Patti wrestled inwardly for a few seconds more, then gave up with a sigh. She looked around instinctively to make sure no one was within hearing. “I’m not promising.”
“I never asked you to. Just see what you can do.”
“What’s the name?”
Kieran took one of his cards and wrote Elaine on the back, and the dates in question. For good measure, and just in case he was mistaken in his guess, he added Leonard Sarda too. “Either of them,” he said. “Call the number on the other side if you come up with anything.”
Patti took the card, glanced at it quickly, and put it away in a pocket of her shorts. Guinness looked up at her and thumped his tail trustingly in a way that told her he knew she’d do what she could.
* * *
When Kieran checked with Sarda later, the problem had been getting worse. Charges that he knew nothing about had been mounting on various of Sarda’s accounts. On trying to use one of his cards, he had been told he’d instructed its cancellation and replacement that morning. The bank was beginning to doubt his stability. He couldn’t make an issue of it for fear of stories getting out that might adversely affect confidence in the project.
13
June looked at Kieran reproachfully over the dinner dishes on the table in the apartment. “You used Guinness? What a deplorable debaser of young innocents you turn out to be. You’ll be pimping next.”
“Shameless,” Kieran agreed shamelessly. “Although I think the demand on Mars must be pretty near saturated already. Ah well, not to worry. Now I can always be a geologist.” He had summarized his conversation with Trevany and the work that his team was engaged in.
“What do you think of all these different accounts we get of what happened to Earth twelve thousand years ago—and now Mars, by the sound of it?” June asked him. “I’ve heard, let’s see . . . the giant-comet-that-became-Venus theory; the some-other-comet-but-not-Venus theory; wobbling crust; unbalanced ice caps; war between alien visitors; ancient civilization that screwed up in a big way . . . And I’m sure there are more. Which one do you subscribe to? Any?”
“They’re like religions: I love ’em all.” Kieran emptied the last of the wine into their glasses. “Diversity is a sign of health and vigor. It’s appropriate to the way things are happening out here. Obsession with conformity in everything, and trying to impose it—that was what stifled Earth.”
They collected their glasses and took them over to sprawl facing each other from opposite ends of the couch, legs intertwined comfortably. “So how’s Mahom these days?” June inquired.
“Still in one piece, strangely enough. He’s got a whole arsenal out back there. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s made customers out of those heavies who tried to put the squeeze on him a while back.”
June took a drink. “So what do you think of the Kodiak?”
“Impressed. I’ll be interested to see this new range from Luna that he talked about. . . . The only thing, though, it looked blue. But when you get out in the sun it’s more of a hideous French-hooker-panties color—kind of a dark purple.”
“And how would you know what color panties French hookers wear?” June asked.
“Purely by repute. Didn’t you know? In any case, I’m extraordinarily well and widely read.”
“I heard somewhere that there isn’t a word in English that rhymes with purple,” June said distantly.
“Nonsense. A modicum of ingenuity and erudition produces rhymes with anything,” Kieran assured her.
“Go on, then. Give me one,” June challenged.
Kieran lifted his glass to hold it poised between fingertips, contemplated it with a faraway expression for some seconds, then looked up and offered:
“When you’re choking, turning purple
A hearty slap and one good burp’ll
Usually fix it.”
“Kieran, you’re impossible,” June sighed. “Okay, they say the same thing about `silver’ too. I bet—” A tone from Kieran’s comset interrupted.
“Always, just when you’ve gotten comfortable.” He got up from the couch and crossed to the breakfast bar, where he had put the unit. “Hello?”
“Hello? Is this Kieran Thane?”