Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

“You can use the old library at Jeuni. Think of that! And the people there will help you, George. You’ll get to know them and understand them. That’s what’s important. You’ve got to put all that in the book. The history of this planet, the strength of the people, their way of life: you’ve got to get all that down before it’s past and lost. If you don’t do it, no one will, George. It’s passing. In another twenty years it will be too late, ever.”

  The swamp ended; a mountain ridge loomed up, isolating it from the land beyond. The ridge was vastly old and time-polished, and flying over it, they could see green vegetation growing in the dirt that wind had long ago deposited in its granite cracks.

  Beyond the ridge was the valley of Jeuni, terribly impermanent in the face of the outside world. The capital province of a forgotten dynasty, rich in ruins, racial echoes, and folk memory.

  The trans began to drop.

  The valley was densely green bordering the wandering ,Cali river; less densely so as it spread toward the mountain boundaries on three sides. The grain fields were straightly laid and crudely cultivated and overflowing with wavering richness.

  The trans changed its course and nosed toward the tiny city at the river junction.

  There were no massive, monolithic buildings there of steel and plastic; they were small and dingy and greenish, time-tarnished alabaster.

  The trans touched ground, shook, and was still.

  After a moment, George alighted and helped his wife down. Together they stood looking toward the old city which stretched carelessly away to their left. Then he turned, and the pilot handed down the paper-heavy bags.

  “Thank you,” he said, and he paid the native with a crisp bill.

  Then they stood alone, and the trans turned back toward the ridge and melted into the sky.

  “Someone will drive down to get us,” George said.

  At the nearest house, nearly a quarter away, a native paused, peered curiously at them, and then turned back to his work.

  Finally from the direction of the central area, an ancient, rattling Earth ground-car bounced roughly across the field toward them. When it arrived, it sputtered to a stop, and its driver waited in silence.

  George said in the native language, “Good afternoon.”

  Silence.

  George shifted his feet.

  Silence.

  He bent to the bags. Wilma opened the back door, and he struggled to get them inside. He helped her up and then got in himself, closing the door gently.

  He read the address from a crumpled paper.

  The driver, an old, bitter-eyed native, grunted wordlessly. Without looking around, he started the engine, spun the ground-car sharply and sent it hurtling roughly over the field toward Jeuni.

  Their new home was waiting. A long lawn led from the ground-car to the columned porch. Wind stirred in the grove of trees to the left.

  George got out of the car, helped Wilma down, and struggled again with the bags. To the driver he said, “How much?”

  “A seni, four.”

  George handed him a bill. “Keep the rest.”

  Without looking directly at him, the driver stuffed the bill into his shabby jacket. The delicate bone structure of his body, the soft, clean erectness of him, seemed to collapse and twist upon itself with self-revilement. The car began to move away.

  Wilma bit her lip.

  The ground-car gained speed, rounded the corner, and was gone. Its fumes hung heavily on the air.

  Turning from the road, George said, “I’ll have to put in work on the yard . . . It hasn’t been cared for.”

  “. . . and, and the windows need curtains,” Wilma said.

  “The house, paint.” He waved his hands with forced enthusiasm.

  “And a flower garden there.”

  “And a hammock between those two trees.”

  They began to laugh encouragement to each other.

  “A little rock pond by that charto; and over there, a bird bowl.”

  “For the kia birds: if they come this far inland.”

  “We should be able to afford some ornamental stones,” George said. “I’m pretty good—I used to be—at building things. My hands don’t show it now. Near where my father used to live there was an abandoned quarry, and I brought rocks—heavy ones, some of them as much as 70, 75 pounds—up to the yard, and . . .”

  “George, look! They left all the furniture out. There by the side of the house.”

  His lips drew into an angry line. “They could have taken it inside,” he said indignantly. “You’d think they would.”

  “It wasn’t nice to leave it out this way. If it were to rain . . .”

  Looking wearily at the sky, he said, “I’ll bring it in tomorrow. Another day won’t hurt.”

  Slowly they crossed the lawn to the small stack of their personal furniture; they looked down at it. George set the bags beside their belongings as if to increase the mass.

  “It isn’t much for a life time,” he said. “It isn’t much to start with, so far away from, from . . .”

  The wind blew in from across the Cali and stirred the strange blue-leaved trees. The first far star winked in the sky across an incredible eternity of time and space.

  “There’s the old oak table, and . . . I guess it’s all here. I hope they didn’t break any of the glass.”

  “I’ll bring it all in tomorrow,” he said, looking up at the sky which was bright and clear but westward just starting to twilight rose and purple.

  Clutching the bundle of cjei closely to her body, she said, “We’ll have to eat from cans tonight.”

  “All right.”

  “They’ll be cold.”

  “I’m not really hungry,” George said.

  They looked at each other. “We may as well go inside,” Wilma said.

  “All right.”

  It was bare. The rooms were hollowly bleak, echoing with dusty footfalls. The walls were impersonal, neutral and cold. The naked windows opened out over the ragged lawn.

  “I’ll bring in some chairs,” he said.

  He went outside. Coming back, carrying the chairs awkwardly, he became lodged in the doorway. He had to struggle a moment before he could break through into the room.

  Wilma was crying.

  He hurried to her. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Please don’t, now, please, Wilma. Look, we’ll go back to the city tomorrow, there’s Igi, and the staff, we’ll be able to get our old room . . .”

  “No, no, no. Don’t, George. We’re not beaten. I’m being silly, I shouldn’t cry. We’re going to stay, of course we are. I’ll be all right in a minute. There’s nothing wrong. Everything’s going to be fine. It’s going to be just like we planned it.”

  “Of course, dear, of course it will.”

  “I’m just upset. I’ll be all right. Just let me alone a minute.”

  George stood helplessly at her side. “There,” he said. “There, there . . . I’ll, I’ll see if there’s something to burn out back. We’ll make a fire. We’ll bring the bed in and put it before the fireplace, and sleep right here in our living room.”

  When the fire was burning, when the bed was in, they sat in silence, staring at the crackling flames, eating from the cans.

  “It’s good,” he said.

  She stood up, glanced at the roll of bedding on the barren bed. She crossed to it and began to spread it out.

  “I’ll help.” He put aside his can.

  He took one end of the blanket, pulled it tight, tucked it in.

  “I’m sorry about crying,” Wilma said. “I’m all right now.”

  “Just for tonight,” he said. “It’ll be changed tomorrow. We’ll move the bed in there . . .”

  Running one hand over her high forehead to lift back a stray wisp of gray hair, she said, “The house will seem brighter with curtains.”

  “And we’ll get to know the natives. It will be different then.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder who lives across the yard,” he s
aid.

  The room had turned dusk, and the sputtering, hissing fire warring with darkness established a slowly retreating defense perimeter beyond the bed.

  “They will be here soon for the Worship gift,” she said.

  The bed was made, and they returned once more to their chairs, grateful now of the fire’s warmth.

  They waited. The fire muttered; once, she started to speak, but changed her mind.

  “Dear . . .” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind.”

  The fire’s perimeter retreated to the near side of the bed, and a little shower of sparks flowed as an ashy log broke and settled.

  “Listen,” she said. “There’s the drum. The procession’s begun.”

  Her husband inclined his head. “Yes, it has.”

  Suddenly radiant, she reached toward the cjei. “I’m glad I remembered.”

  “It will be a good way to start. They’ll know we understand them, if we have cjei.”

  The festive procession was nearer and louder, as other families joined in from the houses being passed.

  “They’re next door, I think.”

  “They’ll be here next,” she said.

  She half turned to face the front window. She was holding her breath. “They’re leaving next door now,” George said.

  “I wish we could ask them in. But it’s so—so bare.”

  After a moment, he said, “They’re out front now.”

  The fire sighed in the grate; the gentle wind fluttered a broken shutter softly in the back of the house.

  They listened to each other’s breathing.

  Finally he said, “They didn’t stop. They saw the light, but they didn’t stop. I, I knew they wouldn’t, Wilma.” He slumped forward toward the fire, held his old, wrinkled hands toward it, avoided looking toward his wife’s face. “We’ll need a fire like this every night, if it gets this cold all the time,” he said. “We’ve forgotten, haven’t we? We’ve lived over twenty years in one apartment in one city. We’ve forgotten.”

  The house creaked, settling; the room was isolated from full moonlight by a tree branch almost brushing the window: the light came through splattered and distorted.

  “Was it five years before Igi came to speak to us? How long before he came to us for cjei? I don’t know, I don’t remember.” His voice was small and lonely and frightened. “We’re not going to have time. We’re not young any more; we don’t have another twenty years.”

  “Oh, now,” she said. “Here, now. It just takes a little time, George. See, I’m not crying any more. We’re not beaten.”

  The fire died away to silence. Neither moved; neither spoke. Finally, listlessly, he poked the grate. “We may as well go to bed,” he said, sighing. As George stood up, there came a soft tap at the door.

  His face suddenly alive, he half turned.

  “Let me go,” Wilma said, retrieving the cjei. “Let me go.”

  “Hurry.”

  She crossed swiftly from the faint illumination of the dying cinders to the gloom of the doorway.

  When she opened the door, pale moonlight entered, outlining the caller. “Why, it’s a little girl!” Then, in the native language, “Come in, child.” The child withdrew half a step, her wide brown eyes opening in surprise and fear. Her fragile, delicate face, her wispy, wind-worried hair, seemed composed of foam and moonlight. Her skin was almost luminous and almost transparent. “Oh! I thought . . .” She half turned.

  “Wait, please wait, child.”

  “I . . . I didn’t know. I just came home. I saw your light. I thought they’d missed you. I thought our new neighbors were—going to be like us. I better go.”

  “We are like you, child,” Wilma said.

  “No, you’re not,” the child said, shaking her head. “You’re like . . . them.”

  Wilma continued to smile. Her husband, who stood behind her now, blinked his eyes uncertainly and steadied her trembling arm.

  Wilma laughed lightly. “Come in, child.”

  “My people wouldn’t want me to.”

  George’s hand tightened reassuringly.

  “Here, then, wait.” Wilma held out the wrapped cjei. “You came for these?”

  “Not from . . . I . . .”

  “Take them, child.”

  The child shifted. Slowly, reluctantly, she held out her hand. “These are very many.”

  “It’s to thank Him for letting us come to this wonderful planet to live.”

  The child blinked and half smiled. Then, taking the cjei, she turned and ran across the yard in the direction of the ceremonial fire which was coloring the sky at the far end of the road.

  “Hear their chants?”

  “The night air smells strange,” George said. “We’ll come to like it.”

  “That child. She was very sweet.”

  He put an arm around Wilma.

  The child, a tiny speck of gray in the moonlight, turned at the roadway and waved to them.

  1954

  PERIL OF THE STARMEN

  Their space ships landed near Washington, and they met Earthmen with friendly smiles. It was a great day—and quite possibly, our last!

  “I CALLED you three in,” the Oligarch said, “because I have some very important news.”

  Herb—he would later be assigned that name—was one of the three. He hated the Oligarch, and he had no doubt that the Oligarch knew it.

  “There are,” the Oligarch said, “people on the planet. Unfortunately.”

  Dull rage and frustration and despair and helplessness bubbled up in Herb. His face remained calm.

  “We’ll have to keep them from interfering with us,” the Oligarch said.

  Herb wanted to cry: Find another! Not this one! Not the only one we’ve ever found with people on it!

  But he said nothing. His anguished thoughts whirled like a dust storm, handling and rejecting ideas like bits of paper. The remote and inaccessible Scientists were beyond accounting. Perhaps only this planet would serve. Perhaps there was insufficient time to locate another of suitable mass. Perhaps . . . But one could not know. One could only submit to authority. The storm died away, and Herb acknowledged bitter reality with helplessness. There even seemed a nightmare inevitability about the selection.

  “It would be dangerous to try to work secretly,” the Oligarch said. “If they were to discover us in the midst of planting the explosive, it would be fatal. We’ll go down and ask their permission.”

  No one protested.

  “To that end,” the Oligarch said, “I have selected you three competent, trustworthy men. You will learn their language and when we land, lull their natural suspicions. It will be your responsibility to see that we blow up the planet on schedule.”

  The crush of the responsibility was terrifying. “I don’t need to tell you,” the Oligarch said, “that you can’t fail.”

  And it was true. Herb believed.

  Unless the planet Earth were exploded, the ever-unstable Universe, itself, would collapse. Already the binding force was dangerously diminished. If new energy were not released within a month, disintegration would begin. The Universe would alter and flow and contract and after the collapse, slowly build itself into a new form—that form itself containing the inherent stresses of change and mutability. Only the arrival of starmen to space flight at the critical time—only their continued vigilance—prevented disaster beyond accounting for.

  Herb believed.

  CHAPTER II

  WELL inside the solar system the huge space ship plunged on, released from the warp drive and slowly braking to establish an orbit around the third planet.

  Herb came up from the deep stupor of the drugs. He had been under their influence for the last twenty hours while the sleep tapes hammered information into his unconscious brain.

  “All right,” said Wezen, their private custodian, “time for exercise. Two hours of work-outs, and then you eat.”

  Herb sat up and felt his head. It ached dully.
“Give me a minute. Time to think, Wezen. I’m—”

  The other two starmen were also recovering.

  “None of that! No time to think! Get up! Get up!”

  Herb got reluctantly to his feet. Cold air washed over his nude body, and he trembled. He wanted to return to sleep, not the drugged sleep of the sleep tapes, but the genuine, untroubled sleep. Something frightening and alien was taking place in his mind.

  He looked around for a dream form. It was a subconscious response. He realized with relief that it was not necessary to fill one in. Technically, he had not been asleep.

  The Oligarch came to witness the first awakening. “How goes it, Wezen?”

  “Fine.”

  “I don’t know,” Herb said. “My mind, it’s . . . I can’t think . . .”

  One of the others said, “There’s all kinds of information, but I can’t get at it. I . . . can’t . . . get . . . at . . . it.” He looked around desperately. “Every time I try, something new comes up. It’s like a volcano. I can’t control it. I think, the name of a river is Mississi—and then I know that leaves are green, and . . .”

  “The sun is 93 million miles away . . .”

  “The day is divided into twenty-four equal periods of sixty minutes . . .”

  “The largest ocean is the Pacific . . .”

  “The Federal Government of the United States of America is composed of three independent branches . . .”

  They were all talking at once.

  “It’s awful. Not to be able to control . . .”

  “Good, good,” said the Oligarch. He was satisfied with the progress. By the time they landed, they would be little more than mechanisms designed to answer questions; they would not be able to think at all: they would respond. Stimuli-response.

  “Freedom,” said the Oligarch.

  “Is,” Herb found himself saying, “is the basis of any government that governs justly.”

  Wezen made a little intake of air that was loud in the shocked silence.

  “I said that,” Herb said unbelievingly.

  “Excellent,” said the Oligarch.

  “The proper reaction.”

  Wezen relaxed, but he was visibly shaken. He had heard the heresy. What might happen to him later, when this job was done?