After the healing catharsis of a night of drunken saturnalia with Ian and Freddie and Betty I was able to think about my ex-family more rationally. Had I in fact been cheated?
I had signed that silly contract willingly, including the termination clause I tripped on. Had I been paying for sex?
No, what I had told Ian was true; sex is everywhere. I had paid for the happy privilege of belonging. To a family-especially the homely delights of changing wet nappies and washing dishes and petting kittens. Mister Underfoot was far more important to me than Anita had ever been-although I had never let myself think about it. I had tried to love them all until the matter of Ellen had thrown light into some dirty corners.
Let me see now: I knew exactly how many days I had been able to spend with my ex-family. A little arithmetic told me that (since all had been confiscated) my cost for room and board for those sweet vacations was slightly over four hundred and fifty Ennzedd dollars per day.
A high price even for a luxury resort. But the actual cost to the family of having me at home was less than a fortieth of that. On what financial terms had each of the others joined the family? I had never known.
Had Anita, unable to stop the men from inviting me in, rigged things so that I could not afford to quit my job and live at home but nevertheless tied me to the family on terms quite profitable to the family-i.e., to Anita? No way to tell. I knew so little about marriage among human beings that I had not been able to judge-and still could not.
But I had learned one thing: Brian had surprised me by turning against me. I had thought of him as the older, wiser, sophisticated member of the family, the one who could accept the fact of my biological derivation and live with it.
Perhaps he could have done so had I picked some other enhanced quality to demonstrate, some nonthreatening ability.
But I had bested him in a feat of strength, a matter in which a male quite reasonably expects to win. I had hit him in his male pride.
Unless you intend to kill him immediately thereafter, never kick a man in the balls. Not even symbolically. Or perhaps especially not symbolically.
IX
Presently free fall went away and we entered the incredibly thrilling sensations of hypersonic glide. The computer was doing a good job of smoothing out the violence, but you could still feel the vibration in your teeth-and I could feel it elsewhere after my busy night.
We dropped through transonic rather abruptly, then spent a long time in subsonic, with the scream building up. Then we touched and the retros cut in . . . and shortly we stopped. And I took a deep breath. Much as I like the SBs, I can’t relax from touchdown to full stop.
We had lifted at North Island at noon Thursday, so we arrived forty minutes later at Winnipeg the day before (Wednesday) in the early evening, 1940 hours. (Don’t blame me; go look at a map-one with time zones marked.)
Again I waited and was last passenger out. Our captain again picked up my bag but this time escorted me with the casualness of an old friend-and I felt enormously warmed by it. He took me through a side door, then went with me through Customs, Health, and Immigration, offering his own jumpbag first.
The CHI officer did not touch it. “Hi, Captain. What are you smuggling this time?”
“The usual. Illicit diamonds. Trade secrets. Weapons specs. Contraband drugs.”
“That’s all? It’s a waste of chalk.” He scrawled something on Ian’s bag. “Is she with you?”
“Never saw her before in my life.”
“Me Injun squaw,” I asserted. “White boss promise me much firewater. White boss don’t keep promise.”
“I could have told you. Going to be here long?”
“I live in the Imperium. Transient, possibly overnight. I came through here on my way to New Zealand last month. Here’s my passport.”
He glanced at it, stamped it, scrawled on my bag without opening it. “If you decide to stay a little longer, I’ll buy you firewater. But don’t trust Captain Tormey.” We went on through.