Part 4 (2/2)

”See how it goes?” he asked. ”We spend our lives s.h.i.+elding our young and then, all of a sudden, we find they're s.h.i.+elding us.” His pipe had gone out again and he relit it. ”Too bad you didn't get an audiovisual of Belsher making that idiotic statement.”

”He didn't even know I was getting a voice-only. All the time he was talking, I was doodling in a pad with a pencil.”

”Synthetic subst.i.tutes!” Dad snorted. ”Putting a synthetic tallow-wax molecule together would be like trying to build a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p with a jackknife and a tack hammer.” He puffed hard on his pipe, and then excused himself and went back to his work.

Editing an audiovisual telecast is pretty much a one-man job. Bish wanted to know if he could be of a.s.sistance, but there was nothing either of us could do, except sit by and watch and listen. Dad handled the Belsher thing by making a film of himself playing off the recording, and interjecting sarcastic comments from time to time. When it went on the air, I thought, Ravick wasn't going to like it. I would have to start wearing my pistol again. Then he made a tape on the landing of the _Peenemunde_ and the arrival of Murell, who he said had met with a slight accident after leaving the s.h.i.+p. I took that over to Julio when Dad was finished, along with a tape on the announced tallow-wax price cut. Julio only grunted and pushed them aside. He was setting up the story of the fight in Martian Joe's--a ”local bar,” of course; n.o.body ever gets shot or stabbed or slashed or slugged in anything else. All the news _is_ fit to print, sure, but you can't give your advertisers and teleprinter customers any worse name than they have already. A paper has to use some judgment.

Then Dad and Bish and I went down to dinner. Julio would have his a little later, not because we're too good to eat with the help but because, around 1830, the help is too busy setting up the next paper to eat with us. The dining room, which is also the library, living room, and general congregating and loafing place, is as big as the editorial room above. Originally, it was an office, at a time when a lot of Fenris Company office work was being done here. Some of the furniture is original, and some was made for us by local cabinetmakers out of native hardwood. The dining table, big enough for two s.h.i.+ps'

crews to eat at, is an example of the latter. Then, of course, there are screens and microbook cabinets and things like that, and a refrigerator to save going a couple of hundred feet to the pantry in case anybody wants a snack.

I went to that and opened it, and got out a bulb of concentrated fruit juice and a bottle of carbonated water. Dad, who seldom drinks, keeps a few bottles around for guests. Seems most of our ”guests” part with information easier if they have something like the locally made hydroponic potato schnapps inside them for courage.

”You drink Baldur honey-rum, don't you, Bish?” he said, pawing among the bottles in the liquor cabinet next to the refrigerator. ”I'm sure I have a bottle of it. Now wait a minute; it's here somewhere.”

When Dad pa.s.ses on and some medium claims to have produced a spirit communication from him, I will not accept it as genuine without the expression: ”Now wait a minute; it's here somewhere.”

Bish wanted to know what I was fixing for myself, and I told him.

”Never mind the rum, Ralph. I believe,” he said, ”that I shall join Walt in a fruit fizz.”

Well, whattaya know! Maybe my stealthy temperance campaign was having results. Dad looked positively startled, and then replaced the bottle he was holding.

”I believe I'll make it unanimous,” he said. ”Fix me up a fruit fizz, too, Walt.”

I mixed two more fruit fizzes, and we carried them over to the table.

Bish sipped at his critically.

”Palatable,” he p.r.o.nounced it. ”Just a trifle on the mild side, but definitely palatable.”

Dad looked at him as though he still couldn't believe the whole thing.

Dinner was slow coming. We finished our fizzes, and Bish and I both wanted repeats, and Dad felt that he had to go along. So I made three more. We were finis.h.i.+ng them when Mrs. Laden started bringing in the dinner. Mrs. Laden is a widow; she has been with us since my mother died, the year after I was born. She is violently anti-liquor.

Reluctantly, she condones Dad taking a snort now and then, but as soon as she saw Bish Ware, her face started to stiffen.

She put the soup on the table and took off for the kitchen. She always has her own dinner with Julio. That way, while they're eating he can tell her all the news that's fit to print, and all the gossip that isn't.

For the moment, the odd things I'd been noticing about our distinguished and temporarily incapacitated visitor came under the latter head. I told Dad and Bish about my observations, beginning with the deafening silence about Glenn Murell at the library. Dad began popping immediately.

”Why, he must be an impostor!” he exclaimed. ”What kind of a racket do you think he's up to?”

”Mmm-mm; I wouldn't say that, not right away,” Bish said. ”In the first place, Murell may be his true name and he may publish under a nom de plume. I admit, some of the other items are a little suspicious, but even if he isn't an author, he may have some legitimate business here and, having heard a few stories about this planetary Elysium, he may be exercising a little caution. Walt, tell your father about that tallow-wax we saw, down in Bottom Level Fourth Ward.”

I did, and while I was talking Dad sat with his soup spoon poised halfway to his mouth for at least a minute before he remembered he was holding it.

”Now, that is funny,” he said when I was through. ”Why do you suppose...?”

”Somebody,” Bish said, ”some group of s.h.i.+p captains, is holding wax out from the Co-operative. There's no other outlet for it, so my guess is that they're holding it for a rise in price. There's only one way that could happen, and that, literally, would be over Steve Ravick's dead body. It could be that they expect Steve's dead body to be around for a price rise to come in over.”

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