"Well," said the officer, "it seems that you might have the other kind."
"What other kind?"
"The kind you were talking about: The kind that will see and interpret, the kind that will tell the people back home what it's really like out there."
"You'd take me on as a chronicler?"
No, we'd have to take you on as something else. But that shouldn't stop you. How many people were drafted for the World Wars for the purpose of writing war novels? How many war novels were written? How many good ones? There were quite a few, you know. You could plan your background to that end."
"Maybe," said the boy.
They walked on.
"Come this way?" asked the officer.
The boy nodded and followed him out into a corridor and then into an elevator. It closed its door and asked them where they wished to be conveyed.
"Sub-balc," said the lieutenant colonel.
There was scarcely a sensation of movement, then the doors opened again. They stepped out onto the narrow balcony which ran around the rim of the soup bowl. It was glassite-enclosed and dimly lit.
Below them lay the pens and a part of the field.
"There will be several vehicles lifting off shortly," said the officer. "I want you to watch them, to see them go up on their wheels of fire and smoke."
" 'Wheels of fire and smoke,' " said the boy, smiling. "I've seen that phrase in lots of your booklets. Real poetic, yes sir."
The officer did not answer him. None of the towers of metal moved.
"These don't really go out, you know," he finally said. "They just convey materials and personnel to the stations in orbit. The real big ships never land."
"Yes, I know. Did a guy really commit suicide on one of your exhibits this morning?"
"No," said the officer, not looking at him, "it was an accident. He stepped into the Mars Grav-room before the platform was in place or the air cushion built up. Fell down the shaft."
"Then why isn't that exhibit closed?"
"Because all the safety devices are functioning properly. The warning light and the guard rail are both working all right."
"Then why did you call it an accident?"
"Because he didn't leave a note. —There! Watch now, that one is getting ready to lift!" He pointed with his pipe.
A blizzard of vapors built up around the base of one of the steel stalagmites. A light was born in its heart. Then the burning was beneath it, and waves of fumes splashed across the field, broke, rose high into the air.
But not quite so high as the ship.
... Because it was moving now.
Almost imperceptibly, it had lifted itself above the ground. Now, though, the movement could be noted.
Suddenly, with a great gushing of flame, it was high in the air, darting against the gray.
It was a bonfire in the sky, then a flare; then it was a star, rushing away from them.
"There is nothing quite like a rocket in flight," said the officer.
"Yes," said the boy. "You're right."
"Do you want to follow it?" said the man. "Do you want to follow that star?"
"Yes," said the boy. "Someday I will."
"My own training was pretty hard, and the requirements are even tougher these days."
They watched two more ships lift off.
"When was the last time you were out, yourself?" asked the boy.
"It's been awhile..." said the man.
"I'd better be going now. I've got a paper to write for school."
"Let me give you some of our new booklets first."
"Thanks, I've got them all."
"Okay, then... Good night, fella."
"Good night. Thanks for the show."
The boy moved back toward the elevator. The officer remained on the balcony, staring out, staring up, holding onto his pipe which had gone out.
The light, and twisted figures, struggling . .. Then darkness.
"Oh, the steel! The pain as the blades enter! I am many mouths, all of them vomiting blood!" Silence. Then comes the applause.
IV
"... the plain, the direct, and the blunt. This is Winchester Cathedral," said the guidebook. "With its floor-to-ceiling shafts, like so many huge treetrunks, it achieves a ruthless control over its spaces: the ceilings are flat; each bay, separated by those shafts, is itself a thing of certainty and stability. It seems, indeed, to reflect something of the spirit of William the Conqueror. Its disdain of mere elaboration and its passionate dedication to the love of another world would make it seem, too, an appropriate setting for some tale out of Mallory..."
"Observe the scalloped capitals," said the guide. "In their primitive fluting they anticipated what was later to become a common motif..."
"Faugh!" said Render—softly though, because he was in a group inside a church.
"Shh!" said Jill (Fotlock—that was her real last name) DeVille.
But Render was impressed as well as distressed.
Hating Jill's hobby, though, had become so much of a reflex with him that he would sooner have taken his rest seated beneath an oriental device which dripped water on his head than to admit he occasionally enjoyed walking through the arcades and the galleries, the passages and the tunnels, and getting all out of breath climbing up the high twisty stairways of towers.
So he ran his eyes over everything, burnt everything down by shutting them, then built the place up again out of the still smoldering ashes of memory, all so that at a later date
he would be able to repeat the performance, offering the vision to his one patient who could see only in this manner. This building he disliked less than most. Yes, he would take it back to her.
The camera in his mind photographing the surroundings, Render walked with the others, overcoat over his arm, his fingers anxious to reach after a cigarette. He kept busy ignoring his guide, realizing this to be the nadir of all forms of human protest. As he walked through Winchester he thought of his last two sessions with Eileen Shallot.
He wandered with her again.
Where the panther walks to and fro on the limb overhead . ..
They wandered.
Where the buck turns furiously at the hunter...
They had stopped when she held the backs of her hands' to her temples, fingers spread wide, and looked sideways at him, her lips parted as if to ask a question.
"Antlers," he had said.
She nodded, and the buck approached.
She felt its antlers, rubbed its nose, examined its hooves.
"Yes," she'd said, and it had turned and walked away and the panther had leapt down upon its back and torn at its neck.
She watched as it bayonetted the cat twice, then died. The panther tore at its carcass and she looked away.
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock...
She watched it coil and strike, coil and strike, three times. Then she felt its rattles.
She turned back to Render.
"Why these things?"
"More than the idyllic must you know," he had said, and he pointed.