One Way Journey by Robert Silverberg

Behind the comforting walls of Terra Import's headquarters on Kollidor, Commander Leon Warshow was fumbling nervously with the psych reports on his mirror-bright desk. Commander Warshow was thinking about spaceman Matt Falk, and about himself. Commander Warshow was about to react very predictably.
Personnel Lieutenant Krisch had told him the story about Falk an hour before, and Warshow was doing the one thing expected of him: he was waiting for the boy, having sent for him, after a hasty conference with Cullinan, the Magyar's saturnine psych officer.
An orderly buzzed and said, "Spaceman Falk to see you, sir."
"Have him wait a few minutes," Warshow said, speaking too quickly. "I'll buzz for him."
It was a tactical delay. Wondering why he, an officer, should be so tense before an interview with an enlisted man, Warshow riffled through the sheaf of records on Matt Falk. Orphaned, 2543 . . . Academy . . . two years' commercial service, military contract. . . injury en route to Kottidor . . .
Appended were comprehensive medical reports on Falk's injury, and Dr. Sigstrom's okay. Also a disciplinary chart, very favorable, and a jaggle-edged psych contour, good.
Warshow depressed the buzzer. "Send in Falk," he said.
The photon beam clicked and the door swung back. Matt Falk entered and faced his commander stonily; Warshow glared back, studying the youngster as if he had never seen him before. Falk was just twenty-five, very tall and very blond, with wide, bunch-muscled shoulders and keen blue eyes. The scar along the left side of his face was almost completely invisible, but not even chemotherapeutic incubation had been able to restore the smooth evenness of the boy's jaw. Falk's face looked oddly lopsided; the unharmed right jaw sloped easily and handsomely up to the condyle, while the left still bore unseen but definitely present echoes of the boy's terrible shipboard accident.
"You want me, commander?"
"We're leaving Kollidor tomorrow, Matt," Warshow said quietly. "Lieutenant Krisch tells me you haven't returned to ship to pack your gear. Why?"
The jaw that had been ruined and rebuilt quivered slightly.
"You know, sir. I'm not going back to Earth, sir. I'm staying here . . . with Thetona."
There was a frozen silence. Then, with calculated cruelty, Warshow said, "You're really hipped on that flatface, eh?"
"Maybe so," Falk murmured. "That flatface. That gook. What of it?" His quiet voice was bitterly defiant.
Warshow tensed. He was trying to do the job delicately, without inflicting further psychopersonal damage on young Falk. To leave a psychotic crewman behind on an alien world was impossible—but to extract Falk forcibly from the binding webwork of associations that tied him to Kollidor would leave scars not only on crewman but on captain.
Perspiring, Warshow said, "You're an Earthman, Matt. Don't you—"
"Want to go home? No."
The commander grinned feebly. "You sound mighty permanent about that, son."
"I am," Falk said stiffly. "You know why I want to stay here. I am staying here. May I be excused now, sir?"
Warshow drummed on the desktop, hesitating for a moment, then nodded. "Permission granted, Mr. Falk." There was little point in prolonging what he now saw had been a predeterminedly pointless interview.
He waited a few minutes after Falk had left. Then he switched on the communicator. "Send in Major Cullinan, please."
The beady-eyed psychman appeared almost instantly. "Well?"
"The boy's staying," Warshow said. "Complete and singleminded fixation. Go ahead—break it."
Cullinan shrugged. "We may have to leave him here, and that's all there is to it. Have you met the girl?"
"Kollidorian. Alien. Ugly as sin. I've seen her picture; he had it over his bunk until he moved out. And we can't leave him here, major."
Cullinan raised one bushy eyebrow quizzically. "We can
try to bring Falk back, if you insist—but it won't work. Not without crippling him."
Warshow whistled idly, avoiding the pyschman's stern gaze. "I insist," he said finally. "There's no alternative."
He snatched at the communicator.
"Lieutenant Krisch, please." A brief pause, then: "Krisch, Warshow. Tell the men that departure's been postponed four days. Have Molhaus refigure the orbits. Yes, four days. Four."
Warshow hung up, glanced at the heaped Falk dossier on his desk, and scowled. Psych Officer Cullinan shook his head sadly, rubbing his growing bald spot.
"That's a drastic step, Leon."
"I know. But I'm not going to leave Falk behind." Warshow rose, eyed Cullinan uneasily, and added, "Care to come with me? I'm going down into Kollidor City."
"What for?"
"I want to talk with the girl," Warshow said.
Later, in the crazily twisting network of aimless streets that was the alien city, Warshow began to wish he had ordered Cullinan to come with him. As he made his way through the swarms of the placid, ugly, broad-faced Kollidorians, he regretted very much that he had gone alone.
What would he do, he wondered, when he finally did reach the flat where Falk and his Kollidorian girl were living? Warshow wasn't accustomed to handling himself in ground-borne interpersonal situations of this sort. He didn t know what to say to the girl. He thought he could handle Falk.
The relation of commander to crewman is that of parent to child, the book said. Warshow grinned self-consciously.
He didn't feel very fatherly just now—more like a Dutch uncle, he thought.
He kept walking. Kollidor City spread out ahead of him like a tangled ball of twine coming unrolled in five directions at once; it seemed to have been laid down almost at random. But Warshow knew the city well. This was his third tour of duty to the Kollidor sector; three times he had brought cargo from Earth, three times waited while his ship was loaded with Kollidorian goods for export.
Overhead, the distant blue-white sun burnt brightly. Kollidor was the thirteenth planet in its system; it swung on a large arc nearly four billion miles from its blazing primary.
Warshow sniffled; it reminded him that he was due for his regular antipollen injection. He was already thoroughly protected, as was his crew, against most forms of alien disease likely to come his way on the trip.
But how do you protect someone like Folk? The commander had no quick answers for that. It wouldn't ordinarily seem necessary to inoculate spacemen against falling in love with bovine alien women, but—
"Good afternoon, Commander Warshow," a dry voice said suddenly.
Warshow glanced around, surprised and annoyed. The man who stood behind him was tall, thin, with hard, knobby cheekbones protruding grotesquely from parchmentlike chalk-white skin. Warshow recognized die genetic pattern, and the man. He was Domnik Kross, a trader from the quondam Terran colony of Rigel IX.
"Hello, Kross," Warshow said sullenly, and halted to let the other catch up.
"What brings you to the city, commander? I thought you were getting ready to pack up and flit away."
"We're—postponing four days," Warshow said.
"Oh? Got any leads worth telling about? Not that I care
to—"
"Skip it, Kross." Warshow's voice was weary. "Were finished our trading for the season. You've got a clear field. Now leave me alone, yes?"
He started to walk faster, but the Rigelian, smiling bleakly, kept in step with him.
"You sound disturbed, commander."
Warshow glanced impatiently at the other, wishing he could unburden himself of the Rigelian's company. "I'm on a mission of top security value, Kross. Are you going to insist on accompanying me?"
Thin lips parted slyly in a cold grin. "Not at all, Commander Warshow. I simply thought I'd be civil and walk with you a way, just to swap the news. After all, if you're leaving in four days we're not really rivals any more, and—"
"Exactly," Warshow said.
"What's this about one of your crewmen living with a native?" Kross asked suddenly.
Warshow spun on heel and glared up tensery. "Nothing," he grated. "You hear that? There's nothing to it!"
Kross chuckled, and Warshow saw that he had decidedly lost a point in the deadly cold rivalry between Terran and Rigelian, between man and son of man. Genetic drift accounted for the Domnik Krosses—a little bit of chromosome looping on a -colonized planet, a faint tincture of inbreeding over ten generations, and a new subspecies had appeared: an alien subspecies that bore little love for its progenitors.
They reached a complex fork in the street, and the commander impulsively turned to the left. Gratifyingly, he noticed that Kross was not following him.
"See you next year!" the Rigelian said.
Warshow responded with a noncommittal grunt and kept moving down the dirty street, happy to be rid of Kross so soon. The Rigelians, he thought, were nasty customers. They were forever jealous of the mother world and its people, forever anxious to outrace an Earthman to a profitable deal on a world such as Kollidor.
Because of Kross, Warshow reflected, I'm going where I'm going now. Pressure from the Rigelians forced Earthmen to keep up appearances throughout the galaxy. The Earth-man's Burden, Terrans termed it unofficially. To leave a deserter behind on Kollidor would endanger Earth's prestige in the eyes of the entire universe—and the shrewd Rigelians would make sure the entire universe knew.
Warshow felt hemmed in. As he approached the flat where Falk said he was living, he felt cascades of perspiration tumbling stickily down his back.
"Yes, please?"
Warshow now stood at the door, a little appalled by the sight and the smell. A Kollidorian female faced him squarely.
Good God, he thought. She's sure no beauty.
"I'm . . . Commander Warshow," he said. "Of the Magyar. Mart's ship. May I come in?"
The sphincterlike mouth rippled into what Warshow supposed was a gracious smile. "Of course. I have hoped you would come. Matt has spoken so much of you."
She backed away from the door, and Warshow stepped inside. The pungent rankness of concentrated Kollidorian odor assaulted his nostrils. It was an unpainted two-room flat; beyond the room they were in, Warshow saw another, slightly larger and sloppier, with kitchen facilities. Unwashed dishes lay heaped in the sink. To his surprise, he noticed an unmade bed in the far room . . . and another in the front one. Single beds. He frowned and turned to the girl.
She was nearly as tall as he was, and much broader. Her brown skin was drab and thick, looking more like hide than skin; her face was wide and plain, with two flat, unsparkling eyes, a grotesque bubble of a nose, and a many-lipped compound mouth. The girl wore a shapeless black frock that hung to her thick ankles. For all Warshow knew, she might be the pinnacle of Kollidorian beauty—but her charms scarcely seemed likely to arouse much desire in a normal Earthman.
"You're Thetona, is that right?"
"Yes, Commander Warshow." Voice dull and toneless, he noted.
"May I sit down?" he asked.
He was fencing tentatively, hemming around the situation without cutting toward it. He made a great business of taking a seat and crossing his legs fastidiously; the girl stared, cowlike, but remained standing.
An awkward silence followed; then the girl said, "You want Matt to go home with you, don't you?"
Warshow reddened and tightened his jaws angrily. "Yes. Our ship's leaving in four days. I came to get him."
"He isn't here," she said.
"I know. He's back at the base. Hell be home soon."
"You haven't done anything to him?" she asked, suddenly apprehensive.
He shook his head. "He's all right." After a moment Warshow glanced sharply at her and said, "He loves you, doesn't he?'
"Yes." But the answer seemed hesitant.
"And you love him?"
"Oh, yes," Thetona said warmly. "Certainly."
"I see." Warshow wet his lips. This was going to be difficult. "Suppose you tell me how you came to fall in love? I'm curious."
She smiled—at least, he assumed it was a smile. "I met him about two days after you Earthmen came for your visit. I was walking in the streets, and I saw him. He was sitting on the edge of the street, crying."
"What?"
Her flat eyes seemed to go misty. "Sitting there sobbing to himself. It was the first time I ever saw an Earthman like that—crying, I mean. I felt terribly sorry for him. I went over to talk to him. He was like a little lost boy."
Warshow looked up, astonished, and stared at the alien girl's placid face with total disbelief. In ten years of dealing with the Kollidorians, he had never gone too close to them; he had left personal contact mainly to others. But—
Dammit, the girl's almost human! Almost—
"Was he sick?" Warshow asked, his voice hoarse. "Why was he crying?"
"He was lonely," Thetona said serenely. "He was afraid. He was afraid of me, of you, of everyone. So I talked to him, there by the edge of the street, for many minutes. And then he asked to come home with me. I lived by myself, here. He came with me. And—he has been here since three days after that."
"And he plans to stay here permanently?" Warshow asked.
The wide head waggled affirmatively. "We are very fond of each other. He is lonely; he needs someone to—"
"That'll be enough," Falk's voice said suddenly.
Warshow whirled. Falk was standing in the doorway, his face bleak and grim. The scar on his face seemed to be inflamed, though Warshow was sure that was impossible.
"What are you doing here?" Falk asked.
"I came to visit Thetona," Warshow said mildly. "I didn't expect to have you return so soon."
"I know you didn't. I walked out when Cullinan started poking around me. Suppose you get out."
"You're talking to a superior officer," Warshow reminded him. "If I—"
"I resigned ten minutes ago," Falk snapped. "You're no superior of mine! Get out!"
Warshow stiffened. He looked appealingly at the alien girl, who put her thick six-fingered hand on Falk's shoulder and stroked his arm. Falk wriggled away.
"Don't," he said. "Well—are you leaving? Thetona and I want to be alone."
"Please go, Commander Warshow," the girl said softly. "Don't get him excited."
"Excited? Who's excited?" Falk roared. "I—"
Warshow sat impassively, evaluating and analyzing, ignoring for the moment what was happening.
Falk would have to be brought back to the ship for treatment. There was no alternative, Warshow saw. This strange relationship with the Kollidorian would have to be broken.
He stood up and raised one hand for silence. "Mr Falk, let me speak."
"Go ahead. Speak quick, because I'm going to pitch you out of here in two minutes."
"I won't need two minutes," Warshow said. "I simply want to inform you that you're under arrest and that you're hereby directed to report back to the base at once, in my custody. If you refuse to come it will be necessary—"
The sentence went unfinished. Falk's eyes flared angrily, and he crossed the little room in three quick bounds. Towering over the much smaller Warshow, he grabbed the commander by the shoulders and shook him violently. "Get out!" he shrieked.
Warshow smiled apologetically, took one step backward, and slid his stunner from its place in his tunic. He gave Falk a quick, heavy jolt, and as the big man sagged toward the floor, Warshow grabbed him and eased him into a chair.
Thetona was crying. Great gobbets of amber liquid oozed from her eyes and trickled heartbreakingly down her coarse cheeks.
"Sorry," Warshow said. "It had to be done."
It had to be done.
It had to be done.
It had to be done.
Warshow paced the cabin, his weak eyes darting nervously from the bright row of rivets across the ceiling to the quiet gray walls to the sleeping form of Matt Falk, and finally to the waiting, glowering visage of Psych Officer Cullinan.
"Do you want to wake him?" Cullinan asked.
"No. Not yet." Warshow kept prowling restlessly, trying to square his actions within himself. A few more minutes passed. Finally Cullinan stepped out from behind the cot on which Falk lay, and took Warshow's arm.
"Leon, tell me what's eating you."
"Don't shrink my skull," Warshow burst out. Then, sorry, he shook his head. "I didn't mean that. You know I didn't."
"It's two hours since you brought him aboard the ship," Cullinan said. "Don't you think we ought to do something?"
"What can we do?" Warshow demanded. "Throw him back to that alien girl? Kill him? Maybe that's the best solution—let's stuff him in the converters and blast off."
Falk stirred. "Ray him again," Warshow said hollowly. "The stunning's wearing off."
Cullinan used his stunner, and Falk subsided. "We can't keep him asleep forever," the psychman said.
"No—we can't." Warshow knew rime was growing short; in three days the revised departure date would arrive, and he didn't dare risk another postponement.
But if they left Falk behind, and if word got around that a crazy Earthman was loose on Kollidor, or that Earthmen went crazy at all—
And there was no answer to that.
"Therapy," Cullinan said quietly.
"There's no time for an analysis," Warshow pointed out immediately. "Three days—that's all."
"I didn't mean a full-scale job. But if we nail him with an amytal-derivative inhibitor drug, filter out his hostility to talking to us, and run him back along his memories, we might hit something that'll help us."
Warshow shuddered. "Mind dredging, eh?"
"Call it that," the psychman said. "But let's dredge whatever it is that's tipped his rocker, or it'll wreck us all. You, me—and that girl."
"You think we can find it?"
"We can try. No Earthman in his right mind would form a sexual relationship of this kind—or any sort of emotional bond with an alien creature. If we hit the thing that catapulted him into it, maybe we can break this obviously neurotic fixation and make him go willingly. Unless you're willing to leave him behind. I absolutely forbid dragging him away as he is."
"Of course not," Warshow agreed. He mopped away sweat and glanced over at Falk, who still dreamed away under the effects of the stunbeam. "It's worth a try. If you think you can break it, go ahead. I deliver him into thy hands."
The psychman smiled with surprising warmth. "It's the only way. Let's dig up what happened to him and show it to him. That should crack the shell."
"I hope so," Warshow said. "It's in your hands. Wake him up and get him talking. You know what to do."
A murky cloud of drug-laden air hung in the cabin as Cullinan concluded his preliminaries. Falk stirred and began to grope toward consciousness. Cullinan handed Warshow an ultrasonic injector filled with a clear, glittering liquid.
Just as Falk seemed to be ready to open his eyes, Cullinan leaned over him and began to talk, quietly, soothingly. Falk's troubled frown vanished, and he subsided.
"Give him the drug," Cullinan whispered. Warshow touched the injector hesitantly to Falk's tanned forearm. The ultrasonic hummed briefly, blurred into the skin. Warshow administered three cc. and retracted.
Falk moaned gently.
"It'll take a few minutes," Cullinan said.
The wall clock circled slowly. After a while, Falk's sleep-heavy eyelids fluttered. He opened his eyes and glanced up without apparent recognition of his surroundings.
"Hello, Matt. We're here to talk to you," Cullinan said. "Or rather, we want you to talk to us."
"Yes," Falk said.
"Let's begin with your mother, shall we? Tell us what you remember about your mother. Go back, now."
"My—mother?" The question seemed to puzzle Falk, and he remained silent for nearly a minute. Then he moistened his lips. "What do you want to know about her?"
"Tell us everything," Cullinan urged.
There was silence. Warshow found himself holding his breath.
Finally, Falk began to speak.
Warm. Cuddly. Hold me. Mamama.
I'm all alone. It's night, and I'm crying. There are pins in my leg where I slept on it, and the night air smells cold. I'm three years old, and I'm all alone.
Hold me, mama?
I hear mama coming up the stairs. We have an old house with stairs, near the spaceport where the big ships go woosh! There's the soft smell of mama holding me now. Mama's big and pink and soft. Daddy is pink too but he doesn't smell warm. Uncle is the same way.
Ah, ah, baby, she's saying. She's in the room now, and
holding me tight. It's good. I'm getting very drowsy. In a minute or two I'll be asleep. I like my mama very much.
("Is that your earliest recollection of your mother?" Cullinan asked.)
("No. I guess there's an earlier one.")
Dark here. Dark and very warm, and wet, and nice. I'm not moving. I'm all alone here, and I don't know where I am. It's like floating in an ocean. A big ocean. The whole world's an ocean.
It's nice here, real nice. I'm not crying.
Now there's blue needles in the black around me. Colors ... all kinds. Red and green and lemon-yellow, and I'm mowing! There's pain and pushing, and—God!—it's getting cold. I'm choking! I'm hanging on, but I'm going to drown in the air out there! I'm—
("That'll be enough," Cullinan said hastily. To Warshow he explained, "Birth trauma. Nasty. No need to put him through it all over again." Warshow shivered a little and blotted his forehead.)
("Should I go on?" Falked asked.)
("Yes. Goon.")
I'm four, and it's raining plunk-a-plunk outside. It looks like the whole world's turned gray. Mama and daddy are away, and I'm alone again. Uncle is downstairs. I don't know uncle really, but he seems to be here all the time. Mama and daddy are away a lot. Being alone is like a cold rainstorm. It rains a lot here.
I'm in my bed, thinking about mama. I want mama. Mama took the jet plane somewhere. When I'm big, I want to take jet planes somewhere too—someplace warm and bright where it doesn't rain.
Downstairs the phone rings, jingle-jingle. Inside my head I can see the screen starting to get bright and full of colors, and I try to picture mama's face in the middle of the screen. But I can't. I hear uncle's voice talking, low and mumbly. I decide I don't like uncle, and I start to cry.
Uncle's here, and he's telling me I'm too big to cry. That I shouldn't cry any more. I tell him I want mama.
Uncle makes a nasty-mouth, and I cry louder.
Hush, he tells me. Quiet, Matt. There, there, Matty boy.
He straightens my blankets, but I scrunch my legs up under me and mess them up again because I know it'll annoy him. I like to annoy him because he isn't mama or daddy. But this time he doesn't seem to get annoyed. He just tidies them up again, and he pats my forehead. There's sweat on his hands, and he gets it on me.
I want mama, I tell him.
He looks down at me for a long time. Then he tells me, mama's not coming back.
Not ever, I ask?
No, he says. Not ever.
I don't believe him, but I don't start crying, because I don't want him to know he can scare me. How about daddy, I say. Get him for me.
Daddy's not going to come back either, he tells me.
I don't believe you, I say. I don't like you, uncle. I hate you.
He shakes his head and coughs. You'd better learn to like me, he says. You don't have anybody else any more.
I don't understand him, but I don't like what he's saying. I kick the blankets off the bed, and he picks them up. I kick them off again, and he hits me.
Then he bends over quick and kisses me, but he doesn't smell right and I start to cry. Rain comes. I want mama I yell, but mama never comes. Never at all.
(Falk fell silent for a moment and closed his eyes. "Was she dead?" Cullinan prodded.)
("She was dead," Falk said. "She and dad were killed in a fluke jetliner accident, coming back from holiday in Bangkok. I was four, then. My uncle raised me. We didn't get along, much, and when I was fourteen he put me in the Academy. I stayed there four years, took two years of graduate technique, then joined Terran Imports. Two-year hitch on Denufar, then transferred to Commander Warshow's ship Magyar where—where—")
(He stopped abruptly. Cullinan glanced at Warshow and said, "He's warmed up now, and we're ready to strike paydirt, to mangle a metaphor." To Falk, he said, "Tell us how you met Thetona.")
I'm alone in Kollidor and wandering around alone. It's a big sprawling place with funny-looking conical houses and crazy streets, but deep down underneath I can see it's just like Earth. The people are people. They're pretty bizarre, but they've got one head and two arms and two legs, which makes them more like people than some of the aliens I've seen.
Warshow gave us afternoon's liberty. I don't know why I've left the ship, but I'm here in the city alone. Alone. Dammit, alone!
The streets are paved, but the sidewalks aren't. Suddenly I'm very tired and I feel dizzy. I sit down at the edge of the sidewalk and put my head in my hands. The aliens just walk around me, like people in any big city would.
Mama, I think.
Then I think, Where did that come from?
And suddenly a great empty loneliness comes welling up from inside of me and spills out all over me, and I start to cry. I haven't cried—since—not in a long time. But now I cry, hoarse ratchety gasps and tears and rolling down my face and dribbling into the corners of my mouth. Tears taste salty, I think. A little like raindrops.
My side starts to hurt where I had the accident aboard ship. It begins up near my ear and races like a blue flame down my body to my thigh, and it hurts like a devil. The doctors told me I wouldn't hurt any more. They lied.
I feel my aloneness like a sealed spacesuit around me, cutting me off from everyone. Mama, I think again. Part of me is saying, act like a grownup, but that part of me is getting quieter and quieter. I keep crying, and I want desperately to have my mother again. I realize now I never knew my mother at all, except for a few years long ago.
Then there's a musky, slightly sickening smell, and I know one of the aliens is near me. They're going to grab me by the scruff and haul me away like any weepy-eyed drunk in the public streets. Warshow will give me hell.
You're crying, Earthman, a warm voice says.
The Kollidorian language is kind of warm and liquid and easy to learn, but this sounds especially warm. I turn around, and there's this big native dame.
Yeah, I'm crying, I say, and look away. Her big hands clamp down on me and hang on, and I shiver a little. It feels funny to be handled by an alien woman.
She sits down next to me. You look very sad, she says.
I am, I tell her.
Why are you sad?
You'd never understand, I say. I turn my head away and feel tears start creeping out of my eyes, and she grabs me impulsively. I nearly retch from the smell of her, but in a minute or two I see it's sort of sweet and nice in a strange way.
She's wearing an outfit like a potato sack, and it smells pretty high. But she pulls my head against her big warm breasts and leaves it there.
What's your name, unhappy Earthman?
Falk, I say. Matthew Falk.
I'm Thetona, she says. I live alone. Are you lonely?
I don't know, I say. I really don't know.
But how can you not know if you're lonely, she asks.
She pulls my head up out of her bosom and our eyes come together. Real romantic. She's got eyes like tarnished half dollars. We look at each other, and she reaches out and pushes the tears out of my eyes.
She smiles. I think it's a smile. She has about thirty notches arranged in a circle under her nose, and that's a mouth. All the notches pucker. Behind them I see bright needly teeth.
I look up from her mouth to her eyes again, and this time they don't look tarnished so much. They're bright like the teeth, and deep and warm.
Warm. Her odor is warm. Everything about her is warm.
I start to cry again—compulsively, without knowing why, without knowing what the hell is happening to me. She seems to flicker, and I think I see a Terran woman sitting there cradling me. I blink. Nothing there but an ugly alien.
Only she's not ugly any more. She's warm and lovely, in a strange sort of way, and the part of me that disagrees is very tiny and tinny-sounding. I hear it yelling, No, and then it stops and winks out.
Something strange is exploding inside me. I let it explode. It bursts like a flower—a rose, or a violet, and that's what I smell instead of her.
I put my arms around her.
Do you want to come to my house, she asks.
Yes, yes, I say. Yes!
Abruptly, Falk stopped on the ringing affirmative, and his glazed eyes closed. Cullinan fired the stunner once, and the boy's taut body slumped.
"Well?" Warshow asked. His voice was dry and harsh. "I feel unclean after hearing that."
"You should," the psychman said. "It's one of the slimiest things I've uncovered yet. And you don't understand it, do you?"
The commander shook his head slowly. "No. Why'd he do it? He's in love with her—but why?"
Cullinan chuckled. "You'll see. But I want a couple of other people here when I yank it out. I want the girl, first of all—and I want Sigstrom."
"The doctor? What the hell for?"
"Because—if I'm right—he'll be very interested in hearing what comes out." Cullinan grinned enigmatically. "Let's give Falk a rest, eh? After all that talking, he needs it."
"So do I," Warshow said.
(Four people watched silently as Falk slipped into the drug-induced trance a second time. Warshow studied the face of the alien girl Thetona for some sign of the warmth Falk had spoken of. And yes, Warshow saw—it was there. Behind her sat Sigstrom, the Magyar's head medic. To his right, Cullinan. And lying on the cot in the far corner of the cabin, eyes open but unseeing, was Matt Falk.)
("Matt, can you hear me?" Cullinan asked. "I want you to back up a little . . . you're aboard ship now. The time is approximately one month ago. You're working in the converter section, you and Dave Murff, handling hot stuff. Got that?")
("Yes," Falk said. "I know what you mean.")
I'm in Converter Section AA, getting thorium out of hock to feed to the reactors; we've gotta keep the ship moving. Dave Murff's with me.
We make a good team on the waldoes.
We're running them now, picking up chunks of hot stuff and stowing them in the reactor bank. It's not easy to manipulate the remote-control mechanihands, but I'm not scared. This is my job, and I know how to do it.
I'm thinking about that bastard Warshow, though. Nothing particular against him, but he annoys me. Funny way he has of tensing up every time he has to order someone to do anything. Reminds me of my uncle. Yeah, my uncle. That's who I was trying to compare him with.
Don't much like Warshow. If he came in here now, maybe I'd tap him with the waldo—not much, just enough to sizzle his hide a little. Just for the hell of it. I always wanted to belt my uncle, just for the hell of it.
Hey, Murff yells. Get number two waldo back in alignment.
Don't worry, I say. This isn't the first time I've handled these babies, lunkhead.
I'm shielded pretty well. But the air smells funny, as if the thorium's been ionizing it, and I wonder maybe something's wrong.
I swing number two waldo over and dump the thorium in the reactor. The green light pops on and tells me it's a square-on hit; the hot stuff is tumbling down into the reactor now and pushing out the neutrons like crazy.
Then Murff gives the signal and I dip into the storage and yank out some more hot stuff with number one waldo.
Hey, he yells again, and then number two waldo, the empty one, runs away from me.
The big arm is swinging in the air, and I see the little fingers of delicate jointed metal bones that so few seconds ago were hanging onto a chunk of red-hot Th-233. They seem to be clutching out for me.
I yell. God, I yell. Murff yells too as I lose control altogether, and he tries to get behind the control panel and grab the waldo handle. But I'm in the way, and I'm frozen so he can't do it. He ducks back and flattens himself on the floor as the big mechanical arm crashes through the shielding.
I can't move.
I stay there. The little fingers nick me on the left side of my jaw, and I scream. I'm on fire. The metal hand rakes down the side of my body, hardly touching me, and it's like a razor slicing through my flesh.
It's too painful even to feel. My nerves are canceling out. They won't deliver the messages to my brain.
And now the pain sweeps down on me. Help! I'm burning! Help!
("Stop there," Cullinan said sharply, and Falk's terrible screaming stopped. "Edit out the pain and keep going. What happens when you wake up?")
Voices. I hear them above me as I start to come out of the shroud of pain.
Radiation burns, a deep crackly voice is saying. It's Doc Sigstrom. The doc says, he's terribly burnt, Leon. I don't think he'll live.
Dammit, says another voice. That's Commander War-show. He's got to live, Warshow says. I've never lost a man yet. Twenty years without losing anybody.
He took quite a roasting from that remote-control arm, a third voice says. It's Psych Officer Cullinan, I think. He lost control, Cullinan goes on. Very strange.
Yeah, I think. Very strange. I blanked out just a second, and that waldo seemed to come alive.
I feel the pain ripping up and down me. Half my head feels like it's missing, and my arm's being toasted. Where's the brimstone, I wonder.
Then Doc Sigstrom says, We'll try a nutrient bath.
What's that, Warshow asks.
New technique, the doc says. Chemotherapeutic incubation. Immersion in hormone solutions. They're using it on Earth in severe cases of type one radiation bums. I don't think it's ever been tried in space, but it ought to be. Hell be in free fall; gravity won't confuse things.
If it'll save him, Warshow says, I'm for it.
Then things fade. Time goes on—an eternity in hell, with the blazing pain racing up and back down my side. I hear people talking every now and then, feel myself being shifted from one place to another. Tubes are stuck in me to feed me. I wonder what I look like with hah" my body frizzled.
Suddenly, cool warmth. Yeah, it sounds funny. But it is warm and nourishing, and yet cool too, bathing me and taking the sting out of my body.
I don't try to open my eyes, but I know I'm surrounded by darkness. I'm totally immobile, in the midst of darkness, and yet I know that outside me the ship is racing on toward Kollidor, enclosing me, holding me.
I'm within the ship, rocking gently and securely. I'm within something within the ship. Wheels within wheels; doors inside doors. Chinese puzzlebox with me inside.
Soft fluid comes licking over me, nudging itself in where the tissue is torn and blasted and the flesh bubbled from heat. Caressing each individual cell, bathing my body organ by organ, I'm being repaired.
I float on an ocean and in an ocean. My body is healing rapidly. The pain ceases.
I'm not conscious of the passage of time at all. Minutes blend into minutes without joint; time flows unbreakingly, and I'm being lulled into a soft, unending existence. Happiness, I think. Security. Peace.
I like it here.
Around me, a globe of fluid. Around that, a striated webwork of metal. Around that, a spheroid spaceship, and around that a universe. Around that? I don't know, and I don't care. I'm safe here, where there's no pain, no fear.
Blackness. Total and utter blackness. Security equals blackness and softness and quiet. But then —
What are they doing?
What's happening?
Blue darts of light against the blackness, and now a swirl of colors. Green, red, yellow. Light bursts in and dazzles me. Smells, feels, noises.
The cradle is rocking. I'm moving.
No. They're pulling me. Out!
It's getting cold, and I can't breath. I'm choking! I try to hang on, but they won't let go! They keep pulling me out, out, out into the world of fire and pain!
I struggle. I won't go. But it doesn't do any good. I'm out, finally.
I look around. Two blurry figures above me. I wipe my eyes and things come clear. Warshow and Sigstrom, that's who they are.
Sigstrom smiles and says, booming, Well, he's healed wonderfully!
A miracle, Warshow says. A miracle.
I wobble. I want to fell, but I'm lying down already. They keep talking, and I start to cry in rage.
But there's no way back. It's over. All, all over. And I'm terribly alone.
Falk's voice died away suddenly. Warshow fought an impulse to get violently sick. His face felt cold and clammy, and he turned to look at the pale, nervous faces of Sigstrom and Cullinan. Behind them sat Thetona, expressionless.
Cullinan broke the long silence. "Leon, you heard the earlier session. Did you recognize what he was just telling us?"
The birth trauma," Warshow said tonelessly.
"Obviously," Sigstrom said. The medic ran unshaking fingers through his heavy shock of white hair. The chemotherapy ... it was a womb for him. We put him back in the womb."
"And then we pulled him out," said Warshow. "We delivered him. And he went looking for a mother."
Cullinan nodded at Thetona. "He found one too."
Warshow licked his lips. "Well, now we have the answer. What do we do about it?"
"We play the whole thing to him on tapes. His conscious intellectual mind sees his relationship with Thetona for what it is—the neurotic grasping of a grown man forced into an artificial womb ana searching for a mother. Once we've gotten that out of his basement and into the attic, so to speak, I think he'll be all right."
"But the ship was his mother," Warshow said. That was where the incubation tank—the womb—was."
"The ship cast him out. You were an uncle-image, not a mother-substitute. He said so himself. He went looking elsewhere, and found Thetona. Let's give him the tapes."
Much later, Matt Falk faced the four of them in the cabin. He had heard his own voice rambling back over his lifetime. He knew, now.
There was a long silence when the last tape had played out, when Falk's voice had said, "All, all over. And I'm terribly alone."
The words seemed to hang in the room. Finally Falk said, Thanks," in a cold, hard, tight, dead voice.
Thanks?" Warshow repeated dully.
"Yes. Thanks for opening my eyes, for thoughtfully giving me a peek at what was behind my lid. Sure—thanks." The boy's face was sullen, bitter.
"You understand why it was necessary, of course," Cullinan said. "Why we—"
"Yeah, I know why," Falk said. "And now I can go back to
Earth with you, and your consciences are cleared." He glanced at Thetona, who was watching him with perturbed curiosity evident on her broad face. Falk shuddered lightly as his eyes met the alien girl's. Warshow caught the reaction and nodded. The therapy had been a success.
"I was happy,' Falk said quietly. "Until you decided you had to take me back to Earth with you. So you ran me through a wringer and combed all the psychoses out of me, and—and—"
Thetona took two heavy steps toward him and put her arms on his shoulders. "No," he murmured, and wriggled away. "Can't you see it's over?"
"Matt—" Warshow said.
"Don't Matt me, cap'n! I'm out of my womb now, and back in your crew." He turned sad eyes on Warshow. "Thetona and I had something good and warm and beautiful, and you busted it up. It can't get put together again, either. Okay. I'm ready to go back to Earth, now."
He stalked out of the room without another word. Gray-faced, Warshow stared at Cullinan and at Thetona, and lowered his eyes.
He had fought to keep Matt Falk, and he had won—or had he? In fact, yes. But in spirit? Falk would never forgive him for this.
Warshow shrugged, remembering the book that said, "The relation of commander to crewman is that of parent to child."
Warshow would not allow Falk's sullen eyes to upset him any longer; it was only to be expected that the boy would be bitter.
No child ever really forgives the parent who casts him from the womb.
"Come on, Thetona," he said to the big, enigmatically frowning alien girl. "Come with me. I'll take you back down to the city."