He supposed he would, one of these days, have to let Moishe Russie know Reuven’s former lady friend would be tying the knot. He wondered how Reuven would take that. His second cousin once removed hadn’t wanted to stay with Dr. Jane Archibald. As far as David was concerned, that meant very poor eyesight on his younger cousin’s part, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He wondered if Reuven had found anyone else after Dr. Archibald left Palestine. Maybe Moishe would tell him.
Meanwhile, he had plenty of work here. He and Devereaux were still refining the design of that speedy new skelkwank- light disk player. He had a side project of his own, too, one that was nothing but a few sketchy notes at the moment but that he hoped would prove important one of these days. Hal Walsh knew he was working on something there, but didn’t yet know what it was. Walsh made a good boss. He didn’t insist on finding out every last detail of what was in his employees’ minds. Goldfarb hoped his notion would reward the younger man’s confidence in him.
Between the disk player and his own idea-with time out for lunch, and for odd bits of banter through the day-his hours at the Saskatchewan River Widget Works went by so fast, he was startled when he realized he could go home. He was also startled to see how dark it had got by the time he went outside, and how chilly the breeze from the northwest was. Autumn was here. Winter wouldn’t wait very long-and winter in Edmonton, he’d already seen, had more in common with Siberia than with anything the British Isles knew by that name.
Naomi greeted him with a kiss when he got home. “You’ve got a letter here from London,” she said.
“Have I?” he said. “From whom?”
“I don’t know,” his wife answered. “Not a handwriting I recognize. Here-see for yourself.” She handed him the envelope.
He didn’t recognize the handwriting, either, though it had a tantalizing familiarity. “Let’s find out,” he said, and tore open the envelope. His voice had gone grim. So had Naomi’s face. She had to be thinking the same thing he was: wondering what Basil Roundbush had to say to him.
“Oh!” they both exclaimed at the same time. Naomi amplified that.
“You haven’t heard from Jerome Jones for a while.”
“So I haven’t,” Goldfarb agreed. “Better him than some other people I’d just as soon not name.”
“Much better,” his wife agreed. “We’d still be in Northern Ireland if it weren’t for his help, and I always thought he was rather a nice chap from what I remember of him during the first round of fighting.”
“Did you?” David asked in a peculiar, toneless way.
“Yes, I did.” Naomi stuck out her tongue at him. “Not like that, though.” She made as if to poke him in the ribs. “What does the letter say? I’ve been waiting since the postman brought it.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Goldfarb said, at which his wife did poke him in the ribs. He threw his hands in the air. “Give over! I surrender. Here, I’ll read it. ‘Dear David,’ he says, ‘I trust this finds you and your lovely wife and family well and flourishing.’ ”
“No wonder I liked him,” Naomi remarked.
“Yes, he always did have a smooth line. A lot of girls fell for it,” David said, which got him a dirty look. He held up the letter and went on, “ ‘I am doing as well as can be expected for one with such a dissolute past. You may perhaps be interested to learn that a certain unfriend of yours has had his own unsavoury past, or something of the sort, catch up with him-so it would appear, at any rate.’ ”
He looked up from the page. His wife made little pushing motions.
“Don’t stop,” she said. “For God’s sake, go on.”
“I love it when you talk to me like that,” David said, which made Naomi give him a good push-exactly what he’d had in mind. “Oh,” he went on. “The letter. I thought you meant something else.” He glanced down at it. “Where was I? Oh, yes… ‘A certain-often a very certain, by all indications-Group Captain Roundbush is in hospital and not expected to pull through, the brakes to his Bentley having failed whilst he was negotiating a curve at a high turn of speed. Signs are that his brakes were encouraged to fail. “A highly professional job,” someone from Scotland Yard writes on a report that just chanced to cross my desk.’ ”
“I wish I could say I was sorry,” Naomi said at last.
“So do I,” Goldfarb agreed. “But I can’t, because I’m not. There’s a bit more here: ‘Not everyone is altogether displeased at this development, because his faction had close ties to the Reich, and the Reich, being more radioactive than not these days, is no longer seen as our stalwart bulwark against the Lizards. What our stalwart bulwark against the Lizards shall be now, I have no idea, but seeing Roundbush hoisted by his own hooked-cross petard doubtless pleases you more. As ever, Jerome.’ ” Goldfarb kissed his wife. “And do you know what, sweetheart? He’s right.” He kissed her again.
16
Kassquit stooped slightly to look at herself in the mirror. She made the affirmative gesture. Maybe the wild Tosevites weren’t so daft to let their hair grow after all. She liked the way it framed her face. True, it did make her look less like a female of the Race, but she worried less about that than she had before she started meeting wild Big Uglies. She no longer saw any point to denying her biological heritage. It was part of her, no matter how much she still sometimes regretted that.
She looked down at herself. She was also growing hair under her arms and at the joining of her legs. That last patch still perplexed her. In long-ago days, had such little tufts of hair helped Tosevites’ semi-intelligent ancestors find one another’s reproductive organs? Animals both on Home and here on Tosev 3 often used such displays. Maybe this was another one. Kassquit couldn’t think of any other purpose the hair might serve.
The telephone hissed, distracting her. “Junior Researcher Kassquit speaking,” she said. “I greet you.” She sometimes startled callers who knew she was an expert on Big Uglies but were unaware she was of Tosevite descent herself.
But this time the startlement went the other way. The image that appeared in her monitor was that of a Big Ugly-and not just any Big Ugly. “And I greet you, superior female,” Jonathan Yeager said formally. Then he twisted his face into the Tosevite expression of amiability and went on, “Hello, Kassquit. How are you? It is good to see you again.”
Her own face showed little. By the nature of things, it couldn’t show much. Considering how she felt, that was probably just as well. Her voice, however, was another matter. She made it as cold as she could: “What do you want?”
“I wanted to say hello,” he answered. “I wanted to say it face to face. I fear I made you unhappy when I told you I was going to enter into a permanent mating arrangement-to get married, we say in English-with Karen Culpepper. I arranged this call from the Race’s consulate here in Los Angeles to apologize to you.”
Sudden hope leaped in her. “To apologize for entering into this arrangement with the Tosevite female?”
“No,” Jonathan Yeager answered. “I am not sorry about that. But I am sorry if I did make you unhappy. I hope you will believe me when I say I did not intend to.” He paused, then pointed at her from the screen. “You have let your hair grow since I was up in the starship with you.”
“Yes.” Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. She forgot-well, almost forgot-to be angry at him as she asked, “What do you think?” The opinions of members of the Race about her appearance meant little to her: they had no proper standards of comparison. Jonathan Yeager, on the other fork of the tongue, did.
“I like it,” he said now, and used an emphatic cough. “Hair does usually seem to add to the attractiveness of a female-even though you were attractive before.”
“But not so attractive as to keep you from seeking a permanent mating arrangement with this other female.” Kassquit could not-and did not bother to-hide her bitterness.
The American Big Ugly who had been her mating partner sighed. “I have known Karen Culpepper for many years. We grew to maturity together. We come from the same culture.”
Kassquit, of course, hadn’t grown to maturity with anybody. She had no idea what doing so would mean. She suspected she was missing something because of that, but she couldn’t do anything about it. For that matter, she sometimes suspected that the way she’d been raised left her missing all sorts of social and emotional development most Big Uglies took for granted, but she couldn’t do anything about that, either.
She said, “Would you have found it impossible to stay up here and spend all your time with me?” She hadn’t asked him that while he was aboard the starship. She hadn’t known how much his leaving would hurt till he’d gone-and then it was too late.
“I am afraid I would,” he answered. “Would you have found it impossible to come down to Tosev 3 and spend all your time here?”
“I do not know,” she said. “How can I know? I have never experienced the surface of Tosev 3.” She sighed. “But I do understand the comparison you are making. It could be that you are speaking a truth.”
“I thank you for that,” Jonathan Yeager said. “You were, I think, always honest with me. And I did try to be honest with you.”
Maybe he had. Back then, though, she hadn’t understood everything he’d meant, not down in her liver she hadn’t. Did she now? How could she be sure? She couldn’t, and knew it. But she understood more now than she had then. She was sure of that. With another sigh, she said, “You will do as you will do, and I shall do as I shall do. That is all I can tell you right now.”