So they disposed of it quickly. They already had Mercy MacDonald’s catalogue of the goods Nordvik wanted to sell them. All they had to do was make a generous estimate of their aggregate value, then double it, then issue enough supplementary script to divide among the people of Slowyear to pay for it all. The only hard part was allocating the proper amount of scrip to each citizen, because the governor thought the most important citizens should be rewarded with extra scrip, and some of the council put forth the idea that lawbreakers, for instance, should be given less. But Blundy argued for flat-equal distribution to every living human on Slowyear, babies and felons included. He carried the day.
“After all,” the governor mused when the vote had been taken, consoling himself for the defeat, “what does it matter? The only thing that’s important is to make the ship people happy.”
And one of the council, shrewdly looking forward to future power changes, said, “Exactly. We’ll call it the Blundy plan, and we can start the distribution tomorrow.”
All that went just as Blundy wished it, but he was dissatisfied. He began to wish for Mercy MacDonald’s return. Not just for her physical company, although there was certainly a sexual interest, but for what she knew. In Blundy’s eyes, Mercy MacDonald was a resource. She had once lived on Earth. Earth was the breeding ground of all politics, and he yearned to ask her for everything she knew.
Where MacDonald was, however, was two hundred-odd kilometers overhead, circling Slowyear nineteen times a day. Twice, after dark, he looked up and was able to pick out the glimmer of Nordvik in its angled orbit. There were shuttles going back and forth, almost every day. There wasn’t any shortage of ship people. More than thirty of them had already come down in one shuttle or another-even in Nordvik’s own shuttle, time-scarred and reentry-heat stained from its long use in so many different parts of the galaxy. (Slowyearians laughed at it-among themselves; they would not be so rude to their guests.) Almost all of the thirty-odd-always excepting Mercy Macdonald-were still on the surface of Slowyear, being feted and entertained by (and entertaining) their hosts.
Blundy did not fail to note that in one particular place there especially was no shortage of ship people, or at least of one ship person. That place was in his own house. It seemed to Blundy that every time he came home Hans Horeger was there before him, sitting under that dumb piece of scrimshaw on the wall, sipping wine with Murra and looking ill at ease when Murra’s husband turned up.
That wasn’t important, either. It certainly didn’t cause Blundy very much annoyance-least of all, jealousy; if there was anything Blundy was sure of, it was that, whatever Horeger was hoping for in his persistent attentions to Murra, Murra was not supplying it.
But still.
Blundy found himself staying out of the house even more than usual. Fortunately he had a lot to keep him busy. He had nearly decided-at least, he had come to the point of thinking seriously about whether he was going to decide-that it would be worth his political while to write something, after all, about Nordvik and its crew, and so he spent a lot of time visiting (“interviewing” was too strong a word) the ship people on Slowyear. That was easy. They were all over, mingling with the natives, looking at everything, curious about everything. They seemed be happy that the Slowyearians were spending their new scrip freely, snapping up almost everything they had to offer without much regard to price-or quality, either, because a lot of the junk Nordvik had hauled from star to star really was junk: old machines that nobody would dream of using any more, “art” that was almost as ugly as Mercy Macdonald’s guest gift, plants that wouldn’t grow on Slowyear and sperm and ova of animals that would certainly die there.
None of them were MacDonald, though. When Blundy, tiring of their company, decided to go back home for lunch it wasn’t to see whether Horeger was there before him.
But of course Horeger was. The only surprising thing was that he wasn’t alone. Their doctor, Megrith, was there, and he looked solemn.
Horeger was looking solemn, too, and even Murra seemed sober. Blundy guessed the reason. “Porly?” he asked, and Megrith nodded.
“He died an hour ago.”
“But let’s not talk about it,” Murra said-as she naturally would, since such subjects as the death of a small child were not only depressing but quite a bore.
Horeger, however, wasn’t smart enough to let it go. He said, sounding sad and sincere, “I feel we’ve let you down, Blundy. I wish we’d had something that helped.”
Murra started to speak, then restrained herself. “I’ll see how lunch is getting on,” she said, getting up.
Megrith responded for all of them. “Well, you didn’t,” he said. “I checked everything in your file myself. Nothing that seems to help with our own situation. Of course, there are plenty of items from way back on Earth. We found entries about all kinds of human prion diseases-kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gerstmann-Straussler syndrome-and the veterinary syndromes, scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, but it’s all old, old stuff. Our own particular variation of the prion syndrome evidently didn’t occur on Earth.”
“Maybe not on any other planet we visited, either,” Horeger said regretfully, “because we dumped most of their data in, too. Where was he?” When Blundy blinked at him, he added, “Porly, I mean. The baby that, ah, passed away.”
“Oh. In the hospital, of course.”
“That’s in the winter city,” Megrith explained. “The hospital’s too much trouble to move with the seasons, with all the equipment and everything. We have aid stations out here, but the real hospital’s in the winter city, up under the hill.”
“I’d like to see that too,” Horeger said thoughtfully. “The whole idea of everybody holing up for the cold weather-that’s interesting.” Then, looking at Blundy, he added, “Mercy would, too. She’s coming back down tomorrow, by the way.”
“How very nice,” Murra said, coming in to announce lunch and speaking for Blundy without looking at him. “Why don’t we all go up there and show you around?”
“I’d love it,” Horeger said, moving toward the table. “I’m sure Mercy would, too. And oh,” he said, sniffing appreciatively, “that does smell good! What is it? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
Blundy didn’t have to invite Mercy Macdonald to tour the winter city. Murra did that for him. As soon as the ship woman had returned to the surface Murra was there at the landing strip, welcoming her back warmly, telling her how much pleasure it would give her and Blundy to show Murra and Hans Horeger around the underground dwellings. Macdonald looked at her strangely, but accepted at once; and the next morning they set out up the hill, all four of them in a tractor cab.
The winter city was set into the side of Winter Hill-“Well, what else would we call it?” Murra said, amused. “Regard it well. It’s where we all live, squeezed in on top of each other, for ten long months every year.” Horeger stared up at the thirty-meter metal tower on top of Winter Hill. “In that? That big metal thing?”
Murra smiled, and Blundy explained. “The tower is just the entrance. The city’s all underground, to conserve heat.
Horeger frowned up at the tower. “But it’s got all those doors,” he said, as of course it had: six great doors, one at each level, of which only the lowest one was open.
“Because of the snow,” Blundy said. “It piles up all winter long, you see. It doesn’t start to melt until New Year’s, so sometimes it gets twenty meters deep here. As it keeps building up we have to switch to a higher door every month or two so as to come out on top of it.”
He halted the tractor at the base of the tower and they got out to look around. Holding her floppy hat against the hilltop breeze, Murra pointed south. “Can you see the pastures over the rim hills there? That’s where we take the sheep to fatten; Blundy can tell you all about that.”
“Yes,” Blundy said, giving his wife a look, “I do go out with the sheep sometimes. It’s taxtime work for me. See, we have to pay part of our taxes in community labor, and-”
But, smiling, Horeger was holding up a hand to stop him. “Yes, I know about taxtime. Murra has explained it all.”
“Well, anyway. . . . I pay the taxes that way because I like it. It gives me a chance to be off by myself-”
“Or with a good friend,” Murra put in amiably.
“Or with a friend, maybe, but pretty much by myself. So I can think. As a matter of fact,” he added, “I’ve decided to go out again with the next flock, maybe in a couple of days.” He didn’t meet the gaze his wife turned on him, but waved to the planted lands down the hill. “That’s all farm. We’re lucky with our farmland here. We always get good crops; there aren’t any native pests, just a few stowaway bugs that sneaked in from Earth on the first landing, and not many of those.”