by Jerry
I wouldn’t meet his eyes. I couldn’t. He had a point—an awful, awful point. But I couldn’t admit that, I couldn’t look at him and nod my surrender. Keith was my friend, and I had to stand by him.
And of all of us in the circle, I was the only one standing. But I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Finally Winters’ eyes moved. He looked at concert rock. Keith sat there, looking at the cigar box.
The hubbub went on for at least five minutes, but at last it died of its own weight. One by one the speakers glanced at Keith, and remembered, and dropped off into awkward silence. When the hush was complete, Keith rose and looked around, like a man coming out of a bad dream.
“No,” he said. His voice was hurt and disbelieving; his eyes moved from person to person. “You can’t. I don’t . . . don’t waste chronine. You know that, all of you. I visit Sandi, and that’s not wasting. I need Sandi, and she’s gone. I have to go back. It’s my only way, my time machine.” He shook his head.
My turn. “Yes,” I said, as forcefully as I could manage. “Keith’s right. Waste is a matter of definition. If you ask me, the biggest waste would be sending people back to sleep through college lectures a second time.”
Laughter. Then other voices backed me. “I’m with Gary,” somebody said. “Keith needs Sandi, and we need Keith. It’s simple. I say he keeps the chronine.”
“No way,” someone else objected. “I’m as compassionate as anyone, but hell—how many of our people have died over the last few years’ cause we’ve bungled it when they needed doctoring? You remember Doug, two years ago? You shouldn’t need chronine for that. A bad appendix and he dies. We butchered him when we tried to cut it out. If there’s a chance to prevent that from happening again—even a long shot—I say we gotta take it.”
“No guarantee it won’t happen anyway,” the earlier voice came back. “You have to hit the right memories to accomplish anything, and even they may not be as useful as you’d like.”
“Shit. We have to try . . .”
“I think we have an obligation to Keith . . .”
“I think Keith’s got an obligation to us . . .”
And suddenly everybody was arguing again, hassling back and forth, while Winters and Keith and I stood and listened. It went on and on, back and forth over the same points. Until Pete spoke.
He stepped around Winters, holding Jan. “I’ve heard enough of this,” he said. “I don’t even think we got no argument. Jan here is gonna have my kid, she tells me. Well, damnit, I’m not going to take any chances on her or the kid dying. If there’s a way we can learn something that’ll make it safer, we take it. Especially I’m not gonna take no chances for a goddamn weakling who can’t face up to life. Hell, Keithie here wasn’t the only one hurt, so how does he rate? I lost a chick in the Blast too, but I’m not begging for chronine to dream her up again. I got a new chick instead. And that’s what you better do, Keith.”
Keith stood very still, but his fists were balled at his sides. “There are differences, Pete,” he said slowly. “Big ones. My Sandi was no chick, for one thing. And I loved her, maybe more than you can ever understand. I know you don’t understand pain, Pete. You’ve hardened yourself to it, like a lot of people, by pretending that it doesn’t exist. So you convinced everybody you’re a tough guy, a strong man, real independent. And you gave up some of your humanity, too.” He smiled, very much in control of himself now, his voice sure and steady.
“Well, I won’t play that game. I’ll cling to my humanity, and fight for it if I must. I loved once, really loved.
And now I hurt. And I won’t deny either of those things, or pretend that they mean any less to me than they do.”
He looked to Winters. “Lieutenant, I want my Sandi, and I won’t let you take her away from me. Let’s have a vote.”
Winters nodded.
It was close, very close. The margin was only three votes. Keith had a lot of friends.
But Winters won.
Keith took it calmly. He picked up the cigar box, walked over, and handed it to Winters. Pete was grinning happily, but Winters didn’t even crack a smile.
“I’m sorry, Keith,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Keith. “So am I.” There were tears on his face. Keith was never ashamed to cry.
There was no singing that night.
Winters didn’t time-trip. He sent men on “search expeditions” into the past, all very carefully planned for minimum risk and maximum reward.
We didn’t get any doctor out of it. Rick made three trips back without coming up with any useful memories. But one of the guys remembered some valuable stuff about medicinal herbs after a trip back to a bio lab, and another jaunt recalled some marginally good memories about electricity.
Winters was still optimistic, though. He’d turned to interviewing by then, to decide who should get to use the chronine next. He was very careful, very thorough, and he always asked the right questions. No one went back without his okay. Pending that approval, the chronine was stored in the new cabin, where Pete kept an eye on it.
And Keith? Keith sang. I was afraid, the night of the argument, that he might give up singing, but I was wrong.
He couldn’t give up song, any more than he could give up Sandi. He returned to concert rock the very next evening, and sang longer and harder than ever before. The night after that he was even better.
During the day, meanwhile, he went about his work with a strained cheerfulness. He smiled a lot, and talked a lot, but he never said anything much. And he never mentioned chronine, or time-tripping, or the argument.
Or Sandi.
He still spent his nights out by the creek, though. The weather was getting progressively colder, but Keith didn’t seem to mind. He just brought out a few blankets and his sleeping bag, and ignored the wind, and the chill, and the increasingly frequent rains.
I went out with him once or twice to sit and talk. Keith was cordial enough. But he never brought up the subjects that really mattered, and I couldn’t bring myself to force the conversations to places he obviously didn’t want to do. We wound up discussing the weather and like subjects.
These days, instead of his cigar box, Keith brought his guitar out to the creek. He never played it when I was there, but I heard him once or twice from a distance, when I was halfway back to the common house after one of our fruitless talks. No singing, just music. Two songs, over and over again. You know which two.
And after a while, just one. “Me and Bobby McGee.” Night after night, alone and obsessed, Keith played that song, sitting by a dry creek in a barren forest. I’d always liked the song, but now I began to fear it, and a shiver would go through me whenever I heard those notes on the frosty autumn wind.
Finally, one night, I spoke to him about it. It was a short conversation, but I think it was the only time, after the argument, that Keith and I ever really reached each other.
I’d come with him to the creek, and wrapped myself in a heavy woolen blanket to ward off the cold, wet drizzle that was dripping from the skies. Keith lay against his tree, half into his sleeping bag, with his guitar on his lap.
He didn’t even bother to shield it against the damp, which bothered me.
We talked about nothing, until at last, I mentioned his lonely creek concerts. He smiled. “You know why I play that song,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “But I wish you’d stop.”
He looked away. “I will. After tonight. But tonight I play it, Gary. Don’t argue, please. Just listen. The song is all I have left now, to help me think. And I’ve needed it, ’cause I been thinking a lot.”
“I warned you about thinking,” I said jokingly.
But he didn’t laugh. “Yeah. You were right, too. Or I was, or Shakespeare . . . whoever you want to credit the warning to. Still, sometimes you can’t help thinking. It’s part of being human. Right?”
“I guess.”
“I know. So I think with my music. No water left to think by, and th
e stars are all covered. And Sandi’s gone.
Really gone now. You know, Gary . . . if I kept on, day to day, and didn’t think so much, I might forget her. I might even forget what she looked like. Do you think Pete remembers his chick?”
“Yes,” I said. “And you’ll remember Sandi. I’m sure of that. But maybe not quite so much . . . and maybe that’s for the best. Sometimes it’s good to forget.”
Then he looked at me. Into my eyes. “But I don’t want to forget, Gary. And I won’t. I won’t.”
And then he began to play. The same song. Once. Twice. Three times. I tried to talk, but he wasn’t listening.
His fingers moved on, fiercely, relentlessly. And the music and the wind washed away my words.
Finally I gave up and left. It was a long walk back to the common house, and Keith’s guitar stalked me through the drizzle.
Winters woke me in the common house, shaking me from my bunk to face a grim, gray dawn. His face was even grayer. He said nothing; he didn’t want to wake the others, I guess. He just beckoned me outside.
I yawned and stretched and followed him. Just outside the door, Winters bent and handed me a broken guitar.
I looked at it blankly, then up at him. My face must have asked the question.
“He used it on Pete’s head,” Winters said. “And took the chronine. I think Pete has a mild concussion, but he’ll probably be all right. Lucky. He could be dead, real easy.”
I held the guitar in my hands. It was shattered, the wood cracked and splintered, several strings snapped. It must have been a hell of a blow. I couldn’t believe it. “No,” I said. “Keith . . . no, he couldn’t . . .”
“It’s his guitar,” Winters pointed out. “And who else would take the chronine?” Then his face softened. “I’m sorry, Gary. I really am. I think I understand why he did it. Still, I want him. Any idea where he could be?”
I knew, of course. But I was scared. “What . . . what will you do?”
“No punishment,” he said. “Don’t worry. I just want the chronine back. We’ll be more careful next time.”
I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “But nothing happens to Keith. I’ll fight you if you go back on your word, and the others will too.”
He just looked at me, very sadly, like he was disappointed that I’d mistrust him. He didn’t say a thing. We walked the mile to the creek in silence, me still holding the guitar.
Keith was there, of course. Wrapped in his sleeping bag, the cigar box next to him. There were a few bags left.
He’d used only one.
I bent to wake him. But when I touched him and rolled him over, two things hit me. He’d shaved off his beard.
And he was very, very cold.
Then I noticed the empty bottle.
We’d found other drugs with the chronine, way back when. They weren’t even guarded. Keith had used sleeping pills.
I stood up, not saying a word. I didn’t need to explain. Winters had taken it all in very quickly. He studied the body and shook his head.
“I wonder why he shaved?” he said finally.
“I know,” I said. “He never wore a beard in the old days, when he was with Sandi.”
“Yes,” said Winters. “Well, it figures.”
“What?”
“The suicide. He always seemed unstable.”
“No, Lieutenant,” I said. “You’ve got it all wrong, Keith didn’t commit suicide.”
Winters frowned. I smiled.
“Look,” I said. “If you did it, it would be suicide. You think chronine is only a drug for dreaming. Bui Keith figured it for a time machine. He didn’t kill himself. That wasn’t his style. He just went back to his Sandi. And this time, he made sure he stayed there.”
Winters looked back at the body. “Yes,” he said. “Maybe so.” He paused. “For his sake, I hope that he was right.”
The years since then have been good ones, I guess. Winters is a better leader than I was. The time-trips never turned up any knowledge worth a damn, but the search expeditions proved fruitful. There are more than two hundred people in town now, most of them people that Winters brought in.
It’s a real town, too. We have electricity and a library, and plenty of food. And a doctor—a real doctor that Winters found a hundred miles from here. We got so prosperous that the Sons of the Blast heard about us and came back for a little fun. Winters had his militia beat them off and hunt down the ones who tried to escape.
Nobody but the old commune people remember Keith. But we still have singing and music. Winters found a kid named Ronnie on one of his trips, and Ronnie has a guitar of his own. He’s not in Keith’s league, of course, but he tries hard, and everybody has fun. And he’s taught some of the youngsters how to play.
Only thing is, Ronnie likes to write his own stuff, so we don’t hear many of the old songs. Instead we get postwar music. The most popular tune, right now, is a long ballad about how our army wiped out the Sons of the Blast.
Winters says that’s a healthy thing; he talks about new music for a new civilization. And maybe he has something. In time, I’m sure, there will be a new culture to replace the one that died. Ronnie, like Winters, is giving us tomorrow.
But there’s a price.
The other night, when Ronnie sang, I asked him to do “Me and Bobby McGee.” But nobody knew the words.
1976
THE EVENT HORIZON
Ian Watson
For the second time in three years the starship Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar sailed for the Black Hole that was the blind eye of the binary system Epsilon Aurigae, with the Arab telemedium Habib on board.
At about the same distance from the bright supergiant that is the visible partner of the system as Pluto from the Sun, they reached their destination. Officers and scientists crowded the nacelle beside the lounge to stare into space at something they couldn’t see except insofar as it bent light from the background stars around itself in an annulus of secondary ghost images.
The Hole itself was nothing—literally. Even the fabric of space was missing, there.
A nova is fearful; a supernova, awe-inspiring. Yet their ravening energies are a creative mainspring of the galaxy, spewing out heavy elements for new stars and planets. They are positive energies. The mind can grasp them. But the Black Hole is all negative—the emptiness of the void multiplied a million times into something infinitely greedy. A star collapses under its own gravity, disappears from the universe and leaves a whirlpool of nothingness beyond it. Anything falling into the hole—no matter how well protected it is, no matter if it is powered by the energy of a thousand suns—is trapped forever. The Black Hole is Death the Conqueror.
The Hole in the Aurigae system had already been located from Earth in the twentieth century by its periodic eclipses of its yellow supergiant partner every twenty-seven years; however it wasn’t till the mid-twenty-third that a starship brushed by it.
Then, something more incredible than the Hole itself was found—a living being trapped inside it.
The growth of Psionics Communications—the telemedium system—made the discovery possible. Instantaneous psi-force alone could enter a Black Hole and emerge again. But only if a mind was already present in there . . .
In the nacelle, along with the officers and scientists, were the two political officers from BuPsych-Sec—the Bureau of Psychological Security—Lew Boyd and Liz Nielstrom; Habib, who had first made contact with the mind in there; and a young Swedish girl on her first starflight, Mara Glas.
Habib stood out from the others by wearing traditional Arab costume: the haik and aba of the desert Bedouin. He wore the headdress and long full skirt with a striped white and blue mantle of camel-hair sacking pulled over it. By making a clown of himself in this way, parodying his uneducated nomad’s origin, he made himself acceptable to the others and guarded the privacy of his feelings; another strategy was his carefully cultivated gutter humor. He was that freak thing, a mind-whore; and however essential he might be for communi
cations and psychological stability, the telemedium was a reluctant actor in a perpetual dirty joke.
Psionics and sexual energy were the two great forces that BuPsych-Sec had learned to harness to bind starships safely to home-base Earth no matter how far they roamed. Through psi and sex, bonded together, Earth held her star fleet on the tightest leash, a leash rooted so deeply in the nervous system as to guarantee there would never be any defections to lotus worlds among the stars; nor more mundane lapses in her continual on-line monitoring of the farthest vessel.
As they stood in the nacelle, Mara Glas tried telling herself for the hundredth time that this was all for the good of everyone at home on Earth, and for the stability of civilization; that BuPsych-Sec had designed the safest, most humanitarian system compatible with star empire. So she had been programmed to believe at any rate, by days of lectures and subliminal persuasion.
But she never thought it would be like this, serving Earth’s starship communications system. She never dreamed.
Naturally, the Black Hole was fair pretext for a bout of boisterous smut, if only to mask their fear of the phenomenon. The very name carried such blatant connotations of the trance room that Mara thanked her stars she wasn’t born a Negress; felt pity for Habib’s darker-skinned soul.
“There she blows!” crowed the chief engineer.
Ted Ohashi, the astrophysicist from Hawaii—a mess of a man, like a third-rate Sumo wrestler gone to seed—snickered back:
“That little mouth; she’ll suck all the juice in the galaxy given half a chance.”
“A suck job, that’s good, I like it,” laughed Kurt Spiegel, the leonine Prussian from Hamburg’s Institut fur Physik, boisterously. His wiry hair was swept back in a mane as though the abstractions of Physics had electrified it; though just as exciting to the man, in fact, was that other district of Hamburg around the Repperbahn, St. Pauli, where he got his relief from the enigmas of Schwarzschildian Geometry and Pauli Equations in the more down-to-earth contortions of the strippers going through their bump and grind routines for him, drunk on Schnapps, replete on bockwurst.