Crashlander

«Thanks,» I called. Yes, I did. I was still bewildered, but she'd obviously stayed to help me. She could just as easily have kept wallet and all.

«No charge,» she called back, and was gone.

I stopped off at the first transfer booth I saw, dropped a half star in the coin slot, and dialed Elephant.

The vestibule was intimidating.

I'd expected a vestibule. Why put a transfer booth inside your own home, where any burglar can get in just by dialing your number? Anyone who can afford the lease on a private transfer booth can also afford a vestibule with a locked door and an intercom switch.

There was a vestibule, but it was the size of a living room, furnished with massage chairs and an autovendor. There was an intercom, but it was a flat vidphone, three hundred years old, restored at perhaps a hundred times its original cost. There was a locked door; it was a double door of what looked like polished brass, with two enormous curved handles, and it stood fifteen feet high.

I'd suspected Elephant was well off, but this was too much. It occurred to me that I'd never seen him completely sober, that I had in fact turned down his offer of guidance, that a sunple morning-after treatment might have wiped me from his memory. Shouldn't I just go away? I had wanted to explore Earth on my own.

But I didn't know the rules!

I stepped out of the booth and glimpsed the back wall. It was all picture window, with nothing outside — just fleecy blue sky. How peculiar, I thought, and stepped closer. And closer.

Elephant lived halfway up a cliff. A sheer mile-high cliff.

The phone rang.

On the third ear-jarring ring I answered, mainly to stop the noise. A supercilious voice asked, «Is somebody out there?»

«I'm afraid not,» I said. «Does someone named Elephant live here?»

«I'll see, sir,» said the voice. The screen had not lit, but I had the feeling someone had seen me quite clearly.

Seconds crawled by. I was half minded to jump back in the transfer booth and dial at random. But only half; that was the trouble. Then the screen lit, and it was Elephant. «Bey! You changed your mind!»

«Yeah. You didn't tell me you were rich.»

«You didn't ask.»

«Well, no, of course not.»

«How do you expect to learn things if you don't ask? Don't answer that. Hang on, I'll be right down. You did change your mind? You'll let me show you Earth?»

«Yes, I will. I'm scared to go out there alone.»

«Why? Don't answer. Tell me in person.» He hung up. Seconds later the big bronze doors swung back with a bone-shaking boom. They just barely got out of Elephant's way. He pulled me inside, giving me no time to gape, shoved a drink in my hand, and asked why I was afraid to go outside.

I told him about the pickpocket, and he laughed, He told me about the time he tried to go outside during a We Made It summer, and I laughed, though I've heard of outworlders being blown away and to Hades doing the same thing. Amazingly, we were off again. It was just like it had been on the ship, even to the end of Elephant's anecdote. «They called me a silly flatlander, of course.»

«I've been thinking about that,» I said.

«About what?»

«You said you'd give a lot to do something completely original, so the next time someone called you a flatlander, you could back him into a corner and force him to listen to your story. You said it several times.»

«I didn't say just that. But I would like to have some story to tell, something like your neutron star episode. If only to tell myself. The silly offworlder wouldn't know, but I'd know.»

I nodded. I'd talked about the neutron star episode over gin cards — a habit I've developed for distracting my opponent — and Elephant had been suitably impressed.

«I've thought of a couple of things you could do,» I said.

«Spill.»

«One. Visit the puppeteer homeworld. Nobody's been there, but everyone knows there is one, and everyone knows how difficult it is to find. You could be the first.»

«Great.» He mused a moment. «Great! And the puppeteers wouldn't stop me because they're gone. Where is the puppeteer homeworld?»

«I don't know.»

«What's your second idea?»

«Ask the Outsiders.»

«Huh?»

«There's not a system in the galaxy that the Outsiders don't know all about. We don't know how far the puppeteer empire extended, though it was way beyond known space, but we do know about the Outsiders. They know the galaxy like the palm of their — uh … And they trade for information; it's just about the only business they do. Ask them what's the most unusual world they know of within reach.»

Elephant was nodding gently. There was a glazed look in his eyes. I had not been sure he was serious about seeking some unique achievement. He was.

«The problem is,» I said, «That an Outsider's idea of what is unique may not —» I stopped because Elephant was up and half ru

I wasn't sorry. It gave me an opportunity to gape in private.

I've been in bigger homes than Elephant's. Much bigger. I grew up in one. But I've never seen a room that soothed the eye as Elephant's living room did. It was more than a living room; it was an optical illusion, the opposite of those jittering black-and-white images they show in lectures on how we see. These clinical children of op art give the illusion of motion, but Elephant's living room gave the illusion of stillness. A physicist would have loved the soundproofing. Some interior decorator had become famous for his work here, if he hadn't been famous already, in which case he had become rich. How could tall, thin Beowulf Shaeffer fit into a chair designed to the measure of short, wide Elephant? Yet I was bonelessly limp, blissfully relaxed, using only the muscles that held a double-walled glass of an odd-tasting, strangely refreshing soft drink called Tzlotz Beer.

A glass which would not empty. Somewhere in the crystal was a tiny transfer motor co

Elephant returned. He walked as if he massed tons, as if any kzinti foolish enough to stand in his path would have a short, wide hole in him. «All done,» he said. «Don Cramer'll find the nearest Outsider ship and make my pitch for me. We should hear in a couple of days.»

«Okay,» said I, and asked him about the cliff. It turned out that we were in the Rocky Mountains and that he owned every square inch of the nearly vertical cliff face. Why? I remembered Earth's eighteen billion and wondered if they'd otherwise have surrounded him up, down, and sideways.

Suddenly Elephant remembered that someone named Dia

Dia

Elephant introduced me to Dia

«What's an Outsider?» she asked.

Elephant gestured with both hands, looked confused, turned helplessly toward me.

«They're hard to describe,» I said. «Think of a cat-o'-nine-tails with a big thick handle.»

«They live on cold worlds,» said Elephant.

«Small, cold, airless worlds like Nereid. They pay rent to use Nereid as a base, don't they, Elephant? And they travel over most of the galaxy in big unpressurized ships with fusion drives and no hyperdrives.»