Return from the Stars (22 page)

"No. I don't understand that. They're not stupid. You said so yourself a moment ago. Surely they don't think that we are predators, that we will throw ourselves at people's throats!"

"If they thought that, they wouldn't have let us come. No, Hal. This doesn't have to do with us. More is at stake. Can't you see it?"

"Apparently I've grown stupid. Tell me."

"The public is not aware…"

"Of what?"

"Of the fact that the spirit of exploration is dead. That there are no expeditions, they know. But they don't think about it. They think that there are no expeditions because expeditions are unnecessary, and that's all. But there are some who see and know perfectly well what is going on, and what consequences it will have. Has already had."

"Well?"

"Pap. Pap and more pap for all eternity. No one will fly to the stars now. No one will risk a dangerous experiment now. No one will test a new medicine on himself now. What, they don't know this? They know! And if the word got out who we are, what we did, why we flew, what it was all about, then it would be impossible, you see, impossible to conceal the tragedy!"

"Pap and more pap?" I asked, using his expression; someone listening to our conversation might have found this funny, but I was in no mood to laugh.

"Of course. And you don't think it's a tragedy?"

"I don't know. Olaf, listen. For us that must be and will always be a great thing. The way we gave up those years—and everything—well, we believe this to be of the utmost importance. But perhaps it isn't. One has to be objective. Because—tell me yourself—what did we accomplish?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, unpack the bags. Dump out everything you brought back from Fomalhaut."

"Are you crazy?"

"Not at all. What was the value of this expedition?"

"We were pilots, Hal. Ask Gimma, Thurber."

"Olaf, don't give me that. We were there together, and you know perfectly well what they did, what Venturi did before he died, what Thurber did—why are you looking at me like that? What did we bring back? Four loads of various analyses, spectral, elemental, et-ceteral, mineral samples, and then there is that soup or metaplasm or whatever that rotten stuff from Beta Arcturi was called. Normers verified his theory of gravimagnetic rotations, and it turned out, in addition, that on planets of type C Meoli there can exist not tri- but tetraploids of silicon, and on that moon where Arder nearly did himself in there is nothing but lousy lava and bubbles the size of skyscrapers. And was it in order to learn that that lava hardens into those goddamn big bubbles that we vomited ten years out of our lives and came back here to be side-show freaks? Then why in hell did we go there? For what? Maybe you can tell me. For what?"

"Not so loud," he said.

I was angry. And he was angry. His eyes had narrowed. I thought that we might fight yet, and my lips began to twitch into a grin. And then suddenly he, too, smiled.

"Still a hothead," he said. "You can drive a man into a fury, you know that?"

"Get to the point, Olaf. To the point."

"To the point? You haven't got to the point yet. And what if we had brought back an elephant that had eight legs and talked algebra, what then, would that have made you happy? What were you expecting on Arcturus? Paradise? A triumphal arch? What do you want? In ten years I didn't hear so much nonsense from you as now, in one minute."

I took a deep breath.

"Olaf, you are trying to make a fool of me. You know what I meant. I meant that people can live without it…"

"I should think they can! Indeed, yes!"

"Wait. They can live, and even if it is as you say, that they have stopped flying because of betrization, still, was it worth it, was it right to pay such a price—that is the question before us, my friend."

"Is it? And suppose you marry. Why do you make a face? You can't get married? You can. I'm telling you, you can. And you will have children. And you will carry them to be betrizated with a song on your lips. Well?"

"Not with a song. But what could I do? I can't war against the whole world.…"

"Well, then, the blessing of the firmament upon you," he said. "And now, if you like, we can go to the city."

"Fine," I said. "Lunch will be in two and a half hours. We can make it."

"And if we don't make it, they won't give us anything to eat?"

"They will, but…"

I turned red. Pretending not to notice, he brushed the sand off his bare feet. We went upstairs, changed, and took the car to Clavestra. The traffic on the road was heavy. For the first time I saw colored gleeders, pink and pastel-lemon. We found a service station. I fancied I saw surprise in the glass eyes of the robot that examined the damage. We left the car there and returned on foot. It turned out that there were two Clavestras, an old and a new; in the old city was the local industrial center, where I had been the previous day with Marger. The new part was a fashionable summer resort, and there were people everywhere, almost exclusively young, teen-agers. In their gaudy, glittering outfits the boys looked dressed up as Roman soldiers, since the materials caught the sun like the half armor of that period. A lot of girls, most of them attractive, often in bathing suits more daring than anything I had seen so far. Walking with Olaf, I felt the eyes of the whole street on me. Colorful groups stopped under the palms at the sight of us. We were taller than anyone there, people stood and exchanged looks, it was extremely embarrassing.

When at last we got to the highway and turned south across the fields, in the direction of the house, Olaf wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. I was sweating a little, too.

"Damn them," he said.

"Save it for a better occasion…"

He gave a sour smile.

"Hal!"

"What?"

"You know what it was like? A set in a movie studio. Romans, courtesans, and gladiators."

"We were the gladiators?"

"Exactly."

"Shall we run?" I said.

"Let's go."

We went over the fields. It was about eight kilometers. But we ended up too far to the right and had to double back a little. Even so, we had time to take a bath before lunch.

knocked on Olaf's door.

"If I know you, come on in," I heard him call.

He stood naked in the middle of the room and was spraying himself, from the flask that he held, with a pale yellow fluid that immediately set to form a fluffy mass.

"Liquid underwear?" I said. "How can you?"

"I didn't bring a spare shirt," he muttered. "You don't care for it?"

"No. You do?"

"My shirt got torn."

At my look of surprise, he added with a grimace:

"The guy who grinned."

I did not say another word. He put on his old trousers—I remembered them, from the
Prometheus
—and we went downstairs. Only three places were set, and no one was in the dining room.

"There will be four of us," I addressed the white robot.

"No, sir. Mr. Marger has gone. The lady, yourself, and Mr. Staave make three. Shall I serve, or wait for the lady?"

"We'll wait," Olaf replied carelessly.

A terrific fellow. Just then, the girl entered. She had on the same skirt as the day before; her hair was a little damp, as if she had come from the water. I introduced Olaf to her; he was calm and dignified. I had never managed to be that dignified.

We talked a little. She said that every week her husband had to go away for three days in connection with his work, and that the water in the pool was not so warm as it could have been, despite the sun. But the conversation quickly died, and, try as I might, I could think of nothing to say. I ate in silence, with their sharply contrasting profiles before me. I noticed that Olaf was studying her, but only when I spoke to her and she looked in my direction. His face was without expression. As if he was thinking the whole time of something else.

Toward the end of the meal, the white robot approached and said that the water in the pool would be heated for the evening, in accordance with Mrs. Marger's wishes. Mrs. Marger thanked it and went to her room. The two of us were alone. Olaf looked at me, and again I reddened terribly.

"How is it," he said, putting to his lips the cigarette I had given him, "that a customer who could crawl into that stinking hole on Kereneia, an old space dog—an old rhinoceros, rather, a hundred and fifty—now starts to…?"

"Please," I muttered, "if you really want to know, I'd crawl in there again…"

I didn't finish.

"All right. I'll stop. Word of honor. But, Hal, I have to say this: I understand you. And I'll bet you don't even know why…"

I pointed my head in the direction in which she had gone.

"Why her?"

"Yes. Do you know?"

"No. And neither do you."

"But I do. Shall I tell you?"

"Yes. But without your jokes."

"You really have gone crazy!" exclaimed Olaf. "It is very simple. But you always did have that fault—you didn't see what was under your nose, only what was far removed, those Cantors, Corbasileuses…"

"Don't preen."

"The style is sophomoric, I know, but our development was halted when they put those six hundred and eighty screws on us."

"Go on."

"She is exactly like a girl from our time. Doesn't have that red rubbish in her nose or those plates on her ears, and no shining cotton on her head; she doesn't drip with gold; she's a girl you could have met in Ceberto or Apprenous. I remember some just like her. That's all."

"I'll be damned," I said quietly. "Yes. Yes, but there is one difference."

"Well?"

"I told you already. At the very beginning. I never behaved like this before. And, to be perfectly honest, I never imagined myself… I thought I was the quiet type."

"Really, it's a shame I didn't take your picture when you came out of that hole on Kereneia. Then you could see what a quiet type you are. Man, I thought that you… Never mind!"

"Let's stow Kereneia, its caves and all of that," I said. "You know, Olaf, before I came here I went to a doctor, Juffon is his name, a very likable character. Over eighty, but…"

"That is our fate now," Olaf observed calmly. He exhaled and watched the smoke spread out above a clump of pale purple flowers that resembled hyacinths. He went on: "We feel most at home among the o-o-old folks. With lo-o-ong beards. When I think about it, I could scream. I tell you what. Let's buy ourselves a chicken coop, we can wring their necks."

"Come on, enough clowning. This doctor said a number of wise things to me. That we have no family, no friends of our own generation—which leaves only women, but nowadays it is harder to get one woman than many. And he was right. I can see that now."

"Hal, I know that you are much cleverer than I. You always liked the unprecedented. It had to be damned difficult, something that you couldn't manage at first, something you couldn't get without busting a gut three times over. Otherwise it didn't tickle your fancy. Don't give me that look. I'm not afraid of you, you know."

"Praise the Lord. That would make things complete."

"And so … what was I going to say? Ah. At first I thought that you wanted to be by yourself and that you hit the books because you wanted to be something more than a pilot and the guy who made the engine work. I waited for you to start putting on airs. And I must say that when you floored Normers and Venturi with those observations of yours and, all innocence, entered into those oh-so-highly-learned discussions, well, I thought that you had started. But then there was that explosion, you remember?"

"The one at night."

"Yes. And Kereneia, and Arcturus, and that moon. My friend, I still see that moon sometimes in my dreams, and once I actually fell out of bed because of it. Oh, that moon! Yes, but what—you see, my mind is going; I keep on forgetting—but then all that happened, and I saw that you were not out to be superior. That that was simply what you liked, and you couldn't be different. Remember how you asked Venturi for his personal copy of that book, the red one, what was it?"

"
The Topology of Hyperspace
."

"Right. And he said, 'It is too difficult for you, Bregg. You lack the background…'"

I laughed, because he did Venturi perfectly.

"He was right, Olaf. It was too difficult."

"Yes, then, but in time you figured it out, didn't you?"

"I did. But … without any real satisfaction. You know why. Venturi, that poor guy…"

"Not another word. It remains to be seen who should feel sorry for whom—in the light of subsequent events."

"He cannot feel sorry for anyone now. You were on the upper deck at the time?"

"I? On the upper deck? I was standing right beside you!"

"That's right. If he hadn't let it all into the cooling system, he might have got off with a few burns. The way Arne did. He had to go and lose his head."

"Indeed. No, you're incredible! Arne died anyway!"

"But five years later. Five years are five years."

"Years like those?"

"Now you're talking this way, but before, by the water, when I started to, you jumped down my throat."

"It was unbearable, yes, but it was magnificent, too. Admit it. You tell me—but, then, you don't need to talk. When you crawled out of that hole on Ke—"