She was very close to him, and suddenly the fact that she was sixty centimeters taller than he didn't seem to matter. How long had he been at Cuckoo? He had lost count, but long enough—certainly long enough for him to be uncomfortably aware that she was a very attractive woman, and Sheryl was very distant and very far in the past.
There was, of course, always the question of Org Rider.
On the other hand, who was Org Rider that he should worry about him? Somebody who'd cooked him a dinner, period. Jen put his arm around her shoulder. Ambivalently. Because she was feeling emotional, and needed a fatherly, brotherly, soothing touch; or because, in quite a different way, the emotional feelings were his own. It was an all- purpose arm, to be defined by the way she reacted to it; but the reaction was never given a chance to develop. "Gentlefolks?" called Doc Chimp's high, giggling voice from the door. "Am I welcome? Do I smell more bananas?"
Zara rose easily and let him in. "Of course you're welcome, Doc," she said. "No bananas, I'm afraid. But there's other fruit, and Jen and I were just having coffee—you're certainly welcome to join us!"
"Coffee, oh, my, yes!" Doc cried, his eyes glittering at the net bag of fruit. "And aren't those pinkish things the ones that taste like plums? Yes, please! But just a few, and then we've got to go, because Org Rider wants us all down in the lander sector in half an hour."
Babylon cleared his throat, not yet quite adjusted to the sudden interruption of the tete-a-tete. "What for, Doc?" he demanded.
"Oh, some nonsense of Ben's, I believe," the chimp said airily, managing to squirt a swallow of coffee through one corner of his hps while cramming the soft-skinned pink fruit into the other—and to speak at the same time. "Did I interrupt something? What were you talking about?"
"Certainly notl" Babylon said virtuously. "I mean— nothing private, of course. We were discussing Zara's son, uh, the other Zara's son. Back on Earth. And I was just going to ask you something, Zara."
"Please do!"
"Well—I mean obviously you love children. Why don't you just go ahead and have some?"
Doc Chimp choked on his coffee and squirted a stream of brownish fluid into the wall. Zara stood as if frozen. Her face had absolutely no expression at all.
Obviously he had said something wrong! But what? Babylon had no clue. It seemed clear that he owed some sort of apology, but he didn't know where to begin. And then Zara spoke, her voice as neutral as her face.
"You did say half an hour, didn't you, Doc? Good heavens, what am I thinking of? It's a long trip to the lander area, and we mustn't be late. Please. Take your time. Finish your coffee. I'll go on ahead—you bring Dr. Babylon with you." And without even looking at him, she was out of the door.
It was only a minute before Doc gulped the rest of his coffee, tucked a couple of fruits in his pouch, and led the way out, but Zara was already out of sight. "Oh, Dr. Babylon," the chimpanzee scolded as he dragged him through the corridors. "Whatever possessed you to say that?"
He caught an endless cable going toward the lander area with one long, skinny arm, the other flashing out to grasp Babylon's wrist. Babylon grunted with the sudden strain, then twisted to peer at the chimp. "What did I say, for heaven's sake?" he demanded.
"Telling her to have a child!"
"Oh, I see," Babylon said, nodding. "She and Org Rider— after thirteen thousand years of genetic separation—not cross-fertile anymore? I should have been more thoughtful!"
"You don't see! You don't see anything! Don't you remember where you are? Cuckoo! The end of the Universe! The place where forgotten beings rot and decay! There's not a chance that any one of us can lead a normal life here."
"Oh," Babylon said remorsefully, "I didn't think."
"No, you didn't! 'Ooh, obviously, Zara, you love children,' " he mimicked savagely, his voice rising into a squeaky falsetto. "Obviously she does! That's why she can't have any! To have a child here you'd have to hate it!"
"I said I was sorry," Babylon snarled, and the chimp shook his head and was grimly silent, until they flashed to the end of the radial passage and emerged into one of the great lander chambers. Then Doc Chimp said forgivingly:
"I guess you just haven't been here long enough, Dr. Baby- Ion. There they are—just don't do it again, please?" And he sailed ahead to join the little group at the far end of the empty, echoing chamber.
There were at least a dozen of the chambers, each big enough to hold an entire shuttlecraft. Although this one was without an occupant at the moment, it was filled with the gear of shuttle maintenance—great flexible peristaltic tubes, to suck from the lander whatever odds and ends of matter it brought up to replenish the plasma chambers; repair units, now slung silent against the glassy walls of the room; the complex locking gear that could open a whole wall of the hangar to space so the lander could exit; fuel pumps; miscellaneous oddments that, to Babylon's eyes, had no recognizable purpose. To launch himself across that littered space took an act of courage—added to the fact that he was feeling somewhat disgruntled at himself, at Zara, and at the chimp for reproving him. So he took his time, handing himself along the walls instead of leaping straight across the space, and by the time he was nearly there he heard angry voices. No; one voice, and it was Ben Pertin's, shrill with vexation. He raised it to include BabyIon as he approached. "Take your time!" he sneered. "No hurry! The most important event in the last year—maybe ever—but there's no reason for you to give up dawdling over your dinner just because the war's started!"
The strange thing, Babylon thought, was that Pertin was really enjoying himself. Although he was talking to Babylon, his real target was obviously Zara, who said, with more patience than Babylon would have expected, "I already told you we didn't know there was any hurry, Ben." She gave her husband a cautionary glance. "And we mustn't argue among ourselves now! Come and see, Jen. It's true, I'm afraid!"
They were all clustered around a transparent port that showed the next lander chamber—but how different from the one they were in! The lander itself was there, a squat, mean-looking rocket vessel with the hatches open. Around it a zoo parade of aliens were readying it for takeoff. The lander itself took up so much of the space that most of what was going on was out of sight, but Babylon could see great chunks of equipment sliding in for stowage. He had a sudden shock of recognition. "Those machines that just went in! I know what they are! They're from the wrecked ship—"
"So you're waking up at last," Pertin crowed scornfully. "That's right—weapons!" And Doc Chimp added sorrowfully:
"It's the Scorpians again, of course. See, there's one of them sealing the hatch—and another, with those Purchased People." He tugged at his long lower lip, his shoe-button eyes troubled. "Oh, what a terrible thing it is to see such treachery and wickedness!"
Zara reached out and patted his narrow shoulder. "I know how you feel, Doc, but the question is, what can we do?"
Ben Pertin laughed sharply. "I thought you'd get around to asking that question—now that it's too late! Pity you didn't think of it when you were playing cozy-up with Babylon!"
Babylon felt his anger flare, but managed to hold it back. There was something calculated and deliberate about Pertin's insulting manner, not explained by the whiskey on his breath or his unshaven, uncared-for appearance. This was personal for him, and the one he was aiming the fury at was Zara. Could he still be jealous? Under the circumstances, preposterous! But something inside Babylon said, True all the same. "There!" Pertin called in sudden excitement. "That big hulking Purchased Person there—I could swear he was the same one whose body I saw going into the plasma converter!"