Outland by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online Page B

really seeing anything, hardly daring to face him even via the mask provided by the video lens.
    "Oh God . . . I just can't take it anymore. That's really what it comes down to. We've gone over this so many times before. We've had the same crying from me and the same assurances from you that the next place will be different. Well, this is the next place and it isn't different, Bill. It's never different. It can't be, except to be worse." Her eyes turned back to ward the pickup and she was staring hard at him once again.
    "So something snapped in me yesterday. I couldn't bear to watch Paulie clattering around still another bleak place. He has no friends. Ever since he was born he's been trucked off from one cesspool to the next, a year or two at a time. He's a child, and he's never set foot on Earth. Never. He reads and looks at pictures of Earth all day long, and then he hides them from you, blanking the recall code, so your feelings won't be hurt."
    She smiled bleakly. "You know what he talks about all the time? Trees. Not Africa or sports or rockets or games. Trees. He's never seen a goddamn tree, Bill.
    "But he's like his father. No matter how bad he's feeling, no matter how bad it gets for him, he never complains. He's not like his mother, God knows."
    O'Niel leaned forward, rested his chin on his folded hands, his face lit by the glow from the screen. His muscles were all tight, belying his relaxed posture.
    "Don't you see," Carol went on, "he deserves a childhood. A real childhood, before he grows up. He deserves a chance to breathe air. Real outside unrecycled air, someplace where you won't broil or freeze or explode. Air that smells like life, not like ventilation unit lubricant.
    "You think it's all worth it. You think that you go where they send you. You keep the good old peace and do the good old job. Well, I'm not as fortunate as you. I don't have your abiding faith in whatever-it-is." The long restrained bitterness was finally creeping into her voice.
    "I can't see that, Bill. I can't see anything except one God-forsaken mining town that looks just like every other one. The Company is the same , the greedy people are the same , the violence is the same . I'm just not as good as you are. I don't think it's all worth it."
    O'Niel's teeth had tightened against each other, until the small muscles in his jaw had started to twitch.
    Carol was not quite finished. Her tone softened a little. "So . . . so I'm taking Paulie back home. Back to the home he's never had, back to the home he deserves. A real home.
    "I love you, Bill. You don't deserve this. You deserve the best. I just have to go, my love. I'll get back in touch in a few days."
    She stared straight into the pickup, evidently trying to add something else. She couldn't get it out. Her eyes were blurred and the tears had started dribbling listlessly down her cheeks. She swallowed, tried vainly to smile, and finally gave up, ending it with a pathetic little shrug, the mute gesture a poor substitute for the words she'd searched for unsuccessfully.
    The screen blanked. Writing appeared, coldly indifferent.
    END MESSAGES O'NIEL, W.T.
    It blinked on and off, signaling silently. O'Niel ignored it, made no move to switch the screen off. He just sat there, gazing at the steadily blinking letters, his eyes staring but not seeing . . .
    Montone was running the regular morning roll call and check. The roll call really wasn't necessary, more formality than anything else. If someone was absent from duty; it was simple enough to check out their whereabouts as there weren't many other places to go.
    O'Niel sat off by himself at the back of the squad room, partially taking note of what was being said and mostly someplace else.
    "Okay," the sergeant was saying briskly, "what do we have?" He studied his acrylic board, then looked up toward one of the junior officers. "Ballard, what's happened with the Purser's Area? That was your job, wasn't it?"
    The younger man nodded. "We've had