has ceased to be a shepherd. Or perhaps you yourself are, since you have aided and abetted him. You could have remembered how full of terrible unknowns space is. Belters are born to that understanding. He is a flatlander.”
Dorcas whitened entirely. Her crest bristled. She stood up, fists on hips, to loom over Markham and say word by word: “That will do. We have endured your presence, that you pushed on us, in hopes you would prove to be housebroken. We have now listened to your ridiculous ranting’s because we believe in free speech where you do not, and in hopes you would soon finish. Instead, you have delivered an intolerable racist insult. You will go to your cabin and remain there for twenty-four hours. Bread and water will be brought to you.”
Markham gaped. “What? Are you mad?”
“Furious, yes. As for sanity, I refrain from expressing an opinion about who may lack it.” Dorcas consulted her watch. “You can walk to your cabin in about five minutes. Therefore, do not be seen outside it, except for visits to the head, until 1737 hours tomorrow. Go.”
He half rose himself, sank back down, and exclaimed, “This is impossible! Professor Tregennis, I call you to witness.”
“Yes,” Dorcas said. “Please witness that he has received a direct order from me, who am second in command of the ship. Shall we call Captain Saxtorph to confirm it? You can be led off in irons, Markham. Better you obey. Go.”
The commissioner clambered to his feet. He breathed hard. The others could smell his sweat. “Very well,” he said tonelessly. “of course I will file a complaint when we return. Meanwhile we shall minimize further conversation. Good day.” He jerked a bow and marched off.
After a time in which only the multitudinous low murmurings of the vessel had utterance, Tregennis breathed, “Dear me. Was that not a… slightly excessive reaction?”
Dorcas sat down again. Her iciness was dissolving in calm. “Maybe. Bob would think so, though naturally he’d have backed me up. He’s more good-natured than I am. I do not tolerate such language about him. This hasn’t been the only incident.”
“There is a certain prejudice against the Earthborn among the space-born. I understand it is quite widespread.”
“It is, and it’s not altogether without foundation—in a number of cases.” Dorcas laughed. “I shared it, at the time Bob and I met. It caused some monumental quarrels the first couple of years, years when we could already have been married. I finally got rid of it and took to judging individuals on their merits.”
“Forgive me, but are you not a little intolerant of those who have not had your enlightening experience?”
“Doubtless. However, between you and me, I welcomed the chance to show Markham who’s boss here. I worried that if we have an emergency he could get insubordinate. That would be an invitation to disaster.”
“He is a strange man,” Tregennis mused. “His behavior, his talk, his past career, everything seems such a welter of contradictions. Or am I being naive?”
“Not really, unless I am, too. Oh, people aren’t self-consistent like the laws of mechanics—even quantum mechanics. But I do think we lack some key fact about Landholder Markham, and will never understand him till we have it.” Dorcas made a gesture of dismissal. “Enough. Now may I do what I originally intended and quiz you about Plateau?”
While Rover was in hyperspace, all five of her gang stood mass detector watch, six hours a day for four days, fifth day off. It was unpopular duty, but they would have enjoyed still less letting the ship fly blind, risking an entry into a gravity well deep enough to throw her to whatever fate awaited vessels which did not steer clear. The daydream was becoming commonplace among their kind, that someday somebody would gain sufficient understanding of the psionics involved that the whole operation could be automated.
It wasn’t torture, of course, once you had schooled yourself never to look into the Less Than Void which filled the single port necessarily left unshuttered. You learned how to keep an eye on the indicator globe while you exercised, read, watched a show, practiced a handicraft. On the infrequent occasions when it registered something, matters did get interesting.
“And I’ve decided I don’t mind it in the least,” said Juan Yoshii after Kamehameha Ryan had relieved him.
“Really?” asked Laurinda Brozik. She had met him below the flight deck by agreement.
He offered her his arm, a studied, awkward gesture not used in his native society. She smiled and took it. He was a young Sol-Belter. Unlike Dorcas Saxtorph, or most folk of his nation, he eschewed spectacular garb. Small, slim, with olive-skinned, almost girlish features, he did wear his hair in the crest, but it was cut short.
“I have just heard complaints about the monotony,” Laurinda said.
“Monotony, or peacefulness?” he countered in his diffident fashion. “I chafed, too. Then gradually I realized what an opportunity this is to be alone and think. Or compose.”
“You don’t sound like a rockjack,” she said needlessly. It was what had originally attracted her to him.
He chuckled. “How are rockjacks supposed to sound? We have the rough, tough image, yes. Pilot the boat, find the ore, wrench it out, bring it home, and damn the meteoroids. Or the sun-flare or the fusion generator failure or anything else. But we are simply persons making a living. Quite a few of us look forward to a day when we can use different talents.”
“What else would you like to do?”
His smile was stiff. He stared before him, “Prepare yourself to laugh.”
“Oh, no.” Her tone made naught of the eight centimeters by which she topped him. “How could I laugh at a man who handles the forces that I only measure?”
He flushed and had no answer. They walked on. The ship hummed around them. Bulkheads were brightly painted, pictures were hung on them and often changed, here and there were pots whose flowers Carita Fenger maintained, but nonetheless this was a barren environment. The two had a date in his cabin, where he would provide tea while they screened d’Auvergne’s Fifth Chromophony. An appreciation of her work was one thing among others that they discovered they had in common.
“What is your hope?” Laurinda asked at last, low.
He gulped. “To be a poet.”
“Why, how… how remarkable.”
“Not that there’s a living in it,” he said hastily. “I’ll need a groundside position. But I will anyway when I get too old for this berth—and am still fairly young by most standards.” He drew breath. “In the centuries of spaceflight, how much true poetry has been written? Plenty of verse, but how much that makes your hair rise and you think yes, this is the real truth? It’s as if we’ve been too busy to find the words for what we’ve been busy with. I want to try. I am trying, but know quite well I won’t have a chance of succeeding with a single line till I’ve worked at it for another ten years or more.”
“You’re too modest, Juan. Genius flowers early oftener than not. I would like to see what you have’ done.”
“No, I don’t think it’s that good. Maybe my efforts never will be. Not even equal to—well, actually minor stuff, but it does have the spirit—”
“Such as what?”
“Oh, ancient pieces, mostly, pre-space. ’To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.’” Yoshii cackled a laugh. “I’m really getting bookish, am I not? An easy trap to fall into. Spacemen have a lot of free time in between crises.”
“You’ve put yours to good use,” she said earnestly. “Is that poem you quoted from in the ship’s database? I’d like to read it.”
“I don’t know, but I can recite it verbatim.”
“That would be much better. Romantic—” Laurinda broke off. She turned her glance away.
He sensed her confusion and blurted in his own, “Please don’t misunderstand me. I know—your customs, your mores—I mean to respect them. Completely.”
She achieved a smile, though she could not yet look back his way. “Why, I’m not afraid of you.” Unspoken: You’re not unbearably frustrated. It’s obvious that Carita is your mistress as well as Kam’s. “You are a gentleman.” And what we have coming to life between us is still small and frail, but already very sweet.
Rover re-entered normal space ten astronomical units from the destination star. That was unnecessarily
