The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology Part 26

--Housnan There were nuances, Scott found, which he had never known existed. A hedonist like Ilene devoted her life to such nuances; they were her career.

Such minor matters as making the powerful, insipid Moonflower c.o.c.ktails more palatable by filtering them through lime-soaked sugar held between the teeth. Scott was a uisqueplus man, having the average soldier's contempt for what he termed hydroponic drinks, but the c.o.c.ktails Ilene suggested were quite as effective as acrid, burning amber uisqueplus.

She taught him, that night, such tricks as pausing between gla.s.ses to sniff lightly at happy-gas, to mingle sensual excitement with mental by trying the amus.e.m.e.nt rides designed to give one the violent physical intoxication of breathless speed. Nuances all, which only a girl with Ilene's background could know.

She was not representative of Keep life. As she had said, she was an offshoot, a casual and useless flower on the great vine that struck up inexorably to the skies, its strength in its tough, reaching tendrils--scientists and technicians and socio-politicians. She was doomed in her own way, as Scott was in his. The undersea folk served Minerva; Scott served Mars; and Ilene served Aphrodite--not purely the s.e.xual G.o.ddess, but the patron of arts and pleasure. Between Scott and Ilene was the difference between Wagner and Strauss; the difference between cras.h.i.+ng chords and tinkling arpeggios. In both was a muted bittersweet sadness, seldom realized by either. But that undertone was brought out by their contact. The sense of dim hopelessness in each responded to the other.

It was carnival, but neither Ilene nor Scott wore masks. Their faces were masks enough, and both had been trained to reserve, though in different ways. Scott's hard mouth kept its tight grimness even when he smiled. And Ilene's smiles came so often that they were meaningless.

Through her, Scott was able to understand more of the undersea life than he had ever done before. She was for him a catalyst. A tacit understanding grew between them, not needing words. Both realized that, in the course of progress, they would eventually die out.

Mankind tolerated them because that was necessary for a little time.

Each responded differently. Scott served Mars; he served actively; and the girl, who was pa.s.sive, was attracted by the ant.i.thesis Scott's drunkenness struck psychically deep. He did not show it. His stiff silver-brown hair was not disarranged, and his hard, burned face was impa.s.sive as ever. But when his brown eyes met Ilene's green ones a spark of--something--met between them.

Color and light and sound. They began to form a pattern now, were not quite meaningless to Scott. They were, long past midnight, sitting in an Olympus, which was a private cosmos. The walls of the room in which they were seemed nonexistent. The gusty tides of gray, faintly luminous clouds seemed to drive chaotically past them, and, dimly, they could hear the m.u.f.fled screaming of an artificial wind. They had the isolation of the G.o.ds.

And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep--That was, of course, the theory of the Olympus room.

No one existed, no world existed, outside of the chamber; values automatically s.h.i.+fted, and inhibitions seemed absurd.

Scott relaxed on a translucent cus.h.i.+on like a cloud. Beside him, Ilene lifted the bit of a happy-gas tube to his nostrils. He shook his head.

"Not now, Ilene."

She let the tube slide back into its reel. "Nor I. Too much of anything is unsatisfactory, Brian. There should always be something untasted, some antic.i.p.ation left--You have that. I haven't."

"How?"

"Pleasures--well, there's a limit. There's a limit to human endurance.

And eventually I build up a resistance psychically, as I do physically, to everything. With you, there's always the last adventure. You never know when death will come. You can't plan.

Plans are dull; it's the unexpected that's important."

Scott shook his head slightly. "Death isn't important either. It's an automatic cancellation of values. Or, rather--" He hesitated, seeking words. "In this life you can plan, you can work out values, because they're all based on certain conditions. On--let's say--arithmetic.

Death is a change to a different plane of conditions, quite unknown.

Arithmetical rules don't apply as such to geometry."

"You think death has its rules?"

"It may be a lack of rules, Ilene. One lives realizing that life is subject to death; civilization is based on that. That's why civilization concentrates on the race instead of the individual.

Social self-preservation."

She looked at him gravely. "I didn't think a Free Companion could theorize that way."

Scott closed his eyes, relaxing. "The Keeps know nothing about Free Companions. They don't want to. We're men. Intelligent men. Our technicians are as great as the scientists under the Domes."

"But they work for war."

"War's necessary," Scott said. "Now, anyway."

"How did you get into it? Should I ask?"

He laughed a little at that. "Oh, I've no dark secrets in my past.

I'm not a runaway murderer. One--drifts. I was born in Australia Keep. My father was a tech, but my grandfather had been a soldier. I guess it was in my blood. I tried various trades and professions.

Meaningless. I wanted something that . . . h.e.l.l, I don't know.

Something, maybe, that needs all of a man. Fighting does. It's like a religion. Those cultists--Men of the New Judgment--they're fanatics, but you can see that their religion is the only thing that matters to them."

"Bearded, dirty men with twisted minds, though."

"It happens to be a religion based on false premises. There are others, appealing to different types. But religion was too pa.s.sive for me, in these days."

Ilene examined his harsh face. "You'd have preferred the church militant--the Knights of Malta, fighting Saracens."

"I suppose. I had no values. Anyhow, I'm a fighter."

"Just how important is it to you? The Free Companions?"

Scott opened his eyes and grinned at the girl. Ee looked unexpectedly boyish.

"d.a.m.n little, really. It has emotional appeal. Intellectually, I know that it's a huge fake. Always has been. As absurd as the Men of the New Judgment. Fighting's doomed. So we've no real purpose. I suppose most of us know there's no future for the Free Companions. In a few hundred years --well!"

"And still you go on. Why? It isn't money."

"No. There is a . . . a drunkenness to it. The ancient Nors.e.m.e.n had their berserker madness. We have something similar. To a Dooneman, his group is father, mother, child, and G.o.d Almighty. He fights the other Free Companions when he's paid to do so, but he doesn't hate the others. They serve the same toppling idol. And it is toppling, Ilene.

Each battle we win or lose brings us closer to the end. We fight to protect the culture that eventually will wipe us out. The Keeps--when they finally unify, will they need a military arm? I can see the trend. If war was an essential part of civilization, each Keep would maintain its own military. But they shut us-out--a necessary evil. If they would end war now!" Scott's fist unconsciously clenched. "So many men would find happier places in Venus --undersea. But as long as the Free Companions exist, there'll be new recruits."

Ilene sipped her c.o.c.ktail, watching the gray chaos of clouds flow like a tide around them. In the dimly luminous light Scot's face seemed like dark stone, flecks of brightness showing in his eyes. She touched his hand gently.

"You're a soldier, Brian. You wouldn't change."

His laugh was intensely bitter. "Like h.e.l.l I wouldn't, Mistress Ilene Kane! Do you think fighting's just pulling a trigger? I'm a military strategist. That took ten years. Harder cramming than I'd have had in a Keep Tech-Inst.i.tute. I have to know everything about war from trajectories to ma.s.s psychology. This is the greatest science the System has ever known, and the most useless. Because war will die in a few centuries at most.

Ilene --you've never seen a Free Company's fort. It's science, marvelous science, aimed at military ends only. We have our psych-specialists. We have our engineers, who plan everything from ordnance to the frictional quotient on flitterboats We have the foundries and mills. Each fortress is a city made for war, as the Keeps are made for social progress."

"As complicated as that?"

"Beautifully complicated and beautifully useless. There are so many of us who realize that. Oh, we fight--it's a poison. We wors.h.i.+p the Company--that is an emotional poison But we live only during wartime.

It's an incomplete life. Men in the Keeps have full lives; they have their work, and their relaxations are geared to fit them. We don't fit."

"Not all the undersea races," Ilene said. "There's always the fringe that doesn't fit. At least you have a raison d'etre. You're a soldier. I can't make a lifework out of pleasure. But there's nothing else for me."

Scott's fingers tightened on hers. "You're the product of a civilization, at least. I'm left out."

"With you, Brian, it might be better. For a while. I don't think it would last for long."

"It might."

"You think so now. It's quite a horrible thing, feeling yourself a shadow.

"I know."

"I want you, Brian," Ilene said, turning to face him. "I want you to come to Montana Keep and stay here. Until our experiment fails. I think it'll fail presently. But, perhaps, not for some time. I need your strength. I can show you how to get the most out of this sort of life--how to enter into it. True hedonism. You can give me--companions.h.i.+p perhaps. For me the companions.h.i.+p of hedonists who know nothing else isn't enough."

Scott was silent. Ilene watched him for a while.

"Is war so important?" she asked at last.

"No," he said, "it isn't at all. It's a balloon. And it's empty, I know that. Honor of the regiment!" Scott laughed. "I'm not hesitating, really.

I've been shut out for a long time. A social unit shouldn't be founded on an obviously doomed fallacy. Men and women are important, nothing else, I suppose."

"Men and women--or the race?"

"Not the race," he said with abrupt violence. "d.a.m.n the race! It's done nothing for me. I can fit myself into a new life. Not necessarily hedonism.

I'm an expert in several lines; I have to be. I can find work in Montana Keep."

"If you like. I've never tried. I'm more of a fatalist, I suppose.

But . .

. what about it, Brian?"

Her eyes were almost luminous, like s.h.i.+ning emerald, in the ghostly light.

"Yes," Scott said. "I'll come back. To stay."

Ilene said, "Come back? Why not stay now?"

"Because I'm a complete fool, I guess. I'm a key man, and Cinc Rhys needs me just now."

"Is it Rhys or the Company?"

Scott smiled crookedly. "Not the Company. It's just a job I have to do.

When I think how many years I've been slaving, pretending absurdities were important, knowing that I was bowing to a straw dummy--No! I want your life--the sort of life I didn't know could exist in the Keeps.

I'll be back, Ilene. It's something more important than love.

Separately we're halves. Together we may be a complete whole."

She didn't answer. Her eyes were steady on Scott's. He kissed her.

Before morning bell he was back in the apartment. Jeana had already packed the necessary light equipment. She was asleep, her dark hair cascading over the pillow, and Scott did not waken her. Quietly he shaved, showered, and dressed. A heavy, waiting silence seemed to fill the city like a cup brimmed with stillness.

As he emerged from the bathroom, b.u.t.toning his tunic, he saw the table had been let down and two places set at it. Jeana came in, wearing a cool morning frock. She set cups down and poured coffee.

"Morning, soldier," she said. "You've time for this, haven't you?"

"Uh-huh." Scott kissed her, a bit hesitantly. Up till this moment, the breaking with Jeana had seemed easy enough. She would raise no objections.

That was the chief reason for free-marriage. However She was sitting in the relaxer, sweetening the coffee, opening a fresh celopack of cigarettes. "Hung over?"

"No. I vitamized. Feel pretty good." Most bars had a vitamizing chamber to nullify the effects of too much stimulant. Scott was, in fact, feeling fresh and keenly alert. He was wondering how to broach the subject of Ilene to Jeana.

She saved him the trouble.

"If it's a girl, Brian, just take it easy. No use doing anything till this war's over. How long will it take?"

"Oh, not long. A week at most. One battle may settle it, you know.

The girl--"

"She's not a Keep girl."

"Yes."

Jeana looked up, startled. "You're crazy."

"I started to tell you," Scott said impatiently. "It isn't just--her.

I'm sick of the Doones. I'm going to quit."

"Hm-m-m. Like that?"

"Like that."

Jeana shook her head. "Keep women aren't tough."

"They don't need to be. Their men aren't soldiers."

"Have it your own way. I'll wait till you get back. Maybe I've got a hunch.

You see, Brian, we've been together for five years. We fit. Not because of anything like philosophy or psychology--it's a lot more personal. It's just us. As man and woman, we get along comfortably.

There's love, too. Those close emotional feelings are more important, really, than the long view.

You can get excited about futures, but you can't live them."