Unearthly Neighbors (10 page)

The sphere lifted again toward the invisible ship high above them in the starlit night. Monte looked down and watched the fire in the clearing until it was lost from view.

Then there was only the great night all around them, the great hollow night and the far cold stars. He closed his eyes. There was a terrible emptiness inside of him, an icy ache that cried out to him of something vanished, something lost…

Something that he had been and something that he could never be again.

The funeral was mercifully brief, and even had a certain dignity, but it was still a barbaric thing. Monte sat through it in a daze, his mind wandering. How Louise would have hated it all…

“When I die,” she had told him once, back in those sunlit days when death was only a word and they had both known that they would live forever, “I don’t want any gloomy songs and weeping relatives. I want to be cremated and I want my ashes to be spread in a flower garden, where they’ll do some good. You’ll see to it, won’t you Monte?”

“Afraid I can’t,” he had said. “I’ve already promised you for a sacrifice to the Sun God.”

The Sun God.

Sirius?

Sacrifice…

There had been one consolation, he supposed, although that was hardly the word for it. Her body, stretched out in its makeshift box, was in space. It was drifting in the
emptiness and the stars. Crazily, he wondered whether she was cold. At least she was not buried in the earth, with damp soil sealing her off forever from the light and the sun.

In time, she might even fall into the sun. A strange sun, to be sure, a white furnace of a sun, but still a sun. She might have liked that…

He could not believe that she was gone. Oh, he didn’t try to kid himself about it. She was dead, and his mind accepted the fact. He couldn’t console himself with any fuzzy notions that they would meet again in some Great Bye and Bye. But belief is something you feel, not just something that your mind cannot reject. Even when he knew that Louise was in a box in space, he found himself listening for her voice, watching for her to come walking through opening doors, wondering why she stayed away now that he needed her so much.

It was unbearable. He shunned the room that they had shared, entering it only to try to sleep. (Sleep? He had forgotten what sleep was.) He didn’t drink much; drinking only made it worse. He knew that some men hit the bottle in an effort to forget, but that would never work for him. Alcohol only accentuated what he was already feeling; it had always been that way.

But there were times when he had to go into their room. There were times when he had to lie on their bed, and be alone in the darkness. There were times when he saw her clothes and the books she had been reading. There were times when he could smell her perfume, still lingering in the bare, tiny room.

Then he knew that she was gone from him forever…

Then he knew.

Admiral William York sat behind his polished desk and looked acutely uncomfortable. He was a tall man, tall and lean, and his gray hair was cropped close to his skull. He seemed to be at attention even when he was sitting down, but he was not an unduly formal man. He had warm brown eyes and a face that easily relaxed into a smile. In fact, Monte thought, he was the perfect officer—even to the slight limp that he had when he walked, a limp that hinted discreetly of past deeds of valor. He was a civilized man, and that didn’t make the interview any easier.

Monte was aware of the contrast in their appearances. Monte’s clothes didn’t fit him the way they should; he had lost a lot of weight and was downright skinny. His beard was ragged and his eyes had dark circles under them. Monte was hard, harder than he had ever been, but he was too hard to be flexible any longer. He didn’t bend and snap back. He—broke.

It didn’t all show, of course; he was glad of that. He was still Monte Stewart, no matter what he felt like inside. But he felt oddly ill at ease, like a schoolboy summoned before the headmaster. He didn’t belong here, in this room, with this man. The hum of the air vents bothered him, and the stale metallic smell of the gray ship. The air seemed cold and dead after the warm irritating atmosphere of Sirius Nine; he always seemed to be cold now…

“Drink, Monte?”

“Thank you.”

Admiral York poured out a shot of whiskey for each of them. He sipped his, but Monte tossed it down like medicine. York made quite a thing out of lighting a cigarette, doing his best to make Monte relax. Monte didn’t want to disappoint him, so he fished out his pipe and began puffing on it. The smoke
did
taste good. That, at least, had not changed.

Admiral York fingered a stapled pile of typewritten pages on his desk. There were fourteen pages, Monte knew, with his signature on the last one.

“Well, Monte?”

“You’ve read it. It’s all there. There isn’t anything else to say.”

York leaned back in his chair, staring at his cigarette as though it were the most interesting thing in the world. “You realize, of course, that the safety of this expedition is my responsibility. I have to take most of the blame for what happened down there.”

Monte sighed. “You’re not a fool, Bill, so don’t act like one. I made all the decisions with the natives. I was careful to make that clear in my report, in case there should be any question about it later. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Perhaps. But it
will
be if anything else happens, so nothing else is going to happen. We know what we’re up against now.”

“Do we? I wish you’d let me in on it.”

“You know what I mean.”

“That’s what you keep telling me. But I
don’t
.”

York shrugged. “Look, Monte, I’m not trying to be difficult. I know that you’ve had a terrible shock; please believe me when I say that if there were anything I could do to help I would do it.”

“I know that, Bill. Sorry.”

“The fact remains, however, that I am not a free agent. I have the responsibilities of command here; I must do what I think best.”

“And?”

“And I’m taking this ship back to Earth, Monte. I can’t risk any further bloodshed. The decisions from now on will have to be made by higher authorities.”

“You mean Heidelman?”

“I mean the Secretary-General. Surely you realize the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into here? You do understand, don’t you?”

Monte puffed on his pipe. He felt his hands begin to tremble and it made him mad. “You mean that we’ve failed. That it was all for nothing. That we’re just going to turn tail and run.”

York looked away. “Isn’t that about the size of it? Think, man! You can’t go back there. You must be able to see that. It was bad enough the first time. Now the natives have attacked us and killed some of our people. Worse than that, maybe, you’ve killed one of the natives. I’m not blaming you; I might have done the same. But we’ve got to draw the line somewhere. We didn’t come here to start a war.”

“What did we come here for?”

“That’s your department, not mine. My job was to get you here and get you back. That’s what I intend to do.”

“Very fine, very noble. Maybe you’ll get a medal out of it, huh?”

“There’s no call to get sarcastic. I’m trying to be reasonable with you. You’re being bull-headed, not me. It’s always easy to blame the brass.”

Monte got to his feet, his pipe clamped between his teeth. “Hell, I know I’m taking it out on you.” He looked at York with weary eyes. “How do you think I feel? My wife is dead. Ralph is dead. Helen is dead. And I’ve flopped in the biggest job I ever had. Ever
think of yourself as a failure? I never had. I always thought I could do anything. Maybe things came too easy for me; I don’t know. I’ve had my nose rubbed in the dirt, but good. But I’m no quitter. I’m not through yet.”

“But what can you
do?
I’m all for this hands-across-space stuff; I believe in it. But it’s absurd to sacrifice yourself for the glories of anthropology. You’re not thinking straight—”

“To hell with anthropology! What kind of a jerk do you take me for? It’s bigger than that and you know it. If we foul it up now there may never be another chance. The next outfit that comes out here—if there is a next outfit—will be a military expedition. Do you want that?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Okay. I loused up the first try. It’s up to me to set it straight. It’s my job. I want to do it, that’s all.”

“I can’t let you risk the others.”

“No, of course not. But who are we risking? There is no threat to the ship—they can’t get at you here. Janice must certainly stay here, and I wouldn’t want Tom to go back. I don’t think Don would go anyhow. I don’t know about Charlie—that’s up to him. But
I
can go back.”

“Alone?”

“Why not? The worst that can happen is that I’ll get myself knocked off. What difference will that make?”

“Monte, I admire your guts. But I’ve seen it happen a thousand times—a man loses his wife and he thinks it’s the end of the world. It isn’t. You’re still young—”

“Creeping crud! I’ve
got
to go back. I’ve got to live with myself, Louise or no Louise. Suppose you were sent out on a big assignment and you lost the first skirmish. Would you run for home? Would you?”

York hesitated. “Maybe. If I saw that there was no hope at all—”

“But you don’t
know
that! We don’t even know what happened down there, not really. We’ve got enough of the language now so that we can talk to them. We made some progress. Look, you’re clear on all this. It’s down in black and white that I’m in charge of all relations with the natives. We came out here to stay a year. I want that year. You can’t just order me to go home, not when
the ship is in no danger at all. That won’t help what happened. We’ve got to try again.”

York poured out another drink and handed it over. “Calm down. Just what do you propose to do? Go back down there with your popgun and start blazing away?” Monte sat down and swallowed his drink at a gulp. “I swear to you that there will be no more killing. Not even in self-defense.”

York looked at him and nodded. “I believe that. But where will it get you? You must have some sort of plan.”

“I do. I’m going down there and I’m going to win their confidence. I’m going to find out what makes them tick. When I understand them I can deal with them. I’m going to give Heidelman his peaceful contact if it kills me.”

“That’s not a plan. That’s an ultimatum. We can’t trust those people—they’ve proved that. We’ve got to consider our own security.”

Monte smiled. “That sounds pretty familiar, Bill. That’s the old, old road that leads to nowhere. I can’t trust him. He can’t trust me. So wouldn’t it be better to drop a big fat bomb on him before he drops one on me? Do you want to start that up all over again? Do you want that to be the history of Earth’s first meeting with other men?”

“You gave them every chance to be friendly!” York was a little red in the face; this was a touchy subject. “You bent over backwards. What did it get you? There’s no damn sense in it! I can’t let you go back down there and get yourself killed. That
is
my responsibility.”

Monte grinned; he was feeling better. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Cut it out. I’ll go this far with you—I’ll give you a week. At the end of that time, I want a plan—a real plan. And you’ll have to sell me on it, I warn you. I want a plan that gives a reasonable prospect for success. I want a plan that will ensure your safety. I want a plan we can show the boys back home that makes it dead certain that no more natives get hurt, no matter what good excuses we have. I want the works, in writing.”

“You don’t want much, do you?”

Admiral York permitted himself a smile. “As the man said, you buttered your bread—now lie in it.”

Monte stood up and stuck out his hand. York took it.

“You’ve got yourself a deal, Bill. Thanks. I won’t forget it.”

“If this backfires, neither one of us will ever forget it. But good luck. And try to get some sleep, will you?”

“Sleep? Who has time for sleep?”

Monte turned and walked out of the room.

He hurried along the metal catwalks with the great ship all around him, feeling more alive than he had felt in a long time. There were plans to be made. He stuck his pipe in his mouth and set out to find Charlie Jenike.

He found Charlie Jenike where he had known he would be: crouched over his notebooks and recording equipment in the cold little box-like room Charlie used for his linguistics lab. Charlie was so wrapped up in his work that he didn’t even hear Monte come in.

Monte studied the man, seeing him with fresh eyes. He had never felt really close to Charlie until that fantastic night by the fire in the bloody clearing on Sirius Nine; there had always been a subtle antagonism between them. It was probably nothing much; they just rubbed each other the wrong way. And yet, somehow, he had been fated to commit a murder with Charlie Jenike. In a universe where strangeness lurked behind every commonplace facade, this was surely one of the strangest things of all.

(Oh yes, it had been murder when they had killed the native. Monte knew it and Charlie knew it. They had not even recognized the man. They had never seen him before. They hadn’t known what he wanted or what he was doing. If you come home some night and find your wife has been murdered, you don’t just charge out into the street and shoot the first man you find on the principle that one victim is as good as another. Maybe they had been a little crazy, but that didn’t excuse them in their own minds. What was it that Don King had said in that bull session so long ago?
“We say we’re civilized, which means that we have enough surplus to afford luxuries like high-minded philosophies. But if things got tough I’ll bet we’d be right back where we started from quicker than you can say Cuthbert Pomeroy Gundelfinger; it’d be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a pancreas for a pancreas. That’s the way men are.”
Monte recalled that he had been rather self-righteous in that argument, talking learnedly about progress and ethics and all the rest. He had been pretty sure of himself. But then, it had been a very long time ago…)