LILA USED to love the zoo. But memory fades, that’s the good thing. Now I can look past Lila’s profile and remember the aviary. Tennyson’s groundport is as vivid, as deafeningly cheerful, as that.
Beagle sits on the bench beside me and leans over. His cheeks, his jowls sag on their frame. He has a cozy easy chair of a face. “They’re fifteen minutes late,” he says.
“I know.”
“Are you sure we’re not supposed to meet them at the hotel?”
A group of brightly-dressed colonials pass, three women and two men. All five stare at us. All five smile and nod. This time I don’t get up. For fifteen minutes now, I’ve risen expectantly as colonials met my eye. Our brown-uniformed gloom must catch their attention.
I don’t know which annoys me more: the scrutiny of the colonials or Beagle’s challenge. “They didn’t say which hotel we’d be staying at. The lodgings weren’t arranged before flight time.”
Beagle nods toward Arne. “His hands shake. Christ. Think about that a minute. A demolitions expert, and his hands shake.”
I watch Arne pace. He’s a small man, pale and fey, the sort of man best seen out of the corner of the eye.
“He’s not regular Home Force,” Beagle says. “They got him from the goddamned Bureau of Transportation and Commerce, and he acts like a head case. What did his files say?”
Odd question. Maybe a test. “You know those files are confidential.”
Beagle’s face might be soft, but his eyes are a hard gray. I wonder how much of Hoad Taylor lurks in them. “I’m M-8, Major.”
No way I can have forgotten. M-8. And famous. I’m only M-4. I may be team leader, but in every way he ranks me.
I’m too cautious, too smart, to respond. He sits back and watches Arne. Why didn’t HF choose Beagle? He must resent being subordinate. The strain of that resentment is bound to tear the team apart. Four-officer teams are unwieldy. Alliances form easiest in triads. If there’s an odd man out, I hope to God it won’t be me.
“You remember the routine Cully Blum used to do?” Beagle sounds amused. “The long involved one about the nervous rabbi at his first circumcision? The grandfather starts giving him instructions and, zip . . .”
I don’t know enough about him. His files were strangely incomplete. So. Before he was downloaded into the Beagle, Dr. Taylor had liked Cully Blum. Did he have many friends? Was he married? Is his wife still alive? If she is, I wonder what she thinks of her living statue.
Beagle says, “Arne’s the rabbi. The rest of us are dicks.” He glances over my shoulder and clambers to his feet. “Company.”
I rise and turn. Bustling toward us is a fat man. Grandly, flagrantly fat. The crowd parts. Like a ball, he bounces through.
He’s the first human being I’ve seen on Tennyson who’s not smiling. “You’re late!” he cries.
Incredulity makes me hesitate. “What do you mean? We’ve been waiting over fifteen minutes . . .”
“No, no!” The man’s rosebud mouth twitches. “You don’t understand! You’re late! You should have been at the hotel five minutes ago, and it’s all my fault. Well, don’t just stand there! Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
And he’s off, bustling through the crowd.
I trot to keep up. “Our luggage—”
An expansive gesture which nearly catches a well-dressed woman on the cheek. “All taken care of. The luggage is all taken care of.”
The man’s speech is rapid, and it has an odd colonial lilt. I’m not certain I’ve understood him correctly when he says, “Bedding.”
“What?”
“Luxury bedding. A catastrophic docking. Simply catastrophic. Sheets and pillowcases in orbit. I don’t know how we’ll ever capture it all.”
The doors slide apart. In the open, my steps falter. It’s always disorienting, this first assault of the wind. The lack of walls. Sunshine dazes me. Beats warm on my face. I take a breath. The air has an intoxicating tang, but the light . . . Oh, the light. It’s a commanding, majestic presence. It’s the way, as a child, I always pictured God.
“So you can see, can’t you?” The colonial herds us, blinded by the light, toward a cab. “You can understand the delay. Well, go ahead. Get in, get in. The cab’s programmed for your hotel. I don’t know how I let the time slip away like this. I looked at the clock and . . . They’ll be very, very upset.”
I climb into the front seat next to Beagle. The door slides closed.
The colonial peers in the window. “They’re sticky about tardiness. It’s covered under one of the major sins—sloth? Yes, must be sloth. Wouldn’t fit under lust or avarice, I suppose. Just tell them it was my fault, will you? They’re bound to ask. Well, go on. Go on!”
The cab lurches down the drive. Behind us on the sidewalk the man waves such an animated goodbye that his entire bulk quivers. “My fault, remember? Tell them it was all my fault so they know who to fine!”
The encounter leaves me stupefied. No longer certain of anything. “Did he say ‘fine’?” I ask.
Sensing the lack of oncoming traffic, the cab makes its turn onto an eight-lane highway. In the distance crouch the low buildings of downtown Hebron.
Beagle chuckles. “Did you notice he never told us his name?”
“Look at the birds!” Szabo says from the back seat.
To our left is a rolling expanse. Lawn so perfectly green that it seems painted on. There willows hunch slope-shouldered about a pond and white birds sail like fat boats across its still surface.
“Ducks?” I ask, recalling Lila at the zoo and snowy birds on water.
“Swans,” Beagle says. “My place has a view of a park, and they have a flock of swans there. I feed them sometimes.”
Swans. A park. A pond. M-8 Level perks. I wonder if his apartment is on the top floor. If it’s washed in cascades of sunlight.
Szabo says, “Aren’t they pretty?” with such yearning that I wonder what he sees out his own apartment window.
“Fuck the goddamned swans,” Arne says.
Beagle and I exchange looks. My shoulders untense. Arne. So the odd man out will be Arne.