44

ANOTHER LAIR

Richard and Nicole had bigger con­cerns than Francesca. When they returned to the central plaza, they found their hut had disappeared. Re­peated knocks on the avian cover produced no response. The precariousness of their situation became clearer to both of them.

Richard grew moody and uncommunicative. He apologized to Nicole, saying that it was a characteristic of his personality for him to withdraw from people when he felt insecure. He played with his computer for several hours, only stopping occasionally to ask Nicole questions about the geography of New York.

Nicole lay down on her sleeping mat and thought about swimming across the Cylindrical Sea. She was not an exceptionally good swimmer. During training it had taken her about fifteen minutes to swim one kilometer. That had been in a placid swimming pool. To cross the sea she would be forced to swim five kilometers through cold, choppy water. And she might be accom­panied by lovely creatures like the shark biots.

A jolly fat man twenty centimeters high interrupted her contemplation. “Would you like a drink, fair lass?” Falstaff asked her. Nicole rolled over and studied the robot from up close. He hoisted a large mug of fluid and drank it, spilling some on his beard. He wiped it off with his sleeve and then he burped. “And if you want nothing to drink,” he said in a heavy British accent, thrusting his hand down into his codpiece, “then perhaps Sir John could teach you a thing or two between the sheets.” The tiny face was definitely leering. It was crude, but very funny.

Nicole laughed. So did Falstaff. “I am not only witty in myself,” the robot said, “but the cause that wit is in other men.”

“You know,’* Nicole said to Richard, who was watching from several me­ters away, “if you ever became tired of being a cosmonaut, you could make millions in children’s toys.”

Richard came over and picked up Falstaff. He thanked Nicole for her compliment. “As I see it, we have three options,” he then said very seriously. “We can swim the sea, we can explore New York to see if we can forage enough material to construct some kind of boat, or we can wait here until someone comes. I’m not optimistic about our chances in any of the cases.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“I propose a compromise. When it’s light, let’s carefully search the key areas of the city, particularly around the three plazas, and see if we can find anything that could be used to build a boat. We’ll allot one Raman day, maybe two, to the exploration. If nothing turns up, well swim for it. I have no faith we’ll ever see a rescue team.”

“Sounds all right to me. But I would like to do one other thing first. We don’t have a lot of food, to make a rather obvious understatement, I’d feel better if we pulled up the manna melon first, before we did any more explor­ing. That way we could be protected against any surprises.”

Richard agreed that establishing the food supply would probably be a prudent initial action. But he didn’t like the idea of using the suture thread again. “You were lucky in many ways,” he told Nicole. “Not only did the line not break, it didn’t even slip off that waistband you made. However, it did cut completely through your gloves in two places and almost through the waistband.”

“You have another idea?” Nicole asked.

“The lattice material is the obvious choice,” Richard replied. “It should be perfect, provided that we don’t have any trouble obtaining it. Then I can go down in the pit and spare you the trouble—”

“Wrong,” Nicole interrupted. She smiled. “With all due respect, Richard, now is not the time for any macho derring-do. Using the lattice is a great idea. But you’re too heavy. If something happened, I would never be able to pull you out.” She patted him on the shoulder. “And I hope it doesn’t hurt your feelings, but I’m probably the more athletic of the two of us.”

Richard feigned hurt pride. “But whatever happened to tradition? The man always performs the feats of physical strength and agility. Don’t you remember your childhood cartoons?”

Nicole laughed heartily. “Yes, my dear,” she said lightly. “But you aren’t Popeye. And I’m not Olive Oyl.”

“I’m not certain I can deal with this,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “To discover at the age of thirty-four that I’m not Popeye… What a blow to my self-image.” He cuddled Nicole gently. “What do you say?” he continued. “Should we try to sleep some more before it’s light?”

Neither of them was able to sleep. They lay side by side on their mats in the open plaza, each occupied with his own thoughts. Nicole heard Rich­ard’s body move. “You’re awake too?” she said in a whisper.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ve even counted Shakespearean characters with no success. I was up to more than a hundred.”

Nicole propped herself up on an elbow and faced her companion. “Tell me, Richard,” she said, “where did this preoccupation of yours with Shake­speare come from? I know you grew up in Stratford, but it’s hard for me to imagine how an engineer like you, in love with computers and calculations and gadgets, could become so fascinated with a playwright.”

“My therapist told me it was an “escapist compulsion,” Richard replied a few seconds later. “Since I didn’t like the real world or the people in it, he said, I made up another one. Except that I didn’t create it from scratch. I just extended a wonderful universe already fabricated by a genius.

“Shakespeare was my God,” Richard continued after a moment. “When I was nine or ten, I would stop in that park along the Avon — the one beside all the theaters, with the statues of Hamlet, Falstaff, Lady Macbeth, and Prince Hal — and spend the afternoon hours making up additional stories about my favorite characters. That way I put off going home until the last possible moment. I dreaded being around my father… I never knew what he would do —

“But you don’t want to hear this,” Richard interrupted himself suddenly, “everyone has memories of childhood pain. We should talk about something else.”

“We should talk about whatever we’re feeling,” Nicole responded, surpris­ing even herself. “Which is something I hardly ever do,” she added softly.

Richard turned and looked in her direction, He extended his hand slowly. She gently wrapped her 6ngers around his. “My father worked for British Rail,” he said. “He was a very smart man, but socially clumsy, and he had difficulty finding a job that fit him after he finished the university at Sussex. Times were still tough. The economy had just started to recover from The Great Chaos…

“When my mother told him that she was pregnant, he was overwhelmed by the responsibility of it all. He looked for a safe, secure position. He had always scored well on tests and the government had forced all the national transportation monopolies, including the rail system, to staff positions based on objective test results. So my father became the manager of operations at Stratford.

“He hated the job. It was boring and repetitive, no challenge at all for a man who had an honors degree. Mother told me that when I was very small he applied for other positions, but he always seemed to botch the interviews. Later on, when I was older, he never even tried. He sat at home and com­plained. And drank. And then made everyone around him miserable.”

There was a long silence. Richard was having a difficult time struggling with the demons of his childhood. Nicole squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“So was I,” Richard replied with a slight break in his voice. “I was just a small child with an incredible sense of wonder and love of life. I would come home enthusiastic about something new I had learned or something that had happened at school, and my Dad would just growl.

“Once, when I was only eight, I came home from school in the early afternoon and I got into an argument with him. It was his day off and he had been drinking, as usual. Mother was out at the store. I don’t remember what it was about now, but I do recall telling him that he was wrong about some trivial fact. When I continued to argue with him, he suddenly hit me in the nose with all his might. I fell against the wall with my broken nose gushing blood. From that time on, until I was fourteen and felt I could protect myself, I never walked in that house when he was there unless I was certain that my mother was home.”