A Scatter of Stardust Read online

  Laura was smiling as we returned to the ship. I learned the reason for that smile long before we reached Earth.

  I had forgotten that Holman was a psychologist. I had underestimated my own importance and ignored the fact that my acquired skill was not to be lightly cast aside. Not by the government which, apparently, needed me. But wanted me sane.

  “It was a trick,” said Holman during our last night in space. “I make no excuses, a practitioner does not have to justify his cures. Laura isn’t a widow. She is an actress.” He looked sharply at me. “Are you surprised?”

  “No,” I said truthfully. Tm not surprised.”

  An intelligent man does not lose all his intelligence because one facet of it is dulled. I had had time to think, and little things, seen in a new light, had become obvious. Holman’s hints, the coincidence of her being missing, even the doctor’s conviction as to where she could have gone. She had heard me coming, of course, and had timed things well. She had never been in any danger but I hadn’t known that. In my anxiety for her I had destroyed my own illusion, faced it and recognized it for what it was. But I had found in return something of infinitely greater value.

  I smiled down at Holman and left him staring, his eyes perplexed. I could have enlightened him, but there was no time.

  Laura was waiting.

  Anne

  There is a place where there is no hurt, no sorrow, no fear, no regret. There has always been such a place. Some call it Heaven.

  One man found it.

  He fled the Cygni battle in a broken ship splotched with corrosive blue fire, the main drive screaming like a woman in pain as it kicked him through space away from the beams, the fire, the expanding flowers of atomic disruption. He wasn’t old. Space fighter pilots are never old. He wasn’t strong. He had no need of muscle. He was a scrap of soft, commanding jelly locked in the protective womb of his ship.

  His name was Argonne.

  He had chosen it himself after much searching through old books of forgotten wars. He wasn’t alone in this. All his companions of that time had adopted the names of famous battles, driven by the notion that a thing takes on the attributes of its name. Earlier his type had chosen to wear the names of great heroes, later of noted weapons. All hoped to gain power and strength from their choice. Argonne had failed.

  He was a coward. The warriors of the Pentarch do not run. They are either victorious or dead, and he was neither. He had fled the battle while he still had life, still had a ship responsive to his commands, still had an enemy large in his sights. He could have fought until his body and vessel joined the others in incandescent ruin but he had chosen to run.

  He was still running.

  He groaned as he lay on his couch before the controls, breathing red-misted air which stank of burning and tasted of char. Beneath a ruby patina his face was a mask of pain. The numbing hypnotic techniques had failed when he needed them most. He was quite alone. The Hatachi beam which had pulped the lower part of his legs had caught his apprentice with undeflected force. The red mist in the air was his flesh and blood jarred to instant molecular disruption. The rest of him sprawled on his couch, naked bone flecked with red and gray, plastic clothing smeared with slime. He was amused. The skull bore a cheerful smile.

  Argonne could not appreciate the humor. He frowned through his pain as he listened to the voice of the ship. Always before it had whispered with a soft, almost inaudible humming, a smooth, smug satisfaction. Not even when entering battle and the hum had deepened to a feral purr had it screamed as it did now. But never before had the ship been so badly hurt.

  And neither had Argonne.

  He sank his teeth into his lower lip, adding a small pain to the greater, concentrating on the cruel impact of his teeth in an effort to minimize the molten agony of his legs. He fumbled at the arm of the couch, pressed a familiar button, felt again the sick despair as the needle which should have brought oblivion failed to respond. Painfully he reached forward and wiped the instruments of their ruby film. Sweat made temporary trails over his face as he read their message.

  The ship needed help.

  Argonne gripped the sides of his couch and tensed the muscles in shoulders, back and arms. He heaved and tasted fresh blood as he fought the pain from his legs. Twice more he tried before admitting defeat. Sagging he gave up the struggle. He wiped his face and looked at the red wetness on his palm. He choked on the misted air. He was careful not to look down at his legs.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the ship. “I can’t do it. I can’t help you.”

  It wasn’t because he didn’t know how.

  Broken, battered and bleeding as the ship was he could still have helped. He could have blown away the contaminated hull, sealed the control room, changed the air filters, cut out the distorted power drive and repaired the seared insulation. He could have healed the crippled vessel and given back to its computer nominal control. He had been trained to do that and he still retained his knowledge. But to use it he needed both dexterity and mobility. He still had dexterity. He had lost his mobility.

  There was nothing he could do.

  He was a failure as well as a coward.

  The scream of the ship was a justified accusation. He blinked at the stinging of his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I just can’t help you. I’m crippled. I can’t move. Please, you must understand.”

  Weakly he sagged back against the couch on which he lived and slept. He didn’t blame the ship for screaming. It had reason to scream.

  And so did he.

  *

  He couldn’t remember the landing. He didn’t know what star this planet circled or what slot had opened between dimensions to permit their entry but they must have landed, for the screaming was gone, the air was clean and he was no longer lying before the controls.

  He was lying on a bed of cloud beneath a roof of purple in a room simply but tastefully furnished with vaguely familiar things. A bureau he had used at the academy? The books he had once owned when young? A painting he had cut from a magazine? He frowned and looked down at himself. He wore a single garment caught over one shoulder, belted at the waist, ending just above his knees. He looked at his legs — they were whole.

  He looked up and saw the woman standing at his side.

  “You have been asleep,” she said. “Now you are awake. I am glad that you are awake.”

  He didn’t answer, trying again to recall the landing, but all he could remember was noise and confusion and a red mist of pain. He looked again at his legs.

  “We repaired you,” said the woman. “You are perfectly well now.”

  He moved his legs, lifting his knees, feeling the shift and tension of muscle.

  “And my ship?”

  “In capable hands. The damage was extensive and medication will take longer. You see the hull was — ”

  “I know the extent of the damage,” he interrupted. “But it will be all right?”

  “Yes. It will be perfectly all right.”

  Her voice was soft and musical. The touch of her hand on his arm as he rose was warm and gentle. He stood upright and her eyes were just below the level of his own. Her hair was blonde and swept about the lines of her slender throat. She wore a garment as simple as his own. Her figure was superb.

  He felt that he knew her, had known her for a long, long time.

  “Where are we?”

  “A place,” she said. “A safe place.”

  He nodded, no longer curious as to where he was. He stared into her eyes.

  “What is your name?”

  “Anne,” she said.

  “Anne — with an ‘e’?”

  “Yes,” she said. “With an ‘e’. How did you know?”

  He had known as he knew the other things about her. As he sensed the warm, protective comfort of her presence. As he knew that she was wholly and utterly his. How he knew did not worry him. He seemed to have lost the capability of care.

  *

&nbs
p; They left the room. They did not walk or he had no remembrance of walking. One moment they were in the room with its vaguely familiar furnishings, the next they were standing beneath a summer sun in a garden bright with flowers. He was not surprised. Such mobility was simply the achievement of desire without the tedium of effort.

  He halted before a bush which bore fruit and bud and flower — a miracle of botanical engineering which ensured that here there could be no seasons of birth and death and decay. Here it was always summer. And winter?

  “There are places where there is always snow and ice,” said Anne. She seemed able to read his thoughts. “The sun is warm but the snow doesn’t melt. Shall we go there?”

  They went and played in the snow and slid on ice and sported in a world which was all white and blue and crisp. They went to a shallow beach which sloped to a rolling sea and swam in the surf, chasing finny creatures of remarkable agility before returning to their discarded clothes. They went to where a forest covered soaring hills in brilliant greens and somber browns and walked among giant trees while eating strange berries and succulent fruits. Then they returned to the garden.

  It was still midday, still as if they had never left. Time here did not move on a relentless path from cradle to grave. There was only the joy of a moment stretched to eternity.

  And they were alone.

  Quite alone.

  *

  “Talk to me,” said Anne. She rested beside him on a mossy bank which fell to a tinkling stream. The scent of her was a perfume in his nostrils. Argonne stirred and looked thoughtfully into the water.

  “What about?”

  “Of yourself. Of your past. Of the things you once considered important.”

  “Of the Pentarch?” He turned and looked at her, wondering a little, then dismissing the doubt. What could she do against the massed might of Earth? “The Pentarch,” he said slowly. “The Pentarch is the race of Man. The rule of five.”

  “Five what?”

  “Five different categories of human beings: those who need metaphorical walls; those who must fight; those who must create; those who are content to build, and those who can do nothing but lead. Five interrelated and integrated branches of the human race. Five fingers of the same hand.” He lifted his own and flexed the fingers before closing them into a fist “The Pentarch!”

  “And?”

  “And what?” He looked down at the glory of her hair. She smiled up into his eyes.

  “And what were you?”

  “A warrior.” He was curt with a sense of guilt.

  “A fighter?” She frowned. “Someone who destroys?”

  “Someone who destroys the enemies of Man,” he corrected. He looked at his clenched fist then slowly opened it. “The Hatachi!”

  He had never seen one of the strange “other race” which had taken it on itself to defy the destiny of Man. They had always been flecks on a screen, the target for his missiles, the focus of his beams. They were the enemy and that was enough. They existed only to be destroyed.

  He felt the sudden acceleration of his heart, the quickening pulse of his blood, the tension of his body as he thought about the Hatachi. Logic had nothing to do with it. He would have felt the same had he been a doctor fighting death and disease, or a pest destroyer waging war on vermin. He was born to fight. What didn’t really matter.

  “Don’t!” said Anne. “Don’t look like that!”

  He ignored the woman. There was something wrong with this place. He had accepted everything too readily, had taken it at its face value, but his nature could not be passive. He frowned, again trying to remember the landing, but it was useless. Noise and confusion and shapeless images and then the wakening. And the woman.

  Only the woman?

  He had seen no one else. He had been here — how long? There was no way of telling. It was always midday, always summer. Always soft and warm and gentle. Time here did not exist.

  And yet he was not content.

  Something was missing.

  *

  He heard her scream and turned and saw it and felt himself grown suddenly calm. It was the enemy; it could be nothing else. The squat, amorphous shape did not belong in this place. Nothing so hideous could have belonged. It was a strangeness, perhaps an arrival like himself, or perhaps it had followed him; it didn’t matter. It had to be destroyed.

  Argonne rose to his feet and stepped toward it.

  He was unarmed but the fact didn’t disturb him. He advanced toward the enemy, nose crinkling at its stench of burning, the odor tasting like char. A tendril lashed at his lower legs the touch burning like acid. It screamed as it rushed to battle.

  Argonne snarled his reply and extended his hands.

  It was a peculiar struggle. The thing fought with fanatical strength but still he prevailed. He gripped something soft and tore at noisome flesh and heard the screaming through the sickening air. He lifted and swung the thing from the ground, hurling it toward the sun. It rose and fell, and a rain of ruby droplets spumed from the pulped body and misted the air. Argonne felt wetness on his face.

  “Darling!” Anne was with him. Somehow she stooped over him, her hair a golden curtain about his face. The droplets had stained the whiteness of her skin.

  “Darling!”

  Her arms held him very close. So close they constricted his breathing.

  “Darling!”

  Her lips offered themselves to his.

  “Darling!”

  And then, as he reached for her, her face changed. It grew stiff and cold and impersonal. Only the red patina remained the same.

  He looked at the instrument panel of his ship.

  *

  He lay for a long while, not moving, feeling only the numbing ache of tremendous loss. Around him the ship screamed its agony, but muted now as if finally accepting the fact that nothing could be done. Or perhaps his hearing was at fault. It didn’t matter.

  Neither of them had any reason to hope.

  His lower legs radiated pain and an icy burning reached to his hips. His skin glowed with fever. He was drowning in the blood-filled air. The instruments told him that the corrosive blue fire on the hull had almost eaten its way to his section of the ship. He could do nothing to help himself. He could do nothing to help the vessel.

  But it had tried to help him.

  He turned his head and looked at the dream cap which had somehow fallen from its catch into position above his head. The cap which provided the essential paradoxical sleep during his times of rest. How had it fallen from its catch?

  Vibration, perhaps? More vibration to switch it on and thus provide an avenue of escape from this living hell. The only avenue of escape. He wondered what had happened to break the circuit and shatter his dream.

  “Thank you,” he said to the ship. “You did your best. Thank you.”

  But he was not sorry that the ship had failed, that the dream circuit had been broken. He would not have liked to lie in the safe, snug world of illusion while the ship had nothing of comfort. It is bad to die alone.

  Argonne had lived a solitary, dedicated life, and it was natural for him to have followed ancient custom. The personalizing and naming of weapons is not new. He looked at the four letters mounted above the instrument panel.

  “Anne,” he murmured. “With an ‘e’.”

  The girl he had never had, the wife he would never get, the dream he would never know again. The ship he had tried to save by running from those who would hurt her.

  Anne!

  Who had shown him Heaven.

  This time he did not try to blink away his tears. They belonged. For around him something beautiful was dying.

  Return Visit

  “You know,” said the demon conversationally, “things have changed quite a bit since the old days.”

  “They have?” Despite the pounding of his heart and an unusual shortness of breath Chris managed to appear as nonchalant as he intended. “Do tell,” he urged, and settling back in his chair lit a
cigarette with fingers laudably steady. Which, all things considered, was quite a feat. The demon seemed appreciative.

  “You’re a cool one,” he said admiringly. “You don’t seem a bit scared.”

  “Why should I be scared?” Chris blew a careful smoke ring toward the pentagram he had chalked on his neutral colored Wilton. “You are the product of a carefully conducted scientific experiment and there is no more reason for me to be afraid of you than there would be for me to be scared of a bacteriological culture I may have bred on an agar plate. Had you not appeared when summoned I would have been disappointed. Why should I be terrified because my experiment was a success?”

  It sounded logical enough and it would have been nice had it been wholly true, but it wasn’t and for a variety of reasons. A nice, normal, twentieth-century man just doesn’t conduct experiments, scientific or otherwise, calling for chalk marks scrawled on the carpet, braziers burning a redolent mixture of exotic herbs, assorted entrails and gooey internal liquids of freshly defunct organisms. Still more, they don’t conduct such experiments to the accompaniment of mystic gestures, symbolic sacrifices and memorized chants in a tongue-twisting language. And if they do, just for the curiosity of it maybe, or because they are bored enough or desperate enough to try anything once, and the experiment succeeds, then a little perturbation is to be excused.

  Chris Neville was more than a little perturbed; he was scared from his scalp to his toenails. Sternly he reminded himself that there was absolutely no reason to be afraid. So what if his hidden guest did happen to look like a badly drawn impression of some medieval artist’s conception of an attendant of the lower regions? He couldn’t help the way he looked, could he? And his opening conversational gambit had shown promise.

  “It’s all a matter of logic,” said Chris. “Logic and a scientific mind. After all, I expected you. That’s what the ceremony was for.” He inhaled again, letting smoke stream from his nostrils. The demon stared in frank admiration.