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

his fingers. He had no desire to go into the Martian building after Sollenar and involve third parties. All he wanted was to put Sollenar’s body under a dated marker, with as little trouble as possible.

Now and then he walked a few paces backward and forward, to keep from losing muscular control at his extremities because of low skin temperature. Sollenar must come out soon enough. He had no food supply with him, and though Ermine did not like the risk of engaging a man like Sollenar in a starvation contest, there was no doubt that a man with no taste for fuel could outlast one with the acquired reflexes of eating.

The door opened and Sollenar came out.

He was carrying something. Perhaps a weapon. Ermine let him come closer while he raised and carefully sighted his rifle. Sollenar might have some Martian weapon or he might not. Ermine did not particularly care. If Ermine died, he would hardly notice it⁠—far less than he would notice a botched ending to a job of work already roiled by Sollenar’s break away at the space field. If Ermine died, some other S.P.R.O. agent would be assigned almost immediately. No matter what happened, S.P.R.O. would stop Sollenar before he ever reached Abernathy Field.

So there was plenty of time to aim an unhurried, clean shot.

Sollenar was closer, now. He seemed to be in a very agitated frame of mind. He held out whatever he had in his hand.

It was another one of the Martian entertainment machines. Sollenar seemed to be offering it as a token to Ermine. Ermine smiled.

“What can you offer me, Mr. Sollenar?” he said, and shot.

The golden ball rolled away over the sand. “There, now,” Ermine said. “Now, wouldn’t you sooner be me than you? And where is the thing that made the difference between us?”

He shivered. He was chilly. Sand was blowing against his tender face, which had been somewhat abraded during his long wait.

He stopped, transfixed.

He lifted his head.

Then, with a great swing of his arms, he sent the rifle whirling away. “The wind!” he sighed into the thin air. “I feel the wind.” He leapt into the air, and sand flew away from his feet as he landed. He whispered to himself: “I feel the ground!”

He stared in tremblant joy at Sollenar’s empty body. “What have you given me?” Full of his own rebirth, he swung his head up at the sky again, and cried in the direction of the Sun: “Oh, you squeezing, nibbling people who made me incorruptible and thought that was the end of me!”

With love he buried Sollenar, and with reverence he put up the marker, but he had plans for what he might accomplish with the facts of this transaction, and the myriad others he was privy to.

A sharp bit of pottery had penetrated the sole of his shoe and gashed his foot, but he, not having seen it, hadn’t felt it. Nor would he see it or feel it even when he changed his stockings; for he had not noticed the wound when it was made. It didn’t matter. In a few days it would heal, though not as rapidly as if it had been properly attended to.

Vaguely, he heard the sound of Martians clacking behind their closed door as he hurried out of the city, full of revenge, and reverence for his savior.

The Rag and Bone Men

The other one⁠—Charpantier, he called himself⁠—he and I were going back up the hill to the Foundation, carrying our bags, when I happened to remark I didn’t think the Veld was sane anymore. (I call myself Maurer.)

Charpantier said nothing for a moment. We kept walking, up the gravel path between the unimaginatively clipped hedges. But he was frowning a little, and after a while he said in an absent way: “Now, how would one determine that?” He looked straight into my eyes, which is something that has always upset me, and challenged: “I don’t think one could.”

I felt the shock of inadequacy. Words come out of me⁠—perfectly accurate words, I know; but I never know how, and sometimes when asked I forget.

Now I must be very lucid; I must be his kind of man, I thought, and picked my way among my words. “These things he’s had us get,” I said, putting the burlap bag down and stopping so as to hold Charpantier in one place.

“He wants to build something un-Earthly,” Charpantier said, annoyed because I was playing his kind of trick on him, and so baldly. “What standards do you propose to judge by?”

But I was right and he was wrong. Now it remained to make him see how. “Yes. He wants to build something un-Earthly. Out of Earthly parts. He wants to take six radio tubes for an Earthly radio, three pieces of Earthly Lucite exactly ¼ Earthly inch thick, a roll of Earthly 16-gauge wire, a General Electric heat lamp, and all these other things⁠—the polystyrene foam blocks, the polyurethane plastic sheeting, the polyvinyl insulating tape; what have you in your bag, Charpantier? Out of all this, he wants to make a Veldish thing.”

“He’s spent years learning about Earthly things,” Charpantier pointed out. “For years, we’ve brought him books. Men. Everything he needs. Now he’s learned what the Earthly equivalents of Veldish materials are, and he’s ready to make his new transporter.” Charpantier had a dark face⁠—dark hair, dark beard, dark eyes. When his dark brows drew together it was easy to see that his best expression was dark scorn.

“I think he’s desperate,” I said. “I think he’s learned all he can. He’s learned what the nearest Earthly equivalents to Veldish things are. And he’s learned that all Earth can give him nothing closer. I don’t see how he could do better. Even he. You cannot make apples of cabbages. But he wants to get home⁠—you know he wants so much to leave here and get home⁠—and now he’s desperate, and is going to try making a