Short Fiction - Algis Budrys (chrysanthemum read aloud .TXT) 📗

things so much better for us. I don’t know if he did anything, but stoke their ships and, I suppose, fix them when they were in trouble. I wonder if he sang dirty songs in that bad voice of his, to people who couldn’t possibly understand what the songs were about. All I know is, for some reason those people slowly began treating us with respect. We changed, too, I think⁠—I’m not the same man I was⁠ ⁠… I think⁠—not altogether the same; I’m a captain now, with master’s papers, and you won’t find me in my cabin very often⁠ ⁠… there’s a kind of joy in standing on a bridge, looking out at the stars you’re moving toward. I wonder if it mightn’t have kept my old captain out of that place he died in, finally, if he’d tried it.

So, I don’t know. The older I get, the less I know. The thing people remember the stoker for⁠—the thing that makes him famous, and, I think, annoys him⁠—I’m fairly sure is only incidental to what he really did. If he did anything. If he meant to. I wish I could be sure of the exact answer he found in the bottom of that last glass at the bar before he worked his passage to Mars and the Serenus, and began it all.

So, I can’t say what he ought to be famous for. But I suppose it’s enough to know for sure that he was the first living being ever to travel all the way around the galaxy.

Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night I

Soft as the voice of a mourning dove, the telephone sounded at Rufus Sollenar’s desk. Sollenar himself was standing fifty paces away, his leonine head cocked, his hands flat in his hip pockets, watching the nighted world through the crystal wall that faced out over Manhattan Island. The window was so high that some of what he saw was dimmed by low clouds hovering over the rivers. Above him were stars; below him the city was traced out in light and brimming with light. A falling star⁠—an interplanetary rocket⁠—streaked down toward Long Island Facility like a scratch across the soot on the doors of Hell.

Sollenar’s eyes took it in, but he was watching the total scene, not any particular part of it. His eyes were shining.

When he heard the telephone, he raised his left hand to his lips. “Yes?” The hand glittered with utilijem rings; the effect was that of an attempt at the sort of copper-binding that was once used to reinforce the ribbing of wooden warships.

His personal receptionist’s voice moved from the air near his desk to the air near his ear. Seated at the monitor board in her office, wherever in this building her office was, the receptionist told him:

“Mr. Ermine says he has an appointment.”

“No.” Sollenar dropped his hand and returned to his panorama. When he had been twenty years younger⁠—managing the modest optical factory that had provided the support of three generations of Sollenars⁠—he had very much wanted to be able to stand in a place like this, and feel as he imagined men felt in such circumstances. But he felt unimaginable, now.

To be here was one thing. To have almost lost the right, and regained it at the last moment, was another. Now he knew that not only could he be here today but that tomorrow, and tomorrow, he could still be here. He had won. His gamble had given him EmpaVid⁠—and EmpaVid would give him all.

The city was not merely a prize set down before his eyes. It was a dynamic system he had proved he could manipulate. He and the city were one. It buoyed and sustained him; it supported him, here in the air, with stars above and light-thickened mist below.

The telephone mourned: “Mr. Ermine states he has a firm appointment.”

“I’ve never heard of him.” And the left hand’s utilijems fell from Sollenar’s lips again. He enjoyed such toys. He raised his right hand, sheathed in insubstantial midnight-blue silk in which the silver threads of metallic wiring ran subtly toward the fingertips. He raised the hand, and touched two fingers together: music began to play behind and before him. He made contact between another combination of finger circuits, and a soft, feminine laugh came from the terrace at the other side of the room, where connecting doors had opened. He moved toward it. One layer of translucent drapery remained across the doorway, billowing lightly in the breeze from the terrace. Through it, he saw the taboret with its candle lit; the iced wine in the stand beside it; the two fragile chairs; Bess Allardyce, slender and regal, waiting in one of them⁠—all these, through the misty curtain, like either the beginning or the end of a dream.

“Mr. Ermine reminds you the appointment was made for him at the Annual Business Dinner of the International Association of Broadcasters, in 1998.”

Sollenar completed his latest step, then stopped. He frowned down at his left hand. “Is Mr. Ermine with the I.A.B.’s Special Public Relations Office?”

“Yes,” the voice said after a pause.

The fingers of Sollenar’s right hand shrank into a cone. The connecting door closed. The girl disappeared. The music stopped. “All right. You can tell Mr. Ermine to come up.” Sollenar went to sit behind his desk.

The office door chimed. Sollenar crooked a finger of his left hand, and the door opened. With another gesture, he kindled the overhead lights near the door and sat in shadow as Mr. Ermine came in.

Ermine was dressed in rust-colored garments. His figure was spare, and his hands were empty. His face was round and soft, with long dark sideburns. His scalp was bald. He stood just inside Sollenar’s office and said: “I would like some light to see you by, Mr. Sollenar.”

Sollenar crooked his little finger.

The overhead lights came to soft light all over the office. The crystal wall became a mirror, with only the strongest city lights glimmering through it. “I only