Irontown Blues

Epilog

I wasn’t shanghaied into a trip to the stars. In the end, I went voluntarily.

There were several opportunities to get off if I had still wanted to. The captain didn’t give the Heinlein full power at the very start. We cruised into a fast orbit for Mars, but before that we lingered in the area as three much smaller ships docked with us, carrying people who had actually booked passage but happened to be elsewhere when the hammer fell. Two of those ships were quickly attached to the hull of the Heinlein. They would be modified into atmosphere landers if we… when we found an Earth-like planet. The other ship was made available to anyone who had been unintentionally stranded aboard the ship, or who had gotten cold feet about setting off into the interstellar void. I thought about it…

… but what did I have to go back to in Luna? My mother would barely miss me, and I had no other family. I’d send her a postcard now and then until we got a few light-years out.

My job? Don’t make me laugh. Somewhere along the line when I was being shot at by Charonese gangsters, I admitted to myself that being a private eye was really little more than a hobby. I could continue the hobby on my way to the stars.

There was also the fact that I was being shot at. I had been dubious about Gretel’s claims of a continuation of the Big Glitch. Now I wasn’t so sure. If things were going to get worse with the CC, I had no great desire to stick around and see it.

Come to think of it, I would write Mom and tell her she had better get herself to Mars or Mercury or some other place not ruled by the CC. Would she believe me? Possibly. Would she leave her precious breeding stock? Doubtful.

Were Mars and Mercury and points outward really going to be safe havens? Not even Gretel could say with any certainty.

We rendezvoused with ships from Mars, then from Ceres. Both had smaller colonies of Heinleiners. The ships carried those Martians and Cereans who wanted to go, and a lot of last-minute supplies.

As Gretel had said, there had been those who were extremely dubious of her desire to take me, an ex-Invader, on the ship. Most of those dissenters were won over by my “heroics” in rescuing Gretel. I even had several come up to me and admit that they had been against me, then give me a hearty slap on the back to show they had changed their minds.

As for the Charonese… no one doubted that they would have shot us out of the sky if they could. No one knew for sure just what sort of nastiness they could send after us in the way of guided missiles. There just wasn’t much information about that. But no one would have been surprised if they had some quite sophisticated space weapons, probably involving nuclear warheads.

But it was academic. Pluto and Charon were on the other side of the solar system from our path to the Goldilocks Star, which is what we were calling it rather than its astronomical catalog number. There was no way they could have reached us.

Then there is the matter of Sherlock. I don’t think I’ve ever been so frustrated.

On the one hand, if I hadn’t been one of the weirdos who didn’t have any cyber implants, it is certain that I would have been found and killed. Only my being off the grid saved my life. It was all pure bull-headedness on my part, and yet it turned out to be one of the wisest decisions I had ever made.

On the other hand, by not being cyber-ready, I missed all those years of a closer relationship with my dog.

My dog? No, I’ll never look at him that way again. I now have implants that hook me into the ultramonitored, ultrasecure shipboard cyber-system. I was reluctant to do that, as my fear of having something in my head was still there, but I got over it.

And the first thing that happened was I was able to tune in to Sherlock’s thoughts and emotions. Not all at once. You have to train for that; no one is born to be a dog whisperer. But I’m working at it. Right now I can only feel his biggest, most surface thoughts, and they don’t express themselves in words. But I have learned much already.

I knew we were close, I knew I loved him and he loved me, but I had no idea of the depth of his love. To feel even a little of it is stunning.

I had no idea, Sherlock. I had no idea. I knew I was the “master,” but I didn’t have any grasp of the concept of being his alpha. Now I know what an honor it is to be an alpha. It is also a great responsibility. I must always live up to his expectations. I will try.

One thing I have picked up from him is his feeling that humans can be pretty dumb. I think he tries to conceal it from me, but he can’t. And, my friend, he won’t get any argument from me. I’m looking forward to years of getting to know him better.

It seems that I have inherited a pack. The Heinleiners have brought dogs along, and they are all CECs. What would be the point of a new world, a fresh start, if we didn’t have dogs with us? I understand that Mr. Heinlein himself was a cat person. I can forgive him for that, and I’ve seen a few cats around. Sherlock gives them the stink eye, but he knows better than to make any trouble.

So… my pack?

The Dalmatian — who I now know is named Spike — was the alpha of his pack of free canines. When they had patched him up, he approached me cautiously, sniffed my hand, then rolled over on his back so I could scratch his belly. This meant he accepted me as the new alpha. A good thing, too. I’d have hated to have had to fight him for it. I saw how fierce he could be. How fierce all of them could be, working together. It is no mystery to me how wild wolves were able to bring down a caribou ten times their weight.

A bit of my hero status has rubbed off on the pack. People saw how they attacked the warrior, protecting me, and incidentally, Gretel. There is always a scoop of ice cream waiting for any of them at Hazel’s new parlor, and so many handouts at the restaurants aboard that they are all in danger of getting fat.

What is an ex-peeper to do in this new world, on its way to another new world? Nobody deadheads on the Heinlein, believe me. I would cheerfully have worked in the warehouses, swept up the corridors, or gathered the garbage, but I didn’t have to.

I wear two hats now. One is really just a continuation of my old hobby. I have registered Sherlock and myself as a small business, the only private-detective agency within seventy billion miles. I don’t figure we’ll get much work, but then we never did. It’s important to Sherlock, so I did it. We expect our first case any day now. If you need a dame tailed, just give us a jingle on the blower. We will shadow her to the ends of the ship. If you want any Maltese Falcons located, we’re your guys. We are also available for recovering crown jewels, finding secret Nazi bases in space, and tracking giant hounds across the moors. As a sideline we do birthday celebrations, bachelor and hen parties, bat and bar mitzvahs.

My second hat is no surprise, either. I’m a cop again.

Heinleiners like to think of themselves as special in all ways. This is an exaggeration. They are special in some ways… but they are just like the rest of us in most ways. Some people steal. We need cops to catch them. Some won’t wash. Can’t have them stinking up the ship. We will be bringing felonies and misdemeanors and violations to Goldilocks along with all our virtues.

If anything, these people are maybe a little more prone to violent crime than your average citizen. Most of them are armed, for one thing. Some of them could do a lot better at impulse control. There have been, and there will be, arguments, and some will degenerate into violence. Fistfights the Heinlein Police Department will mostly tolerate. Gunfights, not so much. We have courts, and a jail. And there’s always the air lock for extreme cases. Heinleiners do believe in capital punishment for the worst of the worst. I’m with them there.

One of the unwritten tenets of the Heinleiners is “An armed society is a polite society.” This is bullshit. Maybe in ten thousand years, when all the hotheads and assholes have killed each other and brought up no offspring in their wild antisocialism, but I doubt it. “An armed society is a society where a lot of people are going to be killed by guns.” It hasn’t happened so far, but it will. It will.

One of the advantages of being a cop in the Heinlein is that there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The ship is huge, but completely mapped, and covered by CCTV so complete you don’t dare pick your nose. There are no hideouts. Like a legendary police force from a frozen northern country back on Old Earth, the officers of the HPD are always going to get our man.

Oh, and Sherlock is an officer, too. Our department is small, only eleven people to run three shifts covering many thousands of passengers. Sherlock is the entire K-9 Division, though he has on call his Barker Street Irregulars if more dog-power is needed.

I don’t have the faintest notion of how Mr. Smith’s “hyperdrive” works. I doubt if more than three people do, and two of them might be faking it. Whatever it is, it gets us moving along quite smartly. At the midpoint of our trip, our speed will be frightening. I don’t know how fast, and I don’t really want to know. Apparently our clocks will slow down. I don’t understand that any more than Sherlock would.

The hyperdrive doesn’t seem to use much in the way of fuel. There are no big tanks anywhere on the ship, but it keeps thrusting away, twenty-four/seven. It also seems to involve some way of generating artificial gravity, as everyone is always well grounded. And though the ship was designed and built to provide spin “gravity,” it doesn’t spin. The view from the observation lounges is as steady as the stars seen from Luna. Steadier, as those stars also move as Luna rotates, just a wee bit too slowly to be seen.

We are now many billions of miles from the sun. All realistic previous proposals for starships have involved trips measured in centuries. Not this one. The trip will take about thirty-five years. I expect to be alive to see landfall.

The only painful thing is to realize that Sherlock probably won’t. But even there, there is hope. I’ve spoken to some of the biologists aboard, and they are intrigued at the possibility of extending human life spans to dogs. There’s no guarantee, but it could happen.

Meantime, I am going to enjoy the time I have with him.

In fact, I think I’ll take him down to the nearest park right now and throw some balls for him.

(I promised Sherlock that he could have the last word.

(Yes, it is I, Penelope Cornflower, C.C.A.T., faithful transcriber. Though I never lived in Irontown, my mother was a Heinleiner and booked passage for me when I was very young. That was when getting the Heinlein off the ground was a completely blue-sky idea, and one that most people thought would never happen. Sadly, my mother died in the Big Glitch.

(I have met Christopher Bach at last, and am now spending a lot of time with him, teaching him to communicate with Sherlock. He is coming along well though I don’t expect him to ever equal my 97 percent adept rating.

(He is cute, in a rough-edged way. Strong arms, a manly chin, a tight little ass, always a plus in my eyes. I’ll bet he could bench-press me all day long.

(Romance? Too early to tell, though I have insisted on taking him to one of the small beaches for whispering lessons, and have been sure to remove all my clothes and put my not-inconsiderable charms on display. No tugs on the line yet. I know that first I would have to lure him away from that Gretel, not an easy chore. I have to decide if he’s worth the work.

(Of course he loves Sherlock, a factor which weighs heavily in his favor as a possible romantic partner. I don’t think I could love a man who is not a dog person. I’ll have to add up all the pluses and minuses soon.

(There is no hurry, though. The ship will be a long time getting to where it’s going.

(Signing off for now. Over to you, Sherlock.)

— Penelope Cornflower

Certified CEC Adept (TEB 97 %) Translator

Level 54, Deck G, Room 1101F

Robert A. Heinlein, en route to Goldilocks