«Not now.» I couldn't breathe.
He sighed. He tapped at the menu board. A squeezebulb popped up, and he handed it across. I found my hand massaging my throat, removed it, took the bulb, and drank. Brandy and soda. Just right.
He watched me drink again. «Stet. Sigmund told me how you got back to Sol system.»
«He might possibly have left something out.»
«Go ahead.»
THE BORDERLAND OF SOL
Three months on Jinx, marooned.
I played tourist for the first couple of months. I never saw the high-pressure regions around the ocean because the only way down would have been with a safari of hunting tanks. But I traveled the habitable lands on either side of the sea, the East Band civilized, the West Band a developing frontier. I wandered the East End in a vacuum suit, toured the distilleries and other vacuum industries, and stared up into the orange vastness of Primary, Jinx's big twin brother.
I spent most of the second month between the Institute of Knowledge and the Camelot Hotel. Tourism had palled.
For me that's unusual. I'm a born tourist. But –
Jinx's one point seven eight gravities put an unreasonable restriction on elegance and ingenuity in architectural design. The buildings in the habitable bands all look alike: squat and massive.
The East and West Ends, the vacuum regions, aren't that different from any industrialized moon. I never developed much of an interest in touring factories.
As for the ocean shorelines, the only vehicles that go there go to hunt Bandersnatchi. The Bandersnatchi are freaks: enormous, intelligent white slugs the size of mountains. They hunt the tanks. There are rigid restrictions to the equipment the tanks can carry, covenants established between men and Bandersnatchi, so that the Bandersnatchi win about forty percent of the duels. I wanted no part of that.
And all my touring had to be done in three times the gravity of my homeworld.
I spent the third month in Sirius Mater, and most of that in the Camelot Hotel, which has gravity generators in most of the rooms. When I went out, I rode a floating contour couch. I passed like an invalid among the Jinxians, who were amused. Or was that my imagination?
I was in a hall of the Institute of Knowledge when I came on Carlos Wu running his fingertips over a Kdatlyno touch sculpture.
A dark, slender man with narrow shoulders and straight black hair, Carlos was lithe as a monkey in any normal gravity, but on Jinx he used a travel couch exactly like mine. He studied the busts with his head tilted to one side. And I studied the familiar back, sure it couldn't be him.
«Carlos, aren't you supposed to be on Earth?»
He jumped. But when the couch spun around, he was grinning. «Bey! I might say the same for you.»
I admitted it. «I was headed for Earth, but when all those ships started disappearing around Sol system, the captain changed his mind and steered for Sirius. Nothing any of the passengers could do about it. What about you? How are Sharrol and the kids?»
«Sharrol's fine, the kids are fine, and they're all waiting for you to come home.» His fingers were still trailing over the Lloobee touch sculpture called Heroes, feeling the warm, fleshy textures. Heroes was a most unusual touch sculpture; there were visual as well as textural effects. Carlos studied the two human busts, then said, «That's your face, isn't it?»
«Yeah.»
«Not that you ever looked that good in your life. How did a Kdatlyno come to pick Beowulf Shaeffer as a classic hero? Was it your name? And who's the other guy?»
«I'll tell you about it sometime. Carlos, what are you doing here?»
«I … left Earth a couple of weeks after Louis was born.» He was embarrassed. Why? «I haven't been off Earth in ten years. I needed the break.»
But he'd left just before I was supposed to get home. And … hadn't someone once said that Carlos Wu had a touch of the flatland phobia? I began to understand what was wrong. «Carlos, you did Sharrol and me a valuable favor.»
He laughed without looking at me. «Men have killed other men for such favors. I thought it was … tactful … to be gone when you came home.»
Now I knew. Carlos was here because the Fertility Board on Earth would not favor me with a parenthood license.
You can't really blame the Board for using any excuse at all to reduce the number of producing parents. I am an albino. Sharrol and I wanted each other, but we both wanted children, and Sharrol can't leave Earth. She has the flatland phobia, the fear of strange air and altered days and changed gravity and black sky beneath her feet.
The only solution we'd found had been to ask a good friend to help.
Carlos Wu is a registered genius with an incredible resistance to disease and injury. He carries an unlimited parenthood license, one of sixty-odd among Earth's eighteen billion people. He gets similar offers every week … but he is a good friend, and he'd agreed. In the last two years Sharrol and Carlos had had two children, who were now waiting on Earth for me to become their father.
I felt only gratitude for what he'd done for us. «I forgive you your odd ideas on tact,» I said magnanimously. «Now. As long as we're stuck on Jinx, may I show you around? I've met some interesting people.»
«You always do.» He hesitated, then, «I'm not actually stuck on Jinx. I've been offered a ride home. I may be able to get you in on it.»
«Oh, really? I didn't think there were any ships going to Sol system these days. Or leaving.»
«This ship belongs to a government man. Ever heard of a Sigmund Ausfaller?»
«That sounds vaguely … Wait! Stop! The last time I saw Sigmund Ausfaller, he had just put a bomb aboard my ship!»
Carlos blinked at me. «You're kidding.»
«I'm not.»
«Sigmund Ausfaller is in the Bureau of Alien Affairs. Bombing spacecraft isn't one of his functions.»
«Maybe he was off duty,» I said viciously.
«Well, it doesn't really sound like you'd want to share a spacecraft cabin with him. Maybe —»
But I'd thought of something else, and now there just wasn't any way out of it. «No, let's meet him. Where do we find him?»
«The bar of the Camelot,» said Carlos.
Reclining luxuriously on our travel couches, we slid on air cushions through Sirius Mater. The orange trees that lined the walks were foreshortened by gravity; their trunks were thick cones, and the oranges on the branches were not much bigger than Ping-Pong balls.
Their world had altered them, even as our worlds have altered you and me. And underground civilization and point six gravities have made of me a pale stick figure of a man, tall and attenuated. The Jinxians we passed were short and wide, designed like bricks, men and women both. Among them the occasional offworlder seemed as shockingly different as a Kdatlyno or a Pierson's puppeteer.
And so we came to the Camelot.
The Camelot is a low, two-story structure that sprawls like a cubistic octopus across several acres of downtown Sirius Mater. Most offworlders stay here for the gravity control in the rooms and corridors and for access to the Institute of Knowledge, the finest museum and research complex in human space.
The Camelot Bar carries one Earth gravity throughout. We left our travel couches in the vestibule and walked in like men. Jinxians were walking in like bouncing rubber bricks, with big happy grins on their wide faces. Jinxians love low gravity. A good many migrate to other worlds.
We spotted Ausfaller easily: a rounded, moon-faced flatlander with thick, dark wavy hair and a thin black mustache. He stood as we approached. «Beowulf Shaeffer!» he beamed. «How good to see you again! I believe it has been eight years or thereabouts. How have you been?»