Part 18 (1/2)

”Don't do that,” she said.

”What?”

”Never underestimate yourself,” she said firmly.

He looked at her. ”You're big on that stuff, huh?”

”What stuff?”

”Self-image.”

”I'm working on it,” she said, and with a start, she realized that it was true. Why had she always put herself down, kept her weight so low that she looked almost emaciated? Was it fear that if she entered the compet.i.tion she'd lose? So here she was, filled out, curvaceous, overweight by her own standards, and she had, at last, entered a compet.i.tion with two strikes against her.

”Well,” Paul said, ”I've always had a winning att.i.tude. You can't partic.i.p.ate successfully in sports unless you have it, but-”

”But you don't have a winning att.i.tude as far as Sage is concerned?”

”Hard to. I lose too many times with her.”

”When you were partic.i.p.ating in sports, Paul, did anyone ever tell you about the law of compensation?” ”What you give you get?”

”That's right. Give out good, good comes back. That's stating it at its simplest. Give out love, get back love. ”

”Well,that part of it hasn't worked,” he said.

”Perhaps you're forgetting one of the most important aspects of the law of compensation,” she said.

”When you give in one direction, the return does not necessarily come back from that same direction,”

she said.

He laughed. ”Then maybe there are a half-dozen women returning my love like crazy, huh?”

”Maybe,” she said. ”Maybe only one.”

He looked at her, startled. ”You telling me I should start looking elsewhere?”

She wanted to say,Yes, dummy , but she didn't. She said casually, ”Oh, I'm just talking. Advice is like bitter medicine-easy to give, hard to take, right?”

”I guess so. ” His grin came back. ”Hey, Vange, you're all right. You're a very all-right woman. You understand things.” He was serious again. ”Maybe if you put in a good word for me with Sage, huh?”

From a very old American short story:Why don't you speak for yourself, Evangeline ? From her own lips, ”I can try.”

”Thanks. Look, I've gotta go. I just sneaked off for a while.” He stood and shook water from his hair.

”Tell Sage I said so long.”

”I'll do that,” she said.

He ran up the slope, gave the admiral a salute, and was gone. Evangeline walked to sit down on the towel next to Sage.

”So Evangeline has a beau,” Sage said.

She blushed. ”He's in love with you,” she said.

Sage laughed cruelly. ”He's just in heat, like all of them.” She looked at Evangeline, with a grim little smile on her lips. ”I see the wayyou look at him, though.”

No, she thought,it couldn't show . ”I like him. He's a friend,” she said.

”Sure, ” Sage said. ”Surrrrrre. Who are you trying to kid?”

”You know, Sage,” Evangeline said, finding that she was full of surprises for herself on that sunny, late afternoon, ”you not only have a strong streak of cruelty in you, you're rather stupid at times.”

Sage's face went taut, then relaxed. ”Oh, you're trying to tell me that I should have pity on him, be nice to him.” And, Evangeline thought, as she lay back to enjoy the sun,you're so very self-centered that you don't even know when you've been insulted .

FIFTEEN.

The jungle on the continent that the Americans had named Columbia covered an area larger than the entire Soviet Union, with the conquered European countries thrown in. It began to grow dense three thousand miles south of Stanton Bay. There at the jungle's edge the two Apache Indians, Jacob West and Renato Cruz, set up their base camp, and Jack Purdy helped them ferry down the steel-mesh squares from theSpirit of America . Renato welded the squares together using a molecular bonder.

Duncan Rodrick flew down, while they were a.s.sembling the landing pad to be dropped atop the jungle, to get a good look at that southern paradise that Clive Baxter's noisy ”concerned-citizens” faction kept talking about. It was, without a doubt, beautiful country. There were shady glades in deep forest, and clear streams, and almost every growing thing seemed to have a fruit or a nut attached to it. But history repeats itself, and every explorer who settled in a tropical paradise where food was easily available was doomed to fail-either lulled by false security or destroyed by sheer laziness. No, the Americans would stay put as long as he was in charge.

Rodrick had started giving Clay Girard flying lessons. Clay would be celebrating his sixteenth birthday soon, and because of the small population of the colony, adulthood would, Rodrick thought, come early to kids like Clay simply because they were needed. Clay handled the scout very well on the approach to the Apache camp, and Rodrick talked him through a vertical landing that jarred teeth only slightly.

Renato and Jacob were just making the final welds. The admiral, well armed, was standing guard. Clay had Jumper on a leash, much to the dog's disgust. The camp had been set up in a natural clearing in a hardwood forest, which extended its vast carpet of green for over a thousand miles north toward Hamilton. Clay didn't want Jumper exploring the woods on his own, for the scouts had recorded a variety of life signals there.

From the air, the jungle to the south was an unbroken deep green. The thought of a band of almost impenetrable jungle extending three thousand miles on either side of the planet's equator had a sobering effect on Rodrick; he wouldn't want to be out there in the midst of it, even without the larger-than-elephant life forms the sensors had picked up.

Clay pitched in to help finish the welding. He was getting to be a good hand with the molecular bonder, and Jacob and Renato were quite willing to let him help so they could stand up straight, backhand their sweat, and have a long drink of cool water.

Jacob showed Rodrick their target area on the map. Jacob had printed, in that vast area of jungle where the only map features were the winding rivers and two areas of connected lakes, Terra Incognita. The selected area was two thousand miles north of the equator, near the coastline of a vast indentation which, on a sensibly sized continent, would have been called a bay, but on Omega was big enough to be a sea.

”You're going to have to carry the landing grid over a thousand miles,” Rodrick said.

Jacob nodded. ”It won't be the most aerodynamic configuration ever flown, but if we winch the gridtight against the landing skids, I think I can fly at around three hundred feet with no problem. Take about four hours, we figure, from lift-off to the time I settle down on the treetops.”

”But that means you'll have to put the scout with the grid down onto the canopy. You won't have a chance to feel out whether the trees will take the weight.”

”I'll settle in very slowly, ” Jacob rea.s.sured him. ”We're mounting the grid to the landing skids with explosive bolts. If I see I'm going to settle into the trees too far, or if the thing starts to tilt too much, I'll press a b.u.t.ton and be free to get the h.e.l.l out of there.”

Rodrick and Clay watched the awkward union of scout and grid lift off, then move away, cautiously at first, toward the south. Renato'sApache Two scout was flying just below, telling Jacob that all was looking good. Rodrick let Clay lift the captain's scout and then took over, flying in close to Jacob's Apache One himself to take a look. Jacob was up to an airspeed of three hundred.

”It's very musical. Captain, ” Jacob radioed. ”The wind whistling through the mesh sounds like a thousand Apaches doing the death dance.”

”You've never even seen a thousand Apaches,” Rodrick joked, ”much less heard them doing a death dance.”

”Ah, ” Jacob said, ”but in my dreams-the souls of my ancestors bewail the dirty deal you white eyes gave them.”