Fats Jordan paused with his hand above the strings. “How do you mean, Mr. Proctor?” he asked.
“I mean getting your first fifty ready for the down jump!”
“Oh, that,” Fats said and paused reflectively. “Well, now, Mr. Proctor, that’s going to take a little time.”
The proctor snorted. ‘Two hours!” he said sharply and, grabbing at the nylon line he’d had the foresight to trail into the Beat Cluster behind him (rather like Theseus venturing into the Minotaur’s probably equally smelly labyrinth), he swiftly made his way out of the Big Igloo, hand over hand, by way of the green tunnel.
The Brainess giggled. Fats frowned at her solemnly. The giggling was cut off. To cover her embarrassment the Brainess began to hum one of her semi-private songs:
“Eskimos of space are we
In our igloos falling free.
We are space’s Esquimaux,
Fearless vacuum-chewing hawks.”
Fats tossed Gussy his guitar, which set him spinning very slowly. As he rotated, precessing a little, he ticked off points to his comrades on his stubby, ripe-banana-clustered fingers.
“Somebody gonna have to tell the research boys we’re callin’ off the art show an’ the ballet an’ terminatin’ jazz Fridays. Likewise the Great Books course an’ Saturday poker. Might as well inform our friends of Edison and Convair at the same time that they’re gonna have to hold the 3D chess and 3D go tournaments at their place, unless they can get the new Administrator to donate them our quarters when we leave — which I doubt. I imagine he’ll tote the Cluster off a ways and use the igloos for target practice. With the self-sealin’ they should hold shape a long time.
“But don’t exactly tell the research boys when we’re goin’ or why. Play it mysterioso.
“Meanwhile the gals gotta start sewin’ us some ground clothes. Warm and decent. And we all gotta get our papers ready for the customs men, though I’m afraid most of us ain’t kept nothin’ but Davis passports. Heck, some of you are probably here on Nansen passports.
“An’ we better pool our credits to buy wheelchairs and dollies groundside for such of us as are gonna ‘need ‘em.” Fats looked back and forth dolefully from Guru Ishpingham’s interwoven emaciation to his own hyper-portliness.
Meanwhile a space-diver had approached the Big Igloo from the direction of the satellite, entered the folds of a limp blister, zipped it shut behind him and unzipped the slit leading inside. The blister filled with a dull pop and the diver pushed inside through the lips. With a sharp effort he zipped them shut, then threw back his helmet.
“Condition Red!” he cried. “The new Administrator’s planning to ship us all groundside! I got it straight from the Police Chief. The new A’s taking those old deportation orders seriously and he’s holding the—”
“We know all about that, Trace Davis,” Fats interrupted him. “The new A’s proctor’s been here.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” the other demanded.
“Nothin’,” Fats serenely informed the flushed and shock-headed diver. “We’re complyin’. You, Trace”—he pointed a finger—”get out of that suit. We’re auctionin’ it off ‘long with all the rest of our unworldly goods. The research boys’ll be eager to bid on it. For fun-diving our space-suits are the pinnacle.”
A carrot-topped head thrust out of the blue tunnel. “Hey, Fats, we’re broadcasting,” its freckled owner called accusingly. “You’re on in thirty seconds!”
“Baby, I clean forgot,” Fats said. He sighed and shrugged. “Guess I gotta tell our downside fans the inglorious news. Remember all my special instructions, chillun. Share ‘em out among you.” He grabbed Gussy Friml’s black ankle as it swung past him and shoved off on it, coasting toward the blue tunnel at about one fifth the velocity with which Gussy receded from him in the opposite direction.
“Hey, Fats,” Gussy called to him as she bounced gently off the sun-quilt, “you got any general message for us?”
“Yeah,” Fats replied, still rotating as he coasted and smiling as he rotated. “Make more guk, chillun. Yeah,” he repeated as he disappeared into the blue tunnel, “take off the growth checks an’ make mo’ guk.”
Seven seconds later he was floating beside the spherical mike of the Beat Cluster’s shortwave station. The bright instruments and heads of the Small Jazz Ensemble were all clustered in, sounding a last chord, while their foreshortened feet waved around the periphery. The half dozen of them, counting Fats, were like friendly fish nosing up to the single black olive of the mike. Fats had his eyes on the Earth, a little more than half night now and about as big as the snare drum standing out from the percussion rack Jordy had his legs scissored around. It was good, Fats thought, to see who you were talking to.
“Greetings, groundsiders,” he said softly when the last echo had come back from the sealingsilk and died in the sun-quilt. “This is that ever-hateful voice from outer space, the voice of your old tormentor Fats Jordan, advertising no pickle juice.” Fats actually said “advertising,” not “advertisin’”—his diction always improved when he was on vacuum.
“And for a change, folks, I’m going to take this space to tell you something about us. No jokes this time, just tedious talk. I got a reason, a real serious reason, but I ain’t saying what it is for a minute.”
He continued, “You look mighty cozy down there, mighty cozy from where we’re floating. Because we’re way out here, you know. Out of this world, to quote the man. A good twenty thousand miles out, Captain Nemo.
“Or we’re up here, if it sounds better to you that way. Way over your head. Up here with the stars and the flaming sun and the hot-cold vacuum, orbiting around Earth in our crazy balloons that look like a cluster of dingy glass grapes.”
The band had begun to blow softly again, weaving a cool background to Fats’ lazy phrases.
“Yes, the boys and girls are in space now, groundsiders. We’ve found the cheap way here, the back door. The wild ones who yesterday would have headed for the Village or the Quarter or Big Sur, the Left Bank or North Beach, or just packed up their Zen Buddhism and hit the road, are out here now, digging cool sounds as they fall round and round Dear Old Dirty. And, folks, ain’t you just a little glad we’re gone?”
The band coasted into a phrase that was like the lazy swing of a hammock.
“Our cold-water flats have climbed. Our lofts have gone aloft. We’ve cut our pads loose from the cities and floated them above the stratosphere. It was a stiff drag for our motorcycles, Dad, but we made it. And ain’t you a mite delighted to be rid of us? I know we’re not all up here. But the worst of us are.
“You know, people once pictured the conquest of space entirely in terms of military outposts and machine precision.” Here Burr’s trumpet blew a crooked little battle cry. “They didn’t leave any room in their pictures for the drifters and dreamers, the rebels and no-goods (like me, folks!) who are up here right now, orbiting with a few pounds of oxygen and a couple of gobs of guk (and a few cockroaches, sure, and maybe even a few mice, though we keep a cat) inside a cluster of smelly old balloons.
“That’s a laugh in itself: the antique vehicle that first took man off the ground also being the first to give him cheap living quarters outside the atmosphere. Primitive balloons floated free in the grip of the wind; we fall free in the clutch of gravity. A balloon’s a symbol, you know, folks. A symbol of dreams and hopes and easily punctured illusions. Because a balloon’s a kind of bubble. But bubbles can be tough.”