«God knows why, but you’ve got as much influence on him as anybody except Gautama Buddha, and I think he needs you.
«It you decide to stay with him, let me know when you’re coming and I’ll pick you up in my hellie so we can have a talk before I take you around.»
That made up my mind for me, all right. It also got me out of the hospital three days short of the ten Dr. Fell had predicted. Maybe I did a little exaggerating to him about how well and strong I felt, but I got away with it.
Klocky looked just as he did the day I left him. I don’t know why that surprised me, after only two months, but it did. Maybe because those two months had seemed like twice that many years.
He gripped my hand so hard it hurt. «Good you’re back, Max. Missed you. Let’s go to the coffee shop for a few minutes and talk before we go to my hellie.»
I remembered Klocky never liked to talk while he piloted, or even while he drove a ground car. I nodded.
Over coffee, I asked him about M’bassi.
«Nothing new that I know of. Haven’t seen him for two days—but listen, before we talk about M’bassi, let’s talk about you a minute. You’re coming back to your job with me, aren’t you?»
«I—I don’t know, Klocky. I don’t think so.»
«It’s open. I marked you down for indefinite leave of absence. And I need you, Max.»
I grinned at him. «That isn’t what you said the day I left. But seriously, I want to mech a while again, I think. It’s what I need—for a while anyway. Grease and oil and grit and soot on my hands. Physical work.»
«Max, you’re not getting any younger. You can’t do mech work all your life.»
«For another few years I can. After that—I’ll see. But don’t keep that job open for me, Klocky.»
He shrugged. «It’s your business. I’ll keep it open for a while, though, in case you change your mind. And I’ll give you a mech job meanwhile, but damn it—»
I shook my head. «Not at L. A., Klocky. It would be embarrassing for both of us to have your former assistant working as a grease monkey. I know where I’m going to work.» I told him about Rory’s change of jobs and his offer.
«Okay, if that’s the way you want it.» I could see that he was relieved that I didn’t intend to mech at the L. A. port.
«Klocky,» I said, «I haven’t been reading the papers much. Has the appointment been announced?»
He knew what appointment I meant. He nodded. «Kreager, Charlie Kreager.»
The name didn’t register, but apparently Klocky knew who he was. «Good man?» I asked.
«Damn good.»
That was what I wanted to hear and I let it go at that. How much Klocky knew or guessed of the details of what had actually happened, I didn’t know, didn’t want to ask. We let it go at that, but it knocked a worry out of my mind to know that a good man would be supervising the construction of the Jupiter rocket.
I said, «Now about M’bassi.»
«On second thought, Max, there’s nothing else I need to tell you. You’ll know the score the minute you see him. Maybe better if I don’t tell you any more than I have—not that there’s much more to tell.»
«We’re wasting time then. Let’s go there,» I said.
No answer to our knock. A square pink corner sticking out from under the door. I pulled it out and opened the pink telegram envelope. It was the telegram I’d sent the day before telling M’bassi when I’d arrive. It must have been delivered to his rooms twenty-four hours ago at least.
The door wasn’t locked; we went in. Knowing, both of us, that we were too late, knowing what had happened.
Inside, the light layer of dust over the smooth surfaces.
The door to the little room, the room without furniture, the cell, was bolted on the inside. I knocked only once; then Klocky and I looked at one another and I nodded. He’s fifty pounds heavier than I; he backed up and ran at it, throwing his shoulder against it. The bolt snapped.
M’bassi was smiling, lying there.
He lay on his back on a strip of canvas, wearing only a breechclout. His rib case looked like a bird cage. His eyes, wide open, stared fixedly through pinpoint pupils upward.
We made the routine checks before we made the routine phone calls. But we’d known, both of us, from the moment that our knock on the outer door hadn’t been answered, that we were too late.
M’bassi wasn’t there. His body was there, but M’bassi?
I wished that I could believe that M’bassi had gone somewhere, not just that M’bassi had gone.
I wish that I could believe not in mortality but in reincarnation or individual immortality; I wish that I could be living again in another body or, God help me, even watching from the edge of a fleecy cloud in Heaven or out through the dirty windowpane of a haunted house or through the dull eyes of a dung beetle or on any terms. On any terms I want to be watching, I want to be there, I want to be around, when we reach the stars, when we take over the universe and the universes, when we become the God in whom I do not believe as yet because I do not believe he exists as yet nor will exist until we become Him.
But I’ve been wrong so I can be wrong. Make me wrong, damn You, show me that I’m wrong, show me that M’bassi had cause to smile.
Show Yourself, God damn You, make me wrong.
2001
«We’ll see better from here, Billy,» I said.
I’d parked the hellie behind the hill and we’d walked up it, one of the low hills that ringed the site. Five o’clock of a clear October evening, the sun getting low. Three hours before the take-off of the Jupiter rocket, but there were others there even before us, finding good spots on the best hills. By three minutes after eight, take-off time, these hills would be filled with people.
«You’re sure, Uncle Max, that down by the fence—?»
«Not nearly as good, believe me.» I grinned at the boy. «I know you want to get close, but don’t worry; you’ll be closer to rockets than you’d get to that one at the edge of the launching site.»
Forty-three feet tall it stood, and beautiful. God, how beautiful. Sleek and slender, shiny and Oh God there aren’t any words for a rocket, a new one-man rocket that’s going where no rocket has been before, to another world, farther out. Nearer where we’re going.
I saw the disappointment in Billy’s freckled face. I said, «Okay, there’s lots of time. Go down to the fence and look at it from there, but then come back. The take-off will look better from here.»
I watched him run down the hill. Ten now, he was. God, how fast the four years had gone since I’d first heard of this rocket, since I’d first heard of Ellen Gallagher. God, how fast the years go when they near the end. Constant acceleration, like a falling object. Be with you soon, Ellen, I thought; whether it’s a couple of years or thirty years, they’ll go like a flash. The speed of light? It’s nothing to the speed of time.
I spread the blanket and sat on it, watching the rocket, watching Billy. He stood now at the high steel-mesh fence, pushing his face against it to be as close as he could.
I saw myself at ten, although there weren’t interplanetary rockets to look at then, back in nineteen fifty. But I’d have looked at one like that, had there been one to look at.
I looked at one now, and I wanted to cry because I wouldn’t be on it when it went to Jupiter. But sixty-one is too old to cry. You’re a big boy now, I told myself.
Sun going down. Son coming up; not my son, but the nearest I’d ever have to a son of my own, plodding up the hill toward me, his eyes filled with stardust. Sitting on the blanket beside me.
The lost, longing look in his eyes. The look of a spaceman Earth-bound. The caged look.