Universe 4 - [Anthology] Read online

  She shook her head no.

  She leaned toward my hand. “I’m so afraid,” she said.

  “I know. I know,” I said.

  I lied.

  * * * *

  You never mean for it to happen.

  It just does, like marriages turning bad, and it is such an easy thing that you do not notice it for days, or hours, until you see what has happened. And then there is nothing you can do, because it has you by the guts and heart.

  There are no bells ringing, no birds singing. I know that I shouldn’t have helped her as much as I did the next few days. But I know too that it couldn’t have happened to me with anyone else, anywhere.

  The interviews were finished, even with Welkins. Welkins we would keep in touch with. Some of the crew and all the returned colonists wanted to leave the Space Services. That was a legal tangle decided by the courts. If a man had been in the service thirty years, he got his retirement pay, plus the hazardous duty pay accruing, even though he had been in deep cryogenic sleep twelve or more of those thirty years.

  I could leave those problems to lawyers. There were the usual jokes about sleeping on duty, and getting promoted in your sleep, and all those other things I could do without.

  It wasn’t just the last two and a half weeks that made me tired. I was really tired. Tired of work. Tired of living at the very sharp edge I had for the last five years, pushing myself. I was as far as I wanted to go in the Service. They could try to promote me to some admin slot in the labs, but I didn’t want it. My life had been writing, working with words. I didn’t want a job where the only words I’d use would be in the Annual Report to the Nation. I didn’t want out; I just didn’t want up.

  Jo Ellen, the tiredness, the loneliness, the work; all got to me at the same time.

  I couldn’t just let her go away, get lost in the masses, with only a letter every three weeks or so.

  * * * *

  She had been to Accounting to get her separation pay. With that last payroll signature, our relationship was no longer official. The sun was bright in the blue morning sky above the Space Services building. No rockets shining in the sun. No aircraft whizzing overhead. All the launchings took place Out There, except for the shuttle runs from Florida.

  She was dressed in a new pantsuit set. She was beautiful, her bronze hair shining in the light Heat waves had begun to shimmer off the concrete of the mall.

  “Well,” she said.

  “Yeah. This is where it all ends,” I said.

  She looked at me. I looked at her. Visions of doom and stardust

  “I don’t guess it is,” she whispered. In front of God and everybody.

  Hand in hand, across the mall.

  * * * *

  The PACV we’d rented sluffed to a stop as I killed the engines.

  The stars, one of them the same star she’d been to and returned from, glowed overhead.

  Angie and Billy and thoughts of Angie and Billy a thousand miles away. Frogs from Florida in the background. A girl from the stars at my elbow. Beer from Milwaukee in the cooler. Hell of a note.

  We listened to the frogs.

  “There aren’t any,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Frogs.”

  “What?”

  “There aren’t any frogs there. On Nova Terra. No frogs.”

  “Oh.”

  Later, after a silence: “What will your wife say? You have children, don’t you?”

  “One,” I said. “A boy. Five. Name is-”

  “I don’t want to know,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “All right. Don’t worry.”

  “I am. You are.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Jesus.”

  She kissed me. “Am I worth it? I can’t be.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  * * * *

  A neighbor lady called the hotel five days later. She was upset. Angie had found out all about it and was crying all the time. The neighbor lady said the least I could do was have the decency to call. The photostats of the colonists’ records had arrived at the house. The least I could do was tell what I wanted done with them. And so on and so on and so on.

  I told her to tell Angie I’d be there tomorrow.

  * * * *

  Jo Ellen packed for me next morning. She was crying, and trying not to.

  I hadn’t told her. I woke up and watched her finish putting the last of my clothes into the suitcase.

  “There’s a bath run. Your suit is hanging by the tub. I’ve got a flight for you at eleven forty. You’ll have to hurry just a little bit.”

  How did you find out? I asked.

  I can tell. This isn’t a new thing with me. It’s one of the reasons I left in the first place. It wasn’t any better out there.

  I’ll be back in a few days.

  I know, she said, crying.

  I shaved, bathed and shined. When I came out of the bathroom, she was gone. Leaving no note.

  The weather calm, the flight uneventful.

  * * * *

  “You didn’t bring Jo Ellen?” she asked when I came in the door.

  I got a case of the ass that lasted till I left. There was no compromise, no hope, no use arguing or pleading. She had taken Billy to her mother’s. She already had a lawyer. She didn’t want anything but out and Billy. I told her she could have it all. To leave the records where they were. I’d have the Agency come and get them. And goodbye.

  Bad moods. Hate. All that

  * * * *

  There are only so many places you can run when your world has changed completely. I found her at one of them.

  I came up very quietly and sat down beside where she sunbathed. It was a few minutes before she turned her head to where I sat.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She jumped, then lay her head back down on the sand. “I didn’t think you’d come back, Ed. The last one didn’t”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I did.”

  She continued to stare at the sand awhile.

  I doodled in the glistening beach. “Tell me,” I said. “What’s it like out there?”

  She laughed and cried and pulled me to her.

  The waves moved and susurrated against the shore. The tide was coming in.

  * * * *

  We first noticed the private detective about three days later. He was a fat little man who went to two of the same places we did. Jo Ellen saw him first

  What with the resurgence of Mom Church, there are some new archaic laws on the books. Some require you to be gone for six months and a day before desertion is declared. Or you have to sign mental cruelty affidavits that make you look like a real sonofabitch. There’s still one way for a divorce to be granted in a few weeks.

  * * * *

  I tried to kill the bastard before he and his buddy popped the flashbulb that night. There were still people who made their livings getting divorce evidence. I don’t know what’ll happen when man gets enlightened enough to dissolve a marriage when two people don’t get along any more.

  The lamp I threw bounced off the doorsill beside the photographer. The big one, the muscle, stepped toward me as I climbed out of bed. I kicked at him hard as I could. He grabbed my foot and dumped me on my ass. My head smacked the bed. Pain shot through me. I lay there with my head buzzing.

  “You get up again, I’ll hurt you,” the big one said. The little fat one popped another snapshot, waved the big one out the door.

  Jo Ellen was crying as she helped me up. The fat one left. I was crying too. At least it would be over, soon.

  After I got my head cleared, I began writing my resignation.

  * * * *

  We thought it would be over. Angie wouldn’t let go, though. She called me that night. She wanted to see me. She wanted us to have one more go at it. Think of Billy.

  “After your hoods did what they did?”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t know they’d do it that way. You know I had to have those pictures.”


  “Sure.”

  “Honey, come back to me. I’ll forget. I’ll forget if you will. I’ll tear up the pictures. We’ll pretend this never happened. Please, honey, please.”

  “Give your pictures to the judge. And to the papers if you want. I’m quitting the Service. There’ll be a scandal anyway; might as well be a big one. Do it up right”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, honey. I’d. . .I don’t want to.”

  “You’re a bitch, Angie.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t.”

  “Get out of my life.” I slammed down the receiver.

  * * * *

  The morning before I turned in my resignation. We lay in bed.

  I looked at Jo Ellen’s stomach. Tiny stretch marks ran in a fine net up her abdomen. Funny the things you don’t notice for a long time.

  She wasn’t married. I looked at the marks. I didn’t say anything.

  She rubbed her hands through my hair. “What are we going to do?” she asked. “They’ll follow us anywhere we go.”

  “Not anywhere.” In that instant, I made up my mind.

  “Where?”

  “Out there,” I said.

  “Oh. Ed, no. I couldn’t do it. I don’t think I could. Not again.”

  “There’s nothing to it, you said. Just going to sleep and waking up somewhere else.”

  “No. Not that. What if something happens? What if one of us . . . doesn’t . . . doesn’t wake up? Or either of us? Or the ship doesn’t make it? Two of ours didn’t,” she said.

  “We can’t stay here. I don’t want to. Too many memories, all bad. Except you.” I kissed her wet eyelids.

  “When?” she asked.

  “Next month. The twelve ships. We could forget it all, all of it. Your troubles, my troubles.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

  * * * *

  space official quits

  wife of space director seeks divorce

  love story from the stars

  It was very quiet in the Cryogenics section. The papers had lost us; we were safe until after the ships left. I still had some friends in the Service.

  Preparation Room No. 3. White-smocked technicians left us alone.

  “You’ll be all right,” I said. “You’ve done it twice before. You’ll go right under. Me, they’ll have to chain me in.”

  “No,” said my sweet lady Jo. “You’ll go right under too. Next thing you know, we’ll be on a new planet, starting over.”

  She was crying. She was beautiful. She was mine.

  “Go ahead. I love you. I’ll see you later,” I said. I kissed her. I had given her a rose, and she held it like a butterfly and cried on it.

  “I love you,” she said. She kissed me. A technician took her away. She was light and air and I loved her.

  I waited for the needle.

  Someone was in the room. I looked.

  A month had changed Angie. She looked twice as old. Her face was drawn, her eyes red. She had a wild look on her face, an animal hid beneath the skin, waiting to pounce out. I was afraid.

  There was no one else with her.

  “You didn’t bring the newsmen?” I asked. “Can’t let go, can you? Are you going to watch, make sure I’m going through with this?”

  “No,” she said. “I wanted you to read this. I just got it from the detectives. I just wanted you to know what you’re doing. I couldn’t let you go through with it.”

  “You think you can stop us?”

  “No. Not me. You’ll stop yourself.”

  She turned and was gone. I couldn’t believe it. No pleas, no threats. I tore open the envelope.

  The top page was a message from the head of the detective agency. The following information, etc., etc. There were tearstains on the page.

  The second page was Jo Ellen’s records, one of the copies which had been at the house. I read it. Then I turned the page.

  * * * *

  Angie, you couldn’t let go, could you?

  Can you forgive me, Jo Ellen? I love you so much.

  Angie couldn’t let go. Had to pry. Had to. Down the long trail reaching back twenty-seven years.

  Angie’s life. My life. Your life.

  Cool cool the needle going into the vein. Hot the drug. Quick the rush of sleep.

  Angie didn’t think I could still go through with it.

  Heavy my eyelids, dark the night in my brain. Sleep, like a stone.

  Jo Ellen, I love you, no matter what. Years will go by in quick darkness. There’ll be a green planet there, maybe.

  A cool green planet. The perfect place for a boy to take his mother on their honeymoon.

  Hopefully, not another Earth.

  Because Earth really messes some people up.

  <>

  * * * *

  STUNGUN SLIM

  by Ron Goulart

  Ron Goulart has discovered a frequently overlooked fact about stories of the future, other planets, strange creatures: they offer virtually unlimited opportunities for satire on today, this planet, us. In “Stungun Slim” he considers how far out our present merchandising tendencies could get, and has a few observations about machines that nag people. (You think it’s humiliating to be nagged by your car to fasten your seat belt? Ah, but that’s the nature of machines, and as they get more sophisticated . . .)

  * * * *

  THERE WAS Jelly Roll Morton sprawled down on the lawn, flat on his back under his piano.

  Exhaling through his nose, Josh Birely set the air cruiser for landing and let it carry him down gently through the twilight.

  They’d already loaded the clarinet player, whatever his name was, and Kid Ory and all the drummer’s drums into the big see-through landvan.

  Josh’s willowy blond wife was standing at the edge of the landing deck, clutching a trombone sadly to her. “Do you have three hundred dollars?” she asked when he hopped out of the cruiser.

  Josh gave a snort. “Gee, Glendora. What kind of greeting is that? You don’t even ask how the execution went.”

  Glendora rubbed at her left eye. Kid Ory’s trombone extended to its full length and hit her lovely right foot. “I’m sorry, Josh. How was the execution?”

  “Disgusting,” he said. He glanced over at their house as two lizard men in the familiar Territorial Credit Detective Agency uniform came out carrying the drummer android.

  “You ought to really think about quitting,” suggested Glendora. “I need the three hundred dollars to—”

  “Didn’t you watch the execution on TV?”

  “We don’t have television at the moment, Josh. I called you about that this morning, but you were in conference with the advertising department, your android secretary said.”

  “She’s not an android, I keep telling you.” Josh started to walk along the ramp leading to the house. “Ella just happens to have an aluminum head. What happened to the TV?”

  “Inspector Custer will explain the details,” said the willowy Glendora. “Basically it’s because we neglected a few payments, I think. The Territorial Credit Detective Agency took it away this morning.”

  “The whole TV wall?”

  “The living room and dining room are all one now,” said Glendora. “I think you’ll like the illusion of space.”

  “Gee, Glendora,” he said. “I’m earning nearly fifty thousand dollars a year as merchandising director with the Trombeta Territory Penal System. A job I have some moral doubts about, as you know. Where does the money all go?”

  “The cost of living index went up 0.07 percent last month.”

  “Gee, Glendora.”

  On the threshold of their house a smiling cyborg appeared. “Hiya, Josh. I thought you were going to keep up the payments on the Jazz Archives Entertainment Unit. Since Glendora is so fond of it”

  “On the what?”

  “On Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers,” said Inspector Custer of the Territorial Credit Detective Agency. Custer turned his half-metal head to call into the hou
se, “We’re still missing the diamond out of Jelly Roll’s front tooth, boys. Keep hunting around.”