Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (27 page)

"Are you kidding?" his gunner grunted.

"No. What is it?"

"B.W."

"What?"

"Bacteriological weapon, skyhead. They keep promising us vaccines. Stuck
in their zippers—look out, there's a ground burst."

They held Hobie up front for another mission, and another after that, and
then they told him that a sector quarantine was now in force.

The official notice said that movement of personnel between sectors would
be reduced to a minimum as a temporary measure to control the spread of
respiratory ailments. Translation: you could go from the support zone to
the front, but you couldn't go back.

Hobie was moved into a crowded billet and assigned to Casualty and Supply.
Shortly he discovered that there was a translation for respiratory
ailments too. Gee-gee turned out to be a multiform misery of groin rash,
sore throat, fever, and unending trots. It didn't seem to become really
acute; it just cycled along. Hobie was one of those who were only lightly
affected, which was lucky because the hospital beds were full. So were the
hospital aisles. Evacuation of all casualties had been temporarily
suspended until a controlled corridor could be arranged.

The Gués did not, it seemed, get gee-gee. The ground troops were
definitely sure of that. Nobody knew how it was spread. Rumor said it was
bats one week, and then the next week they were putting stuff in the
water. Poisoned arrows, roaches, women, disintegrating canisters, all had
their advocates. However it was done, it was clear that the U.A.R.
technological aid had included more than hardware. The official notice
about a forthcoming vaccine yellowed on the board.

Ground fighting was veering closer to Hobie's strip. He heard mortars now
and then, and one night the Gués ran in a rocket launcher and nearly
got the fuel dump before they where chased back.

"All they got to do is wait," said the gunner. "We're dead."

"Gee-gee doesn't kill you," said C/S control. "You just wish it did."

"They say."

The strip was extended, and three attack bombers came in. Hobie looked
them over. He had trained on AX92's all one summer; he could fly them in
his sleep. It would be nice to be alone.

He was pushing the C/S chopper most of the daylight hours now. He had
gotten used to being shot at and to being sick. Everybody was sick, except
a couple of replacement crews who were sent in two weeks apart, looking
startlingly healthy. They said they had been immunized with a new
antitoxin. Their big news was that gee-gee could be cured outside the
zone.

"We're getting reinfected," the gunner said. "That figures. They want us
out of here."

That week there was a big drive on bats, but it didn't help. The next week
the first batch of replacements were running fevers. Their shots hadn't
worked, and neither did the stuff they gave the second batch.

After that, no more men came in except a couple of volunteer medicos. The
billets and the planes and the mess were beginning to stink. That
dysentery couldn't be controlled after you got weak.

What they did get was supplies. Every day or so another ton of stuff would
drift down. Most of it was dragged to one side and left to rot. They were
swimming in food. The staggering cooks pushed steak and lobster at men who
shivered and went out to retch. The hospital even had ample space now,
because it turned out that gee-gee really did kill you in the end. By that
time, you were glad to go. A cemetery developed at the far side of the
strip, among the skeletons of the defoliated trees.

On the last morning, Hobie was sent out to pick up a forward scout team.
He was one of the few left with enough stamina for long missions. The
three-man team was far into Gué territory, but Hobie didn't care. All
he was thinking about was his bowels. So far he had not fouled himself or
his plane. When he was down by their signal, he bolted out to squat under
the chopper's tail. The grunts climbed in, yelling at him.

They had a prisoner with them. The Gué was naked and astonishingly
broad. He walked springily; his arms were lashed with wire and a shirt was
tied over his head. This was the first Gué Hobie had been close to.
As he got in, he saw how the Gué's firm brown flesh glistened and
bulged around the wire. He wished he could see his face. The gunner said
the Gué was a Sirionó, and this was important because the Sirionós
were not known to be with the Gué's. They were a very primitive
nomadic tribe.

When Hobie began to fly home, he realized he was getting sicker. It became
a fight to hold onto consciousness and keep on course. Luckily nobody shot
at them. At one point he became aware of a lot of screaming going on
behind him but couldn't pay attention. Finally he came over the strip and
horsed the chopper down. He let his head down on his arms.

"You okay?" asked the gunner.

"Yeah," said Hobie, hearing them getting out. They were moving something
heavy. Finally he got up and followed them. The floor was wet. That wasn't
unusual. He got down and stood staring in, the floor a foot under his
nose. The wet stuff was blood. It was sprayed around, with one big puddle.
In the puddle was something soft and fleshy-looking.

Hobie turned his head. The ladder was wet. He held up one hand and looked
at the red. His other hand too. Holding them out stiffly, he turned and
began to walk away across the strip.

Control, who still hoped to get an evening flight out of him, saw him fall
and called the hospital. The two replacement parameds were still in pretty
good shape. They came out and picked him up.

When Hobie came to, one of the parameds was tying his hands down to the
bed so he couldn't tear the IV out again.

"We're gong to die here," Hobie told him.

The paramed looked noncommittal. He was a thin dark boy with a big Adam's
apple.

"'But I shall dine at journey's end with Landor and with Donne,'" said
Hobie. His voice was light and facile.

"Yeats," said the paramed. "Want some water?"

Hobie's eyes flickered. The paramed gave him some water.

"I really believed it, you know," Hobie said chattily. "I had it all
figured out." He smiled, something he hadn't done for a long time.

"Landor and Donne?" asked the medic. He unhooked the empty IV bottle and
hung up a new one.

"Oh, it was pathetic, I guess," Hobie said. "It started out … I
believed they were real, you know? Kirk, Spock, McCoy, all of them. And
the ship. To this day, I swear … one of them talked to me once; I
mean, he really did … I had it all figured out; they had me left
behind as an observer." Hobie giggled.

"They were coming back for me. It was secret. All I had to do was sort of
fit in and observe. Like a report. One day they would come back and haul
me up in that beam thing; maybe you know about that? And there I'd be back
in real time where human beings were, where they were human. I wasn't
really stuck here in the past. On a backward planet."

The paramed nodded.

"Oh, I mean, I didn't really
believe
it; I knew it was just a show.
But I did believe it too. It was like
there,
in the background,
underneath, no matter what was going on. They were coming for me. All I
had to do was observe. And not to interfere. You know? Prime directive
… Of course, after I grew up, I realized they weren't; I mean, I
realized consciously. So I was going to go to them. Somehow, somewhere.
Out there … Now I know. It really isn't so. None of it. Never.
There's nothing … Now I know I'll die here."

"Oh, now," said the paramed. He got up and started to take things away.
His fingers were shaky.

"It's clean there," said Hobie in a petulant voice. "None of this shit.
Clean and friendly. They don't torture people," he explained, thrashing
his head. "They don't kill—" He slept. The paramed went away.

Somebody started to yell monotonously.

Hobie opened his eyes. He was burning up.

The yelling went on, became screaming. It was dusk. Footsteps went by,
headed for the screaming. Hobie saw they had put him in a bed by the door.

Without his doing much about it, the screaming seemed to be lifting him
out of the bed, propelling him through the door. Air. He kept getting
close-ups of his hands clutching things. Bushes, shadows. Something
scratched him.

After a while the screaming was a long way behind him. Maybe it was only
in his ears. He shook his head, felt himself go down onto boards. He
thought he was in the cemetery.

"No," he said. "Please. Please no." He got himself up, balanced, blundered
on, seeking coolness.

The side of the plane felt cool. He plastered his hot body against it,
patting it affectionately. It seemed to be quite dark now. Why was he
inside with no lights? He tried the panel; the lights worked perfectly.
Vaguely he noticed some yelling starting outside again. It ignited the
screaming in his head. The screaming got very loud—loud—LOUD—and
appeared to be moving him, which was good.

He came to above the overcast and climbing. The oxy-support tube was
hitting him in the nose. He grabbed for the mask, but it wasn't there.
Automatically, he had leveled off. Now he rolled and looked around.

Below him was a great lilac sea of cloud, with two mountains sticking
through it, their western tips on fire. As he looked, they dimmed. He
shivered, found he was wearing only sodden shorts. How had he got here?
Somebody had screamed intolerably and he had run.

He flew along calmly, checking his board. No trouble except the fuel.
Nobody serviced the AX92's any more. Without thinking about it, he began
to climb again. His hands were a yard away and he was shivering, but he
felt clear. He reached up and found his headphones were in place; he must
have put them on along with the rest of the drill. He clicked on. Voices
rattled and roared at him. He switched off. Then he took off the headpiece
and dropped it on the floor.

He looked around: 18,000, heading 88-05. He was over the Atlantic. In
front of him the sky was darkening fast. A pinpoint glimmer ten o'clock
high. Sirius, probably.

He thought about Sirius, trying to recall his charts. Then he thought
about turning and going back down. Without paying much attention, he
noticed he was crying with his mouth open.

Carefully he began feeding his torches and swinging the nose of his pod
around and up. He brought it neatly to a point on Sirius. Up. Up. Behind
him, a great pale swing of contrail fell away above the lilac shadow,
growing, towering to the tiny plane that climbed at its tip. Up. Up. The
contrail cut off as the plane burst into the high cold dry.

As it did so, Hobie's ears skewered and he screamed wildly. The pain quit;
his drums had burst. Up! Now he was gasping for air, strangling. The great
torches drove him up, up, over the curve of the world. He was hanging on
the star. Up! The fuel gauges were knocking. Any second they would quit,
and he and the bird would be a falling stone. "Beam us up, Scotty!" he
howled at Sirius, laughing, coughing—coughing to death, as the
torches faltered—

—And was still coughing as he sprawled on the shining resiliency
under the arcing grids. He gagged, rolled, finally focused on a personage
leaning toward him out of a complex chair. The personage had round eyes, a
slitted nose, and the start of a quizzical smile.

Hobie's head swiveled slowly. It was not the bridge of the
Enterprise.
There were no viewscreens, only a View. And Lieutenant Uhura would have
had trouble with the freeform flashing objects suspended in front of what
appeared to be a girl wearing spots. The spots, Hobie made out, were fur.

Somebody who was not Bones McCoy was doing something to Hobie's stomach.
Hobie got up a hand and touched the man's gleaming back. Under the mesh it
was firm and warm. The man looked up, grinned; Hobie looked back at the
captain.

"Do not have fear," a voice was saying. It seemed to be coming out of a
globe by the captain's console. "We will tell you where you are."

"I know where I am," Hobie whispered. He drew a deep, sobbing breath.

"I'm HOME!" he yelled. Then he passed out.

The End

© 1969, 1997 by James Tiptree, Jr.; first appeared in
Galaxy
Science Fiction
; reprinted by permission of the author's estate and
the Estate's agent, Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.

A. Bertram Chandler writing as George Whitley

When Captain Lessing had written his Night Orders the previous night, he
had asked to be called either when Hunter Island Light was sighted or, if
the light was not seen, when the vessel was within the extreme range. He
had, therefore, turned in with the expectation of being aroused at
approximately 0530 hours. He did not anticipate being called before; the
weather was fine and, according to the forecasts and the behavior of the
aneroid barometer, would continue so. His three officers were trustworthy
and almost as experienced on the trade as he was himself.

He was awakened by the irritating buzzing of the telephone at the head of
his bunk. This, by itself, gave slight cause for alarm—usually, if
all was clear, the officer of the watch would come down from the bridge to
call the master in person. Before answering the phone, Lessing switched on
his bunkside reading lamp and looked at the clock on his cabin bulkhead.
The time was 0335.
Something,
thought the captain,
is wrong. To
have been within range of the light at this time we should have had to
have done twelve knots—and this underpowered tub never did twelve
even downhill with a following wind …

The instrument buzzed again.

Lessing lifted the handset from its rest, barked into the receiver, "Yes?"

"Second officer here, Captain. There's a big aircraft just come down in
the sea, about five miles ahead of us—"

"I'll be right up," said Lessing as he swung his long legs out of his
bunk, his feet searching for his slippers. He pulled his dressing gown on,
lit the inevitable cigarette, and hurried up to the bridge.