In the Beginning (36 page)

Finally he came along, walking briskly and whistling a hymn. He said, “Do you wish to see me?”

“Yes.”

I explained the whole thing: who I was and who Howard was, and why it was so important to let Howard get aboard the ship for Earth. I let him know that there would be two or three thousand credits in it for him if he arranged things so Howard Brian could board the
Oliver Cromwell
next Twoday. At least, I finished, he would die with Earth in sight, even though he might not be permitted to disembark.

I stood there waiting hopefully for an answer and watched his already frosty gaze drop to about three degrees Kelvin. He said, “By the law, Mr. Smit, I should turn you in for attempting to bribe a customs official. But in your case justice should be tempered by mercy. I pity you. Please leave.”

“Dammit, I’ll give you
five
thousand!”

He smiled condescendingly. “Obviously you can’t see that my soul is not for sale—not for five thousand or five billion credits. The law prohibits allowing individuals without visas to board interstellar ships. I ask you to leave before I must report you.”

I left. I saw I was making a head-first assault on a moral code which by its very nature was well-nigh impregnable, and all I was getting out of it was a headache.

Bribery was no good. These people took a masochistic pride in their underpaid incorruptibility: I was forced back on my last resort.

I went to see the Terran Consul. The legal above-board approach was my one slim hope.

Archibald von Junzt McDermott was his name, and he was a tall and angular person clad entirely in black, with a bit of white lace at his throat. It was his duty to comfort, aid, and abet Terran citizens on Salvor. Of course, I was no longer a Terran citizen—that was part of the Amnesty too—but I was of Terran birth, at least.

He wore the full Neopuritan makeup, bleached face, cropped hair, blackened lips; he hardly seemed like a comforting type to me. He sat stiffly erect behind his desk and let me squirm and fidget a while before he said, “You realize, of course, that such a request is impossible to grant. Utterly.”

Quietly I said, “I’m asking for a relaxation of the rules on behalf of one very sick old man who will probably die of joy the moment Earth comes into sight, and who is guaranteed not to touch off a revolution, promote licentiousness, seduce maidens, or otherwise upset the aims and standards of Neopuritan Earth.”

‘”There can be no relaxation of the rules,” Consul McDermott repeated stonily.

“Can’t you look the other way
once?
Don’t you know what pity is, Consul?”

“I know the meaning of the word well. I feel deep pity for you now, Mr. Smit. You have no spine. You are afraid to face the world as it is. You’re a weakling, Mr. Smit, and I offer you my pity.”

“Damned decent of you,” I snorted. “You won’t grant Howard Brian a visa to Earth, then?”

“Definitely not. We’re neither cruel nor vindictive, Mr. Smit. But the standards of society must be upheld. And I cannot find it within my heart to encourage immorality.”

“Okay,” I said. I stood up and flashed a withering glare at him—a glare of pure hate that would have been a credit to the starchiest Neopuritan preacher in the universe.

Then I turned and walked out.

***

It was 1800 when I got back to my flat, and that left me an hour to relax before I had to get down to the theater to set things up for the 2030 performance. I got out of my stiff dress clothes and into my work outfit, and spent a little time on my forthcoming condensation of
Medea
while waiting for the hour to pass. I felt sour with defeat.

The visiphone chime sounded. I activated the receiver and John Ludwig’s face appeared, half in makeup for his role of Gloucester.

“What is it, Johnny?”

“Erik, can you get right down to the theater? Howard’s had a sort of stroke. We’ll have to call off tonight’s performance.”

“I’ll decide that,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”

They had fixed up a rough sort of bed for him in the main dressing-room, and he was stretched out, looking pale and lean and lonely; gobbets of sweat stood out on his forehead. The whole company was standing around, plus a couple of tentacled Arcturan acrobats and the three Damooran hypnotists whose act follows our show each night.

Ludwig said, “He got here early and started making up for
Lear.
Then he just seemed to cave in. He’s been asking for you, Erik.”

I went over to him and took his cool wrist and said, “Howard? You hear me, Howard?”

He didn’t open his eyes, but he said, “Well, how did it go? Did you book the trip for me?”

I took a deep breath. I felt cold and miserable inside, and I glanced around at the tense ring of faces before I told the lie. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure, Howard. I fixed it all up. Leave it to old Erik. Everything’s fine.”

A pathetic trusting childlike smile slowly blossomed on his face. I scowled and snapped to a couple of others, “Carry him into my office. Then get finished making up for tonight’s show.”

Ludwig protested, “But Howard doesn’t have an understudy. How can we—”

“Don’t worry,” I barked.
“I’ll
play Lear tonight, if Howard’s out.”

I supervised as they carried Howard, bed and all, through the corridor into my office. Then, sweating nervously, I collared the three Damoorans and said, “Are you boys doing anything for the next half hour or so?”

“We’re free,” they said in unison. They looked like a trio of tall, red, flashy animated corkscrews with bulbous eyes in their forehead. They weren’t pretty, but they were masters of their trade and fine showmen. They hung around Goznor’s Circus all the time, even when they weren’t on.

I explained very carefully to them just what I wanted them to do. It was an idea I’d held in reserve, in case all else failed. They were dubious, but liberal application of platinum double stellar coins persuaded them to give in. They vanished into my office and shut the door behind them. While I was waiting, I found Howard’s makeup kit and started turning myself into King Lear.

Perhaps fifteen minutes later the Damoorans filed out again, and nodded to me. “You had better go in there, now. He’s on Earth. It was a very good trip.”

I tiptoed into the office. Howard lay sprawled on the bed, eyes screwed tight shut, mouth moving slowly. His skin was a frightening waxy white. I put an ear near his lips to hear what he was mumbling.

“I cannot live to hear the news from England,

But I do prophesy the election lights

On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice:

So tell him, with the occurents, more and less,

Which have solicited—the rest is silence.”

My mind filled in the stage direction:
Dies.
Act Five, Scene Two. Hamlet’s last speech.

Bravo,
I thought. I looked down at Howard Brian. His voice had ceased, and his throat was still. His part was played. Howard Brian had acted Hamlet at last, and it was his finest moment on Broadway.

He was smiling even in death.

The Damoorans had done their job well. For thirty years I had watched them perform, and I had faith in their illusion-creating ability. Howard had probably lived months in these last fifteen minutes. The long journey to Earth, the tickertape parade down Fifth Avenue, the thronged opening-night house, deafening applause. Certainly the Damoorans had manufactured good notices for him in the late editions.

Anyway, it was over. Howard Brian had cheated them after all. He had returned to Earth for his swansong performance.

I shook a little as I left the office and shut the door behind me. The on-stage bell sounded. I heard Kent and Gloucester begin their scene.

I went out there as Lear and maybe I did a good job. The cast told me later that I did, and the Salvori loved it. It didn’t matter. Howard would have wanted the show to go on.

But I couldn’t help thinking, during the solemn aftershow moments when they carried Howard out, that my turn was coming. You can’t go back to Earth; but someday in the next twenty years I was going to want to go back with all my heart, as Howard had wanted. The thought worried me. I only hoped there’d be a few Damoorans around, when my time came.

Second Start

(1959)

Here’s a story written in July, 1958 and published in the February, 1959 issue of
Super-Science Fiction
that is the most interesting rediscovery I made while choosing material for this collection.

As usual, W.W. Scott retitled it for publication—he called it “Re-Conditioned Human.” But when I leafed through the magazine, I needed to read only the first paragraph to realize what I had stumbled upon:

“The name they gave me at the Rehabilitation Center was Paul Macy. It was as good as any other, I guess. The name I was born with was Nat Hamlin, but when you become a Rehab you have to give up your name.”

Paul Macy, who was called Nat Hamlin before being sentenced to rehabilitation for his crimes, is the protagonist of a novel of mine called
The Second Trip,
which was first published in 1972. I wrote it in November, 1970, one of the strongest periods of my writing career.
The Second Trip
is one of my best books. (The novel just preceding it was the Nebula-winning
A Time of Changes;
the one just after it was
The Book of Skulls.)
I rarely re-read my own books, but I happened to read
The Second Trip
a few months ago, in connection with a new edition, for the first time in more than three decades. Coming to it after so many years, I had forgotten most of its details and I was able to read it almost as an outsider, caught up in the narrative as though encountering it for the first time. I have to tell you that I was quite impressed.

Another thing that I had forgotten over the years, it seems, is that back there in 1970 I had based
The Second Trip
on an earlier story, already twelve years old, that I had written one busy morning for
Super-Science Fiction.
Not only had I forgotten that
The Second Trip
had grown out of the earlier story, I had entirely forgotten the whole existence of the earlier story itself, and great was my astonishment when I encountered Paul Macy/Nat Hamlin in that 1959 magazine.

Anyone interested in studying the evolution of a writer would do well to compare the story and the novel that grew out of it. The story is set in a universe of easy travel between stars, many centuries from now. The novel is set on Earth in the year 2011. The former identity of the Macy of the story is an interstellar jewel thief and smuggler, whose old confederates in crime want to force him back into their syndicate. The former identity of the Macy of the novel is a brilliant sculptor who happens also to be a psychopath, and who struggles to regain control of his body after it has been given to a newly created personality. In concept, in handling, in everything, the two works could not have been more different—and yet one plainly grew out of the other, twelve years later. The evidence of the characters’ names is there to prove that. The story is the work of a young man of 23, turning out material as fast as possible to fill the pages of a minor science-fiction magazine. The novel is the work of a mature writer of 35, who was devoting all the skill and energy at his command to the creation of a group of novels that would establish him as one of the leading s-f writers of his day. Reading the two works just a few months apart, as I did last year, was an extraordinary revelatory experience for me.

The name they gave me at the Rehabilitation Center on Earth was Paul Macy. It was as good as any other, I guess. The name I was born with was Nat Hamlin, but when you become a Rehab you have to give up your name.

I didn’t mind that. What I did mind was the idea of having my face changed, since I was pretty well content with my looks the way they were. They gave me the option of choosing either a refacing job or else getting outside the Four Parsec Zone and staying there, and I opted to keep my face and leave Earth. This was how I happened to settle on Palmyra, which is Lambda Scorpii IX, 205 light-years from Earth. I met Ellen on Palmyra. And Dan Helgerson met me. I didn’t figure to run into Helgerson there, but it’s a smaller universe than you think.

Helgerson was a sometime business associate of Nat Hamlin’s—the
late
Nat Hamlin, because that was the way I thought of my former identity. Hamlin had been in the jewel-trading business. Also the jewel-stealing business, the jewelry-fencing business, and the jewelry-smuggling business, and toward the end of his varied career, after he had made contact with an enterprising Sirian who owned a fusion forge, the jewel-making business.

Hamlin was quite a guy. If it had to do with pretty pebbles, and if it happened to be illegal, you could bet Hamlin was mixed up in it. That was why the Galactic Crime Commission finally had to crack down, grab Hamlin, and feed him through the psychic meatgrinder that is the Rehabilitation Center. What came out on the other end, purged of his anti-social impulses and stuff like that, was Paul Macy.

Me.

Naturally they confiscated Hamlin’s wealth, which included a cache of gold in Chicago, a cache of pure iron on Grammas VI, a cache of tungsten on Sirius XIX, and a cache here and there of whatever was most precious to a particular planet. Hamlin had been a smart operator. He had been worth a couple of billions when they caught him. After they finished turning him into me, they gave me five thousand bucks in Galactic scrip—not a hell of a lot of money by Nat Hamlin’s standards—he used to carry that much as pocket-change for tips—but more than enough for Paul Macy to use in starting his new life.

The Rehab people found me a good job on Palmyra, as a minor executive in a canning factory. It was the sort of job where I could make use of Nat Hamlin’s organizational abilities, channelling them constructively into the cause of faster and more efficient squid-canning. Canned squid is Palmyra’s big industry. The fishermen bring them in from the wine-colored sea in the billions, and we ship them all over the universe.