“Liar!”
The conversation died so he tried again. “I’m waiting.”
“There’s one thing I’ve never been able to say to you and it’s eating my heart out.” She looked at him, begging permission to go on, a forlorn waif.
“Go on.”
“Kakabuni!” And she was her old mischievous self again.
He grunted from this blow to his solar plexus. “You’ve floored me. Yeah. We haven’t been able to talk about that.” The taboo word. And he concentrated on his stew for a while before he had the courage to look her grin in the teeth. “I’ll be a man and take my medicine. What else?”
“You want more? Let’s have some apple pie first,” she said miserably.
Somehow the conversation turned back to Nora Argamentine. The topic was safe and they each had a lot to say. The chime went off for the pie. He put on his mitts and took it out of the oven. He cut her a slice. “It’s hot,” he said.
Chloe took a forkful and blew on it. “I’m pregnant.”
Yankee was half-expecting that. He had forgotten to make his offering to Murphy. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Murphy was a hard god who expected you to tend to the smallest details of your life. Fail him once and his wrath was upon you. Murphy, judge and executioner—and Kakabuni, tempter.
“You’re more worried that my father is going to chop your head off than you are about me,” she sulked.
“I did promise him I’d take care of you.”
“You’ve taken very good care of me considering what a pest I am. You can marry me. Otherwise I have to have an abolition.”
“Before now, have you ever thought about marrying me?” he asked.
“You know I have—unless you’re blind. I’ve chased you mercilessly.”
“You chase all men mercilessly.”
“Those are just boys. I keep looking for a man, and all I find are adolescent boys like you who do things on the floor and then run away.”
“It’s a fantasy, Chloe. I’m thirty-two years older than you are.”
“You’re lying like a kzin,” she said. “What you mean to say is that I’m thirty-two years younger than you are. You’re telling me that I’m too immature to understand you, too young to fit in your life, that I giggle too much, and that I run you ragged around your stuffy old edges.”
“Well, yeah.”
“You’re just afraid my father’s going to kill you!”
“There’s that.”
“Haven’t you ever even once thought about how nice it would be to be married to me?”
“More than you can imagine, I’m very fond of you. But it’s a fantasy.”
“Why?”
“The military life is hell.”
“I’m used to it. What am I supposed to do? Marry a painter and live in a Chinese junk in the San Francisco Bay slums? Marry a Wunderland sheep rancher?”
“I’m too old.”
“I’ll be 178 when you are 210. Big deal. You’re such an ooze! You defy the whole navy but you’re terrified that your shipmates will laugh at you for marrying a gangly pubescent!”
“But I am too old for you.”
“I’d eat another slice of your superior pie but I’m too mad. Sit down. I’m prepared for you. I do my research.” She dragged him over to the couch and pushed him into a seat. She pulled out her infocomp and made a directory out of the word “aging” and a subdirectory out of the word “Jinx.” “I have an article for you.” She didn’t trust him to read it by himself so she read it to him.
More than forty-years ago the Jinxian laboratory at Sirius had produced something they called “boosterspice.” The new varieties were enormous improvements on the first product. It could run around in cells repairing DNA. It regulated the growth of cell types that had stopped reproducing—without inducing cancer. Some of the oldest test subjects were still alive.
Yankee put his arm around her soberly with the tender affection of a man who is trying to tell a youngster that they have rediscovered the wheel. “I know all about boosterspice. I’ve been reading up on it since before you were born. Every year Jinx turns out a better product and there is more ballyhoo. They are gradually nailing down all the side effects. Do you know what happens in your brain when neurons start to reproduce and connect up at the wrong places? Do you have any idea how expensive that stuff is? And what do you get for your money? Boosterspice has been known to extend lives. Or it might cripple you. Maybe even kill you. One of the richest old men on Earth jumped on the Boosterspice bandwagon. Now he’s very young—but he’s a mentally retarded youth and slightly musclebound.”
“That’s what rich people are for,” she said petulantly. “They are very useful experimental animals for us poor military types and carpenters. The rich pay through the nose for all the fancy new technology when it isn’t very good. They’re desperate to live so they pay thousands of crazy witch-doctors to kill them in fancy new ways. When the rich people stop dying, we know the product is ready for market and can be mass produced cheaply.”
“Chloe!”
“It’s like being a king and having a food-taster. The reason I want to marry an older man is so you can test out the boosterspice for me. If you die, I get your money. If you stay young, I’ll know its safe to start taking boosterspice.”
“Chloe, how come you taste my pies for me? Through thick crust and thin?”
She snuggled. “How come you never tell me that you love me?”
“I love you.”
“That’s better. How come you never make love to me? I haven’t been a virgin since I was thirteen.”
“That’s why. When I was thirteen, seventeen-year-old girls were old crones. Every year since then they’ve been getting younger. It has gotten so that I can’t keep track of how old a seventeen-year-old girl is anymore.”
“That’s silly! Are we in a Kakabuni mood yet?”
“I have to decide whether you are grown-up or not.”
“I’m grown-up. I’m pregnant, remember. I’m in the army. My father is six light-years away.” She undid his belt.
“All right. You’re grown-up. I can’t go wrong. You’re getting older every year.” He picked her up, mostly to keep her from undressing him. He carried her across the threshold of his bedroom door and let her float dreamlike to the small navy bed in the light gravity. He sat down on its edge and began to undress her.
She grabbed his hand in both of hers, stopping him.
She wasn’t wearing a bra. “How come we are afraid of each other?”
He let her fingers stay with his hand. “Who knows? Maybe you’re afraid of yourself and I’m afraid of your father.”
She kissed his hand. “Are you a virgin? I mean before you met me.”
“Not likely. I’m a navy man—and I used to be handsome. I even had a flatlander marriage contract once.”
“You seem shy to me.”
“It depends upon whom I’m with.”
“How many women?”
“You ask too many questions, young lady.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
She sat up. “I can undress myself. I’ve had lots of men, too, you know. I sexed with your crashlander friend, Brobding What’s-his-Name.” She wasn’t used to her uniform—it didn’t come off gracefully, futz! “You can’t take off my wedding ring.” She fingered the iron ring hanging between her breasts. “I always wear it.”
“Was your mother as beautiful as you?”
“No. I’m prettier. I take after my father. Do I have to give you orders to strip? It’s a Wunderland custom for a man to make sex when he’s properly naked.”
He was smiling. “It’s a flatlander custom that love-partners help each other with their clothes. Unless, of course, when proceeding by the rules of unpremeditated Kakabuni.”
“You’re a pervert! I feel like a baby in diapers when a man tries to undress me. Is Clandeboye an Italian name?”
“I think it comes from a gloomy Scottish castle.” He said that to the ceiling because she was ripping his pants off. “Wait. I’ll help you with the shirt!”