Alex watched Gordon cry. Thor had lost his friend. Sherrine had lost her job; or would when she failed to show up for work in the morning. Bob had lost his van, and probably his job, too. But Gordon cried uncontrollably. Okay, for Gordo this is a totally alien planet. I could acclimate myself. I was born here. I loved Kansas; I cried when my parents took me up. I could learn to love it here again. I could convince myself that I was only coming home again.
The Titan had given their sojourn a purpose. They had had a goal, as quixotic as that goal had been. Now, they had nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"See What Free Men Can Do…"
"She's dead, then," Bob said. "Goddam. The rumor was right. Cole had a rocket. Maybe it was alive, once."
"For all the good it does us," Sherrine said bitterly. "Oh bloody hell, I'm, sorry. I'm really sorry."
"Don't look now," Bob said. He jerked his thumb
toward the entrance. The homeless pair who had claimed the corridor were now in the room, still wearing their blankets. Sherrine wondered if they had clothes on under them. The pair seemed to be hustling a girl in her teens. The girl tried to move away from them, but the pair followed, evidently begging.
The pantomime dance was curving them toward the rocket. Cole eyed the three warily and took a tentative step to place himself between them and it.
One of the blanketed figures began to sing, very softly. The other joined in, then the girl they had been begging from. Even as close as they were, they could barely be heard.
"Star fire! Star fire!
It's singing in my blood, I know it well!
We can know the promise of the stars.
Star fire! Star fire!
The promise of the universe is ours-"
"Harry?" Bob said quietly.
"Nobody else," Harry said. "Been waiting for you. 'Lo, Ron."
" 'Lo, Harry," Cole said. "Wade send you?"
"Yup. Says it's getting on for time to move on."
Some of the mad glint faded from Cole's eyes.
"Harry, what are you doing here?" Bob demanded.
"Better yet, what are you talking about?" Sherrine said.
"Shh," Jenny said. "Come on where we can talk." She eyed the two spacemen. "Huh. You're walking now! You had me fooled."
"Not me," Harry said. "I guessed in Minneapolis. Come on--"
Thor looked at Harry and shook his head. "Same old bullshit. Like hell you guessed." He looked suspiciously at the girl who had come in with Harry and Jenny. "Who's this?"
She had dark hair, soft brown eyes, exotic features. Sherrine thought that with a little makeup and some attention to her hair she would be beautiful. As it was, she seemed to want to look plain: no makeup at all, not even lipstick, hair brushed severely back and tied in a bun. She wore a skirt and sweater, both drab brown, with black leggings and ugly leg warmers over those.
"Who's this?" Thor demanded again.
"Violetta Brown," Harry said. He looked around the room, saw no one, and lowered his voice. "Oliver Brown's daughter."
"Oh," Sherrine said. "Pleased to meet you, Violetta. Is your father--"
"Waiting for us," Violetta said. "Come on. Harry has a lot to tell you."
"That I do," Harry said. He turned to Cole. "You, too, Ron. Wade says it's time. Said you'd know what I meant."
Ron Cole nodded slowly. "And past time. You'll be back?"
"Tomorrow," Harry promised. "Maybe tonight."
"Let's get out of here," Thor said. Outside he turned to Harry, "You get picked up as homeless--"
"Lots," Harry said.
"But you're no crazier than you ever were. Why?" He stabbed an arm back toward the dim lit space center. "Why the hell did they do that to Ron? And not you."
Harry shrugged. "He was interesting."
"Interesting?"
"Yeah," Jenny said. "The last thing you want to be is different. Those mental health centers are filled up with graduate students, all just alike, no future, unless they can find an interesting case to write a thesis about."
"Ron couldn't be ordinary, no matter how hard he tried," Thor said. "Yeah. I see."
Harry said, "Some of us hide it better than others."
Captain Lee Arteria opened the folder and removed the single sheet of paper it contained. Do allfiles start asinnocuously as this? One sheet; but destined to multiply, like a bacterial colony. Trees die so that we may keep dossiers.
Arteria looked up and caught the eye of Captain Machtley, the North Dakota liaison. The State Police agencies, fearful of being left out in the cold in the pursuit of the spacemen, had agreed to be coordinated through Arteria's Air Police.
"Why don't you fill us in on what this says, Captain?"
Machtley cleared her throat. "Her name is Sherrine Hartley. She lives in Minneapolis, but her grandparents live near the crash site; and the telephone company's records show that she called them the night of the crash."
"Well. That certainly sounds suspicious. Calling your grandparents."
"In the middle of the night? Besides, there's more," Machtley said happily.
Arteria replaced the sheet in the folder and closed it. "Tell me."
Machtley looked around the table at the others. That's right, thought Arteria. Share and share alike.
"Dakota Bell's data banks were scrambled the next day. If the off-line backup hadn't been done first thing in the morning, there would have been no record of Hartley contacting her grandparents. We suspect that the Legion of Doom was involved."
Lee was unconvinced. "The Legion of Doom has been sparring with the phone company since Day One. It might not be related."
"We would never have found the grandparents," Machtley insisted, "if we hadn't gone door to door. It was a neighbor who told us about the granddaughter in Minneapolis."
Arteria smiled. "I've always said that good old-fashioned police legwork beats these computerize searches for useful results. Moorkith and his Green Police are going nuts trying to straighten out their records. They're too damn lazy to hit the bricks."
"Don't forget the Motor Vehicle data banks," said Captain Conte, the Minnesota liaison. "They were scrambled, too. Remember when we tried to ID the maroon van?"
Machtley nodded. "That's an interesting point. Hartley's grandparents would have been on Moorkith's un-Green list, too; if it hadn't been hacked up. They are not the milk and cookie type at all. The old lady is a former gene-tamperer."
There was a general stirring around the table. "You're right," Arteria said. "Gene tampering does not sound good at all."
"It violates God's law," put in Captain Traxler, the Wisconsin liaison. "And it harms the ecology. Satan's work."
"We've started checking up on the Hartley woman," said Conte. "She was once reported as active in the science fiction underground."
Aha. "By whom?"
"Her ex-husband."
"Ex-husband. Was the report substantiated, or was it just a messy divorce?"
Conte shook his head. "Nothing was proven; and the records say she's kept her nose clean the last few years. But still, where there's smoke, there's usually fire."
Oh, well, thought Lee Artena, we never needed a Fourth Amendment, anyway. Start making exceptions in the need for probable cause and where did you stop? Not at sobriety checkpoints. "Does anyone else have anything concrete to add?"
Nobody spoke. After a moment, Arteria nodded. "Very well, Captains. Scrambling three separate databases relating to Hartley, her grandparents and the van. Machtley, that was good work. It would be one hell of a thick coincidence." And there is a definite whiff of fannishness about Hartley. Gafiated years ago, but still has connections. "Hartley may have been the woman in the van at Fargo Gap. It's worth following up. Captain Conte?"