CHAPTER TEN
Only Georgina had been sorry to hear that Stein was going. They had got gloriously drunk together on his last day in Lisboa and she’d said, “How’d you like to do it in a volcano?” And he had muttered fondly that she was a crazy fat broad, but she assured him that she knew a guy who would, for suitable consideration, look the other way while they took a research deep-driller out of Messina, where there was this adit that led right into the main chamber of Stromboli.
So what the hell, they egged on over and the guy did let them get away with it. So what if it cost six kilobux? It was seismic down there in the surging lava with colored gas bubbles oozing slowly up the observation window like a bunch of jellyfish in a bowl of incandescent tomato soup.
“Oh, Georgina,” he had moaned in the postcoital triste. “Come with me.”
She rolled over on the padded floor of the driller cockpit, white flesh turned to scarlet and black by the glare outside, and gave the weeping giant mother-comfort from her melon-sized breasts.
“Steinie. Lovie. I’ve got three beautiful children and with my genetic quotient I can have three more if I want them. I’m happy as a clam at high tide playing with my kids and torching busted bores and loving up any man who isn’t afraid I’ll eat him alive. Steinie, what do I need with Exile? This is my kind of world. Exploding in three million directions all at once! Earthlings increasing and multiplying in every nook of the galaxy and the race evolving into something fantastic practically before your eyes. You know that one of my kids is coming out meta? It’s happening all over the place now. Human biology is evolving right along with human culture for the first time since the Old Stone Age. I couldn’t miss it, lovie. Not friggerty likely.”
He broke away and knuckled out tears, disgusted with himself. “You better hope I didn’t plant anything in your potato patch then, kid. I don’t think my genes’d meet your standards.”
She took his face in both hands and kissed him. “I know why you have to go, Blue Eyes. But I’ve also seen your PS profile. The squiggles in it have nothing to do with heredity, whatever you may think. Given another nurturing situation, you would have turned out fine, laddie.”
“Animal. He called me a murdering little animal,” Stein whispered.
She rocked him again. “He was hurt terribly when she died, and be couldn’t know you understood what he was saying. Try to forgive him, Steinie. Try to forgive yourself.”
The deep-driller began to lurch violently as massive eruptions of gas rose from Stromboli’s guts. They decided to get the hell out of there before the sigma-field heat shields gave way, and burrowed out of the lava chamber via an extinct underwater vent. When they finally emerged on the floor of the Mediterranean west of the island, the driller’s hull clanged and pinged with the sounds of rocks falling through the water.
They rose to the surface and came into a night of mad melodrama. Stromboli was in eruption, farting red and yellow fire clouds and glowing chunks of lava that arched like skyrockets before quenching themselves in the sea.
“Holy petard,” said Georgina. “Did we do that?”
Stein grinned at her owlishly as the driller rocked on steaming waves. “You wanna try for continental drift?” he asked, reaching for her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Richard Voorhees took the Express Tube from Unst to Paris to Lyon, then rented a Hertz egg for the last part of his journey. His earlier notion of eating and drinking and screwing his way across Europe and then jumping off an Alp had been modified when a fellow passenger on the liner from Assawompset happened to mention the odd Earth phenomenon of Exile.
That, Richard knew instantly, was just the kind of reprieve he needed. A new start on a primitive world full of human beings with no rules. Nothing to bug you but the occasional prehistoric monster. No green Leakie-Freakies, no dwarf Polli-wogs, no obscene Gi, no glaring Krondaku making you feel like your nightmares just came true, and especially no Lylmik.
He started pulling the strings as soon as he got out of decon and was able to get to a teleview. Most Exile candidates applied months in advance through their local PS counselors and took all the tests before they ever left home. But Voorhees, the old operator, knew that there had to be a way of expediting matters. The magic passkey had come via a big Earthside corporation for which he had done a delicate job less than a year ago. It was to the advantage of both the corporation and the ex-spacer that he exit the here and now as soon as possible; and so with scarcely any arm-twisting at all, the outfit’s XT-Operations agreed to use his good offices to convince the people at the auberge to let Richard take abbreviated tests right there at the starport, then proceed directly to Go.
This evening, however, as he glided out of the Rhône Valley toward the Monts du Lyonnais, he still admitted to a few qualms. He landed at Saint-Antoine-des-Vignes just a few kilometers from the inn and decided to have one last meal on free turf. The August sun had dropped behind the Col de la Lucre and the resolutely quaint village drowsed in leftover heat. The café was small but it was also dim and cool and not, thank God, too cutesy atmospheric for comfort. As he ambled in, he noted approvingly that the Tri-D was off, the musicbox played only a subdued, jangling tune, and the smells of food were incredibly appealing.
A young couple and two older men, locals by the look of their agrigarb, sat at window tables wolfing large plates of sausage and bowls of salad. On a stool at the bar sat a huge blond man in a glossy suit of midnight nebulin. He was eating a whole chicken prepared with some pinkish sauce and washing it down with beer from a two-liter pewter tankard. After hesitating for a moment, Richard went and took another stool.
The big fellow nodded, grunted, and kept feeding his face. From the kitchen came the proprietor, a jolly pot-bellied man with a heroic aquiline nose. He beamed a welcome to Voorhees, spotting him as an offworlder immediately.
“I have heard,” Richard said carefully, “that the food in this part of Earth is never prepared with synthetics.”
The host said, “We’d sooner gastrectomize than insult our bellies with algiprote or biocake or any of the rest of that crap-diddle. Ask any gorf in the place.”
“Say again, Louie!” cackled one of the oldsters at the window, hoisting a dripping hunk of sausage on his fork.
The proprietor leaned on the counter with hands palm down. “This France of ours has seen a lot of change. Our people are scattered over the galaxy. Our French language is dead. Our country is an industrial beehive underground and a history buff’s Disneyland on top. But three things remain unchanged and immortal, our cheeses, our wines, and our cuisine! Now, I can see that you’ve come a long way.” The man’s eyelid drooped in a ponderous wink. “Like this other guest here, maybe you still have a ways to go. So If you’re looking for a really cosmic meal, well, we’re a modest house, but our cooking and our cellar are four-star if you can pay for it.”
Richard sighed. “I trust you. Do it to me.”
“An aperitif, then, which we have chilled and ready! Dom Pérignon 2100. Savor it while I bring you a selection of whimsies to whet your appetite.”
“Is that champagne?” the chicken muncher asked. “In that little bitty bottle?”
Richard nodded. “Where I come from, a split of this will set you back three centibux.”
“No shit? How far out you be, guy?”
“Assawompset. The old Assawomp-hole of the universe, we call it. But don’t you try.”
Stein chortled around his chicken. “I never fight with a guy till I meet him formal.”