He wasn’t in the datastore room, wasn’t even with Betsy arap Dee, who was back in her own room dreamily changing into more interesting clothes. MacDonald finally found all three of the Slowyear people together, hanging onto wall holds and talking quietly together. For a moment she thought they might not want to be interrupted, but as soon as Blundy caught sight of her he beckoned her over.
“I thought you could take my blood sample now,” she explained to Gowen, holding out her wrist. The girl, Petoyne, sniffed at that, but Gowen immediately dug into his pouch and pulled out a tiny syringe. It didn’t hurt. It only took a second-long enough to pull a thin streak of red into an ampoule-but also long enough for Petoyne to turn away in a marked manner and leave.
“Gowen’ll put your sample in a culture box,” Blundy explained. “By the time we land we’ll know for sure if you have to go into quarantine or anything. But you look pretty healthy to me.”
She smiled back at him, but said, “Are you sure I should go on the first trip? That girl didn’t look as though she wanted me to.”
“Oh,” he said dismissively, “Petoyne. Don’t worry about Petoyne. Pack a bag, and don’t be too long, please-you don’t want to miss the flight!”
She didn’t, though. Didn’t pack just one bag; at least, did pack one, and then bit her thumb for a moment, and went on to pack a second, and a third, until everything she really wanted to preserve of all her life to date was packed.
It took up more space in the shuttle than she had planned, but Blundy only grinned and, although Hans Horeger certainly saw it and was not pleased at all, his wife, who was complaining about being left on the ship, was a more immediate problem for him. And then they were inside, and the hatches were closed, and they were on their way.
.4e
Chapter 6
Not even Murra stayed home on the day the first shuttle came back from the ship. She dressed herself in her prettiest robes and perfumed herself with an extra bit of her special (if no longer unique) essence, since she would be outdoors. Before leaving the house she studied herself in the mirror for several minutes. Then, regretfully, she took off the pretty bugsilk slippers that became her feet so well and replaced them with sheepskin half-boots. The boots were beautifully ornamented of course, but so rugged. She didn’t have any choice about that. Practicality had to triumph over looks because, even though warmspring had begun to dry out the landscape, there would surely be mud and puddles near the landing strip.
There were. She was lucky enough to get a ride up the slope on a flatbed. Although it was packed she wasn’t refused, since everyone was kind enough to make room for Blundy’s Murra. The landing strip was on the far side of the pass, five kilometers of meadow bulldozed flat, and at least five thousand other people had already gathered there. Scores of armbanded marshals were herding them behind a roped line away from the stirp itself, but even the marshals were looking up half the time in the hope of catching a glimpse of the shuttle through the clouds. Heaven knew how many thousand others were up in the hills, watching with binoculars or simply their unaided eyes. Everybody was bouncing with anticipation. Children ran and shouted. Vendors were all through the crowd, selling cold drinks and sandwiches.
There was a scream from the sky. Five thousand heads jerked back, and voices began to shout: “I see it. There it is! It’s coming!”
Then, squinting, Murra saw it too-first the thread-thin snowy plume that followed the shuttle, then the glint of the spacecraft itself. It was high overhead, passing beyond them to the east, then banking sharply and turning back.
When at last it landed Murra thought she had never seen anything moving so fast-as indeed she hadn’t; it was going a good hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, even with its flaps and airbrakes extended. But it settled on the strip cleverly enough, though sudden spurts of smoke and dust puffed up as its tires touched. It rolled away, long away-far down the strip, until it was only a toylike thing.
Then the marshals gave up trying to keep order. The crowds burst through, running toward the shuttle. At the end of the strip a waiting tractor backed itself into position to snag the towring in the shuttle’s nose and begin to drag it back toward the sheds.
Murra spared herself that silly scramble. She knew perfectly well that it would be nearly half an hour before the shuttle was in position and had cooled off enough for the hatches to be opened. She waited. She planted herself where the movable stairs were ready to be rolled into position, bought an ice for a vendor-who almost forgot to take her money, she was so intent on staring down the runway-and allowed the whole procession to come to her. When everybody had come drifting back, pacing the slowly dragged shuttle itself, Murra was in the front row, neatly finishing the last of her ice.
Even then, even there, nearly everybody recognized Murra. While they waited for the shuttle to finish its cooling process, crackling and pinging alarmingly as it did, people took time to smile at her, and nod. She accepted their attention as graciously as always. It didn’t particularly please her; it simply would have puzzled her if it had been withheld. When at last the handlers pushed the rolling stairs to the hatch and it opened Murra did not join in the cheering. She was there, though. She was right there to see Blundy and Petoyne appear in the doorway with a couple of strangers, strutty little man and dark, middle-aged woman; and she only had to see the woman once to see what she saw. As soon as they came down she was right at the foot of the stairs, gracefully moving up between the woman and Blundy to kiss him. “I’m so glad to have you back, my very dearest,” she said, marking out her claim, “and I hope you’ve remembered to invite your friends to dine with us tomorrow night. Her too,” she said, gazing benignly at Petoyne.
Murra saw rather little of her husband that day, or at least not at close range. He was frequently on the news screen, of course: taking the visitors to see the governor, showing the visitors around the summer city, standing with the visitors as they were welcomed, and welcomed, and welcomed. No, actually she saw quite a lot of Blundy that day, and it pleased her that she saw him as she did because so did everyone else on Slowyear.
It was less pleasing, though, because it was never Blundy alone she saw on the screen but always Blundy plus that foolish little Petoyne, and Blundy with that rather unattractive starship woman who would, Murra was resignedly certain, be the next Petoyne in Blundy’s life . . . for a time.
By the time Blundy got home that night he was too tired to talk, or said he was. She had expected as much. Anyway, as she certainly had expected, he slept that night where he belonged, next to her side. He didn’t talk in the morning, either, because as soon as he was awake he was out, muttering excuses, no time, so much to do; but that was all right, too, because the dinner was a fixture for that night.
In a whole marriage’s worth of arranging pleasing dinners for Blundy she was determined this would be the grandest and best. Everything would have to be perfect; so to beging with Murra called in the cleaners as soon as he was out of the house, and informed her cooker that he would be needed by noon at the latest to start preparing the meal. Then, content that that much was well in hand, she allowed herself to go shopping.
The shopping was for food, she told herself. But although there were plenty of food stores nearer than the central marketplace, that was where she went. That was where everyone else went, too, because the second shuttle, this one the starship’s own, had landed at daybreak, and the people from the ship were already setting up their displays.
Of course, there weren’t any actual goods there; those were already in the sheds by the landing strip. What the ship people had were a dozen or so video displays to show the catalogue of their wares. One screen was showing a succession of industrial-looking machines, another household appliances, a third plants of many kinds, from tiny baby’s-breath blossoms to giant redwoods, a fourth animals. It was hard to see individuals in the press around the displays, but a short, sallow man stranger at one of the booths came forward to greet her. “Mrs., ah, Blundy, isn’t it?” he asked, and she recognized the man she had invited to dinner.