The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

“And then you would’ve resented me. No, this may not be the best way, but it’s the only way.”

He pulled her to him to kiss her, but she gave him her cheek.

“Goodbye, Peter.”

“I won’t forget you.”

“A lot of good that’ll do us,” she said, and she walked away.

Peter went back under the roof. People crowded around to con­gratulate him. He didn’t feel happy. Eve had upset him, and he felt uncomfortable when he was the focus of public attention. Then Bullitt was shaking his hand.

“We’ll be sorry to see you go, Frigate,” he said. “You’ve been a model citizen. However, there is one thing.”

He turned to the sergeant-at-arms next to him and said, “Mr. Armstrong, please confiscate Mr. Frigate’s weapons.”

Peter did not protest, since he had sworn to give them up if he quit Ruritania. However, he had not given his word not to steal them back. Early that morning, while it was still dark, he did just that.

He told himself that he had put in too much labor making the weapons to give them up. Besides, he had been wounded once in the service of this state. Ruritania owed him those weapons.

He had not gotten more than a kilometer up The River when he felt like going back and surrendering the weapons. That fit of honesty lasted for a day, and then he was cured.

Or he thought that he was! The recurring dream came back again. This time it progressed past the point where he was standing naked outside the house. He threw pebbles against the window of the bedroom but repeated casts failed to wake Roosevelt. He went around trying the doors and windows, and when he got to the front door, he found it unlocked. He crept in through the front room, into the small kitchen, and he took the two steps needed to get to the door opposite the bathroom. This led up a steep stairway to the attic, a section of which had been made into a tiny bedroom. He would have to go slowly, walking on the ends of the steps. They squeaked abominably if he stepped in their middle.

It was then that he saw that the doors to his parents’ bedroom and the younger children’s were open. Moonlight came in. (Never mind that it had been dawn just as he opened the front door. This was a dream.) By its bright light he saw that his parents’ big old-fashioned brass bed was empty. And so was his little sister’s. He looked around the corner and saw that the bunkbeds of Mungo and James, Junior were also deserted.

Nor was Roosevelt in his bed.

In a panic, he looked out the back window. The doghouse in the backyard was empty.

Everybody, even the dog, had gone off without a word.

What nameless crime had he committed?

32

“The training blimp will be completed within a month,” Firebrass said. “Jill Gulbirra is the most experienced aeronaut by far, so she’ll take charge of the training. In fact, I’m making her captain of the trainer. How about that, Jill? If you can’t be com­mander of the big ship, you will be unchallenged chief honcho of the little one. Don’t ever say I never did anything for you.”

The other men offered her their congratulations, though some did so sourly. Cyrano seemed genuinely delighted, and if he had not been aware of her dislike for being touched, would doubtless have embraced her tightly and kissed her. On impulse, Jill pulled him to her and gave him a quick hug. After all, he was trying to make up for his offensive behavior on the Riverbank.

Twenty minutes later, she, Firebrass, Messnet, Piscator, and ten engineers began working on the blueprints for the big airship. The specifications had been determined during three weeks of hard work, usually twelve to fourteen hours a day. Instead of drawing lines on paper, however, they made blueprints on the cathode-ray tube of a computer. This was much faster, mistakes or alterations were erased quickly, and the computer itself double-checked the proportions. Of course, the computer had to be programmed first, and Jill participated in this. She loved this sort of work. It was creative and gave her a chance to play with mathematical relations.