Tales of the Flying Mountains (14 page)

“I see you changed tattoos,” Ulstad remarked.

Flowers glanced at his left forearm, bare in an incandescent sports shirt, and grunted. “Yeah. That one. Very soon after I escaped from you, in fact. A dame I was going with for a while said she didn't like the design. I didn't either, so I had it removed. I, uh, this is a kind of sentimental thing to say, but I had reasons for substituting this eagle. Symbol of friendship with the mother country and all that sort of engine spew, huh?”

“Yes. I'm glad you feel that way.” Ulstad took a swallow of Tuborg. “Glad I could finally get hold of you, too, and learn how you did get away from us. What a yarn!”

Flowers grinned. “I didn't know the whole story till after the war.”

Ulstad pricked up his ears. “Go on.”

“This is no secret any longer, or I wouldn't've been told yet. But the message I was carrying—you never did decipher it, did you?”

“No. We finally decided it was a blind, wasting much too much valuable computer time.”

“Kee-rect. A pure random pattern. Quite a few of our couriers carried similar ones for a while. It was a safe bet that at least one man would get captured and so confuse you. I happened to be the man.”

Ulstad frowned. “Seems like poor strategy. You couldn't spare that many ships for a single trick.”

“Oh, no. 'Course not. But you see, messages were being sent anyway.”

“What? How in the name of——”

Flowers drained his beer and bellowed for another. While he waited, he produced a cigar. “That tattoo on my arm,” he said. “I only knew I'd gotten blind drunk. Figured I must've ordered the damn thing put on and never remembered afterward. Actually, my booze had been mickeyed.

“The message was important. They did capture the
Vega
in the battle off Sam's, you know. And maybe by now you also know they locked onto her code books. Pallas had to be told what your ciphers were, but we couldn't risk a maser beam being intercepted.”

“Certainly not.” Ulstad grimaced. “It took several disasters before we realized what must have happened.”

“That code was in my tattoo,” Flowers said. “There're thousands of punctures in any such picture. For some of 'em you can use a needle with a special dye—standard color, nothing different except for a few iron atoms—to write anything you please. Put the arm under a scanner while I'm anesthetized and can't blab, and there you are.”

The beer arrived and he drained half the tankard. “I really needn't have bothered escaping, I suppose,” he mused. “Our high command would've gotten me included in the next prisoner exchange. Still, I did get the information to HQ faster, and saved myself a bad time.”

Ulstad whistled. After a while, with a touch of malice, he said: “Remember I told you I had a nephew on the
Vega?
Not true. I was only trying to soften you up a bit.”

Flowers started. Then he guffawed and raising his draught, he said, “You know, I could use a man like you in my business.”

“Might be fun at that,” said Ulstad. The tankards touched.

Interlude
3

“Ahem.” Amspaugh clears his throat. “I suppose we should resume our business meeting. The majority opinion seems to be that it's both harmless and desirable for our schools to represent our ancestors as—ah—ordinary fallible human beings.”

“Including a hefty share of crooks, toughs, and bums,” McVeagh nods.

“No,” Amspaugh says, “I do believe you lean too far backward, Colin. We can admit history has a seamy side without claiming it's the only side, or that the good part doesn't matter most. The Founding Fathers were honorable men, and statesmen; the Constitution of the Asteroid Republic is one of the noblest documents ever written.”

“Why not?” McVeagh drawls. “It's mainly plagiarized from the original United States Constitution.”

“And what's wrong with using the best model around?” Lindgren responds. “Besides, they adapted creatively. And the adaptation was to more than the physical, social, technological, or economic differences between Earth and the Belt. They drew lessons from history, and made sure the daughter Republic won't get crusted over with the kind of unfreedom that the mother country did.”

“Don't worry,” McVeagh says, “future generations will find new ways to bollix things up.”

“I would not claim, nor wish to teach, that the Constitution is perfect.” Orloff lifts a thin hand. “Please! Let me finish. Don't forget, I was not born in the American asteroids, I was not caught up in their revolution, I came afterward, from the Soviet colonies. I chose my nationality. But that does not mean I cannot offer loving criticism. No work of man is flawless. It seems to me, the extreme libertarianism of the Republic has tended to produce individuals who are too selfish, too materialistic, too little concerned for their society as a whole. Can we not do better here on
Astra?
”

“I don't imagine we have room aboard for unregulated capitalism,” Lindgren says. “But I'd hate to see an outright socialism evolve. Not simply because it's stifling. I think it'd discourage the creativity this ship will need for long-range survival. Only consider what advances, how fast and dazzling, the asterites made once they were free. Invention, exploration, construction.… And it's got to be because they'd been liberated as individuals. The members of the Belt that remained under Earth governments didn't do nearly as well.”

“In part,” Missy answers dryly, “that was because we, the ungrateful and rebellious children, stopped sending very much of our wealth back to America. This in turn lured the ablest—and greediest—colonials elsewhere into joining us.”

Conchita sounds impatient: “However that may be, you can't deny that our forefathers
were
able, and had won ample scope for their abilities. Those that became wealthy deserved to, because they'd produced that wealth by their personal efforts.”

“We-e-e-ell,” Missy murmurs, “I remember various real estate speculators, loan sharks, bucket shop operators, vice barons, and assorted con men who ended rich.” Soberly: “I also remember damn good men who died broke, or who never got the chance to get rich because they died young.”

“I spoke statistically, of course.”

“Yes, I realize that. But a statistic can mislead you pretty badly if you don't know everything that's behind it. On the whole, true, the Republic saw a brilliant era. Nevertheless, I doubt if everything—I wonder exactly how much of anything—was due to cool economic calculation, any more than it was due to the altruism we agree was in short supply. I've seen, myself, how many things just happened, as a result of blind stumbling. Nobody was more astounded at the outcomes than the people who'd been most directly concerned.”

“Like the development of the geegee?” asks hitherto silent Echevaray.

“I wanted more to emphasize that being a free entrepreneur does not automatically make you a prophetic genius or put you in control of events,” Missy says. “For instance, do you know about the Odysseus affair? I chanced to get a first-hand account not long after. Can you stand to have me tell another story? In a way, this was the cause of our being starbound today. And yet at the same time …” In her extreme age, she keeps the sweet laughter of a young woman.

Ramble with a Gamblin' Man

Avis' youngest boy, Tommy, came headlong down the garden. Its paths wound between blossoming hedges. In his haste he sprang over them, aiming himself straight at Lake Circe. Those were substantial jumps, even though the geegee field made weight on the Odyssean surface equal to the mere three-quarter terrestrial that Earthside tourists enjoyed. But he was active at his age, which was less than one year. (That was a local year, of course. With orbital periods as variable as they were among the asteroids, colonists had no choice but to keep the old calendar. Not that Tommy's parents would have denied him in any case the ten birthdays and Christmases he had known.) “Mom!” he shouted. “The ship's coming!”

She was about to remind him that she detested any such corruption of the good old word “Mother.” But he came so fast and happily among the flowers; his hair was flying in a light breeze; every day he looked more like his father. “What ship?” she asked when he panted to a halt before her. “We're beginning to get quite a few, after all, now the war's over.”

“The, the, the Northa Merican ship. Gover'ment people. They jus' masered in. Dad told me to go find you. He wants you to help meet them. I figured you'd be here.” Tommy straightened himself with such an air of masculine responsibility that she wanted to kneel and hug him.

But he'd never forgive her that—when Jack Herbert, superintendent of the construction gang and its great machines, stood burly in his coveralls and watched. Therefore Avis said gravely, “Thank you. I'll come right away.”

“What's this about, Mrs. Bell?” Herbert asked, with a bare touch of truculence. Like most of his men, he was a resident of the local group and thus still a North American national. But such folk were not unanimously pleased with a peace treaty that had left the mother country in possession of the leading Trojan asteroids.

“A commission,” Avis explained. “That is, not just another set of inspectors from the vice governor's office——”

“Hector inspectors,” Tommy chortled.

Avis shook her head at him. Hector was in fact the seat of regional colonial government, but she wished her son had not overheard the scurrilous limerick her husband had composed on that basis. “Not even from Vesta,” she went on, referring to the worldlet which was the capital of all remaining North American territories in the Belt. “Washington. A special mission, I understand.”

Herbert scowled and tugged his blond beard. “What for?”

Avis let her glance stray from his. The weather felt suddenly less warm and she noticed too clearly how dark the sky was.

That duskiness always prevailed. Trapped by geegee fields, the artificial atmosphere of a terraformed asteroid could be as dense at the bottom as Earth's; but it could not extend nearly as high, nor scatter light nearly as much. And then the sun was remote: in the case of a Trojan body, more than five times as distant, shrunken to a spark of brilliance which gave less than 4 percent the illumination Earth receives. The human eye is sufficiently adaptable that this did not seem murky. But heaven on Odysseus was a deep blue-black wherein the brighter stars were visible by day.

The scene about her felt as if that endless surrounding night had touched it.
I've been a coward
, she reproached herself.
I knew Don was worried, but he never lets on, so I told myself this will only be a standard official visit, and hid in the pleasure of landscaping
.

That joy was a high one, after the despair of the war years. Isolated, at their immense distance, from any but the rarest callers, the Trojan settlers had been concerned with little except survival. Donald Bell's sympathies inclined toward the Republic, though basically he was apolitical. He might have tried to run supplies, if not actually to fight. But there were no spaceships to bring him to the scene: only a few patched-together scooters and flitboats, in which a few reckless men hauled essentials from one to another of the half-dozen leading asteroids. Bell turned his parks and gardens into miniature farms, let his shops, theaters, restaurants, and half-built new facilities molder, and settled down to help keep as many folk fed as possible. (Well, he did maintain a distillery, which gave him brandy as a byproduct of his vineyards; but confound it, that had rescued the local sanity!)

Now that traffic was resuming, the waterworks again in business and expanding fast, fresh immigration as well as returned veterans coming in to ransack the natural wealth of the group, Dingdong Enterprises had gone back to its original undertakings. Reconstruction and new growth went apace. Around Avis leaves rustled, flowerbeds stood bright against the green of lawns, fountains splashed, fragrance filled the air. Above a weeping willow she could see the hotel, a literal skyscraper, its rooftop dome high enough in this shallow atmosphere to provide a fantastic view for dancers. Across the small, glittering lake, where several canoes floated lazily past the zoo island Aeaea, sounded noises of building; the casino was nearing completion.

We worked so hard for this
, Avis thought.
Now we could lose it
.

Realizing with a start that Herbert was waiting for an answer, she said, “Oh. Why should a special delegation come here? Well, we're making a good profit once again. Tax assessment or something——”

“Might be more than that, ma'm,” the superintendent said. “If your husband keeps on buying into the water-works at the rate I hear he is, he could end up owning this whole planetoid, pretty near. The government mightn't like that. You know, Earthside they don't think any man ought to become a lot bigger than any other.”

“Maybe,” Avis said.
If only it's no worse! We don't need more money than we're earning. It'd be nice, certainly
—
and not just for Don and the kids and me; we could do so much, out here where so much needs doing. But that isn't vital to us, I suppose. Let them forbid us to make further investments in industry. We can stand that. If, though, they take away this thing we built together
—

“I'd better go,” she went on with forced brightness. “We'll talk further about the Hall of Alkinous idea when I can get free, Jack. Meanwhile——”

“Sure, I'll find plenty of jobs for the boys.” Herbert watched her stride off. She must be pushing fifty standard years, he thought, but antisenescence treatment had taken well on her; she remained petite, bounciness in her gait, hair flowing dark to her shoulders, maybe no stun-blast beauty in the face but sure okay to look at, especially when one of her frequent enthusiasms lit her up from within.…