We pretended it was just one of those things that happen when you don't actually take steps to prevent it, meaning little or nothing. We didn't talk about it at all, and went on acting exactly as before.
Except—perhaps I'm biased, but Shirley really seemed to become a hundred per cent prettier. I don't think that's bias, for Ellen remarked one day that she didn't know why she'd once said Shirley wasn't chosen for her looks, anyway. But it must have been bias that made me think Shirley was really quite intelligent and had good taste and could make a good TC agent.
Still Shirley and I never talked about Lotrin. Until the very last day when the bubble burst.
We were still untold light-years from Lotrin, but only a few hours. We had not, of course, landed anywhere; we stopped several times and tenders came out to the Sardonia, but that affected us not at all except that there were different faces at mealtimes.
Someone once said that the poor have large families because, cooped up in a small space, they haven't much else to do. But Shirley and I, despite that one lapse, were so sure of ourselves that we spent nearly all our time together in a space no larger than a big cupboard. There was nothing of sex in our talk, and, though we couldn't avoid touching each other accidentally, there was never a hint of sensuality in the contact between Shirley and me.
That day, Shirley was reading and I was sitting on the floor wondering what assignment Ellen and I would be given next—still in the determined pretense that this was just a job which would be over and all but forgotten very soon. I wondered again why TC had given us the job of taking Shirley out to Lotrin. But that was a train of thought that led in a direction I didn't like, and I jerked my head as one does when in search of distraction—any distraction.
Shirley's red slipper caught my eye, which then drifted up her legs. Shirley had good legs, but her skirt was tucked modestly under her and I couldn't even see to the knee. I was unreasonably irritated. Why did she have to pull her skirt about her like that? It was like shielding a letter from you as you passed, as if you were trying to read it. Uncalled for. I wasn't sitting on the floor so that I could see her legs. I hadn't even thought of her legs until I saw she was hiding them primly like a spinster.
I reached out and touched Shirley's ankle, but, at the touch, anything I'd had in mind went away abruptly. She threw aside her book and slid down into my arms.
We petted like teen-age lovers, just as nervous and excited. Suddenly Shirley threw herself back, eyes closed, waiting.
And it had exactly the opposite effect on me of what it was supposed to have.
"Look, Shirley," I said harshly. "This is impossible."
She sat up, her back against the bed.
"Don't you know what a First Lady is?" I demanded. "She's a symbol. A goddess. A whole new world depends on her, loves her and would die for her. She's more of a sovereign than any queen in history."
"Lotrin can have another First Lady," said Shirley sharply. "I'm going to abdicate right away."
"You can't. Weeks ago, it was disclosed on Earth that the First Lady of Lotrin was Shirley Judson, who was on her way there. It hasn't anything like the importance to Earth that it has to Lotrin, but it's known. It can't be hushed up. Suppose you go back. Lotrin will hear the story eventually. Some other girl goes—a second-best, not the real First Lady, a substitute for a failure or a coward. What chance will she have? Suppose TC covers up and sends out another girl as Shirley Judson with some story to explain the delay. She'll know. She'd have to be the best actress in the Galaxy to keep up the pretense all the rest of her life."
"Why didn't you think of that before?"
"I knew it all along."
"Nobody can make me be a good First Lady. I can ruin Lotrin. I would."
"Ruin a world because you didn't get your own way? Because you went back on your word?"
We were both being unfair, of course. We went around in circles for a while longer, blaming everything on each other, but not in hot anger—rather with a sort of hopeless knowledge that what I had said was true.
The TC colonization system is all built into a solid pyramid. At the bottom are the real pioneers, the men who take a chance on death or glory, poverty or fabulous wealth. They go to a world and shape it into a place for men to live. As time goes by and they prosper, there are more and more of them. A hundred men, a thousand, a hundred thousand. But no women. Everybody knows that. It's accepted.
Every new world may be life-blood or canker. If the canker ever has to be cut out, it must be possible to do it cleanly and completely. No women. The world settled, examined, explored, tested, tried out in every way. Early diseases and allergies and maladies conquered. Five hundred thousand men, a million.
And no women. TC controls all space travel, not only interstellar travel. No woman can possibly reach a virgin world.
Then the First Lady. The real beginning. Recognition. Reward. Promise. Hope.
That's one side.
The other side is that if the world turns out to be canker, the First Lady can easily be sterilized, along with the unfortunate child, if it happens to be female. That's the end. The world must die, for there are no more women. Everybody knows and accepts that, too.
It's a crazy structure of luck and fear and wild hope, but a solid structure. I could no more buck it than Shirley could. She was Lotrin's First Lady and there was no escape.
But Shirley and I weren't really considering the issues, only toying with them. When I saw that, I said: "Let's get Ellen in on this."
Shirley jumped. "Are you mad?"
When we had been pretending to ourselves and to each other that we had merely been carried away once by the heat of the moment, we had naturally pretended very hard to Ellen that not even that had ever happened.
"She's got to come into this," I said, "Unless we can decide here and now that you and I are finished."
I hoped Shirley would say we could. I was afraid she might say it. She said nothing.
So I said, "Stay here," and went for Ellen. I didn't even knock. Ellen's arms were above her head, swinging one way and then the other. She dropped her arms and looked at me in fury.
"It's important," I said. "Shirley and I need your help. Never mind making yourself smart. Just come."
I didn't tell her anything until we were wedged in Shirley's room. Then I told her that Shirley and I were in love. Ellen's frown cleared away as if by magic. This was interesting. It was a break in routine. It was a problem, a challenge.
But she couldn't help sighing and saying: "I knew something would happen when I stopped running the show. I didn't know it would be this. I don't know everything."
"You think you do," Shirley flashed.
Ellen turned a cold eye on her. "Is that attitude going to help?" she asked. "Aren't you just putting it on to show you've outgrown your childish crush on me?"
That was meant to make Shirley about two inches high. It failed because Shirley knew she was somebody. Merely being a First Lady was nothing, but now she had someone in love with her.
"I'm not ashamed that I once thought you were wonderful," she retorted. "You're a great actress. You can even act the part of a decent human being."
Ellen smiled. That smile showed Ellen's real talent. Come to think of it, Shirley was right. That's what Ellen is above all else—an actress—the kind I'd been talking about.
"That's not hard," she said quietly. "Honestly, Shirley, have you ever met anyone who wasn't basically a decent human being?"
Shirley hadn't. That was her good luck; it was like Ellen to play on it.
"Now let's get the position clear," Ellen went on. "Is it settled that Shirley isn't going to be Lotrin's First Lady, and what we're looking for is some way out of it?"
Nobody spoke. "Well, let's make up our minds," Ellen insisted pleasantly, after a long pause. "Shirley, think about your mother."
"That's you all over!" Shirley burst out. "Any weapon—anything's fair to you! It's not safe for anyone to have feelings, because yo
u'll twist them and use them against them—"
"All right, don't think about your mother. Count her out of it. You've already made up your mind that you'll probably never see her again, anyway."
There was another long silence. Then Shirley said: "Suppose I think about her. What am I supposed to think?"
"You were an ordinary girl, quite happy on Earth, content to stay there. Some TC men came along and talked to you, persuaded you to take a few tests, and then threw their bombshell. You could be important. You could rule a whole planet of men. Only it meant leaving Earth, leaving your mother, and the answer had to be yes or no, not maybe."
"They made me go!"
"They would be persistent, I admit. First Ladies don't grow on trees. But did you really believe you couldn't say no?"
No answer.
"Well, you could be somebody," Ellen continued reflectively, "or you could give up the chance. You love your mother. You didn't want to leave her. You thought of giving it up. You didn't, as history will bear out, really care about space and progress and mankind and all the big things like that. People don't, though it makes a good story. The real question was, could you give up an opportunity like that?"
In case by any chance I haven't said so before—Ellen has personality. She had both of us hanging on her words. Me a little less than Shirley, of course, but still enough.
"You couldn't," said Ellen, "There were things you had to give up, a lot of things. Things I don't know about. Things no one but you will ever know about."
I saw what was coming. I had been long enough seeing it; but, then, I had been pretty unreasonable in a lot of ways lately.
"Never mind whether it's possible or not," said Ellen.
"The question's still the same. Are you going to give up the things you have to give up to be a First Lady? Or are you going to give up being a First Lady?"
"I'm not going to give up Joe," declared Shirley defiantly.
Ellen nodded as if that was perfectly reasonable. "All right. The question is, then, have you got Joe?" She looked at me.
I avoided her eye. "You won't understand this," I said, "but I have really fallen for Shirley."
"Oh, I understand that, all right. Do you see any future in it?"
"I've already told Shirley that I don't."
"I've tried to be fair to Shirley," Ellen said, "but I can be a lot tougher with you and still be fair. You know better."
I might have known that when I went to Ellen with a problem, she would throw it right back in my lap.
The real difference between Shirley and me wasn't age or sex, but the fact that I knew TC. I wanted Shirley and I'd have moved Heaven and Earth for her. But I knew I couldn't move TC.
I had one last doomed try. "You talk about Shirley giving up a chance, Ellen. A chance to be a tragic queen? Suppose Lotrin won't support human life and let it stay human. Wouldn't she be better off—if she—"
"Cut it out," retorted Ellen. She turned to Shirley. "Listen, Shirley, Joe's doing this because he's a fool. He can't help that. It's too late to do anything about Joe. But you're doing it because you're afraid. At the last moment, only a few hours from Lotrin, you suspect you can't face what may happen there."
"You admitted you couldn't either," said Shirley.
"I didn't say I could. You did, so leave me out of it. Knowing you're alone, you turned to Joe, who's a fool, and made your problem his. I'm a woman, too, remember—I know the technique. You were afraid and Joe was around and, after all, you were picked out for a whole world to fall in love with—not only Joe, who's a fool. I don't blame you. You did a good job, helped by the fact that I was too busy with something else to have any time for either of you. And it was left to Joe, who's a fool, to find a way out for both of you. Joe—"
"Who's a fool," I supplied.
Ellen made an impatient gesture. "Joe should have told you something. TC should have told you. But now I'll tell you.
"Shirley, TC has the best brains of all humanity. Not running things, but finding out facts. The best scientific brains.
"Listen, Shirley, this is important. In a sense, nearly every First Lady is a sham. Yes, you're meant to go to Lotrin and have a baby, and doctors and scientists and psychologists will very honestly and thoroughly test it for any deviation from the human norm. But do you really think TC needs that?"
This, as they say, was the pay-off. At the back of my mind, I had known when I went for Ellen that she would tell Shirley at least some of the truth. But I had hoped that the thing could be worked out some other way.
Ellen didn't need to play for effect now. Shirley was rigid with attention.
Ellen shook her head. "No, Shirley, the people who examine the world before it's colonized may not be sure what it will do to men, but after a few thousand have lived on a world for a year, and a hundred thousand or so for years, and a million are finally settled there, the scientists know a lot more about the place and its effect on human physical structure than any single experiment can tell them. You know a First Lady is a symbol. Well, that also applies to the test. The first birth.
"TC knows already what it's going to show. TC always knows. But, so long as people are unreasonable and superstitious and unscientific and emotionally immature, this symbolic test will be needed. The proof that a world is safe or unsafe.
"But it isn't proof to TC. It's confirmation of more than a ninety per cent probability, which is reasonable certainty in your language and mine. You can see that, can't you? Doesn't it make sense?"
"Yes," Shirley grudgingly admitted.
"And you want to know about Lotrin. Well, even you couldn't be told. And, now that I'm telling you, listen and keep it to yourself. The whole TC system is built on the First Ladies. Don't even tell Bill, or whatever his name turns out to be. He doesn't know. Nobody knows but TC.
"You were never in any danger, Shirley. Lotrin is safe. Your child will be like any other woman's child on any human world. I tell you TC knows. Now are you going to cling to Joe?"
I actually landed with Shirley. Ellen couldn't because the First Lady regulations were inflexible. No woman could even visit a world like Lotrin for as much as five minutes, except the First Lady.
I saw what Shirley's arrival did to the place. Alextown was the main population center of Lotrin, and literally every inhabitant was there to welcome her. I can't describe the scene—you would think I was mad.
Have you ever seen or heard what a flag or a cross or just a sign can do to people living in the valley between life and death?
Well, imagine the symbol isn't a flag or a cross or just a sign, but a living, breathing, beautiful girl in a world which no woman has ever trod.
And still you won't be within light-years of the reality.
When I said good-by to her, she had to make an obvious effort to bring her attention back to me. It wasn't that her thinking herself in love with me had been as light and casual and false as all that. I was already just an episode in an entirely irrelevant past, and it didn't matter in the least how important an episode I had been.
Ellen was waiting when I got back to the Sardonia—waiting, apparently, to look into my eyes.
"I don't know how I got through it," I said dully.
"I don't know, either," Ellen confessed with that incredible sympathy of hers which had won Shirley twice. "Let me say it first, Joe. This is the last time we ever do anything like this."
"It's the last time for everyone. That's why we got the job, because no one will ever do it twice. And there can only be a few human beings in any generation foul enough to do it once."
All of what Ellen had told Shirley was true except the end.
TC naturally did know what was going to happen before the First Lady went out. Not long before—not until the world was pretty fully colonized and there was a lot of data to work on. We knew before we saw Shirley. We hadn't like the job, but we agreed it was necessary. Lotrin still had to have a First Lady. Colonists who had worked and sweated and slaved to build a
new world wouldn't believe a test tube. They wouldn't listen calmly when they were told there could be no more colonists and their world was condemned without the real test.
But they would believe their own eyes when they saw Shirley's child. Ellen had told it the wrong way around.
Shirley had believed I had fallen in love with her because a woman is always ready to believe that of any man. She couldn't guess that the real reason was that I couldn't go on spending so much time with her and getting to know her without being so damn sorry for her that—
No, Ellen was no worse than me. She told the lie, but I acted it.
"It isn't ninety per cent, of course," Ellen reminded me. "Only about seventy-five. There is a chance…"
I nearly demanded, "Would you take it?" But I didn't. She would. Yes, Ellen would take one chance in four, for a world. It had been another lie when she told Shirley she wouldn't—a devious lie to rid Ellen of Shirley's affection before Ellen had to return it.
So it wasn't too bad really, I tried to convince myself. Ellen would do it. Ellen, my wife.
I also tried to interest myself again in the fact that Ellen was one of the most beautiful women ever born. That was why people loved her against all reason, I told myself. I didn't often admit it, but Ellen was…
When I looked at Ellen, though, gazing silently at me, all I could see was Shirley's face.
INSIDEKICK BY J. F. BONE
Psychologists have a nice complicated term for what this story really is: it's nothing more nor less than a "hypnogogic hallucination," a self-induced dream-just-before-sleeping, meant to actually put you to sleep. Such a dream takes the form of a visualization of such propositions as "How nice it would be if I could play the piano better than anyone in the world," or, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could control people's actions from a distance?"—that sort of thing.
As a matter of fact, a lot of the very best science fiction stories might just as well be called hypnogogic hallucinations, carefully brought out of the dark by their authors, washed, sterilized, ironed, and starched a bit so that they can stand daytime presentation in public.
Another Part of the Galaxy Page 13