He was glowering at the map. "But there's only that one little piece of a mascon that isn't off limits!"
"And that little piece," I said, "is where we're going."
VI
For a man more than ninety years old, Boyce Cochenour was spry. I don't mean just that he was healthy. Full Medical will do that for you, because you just replace whatever wears out or begins to look tacky. You can't replace the brain, though. So what you usually see in the very rich old ones is a bronzed, muscular body that shakes and hesitates and drops things.
About that Cochenour had been very lucky.
He was going to be abrasive company for three weeks. He'd already insisted I show him how to pilot an airbody, and he had learned fast. When I decided to use a little flight time to give the cooling system a somewhat premature thousand-hour check, he helped me pull the covers, check the refrigerant levels, and clean the filters. Then he decided to cook us lunch.
Dorrie Keefer took over as my helper while I moved some of the supplies around, getting the autosonic probes out. At the steady noise level of the inside of an airbody, our normal voices wouldn't carry to Cochenour, a couple of meters away at the stove. I thought 0f pumping the girl about him while we checked the probes. I decided against it. I already knew the important thing about Cochenour, namely that with any luck he might be going to pay for my new liver. I didn't need to know what he and Dorrie thought about when they thought about each other.
So what we talked about was the probes. About how they would fire percussive charges into the Venusian rock and time the returning echoes. And about what the chances were of finding something really good. ("Well, what are the chances of winning a sweepstakes? For any individual ticket holder they're bad. But there's always one winner somewhere!") And about what had made me come to Venus in the first place. I mentioned my father's name, but she'd never heard of the deputy governor of Texas. Too young, no doubt. Anyway she had been born and bred in southern Ohio, where Cochenour had worked as a kid and to which he'd returned as a
billionaire. She told me, without my urging, how he'd been building a new processing center there, and how many headaches that had been-trouble with the unions, trouble with the banks, bad trouble with the government-and so he'd decided to take a good long time off to loaf. I looked over to where he was stirring up a sauce and said, "He loafs harder than anybody else I ever saw."
"He's a work addict, Audee. I imagine that's how he got rich
in the first place." The airbody lurched, and I dropped everything
to jump for the controls. I heard Cochenour howl behind me, but
I was busy locating a better transit level. By the time I had climbed
a thousand meters and reset the autopilot he was rubbing his wrist
and swearing at me.
"Sorry," I said.
He said dourly, "I don't mind your scalding the skin off my arm. Ican always buy more skin, but you nearly made me spill the gravy.
I checked the virtual globe. The bright ship marker was two-thirds of the way to our destination. "Is lunch about ready?," I asked. "We'll be there in an hour."
For the first time he looked startled. "So soon? I thought you said this thing was subsonic."
"I did. You're on Venus, Mr. Cochenour. At this level the speed of sound is a lot faster than on Earth."
He looked thoughtful, but all he said was "Well, we can eat any minute." Later he said, while we were finishing up, "I think maybe I don't know as much about this planet as I might. If you want to give us the guide's lecture, we'll listen."
"You already know the outlines," I told him. "Say, you're a great cook, Mr. Cochenour. I know I packed all the provisions, but I don't even know what this is I'm eating."
"If you come to my office in Cincinnati," he said, "you can ask for Mr. Cochenour, but while we're living in each other's armpits you might as well call me Boyce. And if you like the fricassee, why aren't you eating it?"
The answer was, because it might kill me. I didn't want to get
into a discussion that might lead to why I needed his fee so badly. "Doctor's orders," I said, "Have to lay off the fats for a while. I think he thinks I'm putting on too much weight."
Cochenour looked at me appraisingly, but all he said was "The lecture?"
