To Follow a Star

by Terry Carr

  “Well . . .”

  “Is it that girl?”

  “Girl?” I stared at him. “Who said anything about a girl?”

  “Come off it,” he said genially. “You think it isn’t all over the store?” He glanced at his watch. “George,” he said, “I never interfere in employees’ private lives. You know that. But if it’s that girl that’s bothering you, why don’t you many her for a while? It might be just the thing you need. Come on, now, George, confess. When were you married last? Three years? Five years ago?”

  I looked away. “I never was,” I admitted.

  That jolted him. “Never?” He studied me thoughtfully for a second. “You aren’t—?”

  “No, no, no!” I said hastily. “Nothing like that. It’s just that, well, it’s always seemed like a pretty big step to take.”

  He relaxed again. “Ah, you kids,” he said genially. “Always afraid of getting hurt, eh? Well, I’ll mind my own business, if that’s the way you want it. But if I were you, George, I’d go get her.”

  That was that. I went back to work; but I kept right on thinking about what Heinemann had said.

  After all . . . why not?

  I called, “Lilymary?”

  She faltered and half turned. I had counted on that. You could tell she wasn’t brought up in this country; from the age of six on, our girls learn Lesson One: When you’re walking alone at night, don’t stop.

  She didn’t stop long. She peered into the doorway and saw me, and her expression changed as though I had hit her with a club. “George,” she said, and hesitated, and walked on. Her hair was a shimmering rainbow in the Christmas lights.

  We were only a few doors from her house. I glanced, half-apprehensive, at the door, but no Father Hargreave was there to scowl. I followed her and said, “Please, Lilymary. Can’t we just talk for a moment?”

  She faced me. “Why?”

  “To—” I swallowed. “To let me apologize.”

  She said gently, “No apology is necessary, George. We’re different breeds of cats. No need to apologize for that.”

  “Please.”

  “Well,” she said. And then, “Why not?”

  We found a bench in the little park across from the subway entrance. It was late; enormous half-tracks from the Sanitation Department were emptying trash cans, sprinkler trucks came by and we had to raise our feet off the ground. She said once, “I really ought to get back. I was only going to the store.” But she stayed.

  Well, I apologized, and she listened like a lady. And like a lady she said, again, “There’s nothing to apologize for.” And that was that, and I still hadn’t said what I had come for. I didn’t know how.

  I brooded over the problem. With the rumble of the trash trucks and the roar of their burners, conversation was difficult enough anyhow. But even under those handicaps, I caught a phrase from Lilymary. “—back to the jungle,” she was saying. “It’s home for us, George. Father can’t wait to get back, and neither can the girls.”

  I interrupted her. “Get back?”

  She glanced at me. “That’s what I said.” She nodded at the Sanitation workers, bailing up the enormous drifts of Christmas cards, thrusting them into the site burners. “As soon as the mails open up,” she said, “and Father gets his visa. It was mailed a week ago, they say. They tell me that in the Christmas rush it might take two or three weeks more to get to us, though.”

  Something was clogging up my throat. All I could say was, “Why?”

  Lilymary sighed. “It’s where we live, George,” she explained. “This isn’t right for us. We’re mission brats and we belong out in the field, spreading the Good News. . . Though Father says you people need it more than the Dyaks.” She looked quickly into my eyes. “I mean—”

  I waved it aside. I took a deep breath. “Lilymary,” I said, all in a rush, “will you marry me?”

  Silence, while Lilymary looked at me.

  “Oh, George,” she said, after a moment. And that was all; but I was able to translate it; the answer was no.

  Still, proposing marriage is something like buying a lottery ticket; you may not win the grand award, but there are consolation prizes. Mine was a date.

  Lilymary stood up to her father, and I was allowed in the house. I wouldn’t say I was welcomed, but Dr. Hargreave was polite—distant, but polite. He offered me coffee, he spoke of the dream superstitions of the Dyaks and old days in the Long House, and when Lilymary was ready to go, he shook my hand at the door,

  We had dinner . . . I asked her—but as a piece of conversation, not a begging plea from the heart—I asked her why they had to go back. The Dyaks, she said; they were Father’s people; they needed him. After Mother’s death, Father had wanted to come back to America . . . but it was wrong for them. He was going back. The girls, naturally, were going with him.

  We danced . . . I kissed her, in the shadows, when it was growing late. She hesitated, but she kissed me back.

  I resolved to destroy my dreamster; its ersatz ecstasies were pale.

  “There,” she said, as she drew back, and her voice was gentle, with a note of laughter. “I just wanted to show you. It isn’t all hymn-singing back on Borneo, you know.”

  I reached out for her again, but she drew back, and the laughter was gone. She glanced at her watch.

  “Time for me to go, George,” she said. “We start packing tomorrow.”

  “But—”

  “It’s time to go, George,” she said. And she kissed me at her door, but she didn’t invite me in.

  I stripped the tapes off my dreamster and threw them away. But hours later, after the fiftieth attempt to get to sleep, and the twentieth solitary cigarette, I got up and turned on the light and looked for them again.

  They were pale; but they were all I had.

  Party Week! The store was nearly bare. A messenger from the Credit Department came staggering in with a load of files just as the closing gong sounded.

  He dropped them on my desk. “Thank God!” he said fervently. “Guess you won’t be bothering with these tonight, eh, Mr. Martin?”

  But I searched through them all the same. He looked at me wonderingly, but the clerks were breaking out the bottles and the runners from the lunchroom were bringing up sandwiches, and he drifted away.

  I found the credit check I had requested. “Co-Maker Required!” was stamped at the top, and triply underlined in red, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I hunted through the text until I found what I wanted to know: “Subject is expected to leave this country within forty-eight hours. Subject’s employer is organized and incorporated under laws of State of New York as a religious mission group. No earnings record on file. Caution: Subject would appear a bad credit risk, due to—”

  I read no further. Forty-eight hours!

  There was a scrawl at the bottom of the page, in the Credit Manager’s own handwriting: “George, what the devil are you up to? This is the fourth check we made on these people!”

  It was true enough; but it would be the last. In forty-eight hours they would be gone.

  I was dull at the Christmas Party. But it had been a splendid Christmas for the store, and in an hour everyone was too drunk to notice.

  I decided to skip Party Week. I stayed at home the next morning, staring out the window. It had begun to snow, and the cleaners were dragging away old Christmas trees. It’s always a letdown when Christmas is over; but my mood had nothing to do with the season, only with Lilymary and the numbers of miles from here to Borneo.

  I circled the date in red on my calendar: December 25th. By the 26th they would be gone . . .

  But I couldn’t, repeat couldn’t, let her go so easily. It was not that I wanted to try again, and be rebuffed again; it was not a matter of choice. I had to see her. Nothing else, suddenly, had any meaning. So I made the long subway trek out there, knowing it was a fool’s errand. But what kind of an errand could have been more appropriate for me?

  They weren’t home, but I wasn’t
going to let that stop me. I banged on the door of the next apartment, and got a surly, suspicious, what-do-you-want-with-them? inspection from the woman who lived there. But she thought they might possibly be down at the Community Center on the next block.

  And they were.

  The Community Center was a big yellow brick recreation hall; it had swimming pools and Ping-Pong tables and all kinds of odds and ends to keep the kids off the streets. It was that kind of a neighborhood. It also had a meeting hall in the basement, and there were the Hargreaves, all of them, along with a couple of dozen other people. None of them was young, except the Hargreave girls. The hall had a dusty, storeroom quality to it, as though it weren’t used much—and in fact, I saw, it still had a small Christmas tree standing in it. Whatever else they had, they did not have a very efficient cleanup squad.

  I came to the door to the hall and stood there, looking around. Someone was playing a piano, and they were having a singing party. The music sounded familiar, but I couldn’t recognize the words—

  Adeste fideles,

  Laeti triumphantes.

  Venite, venite in Bethlehem.

  The girls were sitting together, in the front row; their father wasn’t with them, but I saw why. He was standing at a little lectern in the front of the hall.

  Natum videte, regem angelorum.

  Venite adoremus, venite adoremus—

  I recognized the tune then; it was a low, draggy-beat steal from that old-time favorite, Christmas-Tree Mambo. It didn’t sound too bad, though, as they finished with a big major chord from the piano and all fifteen or twenty voices going. Then Hargreave started to talk.

  I didn’t listen. I was too busy watching the back of Lilymary’s head. I’ve always had pretty low psi, though, and she didn’t turn around.

  Something was bothering me. There was a sort of glow from up front. I took my eyes off Lilymary’s blond head, and there was Dr. Hargreave, radiant; I blinked and looked again, and it was not so radiant. A trick of the light, coming through the basement windows onto his own blonde hair, I suppose, but it gave me a curious feeling for a moment. I must have moved, because he caught sight of me. He stumbled over a word, but then he went on. But that was enough. After a moment Lilymary’s head turned, and her eyes met mine.

  She knew I was there. I backed away from the door and sat down on the step coming down from the entrance.

  Sooner or later she would be out.

  It wasn’t long at all. She came toward me with a question in her eye. She was all by herself; inside the hall, her father was still talking.

  I stood up straight and said it all. “Lilymary,” I said, “I can’t help it, I want to marry you. I’ve done everything wrong, but I didn’t mean to. I—I don’t even want it conditional, Lilymary, I want it for life. Here or Borneo, I don’t care which. I only care about one thing, and that’s you.” It was funny—I was trying to tell her I loved her, and I was standing stiff and awkward, talking in about the same tone of voice I’d use to tell a stock boy he was fired.

  But she understood. I probably didn’t have to say a word, she would have understood anyhow. She started to speak, and changed her mind, and started again, and finally got out, “What would you do in Borneo?” And then, so soft that I hardly knew I was hearing it, she added, “Dear.”

  Dear! It was like the first time Heinemann came in and called me “Department Head!” I felt nine feet tall.

  I didn’t answer her. I reached out and I kissed her, and it wasn’t any wonder that I didn’t know we weren’t alone until I heard her father cough, not more than a yard away.

  I jumped, but Lilymary turned and looked at him, perfectly calm. “You ought to be conducting the service, Father!” she scolded him.

  He nodded his big fair head. “Doctor Mausner can pronounce the Benediction without me,” he said. “I should be there but—well, He has plenty of things to forgive all of us already; one more isn’t going to bother Him. Now, what’s this?”

  “George has asked me to marry him.”

  “And?”

  She looked at me. “I—” she began, and stopped. I said, “I love her.”

  He looked at me too, and then he sighed. “George,” he said after a moment, “I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, for the first time in my life. Maybe I’ve been selfish when I asked Lilymary to go back with me and the girls. I didn’t mean it that way, but I don’t deny I wanted it. I don’t know. But—” He smiled, and it was a big, warm smile. “But there’s something I do know. I know Lilymary; and I can trust her to make up her own mind.” He patted her lightly.

  “I’ll see you after the service,” he said to me, and left us. Back in the hall, through the door he opened, I could hear all the voices going at once.

  “Let’s go inside and pray, George,” said Lilymary, and her whole heart and soul was on her face as she looked at me, with love and anxiousness.

  I only hesitated a moment. Pray? But it meant Lilymary, and that meant—well, everything.

  So I went in. And we were all kneeling, and Lilymary coached me through the words; and I prayed. And, do you know?—I’ve never regretted it.

  The

  Santa Claus

  Planet

  BY FRANK M. ROBINSON

  On Earth or other planets, humanity’s striving for dominance through riches may last a long time. Consider the following story of a lost Earth colony in the stars, where people judge each others worth completely by the wealth they can display . . . and throw away. On such a world, gift-giving might take on a strangely sinister aspect, even at Christmastime.

  Frank M. Robinson began his professional association with science fiction more than thirty-five years ago when he went to work as an office boy for Amazing Stories. Since then he has written an impressive number of stories, including the novels The Power, which was filmed for television, and The Glass Inferno (in collaboration with Thomas N. Scortia), which served as a basis for the movie The Towering Inferno.

  “I think the town is over this way, sir,” Hawsworthy said, his words coming out in little puffs of steam.

  Lieutenant Harkins waited until there was a brief calm in the flurries of snow whirling about him, then shielded his eyes and stared in the direction that Hawsworthy had pointed. There was a small cluster of lights in the distance—a good two or three snowy miles away, he judged sourly—but it couldn’t be anything but the twinkling lights of some primitive village.

  He sighed and pulled the collar of his heavy tunic tighter around his neck, then turned for a last look at the Churchill, the sleek and shiny line-cruiser bulking huge in the valley a few hundred yards to the rear. Her ports were radiating a cozy, yellow warmth and he could catch glimpses of her officers and enlisted men standing around the brightly bedecked tree in the main lounge. He even fancied that he could hear the strains of “Cantique Noel” and smell the hot, spicy odor of the wassail drifting up on the cold, sharp air.

  Christmas Eve . . .

  He bit his thin lips in disappointment. Outside in the cold on a fool’s errand while inside the Churchill the Christmas celebration was just getting started. He had done the best he could in making arrangements with Ensign Jarvis to save him some of the wassail, but knowing Jarvis’ own enthusiasm for the monthly liquor ration, they were shaky arrangements at best.

  A sudden gust of snow hid the ship and he and Hawsworthy wheeled and started trudging towards the faint glow on the horizon.

  It was traditional in the service, Harkins thought, to set the ship down on some hospitable planet for Christmas. Christmas wasn’t Christmas without the solid feeling of the good earth under you and the smell of pine and the soft mistiness of snow drifting gently down from the sky.

  Naturally, there had been a lot of enthusiasm aboard ship. The commissary had been busy all week filling the ship with the appetizing odors of synthetic roast goose and plum pudding and the pleasant spiciness of fruit cakes. And the carpentry shop had spent many a hard afternoon building the tree out
of fine dowels and daubing it with green paint, just in case they were unable to obtain the genuine article.

  Then—only an hour ago, Harkins thought bitterly—the captain had asked to see him and his own personal enthusiasm had collapsed like a pricked balloon.

  The captain had discovered that the planet supported a human culture, so it was naturally incumbent on the Churchill to send for a deputation to invite members of the Terran-speaking community—if any—aboard to celebrate Christmas with the crew, present the ship’s credentials to the powers that might be, and try and arrange for possible planet leave.

  And as he had once dabbled in anthropology, the deputation was to be made in the person of Lieutenant Junior Grade Harkins. Which meant that he would miss most of the celebration. On top of that, he had drawn Haws worthy for an assistant. (There was nothing wrong with Hawsworthy, of course, except that he had an amazing talent for making you feel ill at ease and unsure of yourself. He was a twenty-year man and you always suspected that his feelings towards the junior grades were composed more of toleration than respect.)

  “It can’t be much farther, sir. I think I can make out some of the buildings.” The lights of the town were considerably nearer now and the rough shapes of small houses had begun to separate themselves from the snow-filled blackness.

  A fool’s errand, Harkins thought for the twentieth time. The records showed that the people were nothing but primitives, but that hadn’t prevented the captain from doing “the decent thing” and sending out a representative anyway. Tradition. The people were probably fish-eaters, and any authority to which he might present the ship’s credentials undoubtedly resided in the painted and scarred body of the village witch doctor, probably hiding under his cooking pot right then.

  Then they were on the summit of the last hill before the town, gazing down at the village below; a village where the streets were neatly laid out, the houses were a large cut above the usual thatched or skin affair, and primitive arc-lamps were strung across the snowy streets.