me where Sharrol was.

We had almost reached the transfer booths. Just to pull Ander's chain, I turned suddenly into the phone booth to see if I could break his grip.

He pulled me back effortlessly. «What?»

«I thought I'd phone and see if the Grill's full up,» I said, and remembered. I couldn't use my pocket phone. It was in the wrong name.

«I'll do it.» He used a card. It took him ten seconds to get a reservation. There are mistakes you don't pay for.

We pushed into a transfer booth. He said, «So there you were, nesting —»

I said, «It was love, stet? We weren't lockstepped … well, we were, a little. I didn't know any women on Earth. Sharrol had some playmates, but a lot of the men she knew were moaning and clutching themselves.» I grinned, remembering. «Rasheed. 'Lockstepped, sure, but you can't mean me! with a great dramatic wave of his arms, like he could have been joking. There were some couples we played with, but not so much of that, either, after a while. We talked about having children. Then we looked into it.»

Ander said, «You?» I wasn't sure how to read his expression. A little disgust, a little pity.

I dialed the Pequod.

We flicked in on the roof, under a rolling curve of greenblack water. The daylight was fading. Ander led off toward the restaurant twelve floors down. He seemed to be familiar with the Pequod. Might even be registered here.

Test that. «I need to visit a 'cycler, Ander. Long day.»

«Me, too,» he said. «This way.»

In the 'cycler he maneuvered himself between me and the door, and I let him. Amusing scenarios came to mind: If I needed a booth, he could watch the door, but what if he needed a booth? Not that it mattered. I didn't want to escape, not until I could know I was loose. I wanted to speak of lost treasure.

But I needed to know how much he already knew. Why was I here? Who had come with me? How? How was I surviving? I waited in the hope that he might speak of those things, and of Carlos Wu's autodoc, too.

So we didn't talk much until we were settled at a table, with drinks. Ander wasn't interested in local cuisine. He ordered beef — no imagination. I found crew snapper on the menu, billed as an order for two. Heh heh.

I asked, «What happened to Greg Pelton's expedition?»

Ander said, «Antimatter planet. The more he thought about it, the more he needed to know. He kept expanding his plans until some government gnome took notice. After that it just inflated. Government projects can do that. Everyone wants in; they always think there's infinite money, and suddenly it's gone from science fiction to fantasy.

I don't even know if Pelton's still involved. The UN has probes in the system. Meanwhile the current plan calls for a base on the planet.»

I laughed. «Oh, sure!»

He grinned at me. «Set on a metal dish in stasis, inside a roller sphere also in stasis. It is antimatter, after all.»

He wasn't making it up. He was too amused. «Civil servants love making plans. You can't get caught in a mistake if you're only making plans, and it can pay your salary for life. And I shouldn't have heard that much, Beowulf, nor should you. If a terrorist knew where to find infinite masses of antimatter, things could get sticky.»

«And that is why you weren't asked to ghostwrite the tour guide,» I surmised.

Ander smiled. He said, «Back to work. You've met Outsiders. Would you consider them a threat?»

«No.»

He waited. I said, «They're fragile. Superfluid helium metabolism and no real skeleton, I think. Any place we consider interesting, they die. But never mind that, Ander —»

«They've got the technology to take accelerations that would reduce you or me to a film of neutrons.»

«Not the point. Can you tell me why they honor contracts? They've got ships to run away from any obligation. I think it must be built into their brains, Ander. They honor contracts, and they keep their promises. They're trustworthy.»

He nodded, in no way dissatisfied. «Grogs? Are they dangerous?»

«Tanj straight they're dangerous.»

He laughed. «Well, finally! Kzinti?»

«Sure.»

«Puppeteers. Where are they going?»

«Anywhere they wast to.» He kept looking, so I said, «Clouds of Magellan? That's not the interesting question. The Outsiders can boost a ship or a planet to near lightspeed. Can the puppeteers do that too? Or will they have to summon Outsiders to change their course?»

«And stop.»

«Yeah. I'd say they have the Outsider drive. They bought it or they built it.»

«Or they've got a research project that'll get it for them.»

«I … futz.» Hire Outsiders to push five planets up to four-fifths of lightspeed, then try to figure out how to slow them down. Was that as risky as it sounded? I began to believe it wasn't. There was nothing dangerous in the path of the puppeteer fleet. They had thousands of years to solve the puzzle.

Ander asked again: «Are the puppeteers a threat?»

He had generated in me a mulish urge to defend them. «They honor their contracts.»

«They're manipulative bastards, Beowulf. You know that.»

«So are the ARMs. Your people have been in my face since I reached Earth. Do you know what Sharrol and I had to go through to have children?»

«The Fertility Board turned you down, of course.»

«Yeah.»

«What did you do?»

«Sharrol used to play with a Carlos Wu. Carlos had an open birthright. So we worked something out. Then I went traveling.»

He was, from the look of him, learning far more about Beowulf Shaeffer than he had ever wanted to. He tried to stick to what he knew. «Traveling. Any contact at all with Pierson's puppeteers during that period?»

«No.»

«Other aliens? Aliens the puppeteers dealt with?»

That made me smile. «I'm a celebrity among the Kdatlyno …»