A Way Home

by Theodore Sturgeon

  He let her be quiet for a time. “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, giro. 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 flickering 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 infolded 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 this 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.

  There was blood on his hands.

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

  The echo of no’s came back to him from the far walls of the big room before he knew he had spoken. Starr wouldn’t do this. She couldn’t!

  A doctor. But there was no doctor. Not since Anders had hung himself. Get somebody. 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, you see? 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 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 windowbox when she was four years old. “Two real live tulips and a pitcherplant. 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 forward on the cot Bonze had used.

  Sonny stared at him. “Pete! Where’ve you been? What happened? Are you all right?”

  Pete shifted a little and grunted. Sonny shrugged and took the audiovid disk 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 video. 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 audio again. “Pete! Pete! W
ake 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 have taken the trouble. Somewhere, Pete, there’s some way to launch bombs at those murdering cowards—and I’ve got a pret-ty 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; thass 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 hear 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 gain, 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,” sang 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 disk 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 him. 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.

  BULKHEAD

  YOU JUST DON’T LOOK THROUGH VIEWPORTS VERY OFTEN.

  It’s terrifying at first, of course—all that spangled blackness, and the sense of disorientation. Your guts never get used to sustained free fall, and you feel, when you look out, that every direction is up, which is unnatural, or that every direction is down, which is sheer horror. But you don’t stop looking out there because it’s terrifying. You stop because nothing ever happens out there. You’ve no sensation of speed. You’re not going anywhere. After the weeks, and the months, there’s some change, sure; but day to day you can’t see the difference, so after a while you stop looking for any.

  Which, of course, eliminates the viewports as an amusement device, which is too bad. There aren’t so many things for a man to do during a Long Haul that he can afford to eliminate anything. Getting bored with the infinities outside is only a reminder that the same could happen with your writing materials, and the music, with the stereo and all the rest of it. And it’s hard to gripe, to say, “Why don’t they install a such-and-such on these barrels?” because you’ve already got what a thousand space men griped about long since—many of them men with more experience, more imagination, and fewer internal resources (that is to say, more need) than you’ll ever have. Certainly more than you have now; this is your first trip, and you’re just making the transition from “inside looking out” to “inside looking on.” It’s a small world. It better be a little complicated.

  A lot that has happened in worlds like these would be simple, if you knew about it. Not knowing is all right: it keeps you wondering. Some of it you can figure out, knowing as you do that a lot of men have died in these things, a lot have disappeared, ship and all, and some—but you don’t know how many—have been taken out of the ships and straight to the laughing academy. You find out fairly soon, for example, that the manual controls are automatically relayed out, and stay out of temptation until you need them to land. (Whether they’ll switch in if you need them for evasive maneuvering some time, you don’t know yet.) Who died, how many died, because they started playing with the manuals? And was it because they decided to quit and go home? Or because they convinced themselves that the autoastrogator had bugs in it? Or because they just couldn’t stand all those stationary stars?

  Then there’s this: You’re alone. You crouch in this little cell in the nose of your ship, with the curving hull to your left and the flat wall of the midship bulkhead to your right. You know that in previous models that bulkhead wasn’t there. You can imagine what happened in some—how many?—ships to make it necessary, at last, to seal you away from your shipmate. Psychodynamics has come a long way, but it hasn’t begun to alter the fact that human beings are the most feral, vicious, destructive, and self-destructive creatures God ever made. You called this a world; well, reduce a world to two separate nations and see what happens. Between two confined entities there’s no mean and no median, and no real way of determining a majority. How many battered pilots have come home crazed, cooped up with the shredded bodies of their shipmates? You can’t trust two human beings together,
not for long enough. If you don’t believe it look at the bulkhead; look again. It’s there because it has to be there.

  You’re a peaceable guy. Scares you a little, to know how dangerous you are. Makes you a little proud, too, doesn’t it?

  Be proud of this, too: that they trust you to be alone so much. Sure, there is a shipmate; but by and large you’re alone, and that’s what’s expected of you. What most people, especially earthside people, never find out is that a man who can’t be by himself is a man who knows, away down deep, that he’s not good company. You could probably make it by yourself altogether...but you must admit you’re glad you don’t have to. You have access to the other side of the bulkhead, when you need it. If you need it. It didn’t take you too long to figure out you’d use it sparingly. You “have books and you have games, you have pictures and text tapes and nine different euphorics (with a watchdog dispenser, so you can never become an addict), all of which help you, when you need help, to explore yourself. But having another human mind to explore is a wonderful idea. The wonder is tempered by the knowledge—oh, how smart you were to figure it out in time!—that the other mind is a last resort; if you ever use up the potentialities it holds for you, you’ve had it, brother.

  So you squeeze it out slowly; you have endurance contests with yourself to see how long you can leave it alone. You do pretty well.

  You go back over your life, the things you’ve done. People have written whole novels about twenty-four hours in a man’s life. That’s the way you think it all out, slowly, piece by piece; every feature of every face, and the way they were used; what people did, and why. Especially why. It doesn’t take any time to remember what a man did, but you can spend hours thinking about why he did it.

  You live it again and it’s like being a little god, knowing what’s going to happen to everyone. When you reported to Base there was a busload of guys with you. Now you know who would go all the way through the course and wind up out here; reliving it, you still know that, so you can put yourself back in the bus again and say, that stranger across the aisle is Pegg, and he isn’t going to make it. He’ll go home on furlough three months from now and he’ll try to kill himself rather than come back. The freckled nape in the seat ahead of you belongs to the redhead Walkinok, who will throw his weight around during the first week and pay expensively for it afterward. But he’ll make it. And you make friends with the shy dark guy next to you; his name is Steih and he looks like a big-brain; he’s easy to talk to and smart, the kind of fellow who always goes straight to the top. And he won’t last even until the first furlough; two weeks is all he can take, and you never see him again. But you remember his name. You remember everything, and you go back over it and remember the memories in between the memories. Did somebody on that bus have shoes that squeaked? Back you go and hunt for it; if it happened, you’ll remember it.