Except for the minor detail that gravity would quickly kill him, Johnson was in reasonably good shape for his age, which was about the same as Flynn‘s. But the other pilot wasn’t wrong; neither one of them had been born yesterday, even subtracting cold sleep. After some thought, Johnson said, “I’ve been accruing pay since the 1960s, and I haven’t had a goddamn thing to spend it on. I may not be pretty, but I might do for a sugar daddy.”
“Maybe you would-if they still have sugar daddies back on Earth,” Flynn said.
“They will. That, I’m not worried about.” Johnson spoke with great conviction. “As long as old guys have more money than they know what to do with, pretty girls’ll give ’em ideas.”
“Hmm. On those grounds, I might even qualify for sugar daddyhood myself,” Flynn said. “I’ve been accruing pay longer than you have, since I joined the crew of the Lewis and Clark on the up and up instead of stowing away, and I’ve been a bird colonel longer than you have. I could outbid you.” He seemed to like the idea.
Johnson laughed at him. “If we’re back on Earth-or in orbit around it, anyway-there’ll be enough girls to go around. You get one, I’ll get another one. Hell, get more than one if you want to.”
“An embarrassment of riches. And, probably, a richness of embarrassments,” Flynn said. “But then, a richness of embarrassments is what sugar daddies are for. I should endeavor to give satisfaction.”
How did he mean that? Johnson refused to give him the satisfaction of asking. Instead, he said, “It’s pretty good weightless, from what I remember. Of course, it’s pretty damn good any which way.”
“There, for once, I find I cannot disagree with you.” Flynn looked aggrieved. “What an unfortunate development. Who could have imagined it?”
Johnson patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. It won’t last.” Flynn seemed suitably relieved.
When Johnson’s shift ended, he went down to the refectory. A couple of doctors were in there, talking while they ate about how they could reacquaint themselves with the state of the art once they got back to Earth. They’d been weightless only since reviving aboard the Admiral Peary. Johnson was jealous of them; he couldn’t go all the way home again.
He got himself a chopped-meat sandwich and a squeeze bottle full of rhubarb juice. The juice wasn’t bad-was damn good, in fact. He wouldn’t have been surprised if somebody on the starship were fermenting it. The meat was full of pepper and cumin and other spices. That helped keep people from thinking about what it was: rat or guinea pig. The Admiral Peary hadn’t brought along any regular domestic animals, and the frozen beef and pork and lamb was long gone. The rodents could live-could thrive-on the vegetable waste from the hydroponic farm. Better just to contemplate them as… meat.
In came Lieutenant General Healey. That did more to spoil Johnson’s appetite than remembering that he was eating a rat sandwich. How many steaks could you carve off of Healey? Or would he prove inedibly tough? That was Johnson’s guess.
The commandant hadn’t missed any meals. His face was full. His body was round. If what he ate ever bothered him, he didn’t let it show. Johnson eyed him again, in a different way this time. Healey was bound to have even more pay saved up than Mickey Flynn did. But with that scowl on the commandant’s face, all the money in the world wouldn’t turn him into a sugar daddy.
Johnson quickly looked away when Healey’s radar gaze swung toward him. Not quickly enough, though-the commandant got his food and then glided toward a handhold near the one Johnson was using. “Well?” Healey asked. “Why are you staring at me? Is my fly unzipped?”
“No, sir,” Johnson said tonelessly. The trousers they wore didn’t have flies.
“Well, then? I’m not Lana Turner, either.” Healey hopelessly dated himself with that crack. Johnson, also hopelessly dated, got it with no trouble. Did anyone on the Commodore Perry even know who Lana Turner was? They leered at the lovely Rita these days-not that she wasn’t worth leering at herself.
“No, sir,” Johnson said again. Leering at Healey for any reason was a really scary thought.
“Then keep your eyes to yourself,” the commandant snapped. “The only other reason you’d stare at me that way is to figure out where to stick the knife.” He took a big bite of his sandwich.
But Johnson shook his head. “Oh, no, sir.”
“Ha!” Healey jeered. “A likely story.”
“It’s true, sir,” Johnson insisted. “I don’t need to figure it out. I’ve known for a long time.” They eyed each other in perfect mutual loathing.
No matter what Kassquit had told Ttomalss about her emotional state, she clung to Frank Coffey now. “I hope you come back!” she said, and used an emphatic cough.
“So do I,” he answered, and used one of his own. “I will do everything I can. I want to see you again, and I want to see our hatchling. And if I have trouble coming back for any reason, perhaps you and the hatchling can come to Tosev 3. You and that little male or female are bridges between the Empire and Tosevites.”
“Truth,” Kassquit said. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I wish you were not going!”
“We both knew I would, sooner or later,” Coffey said. “The coming of the Commodore Perry has made it sooner, that is all.” He shook his head. “I did not think I would be leaving as a sire, though. I will say that. It makes things more difficult… Do something for me?”
“If I can,” she said. “What is it?”
“Try not to hate me after I am gone.”
“I would not do that!” she said.
“I hope not,” he said. “Sometimes, though, after these things end, it happens. It is a way of telling yourself, He is gone, so he could not have been any good while he was here. ”
Remembering how she’d felt after Jonathan Yeager returned to the surface of Tosev 3, and especially after he formed his permanent mating alliance with Karen, Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. She saw how doing as Frank Coffey said might make her feel better. In a small voice, she told him, “I will try not to.”
“Good,” Coffey said. “And one other thing. When the hatchling comes, try to let it get to know both members of the Race and wild Tosevites. There will be a good many males and females from the Commodore Perry here. Their physician no doubt did not expect to take care of a hatchling, but I think he will do a good job. He probably knows more than Dr. Blanchard does, just because the state of the art has moved forward since she went into cold sleep.”
He said such things as if they were as natural as sunrise or as stars coming out at night. (Even as Kassquit had that thought, she made the negative gesture. She’d grown up in space. There, the stars were always out. She’d had to get used to their being gone during the day.) To the wild Big Uglies, change and technical advances were natural. Were that untrue, they never would have built the Commodore Perry. For a whole swarm of reasons, Kassquit wished they hadn’t.
“I will do that,” she said. “The hatchling will be a citizen of the Empire, but it will know more of its biological heritage than I ever did. And I will do my best to make sure that it does not become an experimental animal, the way I did.” She added an emphatic cough to her words.
“Good.” Frank Coffey caressed her and kissed her. “Believe me, I like your biological heritage.” He had a way of showing enthusiasm without an emphatic cough. They lay down together. The last time, Kassquit thought. She did her best to make the most of it.
The next morning, the American Tosevites from the Admiral Peary got into the bus that would take them to the shuttlecraft port. Atvar got on the bus, too; he was going to Tosev 3 as final proof that the Commodore Perry was what the wild big Uglies claimed it was. No one on Home really doubted it any more. The Tosevites on the new starship already knew about things speed-of-light transmission from Tosev 3 was just now revealing here. But the Race wanted to see for itself, and the Big Uglies had agreed.