“Maybe.”
“And a bar is a good place to meet people.”
And mostly you just can’t wait to see him. A man who’ll be twice your age while you’re still young. Do you love him or hate him?
“I . . .” She paused and ran a hand over her hair. “I don’t know; he just didn’t make the rendezvous in time, they were closing in, and . . .” A shrug.
Jonah linked hands behind his head. “I still say it’s damned iffy but I guess it’s the best chance we have; I certainly don’t want to give the gangsters another location to find us at. I guess it’s the best chance we have. At least we’ll be able to get a drink.”
Chapter 4
“This is supposed to be a Terran bar?” Jonah asked dubiously. He lifted one of the greenish shrimpoids from the platter and clumsily shelled it, got a thin cut under his thumbnail, and sucked on it, cursing. There was a holo of a stick-thin girl with body paint dancing in a cage over the bar, and dancing couples and groups beneath it; most of the tables were cheek-to-jowl, and they had had to pay heavily for one with a shield, here overlooking the lower level of the club.
Ingrid ignored him, focusing on the knot in her stomach and the clammy feel of nervous sweat across her shoulders under the formal low-necked black jumpsuit. Harold’s Terran Bar was crowded tonight, and the entrance-fee had been stiff. The verguuz was excellent, however, and she sipped cautiously, welcoming the familiar mint-sweet-wham taste. The imitations in the Sol system never quite measured up. Shuddering, she noticed that two Swarm-Belter types at the next table were knocking back shot glasses of it, and then following the liqueur with beer chasers, in a mixture of extravagance and reckless disregard for their digestions. The squarebuilt Krio at the musicomp was tinkling out something old-sounding, piano with muted saxophone undertones.
Gottdamn, but that takes me back.
Claude had had an enormous collection of classical music, expensively enhanced stuff originally recorded on Earth, some of it on hardcopy or analog disks. His grandfather had acquired it, one of the eccentricities that had ruined the Montferrat-Palme fortunes. A silver-chased ebony box as big as a man’s head, with a marvelous projection system. All the ancient greats, Brahms and Mozart and Jagger and Armstrong . . . They had all spent hours up in his miserable little attic, knocking back cheap Maivin and playing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or Sympathy for the Devil loud enough to bring hammering broomstick protests from the people below. . . .
Gottdamn, it is him, she thought, with a sudden flare of determination.
“Jonah,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. “This is too public, and we can’t just wait for him. It’s . . . likely to be something of a shock, you know? That musician, I knew him back when too. I’ll get him to call through directly, it’ll be faster.”
The Sol-Belter nodded tightly; she squeezed the forearm before she rose. In space or trying to penetrate an infosystem, rank and skill both made him the leader, but here the mission and his life were both dependent on her. On her contacts, decades old here, and severed in no friendly wise.
Ingrid moistened her lips; Sam had been on the edge of their circle of friends, and confronting him would be difficult enough, much less Harold . . . She wiped palms down her slacks and walked over to the musicomp; it was a handsome legged model in Svarterwood with a beautiful point resonator, and a damper field to ensure that nothing came from the area around it but the product of the keyboard.
“G’tag, Sam,” she said, standing by one side of the Instrument. “Still picking them out, I see.”
“Fra?” he said, looking up at her with the dignified politeness of a well-raised Krio country-boy. The face was familiar, but one side of it was immobile; she recognized the signs of a rushed reconstruction job, the type they did after severe nerve-damage in the surface tissues.
“Well, I haven’t changed that much, Sam. Remember Graduation Night, and that singalong we all had by the Founders?”
His features changed, from the surface smoothness of a well-trained professional to a shock so profound that the living tissue went as rigid as the dead. “Fra Raines,” he whispered. The skilled hands continued over the musicomp’s surface, but the tune had changed without conscious intent. He winced and hesitated, but she put a hand on his shoulder.
“No, keep playing, Sam.
“Remember me and you
And you and me
Together forever
I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you—
For all my life—”
The musician shook his head. “The boss doesn’t like me to play that one, Fra Raines,” he said. “It reminds him, well, you’d know.”
“I know, Sam. But this is bigger than any of us, and it means we can’t let the past sleep in its grave. Call him, tell him we’re waiting.”
“Mr. Yarthkin?” the voice asked.
He had been leaning a shoulder against one wall of the inner room, watching the roulette table. The smoke in here was even denser than by the front bar, and the ornamental fans made patterns and traceries through the blue mist. Walls were set for a space scene, a holo of Jupiter taken from near orbit on one side and Wunderland on the other. Beyond them the stars were hard glitters, pinpoints of colored light receding into infinity, infinitely out of reach. Yarthkin dropped his eyes to the table. The ventilation system was too good to carry the odor of the sweat that gleamed on the hungrily intent faces. . . .
Another escape, he thought. Like the religious revivals, and the nostalgia craze; even the feverish corruption and pursuit of wealth. A distraction.
“Herrenmann Yarthkin-Schotmann?” the voice asked again, and a hand touched his elbow.
He looked down, into a girl’s face framed in a black kerchief. Repurified Amish, by the long drab dress. Well-to-do, by the excellent material; many of that sect were. Wunderland had never relied much on synthetic foods, and the Herrenmen estates had used the Amish extensively as subtenants. They had flourished, particularly since the kzin came and agricultural machinery grew still scarcer . . . That was ending now, of course.
“No ‘Herrenmann,’ sweetheart,” he said gently. She was obviously terrified, this would be a den of Satan by her folks’ teaching. “Just Harold, or Mr. Yarthkin if you’d rather. What can I do for you?”
She clasped her gloved hands together, a frown on the delicately pretty features and a wisp of blond hair escaping from her scarf and bonnet. “Oh . . . I was wondering if you could give me some advice, please, Mr. Yarthkin. Everyone says you know what goes on in Munchen.” He heard the horror in her voice as she named the city, probably from a lifetime of hearing it from the pulpit followed by “Whore of Babylon” or some such.
“Advice I provide free,” he said neutrally. Shut up, he added to his mind. There’s thousands more in trouble just as bad as hers. None of your business.
“Wilhelm and I,” she began, and then halted to search for words. Yarthkin’s eyes flicked up to a dark-clad young man with a fringe of beard around his face sitting at the roulette table. Sitting slumped, placing his chits with mechanical despair.
“Wilhelm and I, we lost the farm.” She put a hand to her eyes. “It wasn’t his fault, we both worked so hard . . . but the kzin, they took the estate where we were tenants and . . .”
Yarthkin nodded. Kzin took a lot of feeding. And they would not willingly eat grain-fed meat; they wanted lean range beasts. More kzin estates meant less work for humans, and what there was was in menial positions, not the big tenant holdings for mixed farming that the Herrenmen had preferred. Farmholders reduced to beggary, or to an outlaw existence that ended in a kzin hunt.
“Your church wouldn’t help?” he said. The Amish were a close-knit breed.
“They found new positions for our workers, but the bishop, the bishop said Wilhelm . . . that there was no money to buy him a new tenancy, that he should humble himself and take work as a foreman and pray for forgiveness.” Repurified Amish thought that worldly failure was punishment for sin. “Wilhelm, Wilhelm is a good man, I told him to listen to the bishop, but he cursed him to his face, and now we are shunned.” She paused. “Things, things are very bad there now. It is no place to live or raise children, with food so scarce and many families crowded together.”
“Sweetheart, this isn’t a charitable institution,” Yarthkin said warily.
“No, Mr. Yarthkin.” She drew herself up and wrapped pride around herself like a cloak. “We had some money, we sold everything, the stock and tools. Swarm Agrobiotics offered Wilhelm and me a place—they are terraforming new farm-asteroids. With what they pay we could afford to buy a new tenancy after a few years.” He nodded. The Swarm’s population was growing by leaps and bounds, and it was cheaper to grow than synthesize, but skilled dirt-farmers were rare. “But we must be there soon, and there are so many difficulties with the papers.”