Universe 9 - [Anthology] Read online

  “Might as well,” she says, and dumps the wood in the bin. She stands taller, lighter. “Can’t live without it, might as well live with it. Getting too old and tired to yell.”

  All for the best, I suppose. Life will be duller, but that’s the price. We’re both old.

  Then there’s the sound of a buggy, and knocking on the door. I go open it, not knowing what to expect.

  It’s the Council, or part of it. A short one, a fat one, a fall one, wearing Council ribbons, holding their hats in their hands. Serious expressions. They look so official that the captain gets courtly and dignified, invites them in, offers tea, takes their hats and jackets.

  “I’m glad you dropped by,” she says, bending forward, serious. “I was out in the garden today, working, and I noticed these little bugs all over the, um, what in hell were those things, kid?”

  “Cabbages.”

  “Right. Cabbages. Little white buggers, about so long, eating every goddamned thing in sight,” says the captain, very serious, very courtly. “Got any idea what they are? I tried squishing them, but there’s forty billion of the suckers. You gentlepeople have any suggestions?”

  “Well, Captain, uh, we didn’t actually, what I mean to say is—”

  “What he means to say,” says the short one, “is that we didn’t come all the way out here to discuss squishing bugs.” The tall one bobs his head and scalds his mouth on the tea. The captain raises her eyebrows.

  “The village is growing,” the fat one says. The others nod. Population’s expanding. Need for more room. Need for more growing space. The captain sits and sips and looks grave and interested. I try not to look suspicious.

  The Council is pleased that we understand, says the short one. Understand what? But she doesn’t give me a chance to talk. Repopulating the homeworld, she says. Greater glory of humanity. All working together. The captain nods again, all reformed.

  Seeing as how we’re so sympathetic, the tall one says, they’re sure we’ll understand and agree. The captain assures them that we definitely want to help. I begin to feel like I’ve been abandoned.

  Well, then, the Fukikos will be expecting us tomorrow, and they’ll send over a cart and Old Jelly, the mule.

  Fukikos? Cart? Mule? Tomorrow? The captain starts frowning. Our visitors look even more nervous. A cart to move things in, they explain. Surely we’ll want to move our old stuff to our new home.

  New home?

  Of course. We’re not farming the land productively. That’s obvious. Our orchards are in terrible condition, precious resources going to waste. The farm needs young people, willing to work. Good arable land we’ve got here, doing nothing, and the Council has set up a nice young couple to take it all over tomorrow. They might even use our house. And the Fukikos have a cabin in the far eastern end of their fields, just the place for us. We’ll like it there. They promise.

  “But there’s no running water there,” says the captain, still reasonable.

  “You can dig a well,” says the tall one.

  “If we’re too damned old to farm, why are we young enough to dig a well?”

  “Besides,” says the short one, “it’s private.”

  “Private!” I shout. “It’s damn near forty kilometers from town and seven from the road! It’s out in the suckin’ wilderness!”

  “And it’s got a lovely view,” says Fatty.

  “But—” I say, and stop. But you can’t see the mountains from the eastern end of the settlement. You can’t see Ship’s Valley. The captain can’t have her ship, but at least she can see the place where it landed. If the captain can’t see Ship’s Valley, the captain’s going to die.

  Maybe that’s what they have in mind.

  “And the land will be just perfect for you,” says the tall one.

  “It’s full of stones and trees,” says the captain, rather quiet.

  “Well—”

  “You trying to starve us to death?” Still quiet.

  Well, of course, we understand that people have to pull their own loads, that’s obvious, stated policy of the colony since return. We can’t expect to be fed for free, now, can we?

  “Get the suckin’ hell off my ship!” the captain yells, and they jump up fast. They’ll send someone over with the cart tomorrow, they say, edging toward the door. Captain tells them where to put their cart, says we’re not moving. They say they’ll send people to move us, whether we want to or not. Needs of the colony. They reach the door, and the captain grabs a big stick and chases them into the yard.

  “You can’t do this to me!” she howls as they rush to the buggy. “I’m a historical monument!”

  The buggy moves so fast it sounds like it’s coming apart, and the captain stands at the door cursing them and shaking her stick. After a while, I take the stick away and close the door. The captain looks at me like death itself, and I go fetch the apple wine.

  * * * *

  The captain’s all trim and vigor the next morning, has tea made by the time I get up. I’ve got a headache and my eyes are red. Captain squats by the fire while I stagger around trying to keep my head on, and finally I see what she’s doing.

  “Hey, that’s—”

  “Burning the Gold Watch,” she says smugly.

  I go over to see.

  The Gold Watch is a piece of paper the Council gave us, fifteen or more years ago, after the captain’s first performance. Thick paper, creamy-colored, with black ink. in deep appreciation, it says, of a job well done.And a bunch of autographs. Supposed to show us that we were thought of highly. Piece of shipdreck. They made a ceremony of it, two or three of them brought it around, had a glass of wine, made a speech, hurried off.

  “Thanks for the goddamned Gold Watch,” the captain shouted after them, but they didn’t get it. Neither did I, until she explained it to me.

  So far, three signatures have burned. It’s tough paper.

  “Think you ought to do that?”

  “Sure. All it’s good for.”

  ll done, up in smoke.

  “It’s all we’ve got.”

  “Good.”

  p appre

  “You’re pretty cheerful,” I say gloomily. She’s grinning and bouncing on her heels. I can barely see.

  “I’ve got a plan,” says the captain, and since she says it sort of crazy, I take her seriously. It’s when she says things sober that you’ve got to watch it

  “What plan?”

  The captain holds the Gold Watch until the last scrap singes her fingers. She stands up, wipes her hands on the seat of her pants, and goes to pour tea.

  “I’ve got a plan,” she says again, and for the first time I notice she’s in uniform.

  * * * *

  Some of them had wanted to dismantle the ship, some hadn’t. Some argued that the ship was a relic of the terrible, polluting past, and we shouldn’t keep it around. Bad karma, maybe. Others pointed out that it was our only escape and only defense, should we ever need it. The argument got pretty hot for a while, but they finally compromised. The first set put signs all over the ship telling about what a terrible place home had been before, and how it got that way, and stuff like that. The second set kept the ship cleaned and in good condition, just in case. Neither group would let us near it. We tried once, ten years back, after they told me I couldn’t have kids. We damn near got through the guards before they caught us and hauled us away.

  This time we do it differently. Cart, mule, and neighbor arrive in the morning, and the captain’s got a pile of junk sitting by the door. Tells the neighbor that we can cart the stuff ourselves and chases him with a stick until he beats it. Then we unhitch Old Jelly and head for the mountains. Takes us most of the morning, going through the bushes, having to kick Old Jelly when he decides he’s had enough. We reach the valley by noon, have a bite to eat, and go down to spy on our ship.

  They’ve got her chained down now, the idiots. Poor old lady, battered along her sides, burns slashed up her fins, craters and pocks and pings and
dents, and chains round and up and down and about, leading to rocks, trees, the hut, every damned thing. She sits there like some old monarch come on evil times, but she’ll shake those chains as easily as the captain shakes her fist.

  Two guards nearby, probably to keep kids from being silly on the acceleration couches. They sit against trees, batons across their knees, not talking to each other. Looks good. The captain tugs Old Jelly up, then makes her lips all straight and thin and kicks Jelly in the right places. Jelly hollers and takes off down the slope straight at the guards, and they scramble up and chase him. Captain and I run down through the trees and get behind them, Jelly’s howling and kicking, guards are shouting, captain and I sneak up and whap them with their own batons, and they go down like lumps. We truss them up and drag them over the hill out of blast range. Then we pelt up the ramp and slam the locks, and we’re safe.

  Captain heads into the bridge to start check-down, and I take a quick look-through. Someone’s taken good care of our ship: galley’s stocked, locks tight, reactors all engaged, and it’s easy to slip the cores into place and cinch them.

  God, she’s pretty inside. Curved corridors with handholds all around for freefall, big bright screens in the forward cabins, the patches on seats that I made myself, circling one star or another. Grease stains in the engine rooms and smudges on the controls—my smudges, and they still fit my hands. The sound of my footsteps echoing in the corridors. The bright, even lights. Oh, I love her, I love her, I hadn’t realized that I missed her so much. Ship. Home. Stars.

  The engines start humming, then the captain yells through the com and I head up toward the bridge, double time. I’m panting when I get there, and the captain points her chin at the downscreen and keeps working the controls. I walk over and take a look.

  The valley’s filling with dirters, tens of them, some of them carrying bundles and babies, and they wave their arms at us and move their mouths, and I can’t hear a word of it. More of them every minute, too. Must be near fifty, sixty of them down there, all in blast range, jumping up and down and being silly.

  “What do they want?” I say.

  “To stop us,” says the captain, grimly. She slaps a set of toggles and the engines hum louder.

  “What for?”

  “Suckers.”

  I look out again. The people have backed off, and someone’s pushing through the crowd.

  “Three minutes,” says the captain. “Get webbed.”

  “Wait,” I say. “That’s Ike, and Tisha. Hold off a minute.”

  “What for?”

  “Come on, Captain. I want to hear him.”

  The captain grumbles and slaps a knob, and the bridge is filled with voices. Then Ike waves his arms hard until everyone shuts up, and turns and hollers at the ship.

  “Captain! Kid! Want to talk with you!”

  “About what?” I say into the phone.

  “Are you taking off? Are you leaving?”

  “No business of yours.”

  “Yes it is,” he says. Old Ike looks pretty nervous himself, and people keep glancing down the road into town. Waiting for help, probably.

  “Get clear or well blast you,” says the captain.

  “Listen to me! We want to come along!”

  “Dreck,” says the captain. “You want to hold us up until the rest of them get here. Clear out!”

  “Goddamn it!” Ike yells. First time I’ve ever heard Ike curse like that. “Listen up, you selfish old cow. You’re not the only one snapped off on this planet; there’s plenty of us, too, and we’re sick and tired of it, and we’ve waited pretty damned long for you to get off it and get us the hell out of here.”

  “What did you call me?” the captain shouts.

  “Fukiko came into town three hours ago and said you’d chased him off, and we figured you were making a break for it. So did the Council, probably, and if you don’t let us aboard they’ll be on our heads in no time, and well all be in for it, and it will be your own damned foolish fault. So open up that crate and let us aboard, hear?”

  “Let ‘em in,” I say. I turn toward the main corridor, to open the lock.”

  “I’m not letting anyone in my ship calls me a cow!” the captain shouts. “I’m the captain, you understand?”

  “Come on—”

  “I’m the suckin’ captain and I run this suckin’ ship and nobody gets aboard until every damned one of you understands! Hear me?”

  “Yes,” the people shout.

  “So what in hell am I?”

  “The captain!”

  “And who runs this ship?”

  “The captain!”

  “And who gives the orders around here?”

  “the captain!”

  “And who’s Rosenwasser?”

  “selfish old cow!”

  “Then get off ‘em and haul ‘em aboard,” the captain says. “Think we’ve got all day?”

  Made it just in time, too. They scramble up the ramp and into the lock, I get them stowed in the sleep couches and make it to the navigator’s couch just as the Council and their dirters come spilling over the hill. The captain gives them a good warning roar of the engines, they hit the dirt, and we pull up and out, and out, and out, until Ship’s Valley and the village and the farms are patches of brown and green on a bigger patch of land by a bigger patch of ocean on a patch of planet in a patch of space. And the sky is filled with seventy zillion stars.

  I unweb and float off the couch, turn a couple of cartwheels in the air, grab a handhold, and grin down at the captain, upside down.

  “Well, kid?”

  “Well, Captain? Where do we go from here?”

  She stretches her arms above her head and grins.

  “Nice little planet, off by Centauri. Green and blue and kind of pretty-looking. We can drop them off there.”

  “Sounds good. Think they’ll like it?”

  “They’ll like it.”

  “And then?”

  “Dunno. Ever seen the Coalsack, close up?”

  “Nope.”

  The captain grins again, all wrinkles and glee, and pushes the ship around toward the stars.

  <>

  * * * *

  This is the first story Mary C. Pangborn has sold, though she started writing as a “closet vice” over sixty years ago, when she and her brother Edgar began “filling endless ancient account books with vast scribbled epics.” (Yes, her brother was the Edgar Pangborn.) She spent most of her life working as a research biochemist in the New York State Health Department, and when she retired in 1970 she took up writing again, producing in collaboration with Edgar a historical novel that has so far failed to find a publisher because it lacks either sex or swashbuckling.

  “The Back Road” is also devoid of such sensationalistic attributes; it is, instead, a warm and quietly told story of a family living near a spacial anomaly that may be the doorway to another dimension.

  Invasions of cubistic creatures? Intrepid explorers of unknown worlds? You’ll find none of them here, simply a tale of calm New Englanders who accept the doorway as a part of their environment that makes more sense than some other aspects of modern life.

  * * * *

  THE BACK ROAD

  Mary C. Pangborn

  “They pay you real money for writing this stuff, Tommy?”

  “Sure, Gramps, why not? It’ll never put me up there with the Rockefellers, but it’s bread. Uh—don’t you like it?”

  “Didn’t say I didn’t.”

  Granny twinkled at me. She pretended to whisper: “Don’t you pay him no mind, Tom. Think he a’n’t that proud of you? Tells all the neighbors each time there’s a new story.”

  Grampa made like he didn’t hear. “Fact is, I don’t want you should get stuck up, Tom. I’d go so far’s to say it a’n’t all that bad, not for a young squirt.” He licked a finger, turned a page of the magazine. “Must take a right smart bit of study, all that science stuff. Course, I can see you maybe got a couple-three things
to learn yet, along that line.” Turned another page. “This faster ‘n light space travel, now. Puts me in mind of a feller over in East Whitchett—what was his name again? Silas—no, that wa’n’t it. Ran around a tree so fast he butted himself in the arse and knocked himself clean inside out. Wheeler, that’s who ‘twas—old Ephraim Wheeler. Before your time. Only way they could straighten him out was to get one of these mobbious-strip gadgets for an operating table. Never rightly the same man again, Ephraim wasn’t. Always a mite left-handed; didn’t hardly know whether he was coming or going.”