Bright Segment (14 page)

On the banks of the wandering rivers, monotremes with opposed
toes dredged and paddled, and sloths and lemurs crept at night. At first they had stayed together, but they were soon too numerous for that; and a half dozen generations cost them the power of speech, which was, by then, hardly a necessity. Living was good for primates on Viridis, and became better each generation.

Eating and breeding, hunting and escaping filled the days and the cacophonous nights. It was hard in the beginning to see a friend cut down, to watch a slender silver shape go spinning down a river and know that with it went some of your brother, some of your mate, some of yourself. But as the hundreds became thousands and the thousands millions, witnessing death became about as significant as watching your friend get his hair cut. The basic ids each spread through the changing, mutating population like a stain, crossed and recrossed by the strains of the others, co-existing, eating each other and being eaten and all the while passing down through the generations.

There was a cloud over the savannah, high over the ruins of the compound. It was a thing of many colors and of no particular shape, and it was bigger than one might imagine, not knowing how far away it was.

From it dropped a golden spot that became a thread, and down came a golden mass. It spread and swung, exploded into a myriad of individuals. Some descended on the compound, erasing and changing, lifting, breaking—always careful to kill nothing. Others blanketed the planet, streaking silently through the green aisles, flashing unimpeded through the tangled thickets. They combed the river-banks and the half-light of hill waves, and everywhere they went they found and touched the mushroom and stripped it of its spores, the compaction and multiplication of what had once been the representatives of a very high reptile culture.

Primates climbed and leaped, crawled and crept to the jungle margins to watch. Eater lay by eaten; the hunted stood on the hunter’s shoulder, and a platypoid laid an egg in the open which nobody touched.

Simian forms hung from the trees in loops and ropes, in swarms and beards, and more came all the time, brought by some ineffable
magnetism to watch at the hill. It was a fast and a waiting, with no movement but jostling for position, a crowding forward from behind and a pressing back from the slightest chance of interfering with the golden visitors.

Down from the polychrome cloud drifted a mass of the golden beings, carrying with them a huge sleek ship. They held it above the ground, sliced it, lifted it apart, set down this piece and that until a shape began to grow. Into it went bales and bundles, stocks and stores, and then the open tops were covered. It was a much bigger installation than the one before.

Quickly, it was done, and the golden cloud hung waiting.

The jungle was trembling with quiet.

In one curved panel of the new structure, something spun, fell outward, and out of the opening came a procession of stately creatures, long-headed, bright-eyed, three-toed, richly plumed and feathered. They tested their splendid wings, then stopped suddenly, crouched and looking upward.

They were given their obeisance by the golden ones, and after there appeared in the sky the exquisite symbol of a beauty that rides up and up, turns and spirals down again only to rise again; the symbol of that which has no beginning and no end, and the sign of those whose worship and whose work it is to bring to all the Universe that which has shown itself worthy in parts of it.

Then they were gone, and the jungle exploded into killing and flight, eating and screaming, so that the feathered ones dove back into their shelter and closed the door …

And again to the green planet (when the time was right) came the cloud-ship, and found a world full of birds, and the birds watched in awe while they harvested their magic dust, and built a new shelter. In this they left four of their own for later harvesting, and this was to make of Viridis a most beautiful place.

From Viridis, the ship vaulted through the galaxies, searching for worlds worthy of what is human in humanity, whatever their manner of being alive. These they seeded, and of these, perhaps one would produce something new, something which could be reduced to the dust of Viridis, and from dust return.

“R
EAD IT FOR YOURSELF
,” said the Major.

She took the sheaf of flimsies from him and for a moment gave him that strange dry gaze.
The woman’s in shock
, he thought, and did what he could to put down the other two memories he had of eyes like that: an injured starling which had died in his hand; his four-year-old niece, the time he struck her, and the long unbearable moment between the impact and her tears.

Mrs. Reger read carefully and slowly. Her face slept. Her eyes reflected and would not transmit. Her long hands were more vulnerable. The Major heard the whisper of the thin paper; then she turned far enough away from him to steady the backs of her fingers against the mantel. When at last she was finished, she put the report down on the black coffee table gently, gently, as if it might shatter. They stood together looking down on it and its blue blare of stamp-pad ink: TOP SECRET.

She said, at last, “That is the foulest thing a human being has ever done.” Then her mouth slept again.

“I’m glad you agree,” he said. “I was afraid that—” and then she was looking at him again and he could not go on.

“I don’t think I understood you,” he said tonelessly. “You meant the report. I thought you meant Wolf Reger.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said.

She glanced down at the report. “That isn’t Wolf. Wolf might be a lot of things … things that are … hard to understand. But he isn’t a traitor.” The Major saw her face lifting and turned his head to avoid those hurt eyes. “I think,” she said quietly, “that you’d better go, Major, and take those lies with you.”

He made no move toward the report. “Mrs. Reger,” he suddenly
shouted, “do you think I’m enjoying this? Do you think I volunteered for this job?”

“I hadn’t thought about you at all.”

“Try it,” he said bitterly. Then, “Sorry. I’m sorry. This whole thing …” He pulled himself together. “I wish I could believe you. But you’ve got to realize that a man died to make that report and get it back to us. We have no choice but to take it for the truth and act accordingly. What else can we do?”

“Do what you like. But don’t ask me to believe things about my husband that just aren’t so.”

Watching her, he felt that if she lost that magnificent control it would be more than he could bear. God, he thought,
where did a rat like Reger ever find such a woman?
As gently as he could, he said, “Very well, Mrs. Reger. You needn’t believe it … May I tell you exactly what my assignment is?”

She did not answer.

He said, “I was detailed to get from you everything which might have any bearing on—on this report.” He pointed. “Whether I believe it or not is immaterial. Perhaps if you can tell me enough about the man, I won’t believe it. Perhaps,” he said, knowing his voice lacked conviction, “we can clear him. Wouldn’t you help clear him?”

“He doesn’t need clearing,” she said impatiently. Then, when he made a tiny, exasperated sound, she said, “I’ll help you. What do you want to know?”

All the relief, all the gratitude, and all the continuing distaste for this kind of work were in his voice. “Everything. Why he might do a thing like that.” And quickly, “Or why he wouldn’t.”

She told him about Wolf Reger, the most hated man on Earth.

Beware the fury of a patient man
.

Wolf Reger had so many talents that they were past enumerating. With them he had two characteristics which were extreme. One was defenselessness. The other was an explosive anger which struck without warning, even to Reger himself.

His defenselessness sprang from his excess of ability. When blocked, it was all too easy for him to excel in some other field. It was hard
to make him care much for anything. Rob him, turn him, use him—it didn’t matter. In a day, a week, he could find something better. For this he was robbed, and turned, and used.

His anger was his only terror. When he was eight he was chasing another boy—it was fun; they ran and laughed and dodged through the boy’s large old house. And at the very peak of hilarity, the other boy ran outside and slammed the French doors in Wolf’s face and stood grinning through the glass. Wolf instantly hit the face with his fist. The double-thick glass shattered. Wolf severed two tendons and an artery in his wrist, and the other boy fell gasping, blood from his carotid spurting between his futile fingers. The boy was saved, but the effect on Wolf was worse than if he had died. His anger had lasted perhaps three microseconds, and when it was gone, it was gone completely. So brief a thing could hardly be termed a madness—not even a blindness. But it left the boy with the deep conviction that one day this lightning would strike and be gone, and he would find himself looking at a corpse.

He never ran and shouted again. He lived every moment of the next four years under the pressure of his own will, holding down what he felt was an internal devil, analyzing every situation he met for the most remote possibility of its coming to life again. With that possibility visualized, he would avoid the situation. He therefore avoided sandlot baseball and school dances; competitions and group activities; friendship. He did very well with his school work. He did very badly with his fellows.

When he was twelve he met a situation he could not avoid. He was in his second year of high school then, and every day for three weeks a bulky sophomore twice his size would catch him on his way from English to Geometry II, wrap a thick arm around his neck, and grind a set of knuckles into his scalp. Wolf took it and took it, and one day he tore himself free and struck. He was small and thin, and the chances are that the surprise of the attack was more effective than its power. Their legs were entangled and the bigger boy was off balance. He hit the tile floor with his head and lay quite still with his lips white, and blood trickling from his ear. For six weeks they did not know if he would live or not. Wolf was expelled from school
the day it happened, and never went to another. From that point on he never dared be angry.

It was easy to hate Wolf Reger. He surpassed anyone he worked with and was disliked for it. He retreated from anyone who wanted what he had, and was despised for it. He communicated but would not converse. He immediately and forcefully rejected any kind of companionship; apparently because he did not need it, but actually because he did not dare let anyone come close to him. And his basic expertness was extrapolation—the ability to project every conceivable factor in a situation to every possible conclusion. He chose his work this way. He chose his restaurants this way, his clothes—everything he did and was. He lived to avoid others for their own protection.

He had two great successes—one a chemical process and one an electronic device. They taught him enough about fame to frighten him away from it. Fame meant people, meetings, associates. After that he let others take the credit for the work he did.

At thirty he was married.

“Why?”

The question hung offensively in the air between them for an appreciable time before the Major realized that he had spoken it aloud and incredulously.

She said, carefully, “Major, what have you in your notebook so far?”

He looked down at the neat rows of symbols. “A few facts. A few conjectures.”

With an accuracy that shook him in his chair, she said coldly, “You have him down as a warped little genius with every reason to hate humanity. If I weren’t sure of that, I wouldn’t go on with this. Major,” she said suddenly in a different voice, “suppose I told you that I was walking down the street and a man I had never seen before suddenly roared at me, leapt on my back, knocked me down, beat me and rolled me in the gutter. Suppose you had fifty eyewitnesses who would swear it happened. What would you think of the man?”

He looked at her sleek hair, her strong, obedient features. Despite
himself he felt a quixotic anger toward her attacker, even in hypothesis. “Isn’t it obvious? The man would have to be a drunk, a psychopath. At the very least he would have to be deluded, think you were someone else. Even if he did, only a real skunk would do a thing like that to a woman.” He suddenly realized how easily she had pulled him away from his subject, and was annoyed. “What has this to do—”

“You’ll see.” She captured his gaze, and he had the sensation that for the very first time she was examining him, looking at his eyes, his mouth; looking at him as a man instead of an unavoidable talking-machine in uniform. “I hope you’ll see,” she said thoughtfully. Then, “You wanted to know why he married me.”

The Army wants to know that
, he corrected silently.
I’d like to know why you married him
.

She committed suicide.

Relentlessly she told the Major why, and he put his pencil down until she had finished with that part of the story. This was a report on Reger, not on his wife. Her reasons were good, at the time, and they constituted a tale of disillusion and defeat which has been, and will be, told again and again.

She stumbled out into the desert and walked until she dropped; until she was sure there could be no rescue; until she had barely strength to lift the phial and drink. She regained consciousness eight months later, in civilian married quarters at Space Base Two. She had been dead twice.

It was a long time before she found out what had happened. Reger, who would not permit himself to move about among people, took his exercise at night, and found her; she had walked almost to the Base without knowing it, and Reger all but tripped over her body. It was not a small body, and he was not a large man, but somehow he got her back to his quarters, a one-room-and-bath affair as near to the edge of the housing area as it could be and still be in the Base. She was still alive—barely.

How he saved her, no one but Reger could know. He knew she was drugged or poisoned, and exhausted. He found the right medication
to keep her from slipping further away, but for weeks he could not bring her back. He did the job for which he was hired, and he worked over her as well, and no one knew she was there. Twice her heart stopped and he started it again, once with adrenalin and once with electric shock.