The Metallic Muse (12 page)

The other boxes contained gifts. For Onga there was cloth, lengths and lengths of it, so finely woven and brightly colored that she regarded it openmouthed and sat fingering it until they had finished making the party. There was a doll for Rirga, a life-sized sky-baby doll that frightened her, and she would do no more than toddle up to it and touch it quickly before she scurried away. There was a knife for Harg, long, glimmering and sharp, and a hatchet, and fish hooks of the kind that the sky-men used with such wonderful fortune. For Zerg there were clothes that made him a sad little miniature sky-man, and they would have laughed had they been making joy.

And there was a tiny thing-that-crawls, with a tiny skyman riding in it, and when Zerg handled it with his curious, prodding fingers it suddenly emitted a loud, grinding noise. He dropped it, and they all stared in amazement as it crawled away across the packed dirt floor of the hut.

Satisfied that they had made the party, they put all except Zerg’s gifts back into the boxes and started off on the long, faltering walk to the River, with Zerg wearing his sky-man clothes and clutching the still-grinding thing-that-crawls.

At the River they skirted the mud huts of the natives and went to the shining, round-roofed huts that the skymen had made. There were other families there, all with a child of Zerg’s summers, and they huddled together in a long, strange hut while the children were undressed and sky-men and sky-women in white looked at them and handled strange, glimmering objects. Then they were outside by a towering thing-from-the-sky, and a sky-man was telling them quietly that they must make their farewell with Zerg.

Zerg, seeing tears in his mother’s eyes, wept frantically, and Onga proudly wiped away her tears, and Zerg’s, and firmly pushed him away.

There was weeping in other families, and Buga, who had had three daughters born to her in a miraculous birth, fell to the ground and rolled hysterically in the dust because the sky-men were taking all three.

An anguish of fright shook little Zerg when he reached the thing-from-the-sky. He shrieked and kicked wildly as he was carried up the steep metal slope, and when he, reached the top a sky-lady in white picked him up and lifted him kindly for a last look at his family. And when he continued to scream and kick she took his hand and moved it up and down in a final, pathetic gesture before she disappeared with him into the yawning opening.

When the last struggling child had made its sobbing, wailing trip up the slope, the opening was closed. The Sky-men moved them back to the edge of the meadow. Fire flashed around the thing-from-the-sky, and thunder roared, and it lifted upward until it became a shining speck and disappeared.

Harg and Onga plodded slowly homeward. Onga walked with her eyes on the rippling dust, and Harg halted, now and then, to gaze futilely up into the sky. Onga clutched the sleeping Rirga tightly in her arms, and she knew that both Rirga and the child that stirred within her would make that frightening journey into the unknown.

And she sobbed soundlessly, “What do they do with them? What do they do with them?”

Thomas Jefferson Sandler III looked out of his window on the ninety-eighth floor of the Terra-Central Hotel and saw the planet Earth at close range for the first time in fifteen years. He’d had his feet on genuine terra firma the night before, at the space port, and he’d flown from the port to the hotel—but that was a different Earth. An artificial Earth. A planet or a woman, he thought, never looks the same by daylight.

He swept his gaze over the welter of towers and spires that glittered brightly in the early-morning sunlight, watched the precisely stratified air traffic, and leaned forward to peer at the scurring microbes in the street below.

“Earth,” he said softly, and strained his eyes at the horizon. The city stretched as far as he could see, and farther. Galaxia, the greatest city on earth. The greatest city in the galaxy. Its site had once been a desert, the guidebook said; and now it was a garden spot, a prime tourists attraction and the holy city of cities for businessmen politicians.

“Capital of the galaxy,” he murmured, and turned his gaze to the glistening white government buildings and green parks that stretched across the heart of Galaxia in an unbroken chain. He’d heard violent protests in the most distant parts of the galaxy about having a capital planet in such an out-of-the-way-sector, but that didn’t concern him. They could move it four galaxies away, for all he cared.

“Home,” he said, and repeated the word doubtfully. That was why he was here. That was the reason for his long trek across the light years, to see Earth again. To see his home. And he stood looking out at the snowy puffs of cloud and the delicate blue sky and felt an overwhelming surge of disillusionment. Why should this planet be home to him? He turned away from the window and sang softly, mouthing the words in disgust.

“Home is that place

In deepest space

Where memories burn.

Home is a sigh

For a color of sky,

And a will to return.”

He ended by cheerfully damning the planet Earth and adding a few choice curses for little Marty Worrel.

He’d run into Marty on a dozen worlds, or fifty, or a hundred. It seemed that everywhere he went he met Marty Worrel—if he happened into a dive that was cheap enough, and dirty enough, and illegal enough. Worrel was a man Sandler’s age, with a wrinkled, ageless face and an insatiable thirst for alcohol. Inveterate wanderer of the galaxy, man of superb, hopelessly squandered talents, brilliant exponent of disillusionment, disgustingly enslaved alcoholic—that was little Marty. He could have been a genius at almost anything he chose to work at, but all he ever worked at was a bottle.

Sandler had last encountered Worrel on Kranil, and the shabby little fellow had managed to stay sober long enough to write a song. Or perhaps he’d tossed it off in a state of exhilarated intoxication. The facts of Worrel’s activities were always hard to come by.

But he had written the song, and Sandler had met Worrel in a tough spacers’ hangout near the Kranil City port

and heard a slatternly bar girl give the song its first public performance. “Homing Song,” Worrel had called it, and like most of Worrel’s conversation the words were sometimes immortal poetry and sometimes nonsense, but the melody was a haunting, soaring masterpiece of poignant emotion. It entwined itself into Sandler’s consciousness and defied eviction. Even if it had not he couldn’t have forgotten it, because it swept across the galaxy on hyperdrive, and everywhere Sandler went he heard it. Even on Earth—he’d heard it the night before, in the hotel’s Martian Room, sung with enticing gestures by a tall, sedate-looking blonde.

It was the song that brought Sandler to Earth. Its words had pounded away at him, home … home … home, and its melody had tormented him, and finally he had signed on a run across half the galaxy to Earth. To home. And he had arrived only to learn that he had no home, and the bitter realization pained and frustrated him.

He was Pilot First Class T. Sandler, and his brightest memories were the blur of unidentified stars and the sweeping emptiness of space—meaning everywhere or nowhere—and he didn’t give a spacer’s damn where he went. Or as he’d heard another spacer put it, home was the nearest planet with a breathable atmosphere.

Sandler dropped into a chair and visiphoned the space port. He reported to Inter-galactic Transport and gave his name and code number. “I want the first assignment that’ll get me off this damned planet,” he said.

The dispatcher chuckled, did some checking, and said, “You’re stuck here for forty-eight hours. That’s the best I can do.”

“I’ll take it,” Sandler said.

He walked back to the window and looked out at the soft blue sky of Earth. “And as long as I’m here,” he told himself, “I might as well have a good look at it. I certainly won’t be coming home again.”

The hackie leaped in front of him as he came out of the hotel, gripped his lapel, and babbled with pathetic, well-rehearsed enthusiasm. “Ground tour? See everything you want to see. Stop anytime you want and look around. Can’t do that on an air tour. I’m an expert, I am. I can show you anything in Galaxia worth seeing. Make a day of it and see all the sights. What d’ya say, mister? Reasonable rates. Three credits an hour and you get a personally guided tour.”

“Let’s go,” Sandler said.

The hackie ceremoniously escorted him to a shabby ground car, got him seated, and took his place in front. He beamed with triumph. “Yes, sir. Where to first, sir?”

“Just drive around,” Sandler said.

“Ever been in Galaxia before?”

“Can’t remember. Probably was here when I was a kid.”

“Then you come from Earth.” “Originally, yes.”

The hackie seemed vaguely disappointed, as though he might have to curb his enthusiasm somewhat in describing Earth’s wonders to a native Earthling. “Well, then,” he said. They were gliding smoothly along Vega Boulevard toward Government Circle, where two dozen stellar boulevards converged. “Art Institute, Galactic Museum of Natural History—they got stuff there that gives you nightmares for weeks. Then there are all the government buildings. Congress isn’t in session, but they take visitors through the House of Congress on tours. Then there’s the Museum of Space Travel—”

The hackie nodded, and their speed picked up somewhat. Sandler leaned back against the worn cushions and idly watched the buildings flow past him: elegant shops, towering luxury hotels, the sprawling office buildings from which galaxy-wide businesses were directed, occasionally behind a high wall and park-like blur of greenery the Earth residence of a galactic multi-billionaire or the official residence of a cabinet minister.

They made a three-quarter circuit of Government Circle, passed the vast House of Congress, and started up the spacious parkway called Government Mall.

“Shorter this way,” the hackie said.

Sandler doubted it, but he made no protest. The mall was beautiful. Flowering trees from a hundred planets, or perhaps a thousand, dotted the sweep of sparkling green grass. The splendid government buildings stood at regular intervals, each in a style of architecture native to a planet of the Galactic Federation, each surrounded by a small park landscaped with such specimens of that planet’s flora as lavish care could keep flourishing on Earth.

They drove down Government Mall for a mile and turned right onto Luna Avenue, and Sandler raised his eyes from a cluster of purple-leaved shrubs to glimpse briefly the facade of the government building they were, passing. The shock of recognition jolted him.

“Stop!” he shouted.

The hackie glanced around at the traffic and wailed, “Can’t stop here!”

“That building—back there, the one on the right. Can we stop anywhere close to it?”

“Should be able to.”

They turned off, followed a curving drive, and entered a two-level parking pavilion—lower level, ground cars; upper level, air cars.

“What building is this?” Sandler asked.

The hackie consulted a map. “The Ministry of Public Welfare.”

Puzzled, Sandler reached for the map. “Never knew there was such a thing,” he said.

He wondered what memory he could have of this building. Could he have seen a similar structure on another world—its native world? If so, why should a passing glimpse of it startle him so?

“I want to look around,” he said, opening the door. Uneasiness flickered in the hackie’s face, and Sandler grinned and handed him a ten-credit note. “There’s pay for two hours with a nice tip. We haven’t been out half an hour. If I’m back any time during the next hour and half, I’ll expect to find you waiting.”

The hackie’s head bobbed. “Right.” He took a newspaper from the storage compartment.

Sandler stepped onto an escalator and rode up to the air car level. The building was enormous, a three-quarter circle stretching its arms about the parking pavilion. It was undistinguished in every way except one. Its windows were the darnedest things Sandler had ever seen.

Only he had seen them—somewhere.

They were circular, but each circle was punched in the top by a stabbing indentation. Sandler said aloud, “Like sticking your finger into an arnel cake.” And then,startled, “What the hell is an arnel cake?”

A passer-by spun around and regarded him strangely, and Sandler strode away and rode the moving ramp into the building. It seemed to be nothing more or less than a vast office building. Clicking machines could be heard through open doors. To a spacer accustomed to a different mechanical breed, they were alien machines, and their functions of writing letters, making records, sorting and filing seemed strangely exotic. Occasionally a pretty junior secretary darted out of a room, stepped onto the ramp, and rode away purposefully. Closed doors were marked with a man’s name, a fancy title, and the word “Private.” Sandler rode from one end of the building to the other and back again. He left the ramp where a glowing sign and an arrow pointed at the auditorium.

He recognized the room as soon as he stepped through the doorway. He recognized the myriad of globes that hung from the ceiling, dark because the room was not in use, but with planetary markings of a myriad of worlds dimly visible on their exteriors. He recognized the curving plastic front on the control room above the stage. He recognized the plushy seats and the flecks of gold that ran through the rich brown tapestry. He recognized …

He moved down the aisle, sat down, and leaned forward. When had it happened? In this life, or in another?

A bloated, bald-headed man—Mr. Minister, they called him—with a loud, sonorous voice that rose and fell in endless gyrations. A nurse with kindly eyes, a warm smile, and a body that had a friendly roundness despite the white stiffness of her dress. A small boy who hid behind the nurse and clung frantically to her skirts. A tall, thin, haughty-looking woman with fur on her dress bending over and staring at the boy and saying, “Aren’t his ears a little pointed?” A gruff-looking doctor in a white coat. Other people dashing in and out, a moving blur of faces.