“What if I tell your boss you’ve been talking out of turn?”
Debrou shrugged. “For starters—you lose out on the coffee.”
“Cream, but no sugar,” Hargate said resignedly. He nodded his thanks as Debrou handed him a plastic cup and, without needing to be asked, a square of absorbent tissue. Within the last year the polyneuritis had serriously affected his palate, a weakness which—as well as imparting the nasal timbre to his voice—caused him to regurgitate fluids through his nose during the act of swallowing. As a rule he only drank when alone, except when he was deliberately setting out to embarrass somebody, but his rapport with Debrou was something special. He drank the warmish coffee, snorting and dabbing his nostrils after each mouthful, and decided against pursuing the reasons for his visit. It was a minor mystery which would soon be resolved. He nodded in the direction of the small abstract sculpture which glowed on a shelf behind Debrou.
“I haven’t heard much from you recently,” he said. “Nothing doing?”
Debrou shook his head. “A couple of people showed some interest last week. Leastways, they were interested till they heard the price. Nobody can afford handmade stuff these days, Denny.”
“Are you telling me?” His coffee finished, Hargate sat with the tissue pressed to his nose and stared moodily at the sculpture, a sample of his work which Debrou displayed for him on a purely unofficial basis for a commission on orders received. It was a symbol of the lasting effects—both mental and physical—that the strange fleeting encounter on Cotter’s Edge had had on his life. For several months after that unique day, each time circumstances had seemed intolerable he had hidden in his room and tried to escape by tracing talismanic signs in the air.
Later he had discovered in himself a genuine talent for mathematics, and had been subtly astonished to find that—far from expunging the remnants of his belief—the new field of learning had shown him undreamt-of ways of correlating the Cotter’s Edge experience with the mundane world. His attitudes, reactions and noughts were both complex and vague, but they sprang from one clear-cut, even simplistic, idea. The gesture which had preceded the s disappearance had been made up of curves, and curves were embodiments of algebraic formulae, therefore there could be a link between mathematics and “magic”. After a brief and disappoint, ing excursion into numerology, he had become fascinated with the construction of mathematical models, a pursuit which—purely as a by-product—had solved the problem of how to supplement his state disability allowance.
During that period, although illness had continued to make inroads into his system—eventually confining him to a wheelchair—he had retained virtually the full use of his arms and hands. Kay Hargate, ever on the look-out for a wink from divine providence, had persuaded herself that the remission could be permanent and had even managed, at times, to begin treating him as an independent adult. For more than ten years Hargate had known something akin to happiness, then his mother had died—swept away with frightening suddenness in a minor outbreak of food poisoning—and soon afterwards had come the first chest pains and black-outs, fresh intimations of his own mortality.
He had continued his solitary existence in the same ground-floor apartment in Green ways, reading a lot—usually mathematical treatises—and working whenever he felt strong enough. And in visions he returned again and again to Cotter’s Edge, striding towards the maple-plumed ridge on legs that were limber and strong, breathing the bright air of an April morning and exulting in the certain knowledge that she was there, waiting for him, and that this time he would get it right …
“Hey, Denny!?” Vince Debrou had half-risen from his chair in his efforts to interrupt Hargate’s reverie. “I said the doc’s back early. Want me to tell him you’re here?”
“No, let it be our special secret,” Hargate said, angry at himself for having wandered into dreamland.
“Funny man.” Debrou flipped an intercom tab and within thirty seconds Hargate was rolling into the high-windowed inner office. Doctor Foerster was a broad-faced, balding man of fifty with weathered skin and large, work-roughened hands which were clues to the fact that he was passionately fond of sailing. He welcomed Hargate with a handshake, returned to his desk and dropped into the chair with a near-destructive impact.
“I’m sorry about asking you to come in at the lunch hour,” he said, “but I wanted some extra time with you and this was the only way I could get it.”
Hargate quelled a spasm of unease. “I’ve got all day.”
“Yeah, but I’m not so fortunate.” Foerster picked a speck of lint from his grey tweed jacket and examined it carefully before dropping it on the floor. “How are your arms, Denny?”
“Everything still works.”
“Put them straight out sideways.”
Hargate did as instructed, all the while trying to read Foerster’s expression. “Like this?”
“Now wiggle your fingers,” the doctor said, glancing down at his wrist watch.
In less than a minute Hargate’s shoulder muscles were desperately tired, but he strove not to give any indication. “Would you mind telling me what’s…?”
“Just keep wiggling,” Foerster said, concentrating on his watch. “You’re doing very well.”
Deciding he was being treated as something less than human, Hargate promptly lowered his arms and returned his hands to his lap. His fingers tingled painfully.
Foerster eyed him with evident surprise. “Why did you stop?”
“I have no interest in manpowered flight,” Hargate said stonily, meeting the doctor’s gaze. “And I’m not auditioning for Swan Lake.”
Foerster’s lips twitched. “It says in your file that you’re ill-adjusted and inclined to be anti-social and uncooperative.”
“Is that another way of saying I’m not overawed by white coats and stethoscopes?”
“Probably,” Foerster said, smiling ruefully. “I’m sorry about the drill-sergeant routine, but it was a quick way of making sure you were still capable of doing a day’s work.”
“Why? Have you got me a job?”
Surprisingly, Foerster nodded. “A spare place has become available in a Government research centre, and I’m pretty sure it’s yours you want it. There’s just one drawback—at least, most people would call it a drawback.”
Hargate leaned forward, intrigued, sensing that the doctor had withheld something important. “Which is…?”
“It’s in the space colony.”
“In the…?” Hargate blinked once, twice, thinking about the twlight sadness of his solitary apartment in which lately it had become impossible to refrain from counting off his diminishing store of minutes and seconds. “So what’s the drawback?”
The single Aristotle space habitat, completed in 2021, had been built in the form of a cone—a shape which provided environ-ments with differing gravities.
Among those benefiting from the conical configuration had been medical researchers, who were grateful for the opportunity to study the effect of low-gravity conditions on patients with certain types of cardiac trouble. They had been given their own facilities in the 0.3G and 0.5G bands on condition that all patients who were fit enough would accept jobs in the zero-gravity production areas.
That proviso, as far as Hargate was concerned, was a bonus rather than a penalty. Foerster had carefully avoided promising too much, but it seemed there was a strong likelihood that residence in the 0.3G suite would increase Hargate’s life expectancy by at least a factor of three. The new prospect of an entire decade of life stretching out before him was a fantastic luxury, but it would have lost some of its savour had there been nothing to do other than take medical tests and in between times stare at blank walls. In weightless conditions, though, he would be almost as mobile as an able-bodied person, every bit as capable of earning a living, of paying his way. And he had a craving, more insistent than that of any drug addict, for the blessed knowledge that he was putting more into the system than he was taking out.