“Of course I was. I had to have been,” he said reasonably, though he was still scowling.
She sighed. “I don’t think you were,” she said. “I think they lied to you.”
He stared at her, thunderstruck and slightly offended. “Why would they do that?” he demanded. She was, after all, talking against the oldest friends he had.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” she said seriously. “What reason could they possibly have? For instance, suppose when they captured your parents—”
“They rescued them,” he snapped.
“When they took them aboard the Hakh’hli ship, then. Suppose your father wasn’t dead. Suppose your mother wasn’t even pregnant. Suppose you weren’t born until early in the return trip, and then something happened to your parents, and they brought you up—”
“Something did happen to my parents. Then the Hakh’hli did bring me up.”
“But you don’t remember anything about Alpha Centauri. So it couldn’t have happened the way they told you, Sandy,” she pointed out.
He was definitely edgy now. He snapped, “What’s your point?”
“Only that they lied to you, Sandy.”
“But that’s silly! There wasn’t any reason for them to lie, was there? Why would they do that?”
And she sighed. “I wish I knew.”
Chapter 14
Good seaports make great cities, but seaports have one inescapable flaw. They are inevitably located at sea level. With the swelling of the oceans New York City has gotten wet. Of the five boroughs the Bronx has suffered the least; the heights around Inwood and Riverdale still stand proud. Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are mostly shallow shoals, apart from the stretches left over from the long glacial ridge, the scrubbings of the last Ice Age, that made their few hills. The island of Manhattan is somewhere in between. Where it rose in hills, even minor ones like Murray Hill, it is still dry. But the Wall Street area is a new Venice. Blue water fills the streets between its skyscrapers. The great bridges rise from water and return to water. Across what used to be the Hudson River—now just a brackish extension of the Lower Bay—the Palisades still tower above the sea, and that is where Hudson City has grown. It has two qualities that make it an important metropolis. One is the salvage industry it supports, for there are treasures still to be rescued from those flooded buildings of downtown New York. The other is sentiment. No former New Yorker could possibly accept a world in which there wasn’t any New York City, even if it had to be in New Jersey.
The blimp landed at Hudson City while Sandy was still asleep. He missed the first sight of what once had been, or once had thought it was, the central city of the human race. He was still bleary eyed as they drove through Hudson to their hotel. Even though he was both sleepy and abstracted, he could not help noticing that Hudson City was orders of magnitude huger and busier than Dawson had been, but the puzzlement in his mind drowned out the curiosity about this huge, human place.
Their quarters weren’t two separate rooms this time. Instead they had a “suite” of three linked rooms, a bedroom apiece and a larger sitting room between. As soon as they were alone Sandy followed Polly into her bedroom to confront her with what Marguery Darp had said.
Predictably, her response was belligerent. “Lie to you?” she cried. “What sort of statement is that? Of course our Major Seniors did not lie to you. Is your mind disordered and not functioning clearly because you are so obsessed with prospect of amphylaxis with that Earth female?”
Sandy made a fist and slammed it against the nearest wall. The wall shook, and Polly giggled in alarm. “Stop talking about me and the Earth female!” he shouted. “Answer the question! What she said was true. I don’t remember the ship visiting that other star. Do you?”
Polly hesitated. “Perhaps not very well,” she admitted. “But what does that prove? Earth people don’t know anything about time dilation, do they? When we get back to the ship you can ask the Major Seniors to clarify your understanding.”
He glared at her. “Who says I’m going back to the ship?”
“Well,” she conceded, “perhaps you are not. I do not know if that has been decided.”
“Perhaps I definitely am not. In any case, who asks the Major Seniors anything?” he growled in English.
“Well, then you can ask ChinTekki-tho by radio. I must call him this morning; when I am finished and not at any earlier time you can speak to him yourself. And speak Hakh’hli to me and not that Earth language,” she finished.
He blinked at her. “What is purpose of that?” he asked, but obeying.
Polly looked sulkily righteous. “You simply have not been using your senses, Lysander. Earth people are observing us at all times. Look in your room. Look here—” She pointed at a lighting fixture in the ceiling. “Do you see that lens? It is a camera. Cameras are in all rooms. I have seen them all along and not now for first time.”
Sandy stared at the tiny, barely visible disk of glass. “Do not look at it so!” Polly ordered. “Do not let them see we have discovered their secrets.”
He looked away. “In all rooms?” he repeated.
“Certainly in all rooms and not just this room,” she said severely. “As you should have observed for yourself. Earth people watch us at every moment, even sleeping. Now you must go away and not return for a twelfth-day—” She paused, consulted her watch, and corrected herself. “For some eighty-five Earth minutes, so that I may speak with ChinTekki-tho in private and not be overheard.”
“Why in private? Why do I have to leave?” Sandy demanded.
“You must leave because you are directed to and not for any other reason,” she said firmly. “Now go. Do not keep the Earth female waiting.”
When Sandy got to the hotel lobby the first thing he saw was Marguery Darp, looking fresh and desirable.
Just the sight of her came close to mending Sandy’s mood, but when he told her that Polly was staying in her room with the radio her expression, too, clouded over. “But Ham Boyle wants to take her to meet some space experts. They need to talk about the conference,” she said. Sandy shrugged. “Well,” she went on, “I suppose that can wait. Everybody’s got Perth on their minds, anyway. Maybe you’d just like me to show you around the city for a while?”
“I am tired of being shown things,” he said bitterly.
She looked at him speculatively. “I guess you got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” she offered.
He said. “I understand that figure of speech. You mean to say that I am in a bad mood. That may be true. It may be that the reason for that is that I am suffering from what is called ‘culture shock.’ There is every reason for that, after all.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Of course there is, Sandy. Well, what would you like? There were some people that wanted to meet you, but I suppose that can wait.” She thought for a moment. “Do you want to go for a walk?”
“Walk where?”
“Anywhere you like. Just around the town, maybe. I’ve got your hat and sunglasses in the car.”
He pursed his lips. “Without being questioned by these people who want to meet me?” he stipulated, and Marguery laughed.
“Sandy, hon,” she said, “it’ll just be the two of us. I won’t promise I won’t ask you any questions, but whether you answer or not, you know—that’s entirely up to you.”
“It is?” he asked, astonished at the thought. “Well, I suppose we could at least try it.” And it was only then that he thought to ask, “What’s ‘Perth’?”
Perth, Marguery reminded him as they strolled through the streets of Hudson City, was a city in Australia, and the reason people had it on their minds was that one 150-ton monster piece of space junk was in the process of deorbiting itself. Unfortunately, its orbit took it right over the city of Perth, in Australia; and since the moment of impact could not be predicted very precisely, the people of Australia were jittery. Which made everyone else jittery.
“I suppose,” he said, as they stopped at a little park that overlooked the swollen river and bay, “that I too am ‘jittery.’ ”
Marguery said comfortably, “You’ll get over it. That’s what’s nice about this place. Looking at large bodies of water is soothing to the nerves.”
“It is?” He considered the thought and decided that it was true that he was feeling more relaxed. He pointed at the skyline across the water. “Is that New York City over there?”
“It’s what’s left of it,” she said. “You can see that parts of it are flooded. They tried diking all around the city when the sea level started to rise, but that only worked for a while. Then the storm surges just came right over the dikes. We can visit it if you like.”