Which was a great pity, agreed the spacers, because with the Godspeed Drive the stars, even the faint and distant ones, must have been no more than a few days away. The Drive had served ten thousand suns. And the ships at Muldoon Spaceport today, even our best ones, were no more than a faint shadow of the ships that must have wandered the Forty Worlds, a few hundred years ago.
I had never in my life heard anything half so interesting. After my second visit I spent almost all my time sitting in the launch lounge. It’s a good thing that Paddy Enderton had no way to check on me, because there could have been armless and legless men by the dozen wandering around the rest of Muldoon Spaceport, and I would never have known it.
My sail home became later and later, as the season moved steadily on toward winter. On my fifth trip across, Muldoon Port was more packed with newly arrived spacers than it had ever been. The place had the atmosphere of one giant reunion party. I could hardly bear to leave, and I stayed there until after dark. But I paid for it on the journey home, when I shuddered and shivered all the way back. It was not just the cold. The squalls that ripped the lake’s surface twice came close to capsizing me. By the time that I tied up the sailboat at our home pier, I had decided that this must be my last trip across Lake Sheelin.
That was a great shame, because for the first time in my life I had money. It was hidden away in a bag beneath my bed. Paddy Enderton was often late now in paying Mother, but never in paying me. Usually it was cash, but sometimes other things—a little timepiece, that showed the passage of hours and days for a place that was clearly not Erin, or a tube that I could place on my skin and see the pattern of veins and sinews and even individual cells, deep inside.
It would sadden me to give up more of these wonders, but it had to be done. I headed up the path, where a thin film of ice was already forming on the puddles. I intended to tell Paddy Enderton that I could not cross the lake again until the spring.
But although he was in his room, he was already asleep when I sneaked upstairs. Through the locked door I could hear him snoring and wheezing, with a rattle in his chest that was sounding worse and worse as the weather grew colder.
No matter, I thought. I would tell him first thing in the morning.
But next morning, before Paddy Enderton and Mother were up and about, Doctor Eileen paid a visit.
The day dawned late, under heavy grey skies. With it came the first real snow of winter, drifting down in big, soft flakes. It made perfect snowballs. I went outside, throwing the icy spheres at trees and birds and bushes, and laughing at our tame miniver, Chum. He was a bit witless, and he didn’t understand the game. He tried to catch everything in his mouth, and he was scooting around looking a bit like an oversized snowball himself when Doctor Eileen’s car came floating in along the northern path.
I pretended that I was going to chuck one at her when she turned off the engine and got out of the little runabout. She stood her ground and faced me down, grinning out from the fur hood that muffled her so only eyes to mouth were visible.
“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’ve been up all night. I decided to cadge something hot from Molly on my way home. Your mother up yet?”
It was her first visit for a few months. Doctor Eileen’s patients were scattered over a big area west of Lake Sheelin, the “poor side,” as she called it, and when she had been working to the north of us she had the habit of dropping in unannounced. The official reason was to perform a routine check on my health and Mother’s, but I thought that was a waste of time, because it seemed to me that both of us were healthy as ticks. The real reason, I decided, was that Mother and Doctor Eileen got on well, and liked to sit and talk. And talk and talk.
But now I have to take a break, and point out that when I sat down to describe the quest for the Godspeed Drive, it was Doctor Eileen herself who told me that I must not take anything for granted. I had to describe everything, she said, people and places and things, even ones so familiar to me that I had never really looked at them before. In fact, especially ones that I had never really looked at before.
So she can hardly object when I apply that rule to her.
I don’t remember a time when I did not know Doctor Eileen Xavier. She had been prodding and poking and making me say “Ah” since I was an infant, and probably before that. I thought of her as big, but she wasn’t. By the time I was twelve, we were eye to eye. She was little and old, with a brown, wrinkled face that somehow stayed tanned summer and winter, and she was sort of roly-poly, a little bent forward and kind of thick through the middle. She was not strong, not in the way that people usually mean, like lifting things, but I had never seen her tired, even when she rolled up at our house after a day and a half on the road.
What she was, she was there, at all hours and in all weathers, whenever people needed a doctor. Mother said there wasn’t a man or woman within thirty miles of Toltoona who wouldn’t give Doctor Eileen anything they owned if she asked for it.
So there was never a question, on that brisk, snowy morning, that I would take Doctor Eileen into the kitchen without consulting anyone, set her cold outer clothes to warm and dry, and give her hot cakes and a mug of sugary tea, the way she liked it. And only after that did I start upstairs to tell Mother that she was here.
“What is that?” said Doctor Eileen, before I could set my foot on the first step.
I had to listen for a moment before I knew what she was talking about. I had become so used to it, that awful lung-collapsing cough.
“It’s Mr. Enderton,” I said. “He always sounds like that when he first gets up. I think it’s the cold air. It gets to him.”
The front bedroom, looking out over the lake, did not benefit much from the house’s heating. It was always freezing in winter. I hadn’t said anything to Mother, but as the weather became colder and colder, my objections to sleeping in the guest room were less and less.
“I’ll tell Mother you’re here,” I went on. But before I could stop her, Doctor Eileen was stumping up the stairs behind me, her mug of tea still in her hand.
“I’m going to take a look at him,” she said. She reached the top of the stairs, set her mug on the landing rail, and started toward the guest bedroom.
“Not that way.” I grabbed her sleeve. “He’s in my room.”
That earned a quick, questioning look, then she had turned and was moving to bang on Paddy Enderton’s door.
“Who is it?” The coughing had stopped for the moment, but his voice was a husky croak.
“This is Doctor Xavier. I’d like to take a look at you.”
“I don’t want no doctor.” But the lock was being turned, and after a couple of seconds the door opened. Paddy Enderton peered out. He looked even worse than usual, face pale as chalk but eyes bloodshot and lips purple-red.
He glared at Doctor Eileen. “I don’t want no doctor,” he repeated, but then he started to cough again, in a fit that doubled him over and left him groping at the wall to support himself.
Doctor Eileen took the opportunity to advance into the room. “You may not want a doctor, but you need one. Sit down, and I’ll examine you.”
“No, damn it, you won’t.” Enderton was recovering from his attack and straightening up. He knotted his fists. “I’m doing fine, and I don’t want any old woman in here, doctor or not. Get the hell out.”
His eyes flicked across the room, and I followed his glance. The big box that usually sat closed and locked had been opened, and a lattice of dark-blue tubes and bars stood next to the window. Enderton took a step to the right, so that his body was between Doctor Eileen and the blue structure, then he slowly moved closer to her. “Out of my room.”