Part 4 (2/2)
”If that's Mother, oh my. Here's your pasta.”
They landed a week later, after considerable international wrangling. At Mexico City, as everyone knows. In a small VTO affair. Thanks to George's connections-in the literal sense-we had it on closed circuit right over the crowd of world dignitaries and four million real people.
The airlock opened on a worldwide hush, and Mother came out. One-and then another-and a third. Last one out fiddled with something on her wrist, and the lock closed. We found out later she was the navigator.
There they stood on their ramp, three magnificent earth-type young females in s.p.a.ce-opera uniforms. Helmets on the backs of their heads and double-curve grins on their long mouths. The leader was older and had more glitter on her crest. She swung back her droopy wing of hair, breathed twice, wrinkled her nose and paced down the ramp to meet the U.N. President.
Then we got it. The U.N. President that year was an Ethiopian about six feet five. The top of his head came just to the buckle on her crossbelt.
I guess the world wide hush quivered-it certainly did in George's projection room.
”About eight-foot-three for the captain,” I said.
”a.s.suming the top of the head is normal,” George chirped. That's what we love him for.
In the dimness I saw a funny look on Tillie's face. Several girls were suppressing themselves, and Mrs. Peabody seemed to feel an egg hatching in her uplift. The men looked like me-tense. Right then I would have settled for green octop.u.s.s.es instead of those three good-looking girls.
The captain stepped back from President Enkaladugunu and said something in a warm contralto, and somehow we all relaxed. She seemed wholesome, if you can imagine a mix of Garbo and Moshe Dayan. The other two officers were clearly very young, and-well, I told you, they could have been Tillie's sisters except for size.
George got that; I saw his eyes going between Tillie and the screen.
To his disgust, all the talking was being done by our people. The three visitors stood it well, occasionally giving brief, melodious responses. They looked mightily relaxed, and also somewhat puzzled. The two young J.O.'s were scanning hard at the crowd and twice I saw one nudge the other.
Mercifully a Soviet-U.S.-Indian power play choked off the oratory and got the party adjourned to Mexico's Guest Palace-or rather, to an unscheduled pause around the pool while beds were being lashed together and sofas subst.i.tuted for chairs. Our circuit went soft. George shut himself up with his tapes of the aliens' few remarks, and I coped with a flock of calls about our observing devices, which gotb.u.g.g.e.red up in the furniture-moving orgy.
Two days later the party was moved to the Popo-Hilton with the swimming pool as their private bath. Every country on earth-even the Vatican-sent visiting delegations. George was going through fits. He was bound and determined to be the expert on Mother's language by remote control. I had an in with the Mexicali bureau and we did pretty well until about twenty other outfits got into the act and the electronic feedback put us all in the hash.
”Funny thing, Max,” said George at morning staff. ”They keep asking-I can only interpret as, 'Where are the women?' ”
”You mean, like women officials? Women in power jobs?”
”Simpler, I think. Perhaps big women, like themselves. But I get a connotation of grown-up, women, adults. I need more of their talk among themselves, Max.”
”We're trying, believe it. They keep flus.h.i.+ng all the cans and laughing like maniacs. I don't know if it's our plumbing or our snoops that amuse them. Did you hear about Tuesday?”
Tuesday my s.h.i.+vers had come back. For half an hour every recording device out to a half-mile perimeter went dead for forty minutes, and nothing else was affected.
Another department was getting s.h.i.+very too. Harry from R&D called me to see if we could get a better look at that charm bracelet the navigator had closed the s.h.i.+p with.
”We can't get so much as a gamma particle into that d.a.m.n boat,” he told me. ”Touch it-smooth as gla.s.s. Try to move it, blowtorch it-nothing. It just sits there. We need that control, Max.”
”She wears it taking a bath, Harry. No emissions we can read.”
”I know what I'd do,” he grunted. ”Those cream-heads up there are in a daze.”
A daze it was. The world at large loved them. They were now on grand tour, being plied with entertainment, scenic wonders and technology. The big girls ate it up-figuratively and literally. Balloon gla.s.ses of aquavit went down especially well from breakfast on, and they were glowingly complimentary about everything from Sun Valley to the Great Barrier Reef with stopovers at every atomic and s.p.a.ce installation. Captain Garbo-Dayan really unbent on the Cote d'Azur, and the two J.O.'s had lost their puzzled looks. In fact, they were doing a good deal of what would have looked like leering if they didn't have such wholesome smiles.
”What the h.e.l.l?” I asked George.
”They think we're cute,” he said, enjoying himself. Did I tell you George was a tiny little man? That figures, with Tillie working for him. He loved to see us big men squinting up at the Girls from Capella, as the world now called them.
They were from a system near Capella, they explained in delightful fragments of various Earth languages. Their low voices really had charm. Why had they come? Well, they were a tramp freighter, actually, taking a load of ore back to Capella. They had dropped by to clear up an old-chart notation about our system. What was their home like? Oh, much like ours. Lots of commerce, trade. Wars? Not for centuries. Shocking idea!
What the world wanted to know most, of course, was where were their men? Were they alone?
This evoked merry laughter. Of course they had men, to care for the s.h.i.+p. They showed us on a video broadcast from Luna. There were indeed men, handsome types with muscles. The chap who did most of the transmission looked like my idea of Leif Ericsson. There was no doubt, however, that Captain Garbo-Dayan-or Captain Lyampka, as we learned to call her-was in charge. Well, we had female Soviet freighter captains, too.
The one thing we couldn't get exactly was the Capellan men's relative heights. The scenery on these transmissions was different. It was my private opinion, from juggling some estimates of similar background items, that at least some of their men were earth-normal size, though burly.
The really hot questions about their s.p.a.ce drive got gracefully laughed off. How did the s.h.i.+p run?Sorry, they were not technicians. But then they sprang the bombsh.e.l.l. Why not come and see for ourselves? Would we care to send a party up to Luna to look over the s.h.i.+p?
Would we? Would we? How many? Oh, about fifty-fifty men, please. And Tillie.
I forgot to mention about Tillie getting to be their pet. George had sent her to Sun Valley to record some speech samples he absolutely had to have. She was introduced at the pool, looking incredibly like a half-size Capellan. A smash. They loved it. Laughed almost to guffawing. When they found she was a crack linguist they adopted her. George was in ecstasy with hauls of Capellan chatter no one else had, and Tillie seemed to like it too. She was different these days-her eyes shone, and she had a kind of tense, exalted smile. I knew why and it bothered me, but there wasn't anything I could do.
I cut myself into her report-circuit one day.
”Tillie. It's dangerous. You don't know them.”
Safe at two thousand miles, she gave me the bare-faced stare.
”They're dangerous?”
I winced and gave it up.
Tillie at fifteen had caught the full treatment from a street gang. Fought against knives, left for dead-an old story. They'd fixed her up as good as new, except for a few interesting white hairlines in her tan, and a six-inch layer of ice between her and everybody who shaved. It didn't show, most of the time. She had a nice sincere cover manner and she wore her old suits and played mousy. But it was permanent guerrilla war, inside.
Intelligence had found her, as they often do, a ready-made weapon. She was totally loyal as long as no one touched her. And she'd wear anything or nothing on business. I'd seen photos of Tillie on a job at twenty that you wouldn't believe. Fantastic-the subtle sick flavor added, too.
She let people touch her, physically I mean, on business. I imagine-I never asked. And I never asked what happened to them afterward, or why the cla.s.sified medal. It did trouble me a little when I found out her chief case officer was dead-but that was all right, he'd had diabetes for years.
But as for letting a friend touch her-really touch her-I tried it once.
It was in George's film vault. We were both exhausted after a fifty-hour run of work. She leaned back and smiled, and actually touched my arm. My arm went around her automatically and I started to bend down to her lips. At the last minute I saw her eyes.
Before I got pastured out to Smoky Bear and George, I had worked around a little, and one of the souvenirs indelibly printed on my memory is the look in the eyes of a man who had just realized that I stood between him and the only exit. He waited one heartbeat and then started for the exit through what very nearly became my dead body, in the next few hectic minutes. I saw that look-depthless, limp, inhuman-in Tillie's eyes. Gently I disengaged my arm and stepped back. She resumed breathing.
I told myself to leave her alone. It's an old story. Koestler told it, and his girl was younger. The trouble was I liked the woman, and it didn't help that she really was beautiful under those sack suits. We got close enough a couple of times so we even discussed-briefly-whether anything could be done.
Her view was, of course, nada. At least she had the taste not to suggest being friends. Just nada.
After the second of those sessions I sloped off with a couple of mermaids from the Reflecting Pool, who turned out to have strange china doork.n.o.bs in their apartment. When the doork.n.o.bs got busted I came back to find Mrs. Peabody had put me on sick leave.
”I'm sorry, Max,” Tillie lied.
”De nada,” I told her.
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