Barry b longyear, p.1
Barry B. Longyear, page 1
THE HOMECOMING
Barry Longyear
Lothas draped his heavy green tail between the seat cushion and backrest. Extending a claw on a scaled, five-fingered hand, he inserted it in a slot switch and pulled down. The armored shield on the forward view bubble slowly lifted as the control center went to redlight. Lothas felt the strange pain grow in his chest as he looked through the filter at the target star, now no longer a point of light but a tiny, brilliant disc. He leaned against the backrest, his large dark eyes glittering as they drank in the sight of the star.
It has been so long. Even though I have been out of suspension for only a total of six star cycles, yet I still know it has been… seventy million star cycles. A third of a galactic cycle.
Lothas noticed his own reflection in the filter, turned his long neck left, then right, and marveled at the absence of change. The large eyes, occupying a fifth of the image, were clear and glinted with points of red, blue, and yellow light reflected from service and indicator lights. The skin, gray-green and smooth, pressed against and outlined the large veins leading from his eyes down the elongated muzzle, with its rows of thick, white, needle-sharp teeth. His focus returned to the star as he reached and pressed a panel with one of the five clawed fingers of his right hand.
“This is Lothas Dim Ir, on regular watch.” He paused and examined the navigation readout, then switched to a display of the rest of the cluster formation of ships. “The formation is normal; no course corrections necessary; the homestar Amasaat now at—” he examined an instrument “—four degrees of arc.”
He pressed another panel, signaling to all the watches on the rest of the ships. The display showed all but three of the two hundred ships answering. Lothas studied the display, slightly confused that he felt nothing about the missing ships. Automatic recording systems had shown the three ships wrecked by the same meteor.
But that was… millions of cycles ago. Difficult to feel pain for deaths that old.
He pressed another panel, and the display began filling with life unit survival-percentage figures transmitted by the watches on the other ships. Automatically an average was made and a total rate of survival and unit count was made. 77.031 percent; 308,124 life units surviving. Lothas nodded. There had been no change in the figure for… over thirty million star cycles. The three wrecked ships, and the others who could not survive the suspension process.
But, the rest of us shall see Nitola.
Lothas looked around at the empty control center. Moments after he gave the initiate-desuspension command, the center would be a hive of activity… a hive of activity; I wonder if the little stinging sweetsects have survived? He looked at the banks of receiving equipment, sensor and analysis piles, and the rest of the tools that the knowing ones would use to see how Nitola had changed.
But, this moment there is still quiet—this wondrous, jeweled loneliness of space. I ache for my home planet, but this, too, has become my home.
He reached out a claw and closed the shield, cutting off his view of the homestar. As the center returned to yellow light, Lothas pressed the initiate-desuspension command. As the ships answered, he listened to the sounds of life stirring in his own vessel — motors whined, draining the clear suspension from countless lengths of veins and replacing it with warm blood.
Lothas looked at the drain set into the skin of his own arm. He pulled it free and watched as the blood pooled slightly, then began clotting. He tossed the drain into a recycler. We will need them no longer. We are almost home.
Carl Baxter, garbed in regulation briefs and tee shirt, looked up from under the bed. “Where are my socks?”
The lump on the bed, sheets pulled up over her head, mumbled. “I don’t wear ‘em.”
“It’s my last pair of clean socks. Now, where are they?”
The lump pulled the sheets down, exposing a sleep-mussed tousle of black curls framing a pretty angry, face. “You’d have clean socks if you’d do the laundry more often. We both work. There’s no reason why I have to be the — “
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Baxter pulled out the dresser and looked behind it.
“Yeah, yeah, is it?”
“Yeah.” He pushed the dresser back against the wall. “Look, it’s not like we had the same kind of job, Deb. I have to be at the base at oh-six-thirty six days a week and sometimes seven. I’m lucky if I can drag it home in time for Johnny Carson. And, you want me to pitch in with the laundry, grocery shopping, housecleaning—”
“Look, supersoldier!” Deb pushed, her hair from her eyes. “You think keeping the agency going by myself is easy? Just last week that idiot layout man you hired before you were called up totally feebed the Boxman Spring campaign. I’ve been putting in sixteen hour days to try and have ready in time! You want laundry on top of that?”
Baxter concluded his third survey of the dresser drawers by slamming the upper right. “Why don’t you hire some help? We can afford it.”
Deb’s eyes widened. “Yawl means dat Massa Baxter gonna let dis nappy ol’ head actually hire someone? Me? a woman!”
“Oh, knock it off!” Baxter frowned and sat on the bed He put a hand on Deb’s shoulder. “Look. I’m sorry Deb. I know I said no hiring until I got back, and I know it’s been tough on you. Go ahead and hire whatever you need in the way of help. I’ll give Boxman a call and try and straighten things out.”
Deb put her hand on Baxter’s and looked up into his eyes. “Carl, when is the Air Force going to be finished with you? This whole thing is so silly. One day we are running a successful advertising agency and living in a nice condo, and the next we’re stuck here in the middle of nowhere in a shack that hasn’t been repaired since Billy Mitchell was a P.F.C. Tell me there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Baxter shrugged. “I don’t know.” He raised his head and looked at her. “That trip to Santa Barbara every day is getting you down, isn’t it? Maybe you’d be happier if you stayed at home?”
“Look, Baxter, I’ll stick it out as long as you do, and how much longer can that be? Your six months is almost up, isn’t it?”
Baxter stood up and resumed his search for the missing pair of socks. “You think I might have left them in the living room?”
Deb’s face developed an instant frown. “Isn’t it?”
“Isn’t what?”
She shook her head and pounded on the mattress with her fists. “Oh, no! You didn’t! Tell me you didn’t get extended, Baxter! Tell me you didn’t, or I’ll brain you with the alarm clock!”
He sighed, shrugged, scratched his head, then held out his hands. “I didn’t have any choice, Deb — “
“Oooooooooo! You… you… monster!” She threw off the covers, swung her legs to the floor, then stormed off to the bathroom. The door slammed, then clicked.
“Deb?” Baxter walked to the door. “Deb, honey? Don’t lock yourself in, honey. I still have to shave.”
“Go away.”
“Deb, I’m all they have in public relations right now to promote the Air Force’s argument for the combined shuttle, not to mention the new bomber, and the— “
The door opened, a pair of socks flew out, and the door slammed shut.
*****
Wearing one regulation blue and one not-so-regulation yellow and red Argyle sock in addition to his uniform, Captain Carl F. Baxter pulled away in the blue staff car assigned to him. He came to the cross-street stop sign, screeched to a halt, and rummaged through the glove compartment for his electric shaver. A honk came from behind, and Baxter looked over the top of the headrest to check the honker’s rank. Seeing only single golden bars, he returned to his search. Damned thing has got to be in here.
His hand closed on the ancient Remington, a gift from his mother-in-law, and he sat up and removed the cap. The driver behind honked again, and Baxter extended a finger in the Hawaiian good luck tradition, then returned to the shaver. With an angry squeal of tires, the lieutenant pulled around Baxter’s car, ignored the stop sign, and pulled out onto the base’s main drag. With his shaver humming, Baxter pulled out and turned right.
Baxter caught a flash of a sign, “ODQ—D7,” recalling Deb’s comment when she first saw it. “This is our new home? Oh, I like the name; it’s so much nicer than Hollywood Hills or Sutton Place.” He snorted and leaned on the accelerator as he came abreast of the parking ramp for the experimental aircraft. Deb was ready with a comment for that, too. “Oh, what a nice view —Baxter, I want a divorce!” She didn’t really, but she was not happy, and neither was Baxter. An experienced test pilot, he had left the Air Force during the testing cutbacks of the late sixties to begin his own advertising agency. As a reserve officer, he had assumed that, if he ever was called up, it would be as a pilot. But, the Air Force had found his advertising skills much more desirable, and dropped him in public relations. Baxter glanced out of the side window at the black, needle-pointed craft on the ramp being readied for a test. Dammit, it is a beautiful view!
He turned back to his driving and concentrated on missing the larger pieces of traffic. The Congressional delegation would show up in two days, and the presentation on the combined shuttle was still in search of a theme —or at least a theme less obvious than “Gimmie bucks!”
Then, there was the still the planning board in town to deal with. The proposed recruiting facility violated the town’s zoning ordinances, and it was feather-smoothing time. Even though Federal departments aren’t obligated to be governed by local zoning regulations, bad press is still bad press. The theme: cram the new faci
The Concerned Women from town still had to have a number done on them. In the office, the group was known as the Anti-Slop Chute and Whorehouse League. The dear ladies objected to men from the base supplying a market in town for the growing number of bars and ladies of negotiable virtue. Theme?
Perhaps we could have all the men castrated, ladies. How would that be? Baxter chuckled, then resumed his sober expression as he remembered the school board had to be dealt with. The screams over supporting the educations of the base’s dependent children were getting loud, and the charge that a group of Air Force brats had introduced pot to their playmates was no help… “Ah, nuts!”
Baxter drove it all from his mind as he pulled up to the guard shack at the security gate. An AP, three times larger than life, with a jaw the size, shape, and color of a cinder block, saluted and bent down to the car’s window. “Captain Baxter?”
Baxter nodded. “Yes, I’m Baxter.”
“Carl F.?”
“That’s right.”
The AP opened the door and motioned with his hand. “Please slide over, sir.”
“What?”
“I’m supposed to drive you to a security area, Captain. Please, slide over.”
Baxter reached for the door and tried to pull it shut. The AP’s grip on the door might as well have been a ton of reinforced concrete. Baxter looked into the guard shack and saw Wilson, one of the regular AP’s on the gate. “Wilson, will you call off this trained gorilla? I have a lot of work to do today, and no time to fool around.”
Wilson stood in the doorway and shrugged. “I’m sorry, Captain, but Inovsky has his orders.”
Baxter looked at the gorilla. “Inovsky, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You sure you got the right Air Force, Inovsky?”
The AP unsnapped the cover on his holster. “Please, Captain Baxter. Slide over.”
Baxter shrugged and put the car in park. “Sure. Why not?” He slid over and watched as the huge AP slid in, slammed the door, then squealed off, heading the car in the direction of the experimental parking ramp. “What’s this all about?”
The AP shook his head. “I don’t know, Captain. I was detailed to get you to the experimental station.” The man cracked his first smile. “But, with all the brass that’s been landed out on the field during the past hour, it looks like you’re going to see some important people.”
“How important?”
“The Secretary of Defense, the base commander, and just about everything in between, from what I hear.”
Baxter looked out of the window on his side, and tried to inch his right trouser leg down over his Argyle sock.
“A question rests without answer in my mind, Lothas.”
Lothas turned away from the side port where he had been drinking in the sights of the blue-white planet Nitola—now called Earth. Medp stood next to him. “Medp, have the knowing ones among you time now for idle thoughts?” Both of them looked at Nitola.
“What is the question, Medp?”
Medp nodded in the direction of the planet. “How does a race such as that select a representative to treat with us?”
“The hue-muns?” Lothas paused, wondering how his own race would have reacted at the news of seventy-million-cycle-old visitors from the past. “I cannot even speculate, Medp.” Lothas held out a clawed hand. “All those separate tribes, such confusion—I know not.” He turned toward Medp. “How are the surveys progressing?”
Medp looked at a readout strapped to his wrist. “We have over twenty distinct languages, with as yet uncounted dialects, entered in the lingpile, and this from only their radio and television. Many more languages are yet to be entered. However, the tribe who is sending the representative speaks the English, and that we have entered in quantity.”
Lothas turned back to the view port. “And, the other surveys?”
“Everything is much as predicted. Residual radiation is negligible; vegetable and animal life is reestablished, although the forms are highly mutated. As I said, it is all much as predicted.”
Lothas nodded toward Nitola. “All except this hue-muns creature. That we did not predict.” He reached up and touched a panel that dropped armor over the view port, then turned to Medp. “I have a question of my own, knowing one.”
“Speak.”
Lothas lowered himself into a couch and closed his eyes. “How would we choose a representative, Medp, if the positions were reversed?”
“That is easily answered; we would send the wisest of our race. Nothing less could serve such a moment.”
Lothas nodded. “Perhaps the hue-muns will do the same.”
Baxter looked around the room at the circle of seated high-ranking officers and officials. “What in the ever-loving, four-color-processed Hell are you people talking about?”
The Secretary of Defense looked at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Chairman and the Secretary of the Air Force both looked at Baxter’s base commander, General Stayer. Stayer’s glance seemed to lower the room’s temperature by twenty degrees. “You don’t understand, Captain. You aren’t being asked; you’re being ordered. You’re it.”
Baxter found a chair and lowered himself into it. He realized that he was coming across as being a little wild-eyed, and he took several deep breaths before he continued. “Gentlemen, what I do not understand is how I drew the black marble on this one. It’s been seven, no, eight years since I flew anything even resembling the Python.”
An unnamed colonel seated next to the Secretary of the Air Force leaned forward. “Captain, you are familiar with the XK-17 Python, are you not?”
Baxter shrugged and shook his head. “Only for publicity purposes. I never flew it, or even checked out in it. The things I know are things people want to know, like cost figures, performance—”
“And, all your tickets are up to date?”
Baxter held out his hands, then dropped them. “Yes.”
“And you are in top physical shape?”
Baxter nodded again. “But, Colonel — “
The colonel held up a hand. “Captain, you will be surprised how fast we can check you out in the XK-17 — “
“Colonel!” Baxter was startled by the loudness of his own voice. “Colonel, there must be at least five pilots I can name who are checked out on the Python, and who are on the base right now.”
General Stayer gave a curt wave of his hand at the Colonel. “Let’s cut through the crap. Baxter, you’re it. None of those pilots are trained in public relations. You are.”
“What about whatsisface? The astronaut in the Senate?”
Stayer shook his head. “Too old, his tickets aren’t up to date, and we can’t locate him. He’s somewhere in Canada right now, fishing.” The general leaned forward and pointed a finger at Baxter’s throat. “You are the closest thing to a flying diplomat that we can get off the ground within the next twenty-four hours, because the Python is the only vehicle ready to go right now.”
The Secretary of Defense moved his head a fraction of an inch, signaling his desire to speak. “If I may, General?”
“Of course, Mr. Secretary.”
The secretary, a blown-dry glory in four-hundred-dollar pin stripes, let his gaze wander around the room as he talked. “Captain Baxter, I realize you are being asked to perform a difficult task, but we have little choice. The…”he waved a hand up in the air “… aliens, or whatever they are, made a broadband contact. In other words, their invitation was extended to whomsoever can make it up there. The Russians, of course, will get there, but—” he held up a finger, “it will take them at least three days to get off the ground. Am I making myself clear?”
Baxter folded his hands over his belly and nodded. “Yes, Mr. Secretary.”
The secretary nodded. “Good. While you are there, you will be in constant touch with the Department of State, and with the White House. There will always be someone with whom you can consult on any matter.”
Baxter nodded and smiled. “This is what I mean, Mr. Secretary. If all I’m supposed to do is carry a radio for the State Department, why not use another—qualified—pilot? I don’t see what particular use my training in public relations will be.”
