“Will it take long?”
“No reason why it should. The scientific colony has been established for over a year now so they might even have the information on file. No it won’t take long. I’ll call you.”
Fortune drained his coffee and stood up, buttoning his overcoat. “Sorry I can’t stay for dinner. Christine’s having one of her parties.” He laughed briefly. “I think this is Nietzche’s birthday.”
They stood for a moment at the door watching three technicians in parkas wheel a gleaming miniature rocket out of the workshop towards the gun which would blast it up into near-vacuum before its motor was ignited.
“That’s the third-cis-lunar shot this year for the University of Nicaragua,” Geissler said with satisfaction. “It’s costing them plenty too—even with off-the-shelf vehicles. I’d forgotten about Christine and Nietzche, John. It’s funny, isn’t it? You must have been a reasonable facsimile; of a superman when she married you.”
Fortune remembered, too late, that Geissler’s intuitive faculty was not merely some kind of mathematical abstraction. He slammed the smaller man’s back with a vague idea of short-circuiting the mental contact. “You don’t know what you’ve just said, Bill.”
He walked back to his staff copter, aware that more time had passed and the rendezvous with Nesster ship 1753 was closer. A sudden spasm of hunger made him grope for a chocolate bar, but his pocket was empty and the sense of disappointment was so keen that Fortune became alarmed. Let’s get this thing out into the open, he planned. My subconscious mind reasons: children eat candy, so if I eat candy I’ll be a child, and if I’m a child the Nesster problem doesn’t exist. However, my conscious mind isn’t so stupid—it knows I can’t grow down towards babyhood, so I’m going to snap out of it and be a normal adult again. That’s it settled then. I feel better already….
The only trouble was that he was still hungry and in the darkness the staff copter’s bulbous, glassy head and tapering tail suddenly resembled the shape of the primordial tadpole. Fortune accepted that he could not become a helpless, blameless baby again and yet he was strangely satisfied at the prospect of being carried upwards into the receptive convexities of the clouds.
The house was glowing like a Chinese lantern. Fortune walked up through the swarmed cars in his driveway, noticing that one of them had knocked a miniature rowan tree askew. It looked as though Christine’s party would be a success.
Using his key he got into the lobby without being noticed, went upstairs and, grunting with the effort, quickly changed out of his uniform into slacks, open-necked silk shirt and sweater. In his son’s bedroom he tiptoed around putting toys away then crouched beside the bed for a moment, looking closely into the sleeping three-year-old face with a kind of warm astonishment.
There were about twenty people having drinks in the orange-lit living room, filling the place with the aggressive yet slightly shamefaced atmosphere of a party in its early stages. His wife and Pavel Efimov were talking seriously in a corner. Christine Fortune was a tall brunette with a hard, snaky body and a knack of looking, even when fully dressed, as though she was not wearing enough clothes. She brought Fortune a drink.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, accepting the misty glass.
Christine glanced at his casuals with traces of anger—as far as she was concerned the uniform was just about all that remained of him.
“I see you’ve changed, darl. I didn’t hear you go upstairs.”
“I’ve-still got my ident disc on—if that will help.”
“Don’t try to be funny, darl,” she replied. “You haven’t got the equipment. Now come and meet our guests.” Fortune ambled softly round the room with her, being introduced. The people were much the same as always attended Christine’s little gatherings; writers who never wrote, artists who never painted, unknown celebrities. Most of them were properly impressed at meeting Captain Johnny in the flesh and he felt a responsive change in Christine. She hugged his left arm with both of hers, proudly possessive, and in spite of everything he enjoyed the contact. When they had completed the circuit he stopped by the portable bar and poured another drink.
“Tell me,” he said quietly, ‘is there anybody here, apart from ourselves, who was born on this side of the Curtain?”
Christine laughed delightedly. “Come up to date, van Winkle. The cold war has been over for years. That’s one thing we have to thank the Nessters for—people just don’t think that way any more. How passé can one be?”
Fortune frowned into his glass, feeling himself forced into heavy dourness by her amusement. “Things don’t change so easily. If the landings were to stop tomorrow most of this lot would hop the first East-bound jet.” He took a long drink, staring over the rim at Efimov who was approaching through the orange twilight of the room.
“Good evening, colonel,” Efimov said, positioning himself close to Christine. He was as tall as Fortune, but with the flat, rangy body of a tennis champion.
“Oh, there you are, Pavel,” Christine said, leaning into him slightly. “Johnny’s worried in case I’m going to get him investigated,”
Efimov put an arm round her waist and smiled easily, challengingly. “Surely not! One has only to look at the colonel to see he is not the sort of man to become involved with the cloak and dagger.”
Fortune felt his heart begin a slow, peaceful pounding which stirred the hair on his temples. Christine had had two previous boyfriends, both of whom had been almost pathetically grateful for Fortune’s disinterest, but this man was of a different type. I Perhaps Christine had deliberately chosen him for that reason.
“Quite right,” Fortune replied calmly, aware of Christine’s eyes. “I never thought much of the dagger as a weapon. If I had to choose from a medieval armoury I think I’d go for something like a mace.”
“Too crude and unwieldy,” Efimov commented predictably. “I’d prefer a …”
“… rapier,” Fortune finished for him. “Yes, I thought you would—it has such connotations of romance. What do you think, Christine? How would Air. Efimov look in a curly wig and wading boots?” He laughed unpleasantly, wondering why he was taking the trouble. Insulting humans was hardly likely to be regarded by Christine as an acceptable substitute for the heroic slaughtering of poison breathing monsters from another world.
Efimov’s face hardened and he changed the subject. “Did you I hear the news about today’s landing, colonel? The ship came down in Loch Ness in Scotland, only a few miles from the position of the original landing. We had another complete victory, of course, but it was quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Fortune nodded, suddenly realising it had been over nine hours since his last proper meal. He looked over the array of canapes and impaled savouries on the side table then went in to the comparative silence of the kitchen and made coffee and ham sandwiches. When the coffee was ready he ignored the piles of disposable tableware in the cupboard and lifted his old-fashioned delph cup from its hook, only to have it deposit a furtive little secretion of cold water in his hand. Christine refused to wash or dry the delph properly when perfectly good throw-away dishes were available. Muttering furiously, Fortune cleaned the cup, sat down to eat then decided to check his bank account to see what the Mars transmission would do to it.
He went back into the living room, worked through the throng, crossed the lobby and entered his study. Christine and Efimov looked momentarily surprised to see him, then Efimov began to smile.