CHAPTER 4
If there's any place where what I'm saying is likely to get interfered with, I guess that this is it. Because I'm going to be talking about Doctor Eileen Xavier—the same Doctor Eileen who made me start working on telling what happened.
But before I get to that, let me say that before I knew it, Paddy Enderton had been staying with us for over five weeks.
I hated having him in the house, and so I think did Mother, although he demanded little enough as a guest. He did not have his meals with us, or go outside for walks, or even bother to clean his room or wash himself. He wouldn't let me or Mother in to clean, either. He seemed to do nothing but sit upstairs, cough and wheeze, make strange drawings that were scattered all over when I took him his meals, and stare out across the lake.
But he paid, and he paid well. So every few days I went along the shore to Toltoona, mostly in the sailboat unless the weather was rough, and when I got back I reported to Enderton that there was nothing out of the ordinary that I could see. He never thanked me, just nodded in a satisfied sort of way. I felt I was taking his money for nothing, but nothing was apparently what he wanted to hear.
About once a week, when the wind was right, I sailed all the way across to Muldoon Spaceport and docked there. With funding from Paddy Enderton, Mother had made for me the blue trousers and white jacket of junior service staff. Wearing those I wandered nervously into the restaurants, and soon learned that provided I didn't go into the kitchens, no one paid me the slightest attention.
After my second visit I became bolder. I broadened my travels to include the repair shops and warehouses and, finally, greatly daring, I went into the launch lounge, where never a launch was to be seen during the day, but where the old retired spacers seemed to spend all their time. There, sitting on the outskirts of those groups and saying not a word, I learned more about space and the Forty Worlds than anyone at Toltoona ever dreamed.
For Mother and Uncle Duncan, the idea that we had once been part of a great commerce between the stars seemed hardly more than a legend. Even if it's true, Duncan once said to me, what does it matter? There's nothing like that now, is there?
He was right, of course. Our real world was Erin, and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the Forty Worlds.
But the spacers could not discard the past so easily. They talked, while I listened open-mouthed, about the great deserted structures that floated free in space out beyond the Gap, beyond the gas giant worlds of Antrim and Tyrone, beyond the Maze. Some of the speakers had visited those empty shells themselves. All of them agreed that no technology on Erin, today or in the past, could have been enough to build those monster habitats. The structures had employed, and now were cannibalized for, elements and alloys hardly known in the Maveen system.
No doubt about it, said the old spacers. Those structures were built using the Godspeed Drive. And somewhere out there, who knew where, there might be a structure that was not deserted and empty. Somewhere maybe was El Dorado, the Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow, the supply base used by the Godspeeders themselves before, for whatever reason, they ceased to visit the system of the Forty Worlds.
Which was a great pity, agreed the spacers, because with the Godspeed Drive the stars, even the faint and distant ones, must have been no more than a few days away. The Drive had served ten thousand suns. And the ships at Muldoon Spaceport today, even our best ones, were no more than a faint shadow of the ships that must have wandered the Forty Worlds, a few hundred years ago.
I had never in my life heard anything half so interesting. After my second visit I spent almost all my time sitting in the launch lounge. It's a good thing that Paddy Enderton had no way to check on me, because there could have been armless and legless men by the dozen wandering around the rest of Muldoon Spaceport, and I would never have known it.
My sail home became later and later, as the season moved steadily on toward winter. On my fifth trip across, Muldoon Port was more packed with newly arrived spacers than it had ever been. The place had the atmosphere of one giant reunion party. I could hardly bear to leave, and I stayed there until after dark. But I paid for it on the journey home, when I shuddered and shivered all the way back. It was not just the cold. The squalls that ripped the lake's surface twice came close to capsizing me. By the time that I tied up the sailboat at our home pier, I had decided that this must be my last trip across Lake Sheelin.
That was a great shame, because for the first time in my life I had money. It was hidden away in a bag beneath my bed. Paddy Enderton was often late now in paying Mother, but never in paying me. Usually it was cash, but sometimes other things—a little timepiece, that showed the passage of hours and days for a place that was clearly not Erin, or a tube that I could place on my skin and see the pattern of veins and sinews and even individual cells, deep inside.
It would sadden me to give up more of these wonders, but it had to be done. I headed up the path, where a thin film of ice was already forming on the puddles. I intended to tell Paddy Enderton that I could not cross the lake again until the spring.
But although he was in his room, he was already asleep when I sneaked upstairs. Through the locked door I could hear him snoring and wheezing, with a rattle in his chest that was sounding worse and worse as the weather grew colder.
No matter, I thought. I would tell him first thing in the morning.
But next morning, before Paddy Enderton and Mother were up and about, Doctor Eileen paid a visit.
* * *
The day dawned late, under heavy grey skies. With it came the first real snow of winter, drifting down in big, soft flakes. It made perfect snowballs. I went outside, throwing the icy spheres at trees and birds and bushes, and laughing at our tame miniver, Chum. He was a bit witless, and he didn't understand the game. He tried to catch everything in his mouth, and he was scooting around looking a bit like an oversized snowball himself when Doctor Eileen's car came floating in along the northern path.
I pretended that I was going to chuck one at her when she turned off the engine and got out of the little runabout. She stood her ground and faced me down, grinning out from the fur hood that muffled her so only eyes to mouth were visible.
"I don't know about you," she said, "but I've been up all night. I decided to cadge something hot from Molly on my way home. Your mother up yet?"
It was her first visit for a few months. Doctor Eileen's patients were scattered over a big area west of Lake Sheelin, the "poor side," as she called it, and when she had been working to the north of us she had the habit of dropping in unannounced. The official reason was to perform a routine check on my health and Mother's, but I thought that was a waste of time, because it seemed to me that both of us were healthy as ticks. The real reason, I decided, was that Mother and Doctor Eileen got on well, and liked to sit and talk. And talk and talk.
But now I have to take a break, and point out that when I sat down to describe the quest for the Godspeed Drive, it was Doctor Eileen herself who told me that I must not take anything for granted. I had to describe everything, she said, people and places and things, even ones so familiar to me that I had never really looked at them before. In fact, especially ones that I had never really looked at before.
So she can hardly object when I apply that rule to her.
I don't remember a time when I did not know Doctor Eileen Xavier. She had been prodding and poking and making me say "Ah" since I was an infant, and probably before that. I thought of her as big, but she wasn't. By the time I was twelve, we were eye to eye. She was little and old, with a brown, wrinkled face that somehow stayed tanned summer and winter, and she was sort of roly-poly, a little bent forward and kind of thick through the middle. She was not strong, not in the way that people usually mean, like lifting things, but I had never seen her tired, even when she rolled up at our house after a day and a half on the road.
What she was, she was there, at all hours and in all weathers, whenever people needed a doctor. Mother said there wasn't a man or woman within thirty miles of Toltoona who wouldn't give Doctor Eileen anything they owned if she asked for it.
So there was never a question, on that brisk, snowy morning, that I would take Doctor Eileen into the kitchen without consulting anyone, set her cold outer clothes to warm and dry, and give her hot cakes and a mug of sugary tea, the way she liked it. And only after that did I start upstairs to tell Mother that she was here.
"What is that?" said Doctor Eileen, before I could set my foot on the first step.
I had to listen for a moment before I knew what she was talking about. I had become so used to it, that awful lung-collapsing cough.
"It's Mr. Enderton," I said. "He always sounds like that when he first gets up. I think it's the cold air. It gets to him."
The front bedroom, looking out over the lake, did not benefit much from the house's heating. It was always freezing in winter. I hadn't said anything to Mother, but as the weather became colder and colder, my objections to sleeping in the guest room were less and less.
"I'll tell Mother you're here," I went on. But before I could stop her, Doctor Eileen was stumping up the stairs behind me, her mug of tea still in her hand.
"I'm going to take a look at him," she said. She reached the top of the stairs, set her mug on the landing rail, and started toward the guest bedroom.
"Not that way." I grabbed her sleeve. "He's in my room."
That earned a quick, questioning look, then she had turned and was moving to bang on Paddy Enderton's door.
"Who is it?" The coughing had stopped for the moment, but his voice was a husky croak.
"This is Doctor Xavier. I'd like to take a look at you."
"I don't want no doctor." But the lock was being turned, and after a couple of seconds the door opened. Paddy Enderton peered out. He looked even worse than usual, face pale as chalk but eyes bloodshot and lips purple-red.
He glared at Doctor Eileen. "I don't want no doctor," he repeated, but then he started to cough again, in a fit that doubled him over and left him groping at the wall to support himself.
Doctor Eileen took the opportunity to advance into the room. "You may not want a doctor, but you need one. Sit down, and I'll examine you."
"No, damn it, you won't." Enderton was recovering from his attack and straightening up. He knotted his fists. "I'm doing fine, and I don't want any old woman in here, doctor or not. Get the hell out."
His eyes flicked across the room, and I followed his glance. The big box that usually sat closed and locked had been opened, and a lattice of dark-blue tubes and bars stood next to the window. Enderton took a step to the right, so that his body was between Doctor Eileen and the blue structure, then he slowly moved closer to her. "Out of my room."
She stood her ground. "I can't examine a man who refuses to be looked at. But I'll tell you this. The weather here is going to get colder and colder for the next four months, and if you don't seek medical treatment you're going to be flat on your back before spring arrives. And that's not the worst that might happen to you."
He grunted, deep in his chest, and shook his tangled bird's-nest of dirty hair. "I won't be here for any four months. And you don't know the worst that could happen to me. How I feel is my business. Get out of here."
"Molly Hara knows how to get in touch with me if you need me," said Doctor Eileen, as she turned and urged me back through the doorway. "Only make that when you need me. If you've not spent a winter by Lake Sheelin, you have an experience coming to you."
The door slammed behind us. The lock went into position, violently. And before either Doctor Eileen or I could say a word to each other, Mother came hurrying along the landing.
"You've hit a new low, Molly," Doctor Eileen said, byway of a greeting. It was as though the two of them were continuing a conversation from an hour before, but Mother just laughed and said, "With that one? Never in this world—or any other. Come on in, and bring your tea with you."
They went straight into Mother's room and closed the door, leaving me alone on the landing.
I could have gone downstairs, and back out into the snow. If it hadn't been for Paddy Enderton, I probably would have done. But his face had been full of anger, and I was afraid that he would follow me outside and blame me for telling Doctor Eileen that he was there. I didn't want to be alone with him.
I sneaked into my bedroom, the one that used to be the guest room, and closed the door as quietly as possible. Just a few seconds later I heard Enderton's door open, and his heavy tread on the landing and the stairs.
There was only the one way down. I was stuck. I settled on my bed, ready to stay there until I heard him come back up. It might not take long. Maybe all he wanted was a hot drink, to which he could add from his own supply of liquor. That was his usual breakfast these days.
In the next room, Mother and Doctor Eileen were talking together. That was nothing new, it was all they seemed to do when they met. What was a surprise was the ease with which someone in the guest bedroom could hear every word that they said.
"Fine. Now let's do the back." That was Doctor Eileen. "Breathe deep, and slow."
"You'll find nothing, you know."
"I should hope not. You're healthy enough, Molly. Not that you do much to make sure you stay that way."
"I eat right." There was the sighing sound of a long, forced breath. "I get plenty of sleep. And those stairs are more than enough exercise."
"I'm not talking about that sort of thing, and you know it. I'm talking about that sort of thing."
I couldn't see what she had done, but Mother laughed and said, "With that one? I told you, not in a million years. Not for a Pot of Gold."
"I'm glad to hear it. But it's a first." There were a few seconds of relative silence, with only the sound of Mother's deep breathing, then Doctor Eileen went on, "It's terribly dangerous, you know, taking on all comers the way you've been doing."
"Don't be horrible. I've never done that. I'm very careful." Breath. "I've only ever had the one accident, and looking back I'm not sure how much of an accident it was. You'd have loved him, Eileen." Breath. "Anyway, it worked out all right, didn't it?"
"Better than all right. Unless you're the odd sort that thinks everybody needs a father. But Molly, I'm not talking that sort of danger, and you know it. What about diseases?"
"That's why you're here, Eileen."
"For the local ailments, yes. But I'm not thinking of them. There's a thousand viruses to be picked up around the Forty Worlds, and brought back here by the spacers."
"You think that maybe Paddy Enderton—the man in the front room—"
"Oh, I wasn't referring to him. What he has sounds like ordinary spacer lungs, aggravated by a bad injury. He's in awful shape, but I'm worrying about something a lot worse. The viruses I'm talking about, we'll never have met them before. And you can bet that the nanos available here won't touch them. If you don't worry about yourself, you ought to worry about Jay."
I goosebumped all over, the way you do when you hear your own name and were least expecting it.
"He's not been sick for years," said Mother.
"Not in a way that you'd recognize. But Molly, how old is he?"
"Just sixteen. His birthday was last month."
"Sixteen. Do you see any signs of the change in him?"
"Puberty, you mean? Not yet. But is that unusual?"
"It isn't." And now it was Doctor Eileen's turn to sigh. "I see it all the time in my rounds. Boys who reach sixteen, or seventeen, or eighteen, and don't mature sexually. But it shouldn't be like that. And it wasn't, fifty years ago."
"I've never known it different."
"Well, I have. I remember it. And I've seen the old medical records, too, from a hundred and two hundred years ago. They're still kept, you know, over in Middletown on the eastern shore. It used to be that most boys reached puberty by the time they were twelve. And did you know there were as many girls born as boys?"
Mother's reaction to that was of course invisible, but I know the effect it had on me. As many girls as boys. I knew scores and scores of boys, and just three girls. And I hardly knew those three, because instead of going to the local school with us boys they were kept coddled indoors all the time. They were never allowed out, to play or fish or wander along the shore of the lake.
"But why is that?" Mother was saying.
"I wish I knew. It's something to do with this damned planet, I'm sure of that."
"I thought you loved Erin."
"I do. But not enough to make me blind."
"Why would it start to happen now, and not hundreds of years ago?"
"Because we're isolated. When there was the Godspeed Drive—"
"Not that again, Eileen."
"Hiding from the truth won't make the problem go away, Molly, even if everybody does it. There used to be a steady flow of materials into Erin, from a hundred different worlds. There were plants and animals and food and supplies, arriving here every day. With that, humans and Erin fitted just fine. But we're isolated now, and have been for centuries, except for bits and pieces coming in from the Forty Worlds. And that's bad news. Human biochemistry and native Erin biology, I don't think they fit. Close, but not quite. And it makes me worry for our future, a century or two from now. People used to live a lot longer than they do, did you know that? Thirty or forty years longer. I don't know if it's missing trace elements in the food, or diet deficiencies, or toxins, or something in the air of Erin—"
It was an unusually long and serious statement for Doctor Eileen, but I missed the end of it, for the clatter of Paddy Enderton's footsteps was again on the stairs. I listened carefully. He walked slowly along the landing, then halted. After a long and mysterious pause there came at last the sound of his door opening and closing.
I stood up. Back in Mother's bedroom, the conversation had turned to the idea that I ought to be made to eat more green vegetables. I made a face at the closed door. I already ate more of them than seemed decent.
It was the time, snow or no snow, to make a run for Toltoona. When I got back Paddy Enderton ought to have calmed down, especially when I brought to him the "no news" that he regarded as good news.
I still think it was a reasonable idea. Except that when I opened the door and sneaked out onto the landing, Paddy Enderton was there waiting, standing in his stockinged feet.
One great hand closed around my upper arm, and the other went over my mouth. He leaned to me, so that his mouth was only an inch from my ear.
"Not a sound, now, Jay Hara," he said in a growling whisper. "You and I are going to have a bit of a talk. And don't try to fight, or I'll have to hurt you."
He was hurting me already. But I kept that to myself, as we shuffled along to his room.
His door opened, and closed again. This time, I was on the wrong side of it.