“Some of them do—geese, mainly. On a clear day you can see them going over here, so far up they look like specks of dust; and your insides feel empty with watching them. I’m told the Des attract geese. In the old days they used to come around here in thousands and foul up the transit area; so, the scarecrows were put in. There’re a few machines at this end of the raft too, but we keep them immobilized most of the time; otherwise we’d get nothing in the traps.”
Stirling noted the frequent use of the personal plural. His brother’s apparently complete identification with the group on the He could mean it would be difficult to persuade him to return; but that was something to worry about later. For the moment he was content just to rest, eat, and enjoy the curiously archaic pleasures of being with and talking to his own kin. The last was a very real enjoyment in spite of the fact that it must have ‘been, in part, induced by the bizarre circumstances of the meeting. Down below, Stirling had left the fam-apt at the first opportunity and had never thought about Johnny from one year to the next. Up here on the He, drifting above cloud-mountains, the family connection was important; and it felt strong even though Johnny had changed.
And Johnny was different. Looking at him in the dim light of an almost-exhausted glow-globe strung in the roof, Stirling saw that his brother had lost the odd mixture of timidity and truculence which had made him virtually unemployable since his teens. He was relaxed, confident, exuding a kind of exultant pleasure in being alive. The only thing which appeared not to have changed was Johnny’s pride in his physique. It was neither warm nor cold in the hut, and all the others were fully clad in assorted old clothes, but Johnny was stripped to the waist. The flat swathes of muscle across his shoulders and chest had an inhuman hardness, a crispness of definition which made them look like the body plates of an armored creature.
Behind him stood Stirling’s two captors, Dix and Paddy; and crouched around the hut in postures of uneasy watchfulness were four other men, none of whom had spoken a word. Stirling was reminded that his brother was known among them as “Jaycee”—a man who, from the stray references picked up during the long walk to the village, had come among them and immediately assumed command, apparently through sheer force. This was something Stirling found difficulty in assimilating. Johnny had always been bigger and stronger than most people; but the will to rule others was something new in his character.
“My brother will sleep here,” Johnny said abruptly. ‘Tell Melissa to bring him some bedding from the store and make it up.”
“Sure thing, Jaycee,” Dix pushed himself away from the wall and headed for the door. He was a rangy, brown man with prematurely silver hair and protruding lower jaw.
“It’s very late,” Paddy said quietly. “She’ll be asleep, and old Latham won’t like anybody going into their place at this time of night.” The glow-globe and revealed him as having a flattened nose and reproachful brown eyes, the face of a man who has seen everything and failed to benefit from the experience.
Dix lifted his shoulders in exasperation. “That old goat Latham! I hope he objects. I just hope he objects.” He grinned, showing only his lower teeth. “I wouldn’t mind if Melissa tried to throw me out, too.”
Stirling felt his animosity for the man return. “This man Latham, Johnny. He’s pretty old, is he?”
“Yeah. Melissa’s father is pretty old.”
“I thought so. I could see Dix was getting ready to bump him, so I guessed he must be an old man.” This is childish, Stirling thought, but the techniques you learn for picking fights at school are always the best simply because they are childish. “Either that, or Dix is planning to sneak up and club him from the back the way he did with me tonight.”
Dix, his eyes sick with hatred, stared at Stirling, but did not speak. Stirling guessed it must have been a bitter blow to him when his new capture had turned out to be Jaycee’s brother.
Johnny looked concerned. “Did he hurt you, Vic?”
“I didn’t hurt him, Jaycee,” Dix protested. “He was able to walk in here, wasn’t he? He was only out for a few seconds.”
“That part could be true,” Stirling said. “When I woke up he was still emptying my pockets.”
Dix, his mouth working silently, took an involuntary ‘half-step towards Stirling, but checked himself as Johnny stood up.
“I’ll talk to you later, Dix.” The slight distortions produced by the voice box made Johnny’s words menacingly flat. Dix spread his knobby-fingered hands. “How was I to know…?”
“Give my brother back what you took; then fetch Melissa. And don’t make any more trouble.”
“Sure thing, Jaycee.” Dix lifted Stirling’s pack from a corner, dropped it in his lap, and went out with a venomous glance over his shoulder. Stirling lifted the pack, set it by his side, and when he looked up found Johnny’s eyes on him.
“How did you find me, Vic?”
“Mostly luck, I guess. I noticed you took Dad Considine’s boots.”
“Well, I’ll be dammed,” Johnny said in wonderment. “You mean you can remember all that stuff we talked about when we were kids?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I didn’t think you would. You seemed to grow up so fast and get out so fast. I’m surprised you can. remember it, that’s all.”
Stirling felt uncomfortable, guilty. “Listen, Johnny. I know I wasn’t much of a brother just at the time when you needed me … ”
“Who needed you?”
“I’ll put that another way… ”
“Save your breath, Victor. I’m all right, and I don’t need an amateur analyst.”
“I’m trying to get things straight between us.”
Johnny smiled. “Vic, how many people did you know down there who had single apartments like your own?” He used an old trick Stirling had almost forgotten: speaking through the voice box while his lips remained motionless in the smile. In their private convention, this meant triumph, the conversational equivalent of “checkmate.”
“What do you mean?” Stirling uneasily sifted the connotations of the question. “Let’s put it another way—how do you feel right now?”
“Pretty tired. Very tired.”
“But otherwise all right?”
“I guess so. Why?”
“Some people spend their first week up here lying on their bellies, hugging the dirt, afraid to move. Some of them die. That skull you found was probably all that’s left of somebody who got up the ladder and was too paralyzed by agoraphobia to get out of the scarecrow’s way. The sky leans heavily on some men, Vic.”
Stirling inventoried his own emotions. Johnny was wrong about him. He could feel those miles of thin, cold air underneath, and his nerves shrieked out against them. Yet he had walked twenty miles across Heaven on his first day. And there had been a skull buried in the soil only a few feet from the transit area.
There was a sound at the entrance to the hut, and a girl came in carrying an armful of lumpy pillows covered in plastic. Moving so quickly that Stirling had barely time to focus on her in the dim light, she threw the pillows onto the floor and stalked out. He got an impression of a black whiplash of a girclass="underline" lean, hard, impossibly thick hair exploding darkly away from her temples, eyes signaling anger. One of the men sitting near the door grabbed for her playfully as she went by; there was the sound of a slap; he settled back against the wall and ruefully nursed his cheek while the others laughed uproariously. Stirling Winked. He had not even seen the blow.
“That was Melissa,” Johnny spoke with a kind of proprietary pride. “What do you think of her, Vic?”
“Nice,” Stirling said cautiously.
“Nice, he says. That’s the future Mrs. Considine.”
“Does she know it yet?”