Andre Norton - The Science Fiction anthology

“You feel sorry for them because you identify with them. That makes you sorry for yourself.”

She misunderstood his motives as she misunderstood everything he did or said, but their rapport wasn’t at stake now. “What are you going to do?” he forced himself to ask.

“The decision will have to be made on Earth. Unless you mean what’s going to happen to you? That’s simple—you’ll go back with us. Blynn will stay here, pending orders.”

The colonel saluted.

“But I thought I was going to stay here ten years,” said Clarey.

“Five to ten years,” she corrected. “Apparently five was enough—” She cut herself short. “What’s the matter with me?” she suddenly exclaimed. “I’ve been letting myself think in the same woolly way you do.”

Suddenly, almost frighteningly, she smiled. “Clarey, you did the job we sent you out to do! You did it better than we expected! What threw me off was that we sent you out to act as an observer. Instead, you became a catalyst!”

She seized his hand and wrung it warmly. “Clarey, I apologize. You’ve done a splendid job!”

He wrenched his hand from her grasp. “I didn’t act as a catalyst! It would have happened anyway.” His voice rang in his own horrified ears—a voice begging for reassurance.

And she was a woman; she had maternal instincts; she reassured him. “It would have happened anyway,” she said soothingly, “but it would have dragged on for years, cost the taxpayers billions.”

“And now,” he whispered, still unable to believe that the thing had really happened, “will you ... dispose of everyone on Damorlant?”

She smiled and threw herself into a chair, her body limp and tired and contented-looking. “Come, Clarey, we’re not that ruthless. Some kind of quarantine will probably be worked out. We just made the whole thing sound more drastic to appeal to your patriotism.”

The general beamed. “So everything has worked out all right, after all? I knew it would. I always had the utmost confidence in you, Clarey.”

She was busily planning. “We’ll arrange some kind of heroic accident.... I have it! You died saving your aunt from the flames.”

“What flames?”

“The flames of the fire that burned down her house. She died of the local equivalent of shock. Embelsira will be rich, so she’ll want to believe the story. She’ll be able to find herself another husband; she’ll have children. She’ll be better off, Clarey.”

He looked at her, his misery welling out of his eyes.

“Oh, I don’t mean it that way, man! All I meant was that you’re a human being; she’s not. I’m not saying one is better than the other. I’m saying they’re different.”

“But I felt less different with her, with the Damorlanti, than with anyone on Earth,” he said.

She walked across to the window and looked out at the Damorlanti rioting ineptly below. “Most of us are happier in our dream world,” she said at last, “but society couldn’t function if we were allowed to stay there.”

“Damorlan wasn’t a dream world.”

“But it will be,” she said.

And so Clarey went back to Earth on the staff ship. Once its luxury would have given him pleasure; now the cabin with its taps that gave out plain water, salt water, mineral water, and assorted cordials held no charm; neither did the self-contained tri-di projector-receiver. The only reason he stayed there most of the time was to avoid the others. However, he couldn’t avoid turning up in the dining salon for meals. The greater his sorrow, the greater his appetite.

One day after lunch, Han stopped him forcibly, grasping his arm. “I’ve got to talk to you. Afterward you can go off and sulk if you want to. But we’re going to make planetfall in a few days. It’s necessary to discuss your future now.”

“I have no future,” he said.

“Come this way, Clarey. That’s an order!”

Obediently, he followed her into a lounge that was a dazzle of color and splendor. There were eight pseudo-windows, each framing a pseudo-scene of a different planet at a different season. The harsh, barren summer of Mars, the cold, bleak winter of Ksud, the gentle green spring of Earth.... It must be a park, he knew; in no other place on Earth could spring be manifest—and yet it gave him a little pang to look at it. He tore his eyes away to turn them toward the others, and then up at the domed ceiling, fashioned to resemble a blue sky with clouds drifting across it. A domed ceiling ... and he thought of the domes of Damorlan, light-years away among the stars....

“I’m afraid the décor’s a bit gaudy,” Han apologized. “We didn’t check the decorator’s past performance until it was too late. But it’s comfortable, anyway. Try one of these chairs. They accommodate themselves to the form.”

She threw herself on a chaise lounge that accommodated itself perfectly to her form. She wasn’t wearing her usual opulent secretarial garb, but something simple of clinging stuff that occasionally went transparent. So we’re back to the first movement, Clarey though wearily.

He made sure that the chair opposite her was old-style before he lowered himself into it. “Where’s the general? I thought he always sat in on these conferences.”

“The formalities are over now,” she said, smiling up at him. “Besides,” she added, “if he doesn’t take a nap after lunch, it wreaks havoc with his digestion. Afraid to be alone with me, Clarey?” she asked huskily.

“Yes,” he said, rising, “as a matter of fact, I am, now that you mention it.”

She sat up. “Sit down!”

He sat down.

She didn’t recline again. Her dress went opaque, but her voice grew silken once more. “Listen, Clarey, I don’t want you to think we’re cheating you out of anything we promised. Even though you stayed only five years, you’re going to have it all. You’ll have U-E status—”

“What do I want that for?”

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you any more, Clarey? It used to mean a lot, though you denied it even to yourself.”

“Did it?” He forced his thoughts back through time. “I suppose it did. But I’ve changed. You know, those five years on Damorlan seem like—”

“Like a lifetime,” she finished. “Couldn’t we dispense with the clichés?”

“On Damorlan the things I said were fresh and interesting. On Damorlan I was somebody pretty special. I’d rather be a big second-hand fish in a small primitive puddle. Isn’t there some way—”

“No way at all, Clarey! The puddle’s drying up. We’ve got a nice aquarium ready for you. Why not dive in gracefully?”

“It was my puddle,” he said. “I belonged.”

She closed her eyes and sank back into the chair which arched to meet the arch of her body. Lying down, she didn’t look nearly as tall. “All right, let’s give the whole opera one final run-through. Nobody cared for you on Earth; on Damorlan your friends liked you; your wife loved you. On Earth you never felt welcome and/or appreciated; on Damorlan you felt both welcome and appreciated. On Earth—”

He was stung out of his apathy. “That’s right! I’m not saying I’m unique, only that I fitted—”

“How about trying to look at it from another point of view? Did it ever occur to you that, if the Damorlanti accepted you, so might your own people, if you approached them in the same way? Did you ever try to make friends on Earth?”

“But on Earth I shouldn’t have to. They were my own people.”

“Aha!” she cried gleefully.

“I mean—well, General Spano said it would be wrong to stoop to hypocrisy to win the friendship of my own people; that, if I did, their friendship wouldn’t be worth anything. You can’t buy friendship.”