The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction Megapack(r)

  * * * *

  At his press conference that afternoon, Burkhardt revealed her name. The system’s interest was at peak, now; another day without the revelation and the peak would pass, frustration would cause interest to subside. Burkhardt told them. Within an hour it was all over the system.

  Glamorous Lily Leigh, for a decade and a half queen of the solidofilms, was named today as the woman for whom John Burkhardt bought himself out of indenture. Burkhardt explained that Miss Leigh, then an unknown starlet, terminated their engagement in 2319 to marry California industrialist Richardson Elliott. The marriage, like Miss Leigh’s four later ones, ended in divorce.

  “I hope now to make her my wife,” the mystery man from Novotny IX declared. “After eighteen years I still love her as strongly as ever.”

  Miss Leigh, in seclusion at her Scottsdale, Arizona home following her recent divorce from sollie-distributing magnate James Thorne, refused to comment on the statement.

  For three days, Lily Leigh remained in seclusion, seeing no one, issuing no statements to the press. Burkhardt was patient. Eighteen years of waiting teaches patience. And Donnie had told him, as they trudged through the grey slush of rising spring, “The man who rushes ahead foolishly forfeits all advantage in a contest of wills.”

  Donnie carried the wisdom of a race at the end of its span. Burkhardt remained in his hotel suite, mulling over the advice of the little alien. Donnie had never passed judgment on the merits and drawbacks of Burckhardt’s goal; he had simply advised, and suggested, and taught.

  * * * *

  The press had run out of things to say about Burkhardt, and he declined to supply them with anything new to print. So, inevitably, they lost interest in him. By the third day, it was no longer necessary to hold a press conference. He had come back; he had revealed his love for the sollie queen, Lily Leigh; now he was sitting tight. There was nothing to do but wait for further developments, if any. And neither Burkhardt nor Lily Leigh seemed to be creating further developments.

  It was hard to remain calm, Burkhardt thought. It was queer to be here on Earth, in the quiet autumn, while winter fury raged on Novotny IX. Fury of a different kind raged here, the fury of a world of five billion eager, active human beings, but Burkhardt kept himself aloof from all that. Eighteen years of near-solitude had left him unfit for that sort of world.

  It was hard to sit quietly, though, with Lily just a visicall away. Burkhardt compelled himself to be patient. She would call, sooner or later.

  She called on the fourth day. Burckhardt’s skin crawled as he heard the hotel operator say—in tones regulated only with enormous effort—“Miss Leigh is calling from Arizona, Mr. Burkhardt.”

  “Put the call on.”

  She had not used the visi-circuit. Burkhardt kept his screen blank too.

  She said, without preliminaries, “Why have you come back after all these years, John?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “Still?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed—the famous LL laugh, for his benefit alone. “You’re a bigger fool now than you were then, John.”

  “Perhaps,” he admitted.

  “I suppose I ought to thank you, though. This is the best publicity I’ve had all year. And at my age I need all the publicity I can get.”

  “I’m glad for you,” he said.

  “You aren’t serious, though, about wanting to marry me, are you? Not after all these years. Nobody stays in love that long.”

  “I did.”

  “Damn you, what do you want from me?” The voice, suddenly shrill, betrayed a whisper of age.

  “Yourself,” Burkhardt said calmly.

  “What makes you think I’ll marry you? Sure, you’re a hero today, The Man Who Came Back From The Stars. But you’re nothing, John. All you have to show for eighteen years is calluses. At least back then you had your youth. You don’t even have that any more.”

  “Let me come to see you, Lily.”

  “I don’t want to see you.”

  “Please. It’s a small thing—let me have half an hour alone with you.”

  She was silent.

  “I’ve given you half a lifetime of love, Lily. Let me have half an hour.”

  After a long moment she said, simply, hoarsely, “All right. You can come. But I won’t marry you.”

  * * * *

  He left New York shortly before midnight. The Colonization Bureau had hired a private plane for him, and he slipped out unnoticed, in the dark. Publicity now would be fatal. The plane was a jet, somewhat out of date; they were using photon-rockets for the really fast travel. But, obsolete or no, it crossed the continent in three hours. It was just midnight, local time, when the plane landed in Phoenix. As they had arranged it, Lily had her chauffeur waiting, with a long, sleek limousine. Burkhardt climbed in. Turbines throbbed; the car glided out toward Lily’s desert home.

  It was a mansion, a sprawled-out villa moated off—a moat, in water-hungry Arizona!—and topped with a spiring pink stucco tower. Burkhardt was ushered through open fern-lined courtyards to an inner maze of hallways, and through them into a small room where Lily Leigh sat waiting.

  He repressed a gasp. She wore a gown worth a planet’s ransom, but the girl within the gown had not changed in eighteen years. Her face was the same, impish, the eyes dancing and gay. Her hair had lost none of its glossy sheen. Her skin was the skin of a girl of nineteen.

  “It’s like stepping back in time,” he murmured.

  “I have good doctors. You wouldn’t believe I’m forty, would you? But everyone knows it, of course.” She laughed. “You look like an old man, John.”

  “Forty-three isn’t old.”

  “It is when you let your age show. I’ll give you some money, John, and you can get fixed up. Better still, I’ll send my doctors to you.”

  Burkhardt shook his head. “I’m honest about the passing of time. I look this way because of what I’ve done these past eighteen years. I wouldn’t want a doctor’s skill to wipe out the traces of those years.”

  She shrugged lightly. “It was only an offer, not a slur. What do you want with me, John?”

  “I want you to marry me.”

  Her laughter was a silvery tinkle, ultimately striking a false note. “That made sense in 2319. It doesn’t now. People would say you married me for my money. I’ve got lots of money, John, you know.”

  “I’m not interested in your money. I want you.”

  “You think you love me, but how can you? I’m not the sweet little girl you once loved. I never was that sweet little girl. I was a grasping, greedy little girl—and now I’m a grasping, greedy old woman who still looks like a little girl. Go away, John. I’m not for you.”

  “Marry me, Lily. We’ll be happy. I know we will.”

  “You’re a stupid monomaniac.”

  Burkhardt only smiled. “It’ll be good publicity. After five marriages for profit, you’re marrying for love. All the worlds love a lover, Lily. You’ll be everyone’s sweetheart again. Give me your hand, Lily.”

  Like a sleepwalker, she extended it. Burkhardt took the hand, frowning at its coldness, its limpness.

  “But I don’t love you, John.”

  “Let the world think you do. That’s all that matters.”

  “I don’t understand you. You—”

  She stopped. Burckhardt’s grip tightened on her thin hand. He thought of Donnie, a grey shadow against the snow, holding his hand, letting the power flow from body to body, from slim alien to tall Earthman. It is all a matter of channeling your desires, he had said. Any creature that thinks can learn how to assert its will. The technique is simple.

  Lily lowered her head. After a moment, she raised it. She was smiling.

  * * * *

&nbs
p; “It won’t last a month,” Richardson Elliott grunted, at the sight of the announcement in the paper.

  “The poor dumb idiot,” Jim Thorne said, reading the news at his Martian ranch. “Falling in love with a dream-Lily that never existed, and actually marrying her. She’ll suck him dry. But at least it gets me off the alimony hook. I ought to be grateful.”

  On nine worlds, people read the story and talked about it. Many of them were pleased; it was the proper finish for the storybook courtship. But those who knew Lily Leigh were less happy about it. “She’s got some angle,” they said. “It’s all a publicity stunt. She’ll drop him as soon as the fanfare dies down. And she’ll drop him so hard he won’t ever get up.”

  Burkhardt and Lily were married on the tenth day after his return from space. It was a civil ceremony, held secretly. Their honeymoon trip was shrouded in mystery. While they were gone, gossip columnists speculated. How could the brittle, sophisticated, much-married Lily be happy with a simple farmer from a colony-world?

  Two days after their return to Earth from the honeymoon Burkhardt and his wife held a joint press conference. It lasted only five minutes. Burkhardt, holding his wife’s hand tightly, said, “I’m happy to announce that Miss Leigh is distributing all of her possessions to charity. We’ve both signed up as indentured colonists and we’re leaving for Novotny IX tomorrow.”

  “Really, Miss Leigh?”

  “Yes,” Lily said. “I belong at John’s side. We’ll work his old farm together. It’ll be the first useful thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  The newsmen, thunderstruck, scattered to shout their story to the waiting worlds. Mr. and Mrs. John Burkhardt closed the door behind them.

  “Happy?” Burkhardt asked.

  Lily nodded. She was still smiling. Burkhardt, watching her closely, saw the momentary flicker of her eyes, the brief clearing-away of the cloud that shrouded them—as though someone were trapped behind those lovely eyes, struggling to get out. But Burckhardt’s control never lapsed. Bending, he kissed her soft lips lightly.

  “Bedtime,” he said.

  “Yes. Bedtime.”

  Burkhardt kissed her again. Donnie had been right, he thought. Control was possible. He had channeled desire eighteen years, and now Lily was his. Perhaps she was no longer Lily as men had known her, but what did that matter? She was the Lily of his lonely dreams. He had created her in the tingling moment of a handshake, from the raw material of her old self.

  He turned off the light and began to undress. He thought with cozy pleasure that in only a few weeks he would be setting foot once again on the bleak tundra of Novotny IX—this time, with his loving bride.

  NEUTRAL PLANET

  Originally published in Science Fiction Stories, July 1957.

  From the fore viewing bay of the Terran starship Peccable, the twin planets Fasolt and Fafnir had become visible—uninhabited Fasolt a violet ball the size of a quarter-credit piece dead ahead, and Fafnir, home of the gnorphs, a bright-red dot far to the right, beyond the mighty curve of the big ship’s outsweeping wing.

  The nameless, tiny blue sun about which both worlds orbited rode high above them, at a sharp 36 degrees off the ecliptic. And, majestic in its vastness, great Antares served as a huge bright-red backdrop for the entire scene.

  “Fasolt dead ahead,” came the word from Navigation. “Prepare for decelerating orbit.”

  The eighteen men who comprised the Terran mission to the gnorphs of Fafnir moved rapidly and smoothly toward their landing stations. This was a functioning team; they had a big job, and they were ready for it.

  In Control Cabin, Shipmaster Deev Harskin was strapping himself into the acceleration cradle when the voice of Observer First Rank Snollgren broke in.

  “Chief? Snollgren. Read me?”

  “Go ahead, boy. What’s up?”

  “That Rigelian ship—the one we saw yesterday? I just found it again. Ten light-seconds off starboard, and credits to crawfish it’s orbiting in on Fasolt!”

  Harskin gripped the side of the cradle anxiously. “You sure it’s not Fafnir they’re heading for? How’s your depth-perception out there?”

  “A-one. That boat’s going the same place we are, chief!”

  Sighing, Harskin said, “It could have been worse, I guess.” He snapped on the all-ship communicator and said, “Gentlemen, our job has been complicated somewhat. Observer Snollgren reports a Rigelian ship orbiting in on Fasolt, and it looks likely they have the same idea we have. Well, this’ll be a test of our mettle. We’ll have a chance to snatch Fafnir right out from under their alleged noses!”

  A voice said, “Why not blast the Rigelians first? They’re our enemies, aren’t they?”

  Harskin recognized the voice as belonging to Leefman—a first-rate linguist, rather innocent of the niceties of interstellar protocol. No reply from Harskin was needed. The hoarse voice of Military Attaché Ramos broke in.

  “This is a neutral system, Leefman. Rigelian-Terran hostilities are suspended pending contact with the gnorphs. Someday you’ll understand that war has its code too.”

  Alone in Control Cabin, Shipmaster Harskin smiled. It was a good crew; a little overspecialized, perhaps, but more than adequate for the purpose. Having Rigelians on hand would be just so much additional challenge. Shipmaster Harskin enjoyed challenges.

  Beneath him, the engines of the Peccable throbbed magnificently. He was proud of his ship, proud of his crew. The Peccable swept into the deadly atmosphere of Fasolt, swung downward in big looping spirals, and headed for land.

  Not too far behind came the Rigelians. Harskin leaned back and let the crash of deceleration eddy up over him, and waited.

  * * * *

  Fasolt was mostly rock, except for the hydrogen-fluoride oceans and the hydrogenous air. It was not an appealing planet.

  The spacesuited men of the Peccable were quick to debouch and extrude their dome. Atmosphere issued into it. “A little home away from home,” Harskin remarked.

  Biochemist Carver squinted balefully at the choppy hydrofluoric-acid sea. “Nice world. Good thing these goldfish bowls aren’t made out of glass, yes? And better caution your men about using the dome airlock. A little of our oxygen gets out into that atmosphere and we’ll have the loveliest rainstorm you ever want to see—with us a thousand feet up, looking down.”

  Harskin nodded. “It’s not a pleasant place at all. But it’s not a pleasant war we’re fighting.”

  He glanced up at the murky sky. Fafnir was full, a broad red globe barely a million miles away. And, completing the group, there was the feint blue sun about which both worlds revolved, the entire system forming a neat Trojan equilateral with vast Antares.

  Snollgren appeared. The keen-eyed observer had been in the ship, and apparently had made it from the Peccable to the endomed temporary camp on a dead run, no little feat in Fasolt’s 1.5-g field.

  “Well?” Harskin asked.

  The observer opened his face plate and sucked in some of the dome’s high-oxygen atmosphere. “The Rigelians,” he gasped. “They’ve landed. I saw them in orbit.”

  “Where?”

  “I’d estimate five hundred miles westward. They’re definitely on this continent.”

  Harskin glanced at the chronometer set in the wrist of Snollgren’s spacesuit. “We’ll give them an hour to set up their camp. Then we’ll contact them and find out what goes.”

  * * * *

  The Rigelian captain’s name was Fourteen Deathless. He spoke Galactic with a sharp, crisp accent that Harskin attributed to his ursine ancestry.

  “Coincidence we’re both here at the same time, eh, Shipmaster Harskin? Strange are the ways of the Guiding Forces.”

  “They certainly are,” Harskin said. He stared at the hand-mike, wishing it were a screen so he could see the sly, smug exp
ression on the Rigelian’s furry face. Obviously, someone had intercepted Harskin’s allegedly secret orders and studied them carefully before forwarding them to their recipient.

  Coincidences didn’t happen in interstellar war. The Rigelians were here because they knew the Earthmen were.

  “We have arrived at a knotty problem in ethics,” remarked Captain Fourteen Deathless. “Both of us are here for the same purpose, that of negotiating trading rights with the gnorphs. Now—ah—which of us is to make the first attempt to deal with these people?”

  “Obviously,” said Harskin, “the ship which landed on Fasolt first has prior claim.”

  “This is suitable,” said the Rigelian.

  “We’ll set out at once, then. Since the Peccable landed at least half an hour before your ship, we have clear priority.”

  “Interesting,” Captain Fourteen Deathless said. “But just how do you compute you arrived before we did? By our instruments we were down long before you.”

  Harskin started to sputter, then checked himself. “Impossible!”

  “Oh? Cite your landing time, please, with reference to Galactic Absolute.”

  “We put down at…” Harskin paused. “No. Suppose you tell me what time you landed, and then I’ll give you our figures.”

  “That’s hardly fair,” said the Rigelian. “How do we know you won’t alter your figures once we’ve given ours?”

  “And how do we know, on the other hand…?”

  “It won’t work,” said the alien. “Neither of us will allow the other priority.”

  Shrugging, Harskin saw the truth of that. Regardless of the fact that the Peccable actually had landed first, the Rigelians would never admit it. It was a problem in simple relativity; without an external observer to supply impartial data, it was Fourteen Deathless’ word against Harskin’s.