Tween ran to us and took my arm gently above the splint. They got me to a couch and I collapsed on it.
“Damn him,” said Clinton good-humoredly. “He seems to be working full time to keep me from going Out.”
There was such a long silence that I opened one eye to look at them. Tween was staring at him as if she had never seen him before—as, actually, she hadn’t, with her eyes so full of Wold.
“Do you really want to go Out?” she asked softly.
“More than…” He looked at her hair, her lovely face. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around much.
You’re—Tween, aren’t you?”
She nodded and they stopped talking. I snapped my eyes shut because they were sure to look at me just for something to do.
“Is he all right?” she asked.
“I think he’s—yes, he’s asleep. Don’t wonder. He’s been through a lot.”
“Let’s go in the other room where we can talk together without disturbing him.”
They closed the door. I could barely hear them. It went on for a long time, with occasional silences.
Finally I heard what I’d been listening for: “If it hadn’t been for him, I’d be gone now. I was just about to solo.”
“No! Oh, I’m glad… I’m glad you didn’t.”
One of those silences. Then, “So am I, Tween. Tween…” in a whisper of astonishment.
I got up off the couch and silently let myself out. I went back to my quarters, even managing to climb the ramp. I felt real fine.
I heard an ugly rumor. I’d seen a lot and I’d done a lot, and I regarded myself as pretty shockproof, but this one jolted me to the core. I took refuge in the old ointment, “It can’t be, it just can’t be,” but in my heart I knew it could.
I got hold of Judson. He was hollow-eyed and much quieter than usual. I asked him what he was doing these days, though I knew.
“Boning up on the fine points of astrogation,” he told me. “I’ve never hit anything so fascinating. It’s one thing to have the stuff shoveled into your head when you’re asleep, and something else again to experience it all, note by note, like music.”
“But you’re spending an awful lot of time in the archives, son.”
“It takes a lot of time.”
“Can’t you study at home?”
I think he only just then realized what I was driving at. “Look,” he said quietly, “I have my troubles. I have things wrong with me. But I’m not blind. I’m not stupid. You wouldn’t tell me to my face that I couldn’t handle problems that are strictly my own, would you?”
“I would if I were sure,” I said. “Damn it, I’m not. And I’m not going to pry for details.”
“I’m glad of that,” he said soberly. “Now we don’t have to talk about it at all, do we?”
In spite of myself, I laughed aloud.
“What’s funny?”
“I am, Jud, boy. I been—handled.”
He saw the point, and smiled a little with me. “Hell, I know what you’ve been hinting at. But you’re not close enough to the situation to know all the angles. I am. When the time comes, I’ll take care of it.
Until then, it’s no one’s problem but my own.”
He picked up his star-chart reels and I knew that one single word more would be one too many. I squeezed his arm and let him go.
Five people, I thought: Wold, Judson, Tween, Clinton, Flower. Take away two and that leaves three.
Three’s a crowd—in this case, a very explosive kind of crowd.
Nothing, nothing justifies infidelity in a modern marriage. But the ugly rumors kept trickling in.
“I want my certificate,” Wold said.
I looked up at him and a bushel of conjecture flipped through my mind. So you want your certificate?
Why? And why just now, of all times? What can a man do with a certificate that he can’t do without one—aside from going Out? Because, damn you, you’ll never go Out. Not of your own accord, you won’t.
All this, but none of it slipped out. I said, “All right. That’s what I’m here for, Wold.” And we got to work.
He worked hard, and smoothly and easily, the way he talked, the way he moved. I am constantly astonished at how small accomplished people can make themselves at times.
He was certified easy as breathing. And can you believe it, I worked with him, saw how hard he was working, helped him through, and never realized what it was he was after?
After going through the routines of certification for him, I wasn’t happy. There was something wrong somewhere… something missing. This was a puzzle that ought to fall together easily, and it wouldn’t. I wish—Lord, how I wish I could have thought a little faster.
I let a day go by after Wold was certified. I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t eat, and I couldn’t analyze what it was that was bothering me. So I began to cruise, to see if I could find out.
I went to the archives. “Where’s Judson?”
The girl told me he hadn’t been there for forty-eight hours.
I looked in the Recreation Sector, in the libraries, in the stereo and observation rooms. Some kind of rock-bottom good sense kept me from sending out a general call for him. But it began to be obvious that he just wasn’t around. Of course, there were hundreds of rooms and corridors in Curbstone that were unused—they wouldn’t be used until the interplanetary project was completed and the matter transmitters started working. But Jud wasn’t the kind to hide from anything.
I squared my shoulders and realized that I was doing a lot of speculation to delay looking in the obvious place. I think, more than anything else, I was afraid that he would not be there…
I passed my hand over the door announcer. In a moment she answered; she had apparently come in from the sun-field and hadn’t bothered to see who it was. She was warm brown from head to toe, all spring-steel and velvet. Her long eyes were sleepy and her mouth was pouty. But when she recognized me, she stood squarely in the doorway.
I think that in the back of every human mind is a machine that works out all the answers and never makes mistakes. I think mine had had enough data to figure out what was happening, what was going to happen, for a long while now. Only I hadn’t been able to read the answer until now. Seeing Flower, in that split second, opened more than one door for me…
“You want something?” she asked. The emphasis was hard and very insulting.
I went in. It was completely up to her whether she moved aside or was walked down. She moved aside. The door swung shut.
“Where’s Jud?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked into those long secret eyes and raised my hand. I think I was going to hit her. Instead I put my hand on her chest and shoved. She fell, unhurt but terrified, across a relaxer. “What do you th—”
“You won’t see him again,” I said, and my voice bounced harshly off the acoust-absorbing walls.
“He’s gone. They’re gone.”
“They?” Her face went pasty under the deep tan.
“You ought to be killed,” I said. “But I think it’s better if you live with it. You couldn’t hold either of them, or anyone else.”
I went out.
6
My head was buzzing and my knitting arm throbbed. I moved with utter certainty; never once did it occur to me to ask myself: “Why did I say that?” All the ugly pieces made sense.
I found Wold in the Recreation Sector. He was tanked. I decided against speaking to him, went straight to the launching court and tried the row of ship ports. There was no one there, no one in any of them. My eye must have photographed something in the third ship, because I felt compelled to go back there and look again.
I stared hard at the deep-flocked floor. The soft pile of it looked right and yet not-right. I went to the control panel and unracked an emergency torch, turned it to needle-focus and put it, lit, on the floor. A horizontal beam will tell you things no other light knows about.
I turned the light on
the door and slowly swung the sharp streak across the carpet. The monotone, amorphous surface took on streaks and ridges, shadows and shadings. A curved scuff inside. Two parallel ones, long, where something had been dragged. A blurred sector where something heavy had lain long enough to press the springy fibers down for a while, over by the left-hand bunk.
I looked at the bunk. It was unruffled, which meant nothing; the resilient surface was meant to leave no impressions. But at the edge was a single rubbed spot, as if something had spilled there and been wiped hard.
I went to the service cubicle. Everything seemed in order, except one of the cabinet doors, which wouldn’t quite close. I looked inside.
It was a food locker. The food was there all right, each container socketed in place in the prepared shelves. But on, between, and among them were micro-reels for the book projector.
I frowned and looked further. Reels were packed into the disposal lock, the towel dispenser, the spare-parts chest for the air exchanger.
Something was where the book-reels belonged, and the reels had been hidden by someone who could not leave them in sight or carry them off.
And where did the reels belong?
I went back to the central chamber and the left-hand bunk. I touched the stud that should have rolled the bunk outward, opening the top, so that the storage space under it could be reached. The bunk didn’t move.
I examined the stud. It was coated over with quick-setting leak-sealer. The stuff was tough but resilient. I got a steel rod and a hammer from the tool-rack and, placing the rod against the stud, hit it once. The leak-sealer cracked off. The bed rolled forward and opened.
It was useless to move him or touch him, or, for that matter, to say anything. Judson was dead, his head twisted almost all the way around. His face was bluish and his eyes stared. He was pushed, jammed, wedged into the small space.
I hit the stud again and the bunk rolled back. Moving without any volition that I could analyze, feeling nothing but a great angry numbness, I cleaned up. I put the rod and the hammer away and fluffed up the piling of the carpeting by the bunk. Then I went and stood in the service cubicle and began to wait.
Wait. Not just stay—wait. I knew he’d be back, just as I suddenly and belatedly understood what it was that every factor in five people had made inevitable. I was coldly hating myself for not having known it sooner.
The great, the admirable, the adventurous in modern civilization were Outbounders. To one who wanted and needed personal power, there would be an ultimate goal, greater even than being an Outbounder. And that would be to stand between an Outbounder and his destiny.
For months Flower had blocked Clinton. When she saw she must ultimately lose him to the stars, she went hunting. She saw Judson—reachable, restless Jud—and she heard my assurance that he would soon go Out. Then and there Judson was doomed.
Wold needed admiration the way Flower needed power. To be an Outbounder and wait for poor struggling Tween suited him perfectly. Tween’s certification gave him no alternative but to get rid of her; he couldn’t bring himself to go Out.
Once I had taken care of Tween for him, there remained one person on the entire project who could keep him from going Out—and she was married to Jud. Having married, Jud would stay married. Wold did what he could to smash that marriage. When Jud still hung on, wanting to help Flower, wanting to show me that he had made the right choice, there remained one alternative for Wold. Evidence of that lay cramped and staring under the bunk.
But Wold wasn’t finished. He wouldn’t be finished while Jud’s body remained on Curbstone. In Wold’s emotional state, he would have to go somewhere and drink to figure out the next step. There was no way of sending a ship Out without riding it. So—I waited.
He came back all right. I was cramped, then, and one foot was asleep. I curled and uncurled the toes frantically when I saw the door begin to move, and tried to flatten my big bulk back down out of sight.
He was breathing hard. He put his lips together and blew like a winded horse, wiped his lips on his forearm. He seemed to have difficulty in focusing his eyes. I wondered how much liquor he had poured into that empty place where most men keep their courage.
He took a fine coil of single-strand plastic cord out of his belt-pouch. Fumbling for the end, he found it and dropped the coil. With the exaggerated care of a drunk, he threw a bowline and drew the loop tight, pulled the bight through the loop so he had a running noose. He made this fast to a triangular bracket over the control panel, led it along the edge of the chart-rack and down to the launching control lever. He bent two half-hitches in the cord, slipped it over the end of the lever and drew it tight. The cord now bound the lever in the up—“off”—position.
From the bulkhead he unfastened the clamps which held the heavy-duty fire extinguisher and lifted it down. It weighed half as much as he did. He set it on the floor in front of the control panel, brought the dangling end of the cord through the U-shaped clamp gudgeons on the extinguisher, took a loose half-hitch around the bight, and, lifting the extinguisher between his free arm and his body, pulled the knot tight. Another half-hitch secured it.
Now the heavy extinguisher dangled in mid-air under the control panel. The cord which supported it ran up to the handle of the launching lever and from there, bending over the edge of the chart-rack, to the bracket.
Panting, Wold took out a cigarette and shook it alight. He drew on it hungrily, and then put it on the chart-rack, resting it against the plastic cord.
When the cigarette burned down to the cord, the thermoplastic would melt through with great enthusiasm. The cord would break, the extinguisher would fall, dragging the lever down. And Out would go all the evidence, to be hidden forever, as far as Wold was concerned, and 6,000 years from anyone else.
Wold stepped back to survey his work just as I stepped forward out of the service cubicle. I brought up my broken arm and swung it with all my weight—and that is really weight—against the side of his head. The cast, though not heavy, was hard, and it must have hit him like a crowbar.
He went down like an elevator, hitched to his knees, and for a second seemed about to topple. His head sagged. He shook it, slowly looked up and saw me.
“I could use one of those needle-guns,” I said. “Or I could kick you cold and let Coordination handle you. There are regulations for things like you. But I’d rather do it this way. Get up.”
“I never…”
“Get up!” I bellowed, and kicked at him.
He threw his arms around my leg and rolled. As I started down, I pulled the leg in close and whipped it out again. We both hit with a crash on opposite sides of the room. The bunk broke my fall; he was not so lucky. He rose groggily, sliding his back up the door. I lumbered across, deliberately crashed into him, and heard ribs crack as the wind gushed out of his lungs.
I stood back a little as he began to sag. I hit him savagely in the face, and his face came back and hit my hand again as his head bounced off the door. I let him fall, then knelt beside him.
There are things you can do to a human body if you know enough physiology—pressures on this and that nerve center which paralyze and cramp and immobilize whole motor-trunk systems. I did these things, and got op, finally, leaving him twisted, sweating in agony. I wheezed over to the control bank and looked critically at the smoldering cigarette. Less than a minute.
“I know you can hear me,” I whispered with what breath I could find. “I’d… like you to know… that you’ll be a hero. Your name will… be on the Great Roll of the… Outbounders. You always… wanted that without any… effort on your part… now you’ve got it.”
I went out. I stopped and leaned back against the wall beside the door. In a few seconds it swung silently shut. I forced back the waves of gray that wanted to engulf me, turned and peered into the port. It showed only blackness.
Jud … Jud, boy … you always wanted it, too. You almost got cheated out of it. You’ll be all right now, son… .
I tottered across the court and out the gate. There was someone standing there. She flew to me, pounded my chest with small hard hands. “Did he go? Did he really go?”
I brushed her off as if she had been a midge, and closed one eye so I could get a single image. It was Flower, without her come-on tunic. Her hair was disarrayed and her eyes were bloodshot.
“They left,” I croaked. “I told you they would. Jud and Wold… you couldn’t stop them.”
“Together? They left together?”
“That’s what Wold got certified for.” I looked bluntly up and down her supple body. “Like everybody else who goes Out together, they had some thing in common.”
I pushed past her and went back to my office. Lights were blazing over the desk. Judson and Wold.
Ship replaced. Quarters cleaned. Palm-key removed and filed. I sat and looked blindly until they were all lit and the board blanked out.
I thought, this pump of mine won’t last much longer under this kind of treatment.
I thought, I keep convincing myself that I handle things impartially and fairly, without getting involved.
I felt bad. Bad.
I thought, this is a job without authority, without any real power. I certify ’em, send ’em along, check ’em out. A clerk’s job. And because of that I have to be God. I have to make up my own justice, and execute it myself. Wold was no threat to me or to Curbstone, yet it was in me to give oblivion to him and purgatory to Flower.
I felt frightened and disgusted and puny.
Someone came in, and I looked up blindly. For a moment I could make out nothing but a silver-haloed figure and a muted, wordless murmuring. I forced my eyes to focus, and I had to close them again, as if I had looked into the sun.
Her hair was unbound beneath a diamond ring that circled her brows. The silver silk cascaded about her, brushing the floor behind her, mantling her warm-toned shoulders, capturing small threads of light and weaving them in and about the gleaming light that was her hair. Her deep pigeon’s-blood eyes shone and her lips trembled.
Selections Page 52