Flatlander - Larry Niven [5]
She was protecting us now. Each fifteen minutes Julie was making contact with a specific ARM agent. Psi powers are notoriously undependable, but Julie was an exception. If we got in a hole, Julie was always there to get us out … provided that some idiot didn’t interrupt her at work.
So I stood outside, waiting, with a cigarette in my imaginary hand.
The cigarette was for practice, to stretch the mental muscles. In its way my “hand” was as dependable as Julie’s mind-touch, possibly because of its very limitations. Doubt your psi powers and they’re gone. A rigidly defined third arm was more reasonable than some warlock ability to make objects move by wishing at them. I knew how an arm felt and what it would do.
Why do I spend so much time lifting cigarettes? Well, it’s the biggest weight I can lift without strain. And there’s another reason … something taught me by Owen.
At ten minutes to fifteen Julie opened her eyes, rolled out of the contour couch, and came to the door. “Hi, Gil,” she said sleepily. “Trouble?”
“Yah. A friend of mine just died. I thought you’d better know.” I handed her a cup of coffee.
She nodded. We had a date tonight, and this would change its character. Knowing that, she probed lightly.
“Jesus!” she said, recoiling. “How … how horrible. I’m terribly sorry, Gil. Date’s off, right?”
“Unless you want to join the ceremonial drunk.”
She shook her head vigorously. “I didn’t know him. It wouldn’t be proper. Besides, you’ll be wallowing in your own memories, Gil. A lot of them will be private. I’d cramp your style if you knew I was there to probe. Now, if Homer Chandrasekhar were here, it’d be different.”
“I wish he were. He’ll have to throw his own drunk. Maybe with some of Owen’s girls, if they’re around.”
“You know what I feel,” she said.
“Just what I do.”
“I wish I could help.”
“You always help.” I glanced at the clock. “Your coffee break’s about over.”
“Slave driver.” Julie took my earlobe between thumb and forefinger. “Do him proud,” she said, and went back to her soundproof room.
She always helps. She doesn’t even have to speak. Just knowing that Julie has read my thoughts, that someone understands … that’s enough.
All alone at three in the afternoon, I started my ceremonial drunk.
The ceremonial drunk is a young custom, not yet tied down by formality. There is no set duration. No specific toasts must be given. Those who participate must be close friends of the deceased, but there is no set number of participants.
I started at the Luau, a place of cool blue light and running water. Outside it was fifteen-thirty in the afternoon, but inside it was evening in the Hawaiian Islands of centuries ago. Already the place was half-full. I picked a corner table with considerable elbow room and dialed for Luau grog. It came, cold, brown, and alcoholic, its straw tucked into a cone of ice.
There had been three of us at Cubes Forsythe’s ceremonial drunk one black Ceres night four years ago. A jolly group we were, too, Owen and me and the widow of our third crewman. Gwen Forsythe blamed us for her husband’s death. I was just out of the hospital with a right arm that ended at the shoulder, and I blamed Cubes and Owen and myself all at once. Even Owen had turned dour and introspective. We couldn’t have picked a worse trio or a worse night for it.
But custom called, and we were there. Then as now, I found myself probing my own personality for the wound that was a missing crewman, a missing friend. Introspecting.
Gilbert Hamilton. Born of flatlander parents in April 2093 in Topeka, Kansas. Born with two arms and no sign of wild talents.
Flatlander: a Belter term referring to Earthmen, particularly to Earthmen who had never seen space. I’m not sure my parents ever looked at the stars. They managed the third largest farm in Kansas, ten square miles of arable land between two wide strips of city paralleling two