Selections

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Surprisingly, she laughed.

  "What's that for?"

  "A moment ago you were blushing and shuffling your feet."

  His voice was rough. "I wasn't talking to a human being. I was talking to a thousand songs I've heard, and a hundred thousand blonde pictures I've seen pinned up. You'd better tell me what this is all about."

  She stopped. "Let's go up and see the colonel."

  He took her elbow. "No. I'm just a sergeant, and he's high brass, and that doesn't make any difference at all now. You're a human being, and so am I, and I'm supposed to respect your rights as such. I don't. You'd better tell me about it."

  "All right," she said, with a tired acquiescence that frightened something inside him. "You seem to have guessed right, though. It's true. There are master firing keys for the launching sites. We have located and dismantled all but two. It's very likely that one of the two was vaporized. The other one is—lost."

  "Lost?"

  "I don't have to tell you about the secrecy," she said. "You know how it developed between nation and nation. You must know that it existed between State and Union, between department and department, office and office. There were only three or four men who knew where all the keys were. Three of them were in the Pentagon when it went up. That was the third blast-bomb, you know. If there was another, it could only have been Senator Vanercook, and he died three weeks ago without talking."

  "An automatic radio key, hm?"

  "That's right. Sergeant, must we walk? I'm so tired."

  "I'm sorry," he said impulsively. They crossed to the reviewing stand and sat on the lonely benches. "Launching racks all over, all hidden, and all armed?"

  "Most of them are armed. There's a timing mechanism in them that will disarm them in a year or so. But in the meantime, they are armed—and aimed."

  "Aimed where?"

  "It doesn't matter."

  "I think I see. What's the optimum number again?"

  "About six hundred and forty; a few more or less. At least five hundred and thirty have been thrown so far. We don't know exactly."

  "Who are we?" he asked furiously.

  "Who? Who?" She laughed weakly. "I could say, 'The Government,' perhaps. If the President dies, the Vice-President takes over, and then the Secretary of State, and so on and on. How far can you go? Pete Mawser, don't you realize yet what's happened?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "How many people do you think are left in this country?"

  "I don't know. Just a few million, I guess."

  "How many are here?"

  "About nine hundred."

  "Then, as far as I know, this is the largest city left."

  He leaped to his feet. "No!" The syllable roared away from him, hurled itself against the dark, empty buildings, came back to him in a series of lower-case echoes: nononono . . . no-no.

  Starr began to speak rapidly, quietly. "They're scattered all over the fields and the roads. They sit in the sun and die. They run in packs, they tear at each other. They pray and starve and kill themselves and die in the fires. The fires—everywhere, if anything stands, it's burning. Summer, and the leaves all down in the Berkshires, and the blue grass burnt brown; you can see the grass dying from the air, the death going out wider and wider from the bald-spots. Thunder and roses . . . I saw roses, new ones, creeping from the smashed pots of a greenhouse. Brown petals, alive and sick, and the thorns turned back on themselves, growing into the stems, killing. Feldman died tonight."

  He let her be quiet for a time. Then:

  "Who is Feldman?"

  "My pilot." She was talking hollowly into her hands. "He's been dying for weeks. He's been on his nerve-ends. I don't think he had any blood left. He buzzed your GHQ and made for the landing strip. He came in with the motor dead, free rotors, gyro. Smashed the landing gear. He was dead, too. He killed a man in Chicago so he could steal gas. The man didn't want the gas. There was a dead girl by the pump. He didn't want us to go near. I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay here. I'm tired."

  At last she cried.

  Pete left her alone, and walked out to the center of the parade ground, looking back at the faint huddled glimmer on the bleachers. His mind flickered over the show that evening, and the way she had sung before the merciless transmitter. "Hello, you." "If we must destroy, let us stop with destroying ourselves!"

  The dimming spark of humankind . . . what could it mean to her? How could it mean so much?

  "Thunder and roses." Twisted, sick, non-survival roses, killing themselves with their own thorns.

  "And the world was a place of light!" Blue light, flickering in the contaminated air.

  The enemy. The red-topped lever. Bonze. "They pray and starve and kill themselves and die in the fires."

  What creatures were these, these corrupted, violent, murdering humans? What right had they to another chance? What was in them that was good?

  Starr was good. Starr was crying. Only a human being could cry like that. Starr was a human being.

  Had humanity anything of Starr Anthim in it?

  Starr was a human being.

  He looked down through the darkness for his hands. No planet, no universe, is greater to a man than his own ego, his own observing self. These hands were the hands of all history, and like the hands of all men, they could by their small acts make human history or end it. Whether this power of hands was that of a billion hands, or whether it came to a focus in these two—this was suddenly unimportant to the eternities which now enfolded him.

  He put humanity's hands deep in his pockets and walked slowly back to the bleachers.

  "Starr."

  She responded with a sleepy-child, interrogative whimper.

  "They'll get their chance, Starr. I won't touch the key."

  She sat straight. She rose, and came to him, smiling. He could see her smile, because, very faintly in the air, her teeth fluoresced. She put her hands on his shoulders. "Pete."

  He held her very close for a moment. Her knees buckled then, and he had to carry her.

  There was no one in the Officers' Club, which was the nearest building. He stumbled in, moved clawing along the wall until he found a switch. The light hurt him. He carried her to a settee and put her down gently. She did not move. One side of her face was as pale as milk.

  He stood looking stupidly at it, wiped it on the sides of his trousers, looking dully at Starr. There was blood on her shirt.

  A doctor . . . but there was no doctor. Not since Anders had hanged himself. "Get somebody," he muttered. "Do something."

  He dropped to his knees and gently unbuttoned her shirt. Between the sturdy unfeminine GI bra and the top of her slacks, there was blood on her side. He whipped out a clean handkerchief and began to wipe it away. There was no wound, no puncture. But abruptly there was blood again. He blotted it carefully. And again there was blood.

  It was like trying to dry a piece of ice with a towel.

  He ran to the water cooler, wrung out the bloody handkerchief and ran back to her. He bathed her face carefully, the pale right side, the flushed left side. The handkerchief reddened again, this time with cosmetics, and then her face was pale all over, with great blue shadows under the eyes. While he watched, blood appeared on her left cheek.

  "There must be somebody—" He fled to the door.

  "Pete!"

  Running, turning at the sound of her voice, he hit the doorpost stunningly, caromed off, flailed for his balance, and then was back at her side. "Starr! Hang on, now! I'll get a doctor as quick as—"

  Her hand strayed over her left cheek. "You found out. Nobody else knew, but Feldman. It got hard to cover properly." Her hand went up to her hair.

  "Starr, I'll get a—"

  "Pete, darling, promise me something?"

  "Why, sure; certainly, Starr."

  "Don't disturb my hair. It isn't—all mine, you see." She sounded like a seven-year-old, playing a game. "It all came out on this side. I don't want you to see me that way.
"

  He was on his knees beside her again. "What is it? What happened to you?" he asked hoarsely.

  "Philadelphia," she murmured. "Right at the beginning. The mushroom went up a half-mile away. The studio caved in. I came to the next day. I didn't know I was burned, then. It didn't show. My left side. It doesn't matter, Pete. It doesn't hurt at all, now."

  He sprang to his feet again. "I'm going for a doctor."

  "Don't go away. Please don't go away and leave me. Please don't." There were tears in her eyes. "Wait just a little while. Not very long, Pete."

  He sank to his knees again. She gathered both his hands in hers and held them tightly. She smiled happily. "You're good, Pete. You're so good."

  (She couldn't hear the blood in his ears, the roar of the whirlpool of hate and fear and anguish that spun inside of him.)

  She talked to him in a low voice, and then in whispers. Sometimes he hated himself because he couldn't quite follow her. She talked about school, and her first audition. "I was so scared that I got a vibrato in my voice. I'd never had one before. I always let myself get a little scared when I sing now. It's easy." There was something about a window-box when she was four years old. "Two real live tulips and a pitcher-plant. I used to be sorry for the flies."

  There was a long period of silence after that, during which his muscles throbbed with cramp and stiffness, and gradually became numb. He must have dozed; he awoke with a violent start, feeling her fingers on his face. She was propped up on one elbow. She said clearly, "I just wanted to tell you, darling. Let me go first, and get everything ready for you. It's going to be wonderful. I'll fix you a special tossed salad. I'll make you a steamed chocolate pudding and keep it hot for you."

  Too muddled to understand what she was saying, he smiled and pressed her back on the settee. She took his hands again.

  The next time he awoke it was broad daylight, and she was dead.

  Sonny Weisefreund was sitting on his cot when he got back to the barracks. He handed over the recording he had picked up from the parade-ground on the way back. "Dew on it. Dry it off. Good boy," he croaked, and fell face downward on the cot Bonze had used.

  Sonny stared at him. "Pete! Where you been? What happened? Are you all right?"

  Pete shifted a little and grunted. Sonny shrugged and took the audiovid disc out of its wet envelope. Moisture would not harm it particularly, though it could not be played while wet. It was made of a fine spiral of plastic, insulated between laminations. Electrostatic pickups above and below the turntable would fluctuate with changes in the dielectric constant which had been impressed by the recording, and these changes were amplified for the scanners. The audio was a conventional hill-and-dale needle. Sonny began to wipe it down carefully.

  Pete fought upward out of a vast, green-lit place full of flickering cold fires. Starr was calling him. Something was punching him, too. He fought it weakly, trying to hear what she was saying. But someone else was jabbering too loud for him to hear.

  He opened his eyes. Sonny was shaking him, his round face pink with excitement. The Audiovid was running. Starr was talking. Sonny got up impatiently and turned down the volume. "Pete! Pete! Wake up, will you? I got to tell you something. Listen to me! Wake up, will yuh?"

  "Huh?"

  "That's better. Now listen. I've just been listening to Starr Anthim—"

  "She's dead," said Pete.

  Sonny didn't hear. He went on, explosively, "I've figured it out. Starr was sent out here, and all over, to beg someone not to fire any more atom bombs. If the government was sure they wouldn't strike back, they wouldn't've taken the trouble. Somewhere, Pete, there's some way to launch bombs at those murdering cowards—and I've got a pretty shrewd idea of how to do it."

  Pete strained groggily toward the faint sound of Starr's voice. Sonny talked on. "Now, s'posing there was a master radio key—an automatic code device something like the alarm signal they have on ships, that rings a bell on any ship within radio range when the operator sends four long dashes. Suppose there's an automatic code machine to launch bombs, with repeaters, maybe, buried all over the country. What would it be? Just a little lever to pull; that's all. How would the thing be hidden? In the middle of a lot of other equipment, that's where; in some place where you'd expect to find crazy-looking secret stuff. Like an experiment station. Like right here. You beginning to get the idea?"

  "Shut up, I can't hear her."

  "The hell with her! You can listen to her some other time. You didn't hear a thing I said!"

  "She's dead."

  "Yeah. Well, I figure I'll pull that handle. What can I lose? It'll give those murderin'—what?"

  "She's dead."

  "Dead? Starr Anthim?" His young face twisted, Sonny sank down to the cot. "You're half asleep. You don't know what you're saying."

  "She's dead," Pete said hoarsely. "She got burned by one of the first bombs. I was with her when she—she— Shut up now and get out of here and let me listen!" he bellowed hoarsely.

  Sonny stood up slowly. "They killed her, too. They killed her! That does it. That just fixes it up." His face was white. He went out.

  Pete got up. His legs weren't working right. He almost fell. He brought up against the console with a crash, his outflung arm sending the pickup skittering across the record. He put it on again and turned up the volume, then lay down to listen.

  His head was all mixed up. Sonny talked too much. Bomb launchers, automatic code machines—

  "You gave me your heart," said Starr. "You gave me your heart. You gave me your heart. You . . ."

  Pete heaved himself up again and moved the pickup arm. Anger, not at himself, but at Sonny for causing him to cut the disc that way, welled up.

  Starr was talking, stupidly, her face going through the same expression over and over again. "Struck from the east and from the struck from the east and from the . . ."

  He got up again wearily and moved the pickup.

  "You gave me your heart you gave me . . ."

  Pete made an agonized sound that was not a word at all, bent, lifted, and sent the console crashing over. In the bludgeoning silence, he said, "I did, too."

  Then, "Sonny." He waited.

  "Sonny!"

  His eyes went wide then, and he cursed and bolted for the corridor.

  The panel was closed when he reached it. He kicked at it. It flew open, discovering darkness.

  "Hey!" bellowed Sonny. "Shut it! You turned off the lights!"

  Pete shut it behind them. The lights blazed.

  "Pete! What's the matter?"

  "Nothing's the matter, Son," croaked Pete.

  "What are you looking at?" said Sonny uneasily.

  "I'm sorry," said Pete as gently as he could. "I just wanted to find something out, is all. Did you tell anyone else about this?" He pointed to the lever.

  "Why, no. I only just figured it out while you were sleeping, just now."

  Pete looked around carefully, while Sonny shifted his weight. Pete moved toward a tool-rack. "Something you haven't noticed yet, Sonny," he said softly, and pointed. "Up there, on the wall behind you. High up. See?"

  Sonny turned. In one fluid movement Pete plucked off a fourteen-inch box wrench and hit Sonny with it as hard as he could.

  Afterward he went to work systematically on the power supplies. He pulled the plugs on the gas-engines and cracked their cylinders with a maul. He knocked off the tubing of the diesel starters—the tanks let go explosively—and he cut all the cables with bolt-cutters. Then he broke up the relay rack and its lever. When he was quite finished, he put away his tools and bent and stroked Sonny's tousled hair.

  He went out and closed the partition carefully. It certainly was a wonderful piece of camouflage. He sat down heavily on a workbench nearby.

  "You'll have your chance," he said into the far future. "And, by Heaven, you'd better make good."

  After that he just waited…

  Those masterful images because complete

  Grew in pure mi
nd but out of what began?

  I must lie down where all the ladders start

  In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

  THE SEX OPPOSITE

  First appeared in Fantastic, Fall Issue, 1952

  Budgie slid into the laboratory without knocking, as usual.

  She was flushed and breathless, her eyes bright with speed and eagerness. "Whatcha got, Muley?"

  Muhlenberg kicked the morgue door shut before Budgie could get in line with it. "Nothing," he said flatly, "and of all the people I don't want to see--and at the moment that means all the people there are--you head the list. Go away."

  Budgie pulled off her gloves and stuffed them into an oversized shoulder bag, which she hurled across the laboratory onto a work surface. "Come on, Muley. I saw the meat-wagon outside. I know what it brought, too. That double murder in the park. Al told me."

  "Al's jaw is one that needs more tying up than any of the stiffs he taxis around," said Muhlenberg bitterly. "Well, you're not getting near this pair."

  She came over to him, stood very close. In spite of his annoyance, he couldn't help noticing how soft and full her lips were just then. Just then--and the sudden realization added to the annoyance. He had known for a long time that Budgie could turn on mechanisms that made every one of a man's ductless glands purse up its lips and blow like a trumpet. Every time he felt it he hated himself. "Get away from me," he growled. "It won't work."

  "What won't, Muley?" she murmured.

  Muhlenberg looked her straight in the eye and said something about his preference for raw liver over Budgie- times-twelve.

  The softness went out of her lips, to be replaced by no particular hardness. She simply laughed good-naturedly. "All right, you're immune. I'll try logic."

  "Nothing will work," he said. "You will not get in there to see those two, and you'll get no details from me for any of that couche-con-carne stew you call a newspaper story."

  "Okay," she said surprisingly. She crossed the lab and picked up her handbag. She found a glove and began to pull it on. "Sorry I interrupted you, Muley. I do get the idea. You want to be alone."