She had been very young--four or five, she'd guessed-- when her parents had emigrated to Deiba. When the conflict had begun, they had been confined to a Relocation Center because of the planet of their origin. If she ever had the money, she would go back. But she knew that she would never have it. Her parents did not live out the duration of the conflict between the Combined Leagues and the DYNAB. Afterward, she had become a ward of the state. She learned that the old stigma remained, also, when she came of age and sought employment. Only the stateoperated pleasure house in Capeville was open to her. She had never had a suitor, or even a boy friend; she had never held a different job. "Possible DYNAB Sympathizer" was stamped on a file, in red, somewhere, she felt, and in it, probably, her life history, neatly typed, double-spaced, filling half a sheet of official stationery.
Very well, she had decided, years before, when she had sorted through the facts and achieved this conclusion. Very well. You picked me up, you looked at me, you threw me away. You gave me a name, unwanted. I will take it, removing only the "Possible." When the time comes, I will indeed be a canker at this flower's heart.
The other girls seldom entered her room, for it made them uneasy. On the few occasions when they did, they would giggle nervously, depart quickly. No lace and ruffles, no tridee photos of handsome actors, such as adorned their rooms--none of these occupied the austere cell that was Jackara's. Above her bed was only the lean, scowling countenance of Malacar the avenger, the last man on Earth. On the opposite wall hung a pair of matched whips with silver handles. Let the other girls deal with ordinary customers. She wanted only those she could abuse. And these were given to her, and she abused them, and they kept returning for more. And every night she would speak to him, in the closest thing in her life to prayer: "I have beaten them, Malacar, as you have struck down their cities, their worlds, as you still strike, as you shall strike again. Help me to be strong, Malacar. Give me the power to hurt, to destroy. Help me, Malacar. Please help me. Kill them!" And sometimes, late at night or in the early hours of morning, she would wake up crying and not know why.
She turned her mount and headed toward the trail that led through the hills toward the other shore of the peninsula. The day was young and her heart was light, filled as it was with the recent news of Blanchen.
Heidel drank one full canteen of water and half of another. The damp, past-midnight darkness lay upon his camp. He turned onto his back and clasped his hands behind his head, staring up into the heavens. Everything recent seemed so far past. Each time that he awakened from the thing it was as if he were beginning a new life, the events of previous days seeming for a time as cold and flat as a year-old letter discovered behind the waste container it had missed. This feeling would pass in an hour or so, he knew.
A shooting star crossed the bright heavens and he smiled. Harbinger of my final day on Cleech, he told himself.
He consulted his gleaming chrono once again, confirming the time. Yes, his sleep-filled eyes had not misread it. Hours still remained before the dawn.
He rubbed his eyes and thought back upon her beauty. She had seemed so very quiet this time. Though he seldom remembered the words, it seemed that there had been fewer of them. Was it sadness that had marked the tenderness? He recalled a hand upon his brow and something moist that fell onto his cheek.
He shook his head and chuckled. Was he indeed mad, as he had expected lives ago, back in that Strantrian shrine? To consider her as a real person was an act of madness.
On the one hand ...
On the other... How do you explain a recurring dream, anyway? One that persists over a decade? Not the dream, exactly, though. Only the principals and the setting. The dialogue changed, the moods shifted. But each time he was taken with a sense of love and strength into a place of peace. Perhaps he should have seen a psychiatrist. If he had wanted to straighten himself out, that is. But he did not, he decided. Not really. Alone most of the time, who was there for him to harm? Awake when he dealt with others, he was not influenced by them. They gave him comfort and distraction. Why destroy one of the harmless pleasures of life? There seemed no progressive derangement involved.
So he lay there for several hours. He thought about the future. He watched the sky grow light, and one by one he saw the stars put away. He was curious as to the happenings on other worlds. It had been a long while that he had been away from News Central.
When dawn broke the world in two, he rose, sponged himself, trimmed his hair and beard, dressed. He breakfasted, packed his belongings, stowed his pack on his back and started downhill.
Half an hour later, he was passing through the outskirts of town.
As he crossed a street, he heard a bell tolling the same note over and over.
Death, he said; a funeral. And he passed on.
Then he heard sirens. But he continued on, not seeking their source.
He came to the store where he had taken a meal several days earlier. It was closed, and there was a dark remembrance set upon the door.
He walked on, suddenly fearing the worst, knowing it.
He waited for a procession to pass the corner where he stood. A hearse rumbled by, lights on.
They still bury the dead here, he reflected; and, Not what I think, he told himself. Just a death, an ordinary death ... Who am I trying to fool?
He walked on, and a man crossed his path and spat upon it.
Again? What have I become?
He walked the streets, wending his slow way to the airfield.
If I am responsible, how can they know so soon? he asked himself.
They cannot, not for sure ...
But then he thought of himself as they knew him. What? A god-touched being dropped into their midst. Mutual apprehension would prevail, along with the awe. He had stayed too long, that day, centuries ago. Now every moment's pleasure was refined, drained, siphoned, lessened by each bellnote. Every new moment here was closed to pleasure.
He moved along the street, cutting toward his right.
A young boy drew attention to him: "There he is!" he cried. "That's H!"
He could not deny it--but the tone made him wish he were catching his air car elsewhere.
He walked on, and the boy--along with several adults-- followed him.
But she lived, he told himself. I made her live ...
Big victory.
He passed a vehicle repair shop, and the men in blue uniforms who worked there sat in the front of the building, their chairs tilted back against the brick wall. They did not move. They sat there and smoked and stared at him as he passed by, silent.
The bells continued to ring. People moved out of doors and side passages to stare at him as he passed along the streets.
I stayed too long, he decided. It's not as if I wanted to shake anybody's hand. I never have this problem in a large city any more. They move me about in robot-controlled units, which they sterilize afterward; they give me a whole ward to myself, which they sterilize afterward; I only see a few people--immediately after catharsis; and I depart the way I arrived. It's been years since I visited a town this small for a job like this. I got careless. It's all my fault. It would have been all right if I hadn't talked too long after dinner. It _would_ have been all right. I got careless.
He saw a casket being loaded onto a hearse. Around the corner, another hearse waited.
Then it's not a plague ... yet? he decided. At that stage, people start burning bodies. They stay off the streets.
He glanced back, already knowing from the sounds they made what it was that he would see.