"Maybe. But that's not right, putting it on somebody else. Is there any way I could send her a letter now and then, Amy? Just to let her know I'm all right and thinking about her? I'd let you or Jarl write it if you wanted. You could even run it through the crypto computer to make sure it's innocent."
"This's just a kid?" Amy demanded.
"Yeah. She reminded me a lot of me when I came off Old Earth. Awful lost. I thought I could help out by sponsoring her. And then I kind of ran out when the Bureau sent us out here. I told her we'd be back in a couple of months. It's been almost fourteen."
"I'll ask Jarl. He lets a little mail go out. Some of us have relatives outside. But it's slow."
"That doesn't matter. Amy, you're a jewel. I love you."
"Well, if you're going to get mushy," Mouse said, standing. "I've got to run. A citizenship class. It's from hunger, Moyshe. Me and Emily Hopkins and this fascist bastard of a teacher... Maybe I'll hurt the arm again. Get back in here so I can miss a few too. Behave. Do what the doctor lady says. Or I'll wring your neck." He made his exit before Moyshe could embarrass him with many thanks-for-comings.
"You're awful quiet today, honey," benRabi said after a while. Perhaps if the doctor had not been there...
"I'm just tired. We're still doing double shifts and barely keeping our heads above water. We're going to be in the Yards a long time. Assuming Danion doesn't fall apart before we get there. Assuming the sharks don't knock us apart."
"You've mentioned these Yards about fifty times and wouldn't tell me about them. Do you trust me enough now?"
"They're what the name sounds like. Where we build and fix our ships. Moyshe, you're not going anywhere for a while. Tell me about you."
"What?"
"I met you the very first day. Way back on Carson's, when you signed your contract. We lived together for months before I even found out you've got a daughter. I don't know anything about you."
"Greta isn't my daughter, honey. I just helped a kid who needed somebody... "
"It's almost the same thing, isn't it?"
"Legally, I guess. On paper. They'd have trouble making it stand up in court."
"Tell me. Everything."
There was little else to do but talk. He talked.
The doctor, lurking in the background watching suspiciously, had made it clear that he would be stuck here for a while.
"All right. Let me know when it gets boring."
He had been born in North America on Old Earth, to Clarence Hardaway and Myra McClennon. He had hardly known his father. His mother, for reasons he still did not understand, had elected to raise him at home instead of burying him in the State Creche. Only a few Social Insurees raised their children.
His early years had been typical for home-raised S.I. children. Little supervision, little love, little education. He had been running with a kid gang before he was eight.
He had been nine when he had seen his first offworlders. Spikes, they had called them. These had been Navy men in crisp dress blacks diligently pursuing the arcane business of offworlders.
Those uniforms had captured his imagination. They had become an obsession. He had started keying information out of his mother's home data retrieval terminal. He had not had the education to decipher most of it. He had started teaching himself, building from the ground up toward the things he so desperately wanted to know.
At ten he had quit the gang so he would have more time to study. Halfway through his eleventh year the revelation had come. He had to get into space. He had approached a Navy recruiter clandestinely. The man had arranged for him to sneak through the Academy exams.
He never would have made it had there been no special standards and quotas for Old Earthers. He would have gotten skunked had he been in direct competition with carefully prepared Outworlders, many of whom had grown up in the military life. Half the officers in Service were the children of officers. Service was a complete sub-culture, and one that was becoming increasingly less connected with and controlled by the over-culture. He had had motivation.
At twelve he had run away from home, fleeing to Luna Command and Academy. In six years he had climbed from dead last to the 95th percentile in class standing. At graduation he had taken his Line option and been assigned to the Fleet. He had served aboard the destroyers Aquataine and Hesse, and the attack cruiser Tamerlane, before requesting Intelligence training.
Following a year of schooling the Bureau had assigned him as Naval Attaché to the Embassy on Feldspar. He had had a half dozen similar assignments on as many worlds before his work attracted the attention of Admiral Beckhart, whose department handled dangerous operations, and tricks on the grey side of legal.
He had taken part in several tight missions, and had reencountered his former classmate, Mouse. They had shared several assignments, the last being to join the Starfishers to ferret out information that could be used to force the Seiners to enter the Confederation fold.
Some of it Amy had heard before. Some she had not. She was not satisfied. Her first comment was, "You didn't say anything about women."
"What do you mean? What's that got to do with anything?"
"Everything, as far as I'm concerned. I want to know who your lovers were and how come you broke up. What they were like... "
"You'll shit in your hand and carry it to China first, Lady."
He was still a little dopey. He did not realize that he had said it aloud till he began to wonder why she had shut up so suddenly.
After one stunned gasp Amy blew out of the room like a tornado looking for a town to wreck.
The lady doctor came out of the background, took his blood pressure. "She's pushy, isn't she?"
"I don't know what's got into her. She wasn't like that before."
"You've had an interesting life."
"Not really. I don't think I'd do it the same if I had it to do again."
"Well, you could, couldn't you?"
"I don't understand."
"Rejuvenation. I thought it was available to everybody landside."
"Oh. Yes. More or less. Some of the brass have been around since Noah landed the Ark. But Fate has a way of catching up with people who try to slide around it."
"Wish we had it out here."
"You don't look that old."
"I was thinking about my father. He's getting on now."
"I see. How soon can I leave?"
"Any time, really. But I wish you'd wait a couple hours. You'll be weak and dizzy."
"Mouse was right about sonic sedation."
"I know. But I don't write the medical budget. Good luck, Mr. benRabi. Try not to see me again."
"I hate hospitals, Doctor."
He did. His only stays had been at Bureau insistence, to modify him mentally or physically.
He did a few minor exercises before catching a public tram home.
Amy was waiting. "Oh, Moyshe. That was stupid of me. You were right. Those things aren't any of my business."
She had been crying. Her eyes were red.
"It's all right. I understand." But he did not. His cultural background had not prepared him for personal nosiness. In Confederation people lived now. They did not consider the past.
"It's just that I feel... Well, everything's so chancey the way it is between us."
Here she comes, he thought. Hints about getting married.
Marriage was important to the Seiners. In Confederation it was more an amusing relic, an entertainment or daydream for the young and the romantic. He could not reconcile his attitudes with Seiner seriousness. Not yet.
The Starfishers had won his loyalty, but they could not make him a different man. They could not make him reflect themselves merely by adopting him.
Was Mouse having the same trouble? he wondered. Probably not. Mouse was a chameleon. He could adapt anywhere, vanish into any crowd.