Collected Fiction Page 8

  Krogson gave a bitter laugh. “In case you didn’t notice on your way in, there is a young man sitting at the fire controls out there who can blow up the whole fleet at the touch of a button. Down below is an ideal base with hundreds of techs, but the colonel here won’t take us in and he’s afraid to let us go.”

  “I wouldn’t,” admitted Harris, “but the last few minutes have rather changed the picture. My empire has been dead for five hundred years and your protectorate doesn’t seem to want you around any more. It looks like we’re both out of a job. Maybe we both ought to try to find a new one. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” said Krogson. “I can’t go back and I can’t stay here, and there isn’t any place else. The fleet can’t keep going without a base.”

  A broad grin came over the face of Colonel Harris. “You know,” he said, “I’ve got a hunch that maybe we can do business after all. Come on!” He threw open the cubicle door and strode briskly into the control room, Krogson and Schninkle following close at his heels. He walked over to Kurt who was still poised stiffly at the fire-control board.

  “You can relax now, lad. Everything is under control.”

  Kurt gave a sigh of relief and pulling himself to his feet, stretched luxuriantly. As the other officers saw the firing stud deserted, they tensed and looked to Commander Krogson questioningly. He frowned for a second and then slowly shook his head.

  “Well?” he said to Colonel Harris.

  “It’s obvious,” said the other, “you’ve a fleet, a darn good fleet, but it’s falling apart for lack of decent maintenance. I’ve got a base down there with five thousand lads who can think with their fingers. This knucklehead of mine is a good example.” He walked over to Kurt and slapped him affectionately on the shoulder.

  “There’s nothing on this ship that he couldn’t tear down and put back together blindfolded if he was given a little time to think about it. I think he’ll enjoy having some real work to do for a change.”

  “I may seem dense,” said Krogson with a bewildered expression on his face, “but wasn’t that the idea that I was trying to sell you?”

  “The idea is the same,” said Harris, “but the context isn’t. You’re in a position now where you have to cooperate. That makes a difference. A big difference!”

  “It sounds good,” said Krogson, “but now you’re overlooking something. Carr will be looking for me. We can’t stand off the whole galaxy!”

  Schninkle interrupted. “You’re overlooking something too, sir. He hasn’t the slightest idea where we are. It will be months before he has things well enough under control to start an organized search for us. When he does his chances of ever spotting the fleet are mighty slim if we take reasonable precautions. Remember that it was only by a fluke that we ever happened to spot this place to begin with.”

  As he talked a calculating look came into his eyes. “A year of training and refitting here and there wouldn’t be a fleet in the galaxy that could stand against us.” He casually edged over until he occupied a position between Kurt and the fire-control board. “If things went right, there’s no reason why you couldn’t become Lord Protector, commander.”

  A flash of the old fire stirred within Krogson and then quickly flickered out. “No, Schninkle,” he said heavily. “That’s all past now. I’ve had enough. It’s time to try something new.”

  “In that case,” said Colonel Harris, “let’s begin! Out there a whole galaxy is breaking up. Soon the time will come when a strong hand is going to be needed to piece it back together and put it in running order again. You know,” he continued reflectively, “the name of the old empire still has a certain magic to it. It might not be a bad idea to use it until we are ready to move on to something better.”

  He walked silently to the vision port and looked down on the lush greenness spreading far below. “But whatever we call ourselves,” he continued slowly, half talking to himself, “we have something to work for now.” A quizzical smile played over his lips and his wise old eyes seemed to be scanning the years ahead. “You know, Kurt; there’s nothing like a visit from the Inspector General once in a while to keep things in line. The galaxy is a big place but when the time comes, we’ll make our rounds!”

  XVI.

  On the parade ground behind the low buildings of the garrison, the 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines stood in rigid formation, the feathers of their war bonnets moving slightly in the little breeze that blew in from the west and their war paint glowing redly in the slanting rays of the setting sun.

  A quiver ran through the hard surface soil of the plateau as the great mass of the fleet flagship settled down ponderously to rest. There was a moment of expectant silence as a great port clanged open and a gangplank extended to the ground. From somewhere within the ship a fanfare of trumpets sounded. Slowly and with solemn dignity, surrounded by his staff, Conrad Krogson, Inspector General of the Imperial Space Marines, advanced to review the troops.

  THE END

  THE CABBAGE PATCH

  Here is a sensitive story of adolescence—and an astonishing technical tour de force, which gives us a penetrating glimpse into a wholly alien culture in well under 2000 words, without one sentence of explanatory exposition.

  AUNT HESTER SENT ME TO BED EARLY that night. I lay quietly in the old four-poster, listening to the night sounds and the soft sleepy hisses as the narns who lived in the old fern tree underneath my window bedded themselves down in their holes. I was supposed to settle down too, but the tight excited feeling inside my chest wouldn’t go away. I pulled the soft down pillow over my head and tried to make everything black. I wanted to go to sleep right away so I could wake up in time to see the birth-fairy when she came down with my new sister.

  Priscilla Winters said babies came from the cabbage patch but I knew better. She brought a cabbage to school one day to prove it, and that night when we were supposed to be asleep she opened it up and showed me a baby inside.

  It was squishy and white like all soon-babies are before they make the change, but I knew it wasn’t a real baby because it didn’t have any teeth. We made a birthing-box out of a jar and gave it some flies to cat but it wouldn’t eat them, it just kept crawling around and waving its feelers as if it didn’t like it there. When we woke up the next morning it had turned brown and was all dead.

  The narns in the fern tree had stopped their whispering, but I still couldn’t get to sleep. The little moon had chased the big one up over the horizon so far that its light was shining through the window right into my eyes. I got up and shut the blinds but even having the room dark again didn’t help. I kept seeing pictures of the birth-fairy fluttering down like a beautiful butterfly, and then, after she’d put the babies safe in their birthing-box, flying off again with the year-father soaring after her on his fine new wings.

  I wanted to see his wings but Mother wouldn’t let me. For two months now she had kept him shut up in his room and she wouldn’t even let me speak to him through the door. I wanted to say goodby to him because, even if he was only a year-father, he’d been nice to me. I was never supposed to be with him unless Mother or Aunt Hester were around, but sometimes I’d slip into the kitchen when they were away and we’d talk about things. I liked being with him best when he was baking preska because he’d give me bits of the dough and let me make funny things out of them.

  Once Aunt Hester caught me alone with him and her face got all hard and twisted and she was going to call the patrol and have him beaten, but Mother came in just then. She sent the year-father to his room and then took me into the parlor. I knew that she was getting ready for one of her heart-to-heart talks but there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I just sat there and listened. Mother’s talks always got so wound in on themselves that when she was through I usually couldn’t figure out what all the fuss had been about.

  First she asked me if I’d felt anything funny when I was alone with the year-father. I asked her what
she meant by “funny” and she sort of stuttered and her face got all red. Finally she asked me a funny question about my stinger and I said “no.” Then she started to tell me a story about the wasps and the meem but she didn’t get very far with that either. She wanted to but she got all flustered and her tongue wouldn’t work. Aunt Hester said nonsense, that I was still a little girl and next year would be soon enough. Mother said she wished she could be sure, then she made me promise that if ever my stinger felt funny when I was around a year-father, I’d run and tell her about it right away because if I didn’t, something terrible might happen.

  My pillow got all hot so I went and sat in my chair. The more I thought about the year-father, the more I wanted to go and see his new wings. Finally I went over to the door and listened. I could hear Mother and Aunt Hester talking in the front of the house so I tiptoed down the back stairs. When I got to the landing I stopped and felt around with my foot until I found the part of the next stair that was right against the railing. That’s a bad stair because if you step in the middle of it without thinking, it gives a loud squeek that you can hear all over the house.

  The year-father’s room is right next to the kitchen. I gave a little scratch on the door so he would know who it was and not be frightened. I stood there in the dark waiting for him to open up but he didn’t so I went inside and felt for him in his nest. He wasn’t there.

  First I thought maybe I should go back up and get in bed because Aunt Hester said that if she ever again caught me up at night when I was supposed to be sleeping, she’d give me a licking that I’d never forget. But then I started to think of what would happen to the year-father if he’d gone outside and the patrol caught him wandering around alone at night, and I decided that I’d better tell Mother right away, even if I did get a walloping afterwards.

  Then I thought that first I’d better look in the kitchen for him. It was dark in there too so I shut the hall door and lit the lamp on the kitchen table. The stone floor was awfully cold on my feet and I began to wish that I’d remembered to put on my slippers before I came downstairs. Once my eyes got used to the light I looked all around but the year-father wasn’t there either. I was about to blow out the lamp and go and tell mother when I heard a funny sound coming from the nursery.

  I know it sounds funny to have a nursery in the kitchen, but since soon-babies have to be locked away in a dark place until it’s time for them to make the change, Mother said we might as well use the old pantry instead of going to all the trouble of blacking out one of the rooms upstairs.

  The big thick door that mother had put on was shut but she’d forgotten to take the key away so I went over and opened it a crack. I was real scared because at birthing time nobody is allowed to go in the nursery, not even Aunt Hester. Once the little ones are in the birthing-box, Mother locks the door and doesn’t ever open it up again until after they’ve changed into real people like us.

  At Priscilla’s house they’ve got an honest-to-goodness nursery. There’s a little window on the door that they uncover after the first month. It’s awful dark inside but if you look real hard you can see the soon-babies crawling around inside. Priscilla let me look in once when her mother was downtown. They had big ugly mouths and teeth.

  The sound came again so I opened the door. It was so dark inside that I couldn’t see a thing so I went back and got the lamp. The noise seemed to be coming from the birthing-box so I went over and looked in. The year-father was hunched up in the bottom of it. He didn’t have any wings.

  He blinked up at me in the lantern light. He’d been crying and his face was all swollen. He motioned to me to go away but I couldn’t. I’d never seen a father without his clothes on before and I kept staring and staring.

  I knew that I should run and get Mother but somehow I couldn’t move. Something terrible was happening to the year-father. His stomach was all swollen up and angry red, and every once in a while it would knot up and twist as if there were something inside that didn’t like it there. When that would happen he’d roll his head back and bite down on his lower lip real hard. He seemed to want to yell but he’d choke it back until nothing came out but a little whimper.

  There was a nasty half-healed place on his stomach that looked as if he’d fallen on a sharp stick and hurt himself real bad. He kept pushing his hands against it as if he was trying to hold back something that was inside trying to get out.

  I heard Mother’s voice calling from the kitchen and then Aunt Hester’s voice saying something real sharp but I couldn’t look up or answer. Blood was trickling out through the year-father’s locked fingers. Suddenly he emptied out in a raw scream and fell back so limp that it looked as if all his bones were gone. His hands dropped away and from inside his stomach something tore at the half-healed place until it split and opened like a big mouth. Then I could see the something. I knew it for what it was and I felt sick and scared in a different sort of way. It inched its way out and wiggled around kind of lost like until it finally lost its balance and fell to the bottom of the box. It didn’t move for a minute and I thought maybe it was dead but then the feelers around its mouth began to reach out as if they were trying to find something. And then all of a sudden it started a fast wabbly crawl as if it knew just where it was going. I saw teeth as it found the year-father and nuzzled up to him. It was hungry.

  Aunt Hester slammed and locked the pantry door. Then she made me a glass of hot milk and sent me up to bed. Mother came into my room a little later and stood by my bed, looking down at me to see if I was asleep. I pretended I was because I didn’t want to talk to her and she finally left. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t because if I did she’d hear me and come back up again. I pulled the pillow down over my face real tight until I could hardly breathe and there were little red flashes of light in the back of my eyes and a humming hive sound in my head. I knew what my stinger was for and I didn’t want to think about it.

  When I did get to sleep I didn’t dream about the year-father, I dreamed about the wasps and the meem.

  1953

  THE SHORT COUNT

  The night was filed with bittersweet memories—and the footsteps of the air-raid warden sounded hollowly beneath their window. . . .

  “How does this sound?”

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “I have seen the years pass like frightened men, and now I am afraid.” She wrinkled her nose. “You’re lifting again.”

  “Who this time?”

  “Eliot. The bang and whimper thing, isn’t it?”

  He thought for a minute and then wet his finger and drew an invisible line in the air. “Half a point for your side. It is Eliot. Prufrock, though. Something about the eternal footman holding his coat and snickering.” He picked up the empty pack of cigarettes beside him for the tenth time, fished in it, and then suddenly aware of what he was doing, snorted and threw it in the wastebasket beside his desk.

  “Any decent sized butts in your ashtray?”

  “Two. But I’m saving them.”

  “Pig.”

  “Smoke your pipe. You paid three-fifty for it and you’ve only used it twice.”

  “It bites my tongue.” He got up and went and got it out of the brass bowl on top of the bookcase. It was filled with charred, half-smoked tobacco. He grimaced and put it back.

  “It stinks.” Fie fished around in his own ashtray but there was nothing there over half-an-inch long. He pulled open his desk drawer, took out a thin, translucent second sheet, and carefully tore a long rectangle from one corner. Taking the tobacco from several of the short butts, he shredded it in his palm, poured it into the paper, and deftly rolled a passable cigarette. He eyed it critically. “Not bad.”

  “I don’t see how you can smoke those things.”

  “Necessity is the toothless mother of. Out of the depression and sired by Spain. I always ate but cigarettes were scarce. In high school we used to have the institution of first and second butts. Nobody was passing out cigarettes then but if you could a
fford them you were expected to be fairly generous with the fag ends.

  “It was a silly damn habit to pick up on a two-bit a week allowance but somehow one felt that a cigarette between the lips and long nonchalant jets of smoke through the nostrils had an almost aphrodisiac effect on the girls who gathered in little clusters on the sidewalk in front of school during the lunch hour. I guess they wore lipstick for the same reason.”

  “You’re half right,” she said. “The direction was the same but the drive was more diffuse. What we primarily wanted—was to be wanted. At least my phantasies were social rather than sexual. I saw myself being taken to smart places by handsome men.” She paused and chuckled. “HI admit that sometimes they took me to their apartments, but that was the end of the evening rather than the beginning.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “I’m wearing a jade-green evening gown and we’re sitting at a little table in the corner drinking champagne. There’s a gypsy violinist playing softly to us and Raoul is pleading with me to marry him. As he talks I can see the curling wrought iron grillwork set in the windows of his hacienda. Gauchos are singing softly behind the stables where he keeps his thoroughbreds. . . . He and I are standing side by side on the balcony and I’m smoking a gold tipped monogrammed cigarette in a long jade cigarette holder.” She laughed softly. “If you’d been around, I’d have given you first butts.” There was a sudden flare as his homemade cigarette burst into flame from too hard a drag.

  “Damn. They’re always doing that.”

  “Do you want to see it?”

  “What?”

  “My jade cigarette holder.”

  “Sure.”

  “Wait a minute.” She got up and went into the bedroom. He found his eyes sliding back to the silent television screen and for a moment he was afraid again. A minute later she came back out carrying a twine-tied cardboard box.