Red Star

by Loren R. Graham

  Often, usually toward the end of my day’s work, weariness would begin to affect my performance. My attention would begin to stray and I would make a mistake or cause some step to be delayed for a second. Whenever this happened, the hand of one of my neighbors was inevitably and infallibly there to correct my error. I was not only surprised but sometimes downright exasperated by this strange ability of theirs to observe everything going on around them without for a moment neglecting their own work. I was not so much touched as annoyed and irritated by their solicitude. I got the feeling that they were all constantly keeping an eye on me. This uneasy sensation aggravated my absentmindedness even more and interfered with my work. Now when I am able to look back upon these circumstances objectively and in detail, I realize that I was mistaken. My comrades at the factory helped each other in exactly the same way and with the same solicitude, although perhaps less often. I was not, as it seemed to me then, the object of any special surveillance or supervision. True to my individualistic background, it was I who was unconsciously singling myself out from the others. And again as a child of a materialistic culture, I morbidly misinterpreted their kindness and comradely gestures because I felt unable to repay them.

  4. Enno

  The long autumn drew to a close. Winter, cold but with little snow, descended upon our region, which was located in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere. The little sun shone even less than before and gave no warmth at all. Nature cast off her brilliant colors and became pallid and harsh. A chill crept into my heart, my mind was filled with doubts, and the moral solitude I felt as a stranger from another world weighed heavily upon me.

  I went to visit Enno, whom I had not seen for some time. She greeted me like a dear friend, and it was as if a bright ray from the recent past cut through the cold of winter and my troubled gloom. Later I noticed that she was also pale and seemed to be worried about something, for there was a hidden sorrow in her voice and her general manner. We had a great deal to talk about, and the several hours I spent with her flew by imperceptibly. It was better than anything I had known since Netti’s departure, and we were both sorry when I rose to go home.

  “If you are not pinned down here by your work, why don’t you come with me?” I said.

  Enno agreed immediately. She took some work with her (at the time she was not busy at the observatory, but was checking a long series of calculations), and we returned to the factory settlement, where I was living alone in Menni’s apartment. Every morning I went to work at my factory, which was about one hundred kilometers or a half hour’s flying time away. Enno and I began spending the long winter evenings together in scientific pursuits, discussions, and sometimes walks in and around the town.

  Enno told me the story of her life. She loved Menni and had earlier been his wife. She passionately wanted to have a baby with him, but the years passed and no child came. She asked Netti’s advice. Netti made a thorough investigation of the situation and determined with absolute certainty that they would never have children. Menni had matured too late from boyhood into manhood and had thrown himself too early into the intense life of a scientist and thinker. His vigorous, overdeveloped intellect had from the very beginning undermined and irreparably stifled the vitality of his reproductive faculty. Netti’s verdict was a terrible blow to Enno; her love for the brilliant man and her deep-seated maternal instincts had fused into a single passionate desire that had now proven hopeless.

  This was not all, however, for Netti’s examination had yielded other findings. It turned out that Menni’s immense intellectual activity and the full development of his brilliant talents required a maximum of physical restraint and thus a minimum of lovemaking. Enno could not refuse to follow this advice and was quickly persuaded of its rationality and fairness. Menni livened up and began working more energetically than ever. He brimmed over with new and extraordinarily successful plans and ideas, and he was evidently not conscious of any loss in his private life. Love was dearer than life itself to Enno, but the genius of the man she loved was an even more precious treasure, and she drew the necessary conclusions. She and Menni separated. It pained him at first, but he soon became reconciled to the fact. He may even have been unaware of the real reason for the break. Enno and Netti kept it a secret, although they could never know for certain that Menni’s sharp intellect had not penetrated to the heart of the matter. As for Enno, her life became so empty and her repressed emotions caused her such pain that a short while later the young woman decided she did not want to live any longer.

  Netti, whose cooperation Enno had requested, found various pretexts for postponing the suicide for a day and informed Menni. He was preparing the expedition to Earth at the time and immediately invited Enno to participate in the important and dangerous undertaking. It was difficult to refuse, so Enno accepted his offer. Her many new impressions during the journey helped her to cope with her emotional distress, and by the time she returned to Mars she had gained enough control of herself to play the part of the cheerful boy poet I had known on the etheroneph.

  Enno had not gone on the new expedition to Venus, because she was afraid she might again become used to Menni’s presence. While she was alone, however, she did not stop worrying about him, for she knew very well how dangerous the project was. During the long winter evenings our thoughts and conversations constantly returned to the same place in the Universe. There under the rays of the enormous sun and in the breath of the scorching wind, the two beings who meant the most to both of us were feverishly struggling to accomplish their daring, titanic mission. This identity of thoughts and feelings brought us very close to each other. Enno became more than just a sister to me. Simply and naturally—neither of us experienced any transports of passion or conflicting emotions—our mutual affection developed into an amorous relationship. Invariably meek and kind, Enno neither shunned nor actively sought this intimacy. Her one definite decision was that she did not want children with me. There was an element of gentle sadness in her caresses—caresses of a tender friendship which permitted everything.

  Winter, a long deathly still Martian winter unbroken by thaws, storms, or blizzards, continued to extend its cold, pallid wings over us. Neither of us wanted to fly south, where nature brimmed with life and spread its brilliant plumage under the warm sun. Enno was not at all in the mood for such a tropical clime, whereas I avoided new people and new situations. Meeting and getting used to them involved additional effort and fatigue, and, as it was, I was making but slow progress toward my goal. Ours was a strange, unreal friendship—a wintertime romance overshadowed by cares and expectations.

  5. Nella

  Enno had been Netti’s best friend since they were both young girls, and she told me a great deal about her. On one occasion I was surprised to hear her mention Netti and Sterni together. When I asked her about it she paused for a moment and seemingly even embarrassed answered:

  “Netti was at one time Sterni’s wife. If she has not told you about it, then I should not be mentioning it either. Obviously I have made a mistake, so please do not question me any further.”

  For some reason I was strangely shaken by what I had heard. After all, the news should not have come as any surprise. I had never imagined that I was Netti’s first man. It would have been absurd to think that a woman bursting with life and health, beautiful both physically and spiritually, a child of a free, highly cultivated race, could live without love until our meeting. Why in the world was I so shocked? I could not reason about it logically, I only knew that I had to have a clear and detailed explanation. It was obviously impossible to ask Enno, but then I remembered Nella. As Netti was leaving she had said to me: “Do not forget Nella, go to her if you run into trouble!” I had in fact thought of visiting her a number of times, but was prevented from doing so partly by my work and partly by a vague fear of the hundreds of curious children’s eyes that surrounded her. Now, however, my indecision had vanished, and I set off that very day for the Children’s Colony in the Great
City of Machines.

  Nella immediately dropped what she was doing. Asking one of her colleagues to replace her, she took me to her room, where we would not be bothered by the children. I decided not to tell her straightaway about the purpose of my visit, especially since I was not convinced myself that my intentions were particularly reasonable or noble. It was perfectly natural that I should begin by talking about a person who was very dear to us both. Then I would simply wait for an opportune moment to ask my question. Nella told me a long, enthusiastic story about Netti’s childhood and youth.

  Like most Martian children, Netti spent the first years of her life at home with her mother. When the time came to send her to the Children’s Colony in order to expose her to the educational influence of her fellow children, Nella could not bear to part with her. First she moved temporarily to the colony, and then she decided to stay on and work there as an educator. She had studied psychology, so she already had a suitable background for the job.

  Netti was a lively, energetic, impetuous child with a great thirst for knowledge and activity. She was especially interested in the mysterious universe beyond Mars. Her most cherished dream and favorite topic of conversation with her teachers and comrades was Earth, which no one had yet visited, and its strange people. When the account of Menni’s first successful expedition was published the little girl was beside herself with joy and excitement. She learned Menni’s report by heart and pestered Nella and the other educators to explain to her every word of it she did not understand. She fell in love with Menni before ever laying eyes on him and wrote him a wildly enthusiastic letter in which, among other things, she asked him to bring her an orphan from Earth, promising to give it the very best upbringing. She filled her room with pictures from the planet and portraits of Earthlings, and began studying the dictionaries of our languages as soon as they appeared in print. Menni and his comrades had captured the first person they met and forced him to help them learn the languages they needed. Netti was indignant at this use of force, yet at the same time she was very sorry they had set him free instead of bringing him back with them to Mars. She was firmly determined to travel to Earth some day, and when her mother jokingly remarked that she would probably end up marrying an Earthling there, she thought for a moment and then declared: “I may do just that!”

  Netti had never mentioned any of this to me herself and was generally reticent about her past. No one, of course, not even she, could have told the story better than Nella. Nella’s descriptions glowed with such warm maternal affection! For minutes on end I was oblivious to all else, and as vividly as if she were standing right there before me I could see this marvelous little girl with her huge sparkling eyes and her enigmatic enthusiasm for our remote, faraway world. This soon passed, however; as my awareness of reality returned I recalled the purpose of my visit, and once again I felt a chill in my heart. Finally, when we came to Netti’s most recent past, I decided to ask as casually and naturally as possible how Netti and Sterni’s relationship had begun. Nella thought for a moment.

  “So that’s what it is!” she said, with a note of uncustomary severity in her voice. “That is why you have come to see me. Why didn’t you simply say so?”

  “Well of course I can tell you,” she went on. “It is actually a very simple story. Sterni was one of Netti’s teachers. He used to lecture to young people on mathematics and astronomy. When he returned from his first trip to Earth—I believe it was Menni’s second expedition—he delivered a whole series of lectures about the planet and its inhabitants. Netti attended all of them. She was especially attracted to him because of the attention and patience with which he answered her endless inquiries, and their friendship gradually grew into marriage. Their relationship was nourished at first by the kind of polar attraction that sometimes exists between two very different and in some respects even opposite characters. This same disparity later manifested itself more fully and consistently, their relations cooled, and finally they separated. That is the whole story.”

  “Tell me, when did this break occur?”

  “It became final after Letta’s death. Actually, it was Netti’s intimacy with Letta that provoked the rupture. Netti disliked Sterni’s coldly analytical intellect; he persistently and systematically demolished all the dreams and emotional and intellectual fantasies that formed a very important part of her life. She unconsiously started looking for someone with a different attitude; old Letta was unusually sympathetic and full of childlike enthusiasm. In him Netti found the comrade she was searching for. He was not only patient with her flights of imagination but was often carried away himself by her enthusiasm. He offered her an emotional respite from Sterni’s numbing criticism. Like her, he loved Earth in his dreams and imagination and believed in the future union of the two worlds and the great prosperity and poetry of life that would result from that alliance. And then she found out that despite the richness of his feelings and spirit Letta had never known a woman’s love and caresses. That was something she simply could not accept, and thus began her second liaison.”

  “Just a moment,” I interrupted. “Do I understand you to mean that she was Letta’s wife?”

  “Yes,” replied Nella.

  “But I thought you said that the final break with Sterni did not occur until after Letta’s death.”

  “That is correct. Is that so difficult to understand?”

  “No, I understand. I simply did not know it.”

  At this point we were interrupted. One of the children had had a nervous fit, and Nella was urgently summoned to him. I was alone for several minutes. My head was spinning—there are no words to describe how I felt. Why? No reason in particular. Netti was a free person and behaved like a free person. What of it if Letta was her husband? I had always respected him and would have liked him very much even if he had not sacrificed his life for me. Netti was married to two of her comrades at the same time? So what? I have always believed that monogamy among us is due exclusively to our economic conditions, which limit and enslave man at every step. The conditions on Mars were quite different and in no way inhibited personal feelings and relationships. Why then this agitated bewilderment, this incomprehensible pain that made me want to scream and laugh at the same time? Or was it that I did not know how to feel as I thought? Evidently. And what about my relationship to Enno? Where was my logic? What was I myself? What an absurd situation!

  Ah yes, one more thing . . . Why hadn’t Netti told me all this? How many more secrets and lies were there around me? How many of them could I expect to encounter in the future? Wrong again! A secret, yes, but there was no deceit here. In this particular case, however, wasn’t the secret equivalent to deception? These thoughts were whirling around in my head when the door opened and Nella again stepped into the room. Evidently she could see from my face how bad I felt, for the earlier note of dryness and severity had disappeared from her voice.

  “Of course,” she said, “it is difficult to get used to an entirely different code of personal relations and the customs of a world with which you have no blood ties. You have already overcome many obstacles, and you will cope with this one as well. Netti believes in you, and I think she is right. Surely your faith in her has not been shaken?”

  “Why did she conceal all of this from me? Is that a sign of faith in me? I cannot understand it.”

  “I do not know why she has behaved the way she has. But I do know that she must have had an important reason and was not acting out of selfish motives. Perhaps this letter contains the answer. She left it with me to give you in the event we should have just such a conversation.”

  The letter was written in my native language, which my Netti knew so well. This is what I read:

  Dearest Lenni! I have never told you about my earlier relationships, but it was not because I wanted to conceal from you any of the details of my life. I have full confidence in your lucid intellect and noble heart. I am sure that however strange and unfamiliar certain of our mores must seem to you, soo
ner or later you will be able to understand them and judge them fairly. But I was afraid of one thing . . . After your illness you quickly regained the strength to work, but the emotional equilibrium that is constantly and in all situations necessary for self-control in words and deeds had not yet fully returned. If the impression of the moment and the unbridled forces of the past that constantly lurk in the depths of the human soul had caused you for a single second to expose me as a woman to that unhealthy attitude of force and domination that still prevails in the old world, you would never have been able to forgive yourself. Yes, my darling, I know that you are hard, even cruel, toward yourself. This is a trait you have brought with you from the stern school of struggle on Earth, and a single ugly, morbid outburst would have remained forever as a black stain upon our love.

  Dear Lenni, I want to and I know I can set your mind at ease. May that evil feeling which mingles concern for a living chattel with love for another human being slumber deep inside you and never awake. There will never he anyone else. I can easily and confidently promise you this: alongside my love for you, alongside my passionate desire to help you in your great and vital task, everything else appears so petty and insignificant. I love you not only as a wife, I love you as a mother who guides her child into a new and strange life full of trials and dangers. This love is the strongest bond that can exist between two people. For that reason my promise requires no sacrifice of me.

  Goodbye my darling, my beloved child.

  Love,

  Netti