The Ophiuchi Hotline

"Where are you from? And what are the names of the other two who would be going?"

"Luna. Vaffa and Cathay. How old are you?" She had not meant to ask it.

"If I don't mind your asking?" She made a small smile. "Old enough to be the missing link in your family chain, Lilo. I was born in 1979, Old Style. My name at that time was Mary Lisa Bailey. I was the first woman on Mars, if you're interested. It was my only footnote in the history books."

Lilo was not sure if she was being lied to. She had run into extravagant claims of age before, and generally discounted them.

As far as she knew, there were no Earth-born people still alive. The Invasion had been five and a half centuries ago, after all, and biological science had been in its infancy. Still...

"That would make you—"

"The oldest living human. Don't spread it around. The last thing I need is to be discovered again as a human interest story on the news. By the way, I've decided to take you and your friends. When can you be ready to go?"

"You've... uh, let me see. This is going a little too fast for me." She never thought she'd say that to a hunter.

"Well, get thinking, woman. You don't need any shots or passports where we're going. I'll allow each of you thirty kilos of luggage. When can you be packed?"

"How about tomorrow? Don't you have to—"

"We burn in eighty-four-thousand standard seconds, then. Have your boarding passes ready. You do your own cooking and cleaning. I'm signing off now. There's some structural changes I'll have to make if you people are going to move around inside the ship. Walls to knock out, that sort of thing. You bring the champagne, okay?"

The screen went dark.

"I don't know why she caved in so fast," Lilo said. "Will you quit bothering me about it? Maybe she'll tell us." The three were approaching the vast bulk of the Cavorite in a scooter, a larger model that allowed them to carry their helmets. Each had a suit and a small suitcase.

Lilo had been replaying her conversation with Javelin all day long. She had told Vaffa that she was not worried about anything, that Javelin was just eccentric and probably didn't have a reason for taking them other than her own amusement.

But privately, Lilo was disturbed by several things, all of them so ephemeral she could barely define them. Of course there was the large question of why Javelin had agreed in the first place. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced the deciding factor had been the mention of being from Luna, and the name of Vaffa. Something had happened just behind Javelin's impassive face when Lilo had said that.

Then there was the talk about the Hotline itself. Had there been a reason for Javelin being so specific about the destination? It had to be just her peculiar sense of humor, suggesting they might be considering a trip to 70 Ophiuchi. The deepest penetration by a human into interstellar space was no more than half a light-year; 70 Ophiuchi was seventeen lights away. But she had paused—hadn't she?—before mentioning the star.

The reception room was changed from her earlier visit. The wall opposite the lock had been knocked out, and the chairs were no longer bolted to the walls. The room was crowded now with odds and ends of antique furniture, so much that they could not see how to get to the other end.

Javelin appeared on the other side of the jumble. It was the first time any of them had seen her, but their view was impeded.

"Hello there," she called, peering at them through the furniture. "You'll have to help me load this stuff into the scooter before you get settled in. I won't be able to boost it with the three of you along." Then, quicker than the eye could follow, she was beside them.

"Holy Mother Earth, don't do that!" Vaffa seemed genuinely shaken. Lilo was a little dizzy herself. It was unca

Lilo looked at Javelin and saw a two-meter cylinder, swelling gently from the extremities to a fatter part in the middle, with a hand at each end. The cylinder was flexible at four points, which were her knee, hip, shoulder, and elbow. Growing from her "shoulder" at a slight angle from the rest of the cylinder was her head, with brown hair cut efficiently short. She wore a simple blue tube of cloth that left her arm and leg bare.

That was Javelin, with her arm held straight up. When she put her arm at her side, she looked like a jackknife.

What she had done was not a simple matter of getting rid of her right arm and left leg. Dispensing with two limbs—usually the legs—was common among spacers. But rib cage, right shoulder, and left hip had been redesigned with plastic structures replacing the bones. She had got rid of her left kidney, right lung, and a lot of intestine. Her elbow and knee had been reengineered with ball and socket joints.

She was limber as a snake. What was left of her could wriggle through a hole twenty centimeters in diameter.

"Do what?" Javelin asked, i

"...that. What you did. I don't like people coming up on me that fast."

"I'll bear it in mind. Now will you lend a hand?"

They got the items moved into the scooter. It might have gone faster, but all three were fascinated by Javelin's movements. She would grab a handle at the side of the lock with one hand, reach out with her leg and use the hand on that end to snatch a piece of furniture, pull, and bend like an eel as she guided it through the hatch.

"This way," she said, when it was done. They followed her out the door, all of them moving awkwardly in zero-gee. There was a long hallway, two walls carpeted and two paneled in oak, with ornamental brass rails on each of the paneled walls.

"Life-support equipment back here," she said, indicating the walls. "Living quarters are forward." She started off, hand over hand, which in her case meant grabbing the rail and swinging her body in an arc until she could make contact with the other hand on the end of her ankle. Three swings like that and she was arrowing down the center of the corridor, leg first, looking back at them with a broad smile on her face. She hit the far end, soaked up momentum with her leg, and vanished around the corner.

"What will modern science think of next?" Cathay said.

"Don't knock it," Lilo said. "It seems to work pretty well. She makes me feel almost... outmoded, you know?"

"Yeah. But she'd be a real sight in a gravity field."

"I gather she never goes down. Never."

Javelin was waiting for them at the end of the corridor, at the first of two locks. She ushered them through, with comments about the ship's air-integrity routines that she expected them to follow with no nonsense. Then they were into the living quarters.

"Sorry about the size," Javelin said, opening the doors to two small rooms. "This isn't the Queen Mary. As it was, I had to move out my stamp collection. So two of you will have to room together, unless one of you bunks on the couch in the solarium. Go ahead, stow your luggage. Now come this way."

Lilo was dazzled. She was not sure how much Javelin was underplaying, whether she actually regretted that there were only two "guest rooms" on a ship that by all economic laws should have had none at all. The rooms were small, but lavishly furnished, paneled, and carpeted, like everything else she had seen. They passed two more facing doors, one leading to a workshop and another to a medical laboratory. Lilo got only a glimpse of each.

The solarium was the biggest part of the living area. Javelin led them in, and kept going forward.

"I'll be right back," she said. "Make yourselves at home. Coffee bulbs over there, drinks in the bottles against that wall." She darted through a small hole in the forward bulkhead.