Bob Shaw - Who Goes Here?

“Invalided.” Forgetting the state of his ribs, Peace banged himself on the side of the chest, gave a sharp cry and folded over the table, narrowly avoiding plunging his face into an ashtray.

“Are you all right?” Norman said anxiously.

“Just a twinge.” Peace straightened up, fearful of being evicted by the bartender. “It’s the weather that does it, you know. I’ll be all right in a minute.” To cover his confusion he raised his beaker and sipped more coffee.

Norman toyed for a moment with his glass. “Why did you join up?”

“Ah … I wanted to forget something.”

“What was it?”

“How would I know?” Peace could not understand how the conversational roles had become reversed. “I’ve forgotten it.”

“Of course—I’m sorry.” Norman nodded, and then—as if something had aroused a painful memory—his lower lip began to tremble.

Peace felt strangely guilty, but he sensed the time was right for him to make a move. “Norman,” he said gently, “you’re waiting to join the Legion, aren’t you?”

“I am! I am! Why don’t they open that cursed office? Why do they make us wait so long to lay down our burdens?”

“All in good time,” Peace soothed, glancing around anxiously in case Norman’s emotional outburst had disturbed other customers in the bar. “Listen, Norman, why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

Norman looked at him with tortured eyes. “It was a terrible thing I did. I can’t talk about it.”

“Of course you can.” Peace placed his free hand over Norman’s. “You can tell me, Norman.

Get it off your chest. You’ll feel much better.”

“If only that were true.”

“It is. It is,” Peace said. “Tell it to me, Norman.”

“You’re sure you really want to hear?”

Peace swallowed nervously. “I do, Norman. I do. ”

“All right,” Norman said, in slow, agonized tones. “My crime is…”

“Yes, yes.”

“My crime is …”

“Yes, Norman, yes!”

“… that I deserted from the Legion.”

There came an ear-splitting crash as Peace dropped his coffee beaker on the tiled floor. He gazed strickenly at the top of Norman’s bowed head, unable to speak, then found himself dragged to his feet by the bartender, who had vaulted over the counter.

“All right, youse two,” the barman said, “Outside! I been watching youse two since youse two came in here, and I don’t want the likes o’ youse two in here.”

“It was an accident, a pure accident.” Peace, his mind still in a downward spiral of disbelief, tucked the twenty monits he had taken from Norman into the barman’s shirt pocket and persuaded him to return to his post. The barman gathered up the pieces of ceramic, issued a final warning about holding hands, and shambled away with a number of distrustful backward glances. Peace sat down again and tapped the crown of Norman’s head with a single knuckle.

“Look at me, Norman,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t put me on, would you?”

“No. It’s the truth.”

“But, Norman! Being a deserter from the Legion is nothing to get worked up about.

Practically ever ranker in the outfit dreams of nothing else. It’s their one ambition in life.”

“That’s all right for rankers—it’s expected of them.” Norman raised his face which was crimson with shame. “But I was an officer.”

“An officer?” Peace fell silent, trying to fit the new information into the complex puzzle of his life, but Norman had got into his confessional stride and was speaking faster.

“… and not just any officer, you see. I was Lieutenant Norman Nightingale, only son of General Nightingale himself. My family has a distinguished record of service in the Legion that goes back two centuries. Two centuries! Two hundred years of generals and space marshals, campaigns and courage, medals and honours, glory and greatness. Can you imagine the burden—the unspeakable burden—that tradition placed on me?” Peace shook his head, partly because it was expected of him, partly because a fierce tingling sensation had developed behind his forehead.

“Almost from the minute I was born, certainly from the cradle, I was prepared and groomed for the Legion. My father never spoke to me about anything else. My mother never spoke to me about anything else. My life was totally committed to the Legion—and the terrible thing is that… that I had no love for it. I wanted to do other things.” Norman paused, obviously reflecting on his filial shortcomings.

Peace was glad of the break because the pins-and-needles had grown stronger, and his memory was throwing up images of a Southern-style white-columned house; a stern-faced, grey-haired man, immaculate in the uniform of a Legion staff officer; a pretty woman, reserved to the point of remoteness, whose upright posture was as militarily correct as that of her husband. These, he knew, were visions of his own childhood, and he began to understand why the memory eraser in the recruiting station had blanked out his entire past. If his whole life had been steeped in the tradition of Space Legion service, his guilt over betraying the family ideal would be equally all-pervading. Every incident stored in his memory, every last detail of his upbringing and early career would be a clue to the nature of his crime—and therefore the machine, with electronic scrupulousness, had deleted the lot.

One of his life’s great mysteries had been cleared up, but another had come forward in its place.

“I see the fix you’re in, Norman,” Peace said slowly. “Naturally, with a background like yours, you feel rotten about having gone AWOL—but why go back as a ranker? You don’t need to have any memories wiped out—as soon as you return to the Legion you’ll cease to be a deserter, and you’ll have nothing to feel guilty about. It’s as simple as that.”

“As simple as that, he says!” Norman gave a sardonic laugh, indicative of a soul in torment.

“Well, isn’t it?”

“If only you knew.”

“For God’s sake!” Peace fought back his impatience, remembering that his former self was in dire mental straits. “Tell me all about it, Norman.”

“The trouble is,” Norman said, gripping his glass in an agitated manner, “That I didn’t just go AWOL. I deserted in the face of the enemy—out of sheer cowardice—and even for a general’s son, that’s serious.”

“It’s pretty serious,” Peace agreed, “but nothing that out… your father couldn’t square for you.”

Norman shook his head. “You just don’t understand—though, as you haven’t had my sort of upbringing, I couldn’t expect you to. There’s simply no way to wipe out the disgrace I’ve brought on the family name. In any case, that’s not my big problem—it’s guilt that’s my problem. My own personal, monogrammed, hand-made guilt over the circumstances in which I deserted.”

“Tell me about it,” Peace said, ignoring a clammy touch of unease.

“I can’t do that. I don’t think I could ever speak to anybody about that.”

This time Norman’s reticence made Peace feel relieved rather than angry. “Okay. So you deserted in the face of the enemy—what happened next?”

Norman took a shaky breath. “We were fighting on Aspatria at the time. Have you ever been there?”

“Let me see.” Peace pretended to search his memory. “I think I spent some leave there once.”

“That must have been after the rebellion ended. When I was there in ‘83 the fighting was still going on, and everything was a bit chaotic. I managed to make my way down to Touchdown City and hide out for a while. The military police were looking for me, of course, but I had no trouble dodging them. It was an easy life for a while, because I had plenty of money—and then some alien beings they call Oscars showed up, and they started haunting me. Have you heard about the Oscars?” A constriction seemed to form around Peace’s heart. “I’ve heard of them. Why did they come after you?”