Robert Silverberg - Exiled from Earth

Which was why we had chosen between going to prison, entering mundane professions, and accepting the new Neopuritan government’s free offer to take ourselves far from Earth and never come back. We’d been on Salvor thirty years now. The youngest of us was middle-aged. But makeup does wonders, and anyway the Salvori didn’t care if Romeo happened to be fifty-seven and slightly paunchy.

I clenched my hands. I had been a wide-eyed kid when the Neopuritans lowered the boom, and I jumped at the chance to see the outworlds free. Now I was forty-nine, balding, a permanent exile. I vowed I was going to work like the deuce to help Howard Brian. It was a small rebellion, but a heartfelt one.

I called my bank and had them flash my bankbook on the screen. It showed a balance of Cr. 13,586—not a devil of a lot for thirty years’ work. I scribbled a draft for six thousand in cash, dropped it in the similarizer plate, and waited. They verified, and moments later a nice wad of Interstellar Galactic Credits landed in the receiving slot.

I got dressed in my Sevenday best, locked up the place, and caught a transport downtown to the spaceport terminal. As an Earthman, of course, I rode in the back of the transport, and stood.

A coach was just leaving the terminal for the spaceport. By noon I found myself forty miles outside Salvor City, standing at the edge of the sprawling maze of buildings and landing-areas that is Salvor Spaceport. I hadn’t been out here since that day in 2168 when the liner John Calvin deposited me and eighty-seven other Terran actors, dancers, strippers, and miscellaneous deported sinners, and a bleak-faced official advised us to behave ourselves, for we were now subject to the laws of Salvor.

I made my way through the confusing network of port buildings to the customs shed. My 6000-credit wad felt pleasantly thick in my pocket. Customs was crowded with aliens of various hues and shapes who were departing on a Mullinor-bound liner and who were getting a routine check-through. Since Mullinor is under Terran administration, not only were the Salvori officials running the check but a few black-uniformed employees of Transgalactic Spacelines were on hand as well. I picked out the least hostile-looking of those, and, palming a twenty-credit piece, sidled up to him.

He was checking through the passports of the departing travellers. I tapped him on the shoulder and slipped the bright; round double stellar into his hand at the same time.

“Pardon me, friend. Might I have a minute’s conversation with you in privacy?”

He glanced at me with contempt in his Neopuritan eyes and handed me back the big coin. “I’ll be through with this job in fifteen minutes. Wait for me in Depot A, if there’s any information you want.”

Now, it might have been that one of his superiors was watching, and that he didn’t want to be seen taking a gratuity in public. But I knew that was a mighty shaky theory for explaining his refusal. I didn’t have much hope, but I hied myself to Depot A and waited there for half an hour.

Finally he came along, walking briskly and whistling a hymn. He said, “Do you wish to see me?”

“Yes.”

I explained the whole thing: who I was and who Howard was, and why it was so important to let Howard get aboard the ship for Earth. I let him know that there would be two or three thousand credits in it for him if he arranged things so Howard Brian could board the Oliver Cromwell next Twoday. At least, I finished, he would die with Earth in sight, even though he might not be permitted to disembark.

I stood there waiting hopefully for an answer and watched his already frosty gaze drop to about three degrees Kelvin. He said, “By the law, Mr. Smit, I should turn you in for attempting to bribe a customs official. But in your case justice should be tempered by mercy. I pity you. Please leave.”

“Dammit, I’ll give you five thousand!”

He smiled condescendingly. “Obviously you can’t see that my soul is not for sale—not for five thousand or five billion credits. The law prohibits allowing individuals without visas to board interstellar ships. I ask you to leave before I must report you.”

I left. I saw I was making a head-first assault on a moral code which by its very nature was well-nigh impregnable, and all I was getting out of it was a headache.

Bribery was no good. These people took a masochistic pride in their underpaid incorruptibility: I was forced back on my last resort.

I went to see the Terran Consul. The legal above-board approach was my one slim hope.

Archibald von Junzt McDermott was his name, and he was a tall and angular person clad entirely in black, with a bit of white lace at his throat. It was his duty to comfort, aid, and abet Terran citizens on Salvor. Of course, I was no longer a Terran citizen—that was part of the Amnesty too—but I was of Terran birth, at least.

He wore the full Neopuritan makeup, bleached face, cropped hair, blackened lips; he hardly seemed like a comforting type to me. He sat stiffly erect behind his desk and let me squirm and fidget a while before he said, “You realize, of course, that such a request is impossible to grant. Utterly.”

Quietly I said, “I’m asking for a relaxation of the rules on behalf of one very sick old man who will probably die of joy the moment Earth comes into sight, and who is guaranteed not to touch off a revolution, promote licentiousness, seduce maidens, or otherwise upset the aims and standards of Neopuritan Earth.”

‘”There can be no relaxation of the rules,” Consul McDermott repeated stonily.

“Can’t you look the other way once? Don’t you know what pity is, Consul?”

“I know the meaning of the word well. I feel deep pity for you now, Mr. Smit. You have no spine. You are afraid to face the world as it is. You’re a weakling, Mr. Smit, and I offer you my pity.”

“Damned decent of you,” I snorted. “You won’t grant Howard Brian a visa to Earth, then?”

“Definitely not. We’re neither cruel nor vindictive, Mr. Smit. But the standards of society must be upheld. And I cannot find it within my heart to encourage immorality.”

“Okay,” I said. I stood up and flashed a withering glare at him—a glare of pure hate that would have been a credit to the starchiest Neopuritan preacher in the universe.

Then I turned and walked out.

It was 1800 when I got back to my flat, and that left me an hour to relax before I had to get down to the theater to set things up for the 2030 performance. I got out of my stiff dress clothes and into my work outfit, and spent a little time on my forthcoming condensation of Medea while waiting for the hour to pass. I felt sour with defeat.

The visiphone chime sounded. I activated the receiver and John Ludwig’s face appeared, half in makeup for his role of Gloucester.

“What is it, Johnny?”

“Erik, can you get right down to the theater? Howard’s had a sort of stroke. We’ll have to call off tonight’s performance.”

“I’ll decide that,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”

They had fixed up a rough sort of bed for him in the main dressing-room, and he was stretched out, looking pale and lean and lonely; gobbets of sweat stood out on his forehead. The whole company was standing around, plus a couple of tentacled Arcturan acrobats and the three Damooran hypnotists whose act follows our show each night.

Ludwig said, “He got here early and started making up for Lear. Then he just seemed to cave in. He’s been asking for you, Erik.”

I went over to him and took his cool wrist and said, “Howard? You hear me, Howard?”

He didn’t open his eyes, but he said, “Well, how did it go? Did you book the trip for me?”