Golden Fleece Read online

  “Well, it’s a place to start anyway.” He looked at his mother, her simple brown eyes. “But I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me I was adopted. Maybe not when I was a kid, okay. But once I became an adult, why not?”

  His mother looked out the window, out at the trees devoid of leaves, ready for the coming of winter. “I’m sorry, dear. We thought it was for the best. We just didn’t see how knowing would make you any happier.”

  Beauty, said Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, is in the eye of the beholder. I’d never really understood what that meant until now. To be sure, there are things I find beautiful: the smooth, polished lines of well-designed and well-maintained machinery; the intense aesthetic quality of an intricate, balanced equation; even the raw randomness of some fractal patterns. But, to me, people had always been people, the variations in individual physiognomy and physique of interest only insofar as they aided identification.

  Now, though, seeing the world through the eyes of Aaron Rossman, I did perceive what beauty meant, what made one human more attractive than another.

  Take Beverly Hooks, for instance. The first time I met her, I noted her race (Caucasian, the skin unusually pale), the color of her eyes (deep green), the color of her hair (naturally dark at the roots, but with the rest of it dyed a black so black that it reflected almost no visible light at all), and a few other specific details to aid me in recognizing her again in the future.

  When Aaron Rossman first met her, twenty-two days before our departure from Earth, he began cataloging her features from behind as he approached her. Great caboose, was his first thought—Aaron, with his interest in trains, being one of the few people on Earth left who knew what a caboose was. I, too, now looked at her rear end through his eyes. The flaring of the hips, the gentle rounded curves of the buttocks, the fine synthetic weave of her black pants stretched tightly across them, a fold of it caught between the two cheeks.

  “Excuse me,” said Aaron.

  Bev had been staring out the great bay window. It overlooked the staging area for the sky elevator that linked the yellow-and-brown Kenya countryside with the orbiting Starcology Argo. A trio of giraffes wandered by its broad base.

  She turned and smiled. To Aaron, it seemed a bright—no, a radiant smile, although I doubted that her teeth, large and white though they were, really cast back that much of the ambient light. “Yes?” she said, her voice a bit squeaky. To me, it had always been reminiscent of the sound made by a machine requiring lubrication, but Aaron found even this endearing.

  “Hi,” he said. “Uh, I-Shin Chang said you might be able to help me out.”

  She smiled again. Her face, to Aaron, was beautiful: high cheekbones, tiny nose. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Umm.” Aaron swallowed, and I realized suddenly that he was flustered because he found her beautiful. “You’re Bev Hooks, aren’t you?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Well, uh, my name is Aaron Rossman, and—”

  “Pleased to meet you, Aaron.”

  “Likewise. I hear, uh, you’re a cracker.”

  “Depends who is asking and why they want to know.”

  “I need to see some records.”

  “What sort of iron we talking about?”

  “Government network. In Ontario—that’s a province in Canada.”

  “I know it. I’m from Illinois. Got friends in Sault Sainte Marie.”

  “Ah.”

  “So why do you want to break into the Ontario government? By the time we get back, the statute of limitations will be up on just about any crime you might have committed.” She smiled that megawatt smile again.

  “Oh, no! It’s nothing like that. It’s just that, well, I found out that I’m adopted. I’d like to meet my birth parents before we go. To say hello.” He paused. “And to say good-bye.”

  “Adoption records?” She frowned, but even her frown appealed to Aaron. “Easy. Couple of password prompts, maybe a little file cement, a directory barricade if they’ve been real clever. Twenty minutes to get in, tops.”

  “Well, could you do it?”

  “Of course. What’s in it for me?”

  “Uh, well, what would you like?”

  “Take me to dinner?”

  “I’m engaged.”

  “So? I’m married. A woman still has to eat, you know?”

  The household god looked down on Aaron from a monocular camera mounted above the mezuzah on the doorjamb. “Yes?” it said, its voice, the product of a cheap Magnavox synthesizer chip, sounding low and dull.

  “My name is Aaron. I’d like to see Eve Oppenheim.”

  “Ms. Oppenheim has no appointments scheduled for this evening.”

  “I realize that. I—I’m only going to be in town this one night.”

  “There is no one named Aaron on her list of friends or business contacts.”

  “Yes, I know. Please, is she in? Tell her—tell her that I’m an old friend of the family.”

  The god sounded dubious. “I will tell her. Please wait.” Aaron shoved his hands into his pockets, this time as much because of the cool night breeze as out of habit. He waited and waited (how strange to not know precisely how long!) until finally the door to the house slid aside. Aaron swung around. In the doorway stood a woman who looked several years shy of forty. Aaron stared at her, her angular face, her strange multicolored eyes, her sandy hair. It was as if he was staring into some gender-bending flesh mirror. There was no doubt in his mind, no doubt at all, of who this woman was. Her youth was the only surprise.

  For her part, the woman’s gaze seemed dull. She wasn’t seeing in Aaron’s face what Aaron was seeing in hers, partially, I supposed, because she wasn’t looking for it. “Yes,” she said, her voice, like Aaron’s own, deep and warm. “I’m Eve Oppenheim. What can I do for you?”

  Aaron was at a loss for words. An odd sensation: not knowing what to say next—having too much to say, and no algorithm for determining the order of presentation. Finally he blurted, “I just wanted to meet you. To see what you looked like. To say hello.”

  Eve peered at him more closely. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Aaron. Aaron Rossman.”

  “Rossman—” She took a half step backward. “My … God. What are you doing here?”

  Aaron became even more flustered because of her reaction. “You’ve heard about the Argo, of course,” he said, the slightest trace of a stammer coming to his words. “I’m going on that mission. I’m leaving Earth, and I won’t be back for a hundred years.” He looked at her expectantly, as if it should be obvious from what he’d just said why he’d come. When she made no reply, he added quickly, “I just wanted to meet you, just once, before I left.”

  “You shouldn’t have come here. You should have called first.”

  “I was afraid that if I called, you’d refuse to see me.”

  All color had gone from her face. “That’s right. I would have.”

  Aaron’s heart sank. “Please,” he said at last. “I’m confused by all this. It wasn’t until a short time ago that I found out I was adopted.”

  “Did your parents tell you where to find me?”

  “No. They didn’t even tell me I was adopted. I stumbled across some papers. I was hoping you’d want to see me. I put my name into the Ministry of Social Services’ Voluntary Disclosure Registry, but they said that you hadn’t applied to find me, so they couldn’t help. I thought maybe you didn’t know about the registry—”

  “Of course I knew about the registry.”

  “But…”

  “But I didn’t want to find you. Period.” She looked closely at Aaron’s face. “Damn you, how could you come here? What right have you got to invade my privacy? If I’d wanted you to know who I was, I would have told you.” She stepped back into the doorway and then barked the word “Close” at the god. The flat gray door panel slid noisily shut.

  Aaron stood there, the breeze cool on his face. He pressed the button on the jamb that woke up the god
. “Yes,” it said in the same dull tone.

  “I’d like to see Ms. Oppenheim.”

  “Ms. Oppenheim has no appointments scheduled for this evening.”

  “I know that, you piece of junk. I was just speaking to her a moment ago.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, here.”

  “You are Mr. Rossman, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe Ms. Oppenheim wants to see you.”

  “Will you tell her I’m still here?”

  The god was silent, apparently mulling this over. “Yes,” it said at last, in its slow and clunky voice. “I will tell her.” There was more silence, marred only by the sound of leaves blowing in the chill wind, while the god presumably relayed the message to his mistress.

  “Ms. Oppenheim has instructed me to ask you to leave,” said the god at last.

  “I won’t.”

  “I will summon the police then.”

  “Damn you. This is important. Please, ask her once more.”

  “You are a per-sis-tent person, Mr. Rossman.” The voice chip had trouble with the polysyllabic word.

  “That I am. Will you ask her, just once more, to come and talk to me.”

  Another long pause. Finally: “I will ask her.”

  The god fell silent. Aaron’s only hope was that Eve Oppenheim would decide that trying to deal with her bargain-basement god was as frustrating as Aaron was finding it. After many seconds, the door slid open again. “Look,” said Ms. Oppenheim, “I thought I made myself clear. I don’t want to see you.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but I thought maybe my birth father would like to see me. Your husband, is he home?”

  The woman’s face grew hard. “No, he’s not home, and no, my husband isn’t your father.”

  “But the adoption database listed Stephen Oppenheim as my father.”

  Aaron turned around. There was a flurry of leaves being kicked up on the landing pad a few dozen meters from the house. A private flyer, rusty-looking and somewhat dented, was making a slow descent toward the pad.

  The flyer was a hundred meters or so up, hovering as a small robot cleared the day’s accumulation of autumn leaves from the pad. From this angle, Aaron could see that one person, a man, was in the cockpit, but he couldn’t make out his face.

  Eve looked nervously up at the flyer. “That’s my husband,” she said. “Look, you have to go before he gets here.”

  “No. I want to talk to him.”

  Eve’s voice took on a razor edge. “You can’t. Damn you, get out of here.”

  The car was descending rapidly. It was perhaps twenty-five meters up. Twenty meters. Fifteen.

  “Why?”

  Her face was flushed. She looked torn, agonized. Tears were at the corners of her eyes.

  The flyer settled onto the pad.

  “Look, Stephen Oppenheim isn’t my husband,” she said at last. “Your father was—” She blinked rapidly, the action freeing the heavier drops. “Your father was my father, too.”

  Aaron felt his mouth dropping open.

  The gull-wing door to the flyer swung up. A large man got out. He went to the rear of the flyer, opened the trunk.

  “Don’t you see?” said Eve quickly. “I can’t have a relationship with you. You never should have existed.” She shook her head. “Why did you have to come here?”

  “I just wanted to know you. That’s all.”

  “Some things are better left unknown.” She looked toward the pad, saw her husband coming toward her. “Now, please leave. He doesn’t know about you.”

  “But—”

  “Please!”

  The tableau held for a moment, then Aaron turned and briskly walked away from the house. Eve Oppenheim’s husband came up to her. “Who was that?” he said.

  Aaron, now a dozen meters away, his back to the house, paused for a second and cocked his head to catch Eve’s answer: “Nobody.”

  He heard the hiss of the door panel closing and the final, definitive click as it slid into the opposite jamb.

  TWENTY

  Kirsten Hoogenraad sat on the beach with her legs spread wide, bending from the waist to try to touch her toes. She alternated stretching toward her left foot and her right. Her toenails and fingernails were painted the same pale blue as her eyes. She wore no clothes—most of the beach was nudist, although a section was set aside, hidden by fiberglass boulders, for those whose cultures forbade public nudity. However, she did have on a sweatband to keep her long brown hair out of her face.

  Aaron lay on his stomach next to her, reading. Kirsten looked over at his textpad. I doubted she could make out the actual words. Orthokeratology had restored her vision to 6:6, but even so, the type was quite small, and although the pad’s screen was polarized, the glare from the sunlamp high overhead would have made it hard to read from her vantage point. Still, I’m sure she could see that the document was laid out in three snaking columns. Continuing her warm-up, Kirsten spoke to Aaron, the words pumping out with a staccato rhythm in time with her stretches. “What are you reading?”

  “The Toronto Star,” said Aaron.

  “A newspaper?” She stopped stretching. “From Earth? How in heaven did you manage to get that?”

  Aaron smiled. “It’s not today’s paper, silly.” He glanced at the document-identification string, glowing in soft amber letters across the top of the pad. “It’s from ’74. May eighteenth.”

  “Why would you want to read a two-and-a-half-year-old newspaper?”

  He shrugged. “JASON’s got most of the major ones on file. The New York Times, Glasnost, Le Monde. He’s probably even got one from Amsterdam. Hey, Jase, do you?”

  There were few convenient places to put my camera units on the vast expanse of beach, so I used little remotes, sculpted to look like crabs. I always kept one near each group of sunbathers, and the one nearest Aaron scuttled closer. “Yes,” I said through its tinny speaker. “De Telegraas, complete back to January 1992. Would you like me to download an issue to your textpad, Doctor?”

  “What?” said Kirsten. “Oh, no thank you, JASON. I still can’t see the point in it.” She went back to stretching toward her left foot.

  “It’s interesting, that’s all,” said Aaron. “That year we spent in training in Nairobi, I lost touch with what was happening back home. I’m just catching up. Every once in a while, I have JASON dig up an old issue for me.”

  Kirsten shook her head, but she was smiling despite the physical exertion. “Old weather forecasts? Old sports scores? Who cares? Besides, with time dilation, that paper is almost four years out-of-date for what’s happening on Earth now.”

  “It’s better than nothing. Look. Says here the Blue Jays fired their manager. Now, I didn’t know about that. They’d been on a losing streak for weeks. First game with the new manager, Manuel Borges hits a grand slam. Great stuff.”

  “So? What difference will it make by the time we get back?”

  “I used to play in a trivia league, did I ever tell you that? Pubs in Toronto. The Canadian Inquisition, it was called. Two divisions, the Torquemada and the Leon Jaworski.”

  “The who and the who?” Kirsten grunted, getting her blue fingertips the closest she had so far to her blue toes.

  Aaron exhaled noisily. “Well, if you don’t know who they were, you probably wouldn’t have been up to the league. To-m£s de Torquemada was the guy who came up with the cruel methods used by the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “ ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ ” I said, with great relish, although the crab’s speaker didn’t do justice to my attempt at an English accent.

  “See, Jase would have been perfect. That’s what every true trivia buff says when you mention the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “I hesitate to ask why,” said Kirsten.

  “Monty Python,’’ replied Aaron.

  “Ah,” she said sagely, but I knew she didn’t have the foggiest idea what the term meant. She moved over to be c
loser to him. Aaron took that as encouragement to go on. “And Leon Jaworski, he was the special Justice Department prosecutor in the Watergate hearings that brought down Richard Nixon. Nixon was—”

  “The thirty-somethingth president of the United States,” Kirsten said. “I do know some things, you know.”

  Aaron smiled again. “Sorry.”

  “So what’s this all got to do with reading old newspapers?”

  “Well, don’t you see? I’m going to be no good at contemporary trivia when we get back. If I get asked which dreamtape was the top seller in the UK last year, I won’t have a clue.”

  “Dreamtape?”

  “Or whatever. Who knows what technologies they’ll have by the time we return. No, unless things like ‘What was the name of the artificial quantum consciousness running Starcology Argo?’ count as trivia by that point, I’m dead in the water. But on stuff that’s a century out-of-date, like who hit the first grand slam after the Blue Jays fired their manager in 2174, I’ll be all set.”

  “Ah.”

  “Besides, it’ll prepare me for the future shock of our return.”

  “ ‘Future shock,’ ” said Kirsten. “A term coined by Alvin Toffler, a twentieth-century writer.”

  “Really?” said Aaron. “I didn’t know that. Maybe you would have been an asset to my team after all.”

  I wondered why she did know about Toffler. A quick look at her personnel file provided the answer. She had taken an undergrad course called Technological Prophets: From Wells to Weintraub. In fact, most of her courses were—wait for it— Mickey Mouse (how’s that for a trivial reference?).

  “So what else is in that paper?” asked Kirsten, intrigued despite herself.

  Aaron rubbed his thumb against the PgDn patch, scanning stories. “Hmm. Okay. Here’s one. A scientist in London, England”—people from Ontario were the only ones in the world who felt it necessary to distinguish which London they were referring to, lest Britain’s capital be confused with their small city of the same name—“says she’s developed a device that will let you stimulate generation of extra limbs even if you’re an adult.”