Godspeed Read online

  * * *

  Just what Paddy Enderton told Mother, I don't know. But a careful walk through the middle of Toltoona, and a slow sail back against the wind, kept me away from the house until lunchtime. When I hurried in Mother was standing at the stove; she said not a word about my lateness.

  Duncan West was sitting with his long legs under the kitchen table. He nodded to me. "Food. A healthy young lad can smell it a mile off."

  Not quite true, but I could certainly smell it now. And I could see it, too, smoking hot and ready to serve. It was my favorite, peppered lake shellfish.

  I went across to join Uncle Duncan.

  "So, Jay," he went on. "How's life for my bold sailor lad?"

  As usual he treated me like a six-year-old, and a none-too-bright one at that. Typical, although before I was ten I'd become sure that Mother was a good deal smarter than Duncan West. She didn't seem to notice, or at least to mind, because he did a lot of repairs around the house and when he was dealing with mechanical things even I admitted that he was unbeatable.

  Fortunately I didn't have to answer, because before I could even sit down Mother was in front of me with a loaded tray.

  "Second sitting for you, Jay. Ten more minutes. If you're going to be an assistant to Mr. Enderton, you can start assisting now. He want to eat in his room. Take this up to him."

  It was another difference from Mother's usual visitors. Everyone in the past had eaten with her, and usually there had been a good deal of talk and laughter and fancy ceremony.

  "Eat in my room, you mean," I said, not quite under my breath. But she did not respond, and I took the tray from her and hurried upstairs. If it was going to be another ten minutes before I could get anything to eat, I could brief Enderton on what I had been doing.

  The door was closed, and with no hand free I banged on it with my elbow.

  "Who's that?" Enderton's voice was gruff and unfriendly.

  "Me. Jay. I'm back."

  "Ah."

  The door opened, a hand grabbed my elbow and dragged me sharply in, and the door slammed behind me.

  All he was wearing above the waist was a sort of leather vest, unbuttoned all the way down the front. It made the power of his arms and shoulders and chest even more obvious. It also showed, running from above his left nipple all the way down to the bottom of his right ribs, a deep, rough-edged scar. The ribs that it crossed were broken and twisted and gnarled in among the thick layers of muscle. The wound, whenever and wherever it had happened, must have healed without medical treatment. It was a wonder that Paddy Enderton had survived.

  But he had, and there was still power in those great hands. He grabbed the tray from me, and at the same time pushed me easily back into a chair.

  "What did you see?" He leaned over me. "Tell it quick."

  I did, but there was not much to tell. I had walked along every street, and into each of the three inns, and nowhere had I seen anything remotely suspicious. There was the occasional sprained ankle, and even a merchant with his arm in a sling, but that was a long way from armless and legless men.

  While I talked, Enderton picked up the tray, ate, and grunted. He ignored all utensils and worked with his hands and teeth, cracking the hard pink shellfish cases casually between thumb and finger, then noisily sucking out the tender white meat.

  "Good enough," he grunted when I was finished. "You sure you covered every street?"

  "Every one in the town."

  "Here, then." He fumbled clumsily in his pocket, and seemed surprised when he came up empty-handed. "I'll pay you later. Tomorrow, I want you to sail across and take the same sort of look at Muldoon Port."

  "If the weather's good," I said, "And if Mother says it's allowed."

  "Mmph."

  That hardly sounded like agreement, but I stood up. I was keen to go back downstairs, and not only because I was hungry. This didn't feel like my room any more, filled as it was with the smell of stale sweat and liquor.

  "She'll say yes." But he stood between me and the door, and he showed no sign of moving. He was breathing heavily, and snorting through his nose. "You may not always see them together, you know. Sometimes they do things separate, quite ordinary things. You have to watch out for each of them. Understand? Each of them."

  I finally realized who he was talking about. "What do they look like?"

  "Why, like each other. Understand? They're brothers, and they were a whole lot alike. More in looks, though, than in behavior. But then there's the accident, see, and one loses his arms, and the other his legs. Understand? Not alike any more. Two years ago, that was, out on Connaught, same place where I got mine." Enderton rubbed at his twisted rib cage, then turned to pick up a half-empty glass of dark liquid from the dresser. He took a big gulp. "We all three got mangled—and we were the lucky ones. We lived. Understand?"

  I said nothing, and he went on with never a pause, "So if you see a man with no legs, that's Stan. Not too bad, he is, compared with the other. But you come and tell me about it anyway. Understand?"

  I understood at least one thing. Paddy Enderton was drunk, dead drunk, more drunk than I had ever seen anyone.

  "But if you see the man with no arms," he went on, snuffling and snorting and rubbing at his tangled beard. "The man with no arms, that's Dan. And then it's God help me."

  He put his hands up to cover his face, and I took the chance to edge around him and to the door. I opened it as quietly as I could, but he heard me, and turned around to grab my arm.

  He pulled me close, and glared into my eyes. "If it's Dan, see, then it's God help me. And it's God help you, Jay Hara. And it's God help everybody. Because nothing else can."

  He released my arm. I stumbled backward through the door and almost fell downstairs.

  His final words followed me. They were just what I needed to put me off my dinner.

  Except that they didn't, not the way they might now, because at that time I didn't know what Dan and Stan were. They were just names.

  And anyway, the food was peppered lake shellfish. I hadn't found anything that could put me off that.

  Not then. I wonder if I would still eat it, knowing what I do now.

  CHAPTER 4

  If there's any place where what I'm saying is likely to get interfered with, I guess that this is it. Because I'm going to be talking about Doctor Eileen Xavier—the same Doctor Eileen who made me start working on telling what happened.

  But before I get to that, let me say that before I knew it, Paddy Enderton had been staying with us for over five weeks.

  I hated having him in the house, and so I think did Mother, although he demanded little enough as a guest. He did not have his meals with us, or go outside for walks, or even bother to clean his room or wash himself. He wouldn't let me or Mother in to clean, either. He seemed to do nothing but sit upstairs, cough and wheeze, make strange drawings that were scattered all over when I took him his meals, and stare out across the lake.

  But he paid, and he paid well. So every few days I went along the shore to Toltoona, mostly in the sailboat unless the weather was rough, and when I got back I reported to Enderton that there was nothing out of the ordinary that I could see. He never thanked me, just nodded in a satisfied sort of way. I felt I was taking his money for nothing, but nothing was apparently what he wanted to hear.

  About once a week, when the wind was right, I sailed all the way across to Muldoon Spaceport and docked there. With funding from Paddy Enderton, Mother had made for me the blue trousers and white jacket of junior service staff. Wearing those I wandered nervously into the restaurants, and soon learned that provided I didn't go into the kitchens, no one paid me the slightest attention.

  After my second visit I became bolder. I broadened my travels to include the repair shops and warehouses and, finally, greatly daring, I went into the launch lounge, where never a launch was to be seen during the day, but where the old retired spacers seemed to spend all their time. There, sitting on the outskirts of those groups and saying n
ot a word, I learned more about space and the Forty Worlds than anyone at Toltoona ever dreamed.

  For Mother and Uncle Duncan, the idea that we had once been part of a great commerce between the stars seemed hardly more than a legend. Even if it's true, Duncan once said to me, what does it matter? There's nothing like that now, is there?

  He was right, of course. Our real world was Erin, and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the Forty Worlds.

  But the spacers could not discard the past so easily. They talked, while I listened open-mouthed, about the great deserted structures that floated free in space out beyond the Gap, beyond the gas giant worlds of Antrim and Tyrone, beyond the Maze. Some of the speakers had visited those empty shells themselves. All of them agreed that no technology on Erin, today or in the past, could have been enough to build those monster habitats. The structures had employed, and now were cannibalized for, elements and alloys hardly known in the Maveen system.

  No doubt about it, said the old spacers. Those structures were built using the Godspeed Drive. And somewhere out there, who knew where, there might be a structure that was not deserted and empty. Somewhere maybe was El Dorado, the Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow, the supply base used by the Godspeeders themselves before, for whatever reason, they ceased to visit the system of the Forty Worlds.

  Which was a great pity, agreed the spacers, because with the Godspeed Drive the stars, even the faint and distant ones, must have been no more than a few days away. The Drive had served ten thousand suns. And the ships at Muldoon Spaceport today, even our best ones, were no more than a faint shadow of the ships that must have wandered the Forty Worlds, a few hundred years ago.

  I had never in my life heard anything half so interesting. After my second visit I spent almost all my time sitting in the launch lounge. It's a good thing that Paddy Enderton had no way to check on me, because there could have been armless and legless men by the dozen wandering around the rest of Muldoon Spaceport, and I would never have known it.

  My sail home became later and later, as the season moved steadily on toward winter. On my fifth trip across, Muldoon Port was more packed with newly arrived spacers than it had ever been. The place had the atmosphere of one giant reunion party. I could hardly bear to leave, and I stayed there until after dark. But I paid for it on the journey home, when I shuddered and shivered all the way back. It was not just the cold. The squalls that ripped the lake's surface twice came close to capsizing me. By the time that I tied up the sailboat at our home pier, I had decided that this must be my last trip across Lake Sheelin.

  That was a great shame, because for the first time in my life I had money. It was hidden away in a bag beneath my bed. Paddy Enderton was often late now in paying Mother, but never in paying me. Usually it was cash, but sometimes other things—a little timepiece, that showed the passage of hours and days for a place that was clearly not Erin, or a tube that I could place on my skin and see the pattern of veins and sinews and even individual cells, deep inside.

  It would sadden me to give up more of these wonders, but it had to be done. I headed up the path, where a thin film of ice was already forming on the puddles. I intended to tell Paddy Enderton that I could not cross the lake again until the spring.

  But although he was in his room, he was already asleep when I sneaked upstairs. Through the locked door I could hear him snoring and wheezing, with a rattle in his chest that was sounding worse and worse as the weather grew colder.

  No matter, I thought. I would tell him first thing in the morning.

  But next morning, before Paddy Enderton and Mother were up and about, Doctor Eileen paid a visit.

  * * *

  The day dawned late, under heavy grey skies. With it came the first real snow of winter, drifting down in big, soft flakes. It made perfect snowballs. I went outside, throwing the icy spheres at trees and birds and bushes, and laughing at our tame miniver, Chum. He was a bit witless, and he didn't understand the game. He tried to catch everything in his mouth, and he was scooting around looking a bit like an oversized snowball himself when Doctor Eileen's car came floating in along the northern path.

  I pretended that I was going to chuck one at her when she turned off the engine and got out of the little runabout. She stood her ground and faced me down, grinning out from the fur hood that muffled her so only eyes to mouth were visible.

  "I don't know about you," she said, "but I've been up all night. I decided to cadge something hot from Molly on my way home. Your mother up yet?"

  It was her first visit for a few months. Doctor Eileen's patients were scattered over a big area west of Lake Sheelin, the "poor side," as she called it, and when she had been working to the north of us she had the habit of dropping in unannounced. The official reason was to perform a routine check on my health and Mother's, but I thought that was a waste of time, because it seemed to me that both of us were healthy as ticks. The real reason, I decided, was that Mother and Doctor Eileen got on well, and liked to sit and talk. And talk and talk.

  But now I have to take a break, and point out that when I sat down to describe the quest for the Godspeed Drive, it was Doctor Eileen herself who told me that I must not take anything for granted. I had to describe everything, she said, people and places and things, even ones so familiar to me that I had never really looked at them before. In fact, especially ones that I had never really looked at before.

  So she can hardly object when I apply that rule to her.

  I don't remember a time when I did not know Doctor Eileen Xavier. She had been prodding and poking and making me say "Ah" since I was an infant, and probably before that. I thought of her as big, but she wasn't. By the time I was twelve, we were eye to eye. She was little and old, with a brown, wrinkled face that somehow stayed tanned summer and winter, and she was sort of roly-poly, a little bent forward and kind of thick through the middle. She was not strong, not in the way that people usually mean, like lifting things, but I had never seen her tired, even when she rolled up at our house after a day and a half on the road.

  What she was, she was there, at all hours and in all weathers, whenever people needed a doctor. Mother said there wasn't a man or woman within thirty miles of Toltoona who wouldn't give Doctor Eileen anything they owned if she asked for it.

  So there was never a question, on that brisk, snowy morning, that I would take Doctor Eileen into the kitchen without consulting anyone, set her cold outer clothes to warm and dry, and give her hot cakes and a mug of sugary tea, the way she liked it. And only after that did I start upstairs to tell Mother that she was here.

  "What is that?" said Doctor Eileen, before I could set my foot on the first step.

  I had to listen for a moment before I knew what she was talking about. I had become so used to it, that awful lung-collapsing cough.

  "It's Mr. Enderton," I said. "He always sounds like that when he first gets up. I think it's the cold air. It gets to him."

  The front bedroom, looking out over the lake, did not benefit much from the house's heating. It was always freezing in winter. I hadn't said anything to Mother, but as the weather became colder and colder, my objections to sleeping in the guest room were less and less.

  "I'll tell Mother you're here," I went on. But before I could stop her, Doctor Eileen was stumping up the stairs behind me, her mug of tea still in her hand.

  "I'm going to take a look at him," she said. She reached the top of the stairs, set her mug on the landing rail, and started toward the guest bedroom.

  "Not that way." I grabbed her sleeve. "He's in my room."

  That earned a quick, questioning look, then she had turned and was moving to bang on Paddy Enderton's door.

  "Who is it?" The coughing had stopped for the moment, but his voice was a husky croak.

  "This is Doctor Xavier. I'd like to take a look at you."

  "I don't want no doctor." But the lock was being turned, and after a couple of seconds the door opened. Paddy Enderton peered out. He looked even worse than usual,
face pale as chalk but eyes bloodshot and lips purple-red.

  He glared at Doctor Eileen. "I don't want no doctor," he repeated, but then he started to cough again, in a fit that doubled him over and left him groping at the wall to support himself.

  Doctor Eileen took the opportunity to advance into the room. "You may not want a doctor, but you need one. Sit down, and I'll examine you."

  "No, damn it, you won't." Enderton was recovering from his attack and straightening up. He knotted his fists. "I'm doing fine, and I don't want any old woman in here, doctor or not. Get the hell out."

  His eyes flicked across the room, and I followed his glance. The big box that usually sat closed and locked had been opened, and a lattice of dark-blue tubes and bars stood next to the window. Enderton took a step to the right, so that his body was between Doctor Eileen and the blue structure, then he slowly moved closer to her. "Out of my room."

  She stood her ground. "I can't examine a man who refuses to be looked at. But I'll tell you this. The weather here is going to get colder and colder for the next four months, and if you don't seek medical treatment you're going to be flat on your back before spring arrives. And that's not the worst that might happen to you."

  He grunted, deep in his chest, and shook his tangled bird's-nest of dirty hair. "I won't be here for any four months. And you don't know the worst that could happen to me. How I feel is my business. Get out of here."

  "Molly Hara knows how to get in touch with me if you need me," said Doctor Eileen, as she turned and urged me back through the doorway. "Only make that when you need me. If you've not spent a winter by Lake Sheelin, you have an experience coming to you."

  The door slammed behind us. The lock went into position, violently. And before either Doctor Eileen or I could say a word to each other, Mother came hurrying along the landing.

  "You've hit a new low, Molly," Doctor Eileen said, byway of a greeting. It was as though the two of them were continuing a conversation from an hour before, but Mother just laughed and said, "With that one? Never in this world—or any other. Come on in, and bring your tea with you."