“No,” Chris said.
“I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we all go down to Luigi’s for the early show? Kind of a wedding breakfast.”
“Chris has got to stay here until the buyer-beware clause expires,” Stewart said.
“What do you think she’s gonna do?” Charmaine said. “Jump off Sony and parachute down to earth?”
“Chris has come dangerously close to losing her apartment once today. I don’t want anything to interfere with that annulment clause. The safest thing is for her to spend the next twenty-four hours in her apartment.”
“Okay, we’ll bring the wedding breakfast here. I’ll call Luigi and have him deliver some teriyaki ham and eggs and have Omiko bring the girls over and…”
“Can I speak to you?” Charmaine’s lawyer said, taking hold of her hand and practically yanking her out of the living room.
“I’m not going to let you jeopardize your apartment a second time,” Stewart said. He went over to the couch. “I think the best thing for us to do is get married immediately. I’ve asked the lawyer to draw up the marriage contracts. Where did this Hutchins sleep? In Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh’s room?”
“No,” Chris said. “He slept in here. Mr. Okeefenokee didn’t understand the concept of ‘room.’ He thought it meant any space that happened to be available. Hutchins slept up there.”
Stewart looked up at the sleep restraint. “In that? Where did you sleep?”
“On the couch.”
“I can’t believe you let him sleep up there with you not five feet away from him.”
“Neither can I,” Chris said. She got her nightshift and robe from the end of the couch. “You can sleep in Mr. Okeefenokee’s room.”
“No!” Charmaine said from the doorway. Her lawyer was with her. They were holding hands. “I mean, ’scuse me, but gee, Mr. Okeefenokee bought all that stuff for you, and it’s a shame to let it go to waste.”
“What stuff?” Stewart said.
“If you want to be able to testify that Chris didn’t leave her apartment for the whole twenty-four hours,” Charmaine’s lawyer said, “you should be the one to sleep out here. Chris can sleep in the bedroom. That way she can’t leave without your knowing it.”
“I thought you said this plan was foolproof,” Stewart said anxiously.
“It is,” Charmaine’s lawyer said, grinning.
“Good night,” Chris said, and went into Mr. Okee-fenokee’s room, still carrying the bridal bouquet, and shut the door.
Charmaine immediately slid the shoji screen open a few inches. “ ’Scuse me,” she said. “Can I come in? I got something to show you.” She sidled through the door, shut it behind her, and flashed her hand at Chris. “It’s a diamond. We’re engaged.”
Chris laid the bouquet on the nightstand and started moving boxes off the bed. “I thought you said you weren’t going to marry him because he thought marriage was a real-estate deal.”
“That was before—” She stopped. “Well, I mean, I think it was pretty romantic the way he got you and Hutchins together.”
“We’re not exactly together,” she said. “Hutchins is in Houston and I’m locked in my room.”
“Yeah, but Mr. Fenokee’s going to…” She stopped again.
Chris looked up. “Mr. Fenokee’s going to what?”
Charmaine fiddled with her ring. “Well, gee, I mean, he’s got that space program, right? Maybe he can talk the NASA people into sending Hutchins back up here. Or maybe you could go down there.”
“I don’t think so,” Chris said sadly. “Stewart’ll see to that. Anyway, Sony’s got a thirty-day travel-permission law, and the marriage expires in”—she looked at her watch—“about twenty-three hours.”
“Gee, that’s right. I better go. I promised Omiko I’d be there for the wedding number. Gee, I almost forgot my pastie.” She picked it up, untaped it from its makeshift handle, and laid the flashlight back on the nightstand. She pointed at the boxes on the bed. “Why don’t you wear that black lace nightie instead of that shift thing?” She flounced out. Chris shut the door and locked it.
She put on her nightshift and her robe and moved the stack of boxes off the bed. “I’ve just had a great idea, Chris,” Stewart called through the door. “I was lying there looking at the hammock, and it suddenly occurred to me that Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh was right. That is available space. Since we’re going to rent this place anyway, we won’t need those high ceilings. We can turn this into two apartments. I’m going to go downstairs right now and talk to Mr. Nagisha about it.”
She could hear him slide the door to the apartment shut, lock it, and start down the stairs. I hope he trips over the old man in the baseball cap and falls the whole flight, she thought, and then remembered that the old man had gone off with Molly and Bets.
She turned off the light and got into bed. There was something hard under her pillow. It’s probably one of Omiko’s tassels, she thought, and turned the light back on. It was her subvocalizer.
“Oh,” she said, and held it to her heart.
“Mr. Nagisha thinks it’s a great idea,” Stewart said through the door. “He’s going to do it to all the apartments in the building. Good night, darling.”
She sat up against the headboard, put the subvocalizer on, and fastened the receiver in her ear. It probably doesn’t work except at short distances, she thought. She turned off the light.
It was completely-dark in the room. There was a narrow line of light under the shoji screen, but it only seemed to intensify the darkness.
(Pete,) she whispered without making any noise. (Are you there?)
(I’m here,) he said, so close he could have been sitting beside her. (Where are you?)
(In Mr. Okeefenokee’s room. My subvocalizer was under his pillow.)
(Where’s Stewart?)
(In the living room on the couch. He wants to make sure I don’t do anything to jeopardize the annulment clause.)
(Is everything okay?) Hutchins said. (You’re not going to be evicted?)
(No.)
(Well, that’s good. At least you don’t have to sleep out on the stairs with Leopold and Loeb.)
(Molly and Bets aren’t here. They got a part in Spielberg’s movie.)
He didn’t answer for a while. (There isn’t any justice, is there?) he said finally.
(No.) Chris said. (I wish you were here.)
(So do I. Chris, look, they’ve got us locked up tight here until the negotiations are over. I tried to talk Okee into telling NASA I had to come back up to Sony to get the space program, but he said, “No. Be alone on hahnahmoon.” Well, we’re sure as hell alone.)
(Is he still refusing to talk?)
(No, he’s been talking a blue streak ever since we got on the shuttle. And I have a sinking feeling I know why the Eahrohhs came. I don’t think it was to negotiate a space program or anything else. I think they just like space travel. Okee had that lump of a nose of his pressed to the port the whole way down, and he told the NASA linguistics team the exciting story of our takeoff and landing twice. He also regaled them with a description of how Omiko orbits her colonies and danced “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” for them. Spielberg blew his big chance. Okee’s a lot better than Molly and Bets. He told the linguistics team about you, too. He said you reminded him of his wife.)
(I know,) she said, and wished she had a Kleenex.
(He said I reminded him of himself. No, what he actually said was that I was like him. He then said the reason he’d wanted us to get married was because he knew we liked each other, which shoots our “one word, one meaning” theory all to hell.)
(But if that’s true, maybe he understands the word “space,” too, and there really is a space program.)
(Maybe.) There was silence for a minute. (He told the linguistics team he’d have a demonstration of the space program for them in twenty-four hours. They asked him what he needed for this demonstration, and he said a room with high ceilings. So they stuck us in an old shuttle hangar with a guard and a couple of army cots, and he went right to sleep on one of the cots.)