Roger Zelazny: To Die In Italbar

Michael shrugged.

"I guess they have a right to make what they want. The DYNAB simply was not turning them out fast enough. So, some Leagues industrialists went into that line. That was the first batch. As you know, they are precision instruments--one of the few machines that requires considerable manual adjustment. Lots of skilled hand labor makes for high overhead."

"And you think the Commander was involved?"

"Everybody _knows_ he was responsible. He's been doing things like this for years. He forgets the war is over, the armistice signed ..."

"You can't very well go into the DYNAB after him."

"No. But some powerful civilian may someday--somebody who gets tired having his property destroyed, or his friends or workers murdered."

"It's been tried, and you know what happened. Anybody who tries it now will be snapping at an even more indigestible mouthful."

"I know! It could lead to big trouble--to a thing we don't want."

"Supposing tile Service caught him, red-handed, putting a knife into somebody's back here in the CL--is it still what they used to say?"

"You ought to know the answer."

Morwin looked away.

"We never talk about such things when we talk," he said, finally.

Michael ground his teeth and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Yes," he said, then. "It still has full force and effect. We would have to return him to the DYNAB. We would then file a complaint with DYNAB Central, which of course would do nothing to their only surviving retired fleet commander. Legally, we would have to return him--so if there are too many witnesses, that's what gets done. If only they hadn't made him their representative at the First SEL Conference. It does seem as though they planned it then and are encouraging him now. I wish there were some way to get him to admit that it is a lost cause, or for us to get his diplomatic immunity revoked. The situation is very embarrassing."

"Yes."

"You served under him. You used to be a pretty good friend of his."

"I guess so."

"Well. You still are, aren't you?"

"As you know, I go to visit him occasionally--for old times' sake."

"Any chance you could talk some sense into him?"

"As I said, we don't talk about things like that. He wouldn't listen to me if I did."

Morwin poured more coffee.

"No matter what he once was, he is a murderer and an arsonist--among other things--now. You realize that, don't you?"

"I guess so."

"If he were ever to go too far--if he were ever to pull off something resulting in a really large-scale disaster--it _could_ possibly lead to war. There are a lot of political and military types would love an excuse to take on the DYNAB again, to dispose of it for once and ever."

"Why are you telling me about it, Mike?"

"I'm off duty and I'm not under orders. Hopefully, my superiors will never find out that I mentioned it to you. It's just that you are the only man I know of--living right here in town and a friend of mine--who actually knows the man and even sees him sometimes. Hell! I don't want another war! Even if this time it would be an overnight affair. I'm getting old. I just want to retire and hunt and fish. --You were his EQ. He'd listen to you. He even gave you that fancy pipe when it was all over. Isn't it a Bayner-Sandow briar? They cost something. He must have liked you."

Morwin's face reddened and he nodded into the smoke, got it in his eyes, shook his head.

And I sold him out, the same as all the others, he thought, when I moved to the CL and started taking their money.

"I haven't seen him in a long time. I'm sure he wouldn't listen."

"I'm sorry," said Michael, staring down into his coffee. "I was way out of order, suggesting something like that. Forget it, huh?"

"You working on the Blanchen thing?"

"Only peripherally."

"I see. I'm sorry."

There was a long silence, and then Michael gulped his coffee and stood.

"Well, I've got to be getting back to work," he said. "I'll see you in eleven days, my place. Sunrise. Right?"

"Right."

"Thanks for the coffee."

Morwin nodded and raised his hand in a half-salute. Michael closed the door behind him.

For a long while, Morwin stared at the boy's frozen dream. Then his gaze fell upon his coffee cup. He watched it until it rose into the air and dashed itself against the wail.

Heidel von Hymack stared down at the girl and returned her faint smile. About nine years old, he guessed.

"... And this is a Claanite," he explained, adding a stone to tile row beside her on the counterpane. "I picked it up a little while back on the world called Claana. I've polished it a lot since then, but I didn't do any grinding. That's its natural shape."

"What is Claana like?" she asked him.

"Mostly water," he said. "It's got a big blue sun in a sort of pinkish sky and eleven small moons that are always doing something interesting. There are no continents, just thousands of islands all over the place. Its people are batrachians, and they spend most of their lives in the water. They do not have any real cities that anybody knows of. They are migrants and traders of sorts. They trade things they find in the oceans for knives and duralines and things like that. This stone comes from their seas. I found it on a beach. It gets its shape from all that grinding against sand and other stones while it is being washed ashore. The trees there spread out for great distances--and they push extra roots out over the ground to reach the water. They have many very large leaves. Some have fruit. The temperature is almost always pleasant, because there are always winds coming in off the water. --And any time you want, you can climb up on something high and start looking off in all directions. You will always find a dark place where it is raining, somewhere. Anything seen through the rainwall is misty and distorted, sort of like the far shores of fairyland. Also, there are mirages. You see islands in the sky, with trees growing upside down. One of the natives told me that that's where they go when they die. They think that their ancestors are up there looking down at them--staring into the seas, watching. --If you like that stone, you can have it."

"Oh yes, Mr. H! Thank you!"

She clutched the stone and rubbed it with her hand. She polished it on the front of her hospital gown.

"How are you feeling today?" he asked.

"Better," she said. "A lot better."

He studied the small face, dark eyes beneath dark bangs, freckles sprinkled everywhere. There was more color to it than there had been a day and a half earlier when she had received the treatment. Her breathing was no longer labored. She was now able to sit up, propped with pillows, and could speak for fairly lengthy periods of time. Her fever was down and her blood pressure was almost normal. She was displaying curiosity and recovering the animation one would expect in a child her age. He considered the treatment a success. He no longer thought of the nine graves in the forest, or the others that lay farther behind him.

"... I'd like to see Claana someday," she was saying, "with its blue sun and all those moons ..."

"Perhaps you will," he told her, guessing far ahead, however, and seeing her with some local boy, a housewife in Italbar for all the days of her now recovered life, with perhaps only an orange stone to remind her of the dreams of childhood. Well, it could be worse, he decided, remembering that evening in tile hills above the city. A town like Italbar might be a pleasant place to end one's wanderings .

Dr. Helman entered the room, nodded to them both, took her left wrist in his hand and watched his chrono.

"You are a bit excited, Luci," he announced, lowering the wrist. "Perhaps Mr. H has been telling you of too many adventures."