The Third Science Fiction Megapack Page 27

  The next thing he knew, Marica was calling his name. He smelled her perfume and smiled.

  Then he sat up, head aching, and saw Marica. Then beyond Marica he saw a withered husk of a body. Pale, piercing blue eyes gleamed in that shriveled head. It took him a moment to realize what it meant.

  “Are you all right?” the Marica next to him asked.

  No! something inside him screamed. He tried to crawl to her. She can’t be dead—

  “Easy.” The alien Marica pushed him back. “I didn’t mean to harm you. But you would have stopped my—” More clicks.

  Cris tried to speak, couldn’t. His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, and then words he’d never voiced while she was alive all came flooding out:

  “I loved her. How could you? You promised!”

  “I promised you her image.” The alien stood, spread its arms, Marica’s arms. It had donned her holobelt; geometric designs rippled across its human skin in odd patterns. “So?”

  Cris sobbed, feeling all chopped up inside, but couldn’t take his eyes off the alien’s beautiful face.

  It smiled as Marica would have smiled. “I understand you more now. She was a creature of wealth and power, but fickle in her tastes. If you are curious, she liked you in her way. But there was not what you would call love.”

  “I knew that,” he said bitterly. He turned so the creature couldn’t see his face, wouldn’t see the loss and fear and hurt all jumbled up inside.

  “Then why are you so concerned?”

  Cris went to the pilot’s seat and sat mechanically, refusing to speak, refusing to look at Marica’s body or her alien double. His eyes brimmed with tears. Blinking, he gazed into the night. Pain filled him, an ache he thought would never go away. It hurt so much he longed to curl up and die.

  “I only want to go home,” the creature said. Its own homesickness carried through the filter of an alien body. The creature squeezed his shoulder. “Crispin…”

  He wrenched away. “Don’t touch me!”

  “I can be her for you, the way you wanted. It’s all here inside me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He pressed his eyes shut. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

  “How?”

  “I’d know.” He looked at her—and the thing that had become her. The alien smiled with Marica’s quirky smile.

  The autopilot beeped. Cris glanced at the controls. They’d reached Marica’s estate; he must have been unconscious longer than he’d thought. Long enough for an alien to suck out her soul.

  When they landed, he fled on foot. The alien called to him in Marica’s voice, but he didn’t look back.

  * * * *

  Marica’s face haunted him every inch of the way home. He saw her in reflections, in the play of neon on glass, in the smoke and clouds and exhaust fumes. Her laugh sounded in the whine of repeller fields; her voice spoke through muted music.

  Two hours later, when he stumbled into his studio, he came face to face with an unfinished canvas. He had the background done, a bleak wintry field with bales of hay stacked at one end. It needed a figure to be complete—Marica’s figure.

  He seized a brush and tried sketching Marica from memory, but his vision of her had all gone sour and he couldn’t seem to catch the curve of her cheek or the swanlike arch of her neck. Gone. Like he’d forgotten her. Like he’d never drawn her before.

  He hurled his brush away in disgust, smashed that canvas in a blind frenzy, then scattered all the others stacked against the wall. God, why didn’t the pain go away?

  Conscience, he thought suddenly. He needed to purge himself. Isn’t that what you did? Cleansed your soul, purified your flesh, scoured the ashes of your mind?

  He crossed to the vidphone and made the call he should’ve made the moment he’d seen the alien.

  “Police,” said a bored-looking man in black uniform.

  “I…I want to report a murder,” Cris said.

  That got the man’s attention. He touched buttons, read information Cris couldn’t see. “You’re Crispin Szand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Officers have been dispatched. You know this conversation is being taped?”

  “Yes.” Numbly.

  “And anything you say can be used in a court as evidence?”

  “Yes.” And on and on they went through the routine.

  Minutes later the doorbell rang. “That’s them now,” the man said. “Let them in.”

  Cris rose and opened the door. Two women in blue uniforms were waiting, one a striking blonde, the other dark.

  They introduced themselves and showed their badges. “You reported a murder?” the dark-haired one asked.

  “Yes. Come in.”

  Then listened quite patiently while he babbled his story, but he could tell they didn’t believe him. One look around his studio, at the paint-splattered walls, at the canvases he’d destroyed in his fury, made it clear he’d gone insane. His pants had garbage stains from the alley, his shirt had paint all over it, and he hadn’t shaved or showered or combed his hair.

  “I’m sorry,” he said then, spreading his hands. “I know how this must sound. But if you’ll call her house, you’ll see. That thing will answer.”

  “Sir…”

  But he insisted, and finally they gave in. The alien Marica answered on the second ring.

  “Are you Marica Donetti?” the blonde officer asked.

  “Yes, of course. Is something wrong?”

  “Do you know a Crispin Szand?”

  “He’s my ex. Why?”

  “I think it’s getting clearer.” She explained Cris’s wild accusations.

  The alien laughed as Marica would have laughed and denied everything as Marica would have denied it. Who could believe such an impossible story? Cris found he couldn’t blame the police for their skepticism. It did sound crazy, even to him. He only wished none of it had happened.

  “Crispin is a great artist,” the alien Marica explained, “and he suffers strange outbursts and odd delusions at times. That’s what makes him a genius, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the blonde said.

  So they arrested Cris instead.

  Figures, Cris thought as they led him away. And justice triumphs once more.

  * * * *

  They let him go that afternoon with stern warnings about what happened to citizens who filed false reports. He agreed to leave Marica strictly alone and considered himself lucky. If they had discovered the alien, he would certainly have been an accessory to murder or something like that. Perhaps this was best in the end.

  Over the next few months he found he’d lost the will to paint. He lived off sales of his finished works. With the supply cut off, prices began to climb. Rumors spread that he was burned out, or dying, or insane. Someone ferreted out the story of his arrest and that seemed confirmation enough for most.

  Cris made enough to live comfortably. He took to spending all his time scanning the NewsNets for articles about the alien. Being (as she was) queen of the glitterfolk, Marica had a certain following, and her every notorious move made the social files.

  Slowly, Cris noticed, the alien was easing Marica from the public eye. She became a recluse, then an ardent investor in space. “Glitterqueen Comes Of Age,” read the last article he saw about her.

  She’d used most of her fortune to buy a frontier planet whose main export seemed to be sugarreed. She’d even booked passage out there to inspect her new purchase, in a move that surprised everyone but Cris.

  Cris went down to the spaceport the day of her departure. Marica wore simple robes now, not the outlandish costumes that had made her such a rage among glitterfolk, and none of her old friends had turned out to see her off. She boarded the starship alone, with only the crew around her, and that was the end of it all.

  They flamed off not long after. Cris stared until he couldn’t see their ship’s tail of fire anymore, and a long time after.

  He felt hollow inside, like he’d lost more
than he knew. But he also felt a curious sort of relief, a great burden lifted from his soul. Free, he decided. I’m free of her.

  For a time he wondered how much of Marica the alien would take back to its world…and whether it could free itself from her grip. Even in death, Marica had power.

  But now, when he closed his eyes, he didn’t see her face anymore. And maybe, just maybe he could learn to be happy again.

  A QUESTION OF COURAGE, by J. F. Bone

  I smelled the trouble the moment I stepped on the lift and took the long ride up the side of the “Lachesis.” There was something wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it but five years in the Navy gives a man a feeling for these things. From the outside the ship was beautiful, a gleaming shaft of duralloy, polished until she shone. Her paint and brightwork glistened. The antiradiation shields on the gun turrets and launchers were folded back exactly according to regulations. The shore uniform of the liftman was spotless and he stood at his station precisely as he should. As the lift moved slowly up past no-man’s country to the life section, I noted a work party hanging precariously from a scaffolding smoothing out meteorite pits in the gleaming hull, while on the catwalk of the gantry standing beside the main cargo hatch a steady stream of supplies disappeared into the ship’s belly.

  I returned the crisp salutes of the white-gloved sideboys, saluted the colors, and shook hands with an immaculate ensign with an O.D. badge on his tunic.

  “Glad to have you aboard, sir,” the ensign said.

  “I’m Marsden,” I said. “Lieutenant Thomas Marsden. I have orders posting me to this ship as Executive.”

  “Yes, sir. We have been expecting you. I’m Ensign Halloran.”

  “Glad to meet you, Halloran.”

  “Skipper’s orders, sir. You are to report to him as soon as you come aboard.”

  Then I got it. Everything was SOP. The ship wasn’t taut, she was tight! And she wasn’t happy. There was none of the devil-may-care spirit that marks crews in the Scouting Force and separates them from the stodgy mass of the Line. Every face I saw on my trip to the skipper’s cabin was blank, hard-eyed, and unsmiling. There was none of the human noise that normally echoes through a ship, no laughter, no clatter of equipment, no deviations from the order and precision so dear to admirals’ hearts. This crew was G.I. right down to the last seam tab on their uniforms. Whoever the skipper was, he was either bucking for another cluster or a cold-feeling automaton to whom the Navy Code was father, mother, and Bible.

  The O.D. stopped before the closed door, executed a mechanical right face, knocked the prescribed three times and opened the door smartly on the heels of the word “Come” that erupted from the inside. I stepped in followed by the O.D.

  “Commander Chase,” the O.D. said. “Lieutenant Marsden.”

  Chase! Not Cautious Charley Chase! I could hardly look at the man behind the command desk. But look I did—and my heart did a ninety degree dive straight to the thick soles of my space boots. No wonder this ship was sour. What else could happen with Lieutenant Commander Charles Augustus Chase in command! He was three classes up on me, but even though he was a First Classman at the time I crawled out of Beast Barracks, I knew him well. Every Midshipman in the Academy knew him—Rule-Book Charley—By-The-Numbers Chase—his nicknames were legion and not one of them was friendly. “Lieutenant Thomas Marsden reporting for duty,” I said.

  He looked at the O.D. “That’ll be all, Mr. Halloran,” he said.

  “Aye, sir,” Halloran said woodenly. He stepped backward, saluted, executed a precise about face and closed the hatch softly behind him.

  * * * *

  “Sit down, Marsden,” Chase said. “Have a cigarette.”

  He didn’t say, “Glad to have you aboard.” But other than that he was Navy right down to the last parenthesis. His voice was the same dry schoolmaster’s voice I remembered from the Academy. And his face was the same dry gray with the same fishy blue eyes and rat trap jaw. His hair was thinner, but other than that he hadn’t changed. Neither the war nor the responsibilities of command appeared to have left their mark upon him. He was still the same lean, undersized square-shouldered blob of nastiness.

  I took the cigarette, sat down, puffed it into a glow, and looked around the drab 6 x 8 foot cubicle called the Captain’s cabin by ship designers who must have laughed as they laid out the plans. It had about the room of a good-sized coffin. A copy of the Navy Code was lying on the desk. Chase had obviously been reading his bible.

  “You are three minutes late, Marsden,” Chase said. “Your orders direct you to report at 0900. Do you have any explanation?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “Don’t let it happen again. On this ship we are prompt.”

  “Aye, sir,” I muttered.

  He smiled, a thin quirk of thin lips. “Now let me outline your duties, Marsden. You are posted to my ship as Executive Officer. An Executive Officer is the Captain’s right hand.”

  “So I have heard,” I said drily.

  “Belay that, Mr. Marsden. I do not appreciate humor during duty hours.”

  You wouldn’t, I thought.

  “As I was saying, Marsden, Executive Officer, you will be responsible for—” He went on and on, covering the Code—chapter, book and verse on the duties of an Executive Officer. It made no difference that I had been Exec under Andy Royce, the skipper of the “Clotho,” the ship with the biggest confirmed kill in the entire Fleet Scouting Force. I was still a new Exec, and the book said I must be briefed on my duties. So “briefed” I was—for a solid hour.

  Feeling angry and tired, I finally managed to get away from Rule Book Charley and find my quarters which I shared with the Engineer. I knew him casually, a glum reservist named Allyn. I had wondered why he always seemed to have a chip on his shoulder. Now I knew.

  He was lying in his shock-couch as I came in. “Welcome, sucker,” he greeted me. “Glad to have you aboard.”

  “The feeling’s not mutual,” I snapped.

  “What’s the matter? Has the Lieutenant Commander been rolling you out on the red carpet?”

  “You could call it that,” I said. “I’ve just been told the duties of an Exec. Funny—no?”

  He shook his head. “Not funny. I feel for you. He told me how to be an engineer six months ago.” Allyn’s thin face looked glummer than usual.

  “Did I ever tell you about our skip—captain?” Allyn went on. “Or do I have to tell you? I see you’re wearing an Academy ring.”

  “You can’t tell me much I haven’t already heard,” I said coldly. I don’t like wardroom gossips as a matter of policy. A few disgruntled men on a ship can shoot morale to hell, and on a ship this size the Exec is the morale officer. But I was torn between two desires. I wanted Allyn to go on, but I didn’t want to hear what Allyn had to say. I was like the proverbial hungry mule standing halfway between two haystacks of equal size and attractiveness. And like the mule I would stand there turning my head one way and the other until I starved to death.

  But Allyn solved my problem for me. “You haven’t heardthis,” he said bitterly. “The whole crew applied for transfer when we came back to base after our last cruise. Of course, they didn’t get it, but you get the idea. Us reservists and draftees get about the same consideration as the Admiral’s dog—No! dammit!—Less than the dog. They wouldn’t let a mangy cur ship out with Gutless Gus.”

  Gutless Gus! that was a new one. I wondered how Chase had managed to acquire that sobriquet.

  * * * *

  “It was on our last patrol,” Allyn went on, answering my question before I asked it. “We were out at maximum radius when the detectors showed a disturbance in normal space. Chase ordered us down from Cth for a quick look—and so help me, God, we broke out right in the middle of a Rebel supply convoy—big, fat, sitting ducks all around us. We got off about twenty Mark VII torpedoes before Chase passed the word to change over. We scooted back into Cth so fast we hardly knew we were gone. And then he raises hell with
Detector section for not identifying every class of ship in that convoy!

  “And when Bancroft, that’s the Exec whom you’ve relieved, asked for a quick check to confirm our kills, Chase sat on him like a ton of brick. ‘I’m not interested in how many poor devils we blew apart back there,’ our Captain says. ‘Our mission is to scout, to obtain information about enemy movements and get that information back to Base. We cannot transmit information from a vaporized ship, and that convoy had a naval escort. Our mission cannot be jeopardized merely to satisfy morbid curiosity. Request denied. And, Mr. Bancroft, have Communications contact Fleet. This information should be in as soon as possible.’ And then he turned away leaving Bancroft biting his fingernails. He wouldn’t even push out a probe—scooted right back into the blue where we’d be safe!

  “You know, we haven’t had one confirmed kill posted on the list since we’ve been in space. It’s getting so we don’t want to come in any more. Like the time—the ‘Atropos’ came in just after we touched down. She was battered—looked like she’d been through a meat grinder, but she had ten confirmed and six probable, and four of them were escorts! Hell! Our boys couldn’t hold their heads up. The ‘Lachesis’ didn’t have a mark on her and all we had was a few possible hits. You know how it goes—someone asks where you’re from. You say the ‘Lachesis’ and they say ‘Oh, yes, the cruise ship.’ And that’s that. It’s so true you don’t even feel like resenting it.”

  I didn’t like the bitter note in Allyn’s voice. He was a reservist, which made it all the worse. Reservists have ten times the outside contacts we regulars do. In general when a regular and reservist tangle, the Academy men close ranks like musk-oxen and meet the challenge with an unbroken ring of horns. But somehow I didn’t feel like ringing up.

  I kept hoping there was another side to the story. I’d check around and find out as soon as I got settled. And if there was another side, I was going to take Allyn apart as a malicious trouble-maker. I felt sick to my stomach.

  * * * *

  We spent the next three days taking on stores and munitions, and I was too busy supervising the stowage and checking manifests to bother about running down Allyn’s story. I met the other officers—Lt. Pollard the gunnery officer, Ensign Esterhazy the astrogator, and Ensign Blakiston. Nice enough guys, but all wearing that cowed, frustrated look that seemed to be a “Lachesis” trademark. Chase, meanwhile, was up in Flag Officer’s Country picking up the dope on our next mission. I hoped that Allyn was wrong but the evidence all seemed to be in his favor. Even more than the officers, the crew was a mess underneath their clean uniforms. From Communications Chief CPO Haskins to Spaceman Zelinski there was about as much spirit in them as you’d find in a punishment detail polishing brightwork in Base Headquarters. I’m a cheerful soul, and usually I find no trouble getting along with a new command, but this one was different. They were efficient enough, but one could see that their hearts weren’t in their work. Most crews preparing to go out are nervous and high tempered. There was none of that here. The men went through the motions with a mechanical indifference that was frightening. I had the feeling that they didn’t give a damn whether they went or not—or came back or not. The indifference was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Yet there was nothing you could put your hand on. You can’t touch people who don’t care.