Godspeed Read online

  They went straight into Mother's room and closed the door, leaving me alone on the landing.

  I could have gone downstairs, and back out into the snow. If it hadn't been for Paddy Enderton, I probably would have done. But his face had been full of anger, and I was afraid that he would follow me outside and blame me for telling Doctor Eileen that he was there. I didn't want to be alone with him.

  I sneaked into my bedroom, the one that used to be the guest room, and closed the door as quietly as possible. Just a few seconds later I heard Enderton's door open, and his heavy tread on the landing and the stairs.

  There was only the one way down. I was stuck. I settled on my bed, ready to stay there until I heard him come back up. It might not take long. Maybe all he wanted was a hot drink, to which he could add from his own supply of liquor. That was his usual breakfast these days.

  In the next room, Mother and Doctor Eileen were talking together. That was nothing new, it was all they seemed to do when they met. What was a surprise was the ease with which someone in the guest bedroom could hear every word that they said.

  "Fine. Now let's do the back." That was Doctor Eileen. "Breathe deep, and slow."

  "You'll find nothing, you know."

  "I should hope not. You're healthy enough, Molly. Not that you do much to make sure you stay that way."

  "I eat right." There was the sighing sound of a long, forced breath. "I get plenty of sleep. And those stairs are more than enough exercise."

  "I'm not talking about that sort of thing, and you know it. I'm talking about that sort of thing."

  I couldn't see what she had done, but Mother laughed and said, "With that one? I told you, not in a million years. Not for a Pot of Gold."

  "I'm glad to hear it. But it's a first." There were a few seconds of relative silence, with only the sound of Mother's deep breathing, then Doctor Eileen went on, "It's terribly dangerous, you know, taking on all comers the way you've been doing."

  "Don't be horrible. I've never done that. I'm very careful." Breath. "I've only ever had the one accident, and looking back I'm not sure how much of an accident it was. You'd have loved him, Eileen." Breath. "Anyway, it worked out all right, didn't it?"

  "Better than all right. Unless you're the odd sort that thinks everybody needs a father. But Molly, I'm not talking that sort of danger, and you know it. What about diseases?"

  "That's why you're here, Eileen."

  "For the local ailments, yes. But I'm not thinking of them. There's a thousand viruses to be picked up around the Forty Worlds, and brought back here by the spacers."

  "You think that maybe Paddy Enderton—the man in the front room—"

  "Oh, I wasn't referring to him. What he has sounds like ordinary spacer lungs, aggravated by a bad injury. He's in awful shape, but I'm worrying about something a lot worse. The viruses I'm talking about, we'll never have met them before. And you can bet that the nanos available here won't touch them. If you don't worry about yourself, you ought to worry about Jay."

  I goosebumped all over, the way you do when you hear your own name and were least expecting it.

  "He's not been sick for years," said Mother.

  "Not in a way that you'd recognize. But Molly, how old is he?"

  "Just sixteen. His birthday was last month."

  "Sixteen. Do you see any signs of the change in him?"

  "Puberty, you mean? Not yet. But is that unusual?"

  "It isn't." And now it was Doctor Eileen's turn to sigh. "I see it all the time in my rounds. Boys who reach sixteen, or seventeen, or eighteen, and don't mature sexually. But it shouldn't be like that. And it wasn't, fifty years ago."

  "I've never known it different."

  "Well, I have. I remember it. And I've seen the old medical records, too, from a hundred and two hundred years ago. They're still kept, you know, over in Middletown on the eastern shore. It used to be that most boys reached puberty by the time they were twelve. And did you know there were as many girls born as boys?"

  Mother's reaction to that was of course invisible, but I know the effect it had on me. As many girls as boys. I knew scores and scores of boys, and just three girls. And I hardly knew those three, because instead of going to the local school with us boys they were kept coddled indoors all the time. They were never allowed out, to play or fish or wander along the shore of the lake.

  "But why is that?" Mother was saying.

  "I wish I knew. It's something to do with this damned planet, I'm sure of that."

  "I thought you loved Erin."

  "I do. But not enough to make me blind."

  "Why would it start to happen now, and not hundreds of years ago?"

  "Because we're isolated. When there was the Godspeed Drive—"

  "Not that again, Eileen."

  "Hiding from the truth won't make the problem go away, Molly, even if everybody does it. There used to be a steady flow of materials into Erin, from a hundred different worlds. There were plants and animals and food and supplies, arriving here every day. With that, humans and Erin fitted just fine. But we're isolated now, and have been for centuries, except for bits and pieces coming in from the Forty Worlds. And that's bad news. Human biochemistry and native Erin biology, I don't think they fit. Close, but not quite. And it makes me worry for our future, a century or two from now. People used to live a lot longer than they do, did you know that? Thirty or forty years longer. I don't know if it's missing trace elements in the food, or diet deficiencies, or toxins, or something in the air of Erin—"

  It was an unusually long and serious statement for Doctor Eileen, but I missed the end of it, for the clatter of Paddy Enderton's footsteps was again on the stairs. I listened carefully. He walked slowly along the landing, then halted. After a long and mysterious pause there came at last the sound of his door opening and closing.

  I stood up. Back in Mother's bedroom, the conversation had turned to the idea that I ought to be made to eat more green vegetables. I made a face at the closed door. I already ate more of them than seemed decent.

  It was the time, snow or no snow, to make a run for Toltoona. When I got back Paddy Enderton ought to have calmed down, especially when I brought to him the "no news" that he regarded as good news.

  I still think it was a reasonable idea. Except that when I opened the door and sneaked out onto the landing, Paddy Enderton was there waiting, standing in his stockinged feet.

  One great hand closed around my upper arm, and the other went over my mouth. He leaned to me, so that his mouth was only an inch from my ear.

  "Not a sound, now, Jay Hara," he said in a growling whisper. "You and I are going to have a bit of a talk. And don't try to fight, or I'll have to hurt you."

  He was hurting me already. But I kept that to myself, as we shuffled along to his room.

  His door opened, and closed again. This time, I was on the wrong side of it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Enderton sat me down on his unmade bed and dragged a chair over so that we sat staring at each other, a couple of feet apart.

  "The woman." He had no knife or other weapon, but I knew that with those hands he did not need one. "Who is she, and why did you bring her to my room?"

  I quailed, and told him. I explained that Doctor Eileen Xavier was an old friend of the family, who never mentioned in advance that she was coming to see Mother. There had been no chance to warn him.

  After I had said that I just kept going, blurting out anything and everything I knew about Doctor Eileen. All the time that I was babbling he sat fidgety in his seat, never still. I saw his eyes flickering from me, to the window where the silent snow was still falling, to the locked door, to the odd skeleton of blue struts that faced out across the lake. He was drinking, too, replenishing a dirty glass with colorless liquid from an unlabeled bottle.

  "She saw too much," he said, when I was finished. He wiped his mouth with his grubby hand. "If I thought that she might . . . The question is, will she talk? Where does she live?"

 
; "South of here, along the lake shore just past Toltoona. Doctor Eileen's not one for talking." Except to Mother, I felt like adding, but instead I said, "What do you mean, she saw too much?"

  He stared at me for a long time, while I hardly dared to breathe. "Well," he said at last. "It's like this, Jay."

  There was a quietness to his voice that I had never heard before, as he went on, "You're a smart lad, and conscientious, and I've come to rely on you a lot in these past weeks. And I've been good to you, or tried to, and I hope you know it. But I'd like to be better yet. Because I can see the day coming, not too many years from now, when Jay Hara will be known as the finest spacer that ever lifted off Erin. And when that day comes, I'd like Jay Hara to be able to say that him and Paddy Enderton were friends, and partners."

  I didn't know how to answer, what with the insincerity oozing out of every pore of his big, sweaty face. But I didn't have to speak, because he had another spasm of coughing, then went on, "Partners, is it then? You and me. I'll treat you like a partner, too. There isn't a boy on Erin, and few men off it, who've seen and heard what I'm going to show and tell you now. Come look at this, Jay."

  He got to his feet and walked across to the blue tubes by the window. They seemed too few and too simple to do anything at all, but while I watched Enderton fiddled with the array for a moment, lining up a pair of struts. Then he flipped a switch on one side and said, "Look into the eyepieces." He handed me a pair of ice-cold tubes not attached to anything else.

  I did, and it was magic. I was seeing Muldoon Spaceport, its domes and launch towers and boost grids like fairy castles, the thin metal trellises covered with a sparkling layer of white snow.

  Except that it couldn't be. The port was ten miles or more away, on the other side of the lake.

  I lifted my head and stepped to the window. The wind was rising now and snow was falling harder than ever, traveling almost horizontally past the house. I couldn't even see as far as the lake shore before everything was swallowed up in a haze of white.

  "That isn't really Muldoon Port, is it?"

  "It is." Enderton flipped another switch. "Try again."

  It was the same thing, much closer. Now a single dome stood in the field of view, elevators rising up its side.

  "But how does it see through the snow, when we can't?"

  "I don't know, but it isn't a problem. Not for this little beauty." He threw another switch. "Try it now."

  This time I was close enough to watch people on the roof of a dome, hurrying about with their heads hooded against the snow. And with that view, I had an awful thought. I had been sailing across to Muldoon Port, but once there I hadn't done much searching for Enderton's two-half-man. Instead I had warmed a chair in the launch lounge, listening to spacer tales.

  And all the time, he had been able to sit back here and watch me! Except that I suddenly realized that maybe he hadn't. The scene was cropped at the bottom, and I could not see anything less than fifteen feet above the ground. It was the curve of Erin's surface, putting anything at ground level below the horizon and out of sight; it meant that although Enderton could see much of the activity at Muldoon Port, people would be invisible unless they happened to be high in the buildings.

  Enderton must have mistaken my relief for amazement. He nodded, and said, "Now you know how to watch launches in comfort. That's what I've been doing, these past few days. And I think we're coming close to Winterfall."

  Thanks to my trips to Muldoon Port I knew what he was talking about. Before Winterfall, the spacer crews that planned to come home at year-end from scavenging the Forty Worlds sent word ahead to Muldoon Spaceport. And as soon as all those returning crews had been safely ferried down from their deep space ships, Winterfall would be complete. The port would enter its quiet period of deep winter, as the crews left Muldoon and dispersed. Most would head away from the lake toward Skibbereen and the bigger towns to the east, but each year, a few spacers came our way, around the lake to its western shore.

  "Can you see Toltoona as well?" I asked. The town was much closer, so no curve of Erin's surface would save me.

  But even before he swiveled the setting, I knew the answer. Miraculous as the instrument was at seeing through falling snow, it did not look through walls. And Toltoona was mostly buildings, blocking off the view of streets and squares and the insides of inns and stores.

  "How would you like to own something like this?" Enderton asked me, as I peered into the cold eyepieces and confirmed my thought about Toltoona.

  "Own it? It must cost a fortune."

  "It would—if there was any place to buy it. There isn't." He took the eyepieces from my hand, and led me back to my seat. "This telecon is pure space technology. It will be yours, if you'll help me a bit more. See, I must know who's at Muldoon come Winterfall. I'm nearly ready, but I must have a few more clear days."

  "Ready for what?"

  "Ready to head out." His eyes flickered to the window. "I mean, ready to head out west of here. Does that doctor of yours ever go over to Muldoon Port?"

  "Never. Her patients are all west and north of us."

  "That's good. But tomorrow and the day after, you have to sail over to Muldoon and keep an eye on things. Until Winterfall it's more important to do that than worrying about Toltoona."

  It was the worst possible time to have to tell him, but I had no choice.

  "Mr. Enderton, I can't sail across in weather like this. It's winter, and the lake winds are too strong. The boat nearly turned over twice yesterday."

  "Can't sail, eh?" he growled, and his face was turning red. "Won't is more like it." His fingers began to twitch, and the look in his eyes petrified me. I had to keep talking.

  "Do I really need to go over there? I mean, if I sat all day with the telecon"—I pointed to the super-telescope over by the window—"I could watch everything that goes on at Muldoon Port."

  "You can't see ground level. I've tried often enough. The curve of the planet cuts off the view. It won't do, Jay Hara."

  He was standing up, stepping toward me. Driven by desperation, I had the idea that I think killed Paddy Enderton.

  "From here you can't see it," I said. "But the water tower that serves Toltoona is only a few minutes walk away. It's high. There's a ladder leading up it, and a balcony all the way round. If I was to go up there with your telecon, I bet I'd see Muldoon all the way to ground level."

  Even as I spoke, I knew it was an awful suggestion. I was volunteering to climb the giddy height of the tower—I'd done it once before, in summer, for a bet—and then sit in the freezing cold, for who knew how long, peering across Lake Sheelin at the goings-on in Muldoon Port. It was hardly better than its alternative—the blind rage and murderous hands of Paddy Enderton.

  He stared at me. "Maybe. Maybe." But I think he was talking more to himself than to me. He went across to his storage chest, opened it, and pulled out a flat black oblong, small enough to fit in his palm. "Three days," he muttered, after he had prodded and poked at a few places on its upper surface. "Aye, that would do it."

  He sat down again. "I have to take a look at Muldoon myself, from the top of that tower. Then we'll see."

  I thought for one ghastly moment that he was proposing we climb the tower then and there, heaving our way up the bare metal ladder in driving snow. But he had sunk in on himself, hands tight around the mug of liquor, and was ignoring me.

  Or almost so. When I began to ease my way across toward the door, he was suddenly up and blocking my path more quickly than I would have thought possible.

  "What are you going to tell the doctor and your mother about what we've been saying to each other?" His face was inches from mine.

  "Nothing." It didn't need a genius to know the right answer. "Not a word."

  He reached out, and I thought he was going to grab me again. But all he did was pat my shoulder, and mutter, "Good lad. Off you go, then. And when it stops snowing, you'll show me that water tower."

  I was allowed to escape. As
I left, I realized that I had found something much more dangerous than sailing across any winter lake. Soon I would be perched on the top of a high tower with Paddy Enderton. An angry Paddy Enderton. A drunk Paddy Enderton. A Paddy Enderton who, if he didn't like what he saw when we got up there . . .

  I hurried downstairs. And not before time, because I was shivering. Enderton's room had been freezing, cold enough to make me tremble all over. Except that I noticed, half an hour after I had parked myself next to the warm kitchen stove, that my shaking still had not stopped.

  * * *

  Looked at from the bottom, the tower rose forever into the afternoon sky. From the top, as I knew from experience, it would seem even taller.

  And I was supposed to scale this monster carrying a quarter of my own weight in equipment on my back. The telecon was marvelous, but it was not light. The only thing I could say was that Paddy Enderton was bowed under a load at least as heavy as mine.

  One hundred and forty-eight rungs in the ladder. I knew that from my previous time up. After seventy rungs a little ledge would allow us to stop and take a breather. Then came the longer haul to the top, in one continuous effort.

  I placed my gloved hands on the first rung, and began to climb. It had been Enderton's threat that had prevented me mentioning to Mother what we would be doing, but suddenly I was glad that I hadn't. She would have been terrified— almost as terrified as I felt now.

  We had agreed that I would go first, and remain on the ledge until Enderton was within ten rungs of me. Then I would start up the rest of the way, while he took a breather.

  I reached the ledge all right, but once there I found that I dared not look down to see how far he had climbed. Instead I stared far out across the slate-grey surface of Lake Sheelin, to the distant domes and towers of Muldoon Port. Yesterday's snow had ended in late afternoon, and now there was bright sun and just a breath of wind. I wished I were down there, sailing across the lake.