Part 20 (1/2)

”I haven't done a thing to daddy, Uncle Vic.”

Her uncle marched over to the bunk, grabbed up the blanket, hissed, and threw it on the floor.

”You-you-”

”Daddy had no right to do that!” Loolie cried. ”It's my life. It didn't work, anyway. I-I love it here, I mean, I think I-”

”No!” the little man shrieked. He scuttled back to Loolie and started shaking her. ”Your father!” he yelled. ”He will have you psyched, he will have you deleted! Puta! Pffah! And as for you, you-” He whirled on Dov and began to spray old-world discourtesies.

At which point, Dov, although a nice person, was starting to get considerably browned. He recalled coming up here for some peace and quiet. Now he looked at the little man, and the big man, and Loolie, and finished lacing up his boots.

”Get up! Move!” the little man screamed. ”You come with us!”

”My folks will wonder where I am,” Dov objected reasonably, thinking the two men looked like urban types. ”On your feet, felo!” Uncle Vic flapped his hands at the big man, who came away from the door and jerked his head at Dov.

”Get moving, boy.” He had one hand in his pocket like an old movie.

Dov got up.

”O.K., but you need some clothes for Miss Aerovulpa, don't you think? Maybe her father won't be so wild if you bring her back dressed.”

Uncle Vic glared distractedly at Loolie, who was sticking out of her blanket.

”I'll get a snowsuit in the closet,” Dov said. He moved carefully toward the woodshed door by the fireplace, wondering if urban types would buy the idea of a closet in a mountain cabin. The big man took his hand out of his pocket with something in it pointed at Dov's back, but he didn't move.

Just as Dov's hand reached the latch he heard Loolie's mouth pop open and held his breath. She didn't say anything.

Then he was twisting through the door and yanking out the main brace of the woodpile. Cordwood crashed down against the door while Dov a.s.sisted matters by leaping up the pile, grabbing the axe as he went. He scrambled around the eaves onto the lean-to and whipped around the chimney, hearing bangings from below.

From the chimney he launched himself up to the roof-ridge. The big front drift was still there. He rode a snow-slide down over the front door, slamming the bar-latch as he landed, grabbed up his skis and was galloping through the drifts to the far side of the helicopter.

The first shots came through the cabin window as he swung his axe at the main rotor bearings. His body was behind the copter and the cabin windows were too small for the big man. When his axe achieved an unhealthy effect on the rotors Dov gave the gas tank a couple of whacks, decided not to bother igniting it, buried the axe in the tail vane and scuttled down the morraine into a private ravine.

Gla.s.s was cras.h.i.+ng, voices bellowing behind him.

The ravine became a long narrow tunnel under the s...o...b..wed spruces. Dov frog-crawled down it until the noise was faint, like coyote pups. Presently the ravine widened and debouched into a steep snowfield. Dov buckled on his skis. The moon rode out of a cloudrack. Dov straightened up and took off down the flittering white. As he flew along gulping in the peace and quiet, he hoped Loolie would be all right. Vic was her uncle, it had to be o.k.

In an hour he had reached the parked snowcat and was headed back to Calgary where his uncle, Ben Rapelle, was chief of. the RCM mountain patrol.

He felt free.But he wasn't.

Because Loolie-Loolie Number One, that is-had said her last name was Rapelle. And his toe swelled up.

That turned out to be, as she'd also said, very important.

Next morning, after the patrol brought Loolie and Uncle Vic and his enforcer all safe and sound down to Headquarters, Loolie insisted on phoning her psychomed. So when her father, Mr. Aerovulpa, arrived in his private VTOL the psychomed was with him.

Mr. Aerovulpa turned out to be quite unlike Uncle Vic, who was actually, it seemed, only a distant cousin. For too many generations swarthy Aerovulpa sperm had been frisking into blond Scandinavian-type wombs; the current Mr. Aerovulpa was a tall yellow-gray glacier with a worried, lumpy Swedish face. If he were wild he didn't show it. He appeared only very weary.

”Eulalia,” he sighed depletedly in Ben Rapelle's office. That was Loolie's real name and he always called her by it, having no talent for fatherhood. He looked from his only child to the psychomed whom he had employed to ensure a marriageable product.

Now it had all blown up in his face.

”But how... ?” asked Mr. Aerovulpa. ”You a.s.sured me, Doctor-” His voice was quiet but not warm. ”Uncle” Vic s.h.i.+ed nervously. They were all standing around the Patrol office, Dov with a socmoc on one foot.

”The time-jump,” shrugged the psychomed. He was plump and slightly walleyed, which gave him an air of manic cheer. ”It was the older Loolie who was in this body, Louis. This older persona was no longer conditioned. You really should have been more careful. What on Earth did you want with a thing like that, time-jumping at your age? And the cost, my G.o.d.”

Mr. Aerovulpa sighed.

”I acquired it for a particular purpose.” He frowned abstractedly at the Rapelles. ”A very small trip, I wished to observe-”

”To see if you had a grandson, eh? Eh, eh?” The psycher chortled. ”Of course. Well, did you?”

For some reason Mr. Aerovulpa chose to continue this intimate topic. ”I found myself at my desk,”

he said. ”On it was a portrait.” His bleak eyes searched his daughter, froze onto Dov.

Dov blinked. It had just occurred to him that a securely hyped and guarded virgin might not be otherwise defended from maternity. Loolie sucked in her lower lip, made a, face.

The psychomed eyed them both, head c.o.c.ked.

”Tell me, Loolie, when you came back to yourself, did you find this young man, ah, disgusting?

Repellent? The situation was traumatic.”

Loolie smiled at him, wider and wider, swinging her head slowly from side to side. ”Oh, no. Oh, no!

It was fantastic, he's fantastic, he's beautiful. Only-”

”Only what?”

Her smile turned to Dov, melted. ”Well, we never, I mean, I wish-”

”All right!” The psychomed held up his hand. ”I see. Now, tell me, Loolie. Think. Did you by any chance bite his toe?”

”Uncle” Vic made a noise, Loolie looked incredulous. ”Bit his toe?” she echoed. ”Of course not.”

The psychomed turned to Dov. His gaze sank to the socmoc. ”Did she, young man?”

”Why?” asked Dov cautiously. Everybody began looking at the socmoc.

”Did she?”

”I never!” said Loolie indignantly.

”You don't know,” Dov told her. ”You did, before. When you were seventy-five.””Bite your toe? What for?”

”Because that was the key cue,” said the psychomed. He pulled his ear. ”Oh bother. You remember, Louis. I told you.”

Mr. Aerovulpa's expression had retreated further into the ice age.