That was when the visits with the psychologists began, and while they found me, of course, perfectly competent mentally (trust Tack to overreact, and they knew it), when I requested that I be transferred from the planet, they found a loophole that let me go without breaking contract or losing pay. But the word was out throughout the corporation that I had gone native on Worthing, that I had actually performed an arcane rite involving blood, ice, a mountain peak, and a dead man's half-digested dinner. I could bear the rumors of madness. It is the laughter that is unbearable, because those who cannot dream of the climb to the mountain, who did not know the men who died for me and for Crofe-- how can they help but laugh?
And how can I help but hate them?
Which is why I request again my retirement from the corporation. I will accept half retirement, if that is necessary. I'll accept no retirement, in fact, if the record can only stay clear. I will not accept a retirement that lists me as mentally incompetent. I will not accept a retirement that forces me to live anywhere but on Ylymyn Island.
I know that it is forbidden, but these are unusual circumstances. I will certainly be accepted there; I will acquit myself with dignity; I wish only to live out my life with people who understand honor perhaps better than any others I have known of.
It is absurd, I know. You will deny my request, I know, as you have a hundred times before. But I hoped that if you knew my story, knew as best I could tell it the whys behind my determination to leave the corporation, that perhaps you would understand why I have not been able to forget that Pru told me, "Now you are Ice, too; and now your soul shall be set free in the Sky." It is not the hope of a life after death-- I have no such hope. It is the hope that at my death honorable men will go to some trouble to bid me farewell.
Indeed, it is no hope at all, but rather a certainty. I, like every modern man, have clung since childhood to a code, to a law that struggled to give a purpose to life. All the laws are rational; all achieve a purpose.
But on Ylymyn, where the laws were irrational and the purposes meaningless, I found another thing, the thing behind the law, the thing that is itself worth clinging to regardless of the law, the thing that takes even mad laws and makes them holy. And by all that's holy, let me go back and cling to it again.
I PUT MY BLUE GENES ON
It had taken three weeks to get there-- longer than any man in living memory had been in space, and there were four of us crammed into the little Hunter III skipship. It gave us a hearty appreciation for the pioneers, who had had to crawl across space at a tenth of the speed of light. No wonder only three colonies ever got founded. Everybody else must have eaten each other alive after the first month in space.
Harold had taken a swing at Amauri the last day, and if we hadn't hit the homing signal I would have ordered the ship turned around to go home to N.ncamais, which was mother and apple pie to everybody but me-- I'm from Pennsylvania. But we got the homing signal and set the computer to scanning the old maps, and after a few hours found ourselves in stationary orbit over Prescott, Arizona.
At least that's what the geologer said, and computers can't lie. It didn't look like what the old books said Arizona should look like.
But there was the homing signal, broadcasting in Old English: "God bless America, come in, safe landing guaranteed." The computer assured us that in Old English the word guarantee was not obscene, but rather had something to do with a statement being particularly trustworthy-- we had a chuckle over that one.
But we were excited, too. When great-great-great-great to the umpteenth power grandpa and grandma upped their balloons from old Terra Firma eight hundred years ago, it had been to escape the ravages of microbiological warfare that was just beginning (a few germs in a sneak attack on Madagascar, quickly spreading to epidemic proportions, and South Africa holding the world ransom for the antidote; quick retaliation with virulent cancer; you guess the rest). And even from a couple of miles out in space, it was pretty obvious that the war hadn't stopped there. And yet there was this homing signal.
"Obviamente autom tica," Amauri observed.
"Que m quina, que n.o pofa em tantos anos, bichinha! N.o acredito!" retorted Harold, and I was afraid I might have a rerun of the day before.
"English," I said. "Might as well get used to it. We'll have to speak it for a few days, at least."
Vladimir sighed. "Merda." I laughed. "All right, you can keep your scatological comments in lingua deporto."
"Are you so sure there's anybody alive down there?" Vladimir asked.
What could I say? That I felt it in my bones? So I just threw a sponge at him, which scattered drinking water all over the cabin, and for a few minutes we had a waterfight. I know, discipline, discipline. But we're not a land army up here, and what the hell. I'd rather have my crew acting like crazy children than like crazy grown-ups.
Actually, I didn't believe that at the level of technology our ancestors had reached in 1992 they could build a machine that would keep running until 2810. Somebody had to be alive down there-- or else they'd gotten smart. Again, the surface of old Terra didn't give many signs that anybody had gotten smart.
So somebody was alive down there. And that was exactly what we had been sent to find out.
They complained when I ordered monkeysuits.
"That's old Mother Earth down there!" Harold argued. For a halibut with an ike of 150 he sure could act like a baiano sometimes.
"Show me the cities," I answered. "Show me the millions of people running around taking the sun in their rawhide summer outfits."
"And there may be germs," Amauri added, in his snottiest voice, and immediately I had another argument going between two men brown enough to know better.
"We will follow," I said in my nasty captain's voice, "standard planetary procedure, whether it's Mother Earth or mother--"
And at that moment the monotonous homing signal changed.
"Please respond, please identify, please respond, or we'll blast your asses out of the sky."
We responded. And soon afterward found ourselves in monkeysuits wandering around in thick pea soup up to our navels (if we could have located our navels without a map, surrounded as they were with lifesaving devices) waiting for somebody to open a door. A door opened and we picked ourselves up off a very hard floor. Some of the pea soup had fallen down the hatch with us. A gas came into the sterile chamber where we waited, and pretty soon the pea soup settled down and turned into mud.
"Mariajoseijesus!" Amauri muttered. "Aquela merda vivia!"
"English," I muttered into the monkey mouth, "and clean up your language."
"That crap was alive," Amauri said, rephrasing and cleaning up his language.
"And now it isn't, but we are." It was hard to be patient.
For all we knew, what passed for humanity here liked eating spacemen. Or sacrificing them to some local deity. We passed a nervous four hours in that cubicle. And I had already laid about five hopeless escape plans when a door opened, and a person appeared.
He was dressed in a white farmersuit, or at least close to it. He was very short, but smiled pleasantly and beckoned. Proof positive. Living human beings. Mission successful. Now we know there was no cause for rejoicing, but at that moment we rejoiced. Backslapping, embracing our little host (afraid of crushing him for a moment), and then into the labyrinth of U.S. MB Warfare Post 004.
They were all very small-- not more than 140 centimeters tall-- and the first thought that struck me was how much humanity had grown since then. The stars must agree with us, I thought.