“Why not?” said the dog-woman, glancing at him. He nodded. The three of them linked hands and then the dog-woman put her left hand on the forehead of the old horse.
The sand splashed beneath their feet as they ran toward Kaheer. The delicious pressure of a man’s body was on their backs. The red sky of Mizzer gleamed over them. There came the shout:
“I’m a horse, I’m a horse, I’m a horse!”
“You’re from Mizzer,” thought Casher O’Neill, “from Kaheer itself!”
“I don’t know names,” thought the horse, “but you’re from my land. The land, the good land.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Dying,” thought the horse. “Dying for hundreds and thousands of sundowns. The old one brought me. No riding, no running, no people. Just the old one and the small ground. I have been dying since I came here.”
Casher O’Neill got a glimpse of Perinö sitting and watching the horse, unconscious of the cruelty and loneliness which he had inflicted on his large pet by making it immortal and then giving it no work to do.
“Do you know what dying is?”
Thought the horse promptly: “Certainly. No-horse.”
“Do you know what life is?”
“Yes. Being a horse.”
“I’m not a horse,” thought Casher O’Neill, “but I am alive.”
“Don’t complicate things,” thought the horse at him, though Casher realized it was his own mind and not the horse’s which supplied the words.
“Do you want to die?”
“To no-horse? Yes, if this room, forever, is the end of things.”
“What would you like better?” thought Genevieve, and her thoughts were like a cascade of newly-minted silver coins falling into all their minds: brilliant, clean, bright, innocent.
The answer was quick: “Dirt beneath my hooves, and wet air again, and a man on my back.”
The dog-woman interrupted: “Dear horse, you know me?”
“You’re a dog,” thought the horse. “Goo-oo-oo-ood dog!”
“Right,” thought the happy old slattern, “and I can tell these people how to take care of you. Sleep now, and when you waken you will be on the way to happiness.”
She thought the command sleep so powerfully at the old horse that Casher O’Neill and Genevieve both started to fall unconscious and had to be caught by the hospital attendants.
As they re-gathered their wits, she was finishing her commands to the surgeon. “—put about 40% supplementary oxygen into the air. He’ll have to have a real person to ride him, but some of your orbiting sentries would rather ride a horse up there than do nothing. You can’t repair the heart. Don’t try it. Hypnosis will take care of the sand of Mizzer. Just load his mind with one or two of the drama-cubes packed full of desert adventure. Now, don’t you worry about me. I’m not going to give you any more suggestions. People-man, you!” She laughed. “You can forgive us dogs anything, except for being right. It makes you feel inferior for a few minutes. Never mind. I’m going back downstairs to my dishes. I love them, I really do. Good-bye, you pretty thing,” she said to Genevieve. “And good-bye, wanderer! Good luck to you,” she said to Casher O’Neill. “You will remain miserable as long as you seek justice, but when you give up, righteousness will come to you and you will be happy. Don’t worry. You’re young and it won’t hurt you to suffer a few more years. Youth is an extremely curable disease, isn’t it?”
She gave them a full curtsy, like one Lady of the Instrumentality saying good-bye to another. Her wrinkled old face was lit up with smiles, in which happiness was mixed with a tiniest bit of playful mockery.
“Don’t mind me, boss,” she said to the surgeon. “Dishes, here I come.” She swept out of the room.
“See what I mean?” said the surgeon. “She’s so horribly happy! How can anyone run a hospital if a dishwasher gets all over the place, making people happy? We’d be out of jobs. Her ideas were good, though.”
They were. They worked. Down to the last letter of the dog-woman’s instructions.
There was argument from the council. Casher O’Neill went along to see them in session.
One councillor, Bashnack, was particularly vociferous in objecting to any action concerning the horse. “Sire,” he cried, “sire! We don’t even know the name of the animal! I must protest this action, when we don’t know—”
“That we don’t,” assented Philip Vincent. “But what does a name have to do with it?”
“The horse has no identity, not even the identity of an animal. It is just a pile of meat left over from the estate of Perinö. We should kill the horse and eat the meat ourselves. Or, if we do not want to eat the meat, then we should sell it off-planet. There are plenty of peoples around here who would pay a pretty price for genuine earth meat. Pay no attention to me, sire! You are the Hereditary Dictator and I am nothing. I have no power, no property, nothing. I am at your mercy. All I can tell you is to follow your own best interests. I have only a voice. You cannot reproach me for using my voice when I am trying to help you, sire, can you? That’s all I am doing, helping you. If you spend any credits at all on this animal you will be doing wrong, wrong, wrong. We are not a rich planet. We have to pay for expensive defenses just in order to stay alive. We cannot even afford to pay for air that our children can go out and play. And you want to spend money on a horse which cannot even talk! I tell you, sire, this council is going to vote against you, just to protect your own interests and the interests of the Honorable Genevieve as Eventual Title-holder of all Pontoppidan. You are not going to get away with this, sire! We are helpless before your power, but we will insist on advising you—”
“Hear! Hear!” cried several of the councillors, not the least dismayed by the slight frown of the Hereditary Dictator.
“I will take the word,” said Philip Vincent himself.
Several had had their hands raised, asking for the floor. One obstinate man kept his hand up even when the Dictator announced his intention to speak. Philip Vincent took note of him, too:
“You can talk when I am through, if you want to.”
He looked calmly around the room, smiled imperceptibly at his niece, gave Casher O’Neill the briefest of nods, and then announced:
“Gentlemen, it’s not the horse which is on trial. It’s Pontoppidan. It’s we who are trying ourselves. And before whom are we trying ourselves, gentlemen? Each of us is before that most awful of courts, his own conscience.
“If we kill that horse, gentlemen, we will not be doing the horse a great wrong. He is an old animal, and I do not think that he will mind dying very much, now that he is away from the ordeal of loneliness which he feared more than death. After all, he has already had his great triumph—the climb up the cliff of gems, the jump across the volcanic vent, the rescue by people whom he wanted to find. The horse has done so well that he is really beyond us. We can help him, a little, or we can hurt him, a little; beside the immensity of his accomplishment, we cannot really do very much either way.
“No, gentlemen, we are not judging the case of the horse. We are judging space. What happens to a man when he moves out into the Big Nothing? Do we leave Old Earth behind? Why did civilization fall? Will it fall again? Is civilization a gun or a blaster or a laser or a rocket? Is it even a planoforming ship or a pinlighter at his work? You know as well as I do, gentlemen, that civilization is not what we can do. If it had been, there would have been no fall of Ancient Man. Even in the Dark Ages they had a few fusion bombs, they could make some small guided missiles and they even had weapons like the Kaskaskis Effect, which we have never been able to rediscover. The Dark Ages weren’t dark because people lost techniques or science. They were dark because people lost people. It’s a lot of work to be human and it’s work which must be kept up, or it begins to fade. Gentlemen, the horse judges us.
“Take the word, gentlemen. ‘Civilization’ is itself a lady’s word. There were female writers in a country called France who made that word popular in the
third century before space travel. To be ‘civilized’ meant for people to be tame, to be kind, to be polished. If we kill this horse, we are wild. If we treat the horse gently, we are tame. Gentlemen, I have only one witness and that witness will utter only one word. Then you shall vote and vote freely.”
There was a murmur around the table at this announcement. Philip Vincent obviously enjoyed the excitement he had created. He let them murmur on for a full minute or two before he slapped the table gently and said, “Gentlemen, the witness. Are you ready?”
There was a murmur of assent. Bashnack tried to say, “It’s still a question of public funds!” but his neighbors shushed him. The table became quiet. All faces turned toward the Hereditary Dictator.
“Gentlemen, the testimony. Genevieve, is that what you yourself told me to say? Is civilization always a woman’s choice first, and only later a man’s?”
“Yes,” said Genevieve, with a happy, open smile.
The meeting broke up amid laughter and applause.
V
A MONTH later Casher O’Neill sat in a room in a medium-size planoforming liner. They were out of reach of Pontoppidan. The Hereditary Dictator had not changed his mind and cut him down with green beams. Casher had strange memories, not bad ones for a young man.
He remembered Genevieve weeping in the garden.
“I’m romantic,” she cried, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of his cape. “Legally I’m the owner of this planet, rich, powerful, free. But I can’t leave here. I’m too important. I can’t marry whom I want to marry. I’m too important. My uncle can’t do what he wants to do—he’s Hereditary Dictator and he always must do what the Council decides after weeks of chatter. I can’t love you. You’re a prince and a wanderer, with travels and battles and justice and strange things ahead of you. I can’t go. I’m too important. I’m too sweet! I’m too nice; I hate, hate, hate myself sometimes. Please, Casher, could you take a flier and run away with me into space?”
“Your uncle’s lasers could cut us to pieces before we got out.”
He held her hands and looked gently down into her face. At this moment he did not feel the fierce, aggressive, happy glow which an able young man feels in the presence of a beautiful and tender young woman. He felt something much stranger, softer, quieter—an emotion very sweet to the mind and restful to the nerves. It was the simple, clear compassion of one person for another. He took a chance for her sake, because the “dark knowledge” was wonderful but very dangerous in the wrong hands.
He took both her beautiful little hands in his, so that she looked up at him and realized that he was not going to kiss her. Something about his stance made her realize that she was being offered a more precious gift than a sky-lit romantic kiss in a garden. Besides, it was just touching helmets.
He said to her, with passion and kindness in his voice: “You remember that dog-woman, the one who works with the dishes in the hospital?”
“Of course. She was good and bright and happy, and helped us all.”
“Go work with her, now and then. Ask her nothing. Tell her nothing. Just work with her at her machines. Tell her I said so. Happiness is catching. You might catch it. I think I did myself, a little.”
“I think I understand you,” said Genevieve softly. “Casher, good-bye and good, good luck to you. My uncle expects us.”
Together they went back into the palace.
Another memory was the farewell to Philip Vincent, the Hereditary Dictator of Pontoppidan. The calm, clean-shaven, ruddy, well-fleshed face looked at him with benign regard. Casher O’Neill felt more respect for this man when he realized that ruthlessness is often the price of peace, and vigilance the price of wealth.
“You’re a clever young man. A very clever young man. You may win back the power of your Uncle Kuraf.”
“I don’t want that power!” cried Casher O’Neill.
“I have advice for you,” said the Hereditary Dictator, “and it is good advice or I would not be here to give it. I have learned the political arts well: otherwise I would not be alive. Do not refuse power. Just take it and use it wisely. Do not hide from your wicked uncle’s name. Obliterate it. Take the name yourself and rule so well that, in a few decades, no one will remember your uncle. Just you. You are young. You can’t win now. But it is in your fate to grow and to triumph. I know it. I am good at these things. I have given you your weapon. I am not tricking you. It is packed safely and you may leave with it.”
Casher O’Neill was breathing softly, believing it all, and trying to think of words to thank the stout, powerful older man when the dictator added, with a little laugh in his voice:
“Thank you, too, for saving me money. You’ve lived up to your name, Casher.”
“Saved you money?”
“The alfalfa. The horse wanted alfalfa.”
“Oh, that idea!” said Casher O’Neill. “It was obvious. I don’t deserve much credit for that.”
“I didn’t think of it,” said the Hereditary Dictator, “and my staff didn’t either. We’re not stupid. That shows you are bright. You realized that Perinö must have had a food converter to keep the horse alive in the Hippy Dipsy. All we did was set it to alfalfa and we saved ourselves the cost of a shipload of horse food twice a year. We’re glad to save that credit. We’re well off here, but we don’t like to waste things. You may bow to me now, and leave.”
Casher O’Neill had done so, with one last glance at the lovely Genevieve, standing fragile and beautiful beside her uncle’s chair.
His last memory was very recent.
He had paid two hundred thousand credits for it, right on this liner. He had found the Stop-Captain, bored now that the ship was in flight and the Go-Captain had taken over.
“Can you get me a telepathic fix on a horse?”
“What’s a horse?” said the Go-Captain. “Where is it? Do you want to pay for it?”
“A horse,” said Casher O’Neill patiently, “is an unmodified earth animal. Not underpeople. A big one, but quite intelligent. This one is in orbit right around Pontoppidan. And I will pay the usual price.”
“A million Earth credits,” said the Stop-Captain.
“Ridiculous!” cried Casher O’Neill.
They settled on two hundred thousand credits for a good fix and ten thousand for the use of the ship’s equipment even if there were failure. It was not a failure. The technician was a snake-man: he was deft, cool, and superb at his job. In only a few minutes he passed the headset to Casher O’Neill, saying politely, “This is it, I think.”
It was. He had reached right into the horse’s mind.
The endless sands of Mizzer swam before Casher O’Neill. The long lines of the Twelve Niles converged in the distance. He galloped steadily and powerfully. There were other horses nearby, other riders, other things, but he himself was conscious only of the beat of the hooves against the strong moist sand, the firmness of the appreciative rider upon his back. Dimly, as in a hallucination, Casher O’Neill could also see the little orbital ship in which the old horse cantered in mid-air, with an amused cadet sitting on his back. Up there, with no weight, the old worn-out heart would be good for many, many years. Then he saw the horse’s paradise again. The flash of hooves threatened to overtake him, but he outran them all. There was the expectation of a stable at the end, a rubdown, good succulent green food, and the glimpse of a filly in the morning.
The horse of Pontoppidan felt extremely wise. He had trusted people—people, the source of all kindness, all cruelty, all power among the stars. And the people had been good. The horse felt very much horse again. Casher felt the old body course along the river’s edge like a dream of power, like a completion of service, like an ultimate fulfillment of companionship.
BEAM US HOME
James Tiptree, Jr.
There are many different battlefields and many kinds of war—some are as external as a bullet in flesh, others as deep and secret as the soul.
Hugo- and-Nebula-winner James Tiptree,
Jr., considered by many to be one of the two or three best short story writers in the genre, is represented here at the very top of his form with this brilliant, sharp-etched study of isolation, war, and love—of the wounds that burn like fire, of the wounds that burn like ice.
HOBIE’S PARENTS might have seen the first signs if they had been watching about 8:30 on Friday nights. But Hobie was the youngest of five active bright-normal kids. Who was to notice one more uproar around the TV?
A couple of years later Hobie’s Friday night battles shifted to 10 P.M. and then his sisters got their own set. Hobie was growing fast then. In public he featured chiefly as a tanned streak on the tennis courts and a ninety-ninth percentile series of math grades. To his parents, Hobie featured as the one without problems. This was hard to avoid in a family that included a diabetic, a girl with an IQ of 185 and another with controllable petit mal, and a would-be ski star who spent most of his time in a cast. Hobie’s own IQ was in the fortunate one-forties, the range where you’re superior enough to lead, but not too superior to be followed. He seemed perfectly satisfied with his communications with his parents, but he didn’t use them much.
Not that he was in any way neglected when the need arose. The time he got staph in a corneal scratch, for instance, his parents did a great job of supporting him through the pain bit and the hospital bit and so on. But they couldn’t know all the little incidents. Like the night when Hobie called so fiercely for Dr. McCoy that a young intern named McCoy went in and joked for half an hour with the feverish boy in his dark room.
To the end, his parents probably never understood that there was anything to understand about Hobie. And what was to see? His tennis and his model rocket collection made him look almost too normal for the small honors school he went to first.
Then his family moved to an executive bedroom suburb where the school system had a bigger budget than Monaco and a soccer team loaded with National Merit Science finalists. Here Hobie blended right in with the scenery. One more healthy, friendly, polite kid with bright gray eyes under a blond bowl-cut and very fast with any sort of ball game.
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