“I’ll manage that just fine,” I tell him.
Parker shakes his head. “Damn it all, what do you think this thing is all about? They let us dress up in fancy clothes and strut our stuff like we owned the whole damned world. They pay us plenty just to be men. But there’s a price for that. We gotta keep on being men. Not just when it’s easy, like at the beginning. We gotta stay men right straight through to the end, no matter what the end is. We don’t just act these parts, Tom; we live them, we stake our lives on them, we are these parts. Christ, anybody can dress up in a cowboy outfit and swagger down Main Street. But not everyone can wear a gun and use it.”
I say, “That’s a beautiful speech, Parker, and you’re such a pro that you’ve blown this scene. Get back in character and let’s get on with it.”
“Goddamn you,” Parker says, “I don’t give a damn for the scene or The Movie or any of it. I’m talking to you straight now, Tom Washburn. We’ve been closer than kin ever since you came into The Territory, a frightened tanglefoot lad who made a place for himself on sheer guts. I’m not going to let you run away now.”
“I’m finishing this coffee,” I tell him, “and riding on.”
Natchez suddenly twists in his chair, grabs a handful of my shirt and pulls my face close to his. In his other hand I see a knife.
“Get out your knife, Tom. I’d rather kill you myself than let you ride away a coward.”
Parker’s face is close to mine, glaring at me, the old man’s breath sour in my face. I brace my left foot on the floor, plant my right foot on the edge of Parker’s chair and push hard. Parker’s chair topples over and I see the look of shock on the old man’s face as he falls to the floor. I draw my gun and take aim between his eyes.
“Christ, Tom,” he says.
I thumb back the hammer. “You stupid old bastard,” I say, “what do you think this is, some kind of a game? You’ve gotten sorta heavy-handed and long-winded ever since that bullet creased your spine. You think there are special rules, and you know all about them. But there aren’t any rules. You don’t tell me what to do and I don’t tell you. You’re a crippled old man, but if you pick a fight with me I’m going to fight my own way, not yours, and I’m going to put you down any way I can.”
I take up slack on the trigger. Old Parker’s eyes bulge, his mouth starts trembling, he tries to control himself but he can’t. He screams, not loud, but high-pitched, like a frightened girl.
I thumb down the hammer and put my gun away. “Okay,” I say, “maybe now you can wake up and remember how it really is.”
I lift him up and slide the chair under him. “Sorry it’s gotta be this way, Natchez. I’m going now.”
I stop at the door and look back. Parker is grinning at me. “Glad to see you’re feeling better, Tom. I should have remembered that you got nerves. All of the good ones have nerves. But you’ll be fine at the showdown.”
“You old idiot, there’s not going to be any showdown. I told you before, I’m riding out of here.”
“Good luck, Tom. Give ’em hell!”
“Idiot!” I got out of there.
A horseman crosses a high ridge and lets his horse pick its own way down the other side to the desert floor. There is a soft hiss of wind, glitter of mica, sand gathered into long wavering windrows.
The noon sun beats down as the rider passes through gigantic rock formations carved by the wind into fantastic shapes. At evening, the rider dismounts and inspects his horse’s hooves. He whistles tunelessly to himself, pours water from his canteen into his derby, waters his horse, puts the hat back on and drinks sparingly himself. He hobbles the horse and makes camp on the desert. He sits by a little fire and watches the swollen desert sun go down. He is a tall, lean man, with a battered derby on his head and a horn-handled .44 strapped down on his right leg.
Brimstone: a desolate mining settlement on the northeastern edge of The Territory. Rising above the town is the natural rock formation of Devil’s Highway—a broad, gently sloping rock bridge. The far end, out of sight from here, is firmly anchored just outside The Set, two hundred yards and 150 years away.
I come in on a limping horse. There aren’t many people around, but I do spot one familiar face: it’s that damned freckle-faced kid. He must have ridden pretty hard to get here before me. I pass him by without a word.
I sit my horse for a while and admire The Devil’s Highway. Five minutes’ ride to the other side and I’ll be out of the West for good, finished with it all, the good times and the bad, the fear and the laughter, the long slow days and the dull, dangerous nights. In a few hours I’ll be with Consuela, I’ll be reading the newspapers and watching TV . . .
Now I’m going to put down one last shot of redeye and then sashay out of here.
I pull up my horse at the saloon. A few more people are on the street now, watching me. I walk into the saloon.
There is one man drinking alone at the bar. He’s short and stocky, wearing a black leather vest and a Mountain Mans buffalo hat. He turns; he carries one unholstered gun high in his belt. I never saw him before, but I know who he is.
“Howdy, Mr. Washburn,” he says.
“Howdy, Little Joe,” I reply.
He holds the bottle out questioningly. I nod. He reaches behind the bar, finds another shotglass, fills it up for me. We sip quietly.
After a while I say, “Hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding me.”
“Not too much,” Little Joe says. He’s older than I had expected, nearly thirty. He’s got a tough, craggy face, high cheekbones, a black handlebar moustache. He sips his drink, then says to me, very gently, “Mr. Washburn, I heard a rumor which I don’t believe. The rumor said that you were leaving this territory in sort of a hurry.”
“That’s right,” I tell him.
“The rumor also said that you wasn’t planning to stay around long enough to give me the time of day.”
“That’s also true, Little Joe. I didn’t figure I had no time for you. But here you are anyhow.”
“Indeed I am,” Little Joe says. He rubs down the ends of his moustache and pulls hard at his nose. “Frankly, Mr. Washburn, I simply can’t believe that you’re not planning to waltz around with me. I know all about you, Mr. Washburn, and I just can’t believe that.”
“Better believe it, Joe,” I say to him. “I’m finishing this drink, and then I’m walking out this door and getting on my horse and riding over Devil’s Highway.”
Little Joe tugs at his nose again, frowns, pushes back his hat. “I never thought to hear this.”
“I never thought to say it.”
“You’re really not going to face me?”
I finish my drink and set the shotglass down on the bar. “Take care of yourself, Little Joe.” I start toward the door.
Little Joe says, “There’s just one last thing.”
I turn. Little Joe is standing away from the bar, both hands visible. “I can’t force you into a showdown, Mr. Washburn. But I did make a little bet concerning that derby of yours.”
“So I heard.”
“And so, although it pains me more than you can know, I’ll have to have it.”
I stand, facing him, not answering.
Little Joe says, “Look, Washburn, no sense you just standing there glaring at me. Give me the hat or make your play.”
I take off the derby. I smooth it on my sleeve, then sail it to him. He picks it up, never taking his eyes from me. He says, “Well, I’ll be.”
“Take care of yourself, Little Joe.” I walk out of the saloon.
A crowd has assembled opposite the saloon. They wait and watch, talking in hushed voices. The saloon doors swing and a tall thin bareheaded man comes through. He is beginning to bald. He carries a .44 strapped down on his right leg, and he looks like he knows how to use it. But the fact is, he hasn’t used it.
Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, Washburn unties his horse, mounts it, and sets it at a walk toward the bridge.
The saloon
doors swing again. A short, stocky hard-faced man comes through, holding a battered derby. He watches the horseman ride away.
Washburn spurs his horse, which hesitates a moment, then mounts the stone bridge. It takes constant urging to keep the horse going, picking its way across the sloping pebble-clad surface, to the center. Here Washburn stops the horse, or allows it to stop. He sits at the highest point of the bridge’s curve, astride the joint between two worlds, but looking at neither. He reaches up to tug at his hat’s brim and is mildly surprised to find himself bareheaded. He scratches his forehead lazily, a man with all the time in the world. Then he turns his horse around and starts back down the bridge to Brimstone.
The crowd watches as Washburn rides toward them. They are motionless, silent. Then, realizing what is about to happen, they scatter for the shelter of wagons, duck down behind water troughs, crouch behind grain sacks.
Only Little Joe Potter remains in the dusty street. He watches while Washburn dismounts, shoos his horse out of the line of fire, walks slowly toward him.
Little Joe calls out, “Hey, Washburn! Come back for your hat?”
Washburn grins, shakes his head. “No, Little Joe, I came back because it’s our dance.”
They both laugh, it is all some ridiculous joke. Then, suddenly, both men draw. The heavy bark of their .44s crashes through the town. Smoke and dust obscure the fighters.
The smoke blows away. Both men are still standing. Little Joe’s gun is pointed down. He twirls it, and watches it fall from his hand. Then he collapses.
Washburn holsters his gun, walks over to Little Joe, kneels, lifts his head out of the dirt.
“Goddamn,” Little Joe says, “that was one short dance, huh, Washburn?”
“Too short,” Washburn says. “Joe, I’m sorry . . .”
But Little Joe doesn’t hear this. His eyes have gone blank and unfocused, his body is limp. Blood trickles out of two holes in his chest, blood stains the dust from the large exit wounds in his back.
Washburn gets to his feet, finds his derby in the dust, wipes it off, puts it on. He walks over to his horse. People are coming out now, there is a buzz of conversation. Washburn sets one foot in the stirrup, begins to mount.
At that moment a wavering, high-pitched voice calls out, “Okay, Washburn, draw!”
Washburn’s face contorts as he whirls, trying to get his gun-hand clear, trying to spin out of the line of fire. Even in that cramped and impossible posture he manages to get the .44 drawn, spins to see the freckle-faced kid ten yards away with gun drawn and aimed, firing.
Sunlight explodes in Washburn’s head, he hears his horse scream, he is falling through the dusty floors of the world, falling as the bullets thud into him with a sound like a butchers cleaver swung flat against a side of beef. The world is coming apart, the picturemaking machine is smashed, his eyes are a broken lens that reflects the sudden destruction of the world. A red light flashes a final warning and the world goes to black.
The viewer, audience and actor, looks for a while at the darkened screen, stirs in his easy chair, rubs his chin. He seems to be in some distress. Then, at last, he belches, and reaches out and turns off the screen.
IN A LAND OF CLEAR COLORS
In a land of clear colors and stories,
In a region of shadowless hours,
Where earth has a garment of glories
And a murmur of musical flowers;
In woods where the spring half uncovers
The flush of her amorous face,
By the waters that listen for lovers,
For these is there place?
—Swinburne
The forms of things bear their own particular message. Here on Kaldor V there is an unsettling irrationality about many artifacts. That mountain in the distance—Ungdoor I think they call it—why should it look like a pyramid point down? Or take this forest—some of the trees are ten feet in diameter. Why should they all lie flat upon the ground? Or those birds, the Maagpi, who build their nests upon the air and who work in relays to support its weight? Why do the clouds regularly form themselves into arches?
These are only the more evident mysteries. And each mystery has a mystery hidden within it. I suppose they are all rationally explicable, even predictable. But not by me.
What worries me most just at the moment is this: Why do mirrors on Kaldor V never reflect back what looks into them?
In some ways my position is ridiculous. Thanks to mechanohypnosis, I can speak three of the major languages on Kaldor. But my sense of nuance is completely off. (I have the same trouble in speaking Spanish.)
We Terrans tend to believe that language is always intentional, that sentences are equations denoting operations, orders, sensations; that words mean what they say. But this is untrue, even on Earth and especially here on Kaldor. Words are intentional here also; but they tend to be used for other purposes.
Words are used with extreme indirection. To them, I suppose it’s all very logical and inevitable. It is not impossible to extract the meaning from most exchanges. What is tedious is the work involved. Because this great effort must be made with everything; nothing comes easy, nothing can be taken for granted.
This must explain the high rate of emotional malfunction among Interactors.
The problems of extraterrestrial exploration are always the same. First problem, how to stay alive. Second (close on its heels), how to stay sane. The uncertainty tends to be maximized. The biggest danger on an alien planet might well be anxiety.
Culture shock is the problem. An overload of novelty is insupportable. One tends to blank out, to stop registering, or to do so in a hasty, inattentive manner.
Decision-making is also affected—disastrously. There are too many imponderables to be weighed, too many courses of action to be chosen among, and always on the basis of insufficient information.
A paralysis of the will sets in. One reaches a point where you can’t decide whether to make fried eggs or boiled eggs. Everything must stop while this decision is being made. And when it has been made, one is too exhausted to eat.
I used to think that exploring an alien planet would be like seeing a very strange movie. I was prepared for that; but I had not counted on the fact that I would be a participant, not a spectator.
Lanea came by today to see how I was getting on. Or at least I presume that is why she came. I find her presence both disturbing and comforting. I have grown accustomed to her anatomical differences. Her extreme physical flexibility (a trait she shares with most other Kaldorians) is still a wonder to me. The appearance is one of bonelessness, especially in arms, legs, neck. She can turn her head a full 180 degrees and look directly behind her. I have asked her not to do this in my presence.
I have every reason to believe—though I have not yet verified it—that her sexual structures, concealed under her clothing, are similar to those of a Terran woman.
Will I ever find this out by actual experience? I should not be thinking such thoughts.
Her face is a long oval, delicately proportioned, beautiful by Earth standards. She has a faint Eurasian look; but, ironically enough, she would not be considered “exotic” on Earth. She could pass unnoticed in a crowd on Earth. Except for her walk, of course, which is sinuous, flowing, faintly repelling, faintly exciting.
Her appearance doesn’t bother me. Quite the contrary. But her mind . . .
One cannot expect to understand any woman, I suppose. But what is one to do about an alien woman?
Nothing, of course! Anyhow, what would Lanea want with me? In her eyes I must be a freak, both in appearance and mentality.
Doerniche is in his fifties (apparently), a lean, spare man of great dignity, a holder of a seat on the Council. He came here today and tried to warn me about something. I do not know what it is. Despite my best efforts, and his, I could not make it out. He seems to have no specific danger in mind; yet I cannot believe that a man of Doerniche’s intelligence would waste his time and effort on a general statem
ent about the danger of the world.
I have seen no hint of danger. What can he be talking about?
Doerniche is so ornate—might he not be talking about something else entirely? It wouldn’t be the first time that has happened. It is one of the vices of this language. If you miss one of the key words or inflections, the meaning is altered drastically. Sentences begun with a certain combination of vowels, for example, are not meant to be taken literally. Their purpose is obliquely metaphoric.
So I may have missed a subtlety in Doerniche’s speech. God knows what else I’ve missed and what wrong assumptions I am operating on here.
Still, I wish I knew whether or not there is a specific danger to me.
I live in a small white house some four or five miles from the outer periphery of Morei. The government constructed this house for me when they saw that I was ill at ease in the city. They built it like an Earth house, copied from one of the pictures I had brought along. I did not ask for this; they did it of their own accord, to surprise and please me.
At first, I considered it a dubious compliment. I wondered if they were not attempting, with infinite politeness, to exile me, to insulate me in my alienness.
But now I do not think this was the intention. They know about homesickness in this place; many of their songs and stories are about that.
So they built me a house that looks exactly like a New England bungalow—until you study the shapes and angles with more care. Then it looks like nothing under the sun.
I’ve grown accustomed to it.
I began to understand the conversation of the flowers last night.
One must listen to them with great attentiveness. Their voices are soft (as you would expect) and tend to a monotone. They cannot pronounce d’s, t’s, r’s. They express various fine meanings by modulating volume. They make an intensive use of silence (stops and rests, as in music) to cover an additional range of meanings, as do the Kaldorians. How they produce their sounds I do not know, nor care to know. I know too much already.
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