Starfarers (69 page)

“Please, no, Scanish, he’s listening!”

“And I hope he—”

“Never mind, dear. What shall we do next? Go to Halgor’s?” She attempted a show of interest.

“Ah, we’ve been there a hundred times. What is there to do? How about getting my rocket and shooting over to China? I know a place where they got techniques you never—”

“No. I’m not in the mood. I don’t know what I want to do.”

“My nerves have been terrible lately. We bought a new doctor, but he says just the same as the old one. They don’t any of them know which end is up. I might try this new Beltanist religion, they seem to have something. It would at least be amusing.”

“Say, have you heard about Marla’s latest? You know who was seen coming out of her bedroom last ten-day?”

Kenri grabbed hold of his mind and forced it away from listening. He didn’t want to. He wouldn’t let the weariness and sickness of spirit which was the old tired Empire invade him.

Dorthy,
he thought.
Dorthy Persis from Canda. It’s a beautiful name, isn’t it? There’s music in it. And the from Candas have always been an outstanding family. She isn’t like the rest of the Stars.

She loves me,
he thought with a singing in him.
She loves me. There is a life before us. Two of us, one life, and the rest of the Empire can rot as it will. We’ll be together.

He saw the skyscraper ahead of him now, a thing of stone and crystal and light that climbed toward heaven in one great rush. The insigne of the from Candas burned on its façade, an ancient and proud symbol. It stood for 300 years of achievement.

But that’s less than my own lifetime. No, I don’t have to be ashamed in their presence. I come of the oldest and best line of all humanity. I’ll fit in.

He wondered why he could not shake off the depression that clouded him. This was a moment of glory. He should be going to her as a conqueror. But—

He sighed and rose as his stop approached.

Pain stabbed at him. He jumped, stumbled, and fell to one knee. Slowly, his head twisted around. The young Star grinned in his face, holding up a shockstick. Kenri’s hand rubbed the pain, and the four people began to laugh. So did everyone else in sight. The laughter followed him off the skyway and down to the ground.

There was
no one else on the bridge. One man was plenty to stand watch, here in the huge emptiness between suns. The room was a hollow cavern of twilight, quiet except for the endless throbbing of the ship. Here and there, the muted light of instrument panels glowed, and the weird radiance of the distorted stars flamed in the viewport. But otherwise there was no illumination, Kenri had switched it off.

She came through the door and paused, her gown white in the dusk. His throat tightened as he looked at her, and when he bowed, his head swam. There was a faint sweet rustling as she walked closer. She had the long swinging stride of freedom, and her unbound hair floated silkily behind her.

“I’ve never been on a bridge before,” she said. “I didn’t think passengers were allowed there.”

“I invited you, Freelady,” he answered, his voice catching.

“It was good of you, Kenri Shaun.” Her fingers fluttered across his arm. “You have always been good to me.”

“Could anyone be anything else, to you?” he asked.

Light stole along her cheeks and into the eyes that turned up at his. She smiled with a strangely timid curve of lips. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Ah, I, well—” He gestured at the viewport, which seemed to hang above their heads. “That is precisely on the ship’s axis of rotation, Freelady,” he said. “That’s why the view is constant. Naturally, ‘down’ on the bridge is any point at which you are standing. You’ll note that the desks and panels are arranged in a circle around the inner wall, to take advantage of that fact.” His voice sounded remote and strange to his ears. “Now here we have the astrogation computer. Ours is badly in need of overhauling just now, which is why you see all those books and calculations on my desk—”

Her hand brushed the back of his chair. “This is yours, Kenri Shaun? I can almost see you working away on it, with that funny tight look on your face, as if the problem were your personal enemy. Then you sigh, and run your fingers through your hair, and put your feet on the desk to think for a while. Am I right?”

“How did you guess, Freelady?”

“I know. I’ve thought a great deal about you, lately.” She looked away, out to the harsh blue-white stars clustered in the viewport.

Suddenly her fists gathered themselves. “I wish you didn’t make me feel so futile,” she said.

“You—”

“This is life, here.” She spoke swiftly, blurring the words in her need to say them. “You’re keeping Earth alive, with your cargoes. You’re working and fighting and thinking about—about something real. Not about what to wear for dinner and who was seen where with whom and what to do tonight when you’re too restless and unhappy to stay quietly at home. You’re keeping Earth alive, I said, and a dream too. I envy you, Kenri Shaun. I wish I were born into the Kith.”

“Freelady—” It rattled in his throat.

“No use.” She smiled, without self-pity. “Even if a ship would have me, I could never go. I don’t have the training, or the inborn strength, or the patience, or—No! Forget it.” There were tears in the ardent eyes. “When I get home, knowing now what you are in the Kith, will I even try to help you? Will I work for more understanding of your people, kindness, common decency? No. I’ll realize it’s useless even to try. I won’t have the courage.”

“You’d be wasting your time, Freelady,” he said. “No one person can change a whole culture. Don’t worry about it.”

“I know,” she replied. “You’re right, of course. You’re always right. But in my place, you would try!”

They stared at each other for a long moment.

That was the first time he kissed her.

The two guards
at the soaring main entrance were giants, immobile as statues in the sunburst glory of their uniforms. Kenri had to crane his neck to look into the face of the nearest. “The Freelady Dorthy Persis is expecting me,” he said.

“Huh?”
Shock brought the massive jaw clicking down.

“That’s right.” Kenri grinned and extended the card she had given him. “She said to look her up immediately.”

“But—there’s a party going on—”

“Never mind. Call her up.”

The guardsman reddened, opened his mouth, and snapped it shut again. Turning, he went to the visiphone booth. Kenri waited, regretting his insolence.
Give ’em a finger and they’ll take your whole arm.
But how else could a Kithman behave? If he gave deference, they called him a servile bootlicker; if he showed his pride, he was an obnoxious pushing bastard; if he dickered for a fair price, he was a squeezer and bloodsucker; if he spoke his own old language to his comrades, he was being secretive; if he cared more for his skyfaring people than for an ephemeral nation, he was a traitor and coward; if—

The guard returned, shaking his head in astonishment. “All right,” he said sullenly. “Go on up. First elevator to your right, fiftieth floor. But watch your manners, tommy.”

When I’m adopted into the masters,
thought Kenri savagely,
I’ll make him eat that word.
Then, with a new rising of the unaccountable weariness:
No. Why should I? What would anyone gain by it?

He went under the enormous curve of the door, into a foyer that was a grotto of luminous plastic. A few Standard servants goggled at him, but made no move to interfere. He found the elevator cage and punched for 50. It rose in a stillness broken only by the sudden rapid thunder of his heart.

He emerged into an anteroom of red velvet. Beyond an arched doorway, he glimpsed colors floating, a human blaze of red and purple and gold; the air was loud with music and laughter. The footman at the entrance stepped in his path, hardly believing the sight. “You can’t go in there!”

“The hell I can’t.” Kenri shoved him aside and strode through the arch. The radiance hit him like a fist, and he stood blinking at the confusion of dancers, servants, onlookers, entertainers—there must be a thousand people in the vaulted chamber.

“Kenri! Oh, Kenri—”

She was in his arms, pressing her mouth to his, drawing his head down with shaking hands. He strained her close, and the misty cloak she wore whirled about to wrap them in aloneness.

One moment, and then she drew back breathlessly, laughing a little. It wasn’t quite the merriment he had known, there was a thin note to it, and shadows lay under the great eyes. She was very tired, he saw, and pity lifted in him. “Dearest,” he whispered.

“Kenri, not here … Oh, darling, I hoped you would come sooner, but—No, come with me now, I want them all to see the man I’ve got with me.” She took his hand and half dragged him forward. The dancers were stopping, pair by pair as they noticed the stranger, until at last there were a thousand faces stiffly turned to his. Silence dropped like a thunderclap, but the music kept on. It sounded tinny in the sudden quiet.

Dorthy shivered. Then she threw back her head with a defiance that was dear to him and met the eyes. Her arm rose to bring the wristphone to her lips, and the ceiling amplifiers boomed her voice over the room: “Friends, I want to announce … Some of you already know … well, this is the man I’m going to marry—”

It was the voice of a frightened little girl. Cruel to make it loud as a goddess talking.

After a pause which seemed to last forever, somebody performed the ritual bow. Then somebody else did, and then they were all doing it, like jointed dolls. There were a few scornful exceptions, who turned their backs.

“Go on!” Dorthy’s tones grew shrill. “Go on dancing. Please! You’ll all—later—” The orchestra leader must have had a degree of sensitivity, for he struck up a noisy tune and one by one the couples slipped into a figure dance.

Dorthy looked hollowly up at the spaceman. “It’s good to see you again,” she said.

“And you,” he replied.

“Come.” She led him around the wall. “Let’s sit and talk.”

They found an alcove, screened from the room by a trellis of climbing roses. It was a place of dusk, and she turned hungrily to him. He felt how she trembled.

“It hasn’t been easy for you, has it?” he asked tonelessly.

“No,” she said.

“If you—”

“Don’t say it!” There was fear in the words. She closed his mouth with hers.

“I love you,” she said after a while. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer.

“Isn’t it?” she cried.

He nodded. “Maybe. I take it your family and friends don’t approve of your choice.”

“Some don’t. Does it matter, darling? They’ll forget, when you’re one of us.”

“One of you—I’m not born to this,” he said bleakly. “I’ll always stick out like—Well, never mind. I can stand it if you can.”

He sat on the padded bench, holding her close, and looked out through the clustered blooms. Color and motion and high harsh laughter—it wasn’t his world. He wondered why he had ever assumed it could become his.

They had talked it out while the ship plunged through night. She could never be of the Kith. There was no room in a crew for one who couldn’t endure worlds never meant for man. He would have to join her instead. He could fit in, he had the intelligence and adaptability to make a place for himself.

What kind of place?
he wondered as she nestled against him. A planner of more elaborate parties, a purveyor of trivial gossip, a polite ear for boredom and stupidity and cruelty and perversion—No, there would be Dorthy, they would be alone in the nights of Earth and that would be enough.

Would it? A man couldn’t spend all his time making love.

There were the big trading firms, he could go far in one of them. (Four thousand barrels of Kalian jung oil rec’d. pr. acct., and the fierce rains and lightning across the planet’s phosphorescent seas. A thousand refined thorium ingots from Hathor, and moonlight sparkling the crisp snow and the ringing winter stillness. A bale of green furs from a newly discovered planet, and the ship had gone racing through stars and splendor into skies no man had ever seen.) Or perhaps the military. (Up on your feet, soldier! Hup, hup, hup, hup!…Sir, the latest Intelligence report on Mars … Sir, I know the guns aren’t up to spec, but we can’t touch the contractor, his patron is a Star-Free. … The General commands your presence at a banquet for staff officers. … Now tell me, Colonel Shaun, tell me what you
really
think will happen, you officers are all so
frightfully
closemouthed. … Ready! Aim! Fire! So perish all traitors to the Empire!) Or even the science centers. (Well, sir, according to the book, the formula is …)

Kenri’s arm tightened desperately about Dorthy’s waist.

“How do you like being home?” he asked. “Otherwise, I mean.”

“Oh—fine. Wonderful!” She smiled uncertainly at him. “I was so afraid I’d be old-fashioned, out of touch, but no, I fell in right away. There’s the most terribly amusing crowd, a lot of them children of my own old crowd. You’ll love them, Kenri. I have a lot of glamour, you know, for going clear to Sirius. Think how much you’ll have!”

“I won’t,” he grunted. “I’m just a tommy, remember?”

“Kenri!” Anger flicked across her brow. “What a way to talk. You aren’t, and you know it, and you won’t be unless you insist on thinking like one all the time—” She caught herself and said humbly: “I’m sorry, darling. That was a terrible thing to say, wasn’t it?”

He stared ahead of him.

“I’ve been, well, infected,” she said. “You were gone so long. You’ll cure me again.”

Tenderness filled him, and he kissed her.

“A-hum! Pardon!”

They jerked apart, almost guiltily, and looked up to the two who had entered the alcove. One was a middle-aged man, austerely slender and erect, his night-blue tunic flashing with decorations; the other was younger, pudgy-faced, and rather drunk. Kenri got up. He bowed with his arms straight, as one equal to another.