Selected Stories Read online

  They were silent as they made their way back to the QM labs. The small thrill of violation was gone and, for Pete Mawser at least, the hate was back, that and the shame. A few short weeks before, this base had been a part of the finest country on earth. There was a lot of work here that was secret, and a lot that was such purely progressive and unapplied research that it would be in the way anywhere else but in this quiet wilderness.

  Sweat stood out on his forehead. They hadn’t struck back at their murderers! It was quite well known that there were launching sites all over the country, in secret caches far from any base or murdered city. Why must they sit here waiting to die, only to let the enemy—“enemies” was more like it—take over the continent when it was safe again?

  He smiled grimly. One small consolation. They’d hit too hard: that was a certainty. Probably each of the attackers underestimated what the other would throw. The result—a spreading transmutation of nitrogen into deadly Carbon Fourteen. The effects would not be limited to the continent. What ghastly long-range effect the muted radioactivity would have on the overseas enemies was something that no one alive today could know.

  Back at the furnace, Pete glanced at the temperature dial, then kicked at the latch control. The pilot winked out and then the door swung open. They blinked and started back from the raging heat within, then bent and peered. The razor was gone. A pool of brilliance lay on the floor of the compartment.

  “Ain’t much left. Most of it oxidized away,” Pete grunted.

  They stood together for a time with their faces lit by that small shimmering ruin. Later, as they walked back to the barracks, Sonny broke his long silence with a sigh. “I’m glad we did that, Pete. I’m awful glad we did that.”

  At a quarter to eight they were waiting before the combination console in the barracks. All hands except Pete and Sonny and a wiry-haired, thick-set corporal named Bonze had elected to see the show on the big screen in the mess hall. The reception was better there, of course, but, as Bonze put it, “you don’t get close enough in a big place like that.”

  “I hope she’s the same,” said Sonny, half to himself.

  Why should she be? thought Pete morosely as he turned on the set and watched the screen begin to glow. There were many more of the golden speckles that had killed reception for the past two weeks. Why should anything be the same, ever again?

  He fought a sudden temptation to kick the set to pieces. It, and Starr Anthim, were part of something that was dead. The country was dead, a real country—prosperous, sprawling, laughing, grabbing, growing and changing, leprous in spots with poverty and injustice, but healthy enough to overcome any ill. He wondered how the murderers would like it. They were welcome to it, now. Nowhere to go. No one to fight. That was true for every soul on earth now.

  “You hope she’s the same,” he muttered.

  “The show, I mean,” said Sonny mildly. “I’d like to just sit here and have it like … like—”

  Oh, thought Pete mistily. Oh—that. Somewhere to go, that’s what it is, for a few minutes. “I know,” he said, all the harshness gone from his voice.

  Noise receded from the audio as the carrier swept in. The light on the screen swirled and steadied into a diamond pattern. Pete adjusted the focus, chromic balance, and intensity. “Turn out the lights, Bonze. I don’t want to see anything but Starr Anthim.”

  It was the same, at first. Starr Anthim had never used the usual fanfares, fade-ins, color, and clamor of her contemporaries. A black screen, then click, a blaze of gold. It was all there, in focus; tremendously intense, it did not change. Rather, the eye changed to take it in. She never moved for seconds after she came on; she was there, a portrait, a still face and a white throat. Her eyes were open and sleeping. Her face was alive and still.

  Then, in the eyes which seemed green but were blue flecked with gold, an awareness seemed to gather, and they came awake. Only then was it noticeable that her lips were parted. Something in the eyes made the lips be seen, though nothing moved yet. Not until she bent her head slowly, so that some of the gold flecks seemed captured in the golden brows. The eyes were not, then, looking out at an audience. They were looking at me, and at me, and at ME.

  “Hello—you,” she said. She was a dream, with a kid sister’s slightly irregular teeth.

  Bonze shuddered. The cot on which he lay began to squeak rapidly. Sonny shifted in annoyance. Pete reached out in the dark and caught the leg of the cot. The squeaking subsided.

  “May I sing a song?” Starr asked. There was music, very faint. “It’s an old one, and one of the best. It’s an easy song, a deep song, one that comes from the part of men and women that is mankind—the part that has in it no greed, no hate, no fear. This song is about joyousness and strength. It’s—my favorite. Isn’t it yours?”

  The music swelled. Pete recognized the first two notes of the introduction and swore quietly. This was wrong. This song was not for … this song was part of—

  Sonny sat raptly. Bonze lay still.

  Starr Anthim began to sing. Her voice was deep and powerful, but soft, with the merest touch of vibrato at the ends of the phrases. The song flowed from her without noticeable effort, seeming to come from her face, her long hair, her wide-set eyes. Her voice, like her face, was shadowed and clean, round, blue and green but mostly gold:

  “When you gave me your heart, you gave me the world,

  You gave me the night and the day,

  And thunder, and roses, and sweet green grass,

  The sea, and soft wet clay.

  “I drank the dawn from a golden cup,

  From a silver one, the dark,

  The steed I rode was the wild west wind,

  My song was the brook and the lark.”

  The music spiraled, caroled, slid into a somber cry of muted, hungry sixths and ninths; rose, blared, and cut, leaving her voice full and alone:

  “With thunder I smote the evil of earth,

  With roses I won the right,

  With the sea I washed, and with clay I built,

  And the world was a place of light!”

  The last note left a face perfectly composed again, and there was no movement in it; it was sleeping and vital while the music curved off and away to the places where music rests when it is not heard.

  Starr smiled.

  “It’s so easy,” she said. “So simple. All that is fresh and clean and strong about mankind is in that song, and I think that’s all that need concern us about mankind.” She leaned forward. “Don’t you see?”

  The smile faded and was replaced with a gentle wonder. A tiny furrow appeared between brows; she drew back quickly. “I can’t seem to talk to you tonight,” she said, her voice small. “You hate something.”

  Hate was shaped like a monstrous mushroom. Hate was the random speckling of a video plate.

  “What has happened to us,” said Starr abruptly, impersonally, “is simple, too. It doesn’t matter who did it—do you understand that? It doesn’t matter. We were attacked. We were struck from the east and from the west. Most of the bombs were atomic—there were blast bombs and there were dust bombs. We were hit by about five hundred and thirty bombs altogether, and it has killed us.”

  She waited.

  Sonny’s fist smacked into his palm. Bonze lay with his eyes open, quiet. Pete’s jaw hurt.

  “We have more bombs than both of them put together. We have them. We are not going to use them. Wait!” She raised her hands suddenly, as if she could see into each man’s face. They sank back, tense.

  “So saturated is the atmosphere with Carbon Fourteen that all of us in this hemisphere are going to die. Don’t be afraid to say it. Don’t be afraid to think it. It is a truth, and it must be faced. As the transmutation effect spreads from the ruins of our cities, the air will become increasingly radioactive, and then we must die. In months, in a year or so, the effects will be strong overseas. Most of the people there will die, too. None will escape completely. A worse thing will come to them tha
n anything they gave us, because there will be a wave of horror and madness which is impossible to us. We are merely going to die. They will live and burn and sicken, and the children that will be born to them—” She shook her head, and her lower lip grew full. She visibly pulled herself together.

  “Five hundred and thirty bombs—I don’t think either of our attackers knew just how strong the other was. There has been so much secrecy.” Her voice was sad. She shrugged slightly. “They have killed us, and they have ruined themselves. As for us—we are not blameless, either. Neither are we helpless to do anything—yet. But what we must do is hard. We must die—without striking back.”

  She gazed briefly at each man in turn, from the screen. “We must not strike back. Mankind is about to go through a hell of his own making. We can be vengeful—or merciful, if you like—and let go with the hundreds of bombs we have. That would sterilize the planet so that not a microbe, not a blade of grass could escape, and nothing new could grow. We could reduce the earth to a bald thing, dead and deadly.

  “No, it just won’t do. We can’t do it.

  “Remember the song? That is humanity. That’s in all humans. A disease made other humans our enemies for a time, but as the generations march past, enemies become friends and friends enemies. The enmity of those who have killed us is such a tiny, temporary thing in the long sweep of history!”

  Her voice deepened. “Let us die with the knowledge that we have done the one noble thing left to us. The spark of humanity can still live and grow on this planet. It will be blown and drenched, shaken and all but extinguished, but it will live if that song is a true one. It will live if we are human enough to discount the fact that the spark is in the custody of our temporary enemy. Some—a few—of his children will live to merge with the new humanity that will gradually emerge from the jungles and the wilderness. Perhaps there will be ten thousand years of beastliness; perhaps man will be able to rebuild while he still has his ruins.”

  She raised her head, her voice tolling. “And even if this is the end of humankind, we dare not take away the chances some other life form might have to succeed where we failed. If we retaliate, there will not be a dog, a deer, an ape, a bird or fish or lizard to carry the evolutionary torch. In the name of justice, if we must condemn and destroy ourselves, let us not condemn all life along with us! We are heavy enough with sins. If we must destroy, let us stop with destroying ourselves!”

  There was a shimmering flicker of music. It seemed to stir her hair like a breath of wind. She smiled.

  “That’s all,” she whispered. And to each man there she said, “Good night—”

  The screen went black. As the carrier cut off—there was no announcement—the ubiquitous speckles began to swarm across it.

  Pete rose and switched on the lights. Bonze and Sonny were quite still. It must have been minutes later when Sonny sat up straight, shaking himself like a puppy. Something besides the silence seemed to tear with the movement.

  He said softly, “You’re not allowed to fight anything, or to run away, or to live, and now you can’t even hate any more, because Starr says ‘no.’”

  There was bitterness in the sound of it, and a bitter smell to the air.

  Pete Mawser sniffed once, which had nothing to do with the smell. He froze, sniffed again. “What’s that smell, Son’?”

  Sonny tested it. “I don’t—Something familiar. Vanilla—no … no.

  “Almonds. Bitter—Bonze!”

  Bonze lay still with his eyes open, grinning. His jaw muscles were knotted, and they could see almost all his teeth. He was soaking wet.

  “Bonze!”

  “It was just when she came on and said ‘Hello—you,’ remember?” whispered Pete. “Oh, the poor kid. That’s why he wanted to catch the show here instead of in the mess hall.”

  “Went out looking at her,” said Sonny through pale lips. “I can’t say I blame him much. Wonder where he got the stuff.”

  “Never mind that.” Pete’s voice was harsh. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They left to call the meat wagon. Bonze lay watching the console with his dead eyes and his smell of bitter almonds.

  Pete did not realize where he was going, or exactly why, until he found himself on the dark street near GHQ and the communications shack. It had something to do with Bonze. Not that he wanted to do what Bonze had done. But then he hadn’t thought of it. What would he have done if he’d thought of it? Nothing, probably. But still—it might be nice to be able to hear Starr, and see her, whenever he felt like it. Maybe there weren’t any recordings, but her musical background was recorded, and the Sig might have dubbed the show off.

  He stood uncertainly outside the GHQ building. There was a cluster of men outside the main entrance. Pete smiled briefly. Rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor gloom of night could stay the stage-door Johnny.

  He went down the side street and up the delivery ramp in the back. Two doors along the platform was the rear exit of the communications section.

  There was a light on in the communications shack. He had his hand out to the screen door when he noticed someone standing in the shadows beside it. The light played daintily on the golden margins of a head and face.

  He stopped. “Starr Anthim!”

  “Hello, soldier. Sergeant.”

  He blushed like an adolescent. “I—” His voice left him. He swallowed, reached up to whip off his hat. He had no hat. “I saw the show,” he said. He felt clumsy. It was dark, and yet he was very conscious of the fact that his dress shoes were indifferently shined.

  She moved toward him into the light, and she was so beautiful that he had to close his eyes. “What’s your name?”

  “Mawser. Pete Mawser.”

  “Like the show?”

  Not looking at her, he said stubbornly, “No.”

  “Oh?”

  “I mean … I liked it some. The song.”

  “I … think I see.”

  “I wondered if I could maybe get a recording.”

  “I think so,” she said. “What kind of a reproducer have you got?”

  “Audiovid.”

  “A disk. Yes; we dubbed off a few. Wait, I’ll get you one.”

  She went inside, moving slowly. Pete watched her, spellbound. She was a silhouette, crowned and haloed; and then she was a framed picture, vivid and golden. He waited, watching the light hungrily. She returned with a large envelope, called good night to someone inside, and came out on the platform.

  “Here you are, Pete Mawser.”

  “Thanks very—” he mumbled. He wet his lips. “It was very good of you.”

  “Not really. The more it circulates, the better.” She laughed suddenly. “That isn’t meant quite as it sounds. I’m not exactly looking for new publicity these days.”

  The stubbornness came back. “I don’t know that you’d get it, if you put on that show in normal times.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Well!” she smiled. “I seem to have made quite an impression.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said warmly. “I shouldn’t have taken that tack. Everything you think and say these days is exaggerated.”

  “I know what you mean.” She looked around. “How is it here?”

  “It’s O.K. I used to be bothered by the secrecy, and being buried miles away from civilization.” He chuckled bitterly. “Turned out to be lucky after all.”

  “You sound like the first chapter of One World or None.”

  He looked up quickly. “What do you use for a reading list—the Government’s own ‘Index Expurgatorius’?”

  She laughed. “Come now—it isn’t as bad as all that. The book was never banned. It was just—”

  “Unfashionable,” he filled in.

  “Yes, more’s the pity. If people had paid more attention to it when it was published, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened.”

  He followed her gaze to the dimly pulsating sky. “How long are you going to be here?”

  “Until … as long as … I’m not
leaving.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I’m finished,” she said simply. “I’ve covered all the ground I can. I’ve been everywhere that … anyone knows about.”

  “With this show?”

  She nodded. “With this particular message.”

  He was quiet, thinking. She turned to the door, and he put out his hand, not touching her. “Please—”

  “What is it?”

  “I’d like to … I mean, if you don’t mind, I don’t often have a chance to talk to—Maybe you’d like to walk around a little before you turn in.”

  “Thanks, no, Sergeant. I’m tired.” She did sound tired. “I’ll see you around.”

  He stared at her, a sudden fierce light in his brain. “I know where it is. It’s got a red-topped lever and a tag referring to orders of the commanding officer. It’s really camouflaged.”

  She was quiet so long that he thought she had not heard him. Then, “I’ll take that walk.”

  They went down the ramp together and turned toward the dark parade ground.

  “How did you know?” she asked quietly.

  “Not too tough. This ‘message’ of yours; the fact that you’ve been all over the country with it; most of all, the fact that somebody finds it necessary to persuade us not to strike back. Who are you working for?” he asked bluntly.

  Surprisingly, she laughed.

  “What’s that for?”

  “A moment ago you were blushing and shuffling your feet.”

  His voice was rough. “I wasn’t talking to a human being. I was talking to a thousand songs I’ve heard, and a hundred thousand blond pictures I’ve seen pinned up. You’d better tell me what this is all about.”

  She stopped. “Let’s go up and see the colonel.”

  He took her elbow. “No. I’m just a sergeant, and he’s high brass, and that doesn’t make any difference at all now. You’re a human being, and so am I, and I’m supposed to respect your rights as such. I don’t. You’re a woman, and—”

  She stiffened. He kept her walking, and finished, “—and that will make as much difference as I let it. You’d better tell me about it.”