Universe 14 - [Anthology] Read online

  Forest was looking at Colonel Dray. Dray gave him a disgusted shrug. "He told me he saw evidence of sabotage."

  "I want you to go back and ask the scientists to intercede for me," January said, raising his voice to get the man's attention. "I haven't got a chance in that court-martial. But if the scientists defend me then maybe they'll let me live, see? I don't want to get shot for doing something every one of you scientists would have done."

  Dr. Forest had backed away. Color rising, he said, "What makes you think that's what we would have done? Don't you think we considered it? Don't you think men better qualified than you made the decision?" He waved a hand- "God damn it-what made you think you were competent to decide something as important as that!"

  January was appalled at the man's reaction; in his plan it had gone differently. Angrily he jabbed a finger at Forest. "Because / was the man doing it, Doctor Forest. You take even one step back from that and suddenly you can pretend it's not your doing. Fine for you, but / was there."

  At every word the man's color was rising. It looked like he might pop a vein in his neck. January tried once more. "Have you ever tried to imagine what one of your bombs would do to a city full of people?"

  "I've had enough!" the man exploded. He turned to Dray. "I'm under no obligation to keep what I've heard here confi­dential. You can be sure it will be used as evidence in Captain January's court-martial." He turned and gave January a look of such blazing hatred that January understood it. For these men to admit he was right would mean admitting that they were wrong-that every one of them was responsible for his part in the construction of the weapon January had refused to use. Understanding that, January knew he was doomed.

  The bang of Dr. Forest's departure still shook the little office. January sat on his cot, got out a smoke. Under Colo­nel Dray's cold gaze he lit one shakily, took a drag. He looked up at the colonel, shrugged. "It was my best chance," he explained. That did something-for the first and only time the cold disdain in the colonel's eyes shifted, to a little hard, lawyerly gleam of respect.

  The court-martial lasted two days. The verdict was guilty of disobeying orders in combat, and of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The sentence was death by firing squad.

  For most of his remaining days January rarely spoke, draw­ing ever further behind the mask that had hidden him for so long. A clergyman came to see him, but it was the 5O9th's chaplain, the one who had said the prayer blessing the Lucky Strike's mission before they took off. Angrily January sent him packing.

  Later, however, a young Catholic priest dropped by. His name was Patrick Getty. He was a little pudgy man, bespecta­cled and, it seemed, somewhat afraid of January. January let the man talk to him. When he returned the next day January talked back a bit, and on the day after that he talked some more. It became a habit.

  Usually January talked about his childhood. He talked of plowing mucky black bottom land behind a mule. Of running down the lane to the mailbox. Of reading books by the light of the moon after he had been ordered to sleep, and of being beaten by his mother for it with a high-heeled shoe. He told the priest the story of the time his arm had been burnt, and about the car crash at the bottom of Fourth Street. "It's the truck driver's face I remember, do you see, Father?"

  "Yes," the young priest said. "Yes."

  And he told him about the game he had played in which every action he took tipped the balance of world affairs. "When I remembered that game I thought it was dumb. Step on a sidewalk crack and cause an earthquake-you know, it's stupid. Kids are like that." The priest nodded. "But now I've been thinking that if everybody were to live their whole lives like that, thinking that every move they made really was important, then… it might make a difference." He waved a hand vaguely, expelled cigarette smoke. "You're accountable for what you do."

  "Yes," the priest said. "Yes, you are."

  "And if you're given orders to do something wrong, you're still accountable, right? The orders don't change it."

  "That's right."

  "Hmph." January smoked awhile. "So they say, anyway. But look what happens." He waved at the office. "I'm like the guy in a story I read-he thought everything in books was true, and after reading a bunch of westerns he tried to rob a train. They tossed him in jail." He laughed shortly. "Books are full of crap."

  "Not all of them," the priest said. "Besides, you weren't trying to rob a train."

  They laughed at the notion. "Did you read that story?"

  "No."

  "It was the strangest book-there were two stories in it, and they alternated chapter by chapter, but they didn't have a thing to do with each other! I didn't get it."

  "… Maybe the writer was trying to say that everything connects to everything else."

  "Maybe. But it's a funny way to say it."

  "I like it."

  And so they passed the time, talking.

  So it was the priest who was the one to come by and tell January that his request for a Presidential pardon had been refused. Getty said awkwardly, "It seems the President ap­proves the sentence."

  "That bastard," January said weakly. He sat on his cot.

  Time passed. It was another hot, humid day.

  "Well," the priest said. "Let me give you some better news. Given your situation I don't think telling you matters, though I've been told not to. The second mission-you know there was a second strike?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, they missed too."

  "What?" January cried, and bounced to his feet. "You're kidding!"

  "No. They flew to Kokura, but found it covered by clouds. It was the same over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, so they flew back to Kokura and tried to drop the bomb using radar to guide it, but apparently there was a-a genuine equipment failure this time, and the bomb fell on an island."

  January was hopping up and down, mouth hanging open, "So we n-never-"

  "We never dropped an atom bomb on a Japanese city. That's right." Getty grinned. "And get this-I heard this from my superior-they sent a message to the Japanese government telling them that the two explosions were warn­ings, and that if they didn't surrender by September first we would drop bombs on Kyoto and Tokyo, and then wherever else we had to. Word is that the Emperor went to Hiroshima to survey the damage, and when he saw it he ordered the Cabinet to surrender. So…"

  "So it worked," January said. He hopped around, "It worked, it worked!"

  "Yes."

  "Just like I said it would!" he cried, and hopping before the priest he laughed.

  Getty was jumping around a little too, and the sight of the priest bouncing was too much for January. He sat on his cot and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.

  "So-" He sobered quickly. "So Truman's going to shoot me anyway, eh?"

  "Yes," the priest said unhappily. "I guess that's right."

  This time January's laugh was bitter. "He's a bastard, all right. And proud of being a bastard, which makes it worse.” He shook his head. "If Roosevelt had lived…"

  "It would have been different," Getty finished. "Yes. Maybe so. But he didn't." He sat beside January. "Ciga­rette?" He held out a pack, and January noticed the white wartime wrapper. He frowned.

  "You haven't got a Camel?"

  "Oh. Sorry."

  "Oh well. That's all right." January took one of the Lucky Strikes, lit up. "That's awfully good news." He breathed out. "I never believed Truman would pardon me anyway, so mostly you've brought good news. Ha. They missed. You have no idea how much better that makes me feel."

  "I think I do."

  January smoked the cigarette.

  "… So I'm a good American after all. I am a good American," he insisted. "No matter what Truman says."

  "Yes," Getty replied, and coughed. "You're better than Truman any day."

  "Better watch what you say, Father." He looked into the eyes behind the glasses, and the expression he saw there gave him pause. Since the drop every look directed at him had been filled with contempt. He'd seen it so often d
uring the court-martial that he'd learned to stop looking; and now he had to teach himself to see again. The priest looked at him as if he were… as if he were some kind of hero. That wasn't exactly right. But seeing it…

  January would not live to see the years that followed, so he would never know what came of his action. He had given up casting his mind forward and imagining possibilities, because there was no point to it. His planning was ended. In any case he would not have been able to imagine the course of the post-war years. That the world would quickly become an armed camp pitched on the edge of atomic war, he might have predicted. But he never would have guessed that so many people would join a January Society. He would never know of the effect the Society had on Dewey during the Korean crisis, never know of the Society's successful cam­paign for the test ban treaty, and never learn that thanks in part to the Society and its allies, a treaty would be signed by the great powers that would reduce the number of atomic bombs year by year, until there were none left.

  Frank January would never know any of that. But in that moment on his cot looking into the eyes of young Patrick Getty, he guessed an inkling of it-he felt, just for an instant, the impact on history.

  And with that he relaxed. In his last week everyone who met him carried away the same impression, that of a calm, quiet man, angry at Truman and others, but in a withdrawn, matter-of-fact way. Patrick Getty, a strong force in the Janu­ary Society ever after, said January was talkative for some time after he learned of the missed attack on Kokura. Then he became quieter and quieter, as the day approached. On the morning that they woke him at dawn to march him out to a hastily constructed execution shed, his MPs shook his hand. The priest was with him as he smoked a final cigarette, and they prepared to put the hood over his head. January looked at him calmly. "They load one of the guns with a blank cartridge, right?"

  "Yes," Getty said.

  "So each man in the squad can imagine he may not have shot me?"

  "Yes. That's right."

  A tight, unhumorous smile was January's last expression. He threw down the cigarette, ground it out, poked the priest in the arm. "But I know." Then the mask slipped back into place for good, making the hood redundant, and with a firm step January went to the wall. One might have said he was at peace.

  <>

  * * * *

  We’re all eager to see the wonders that the future is likely to bring; that’s one of the reasons we read science fiction. Here’s a typically mordant Silverberg story about a man who manages to visit the future and is not delighted by what he finds.

  Robert Silverberg contributed a string of excellent stories to early volumes of Universe (including the Nebula-winning “Good News from the Vatican”), but has been absent from these pages during several years of retirement from writing. He’s now back at work with a new word processor, turning out books like Lord Valentine’s Castle, Majipoor Chronicles, and Valentine Pontifex; and he now makes a welcome return to Universe.

  GATE OF HORN, GATE OF IVORY

  ROBERT SILVERBERG

  Often at night on the edge of sleep I cast my mind toward the abyss of time to come, hoping that I will tumble through some glowing barrier and find myself on the shores of a distant tomorrow. I strain at the moorings that hold me to this time and this place and yearn to break free. Sometimes I feel that I have broken free, that the journey is at last beginning, that I will open my eyes in the inconceivable dazzling future. But it is only an illusion, like that fluent knowledge of French or Sanskrit or calculus which is born in dreams and departs by dawn. I awaken and it is the year 1983 and I am in my own bed with the striped sheets and the blue coverlet and nothing has changed.

  But I try again and again and still again, for the future calls me and the bleak murderous present repels me, and again the illusion that I am cutting myself loose from the time line comes over me, now more vivid and plausible than ever before, and as I soar and hurtle and vanish through the permeable membranes of the eons I wonder if it is finally in truth happening. I hover suspended somewhere outside the fabric of time and space and look down upon the Earth, and I can see its contours changing as though I watch an accelerated movie: roads sprout and fork and fork once more; villages arise and exfoliate into towns and then into cities and then are overtaken by the forest; rivers change their courses and deliver their waters into great mirror-bright lakes that shrivel and become meadows. And I hover, passive, a dreamer, observing. There are two gates of sleep, says Homer, and also Virgil. One is fashioned of horn, and one of ivory. Through the gate of horn pass the visions that are true, but those that emerge from the gate of ivory are deceptive dreams that mean nothing. Do I journey in a dream of the ivory gate? No, no, this is a true sending, this has the solidity and substance of inexorable reality. I have achieved it this time. I have crossed the barrier. Hooded figures surround me; somber eyes study me; I look into faces of a weird sameness, tawny skin, fleshless lips, jutting cheekbones that tug the taut skin above them into drumheads. The room in which I lie is high-vaulted and dark but glows with a radiance that seems inherent in the material of its walls. Abstract figurings, like the ornamentation of a mosque, dance along those walls in silver inlay; but this is no mosque, nor would the tribe of Allah have loved those strange and godless geometries that restlessly chase one another like lustful squirrels over the wainscoting. I am there; I am surely there.

  “I want to see everything,” I say.

  “See it, then. Nothing prevents you.”

  One of them presses into my hand a shining silver globe, an orb of command that transports me at the tiniest squeeze of my hand. I fly upward jerkily and in terror, rising so swiftly that the air grows cold and the sky becomes purple, but in a moment I regain control and come to govern my trajectory more usefully. At an altitude of a few dozen yards I pass over a city of serene cubical buildings of rounded corners, glittering with white Mediterranean brilliance in the gentle sunlight. I see small vehicles, pastel-hued, teardrop-tapered, in which citizens with the universal face of the era ride above crystalline roadbeds. I drift over a garden of plants I cannot recognize, perhaps new plants entirely, with pink succulent leaves and great, mounding, golden inflorescences, or ropy stems like bundles of coaxial cable, or jagged green thorns tipped with tiny blue eyes. I come to a pond of air where serene naked people swim with minimal motions of their fingertips. I observe a staircase of some yielding rubbery substance that vanishes into a glowing nimbus of radiance, and children are climbing that staircase and disappearing into that sparkling place at its top. In the zoological gardens I look down on creatures from a hundred worlds, stranger than any protozoan made lion-sized.

  For days I tour this place, inexhaustibly curious, numb with awe. There is no blade of grass out of place. There is no stain nor blemish. The sounds I hear are harmonious sounds, and no other. The air is mild and the winds are soft. Only the people seem stark and austere to me, I suppose because of their sameness of features and the hieratic Egyptian solemnity of their eyes, but after a while I realize that this is only my poor archaic sensibility’s misunderstanding, for I feel their love and support about me like a harness as I fly, and I know that these are the happiest, most angelic of all the beings that have walked the earth. I wonder how far in time I have traveled. Fifty thousand years? Half a million? Or perhaps—perhaps, and that possibility shrivels me with pain—perhaps much less than that. Perhaps this is the world of a hundred fifty years from now, eh? The post-apocalyptic era, the coming Utopia that lies just on the farther shore of our sea of turbulent nightmares. Is it possible that our world can be transformed into this so quickly? Why not? Miracles accelerate in an age of miracles. From the wobbly thing of wood and paper that flew a few seconds at Kitty Hawk to the gleaming majesty of the transcontinental jetliner was only a bit more than fifty years. Why not imagine that a world like this can be assembled in just as little time? But if that is so—

  The torment of the thought drives me to the ground. I fall; they are taken by su
rprise, but ease my drop; I land on the warm moist soil and kneel, clutching it, letting my head slacken until my forehead touches the ground. I feel a gentle hand on my shoulder, just a touch, steadying me, soothing me.

  “Let go,” I say, virtually snarling. “Take you hand off!”

  The hand retreats.

  I am alone with my agony. I tremble, I sob, I shiver. I am aware of them surrounding me, but they are baffled, helpless, confused. Possibly they have never seen pain before. Possibly suffering is no part of their vocabulary of spirit.

  Finally one of them says softly, “Why do you weep?”

  “Out of anger. Out of frustration.”

  They are mystified. They surround me with shining machinery, screens and coils and lights and glowing panels, that I suspect is going to diagnose my malady. I kick everything over. I trample the intricate mechanisms and shove wildly at those who reach for me, even though I see that they are reaching not to restrain me but to soothe me.