Footfall

Aliana smiled back. “If we had the funding, wouldn’t we make improvements too? Very well. Dr. Beaumont has been a French communist for two decades. We can count her an ally. She has a kind of beauty, wouldn’t you say?”

“Classic and severe, but yes.”

“Have you made advances?”

Arvid laughed. “She would not be interested. A male can tell before he commits himself. Perhaps I have grown too fat. She speaks little English. I have taken opportunities to put her together with Dawson, to see what would happen.”

“And?”

“Oh, he shows some interest… but Captain Greeley and Giselle Beaumont have spent much more time together. Aliana, I find that odd.”

She nodded comprehension. “Captain John Greeley, USAF A good-looking man, three years younger than the French doctor, but fourteen years younger than, for example, me. Greeley probably considers Dawson a step in his career, which might end in public relations or political campaign management. Yet he seems to be trying to share a bed with the Frenchwoman. Dawson might find her attractive as well. Greeley is competing with a man who could help or hurt him.”

He shrugged. “Some men have little control over their gonads.”

“What would you do? I hardly have to ask, do I, Arvid? You would help your superior seduce the woman, and thereby advance your career.”

“I no longer must resort to such tactics. Yet I would have said that Greeley does.”

“Greeley knows Dawson better than we do. Dawson may be homosexual”

“It would be in his dossier. Even if the Americans do not know. The KGB would.”

“Then again, some married people are more thoroughly married than others.” That was a dig, but meant in friendly fashion. Arvid found Aliana’s position perfectly reasonable. With a husband and a child on Earth, and a career to manage as well, her life was easily complex enough without adding a lover.

Arvid poured more tea for them from the plastic bag. (Oh, yes, he would make changes here if he had the funding. Powdered tea! A samovar wouldn’t occupy that much room.) “I enjoy gossiping with you, Aliana.”

“We are also discussing security, are we not?” “Perhaps. Security isn’t my department either… Decisions have already been made, and not by me. My own inclination would be to bar any tourists from the station during this crucial time. But the Chairman favors world opinion these days—”

“I generally find that reassuring.”

“Too often it precedes an invasion. Not this time, perhaps. Mother Russia is about to greet the first visitors from interstellar space. They will come here first; intelligent creatures would not leave potential enemies above them when they land. And that coup will make the U.S. landings on the Moon look like a child reciting for his elders.”

“Must we have visitors to watch our triumph? It could be filmed.”

“We can guess at a second purpose. When the aliens arrive we will seem to represent the world… It doesn’t matter. Security is out of my hands. I can forbid our foreign visitors to enter parts of the station. I can forbid the crew to discuss technical matters. Information may leak through anyway; it usually does. But the blame will not fall on Arvid Rogachev.”

The little truck groaned up Coldwater Canyon. Harry clutched his twelve-string guitar and shivered in the wind-wake behind the cab. It was cold for May in Los Angeles. Lately all the nights had been cold. Cold or not, it beat walking. It was nice of Arline to duck her old man and come pick him up. Too damn bad she had five other people with her, so he had to ride in the back.

It had been a good evening in the Sunset Bar, where he played for free drinks and customer change. Once Harry had thought he’d be a real performer, but the auto wrecks had finished that. Twice within two weeks, in his own car and then his boss’s borrowed car, and neither had headrests! It went beyond bad luck. His head hurt, and his back hurt, and he cursed the two separate sets of sons of bitches who’d separately rear-ended him and left him part crippled. And the insurance companies and their goddam lawyers and — Ruby moved over to sit against him. A hundred and eighty pounds of fleshy cushion: her warmth felt good. “Want to come to my place?” she asked.

“Love to,” Harry said. And I don’t like to sleep alone. “But you know, I have this place I have to watch.”

“Take me with you, then.”

“Can’t do that, either,” Harry said. He didn’t want to. Ruby had been a nice, soft, affectionate partner, and not just in bed, ten years ago. Naive but nice. Maybe he’d been expecting her to grow up. God, how she’d changed! She’d grown out: forty pounds, maybe more. She’d been soft, then, but she hadn’t sagged! You noticed the lack of brains more now. Arline, now she’d be nice, but Jesus, she lives with her old man and he’d get sticky as hell.

For a moment Harry thought it over. Arline would come with him. She’d love the Dawson house. And— And word of honor on record. Heckfire. The truck was passing

Laurel Canyon on Mulholland. He tapped on the glass. The pickup pulled over. Harry climbed out. He waved to Arline. “Thanks,” he called.

“Sure this is all right?” she asked.

“Fine,” Harry said. He waited until she’d driven on up the hill and around a corner, then started climbing toward the Dawson house.

It’s good for me, Harry thought. It’s got to be. And, by damn, my legs are tightening up. He slapped his thigh-it did feel more solid than it had in a long time-and shifted the guitar from his left hand to his right.

The little .25-caliber Beretta was too heavy in his shirt pocket. He knew he ought to leave it at home. It wasn’t much of a gun, and even so, the cops would get soggy and hard to light if they caught him with it. But it was all the gun he had, and there were some bad people out there.

Not the only gun, he thought. He’d rooted around in the Dawson house-hell, Wes knew he’d do that, that’s why he told him about the money in the drawer behind the big drawer in the kitchen-and he’d found the Army .45, the one Wes bought for Carlotta on Harry’s advice, and damn all, she hadn’t taken it with her. But it wasn’t his gun, and Harry couldn’t carry it. It would really hit the fan if he was caught carrying a piece registered to a congressman.

Hell, he’d never carry that weight up this hill! It was always steeper. Every fucking night it got steeper.

It’s good for me. It’s really good for me. Oh, my, God, I have got to get that motorcycle fixed.

I’ve got enough for a deposit. They’ll fix the engine. Maybe if I sing at three places, the hell with the free drinks, get to places where the tips are good, I can scrape up enough to get it out, because I can’t go on climbing this hill! And there’s groceries. Jesus, I’m down to chili and cornmeal and NutriSystems. For the first week it had been easy. There had been food in the refrigerator. He ate vegetable omelets, then frozen stuff, then cans. But now he was down to the NutriSystem stuff Carlotta had bought years ago.

Diet stuff! Lord God. It tastes better than it ought to, and I could lose some belly, here. But opening the cans feels like opening cat food, looks like opening cat-food cans, and Carlotta went off the diet two years ago! Fry it with eggs, and it looks like cat food and snot! And I’m out of eggs…

He shifted the guitar to his other hand. Nothing left but breakfast cereal! I’m going to get that engine fixed.

Tomorrow, Harry thought. He shifted the guitar again. I can take the Kawasaki apart, but the engine has to be rebuilt. I’ll have to carry it in. Borrow Arline’s pickup again.

If you pulled a drawer in the Dawson kitchen all the way out, there was another drawer behind it, and a thousand dollars in fifties behind that. A good burglar would find it and go away, Harry thought, and that was probably its major purpose. Burglar bait, for God’s sake, and thank God he didn’t need it. He had enough for the deposit.