Still I frowned. “With Carrington’s backing.”
Her eyes left mine. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
“What does he charge?”
She failed to answer, for long enough to answer me. In that instant I began believing in God again, for the first time in years, just to be able to hate Him.
But I kept my mouth shut. She was old enough to manage her own finances. The price of a dream gets higher every year. Hell, I’d half expected it from the moment she’d called me.
But only half.
“Charlie, don’t just sit there with your face all knotted up. Say something. Cuss me out, call me a whore, something.”
“Nuts. You be your own conscience; I have trouble enough being my own. You want to dance, you’ve got a patron. So now you’ve got a video man.”
I hadn’t intended to say that last sentence at all.
Strangely, it almost seemed to disappoint her at first. But then she relaxed, and smiled. “Thank you, Charlie. Can you get out of whatever you’re doing right away?”
“I’m working for an educational station in Shediac. I even got to shoot some dance footage. A dancing bear from the London Zoo. The amazing thing was how well he danced.” She grinned. “I can get free.”
“I’m glad. I don’t think I could pull this off without you.”
“I’m working for you. Not for Carrington.”
“All right.”
“Where is the great man, anyway? Scuba diving in the bathtub?”
“No,” came a quiet voice from the doorway. “I’ve been sky diving in the lobby.”
His wheelchair was a mobile throne. He wore a five-hundred-dollar suit the color of strawberry ice cream, a powder-blue turtleneck and one gold earring. The shoes were genuine leather. The watch was the newfangled bandless kind that literally tells you the time. He wasn’t tall enough for her, and his shoulders were absurdly broad, although the suit tried hard to deny both. His eyes were like twin blueberries. His smile was that of a shark wondering which part will taste best. I wanted to crush his head between two boulders.
Shara was on her feet. “Bryce, this is Charles Armstead. I told you....”
“Oh yes. The video chap.” He rolled forward and extended an impeccably manicured hand. “I’m Bryce Carrington, Armstead.”
I remained in my seat, hands in my lap. “Ah yes. The rich chap.”
One eyebrow rose an urbane quarter inch. “Oh my. Another rude one. Well, if you’re as good as Shara says you are, you’re entitled.”
“I’m rotten.”
The smile faded. “Let’s stop fencing, Armstead. I don’t expect manners from creative people, but I have far more significant contempt than yours available if I need any. Now I’m tired of this damned gravity and I’ve had a rotten day testifying for a friend and it looks like they’re going to recall me tomorrow. Do you want the job or don’t you?”
He had me there. I did. “Yeah.”
“All right, then. Your room is 2772. We’ll be going up to Skyfac in two days. Be here at eight A.M.”
“I’ll want to talk with you about what you’ll be needing, Charlie,” Shara said. “Give me a call tomorrow.”
I whirled to face her, and she flinched from my eyes.
Carrington failed to notice. “Yes, make a list of your requirements by, tonight, so it can go up with us. Don’t scrimp—if you don’t fetch it, you’ll do without. Good night, Armstead.”
I faced him. “Good night, Mr. Carrington.” Suh.
He turned toward the narghile, and Shara hurried to refill the chamber and bowl. I turned away hastily and made for the door. My leg hurt so much I nearly fell on the way, but I set my jaw and made it. When I reached the door I said to myself, you will now open the door and go through it, and then I spun on my heel. “Carrington!”
He blinked, surprised to discover I still existed. “Yes?”
“Are you aware that she doesn’t love you in the slightest? Does that matter to you in any way?” My voice was high, and my fists were surely clenched.
“Oh,” he said, and then again, “Oh. So that’s what it is. I didn’t think success alone merited that much contempt.” He put down the mouthpiece and folded his fingers together. “Let me tell you something, Armstead. No one has ever loved me, to my knowledge. This suite does not love me.” His voice took on human feeling for the first time. “But it is mine. Now get out.”
I opened my mouth to tell him where to put his job, and then I saw Shara’s face, and the pain in it suddenly made me deeply ashamed. I left at once, and when the door closed behind me I vomited on a rug that was worth slightly less than a Hamilton Masterchrome board. I was sorry then that I’d worn a necktie.
The trip to Pike’s Peak Spaceport, at least, was aesthetically pleasurable. I enjoy air travel, gliding among stately clouds, watching the rolling procession of mountains and plains, vast jigsaws of farmland, and intricate mosaics of suburbia unfolding below.
But the jump to Skyfac in Carrington’s personal shuttle, That First Step, might as well have been an old Space Commando rerun. I know they can’t put portholes in space ships—but dammit, a shipboard video relay conveys no better resolution, color values, or presence than you get on your living room tube. The only differences are that the stars don’t “move” to give the illusion of travel, and there’s no director editing the POV to give you dramatically interesting shots.
Aesthetically speaking. The experiential difference is that they do not, while you are watching the Space Commando sell hemorrhoid remedies, strap you into a couch, batter you with thunders, make you weigh better than half a megagram for an unreasonably long time, and then drop you off the edge of the world into weightlessness. Body fluids began rising into my upper half: my ears sang, my nose flooded, and I “blushed” deep red. I had been prepared for nausea, but what I got was even more shocking: the sudden, unprecedented, total absence of pain in my leg. Shara got the nausea for both of us, barely managing to deploy her dropsickness bag in time. Carrington unstrapped and administered an antinausea injection with sure movements. It seemed to take forever to hit her, but when it did there was an enormous change—color and strength returned rapidly, and she was apparently fully recovered by the time the pilot announced that we were commencing docking and would everyone please strap in and shut up? I half expected Carrington to bark manners into him, but apparently the industrial magnate was not that sort of fool. He shut up and strapped himself down.
My leg didn’t hurt in the slightest. Not at all.
The Skyfac complex looked like a disorderly heap of bicycle tires and beach balls of various sizes. The one our pilot made for was more like a tractor tire. We matched course, became its axle, and matched spin, and the damned thing grew a spoke that caught us square in the airlock. The airlock was “overhead” of our couches, but we entered and left it feet first. A few yards into the spoke, the direction we traveled became “down,” and handholds became a ladder. Weight increased with every step, but even when we had emerged into a rather large cubical compartment it was far less than Earth normal. Nonetheless my leg resumed nibbling at me.
The room tried to be a classic reception room, high-level (“Please be seated. His Majesty will see you shortly”), but the low gee and the p-suits racked along two walls spoiled the effect. Unlike the Space Commando’s armor, a real pressure suit looks like nothing so much as a people-shaped baggie, and they look particularly silly in repose. A young dark-haired man in tweed rose from behind a splendidly gadgeted desk and smiled. “Good to see you, Mr. Carrington. I hope you had a pleasant jump.”