“Settle yourself down here, Gussie. Of course it’s the war that’s to blame. I don’t know what’s to become of us all. The news from Sector 160 is so depressing, isn’t it?”
Phipps said, “Out in the galaxy, nobody takes any interest in the war. I must say it all sounds a bit of a shower to me.”
“Haven’t lost your patriotism, have you, Gussie?” his father asked.
“What’s patriotism but an extension of egotism?” Phipps asked, and was glad to see his father’s chest, momentarily puffed, shrink again.
His mother broke a tense silence by saying, “Anyhow, dear, you’ll see a difference in England while you’re on leave. How long have you got, by the way?”
Little as the parental chatter enthralled Phipps, this sudden question discomforted him, as mother and father waited eagerly for his answer. He knew that stifling feeling of old. They wanted nothing of him, only that he was there to be spoken to. They wanted nothing from him but his life.
“I shall only be staying here for a week. That charming part-Chinese girl that I met last leave, Ah Chi, is in the Far East on a painting holiday. Next Thursday I fly to Macao to stay with her.”
Familiarity again. He knew his father’s would-be piteous shake of the head, that particular pursing of his mother’s lips as if she nursed a lemon pip there. Before they could speak, he rose to his feet.
“I’ll just go upstairs and unpack my grip, if you’ll both excuse me.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Pasztor, Director of the London Exozoo, was a fine willowy man without a grey hair on his head despite his fifty-two years. A Hungarian by birth, he had led an expedition into the submarine Antarctic by the time he was twenty-five, had gone on to set up the Tellus Zoological Dome on the asteroid Apollo in 2005. and had written the most viewed technidrama of 2014, An Iceberg for Icarus. Several years later he went on the First Charon Expedition, which charted and landed upon that then newly-discovered planet of the solar system; Charon refrigerates so unloveably some three thousand million miles beyond the orbit of Pluto that it earned itself the name of Deep Freeze Planet, Pasztor had given it that nickname.
After which triumph, Sir Mihaly Pasztor was appointed Director of the London Exozoo and was at present employed in offering Bruce Ainson a drink.
“You know I don’t, Mihaly,” Bruce said, shaking his long head in reproof.
“From now on you are a famous man; you should toast your own success, as we toast it. The drinks are all pure synthetics, you know — a de-alcoholized sinker will surely never hurt you.”
“You know me of old, Mihaly. I wish only to do my duty.”
“I know you of old, Bruce. I know that you care very little for the opinions or the applause of anyone else, so thirstily do you crave for the nod of approval from your own superego,” the Director said in a mild voice, while the bartender mixed him the cocktail known as a Transponential. They were at the reception being held in the hotel belonging to the Exozoo, where murals of exotic beasts stared down on a bracing mixture of bright uniforms and flowery dresses.
“I do not stand in need of tidbits from your well of wisdom,” Ainson said.
“You will not allow that you have need of anything from anybody,” said the Director. “I have meant to say this to you for a long while, Bruce — though this is neither the time nor the place, let me continue now I have begun.
You are a brave, learned, and formidable man. That you have proved not only to the world but to yourself. You can now afford to relax, to let down your guard. Not only can you now afford to do so; you ought to do so before it is too late. A man has to have an interior, Bruce, and yours is dying of suffocation—”
“For heavens’ sake, man!” Ainson exclaimed, breaking away half laughing, half angry. “You are talking like an impossibly romantic character in one of the plays of your nonage! I am what I am, and I am no different from what I have always been. Now here comes Enid, and it is high tune we changed the subject.”
Among the bright dresses, Enid Ainson’s hooded cobra costume looked as sunny as an eclipse. She smiled, how-ever, as she came up to her husband and Pasztor.
“This is a lovely party, Mihaly. How foolish I was not to have come to the last one, the last time Bruce came home. You have such a pretty room here to hold it in, too.”
“For wartime, Enid, we try to squeeze a little extra gaiety, and your appearance has done the trick.”
She laughed, obviously pleased, but compelled to protest.
“You’re flattering me, Mihaly, just as you always do.”
“Does your husband never flatter you?”
“Well, I don’t know…. I don’t know if Bruce — I mean—”
“You’re being silly, the pair of you,” Ainson said. “The noise in here is enough to make anyone senseless. Mihaly, I’ve had enough of all this frippery, and I’m surprised that you haven’t too, Enid. Let’s get down to business; I came here to hand the ETA’s over to you officially, and that’s what I want to do.
Can we discuss that in peace and quiet somewhere?”
Pasztor had trim eyebrows which rose towards his hair-line, descended, and then moved together in a frown.
“Are you trying to distract me from my duty to the bar-tender? Well, I suppose we can slip down to the new ETA enclosure, if you must. Your specimens should be installed by now, and the spaceport officials out of the way.”
Ainson turned to his wife, laying a hand on her arm.
“You come along too, Enid; the excitement up here isn’t good for you.”
“Nonsense, my dear, I’m enjoying myself.” She removed her arm from his grasp.
“Well really, you might show a little interest in the creatures we have brought back.”
“I’ve no doubt I shall hear about them for weeks!” She looked at the canyons of his face and said, in the same humorously resigned tone, “Very well, I’ll come along if you can’t bear to have me out of your sight. But you’ll have to go and get my wrap, because it is too cool to go outside without it.”
Not making a graceful thing of it, Ainson left them. Pasztor cocked an eyebrow at Enid, and secured them a drink apiece.
“I don’t know really whether I ought to have another, Mihaly. Wouldn’t it be terrible if I got tipsy!”
“People do, you know. Look at Mrs. Friar over there. Now I’ve got you alone, Enid, instead of flirting with you as I have a mind to do, I have to ask you about your son, Aylmer. What is he doing now?
Where is he?”
He detected her brief flush. She looked away from him as she spoke.
“Don’t please, don’t spoil the evening, Mihaly. It’s so nice to have Bruce back. I know you think he’s a terrible old monster, but he isn’t really, not underneath.”
“How is Aylmer?”
“He’s in London. Apart from that, I don’t know.”
“You are too harsh with him.”
“Please, Mihaly!”
“Bruce is too harsh with him. You know I say that as an old friend, as well as Aylmer’s godfather.”
“He did something disgraceful, and his father turned “him out of the house. They have never got on well together, as you know, and although I am terribly sorry about the boy, it is much more peaceful without having both of them to cope with.” She looked up at him to add. “And don’t go thinking I always take the line of least resistance, because I don’t. For years I had a real battle with them.”
“I never saw a face look less embattled. What did Aylmer do to bring this terrible edict down upon his head?”
“You must ask Bruce, if you’re so keen to know.”
“There was a girl involved?”