by Damon Knight
“Is that really snow?” She pulled at his arm, pointing.
He nodded. “We manage a little.”
“I’ve only seen snow once since I left Calicho, once it was winter on Treone. We wrapped up in furs and capes even though we didn’t have to, and threw snowballs with the Tails. . . . But it was cold most of the year on our island, on Calicho—we were pretty far north, we grew special kinds of crops . . . and us kids had hairy hornbeasts to plod around on. . . Lost in memories, she rested against his shoulder; while he tried to remember a freehold on Glatte, and snowy walls became jumbled whiteness climbing a hill by the sea.
They had crossed the divide; the protruding batholith of the peaks degenerated into parched, crumbling slopes of gigantic rubble. Ahead of them the scarred yellow desolation stretched away like an infinite canvas, into mauve haze. “How far does it go?”
“It goes on forever. . . . Maybe not this desert, but this merges into others that merge into others—the whole planet is a desert, hot or cold. It’s been desiccating for eons; the sun’s been rising off the main sequence. The sea by New Piraeus is the only large body of free water left now, and that’s dropped half an inch since I’ve been here. The coast is the only habitable area, and there aren’t many towns there even now.”
“Then Oro will never be able to change too much.”
“Only enough to hurt. See the dust? Open-pit mining, for seventy kilometers north. And that’s a little one.”
He took them south, sliding over the eroded face of the land to twist through canyons of folded stone, sediments contorted by the palsied hands of tectonic force; or flashing across pitted flatlands lipping on pocket seas of ridged and shadowed blow-sand.
They settled at last under a steep out-curving wall of frescoed rock layered in red and green. The wide, rough bed of the sandy wash was pale in the chill glare of noon, scrunching underfoot as they began to walk. Pulling on his leather jacket, Maris showed her the kaleidoscope of ages left tumbled in stones over the hills they climbed, shouting against the lusty wind of the ridges. She cupped them in marveling hands, hair streaming like silken banners past her face; obligingly he put her chosen few into his pockets. “Aren’t you cold?” He caught her hand.
“No, my suit takes care of me. How did you ever learn to know all these, Maris?”
Shaking his head, he began to lead her back down. “There’s more here than I’ll ever know. I just got a mining tape on geology at the library. But it made it mean more to come out here . . . where you can see eons of the planet laid open, one cycle settling on another. To know the time it took, the life history of an entire world: it helps my perspective, it makes me feel—young.”
“We think we know worlds, but we don’t, we only see people: change and pettiness. We forget the greater constancy, tied to the universe. It would humble our perspective, too—” Pebbles boiled and clattered; her hand held his strongly as his foot slipped. He looked back, chagrined, and she laughed. “You don’t really have to lead me here, Maris. I was a mountain goat on Calicho, and I haven’t forgotten it all.”
Indignant, he dropped her hand. “You lead.”
Still laughing, she led him to the bottom of the hill.
And he took her to see the trees. Working their way over rocks up the windless branch wash, they rounded a bend and found them, tumbled in static glory. He heard her indrawn breath. “Oh, Maris—” Radiant with color and light she walked among them, while he wondered again at the passionless artistry of the earth. Amethyst and agate, crystal and mimicked wood-grain, hexagonal trunks split open to bare subtleties of mergence and secret nebulosities. She knelt among the broken bits of limb, choosing colors to hold up to the sun.
He sat on a trunk, picking agate pebbles. “They’re sort of special friends of mine; we go down in time together, in strangely familiar bodies. . . .” He studied them with fond pride. “But they go with more grace.”
She put her colored chunks on the ground. “No … I don’t think so. They had no choice.”
He looked down, tossing pebbles.
“Let’s have our picnic here.”
They cleared a space and spread a blanket, and picnicked with the trees. The sun warmed them in the windless hollow, and he made a pillow of his jacket; satiated, they lay back head by head, watching the cloudless green-blue sky.
“You pack a good lunch.”
“Thank you. It was the least I could do”—her hand brushed his arm; quietly his fingers tightened on themselves—“to share your secrets; to learn that the desert isn’t barren, that it’s immense, timeless, full of—mysteries. But no life?”
“No—not anymore. There’s no water, nothing can live. The only things left are in or by the sea, or they’re things we’ve brought. Across our own lifeless desert-sea.”
“‘Though inland far we be, our souls have sight of that immortal sea which brought us hither.’” Her hand stretched above him, to catch the sky.
“Wordsworth. That’s the only thing by him I ever liked much.”
They lay together in the warm silence. A piece of agate came loose, dropped to the ground with a clink; they started.
“Maris—”
"Hmm?”
“Do you realize we’ve known each other for three-quarters of a century?”
“Yes. . . .”
“I’ve almost caught up with you, I think. I’m twenty-seven. Soon I’m going to start passing you. But at least—now you’ll never have to see it show.” Her fingers touched the rusty curls of his hair.
“It would never show. You couldn’t help but be beautiful.”
“Maris . . . sweet Maris.”
He felt her hand clench in the soft weave of his shirt, move in caresses down his body. Angrily he pulled away, sat up, half his face flushed. “Damn—!”
Stricken, she caught at his sleeve. “No, no—” Her eyes found his face, gray filled with grief. “No . . . Maris . . . I—want you.” She unsealed her suit, drew blue-silver from her shoulders, knelt before him. “I want you.”
Her hair fell to her waist, the color of warm honey. She reached out and lifted his hand with tenderness; slowly he leaned forward, to bare her breasts and her beating heart, felt the softness set fire to his nerves. Pulling her close, he found her lips, kissed them long and longingly; held her against his own heart beating, lost in her silken hair. “Oh, God, Brandy . . .”
“I love you, Maris … I think I’ve always loved you.” She clung to him, cold and shivering in the sunlit air. “And it’s wrong to leave you and never let you know.”
And he realized that fear made her tremble, fear bound to her love in ways he could not fully understand. Blind to the future, he drew her down beside him and stopped her trembling with his joy.
In the evening she sat across from him at the bar, blue-haloed with light, sipping brandy. Their faces were bright with wine and melancholy bliss.
“I finally got some more brandy, Brandy … a couple of years ago. So we wouldn’t run out. If we don’t get to it, you can take it with you.” He set the dusty red-splintered bottle carefully on the bar.
“You could save it, in case I do come back, as old as your grandmaw, and in need of some warmth. . . .” Slowly she rotated her glass, watching red leap up the sides. “Do you suppose by then my poems will have reached Home? And maybe somewhere Inside, Ntaka will be reading me.”
“The Outside will be the Inside by then. . . . Besides, Ntaka’s probably already dead. Been dead for years.”
“Oh. I guess.” She pouted, her eyes growing dim and moist. “Damn, I wish … I wish.”
“Branduin, you haven’t joined us yet tonight. It is our last together.” Harkane appeared beside her, lean dark face smiling in a cloud-mass of blued white hair. She sat down with her drink.
“I’ll come soon.” Clouded eyes glanced up, away.
“Ah, the sadness of parting keeps you apart? I know.” Harkane nodded. “We’ve been together so long; it’s hard, to lose another family.” She rega
rded Maris. “And a good bartender must share everyone’s sorrows, yes, Soldier—? But bury his own. Oh—they would like some more drinks—”
Sensing dismissal, he moved aside; with long-practiced skill he became blind and deaf, pouring wine.
“Brandy, you are so unhappy—don’t you want to go on this other voyage?”
“Yes, I do—! But . .
“But you don’t. It is always so when there is choice. Sometimes we make the right choice, and though we’re afraid we go on with it anyway. And sometimes we make the wrong choice, and go on with it anyway because we’re afraid not to. Have you changed your mind?”
“But I can’t change—”
“Why not? We will leave them a message. They will go on and pick up their second compatible.”
“Is it really that easy?”
“No . . . not quite. But we can do it, if you want to stay.”
Silence stretched; Maris sent a tray away, began to wipe glasses, fumbled.
“But I should
“Brandy. If you go only out of obligation, I will tell you something. I want to retire. I was going to resign this trip, at Sanalareta; but if I do that, Mactav will need a new Best Friend. She’s getting old and cantankerous, just like me; these past few years her behavior has begun to show the strain she is under. She must have someone who can feel her needs. I was going to ask you, I think you understand her best; but I thought you wanted this other thing more. If not, I ask you now to become the new Best Friend of the Who Got Her.”
“But Harkane, you’re not old—”
“I am eighty-six. I’m too old for the sporting life anymore! I will become a Mactav; I’ve been lucky, I have an opportunity.”
“Then . . . yes—I do want to stay! I accept the position.”
In spite of himself Maris looked up, saw her face shining with joy and release. “Brandy—?”
“Maris, I’m not going!”
“I know!” He laughed, joined them.
“Soldier.” He looked up, dark met dark, Harkane’s eyes that saw more than surfaces. “This will be the last time that I see you; I am retiring, you know. You have been very good to me all these years, helping me be young; you are very kind to us all. . . . Now, to say good-bye, I do something in return.” She took his hand, placed it firmly over Brandy’s, shining with rings on the counter. “I give her back to you. Brandy—join us soon, we’ll celebrate.” She rose mildly and moved away into the crowded room.
Their hands twisted, clasped tight on the counter.
Brandy closed her eyes. “God, I’m so glad!”
"So am I.”
“Only the poems . . .”
“Remember once you told me, ‘you can see it all a hundred times, and never see it all’?”
A quicksilver smile. “And it’s true. . . . Oh, Maris, now this is my last night! And I have to spend it with them, to celebrate.”
“I know. There’s—no way I can have you forever, I suppose. But it’s all right.” He grinned. “Everything’s all right. What’s twenty-five years, compared to two hundred?”
“It’ll seem like three.”
“It’ll seem like twenty-five. But I can stand it—”
★
He stood it, for twenty-four more years, looking up from the bar with sudden eagerness every time new voices and the sound of laughter spilled into the dim blue room.
“Soldier! Soldier, you’re still—”
“We missed you like—”
“—two whole weeks of—”
“—want to buy a whole sack for my own—”
The crew of the DOM-428 pressed around him, their fingers proving he was real; their lips brushed a cheek that couldn’t feel and one that could, long loose hair rippling over the agate bar. He hugged four at a time. “Aralea! Vlasa! Elsah, what the hell have you done to your hair now—and Ling-shan! My God, you’re pretty, like always. Cathe—” The memory bank never forgot a shining fresh-scrubbed face, even after thirty-seven years. Their eyes were very bright as he welcomed them, and their hands left loving prints along the agate bar.
“—still have your stone bar; I’m so glad, don’t ever sell it—”
“And what’s new with you?” Elsah gasped, and ecstatic laughter burst over him.
He shook his head, hands up, laughing too. “—go prematurely deaf? First round on the house; only one at a time, huh?”
Elsah brushed strands of green-tinged waist-length hair back from her very green eyes. “Sorry, Soldier. We’ve just said it all to each other, over and over. And gee, we haven’t seen you for four years!” Her belt tossed blue-green sparks against her green quilted flight-suit.
“Four years? Seems more like thirty-seven.” And they laughed again, appreciating, because it was true. “Welcome back to the Tin Soldier. What’s your pleasure?”
“Why you of course, me darlin’,” said black-haired Brigit, and she winked.
His smile barely caught on a sharp edge; he winked back. “Just the drinks are on the house, lass.” The smile widened and came unstuck.
More giggles.
“Ach, a pity!” Brigit pouted. She wore a filigree necklace, like the galaxy strung over her dark-suited breast. “Well, then, I guess a little olive beer, for old time’s sake.”
“Make it two.”
“Anybody want a pitcher?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Come sit with us in a while, Soldier. Have we got things to tell you!”
He jammed the clumsy pitcher under the spigot and pulled down as they drifted away, watching the amber splatter up its frosty sides.
“Alta, hi! Good timing! How are things on the Extra Sexy Old-115?”
“Oh, good enough; how’s Chrysalis—has it changed much?”
The froth spilled out over his hand; he let the lever jerk up, licked his fingers and wiped them on his apron.
“It’s gone wild this time, you should see what they’re wearing for clothes. My God, you would not believe—”
He hoisted the slimy pitcher onto the bar and set octagonal mugs on a tray.
“Aralea, did you hear what happened to the—”
He lifted the pitcher again, up to the tray’s edge.
The pitcher teetered.
“Their Mactav had a nervous breakdown on landing at Sanalareta. Branduin died, the poet, the one who wrote—”
Splinters and froth exploded on the agate bar and slobbered over the edge, tinkle crash.
Stunned blank faces turned to see Soldier, hands moving ineffectually in a puddle of red-flecked foam. He began to brush it off onto the floor, looking like a stricken adolescent. “Sorry . . . sorry about that.”
“Ach, Soldier, you really blew it!”
“Got a mop? Here, we’ll help you clean it up . . . hey, you’re bleeding—?” Brigit and Ling-shan were piling chunks of pitcher onto the bar.
Soldier shook his head, fumbling a towel around the one wrist that bled. “No . . . no, thanks, leave it, huh? I’ll get you another pitcher … it doesn’t matter. Go on!” They looked at him. “I’ll send you a pitcher; thanks.” He smiled.
They left, the smile stopped. Fill the pitcher. He filled a pitcher, his hand smarting. Clean up, damn it. He cleaned up, wiping off disaster while the floor absorbed and fangs of glass disappeared under the bar. As the agate bar-top dried he saw the white-edged shatter flower, tendrils of hairline crack shooting out a hand’s-breadth on every side. He began to trace them with a rigid finger, counting softly . . . She loved me, she loved me not, she loved me— “Two cepheids and a wine, Soldier!”
“Soldier, come hear what we saw on Chrysalis if you’re through!” He nodded and poured, blinking hard. God damn sweetsmoke in here . . . God damn everything! Elsah was going out the door with a boy in tight green pants and a star-map-tattooed body. He stared them into fluorescent blur. And remembered Brandy going out the door too many times . . .
“Hey, Soldier, what are you doing?”
He blinked himself back.
&n
bsp; “Come sit with us?”
He crossed the room to the nearest bulky table and the remaining crew of the Dirty Old Man-428.
“How’s your hand?” Vlasa soothed it with a dark, ringed finger. “It only hurts when I laugh.”
“You really are screwed up!” Ling-shan’s smile wrinkled. “Oh, Soldier, why look so glum?”
“I chipped my bar.”
“Ohhh . . . nothing but bad news tonight. Make him laugh, somebody, we can’t go on like this!”
“Tell him the joke you heard on Chrysalis—”
“—from the boy with a cat’s-eye in his navel? Oh. Well, it seems there was . . .”
His fingers moved reluctantly up the laces of his patchwork shirt and began to untangle the thumb-sized star trapped near his throat.
He set it free; his hand tightened across the stubby spines, feeling only dull pressure. Pain registered from somewhere else.
“—‘Oh, they fired the pickle slicer too!’”
He looked up into laughter.
“It’s a tech-one joke, Soldier,” Ling-Shan said helpfully.
“Oh … I see.” He laughed, blindly.
“Soldier, we took pictures of our black hole!” Vlasa pulled at his arm. “From a respectable distance, but it was bizarre—”
“Holograms—” somebody interrupted.
“And you should see the effects!” Brigit said. “When you look into them you feel like your eyes are being—”
“Soldier, another round, please?”
“Excuse me.” He pushed back his chair. “Later?” Thinking, God won’t this night ever end?
His hand closed the lock on the pitted tavern door at last; his woven sandal skidded as he stepped into the street. Two slim figures, one all in sea-blue, passed him and red hair flamed; he recognized Marena, intent and content arm in arm with a gaudy, laughing Tail. Their hands were in each other’s back pockets. They were going uphill; he turned down, treading carefully on the time- and fog-slicked cobbles. He limped slightly. Moist wraiths of sea fog twined the curving streets, turning the street lights into dark angels under fluorescing haloes. Bright droplets formed in his hair as he walked. His footsteps scratched to dim echoes; the laughter faded, leaving him alone with memory.