The Best of (35 page)

However, there I was, with an unexpected week of leisure to put in, and no reason why I should spend it in SpaceConcession territory. One of the secretaries suggested Lahua, down in the south at no great distance from Noumea, the capital, as a restful spot, so thither I went.

Lahua has picturebook charm. It is a small fishing town, halftropical, halfFrench. On its wide white beach there are still canoes, working canoes, as well as modern. At one end of the curve a mole gives shelter for a small anchorage, and there the palms that fringe the rest of the shore stop to make room for a town.

Many of Lahua's houses are improvedtraditional, still thatched with palm, but its heart is a cobbled rectangle surrounded by entirely untropical houses, known as the Grande Place. Here are shops, pavement cafes, stalls of fruit under bright striped awnings guarded by Gauguinesque women, a state of Bougainville, an atrociously ugly church on the east side, apissoir , and even amairie . The whole thing might have been imported complete from early twentiethcentury France, except for the inhabitants— but even they, some in bright sarongs, some in European clothes, must have looked much the same when France ruled there.

I found it difficult to believe that they are real people living real lifes. For the first day I was constantly accompanied by the feeling that an unseen director would suddenly call 'Cut', and it would all come to a stop.

On the second morning I was growing more used to it. I bathed, and then with a sense that I was beginning to get the feel of the life, drifted to theplace , in search of aperitif. I chose a café on the south side where a few trees shaded the tables, and wondered what to order. My usual drinks seemed out of key. A dusky, brightly saronged girl approached. On an impulse, and feeling like a character out of a very old novel I suggested a pernod. She took it as a matter of course.

"Un pernod? Certainement, monsieur," she told me.

I sat there looking across the Square, less busy now that thedejeuner hour was close, wondering what Sydney and Rio, Adelaide and São Paulo had gained and lost since they had been the size of Lahua, and doubting the value of the gains...

The pernod arrived. I watched it cloud with water, and sipped it cautiously. An odd drink, scarcely calculated, I felt, to enhance the appetite. As I contemplated it a voice spoke from behind my right shoulder.

"An island product, but from the original recipe," it said. "Quite safe, in moderation, I assure you."

I turned in my chair. The speaker was seated at the next table; a wellbuilt, compact, sandyhaired man, dressed in a spotless white suit, a panama hat with a coloured band, and wearing a neatly trimmed, pointed beard. I guess his age at about thirtyfour though the grey eyes that met my own looked older, more experienced and troubled.

"A taste that I have not had the opportunity to acquire," I told him. He nodded.

"You won't find it outside. In some ways we are a museum here, but little the worse, I think, for that."

"One of the later Muses," I suggested. "The Muse of Recent History. And very fascinating, too."

I became aware that one or two men at tables within earshot were paying us—or rather me—some attention; their expressions were not unfriendly, but they showed what seemed to be traces of concern.

"It is—" my neighbour began to reply, and then broke off, cut short by a rumble in the sky.

I turned to see a slender white spire stabbing up into the blue overhead. Already, by the time the sound reached us, the rocket at its apex was too small to be visible. The man cocked an eye at it.

"Moonshuttle," he observed.

"They all sound and look alike to me," I admitted.

"They wouldn't if you were inside. The acceleration in that shuttle would spread you all over the floor —very thinly," he said, and then went on: "We don't often see strangers in Lahua. Perhaps you would care to give me the pleasure of your company for luncheon? My name, by the way, is George."

I hesitated, and while I did I noticed over his shoulder an elderly man who moved his lips slightly as he gave me what was without doubt an encouraging nod. I decided to take a chance on it.

"That's very kind of you. My name is David—David Myford, from Sydney," I told him. But he made no amplification regarding himself, so I was left wondering whether George was his forename, or his surname.

I moved to his table, and he lifted a hand to summon the girl.

"Unless you are averse to fish you must try the bouillabaisse—spécialité de la maison ," he told me.

I was aware that I had gamed the approval of the elderly man, and apparently of some others as well, by joining George. The waitress, too, had an approving air. J wondered vaguely what was going on, and whether I had been let in for the town bore, to protect the rest.

"From Sydney," he said reflectively. "It's a long time since I saw Sydney. I don't suppose I'd know it now."

"It keeps on growing," I admitted, "but Nature would always prevent you from confusing it with anywhere else."

We went on chatting. The bouillabaisse arrived; and excellent it was. There were hunks of firstclass bread, too, cut from those long loaves you see in pictures in old European book. I began to feel, with the help of the local wine, that a lot could be said for the twentiethcentury way of living.

In the course of our talk it emerged that George had been a rocket pilot, but was grounded now—not, one would judge, for reasons of health, so I did not inquire further...

The second course was an excellent coupe of fruits I had never heard of, and, overall, iced passionfruit juice. It was when the coffee came that he said, rather wistfully I thought:

"I had hoped you might be able to help me, Mr. Myford, but it now seems to me that you are not a man of faith."

"Surely everyone has to be very much a man of faith," I protested. "For everything a man cannot do for himself he has to have faith in others."

"True," he conceded. "I should have said 'spiritual faith'. You do not speak as one who is interested in the nature and destiny of his soul—or of anyone else's soul—I fear?"

I felt that I perceived what was coming next. However if he was interested in saving my soul he had at least begun the operation by looking after my bodily needs with a generously good meal.

"When I was young," I told him, "I used to worry quite a lot about my soul, but later I decided that that was largely a matter of vanity."

"There is also vanity in thinking oneself selfsufficient," he said.

"Certainly," I agreed. "It is chiefly with the conception of the soul as a separate entity that I find myself out of sympathy. For me it is a manifestation of mind which is, in its turn, a product of the brain, For me it is a manifestation of mind which is, in its turn, a product of the brain, modified by the external environment and influenced more directly by the glands."

He looked saddened, and shook his head reprovingly.

"You are so wrong—so very wrong. Some are always conscious of their souls, others, like yourself, are unaware of them, but no one knows the true value of his soul as long as he has it. It is not until a man has lost his soul that he understands its value."

It was not an observation making for easy rejoinder, so I let the silence between us continue. Presently he looked up into the northern sky where the trail of the moonbound shuttle had long since blown away. With embarrassment I observed two large tears flow from the inner corners of his eyes and trickle down beside his nose. He, however, showed no embarrassment; he simply pulled out a large, white, beautifully laundered handkerchief, and dealt with them.

"I hope you will never learn what a dreadful thing it is to have no soul," he told me, with a shake of his head. "It is to hold the emptiness of space in one's heart: to sit by the waters of Babylon for the rest of one's life."

Lamely I said:

"I'm afraid this is out of my range. I don't understand."

"Of course you don't. No one understands. But always one keeps on hoping that one day there will come somebody who does understand and can help."

"But the soul is a manifestation of the self," I said. "I don't see how thatcan be lost—it can be changed, perhaps, but not lost."

"Mine is," he said, still looking up into the vast blue. "Lost—adrift somewhere out there. Without it I am a sham. A man who has lost a leg or an arm is still a man, but a man who has lost his soul is nothing —nothing—nothing..."

"Perhaps a psychiatrist—" I started to suggest, uncertainly. That stirred him, and checked the tears.

"Psychiatrist!" he exclaimed scornfully. "Damned frauds!I Even to the word. They may know a bit about minds; but about the psyche!—why they even deny its existence...!"

There was a pause.

"I wish I could help..." I said, rather vaguely.

"There was a chance. Youmight have been one who could. There's always the chance..." he said consolingly, though whether he was consoling himself or me seemed moot. At this point the church clock struck two. My host's mood changed. He got up quite briskly.

"I have to go now," he told me. "I wish you had been the one, but it has been a pleasant encounter all the same. I hope you enjoy Lahua."

I watched him make his way along theplace . At one stall he paused, selected a peachlike fruit and bit into it. The woman beamed at him amiably, apparently unconcerned about payment.

The dusky waitress arrived by my table, and stood looking after him.

"O le pauvre monsieur Georges," she said sadly. We watched him climb the church steps, throw away the remnant of his fruit, and remove his hat to enter. "Il va jaire la prière," she explained."Tous les jours 'e make pray for 'is soul. In ze morning, in ze afternoon.C'est si triste ."

I noticed the bill in her hand. I fear that for a moment I misjudged George, but it had been a good lunch. I reached for my notecase. The girl noticed, and shook her head.

"Non, non, monsieur, non.Vous êtes convive. C'est d'accord .Alors, monsier Georges 'e sign bill tomorrow. S'arrange. C'est okay ," she insisted, and stuck to it.

The elderly man whom I had noticed before broke in:

"It's all right—quite in order," he assured me. Then he added: "Perhaps if you are not in a hurry you would care to take a cafécognac with me?"

There seemed to be a fine openhandedness about Lahua. I accepted, and joined him.

"I'm afraid no one can have briefed you about poor George," he said.

I admitted this was so. He shook his head in reproof of persons unknown, and added:

"Never mind. All went well. George always has hopes of a stranger, you see: sometimes one has been known to laugh. We don't like that."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I told him. "His state strikes me as very far from funny."

"It is indeed," he agreed. "But he's improving. I doubt whether he knows it himself, but he is. A year ago he would often weep quietly through the wholedejeuner . Rather depressing until one got used to it."

"He lived here in Lahua, then?" I asked.

"He exists. He spends more of his time in the church. For the rest he wanders round. He sleeps at that big white house up on the hill. His granddaughter's place. She sees that he's decently turned out, and pays the bills for whatever he fancies down here."

I thought I must have misheard.

"His granddaughter!" I exclaimed. "But he's a young man. He can't be much over thirty..."

He looked at me.

"You'll very likely come across him again. Just as well to know how things stand. Of course it isn't the sort of thing the family likes to publicize, but there's no secret about it."

The cafécognacs arrived. He added cream to his, and began:

About five years ago (he said), yes, it would be in 2194, young Gerald Troon was taking a ship out to one of the larger asteroids—the one that de Gasparis called Psyche when he spotted it in 1852. The ship was a spacebuilt freighter called theCelestis working from the moonbase. Her crew was five, with not bad accommodation forward. Apart from that and the motorsection these ships are not much more than one big hold which is very often empty on the outward journeys unless it is carrying gear to set up new workings. This time it was empty because the assignment was simply to pick up a load of uranium ore—Psyche is half made of highyield ore, and all that was necessary was to set going the digging machinery already on the site, and load the stuff in. It seemed simple enough.

But the Asteroid Belt is still a very tricky area, you know. The main bodies and groups are charted, of course—but that only helps you to find them. The place is full of outfliers of all sizes that you couldn't hope to chart, but have to avoid. About the best you can do is to tackle the Belt as near to your objective as possible, reduce speed until you are little more than local orbit velocity and then edge your way in, going very canny. The trouble is the time it can take to keep on fiddling along that way for thousands—hundreds of thousands, maybe—of miles. Fellows get bored and inattentive, or sick to death of it and start to take chances. I don't know what the answer is. You can bounce radar off the big chunks and hitch that up to a coursedeflector to keep you away from them. But the small stuff is just as deadly to a ship, and there's so much of it about that if you were to make the coursedeflector sensitive enough to react to it you'd have your ship shying off everything the whole time, and getting nowhere. What we want is someone to come up with a kind of repulse mechanism with only a limited range of operation—say, a hundred miles—but no one does. So, as I say, it's tricky. Since they first started to tackle it back in 2150 they've lost half a dozen ships in there and had a dozen more damaged one way or another. Not a nice place at all... On the other hand, uranium is uranium...

Gerald's a good lad though. He had the authentic Troon yen for space without being much of a chancer; besides, Psyche isn't too far from the inner rim of the orbit—not nearly the approach problem Ceres is, for instance—what's more, he'd done it several times before.

Well, he got into the Belt, and jockeyed and fiddled and niggled his way until he was about three hundred miles out from Psyche and getting ready to come in. Perhaps he'd got a bit careless by then; in any case he'd not be expecting to find anything in orbit around the asteroid. But that's just what he did find—the hard way...