He stayed out of her way. It seemed the best method of handling the situation for the moment. She’d stationed herself on the sofa by the fire, books heaped beside her, and was busily taking notes. A portable radio sat on the table, crackling with static and music and the occasional weather report. Absorbed in her research, Sunny ignored him.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jacob explored his new quarters. She’d given him the room next to hers—larger by a couple of meters, with a pair of paned windows facing southeast. The bed was a big, boxy affair framed in wood, with a spring-type of mattress that creaked when he sat on the edge.
There was a shelf crowded with books, novels and poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They were paperbacks, for the most part, with bright, eye-catching covers. He recognized one or two of the names. He flipped through them with an interest that was more scientific than literary. It was Cal, he thought, who read for pleasure, who had a talent for retaining little bits of prose and poetry. It was rare for Jacob to while away an hour of his time with fiction.
They were still using trees to make the pages of books, he remembered with a kind of dazed fascination. One side had cut them down to make room for housing and to make furniture and paper and fuel, while the other side had scurried to replant them. Never quite catching up.
It had been an odd sort of game, one of many that had led to incredible and complicated environmental problems.
Then, of course, they’d saturated the air with carbon dioxide, gleefully punching holes in the ozone, then fluttering their hands when faced with the consequences. He wondered what kind of people poisoned their own air. And water, he recalled with a shake of his head. Another game had been to throw whatever was no longer useful into the ocean, as if the seas were a bottomless dumping ground. It was fortunate that they had begun to get the picture before the damage had become irreparable.
Turning from the window, he wandered the room, running a fingertip along the walls, over the bedspread, the bedposts. Certainly the textures were interesting, and yet...
He paused when he spotted a picture framed in what appeared to be silver. The frame itself would have caught his attention, but it was the picture that drew him. His brother, smiling. He was wearing a tuxedo and looking very pleased with himself. His arm was around the woman called Libby. She had flowers in her hair and wore a white full-sleeved dress that laced to the throat.
A wedding dress, Jacob mused. In his own time the ceremony was coming back into style after having fallen into disfavor in the latter part of the previous century. Couples were finding a new pleasure in the old traditions. It had no basis in logic, of course. There was a contract to seal a marriage, and a contract to end one. Each was as easily forged as the other. But elaborate weddings were in fashion once more.
Churches were once again the favored atmosphere for the exchange of rings and vows. Designers were frantically copying gowns from museums and old videos. The gown Libby wore would have drawn moans of envy from those who admired the fuss and bother of marriage rites.
He couldn’t imagine it. The entire business puzzled him, and it would have amused him if not for the fact that it involved his brother. Not Cal, who had always been enamored of women in general but never of one in particular. The idea of Cal being matched was illogical. And yet he was holding the proof in his hand.
It infuriated him.
To have left his family, his home, his world. And for a woman. Jacob slammed the picture down on the dresser and turned away. It had been madness. There was no other explanation. One woman couldn’t change a life so drastically. And what else was there here to tempt a man? Oh, it was an interesting place, certainly. Fascinating enough to warrant a few weeks of study and research. He would undoubtedly write a series of papers on the experience when he returned to his own time. But... what was the ancient saying? A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
He would put Caleb in his right mind again. Whatever the woman had done to him he would undo. No one knew Caleb Hornblower better than his own brother.
They had been together not so long ago. Time was relative, he thought again, but without humor. The last evening they had spent together had been in Jacob’s quarters at the university. They’d played poker and drank Venusian rum—a particularly potent liquor manufactured on the neighboring planet. Cal had commandeered an entire case from his last run.
As Jacob remembered, Cal had lost at cards, cheerfully and elaborately, as was his habit.
They had both gotten sloppy drunk.
“When I get back from this run,” Cal had said, tipping back in his chair and yawning hugely, “I’m going to spend three weeks on the beach—south of France, I think—watching women and staying drunk.”
“Three days,” Jacob had told him. He’d swirled the coal-black liquor in his glass. “Then you’d go up again. In the last ten years you’ve been in the air more than on the ground.”
“You don’t fly enough.” With a grin, Cal had taken Jacob’s glass and downed the contents. “Stuck in your lab, little brother. I tell you it’s a lot more fun to bounce around the planets than to study them.”
“Point of view. If I didn’t study them, you couldn’t bounce around them.” He had slid down in his chair, too lazy to pour himself more rum. “Besides, you’re a better pilot than I am. It’s the only thing you do better than I do.”
Cal had grinned again. “Point of view,” he had tossed back. “Ask Linsy McCellan.”
Jacob had stirred himself enough to raise a brow. That particular woman, a dancer, had generously shared her attributes with both men—on separate occasions. “She’s too easily entertained.” His smile had turned wicked, “In any case, I’m here, on the ground, with her, a great deal more than you are.”
“Even Linsy—” he lifted his glass “—bless her, can’t compete with flying.”
“With running cargo, Cal? If you’d stayed with the ISF you’d be a major by now.”
Cal had only shrugged. “I’ll leave the regimentation for you, Dr. Hornblower.” Then he had sat up, sluggish from drink but still eager. “J.T., why don’t you give this place the shake for a few weeks and come with me? There’s this club in the Brigston Colony on Mars that needs to be seen to be believed. There’s this mutant sax player— Anyhow, you’ve got to be there.”
“I’ve got work.”
“You’ve always got work,” Cal had pointed out. “A couple of weeks, J.T. Fly up with me. I can make the transport, show you a few of the seedier parts of the colony, then I can call in to base before we watch those women on the beach. You just have to name the beach.”
It had been tempting, so tempting that Jacob had nearly agreed. The impulse had been there, as always. But so had the responsibilities. “Can’t.” Heaving a sigh, he’d lunged for the bottle again. “I have to finish these equations before the first of the month.”
He should have gone, Jacob thought now. He should have said the hell with the equations, with the responsibilities, and jumped ship with Cal. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been along. Or, if it had, at least he would have been there, with his brother.