clamped around a wooden toothpick, in a husky whisper that had retained more
than a hint of its original brogue for what must have been thirty or so years.
“What part of Ireland did you move from?” Zambendorf inquired from his cramped
perch on a metal seat that folded out from the wall between a tool rack and an
equipment cabinet—more comfortable than it looked since his weight near the
ship’s axis was barely sufficient to keep him in place.
“County Cork, in the south, not far from a little place called Glanmire.”
Zambendorf rubbed his beard and looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “That would
be roughly over in the direction of Watergrasshill, wouldn’t it, if I remember
rightly?” he said.
O’Flynn looked surprised. “You know it?”
“I was there a few years ago. We toured all around that area for a few days . .
. and up to Limerick, back down around Killamey and the lakes.” Zambendorf
laughed as the memories flooded back. “We had a wonderful time.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” O’Flynn said. “And you like the place, eh?”
“The villages are as pretty and as friendly as any you’ll find in Austria, and I
found Guinness remarkably good once I’d gotten used to it. Those mountains,
though, what do you call them? Macgilly-something…”
“Macgillycuddy’s Reeks.”
“Yes—how is anybody supposed to remember something like that? Well they’re not
really mountains at all, are they? You really could use a genuine Alp or two,
you know. But apart from that . . .” Zambendorf shrugged and sipped his own
drink.
“What are your Alps but more of the same?” O’Flynn said. “Ours have everything a
mountain needs to be called a mountain, except a man doesn’t have to waste more
of the breath he could be using for better things getting to the top.”
“The higher a man rises, the farther he sees,” Zambendorf said, throwing out a
remark that was open for O’Flynn to take any way he pleased. “It’s as true of
life as it is of mountains, wouldn’t you agree?”
O’Flynn’s eyes narrowed a fraction further for a moment, and he chewed on his
toothpick. “Yes, and the farther away he gets, the less he sees, until he can
make out no part of any of it,” he replied. “The world’s full of people parading
their high-and-mightiness, who think they can see everything, but they know
nothing.” It sounded like a general observation and not a veiled reference to
Zambendorf.
“I take it that the noble and the worthy don’t exactly inspire you to any great
feelings of awe and reverence.”
“Ah, and who else would they be but those who make it their affair to mind the
rest of the world’s business when the rest of the world is quite able to look
after itself? It’s people whose own business isn’t worth minding who mind other
people’s business, I’m after thinking. A man has work enough in one lifetime
trying to improve himself without thinking that he’s fit to be out improving the
world,”
A strange garb to find a philosopher in, Zambendorf thought to himself. “Well,
that’s certainly been the old way,” he said, stretching and looking around, as
if for a way of changing the subject. “Who knows? Perhaps Mars will be the
beginning of something different.”
O’Flynn remained silent for a few seconds and rubbed his nose with a pink, meaty
knuckle, as if weighing something in his mind. “So, it’s convinced you are that
it’s Mars we’re going to, is it?” he said at last.
Although nothing changed on Zambendorf’s face, he was instantly alert. “Of
course,” he said, keeping his voice nonchalant. “What are you saying, Mike?
Where else could we be going?”
“Well now, aren’t you the great clairvoyant who sees into the future?” O’Flynn’s
smile twinkled mockingly for just an instant. “I was hoping that maybe you were
going to tell me,”
Zambendorf had ridden out worse in his time. “What are you saying?” he asked
again. “What makes you think we might be going anywhere else?”
O’Flynn chewed on his toothpick and watched Zambendorf curiously for a second or
two, then crumpled the cup and dropped it into a trash disposal inlet. He stood