Matthews nodded. “It can’t hurt now. And she wanted to see you.”
I went in after him, with the eyes of the others thrusting at me. Matthews waved the nurse out and went over
to the window; the chpking sound from his throat was louder than the, ffwnt hiss of the oxygen. I hesitated, then drew near the bed.
Mother lay there, and her eyes were open. She turned them toward me, but there was no recognition.in them. One of her thin hands was poking at the transparent tent over her. I looked toward Matthews, who nodded slowly. “It won’t matter now.”
He helped me move it aside. Her hand groped out, while the wheezing sound of her breathing grew louder. I tried to follow her pointing finger. But it was Matthews who picked up the small picture of a young boy, put it into her hands for her to clasp to her.
“Mother!” It ripped out of me, louder than I had intended. “Mother, it’s Andy! I’m here!”
Her eyes turned again, and she moved her parched lips. “Andrew?” she asked weakly. Then a touch of a smile came briefly. She shook her head slightly. “Jimmy! Jimmy!”
The hands lifted the picture until she could see it. “Jimmy!” she repeated.
From below, there was the sound of a door closing weakly, and steps moving across the lower floor. They took the stairs, two steps at a time, but quickly now, without need of the banister. They crossed the landing. The door remained closed, but there was the sound of a knob turning, a faint squeak of hinges, then another sound of a door closing. Young footsteps moved across the rug, invisible, a sound that seemed to make all other sounds fade to silence. The steps reached the bed and stopped.
Mother turned her eyes, and the smile quickened again. One hand lifted. Then she dropped back and her breathing stopped.
The silence was broken by the sound of feet again—heavier, surer feet that seemed to be planted on the floor beside the bed. Two sets of footsteps sounded. One might have been those of a small boy. The others were the quick, sharp sounds that only a young woman can make as she hurries along with her first-born beside her. They moved across the room.
There was no hesitation at the door this time, nor any sound of opening or closing. The steps went on, across the landing and down the stairs. As Matthews and I followed into the hall, they seemed to pick up speed toward the back door. Now finally there was a soft, deliberate sound of a door closing, and then silence.
I jerked my gaze back, to see the eyes of all the others riveted on the back entrance, while emotions I had never seen washed over the slack faces. Agnes rose slowly, her eyes turned upward. Her thin lips opened, hesitated, and closed into a tight line. She sat down like a stick woman folding, glancing about to see whether the others had noticed.
From below, her daughter came running up the stairs. “Mother! Mother, who was the little boy I heard?”
I didn’t wait for the answer, nor the thick words with which Matthews confirmed the news of Mother’s death. I was back beside the poor old body, taking the picture from the clasped hands.
Liza had followed me in, with the color just beginning to return to her face. “Ghosts,” she said thickly. Then she shook her head, and her voice softened. “Mother and one of the babies, come back to get her. I always thought…”
“No,” I told her. “Not one of my sisters who died too young. Nothing that easy, Liza. Nothing that good. It was a boy. A boy who had measles when he was six, who took the stairs two at a time—a boy named Jimmy…”
She stared at me doubtfully, then down at the picture I held—the picture of me when I was six. “But you—” she began. Then she turned away without finishing, while the others began straggling in.
We had to stay for the ceremony, of course, though I guess Mother didn’t need me at the funeral. She already had her Jimmy.
She’d wanted to name me James for her father, and Dad had insisted on Andrew for his. He’d won, and Andrew came first. But until I was ten, I’d always been called Jimmy by Mother. Jimmy, Andy, Andrew, A. J.
A man’s name was part of his soul, I remembered, in the old beliefs.
But it didn’t niake sense, no matter how I figured it out by myself. I tried to talk it over with Matthews, but he wouldn’t comment. I made another effort with Liza when we were on the plane going back.
“I can believe in Mother’s spirit,” I finished. I’d been over it all so often hi my own mind that I had accepted that finally. “But who was Jimmy? We all heard him—even Agnes’ daughter heard him from downstairs. So he wasn’t a delusion. But he can’t be a ghost. A ghost is a returned spirit—the soul of a man who has died!”
“Well?” Liza asked coldly. I waited, but she went on staring out of the plane window, not saying another word.
I used to think meeting a ghost would offer reassurance to a man. Now I don’t know. If I could only explain little Jimmy…
The Seat of Judgment
Night had fallen, but the city gleamed with the angry red of dying fires, and the crowds still fought back and forth across the streets, howling in sorrow and rage. But in front of the barracks beyond the Earth palace, the fighting seemed spent, and the mob had thinned to a scattering of huddled, dazed figures.
Lorg, one of the Ludh mercenaries, broke from a side street in an exhausted attempt to run. Two of his arms hung useless, his clothing was ripped to shreds, his bow was gone, and his body was covered with wounds; he no longer felt them—his mind was filled only with the need for a weapon.
He hesitated, listening for pursuit. Then, with a final staggering run, he burst through the barracks door and headed for the bow racks.
Light hit his eyes, jerking him to a stop. They’d guessed his destination and beaten him here. There were a dozen of them, headed by the renegade, Pars, whose bow was already pulled taut.
Pars’ voice was sick as he stared at his fellow Ludh, nodding to the others. “He’s one of the butchers,” he said heavily. The bowstring stretched tighter.
“Renegade! Adominist!” Lorg screamed the words, knowing it was too late for words. “When Earth catches you—!”
Pars’ head shook more firmly. “Earth!” He spat the word out harshly. “The men of Earth are dead a hundred years, Lorg. Only the weaklings are left. They’ll never a&i until they have to—and then too late. Pray to your own false gods, Lorg, not to Earth!”
Lorg leaped, but the arrow was already in flight. It was a sliver, a wand, a lance—then a stake driving toward him.
Pors dropped the bow and leaned against the wall, sobbing harshly—but not for the death of Lorg.
Beyond the high walls of the spaceport, Sayon seemed almost unchanged by the thirty years since Eli Judson had last seen the planet. Time might have ceased to exist here, though it had dealt heavily enough with him. The grayish-blue uniform of the Colonial Service hung slackly on his sinewy, old man’s body. The black was almost gone from his hair, bitter lines had been etched across his hollow-cheeked face, and his sight was almost useless without his glasses. In a few more years, it would be too late for even the geriatric treatments back on Earth to help him.
He grunted uncomfortably as the llamalike beast he rode jolted up the rough road to the top of a hill, then held up his hand to stop his escort. “It looks peaceful enough,” he observed.
“So does a fusion bomb until it goes off,” Dupont answered hi his irritatingly high-pitched voice. His stout face was sweating profusely, and he made nervously futile gestures with a handkerchief.