To Follow a Star

by Terry Carr

  The wet spot flared into flame that became a rapidly twisting snake of fire, leading down to the stream. A moment later, the waters were thick with flames and oily, black smoke.

  It looked like Reynolds was indeed bent upon the destruction of the land.

  The chief’s face was white. “The stranger really means this?”

  Reynolds nodded grimly and the first of the drums that he had cached behind the village went up in a roar and a gush of flame. The assembled natives paled. Another drum went up.

  “We shall be killed!” the chief cried, his eyes rolling white.

  Reynolds smiled. “The property of the Mantanai and the Mantanai themselves are nothing.”

  Another drum.

  “But you, too, shall die!”

  Reynolds shrugged. “My last gift. I knew you wouldn’t want to ascend into the skies without taking me along.”

  The chief suddenly knelt and kissed Reynolds’ calloused feet. “The wealth of the stranger is mighty; that of the Mantanai is small and insignificant.” His face was terror-stricken. “The stranger has won the game!”

  The last of the drums went up with a cloud explosion.

  “Perhaps,” the chief pleaded, “the wealth of the stranger is so great that he can overlook our own small lands and village?”

  They were learning humility at a late date, Reynolds thought. But he nodded solemnly and extended his hands toward the flaming oil barriers around the village. There were no more sudden gushes of flame and gradually the oil on the streams burned out.

  He had won, Reynolds thought shakily, won on a bluff with practically no time to spare. Another ten minutes and the flames would have died by themselves, exposing his deception.

  But he was still stranded, and stranded now for the rest of his life. There were compensations, of course, chief among which was the fact that he would be spared his unhappy homecoming on Canopus.

  And this planet was comfortable, the weather was nice.

  And he had always been the comfort-loving sort, anyway.

  And then there was Ruth.

  “About the girl Ruth,” he said to the chief.

  The chief’s face immediately grew stem. “She interfered with the game of the Giving of Gifts. She will have to take the Last Cup.”

  Reynolds was aghast.

  “But look here, I own the village and all the lands surrounding it! I . . .”

  The chief shook his head. “It is tradition.” Then his face grew sly. “But, perhaps if the stranger were willing to consider a gift, the girl could be spared.”

  There wasn’t any doubt as to what he was driving at.

  “What do you want?”

  Firmly. “The village and lands to revert to their owners.”

  Later, on the bank of the stream, Ruth leaned her head in the crook of his arm and gazed dreamily at the sky.

  “You know why you won, do you not?”

  “Certainly. They were afraid they were going to lose all their property.”

  She shook her head. “Partly. But mostly because you were willing to lose your life, your last gift as you said. They could never have matched it.”

  He nodded vaguely, not too much interested, and told her his plans for the future and just where she fitted into them. He should have seen long ago, he thought, that her efforts to help him hinged on more than just the past kindnesses of Father Williams.

  She didn’t reply to his final question.

  He flushed, thinking that possibly his conclusions had been all wrong.

  “You forget,” she said softly. “The bridal price.”

  He lay back on the bank, his head whirling. With the reversion of the village and lands back to the tribe to save Ruth’s life, he was broke. He had no property of his own.

  He had won his life—and hers—he thought, but he had finished as a bankrupt in the most brutally capitalistic society that nature had ever created, without even the bridal price for the woman he loved!

  Reynolds finished the story, and sipped the last of the wassail in his cup.

  “Then when we gave those natives our guns,” Harkins said, “it was doing essentially what you had done. Short-circuiting the ceremony of the Giving of Gifts by offering our lives, the ultimate gift, the one that couldn’t be topped.”

  “Essentially,” Reynolds agreed, “though that’s a simplification.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jarvis cut in, puzzled. “Harkins here says that the town has been considerably modernized. How was that accomplished?”

  Reynolds swirled the last few drops of liquor in his glass and watched the small whirlpool thoughtfully.

  “I’m a comfort-loving man myself, and as I became more wealthy and consequently gained more power in the village council, I saw to it that my own ideas for civic improvement were carried out.” He started looking around for the wassail bowl. “Quite simple, really.”

  There was a short silence, leaving an opening for the strains of “Good King Wenceslas” and “Silent Night” emanating from a small group of overly merry carolers in another corner.

  Harkins looked Reynolds slowly up and down and thought to himself that the man was lying like a rug. There were gaps in his story big enough to run the Churchill through.

  “I was wondering, Mr. Reynolds,” he said. “You had to give back the village and lands to save the girl’s life.” (The way Harkins phrased it, he obviously didn’t approve of Reynolds there.) “And that left you as poor as the proverbial church-mouse. Just how did you gain your wealth and influence?”

  “I worked a full year,” Reynolds said, “before I earned

  Ruth’s bridal price. Even at that, her bridal price wasn’t great, less than that of some of the other belles of the village. (Their tastes in feminine beauty weren’t the same as ours, you understand.)”

  “I don’t quite see what bearing that has on it,” Harkins said stiffly.

  Reynolds felt around in the folds of his cloak, then passed over a simple drawing to Harkins. It was a crude line drawing of a plump, pleasant-faced woman surrounded by her family.

  “I think I told you before, that the natives also used their wealth in paying for their grandsons. That is, a father-in-law would pay a hundred percent interest on the bridal price his daughter’s husband had given him on the birth of his first grandson. Two hundred percent for the second one and four hundred percent for the third, doubling each time. Now most of the Mantanai don’t care for many children, but Ruth and I had always thought that we would like a large family. And Ruth’s father, you remember, was the wealthiest man in the village.”

  Harkins was staring openmouthed at the drawing, counting the number of children and frantically doubling as he went along.

  “Of course, a good deal of luck was involved,” Reynolds said expansively. “Fifteen children—all boys!”

  Christmas

  Tree

  BY JOHN CHRISTOPHER

  People whose jobs take them far from home find Christmas a saddening time, a time for remembering past joys and the warmth of home fires and family. Think of how bleak the Moon could seem to a man stranded there because his heart couldn’t stand the strain of another takeoff: how he might long for the sight of a real Christmas tree! John Christopher captures that feeling of poignance in this short, understated tale.

  John Christopher, an English writer whose real name was Christopher Youd, contributed many fine novels to science fiction, among them The Little People and No Blade of Grass.

  The skipper cushioned us in nicely. I had my eyes on the dial the whole time and the needle never got above four and a half G’s. With a boat like the Arkland that was good; I’ve known a bad pilot to touch seven G’s on an Earth landing. All the same I didn’t feel so hot. Young Stenway was out of his cradle before the tremors had stopped. I lay still a moment while he stood over me, grinning:

  “Break it up, Joe. Dreaming of a pension?”

  I got up with a bounce and landed him a playful clip that rocked him back into his
own cradle. There was normal gravity underneath us; the feeling of rightness you know in your bones and muscles no matter how long you’ve been away. It was good to feel myself tough still.

  “So this is Washington. What day is it?” Stenway asked. “You revert to type quick, kid. How should I know what day it is? I’m only a visitor.”

  He grinned, flushing a little, and went over to the multiple calendar. I saw him fingering it, his face screwed up.

  “Friday. Say, Joe, if we take more than fourteen days on the turn-around, well make Christmas here.”

  “If we take more than ten days on the turn-around,” I shot back, “the whole Board of Directors will commit gory suicide. What’s worrying you?”

  He grinned lopsidedly, and went out in a hurry. I was a bit sorry for him. He’d done less than a year in the Service. Things weren’t the right pattern for him yet. He probably thought some of us were tough eggs. But we had to ride him down now and then for his own good.

  I went along to see Louis. He’d been in space only a couple of years less than I had, and we’d both been with the Arkland since she was commissioned eight years before. But we didn’t see each other much, working on different shifts and pretty nearly at opposite ends of the boat. I found him in the mess, sprucing up. He called out:

  “Hello, Joe. You still with us?”

  “Why not?”

  “Borrowed time—just borrowed time.”

  “Louis. Do me a favor?”

  “Sure, Joe. Any little thing.”

  He put down a hairbrush and started powdering his face, overlaying the finely raveled seams of red that told he’d been out in a vacuum. I couldn’t understand that myself. It made you a bit unusual on Earth, it stamped you as a spaceman, but who’d be ashamed of that? Still, I’ve never been branded myself, so maybe I shouldn’t talk.

  “You handling the loading for the next trip, Louie?”

  He pressed the powder in with his fingertips, and nodded. “I want to get something on board.”

  “How big?” Louie asked.

  I shrugged lightly. “About five feet long. Maybe two feet across, at its widest—when it’s tied up.”

  Louie juted his chin out and flicked a patch of black velvet across his face. He spoke through his teeth:

  “What about the Pentagon Building, if you want a souvenir?”

  “What would I do with the Pentagon Building?”

  Louie turned around. “Look, Joe, you know how things are. You know the cost of space-freighting. There isn’t a quarter ounce of cargo weight that isn’t accounted for. What do you want to fit in, anyway?”

  “This is for old Hans. I thought of taking him a Christmas tree.”

  Louie didn’t say anything for a moment. He had brushed the powder well in, but you could still see the crimson network underneath. At last he said:

  “Okay. Get it up here the night before we blast. I’ll fix it for you.”

  “Thanks, Louie. When will that be, by the way? Have they told you?”

  “Nineteenth. Now go and raise hell for nine days. But don’t forget the Medical tomorrow.”

  I looked at him sharply, but he was brushing in another layer of powder. Medical was a routine, always taken between eighteen and twenty-four hours after cushioning. The doctors knew why, or said they did. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d forget. But it wasn’t worth taking him up on it.

  The Arkland touched at Washington every fifth trip. I knew quite a few numbers and had my usual haunts. There was a somber moment once when one of the girls relaxed and the wrinkles stood out, but it passed. There’s always the younger generation. I let it get around to the day before blasting before

  I dropped in on the company’s office. They’ve got a block of masonry on Roosevelt Boulevard that’s bigger than Luna City. Welfare is on Floor 32. It makes me airsick to look out of their windows.

  There was a cute little blonde at the desk and it occurred to me that next time I might contact Welfare at the beginning of a furlough. She looked as though she could get through my back pay as well as any.

  I said: “You can help me out. I want to buy a Christmas tree.”

  She looked surprised and rather disappointed, but she was businesslike. She waded through a pile of directories like a terrier after rats.

  “Christmas trees,” she said. “Your best bet is the Leecliff Nurseries. Mr. Cliff. About fifteen miles out. You can pick up a gyro on the roof.”

  “Don’t tell me there’s a roof on this thing,” I said.

  She just smiled very nicely.

  “Keep a week free next November,” I told her as I turned to leave. “I’ll be back.”

  The gyro did the trip in just over ten minutes. Where it put me down you wouldn’t guess such a place as Washington existed. One way there were a lot of low sheds and a few glasshouses. The other way there were just fields and fields of plants growing. I realized that it was more than ten years since I’d been outside a city on an Earth furlough. You get into habits. For the first time it occurred to me that I might have been missing something.

  They had phoned Mr. Cliff I was coming; “Good Service” is the company’s motto. He was waiting when the gyro touched. A little round fellow, with a look as though something had surprised him. He said:

  “Major Davies, I’m delighted to see you. We don’t see many spacemen. Come and see my roses.”

  He seemed eager and I let him take me. I wasn’t breaking my neck to get back into town.

  He had a glasshouse full of roses. I hesitated in the doorway. Mr. Cliff said: “Well?”

  “I’d forgotten they smelled like that,” I told him.

  He said proudly, “It’s quite a showing. A week before Christmas and a showing like that. Look at this Frau Karl Druschki.”

  It was a white rose, very nicely shaped and scented like spring. The roses had me. I crawled around after Mr. Cliff, seeing roses, feeling roses, breathing roses. I looked at my watch when it began to get dark.

  “I came to buy a Christmas tree, Mr. Cliff.”

  We left the rose house reluctantly.

  “Christmas on Earth for a change, Major Davies?”

  “No—Luna City. It’s for someone there.”

  He waited for me to go on.

  “A guy called Hans,” I said. “He’s been nearly forty years in Luna City. He was born in a little village in Austria. Halfway up a mountain, with pines all around and snow on them in winter. You know. He gets homesick.”

  “Why doesn’t he come back, Major Davies?”

  It’s always a shock when people show how little they know about the life you lead, though I suppose you can’t blame them. The exciting parts are news—spacewrecks and crashes and mad orbits—but the routine’s dull. I suppose there are some things the company doesn’t pass on to Publicity. Not that there’s anything they’re ashamed of—they just don’t talk about such things.

  “Mr. Cliff,” I said, “the doctors have it all tabbed. It’s what they call cumulative stress. You can’t bring a boat in or push her off without an initial strain. It varies with the planets, of course. For Earth, with an average-sized vessel, the peak’s about five or six gravities.”

  I flexed my shoulders back, breathing this different air.

  “You’ve got to be tough physically,” I went on, “but even so it tells. It’s the heart chiefly. They give you a warning when it begins to flicker; you can drop out then with a pension. Of course there are some who can carry on. They’re used to the life, and—”

  “And—?” prompted Mr. Cliff.

  “There’s a final warning as well. They check up on you after each trip; vet you for the next. Then one time it’s just plain No. You can argue, but the answer’s No. Another takeoff would finish you. So they say. There’s no way of testing it; they just don’t let you on a boat after that.”

  “They’re very considerate, Major Davies.”

  I laughed. “Oh, very. The only thing is—they check you each landfall. Hans got his final wa
rning at Luna City.”

  “Oh.” Mr. Cliff bent his head to smell the red rose in his coat. “How long ago did you say?”

  “Hans is an old man. Over seventy. Generally you get your first warning when you are about thirty.”

  “And how big is this Luna City?”

  “That’s easy,” I said. “It’s in the guidebooks. A couple of blocks long by a block wide. It goes underground a bit as well.”

  “That’s terrible, Major Davies. Forty years like that. No trees, no birds—And young men know that and still take the risk? I can’t believe it.”

  It was an old story, but I’d never felt myself getting so mad about it before. I reined myself in. He was a nice old guy.

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Cliff. There’s something in the life. And sometimes there’s more than five years between first and final warnings. One guy went ten. There’s always one more trip that’s worth making before you settle down for good. They don’t recruit spacemen who give up easily. And you may always strike lucky and get your ticket at this end.”

  “When did you get your first warning, Major Davies?”

  I flushed. “Three years ago. So what? Now this matter of the Christmas tree, Mr. Cliff—”

  “I’ll show you. The Christmas tree is on me. Please.”

  He led me away to show me the fir trees, and the scent of roses gave way to a rich piny smell that made me remember being a kid, and holidays up in the lakes. Mr. Cliff finally broke the silence:

  “I’ve been thinking, Major Davies. I’ve got a proposition that may interest you—”

  I didn’t see Louie when the tree went on board; one of his boys handled it. There wasn’t a sign of any of the company police around, and I guessed Louie was distracting them with a friendly game of poker. Skinning ’em too, if I knew Louie. I didn’t see him until the end of my second shift on the trip. The radar screen was a beautiful blank; it was a clear season for meteors. Louie was lolling in front of it reading a book.

  “Louie, I always knew I slipped up when I majored in Nav. Do they pay you for this?”