Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  Outside the Richardson Dome, the wind was changing. It could now neither support the life that was nor the life that would be, and it howled in melancholy and insensate anguish its loneliness and longing to the eternal and ever-changing pattern of the stars.

  THE Committee concluded their interviews with an old-line corporal. He had just short of thirty years service and had several times traveled the two-way escalator of non-commissioned rank from master sergeant to private. He was perhaps typical of many of the older soldiers. His love of the Corps was expressed by his loyalty to it; his hatred of the Corps was expressed by his inability to abide by its regulations.

  “You knew Sergeant Schuster very well?” Mr. Tucker asked.

  “He was a new man,” the corporal said. “He got on just before lift-off. A week, two weeks, something like that. I knew him, I guess. He was one of them kind that was always thinking. And like you know, sir, thinking ain’t too good for a soldier. I’ve known a lot of guys like that in my time. You know what I mean? They’re not cut out for the Corps.”

  “He talked to you quite a bit?”

  The corporal turned to face Mr. Ryan. “He was always talking, sir. He was a regular nut. I thought for a while he was queer. He had all those crazy ideas.”

  “Like what, Corporal?”

  “Oh, like—well, you know.” The corporal hesitated and rummaged his memory without conspicuous success. “Sunsets,” he said rather emphatically. “Talked about sunsets. Talked about just anything. Called me out back on Earth to look at a sunset once, I remember.”

  “What did he think about killing the natives?” Mr. Wallace asked.

  The question alerted the mechanism which produced the almost-Pavlovian loyalty response.

  “We didn’t kill no natives,” the corporal said. “They just died when we changed the air. Tough.”

  He looked at Mr. Wallace and then into the silence around him.

  “Well . . . well, let’s see. I guess you’d say that sort of got to him. I mean, you know, he thought it was—” the voice became distant, as though describing a fantastic event which he could not relate to anything in a rational environment—“he thought it was his fault. You know how some of these guys are. I used to have a platoon once, you know. And they say—” He twisted his mouth and changed his voice to a childish whine. “What for?” The voice reverted to normal. “They don’t ask for any reason. They just ask. I say to them, I say, ‘God damn it’—excuse me, sir—‘I told you to do it, ain’t that enough?’ Well, this Schuster, sir, he worried all the time. He got so he cut himself shaving. Damnedest thing. Oh, hell, maybe for the last week, every morning, he came out a bloody mess. Patches of toilet paper all over his face. ‘I can’t shave,’ he’d say. ‘My God, I can’t shave.’ He wasn’t nervous, either. His hands were okay. They didn’t shake. It’s just that he couldn’t shave. Like I say, he was a nut.”

  No one spoke for a moment, and the corporal twisted uncomfortably.

  Then Mr. Tucker said, “Well, Corporal, tell me this, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your own personal impression of General Shorter?”

  “The old man?” the corporal asked in surprise. “He’s okay.”

  “Feel free to discuss this,” Mr. Flison said. “We’d like to know, really, what your opinion is.”

  “Like I say, he’s okay. He’s got a job to do. You know, he busted me once. General Shorter personally, I mean. Hell, I don’t hold it against him, though. He’s got his job to do, I got mine. I wouldn’t say anything against General Shorter, no, sir. He’s a soldier. I mean, you know . . . he’s a soldier.”

  After the corporal was dismissed, Mr. Tucker said, “Well, gentlemen, I guess we’ve about wrapped it up here. I think this is enough. Anybody’s mind changed? I don’t think we need any more, do you?”

  Mr. Wallace sighed heavily. He looked down at his hands.

  GENERAL SHORTER was still at his writing desk when he was notified that Mr. Tucker would like to see him first thing in the morning.

  “Another day of it, eh?” the general asked the sergeant who brought the message.

  “No, sir. From the other crew, I hear they’re planning to leave tomorrow.”

  The general’s face relaxed. His smile reflected weary tolerance. “Had enough in one day, have they? It’s about time they let us get back to work.”

  After the sergeant left, the general wrote a final paragraph:

  “I’ve just been informed the ‘investigation’ is completed. In record time, it seems. They finished up in the mess tonight, talking to some of the men. So what did it all really accomplish? They took a long ship that could better have been used somewhere else. Half my men are down with the virus. They almost cost me my schedule. And to what end? Just another piece of paper somewhere. Put Miracastle on the scale against some nice, heavy report and see which way the scale tips.”

  The general closed the diary. It was late now. He was very tired.

  MR. TUCKER, after breakfast, knocked on the general’s door.

  “Come in,” General Shorter called.

  The civilian entered. The general dismissed the orderly with a nod. “And I’ll need some clean towels for tonight,” he called. His voice was hoarse.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The door closed. The two of them were alone.

  “Sit down. Excuse the cold. Got it last night. What do you say to a brandy?”

  “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “I never drink alone.”

  “Perhaps you’d better,” Mr. Tucker said.

  The general had paused just short of the cupboard. He turned slowly. “In that case, I’ll make an exception, this once.” He poured. “Just what did you mean by that, sir? Let’s get to the point.”

  “General Shorter, we’re going to have to ask you to come back with us.”

  The general bent slightly forward. His lips were partly open, as though he were listening to hear a second time.

  “Why,” he said, “I’ve too much work to do, sir. I’m afraid that’s out of the question. It’s just not possible at all.”

  Mr. Tucker waited.

  General Shorter poured himself another brandy. His back was to the civilian.

  “There’s nothing more important, right now, than my job here,” he said. He drank the brandy in a single gulp.

  “I don’t see how it can wait, General,” Mr. Tucker said.

  The general’s lips were dry. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment against the alcohol and the cold. He licked his lips. “What’s the formal charge?”

  Mr. Tucker bent forward. His voice was soft and curious, as though the question were his final effort to understand something that puzzled him for a long time. “What do you think it is, General?”

  “What could it be?” the general said sharply. “I follow orders, sir. I was sent out here to make this planet suitable for human habitation. This is exactly what I have been doing.” His voice was growing progressively more angry and with an effort he curbed himself. “Put yourself in my position. I did what any field commander would have done. It was too late to stop it. I’ve got—It’s a question of the limits of normal prudence. A matter of interpretation, sir.”

  The general was in the process of pouring still another drink. The slender brandy glass broke under the force of his anger. He opened his palm. Blood trickled from between his fingers.

  The general looked up from the hand and fleeting annoyance came and went before he was recalled to present reality. His eyes met Mr. Tucker’s.

  Mr. Tucker suddenly shivered as if touched by a wind from beyond the most distant stars, a wind which whispered: The aliens are among us.

  “General,” Mr. Tucker said, “the formal charge is murder.”

  1963

  VOYAGE TO FAR N’JURD

  They would never live to see the trip’s end. So they made a few changes in their way of life—and many in their way of death!

  I

 
; “I DON’T see why we have to be here,” a crewman said. “He ain’t liable to say anything.”

  “He shore better,” the man in front of him said loudly.

  “Be still,” his wife said. “People’s lookin’ at ya.”

  “I don’t care a smidgen,” he said, “if en they ayre.”

  “Please,” she said.

  “Joanne Marie,” he said, “you know that when I aims ta do somethin’, I’m jest natcher’lly bound to do hit. An’ iffen I aims ta talk . . .”

  “Here comes the priest. Now, be still.”

  The man looked up. “So he do; an’ I’ll tell ya, hit shore is time he’s a-gittin’ hyere. I ain’t got no all night fer ta sit.”

  The crewman to his left bent over and whispered, “I’ll bet he’s gonna tell us it’s gonna be another postponement.”

  “Iffen he does, I’m jest a-gonna stand up an’ yell right out that I ain’t gonna stand fer hit no longer.”

  “Now, dear,” said Joanne Marie, “the captain can hear ya, if you’re gonna talk so loud.”

  “I hope he does; I jest hope he does. He’s th’ one that’s a-keepin’ us all from our Reward, an’ I jest hope he does heyar me, so he’ll know I’m a-gittin’ mighty tyird uv waitin’.”

  “You tell ’im!” someone said from two rows behind him.

  THE captain, in the officer’s section, sat very straight and tall. He was studiously ignoring the crew. This confined his field of vision to the left half of the recreation area. While the priest stood before the speaker’s rostrum waiting for silence, the captain reached back with great dignity and scratched his right shoulder blade.

  Nestir, the priest, was dressed out in the full ceremonial costume of office. His high, strapless boots glistened with polish. His fez perched jauntily on his shiny, shaven head. The baldness was symbolic of diligent mental application to abstruse points of doctrine. Cotian exentiati pablum re overum est: “Grass grows not in the middle of a busy thoroughfare.” The baldness was the result of the diligent application of an effective depilatory. His blood-red cloak had been freshly cleaned for the occasion, and it rustled around him in silky sibilants.

  “Men,” he said. And then, more loudly, “Men!”

  The hiss and sputter of conversation guttered away.

  “Men,” he said.

  “The other evening,” he said, “—Gelday it was, to be exact—one of the crew came to me with a complaint.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Joanne Marie’s husband said loudly.

  Nestir cleared his throat. “It was about the Casting Off. That’s why I called you all together today.” He stared away, at a point over the head and to the rear of the audience.

  “It puts me in mind of the parable of the six Vergios.”

  Joanne Marie’s husband sighed deeply.

  “Three, you will recall, were wise. When Prophet was at Meizque, they came to him and said, ‘Prophet, we are afflicted. We have great sores upon our bodies.’ The Prophet looked at them and did see that it was true. Then he blessed them and took out His knife and lay open their sores. For which the three wise Vergios were passing grateful. And within the last week, they were dead of infection. But three were foolish and hid their sores; and these three did live.”

  The captain rubbed his nose.

  “Calex i pundendem hoy, my children. ‘Secrecy makes for a long life,’ as it says in the Jarcon.” Nestir tugged behind him at his cloak.

  “I want you all to remember that little story. I want you all to take it away from here with you and think about it, tonight, in the privacy of your cabins.

  “And like the three wise Vergios who went to the Prophet, one of the crewmen came to me. He came to me, and he said: ‘Father, I am weary of sailing.’

  “Yes, he said, ‘I am weary of sailing.’

  “Now, don’t you think I don’t know that. Every one of you—every blessed one of you—is weary of sailing. I know that as well as I know my own name, yes.

  “But because he came to me and said, ‘Father, I am weary of sailing,’ I went to the captain, and I said, ‘Captain, the men are weary of sailing.’

  “And then the captain said: ‘All right, Father,’ he said, ‘I will set the day for the Festival of the Casting Off!’ ”

  THE little fellow was pleased by the rustle of approval from the audience. “God damn, hit’s about time!” Joanne Marie’s husband said.

  Nestir cleared his throat again.

  “Hummm. Uh. And the day is not very far distant,” said Nestir.

  “I knowed there was a catch to hit,” Joanne Marie’s husband said.

  “I know you will have many questions; yes, I know you will have—ah, ah—well, many questions. You are thinking: ‘What kind of a Festival can we have here on this ship?’ You are thinking: ‘What a fine thing—ah, what a good thing, that is—ah, how nice it would be to have the Casting Off at home, among friends.’ ”

  Nestir waved his hands. “Well, I just want to tell you: I come from Koltah. And you know that Koltah never let any city state outdo her in a Festival, uh-huh.

  “The arena in Koltah is the greatest arena in the whole system. We have as many as sixty thousand accepted applicants. All of them together in the arena is a—uh, uh, well—a sight to behold. People come from all over to behold it. I never will forget the Festival at which my father was accepted. He . . .

  “Well, the point I want to make is this: I just wanted to tell you that I know what a Festival should be, and the captain and I will do everything in our power to make our Casting Off as wonderful as any anywhere.

  “And I want to tell you that if you’ll come to me with your suggestions, I’ll do all I can to see that we do this thing just the way you want it done. I want you to be proud of this Casting Off Festival, so you can look back on it and say, uh, uh—this day was the real high point of your whole life!”

  Everyone but Joanne Marie’s husband cheered. He sat glumly muttering to himself.

  Nestir bobbed his shiny head at them and beamed his cherubic smile. And noticed that there was a little blonde, one of the crewmen’s wives, in the front row that had very cute ankles.

  While they were still cheering and stomping and otherwise expressing their enthusiasm and approval, Nestir walked off the speaker’s platform and into the officer’s corridor. He wiped his forehead indecorously on the hem of his cloak and felt quite relieved that the announcement was over with and the public speaking done.

  II

  DINNER that evening was a gala occasion aboard the ship. The steward ordered the holiday feast prepared in celebration of Nestir’s announcement. And, for the officers, he broke out of the special cellar the last case allotment for Crew One of the delicate Colta Barauche (’94). He ordered the messman to put a bottle of it to the right of each plate.

  The captain came down from his stateroom after the meal had begun. He nodded curtly to the officers when he entered the mess hall, walked directly to his place at the head of the table, sat down and morosely began to work the cork out of his wine bottle with his teeth.

  “You’ll spoil the flavor, shaking it that way,” the third mate cautioned. He was particularly fond of that year.

  The captain twisted the bottle savagely, and the cork came free with a little pop. He removed the cork from between his teeth, placed it very carefully beside his fork, and poured himself a full glass of the wine.

  “Very probably,” he said sadly.

  “I don’t think hit’ll do hit,” the first mate said. “He hain’t shook hard enough to matter.”

  The captain picked up the glass, brought it toward his lips—then, suddenly having thought of something, he put it back down and turned to Nestir.

  “I say. Have you decided on this Carstar thing yet, Father?”

  The little priest looked up. He laid his knife across the rim of his plate. “It has ramifications,” he said.

  When the third mate saw that his opinion on the wine was not immediately to be justified, he s
ettled back in his chair with a little sigh of disapproval.

  “Well, what do you think your decision will be, Father?” the steward asked.

  Nestir picked up his knife and fork and cut off a piece of meat. “Hummmm,” he said. “It’s hard to say. The whole issue involves, as a core point, the principle of casta cum mae stotiti.”

  The first mate nodded sagely.

  “The intent, of course, could actually be—ah—sub mailloux; and in that event, naturally, the decision would be even more difficult. I wish I could talk to higher authority about it; but of course I haven’t the time. I’ll have to decide something.”

  “HE had a very pretty wife,” the third mate said.

  “Yes, very.” Nestir agreed. “But as I was saying, if it could be proven that the culstem fell due to no negligence on his part, either consciously or subconsciously, then the obvious conclusion would be that no stigma would be attached.” He speared his meat and chewed it thoughtfully.

  “But it wasn’t at all bloody,” the wife of the second mate said. “I scarcely think he felt it at all. It happened too fast.”

  Nestir swallowed the mouthful of food and washed it down with a gulp of wine.

  “The problem, my dear Helen,” he said, “is one of intent. To raise the issue of concomitant agonies is to confuse the whole matter. For instance. Take Wilson, in my home state of Koltah. Certainly he died as miserable a death as anyone could desire.”

  “Yes,” said the second mate’s wife. “I remember that. I read about it in the newspapers.”

  “But it was a case of obvious intent,” continued Nestir, “and therefore constituted a clear out attempt to avoid his duty by hastening to his Reward.”

  Upon hearing the word duty, the captain brightened.

  “That,” he said to Nestir, “my dear Father, is the cardinal point of the whole game, y’know.” He scratched the back of his left hand. “Duty. And I must say, I think you’re being quite short-sighted about the Casting Off date. After all, it’s not only a question of how we go, but also a question of leaving only after having done our duty. And that’s equally important.”