Chapter 2

"I don't know when the general was told."

"You discovered them?"

"Yes, sir. I ... you see, at the time the winds completely prohibited air traffic. As you know, the air scouts are not stable enough until ... later. Later, I ... Yes, sir. I discovered them."

"Did you then inform the general?"

"No, sir. I informed the duty officer."

"Did he inform the general?"

"I don't know."

"Why didn't you tell the general?" Mr. Tucker asked.

"I was then in communication with Captain Geiger, and I felt he...." The sentence trailed away.

"Would tell the general?" Mr. Tucker prompted. "Well, did he?"

"I believe he did, sir," Captain Meford said. He let out a long breath.

"May we see the aliens?" Mr. Ryan asked.

"I wouldn't advise it, sir," Captain Meford said. "High flights are still very risky because of the wind velocities."

* * * * *

After the evening meal, General Shorter called Captain Arnold aside. "Mind if I go over to Nine with you?" he asked. "The air around here is--well, the fact of the matter is, I'd like to get away from them for awhile."

"Of course not, sir," Captain Arnold said.

"We'll call it an inspection. Which might be a good idea at that. With these people running around trying to interfere with my schedule. Poking around. Asking questions. Taking men away from their work, basically." He tapped his teeth with his right thumb in reflection. "I'd better check up on all the domes tonight, just to be sure."

"Yes, sir."

"I wouldn't want anything to go wrong because they're here."

In the dressing quarters, they donned surface suits and exited through the locks to Miracastle. In the area immediately beyond the Dome, the solidly positioned connection rails radiated away. The general gestured for the captain to lead.

The wind buffeted them. Inside the surface suits it was quiet.

"David?" the general asked.

"Yes, sir?" Captain Arnold said. He was fastening his safety line in the keyed slot. He fumbled with it for a moment before the wind.

"You on suit communications?"

"Yes, sir." Captain Arnold straightened and moved forward. The general replaced him and dropped his safety line in place with practiced efficiency.

Captain Arnold, surrounded by dust devils, became a distant, indistinct bulk. His motions were ponderous. The general could no longer see his face or his expression.

"I do not entirely understand this, David," the general said conversationally. "The investigation. I thought I had powerful friends in the Corps. Though a man makes enemies." The general lurched awkwardly over the broken surface of Miracastle, drawing the safety line taut. He moved toward the connection rail again. "A general is separated from much of his command. Some of the technical refinements are too involved--and, of course, men hide their feelings." Once again he struggled with the wind, turning slowly at the end of the safety line: held from the devouring anger of the planet only by the slender umbilical cord from the stars. "General Grisley, now. I think he's sixteen star, in headquarters. He was a politician. He came up fast. In fact, he was my adjutant a few years ago. He was always a man to hold a grudge."

Captain Arnold made no reply.

"You know how politics is in the Corps."

Dome Nine rose from the swirling mist before them. The wind seemed to increase in fury. And still, inside the suits, there was the sound only of labored breathing and the general's voice.

"These natives," the general said. "They were very primitive, David." Neither could see the other's face. "I can't think of them as intelligent at all. I feel they were very low on the evolutionary ladder. I wouldn't call it a city, as I've heard it called. Natural formation, more likely. Nature plays strange tricks."

* * * * *

They were at the lock of Dome Nine.

Inside, the general removed his helmet. "David," he said, "I've been meaning to talk to you for some time now. You've got a good career in front of you in the Corps. You're going to move up. With a few breaks, right to the top. I'm just now writing up my evaluation for your files. I plan to give you a very fine recommendation, Captain. Normally, I don't talk about this sort of thing, but I thought you might like to know."

"Thank you, sir," Captain Arnold said uneasily, opening his surface suit.

"Well, let's inspect the area, Captain."

The inspection was perfunctory. As he always did, the general paused at the pile monitor and watched, in the Dante screen, the virtually indescribable reactions being sustained far beneath the surface: molten rock flowing and smoking. Orange, blue and white flames danced as though in agony in the great, expanding cavern, danced and merged and vanished and reappeared in an ever-changing pattern.

Back at the locks, the general bid Captain Arnold good-by and turned to leave. Then, as if an afterthought came forward, he turned back.

"David, oh, David!"

"Yes, sir."

"Perhaps you remember a conversation we had a few weeks ago? I called on you for some technical advice." He held his helmet in his hands.

"When was that, sir?"

"Oh, it was about the technical feasibility of reversing the air-changing equipment, I believe. As you know, I can't be up on all the technical, purely detailed procedure, for all phases of the operation. That's what we have experts for." The last statement was unusually jovial. "I believe you told me, David, that the process was too far along at that time. Perhaps you remember?"

"General Shorter, when was that?"

"I thought you would remember, David. I'm sure it was you. Yes, I'm almost positive it was. But if you say.... Well, David, it wasn't quite so much as exactly a statement like that. But that was the general meaning of it, you know, stripped of all the technical language. You have to take it in the over-all context. That was the meaning I got." He laughed tactfully. "You're like lawyers, all you technicians. You answer everything yes and no at the same time. I hoped you'd remember the conversation. I got that idea from it." The general waited. "Well, David--don't look like that--it's not at all important. Just trying to refresh my own memory. It's not important, really.... Good night, David." He placed the helmet over his head.

"Good night, General."

Methodically the general completed his rounds. He laughed often and joked with the men and seemed in exceptionally good spirits.

Back in his own quarters, he brought out his diary. With a weary sigh, he sat down to it. He glanced at his timepiece. The day extended backward almost beyond memory but it was not yet late.

After thumbing the diary listlessly for several minutes--pausing now and then at a paragraph--he began to write. He put the events of the day down precisely in their logical sequence.

IV

The Committee took over the dining area when the general left for his tour of inspection. While the steward's department was preparing coffee for the interviewees, now assembling in the corridor, the four members of the Committee arranged themselves at the larger of the tables. Notepaper lay before them.

Mr. Tucker lighted a cigar and fingered it. "A rather good meal," he said.

The others nodded.

"I may as well start off, while we're waiting," Mr. Wallace said. "I'll summarize my somewhat contradictory observations.

"Superficially, the cultural level of the natives appeared quite primitive. The absence of tools would normally be indicative. On the other hand, the city was carved from rock in a way so as to suggest a very sophisticated technology. And writing, while apparently not practiced to any considerable extent, was known--or, if not writing as we understand it, some advanced decorative technique. We've found two lines of it, at least.

"Again superficially, the city would suggest a nomadic tradition, but for its craftsmanship. It seems independent of any obvious supply of food and their equivalent of water, if any. Nor were any provisions in evidence for the disposal of waste products. Yet the city had the appearance of age and continual usage. If you notice, the floor of the recess was worn unevenly toward the center by what I should guess to be the traffic of several centuries.

"The thought naturally occurs that the aliens were the rather decadent relics of a highly developed technological civilization existing on the planet in the not too distant past. Yet Miracastle offers no evidence for the existence of a prior technology--no ruins, no residual radioactivity from atomic operations. In short, the city has no apparent genesis in the past.

"The alternative arises: perhaps the natives were not natives at all, but immigrants or colonists like ourselves. Yet the age of the city contradicts this.

"Perhaps there is a simple explanation, although it does not occur to me. But I do have this feeling. The city was utilitarian. To me, it calls to mind one of those exquisite etchings of Picasso. The severe economy of line suggests simplicity. Yet, on further inspection, you see that each line contributes to a rather bewildering variety of perspectives. I strongly suspect that the city and the people of Miracastle will remain one of the great, unsolved mysteries of the universe."

Mr. Wallace was finished with his remarks.

Mr. Ryan nodded. "Perhaps I'm deficient in sensibilities, but I find that the most ... agonizing ... thing of all is not ever to be able to know what these people were like. It's almost as if some part of us had been lopped off, isn't it? What did the people of Miracastle think about? What was their philosophy of life? What was their social organization? What was their ultimate goals? When you realize how much we learned of ourselves from an examination of our own primitive cultures, the sense of loss really comes home. Think how much more we could have learned of ourselves by acquiring the perspective of a truly alien culture. It's almost as if we could really understand ourselves at last if we could only understand a totally alien culture ..."

"Well, that's gone," Mr. Tucker said. The words were brittle and discrete. They hung in memory and the listeners waited as though for an echo of something shouted into a canyon. The echo did not come.

They were silent. Grief is the final knowledge of time. When one first learns that it can never be turned backward upon itself to permit the correction of past sins and the rightings of wrongs transfixed and forever unalterable. Grief is the frantic, futile beating of hands against a barrier without substance, both obscenely unreal and yet the only reality. Grief is the knowledge that we cannot step backwards before the death of loved ones and see those precious half-forgotten dream faces once again. Grief is the knowledge that time is immutable.

Outside the Richardson Dome, the wind was changing. It could now neither support the life that was nor the life that would be, and it howled in melancholy and insensate anguish its loneliness and longing to the eternal and ever-changing pattern of the stars.

* * * * *

The Committee concluded their interviews with an old-line corporal. He had just short of thirty years service and had several times traveled the two-way escalator of non-commissioned rank from master sergeant to private. He was perhaps typical of many of the older soldiers. His love of the Corps was expressed by his loyalty to it; his hatred of the Corps was expressed by his inability to abide by its regulations.

"You knew Sergeant Schuster very well?" Mr. Tucker asked.

"He was a new man," the corporal said. "He got on just before lift-off. A week, two weeks, something like that. I knew him, I guess. He was one of them kind that was always thinking. And like you know, sir, thinking ain't too good for a soldier. I've known a lot of guys like that in my time. You know what I mean? They're not cut out for the Corps."

"He talked to you quite a bit?"

The corporal turned to face Mr. Ryan. "He was always talking, sir. He was a regular nut. I thought for a while he was queer. He had all those crazy ideas."

"Like what, Corporal?"

"Oh, like--well, you know." The corporal hesitated and rummaged his memory without conspicuous success. "Sunsets," he said rather emphatically. "Talked about sunsets. Talked about just _anything_. Called me out back on Earth to look at a sunset once, I remember."

"What did he think about killing the natives?" Mr. Wallace asked.

The question alerted the mechanism which produced the almost-Pavlovian loyalty response.

"We didn't kill no natives," the corporal said. "They just died when we changed the air. Tough."

He looked at Mr. Wallace and then into the silence around him.

"Well ... well, let's see. I guess you'd say that sort of got to him. I mean, you know, he thought it was--" the voice became distant, as though describing a fantastic event which he could not relate to anything in a rational environment--"he thought it was _his_ fault. You know how some of these guys are. I used to have a platoon once, you know. And they say--" He twisted his mouth and changed his voice to a childish whine. "What _for_?" The voice reverted to normal. "They don't ask for any reason. They just ask. I say to them, I say, 'God damn it'--excuse me, sir--'I told you to do it, ain't that enough?' Well, this Schuster, sir, he worried all the time. He got so he cut himself shaving. Damnedest thing. Oh, hell, maybe for the last week, every morning, he came out a bloody mess. Patches of toilet paper all over his face. 'I can't shave,' he'd say. 'My God, I can't shave.' He wasn't nervous, either. His hands were okay. They didn't shake. It's just that he couldn't shave. Like I say, he was a nut."

No one spoke for a moment, and the corporal twisted uncomfortably.

Then Mr. Tucker said, "Well, Corporal, tell me this, please."

"Yes, sir."

"What's your own personal impression of General Shorter?"

"The old man?" the corporal asked in surprise. "He's okay."

"Feel free to discuss this," Mr. Flison said. "We'd like to know, really, what your opinion is."

"Like I say, he's okay. He's got a job to do. You know, he busted me once. General Shorter personally, I mean. Hell, I don't hold it against him, though. He's got his job to do, I got mine. I wouldn't say anything against General Shorter, no, sir. He's a soldier. I mean, you know ... he's a soldier."

After the corporal was dismissed, Mr. Tucker said, "Well, gentlemen, I guess we've about wrapped it up here. I think this is enough. Anybody's mind changed? I don't think we need any more, do you?"

Mr. Wallace sighed heavily. He looked down at his hands.

* * * * *

General Shorter was still at his writing desk when he was notified that Mr. Tucker would like to see him first thing in the morning.

"Another day of it, eh?" the general asked the sergeant who brought the message.

"No, sir. From the other crew, I hear they're planning to leave tomorrow."

The general's face relaxed. His smile reflected weary tolerance. "Had enough in one day, have they? It's about time they let us get back to work."

After the sergeant left, the general wrote a final paragraph:

"I've just been informed the 'investigation' is completed. In record time, it seems. They finished up in the mess tonight, talking to some of the men. So what did it all really accomplish? They took a long ship that could better have been used somewhere else. Half my men are down with the virus. They almost cost me my schedule. And to what end? Just another piece of paper somewhere. Put Miracastle on the scale against some nice, heavy report and see which way the scale tips."

The general closed the diary. It was late now. He was very tired.

* * * * *

Mr. Tucker, after breakfast, knocked on the general's door.

"Come in," General Shorter called.

The civilian entered. The general dismissed the orderly with a nod. "And I'll need some clean towels for tonight," he called. His voice was hoarse.

"Yes, sir."

The door closed. The two of them were alone.

"Sit down. Excuse the cold. Got it last night. What do you say to a brandy?"

"Don't let me stop you."

"I never drink alone."

"Perhaps you'd better," Mr. Tucker said.

The general had paused just short of the cupboard. He turned slowly. "In that case, I'll make an exception, this once." He poured. "Just what did you mean by that, sir? Let's get to the point."

"General Shorter, we're going to have to ask you to come back with us."

The general bent slightly forward. His lips were partly open, as though he were listening to hear a second time.

"Why," he said, "I've too much work to do, sir. I'm afraid that's out of the question. It's just not possible at all."

Mr. Tucker waited.

General Shorter poured himself another brandy. His back was to the civilian.

"There's nothing more important, right now, than my job here," he said. He drank the brandy in a single gulp.

"I don't see how it can wait, General," Mr. Tucker said.

The general's lips were dry. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment against the alcohol and the cold. He licked his lips. "What's the formal charge?"

Mr. Tucker bent forward. His voice was soft and curious, as though the question were his final effort to understand something that puzzled him for a long time. "What do you think it is, General?"

"What could it be?" the general said sharply. "I follow orders, sir. I was sent out here to make this planet suitable for human habitation. This is exactly what I have been doing." His voice was growing progressively more angry and with an effort he curbed himself. "Put yourself in my position. I did what any field commander would have done. It was too late to stop it. I've got--It's a question of the limits of normal prudence. A matter of interpretation, sir."

The general was in the process of pouring still another drink. The slender brandy glass broke under the force of his anger. He opened his palm. Blood trickled from between his fingers.

The general looked up from the hand and fleeting annoyance came and went before he was recalled to present reality. His eyes met Mr. Tucker's.

Mr. Tucker suddenly shivered as if touched by a wind from beyond the most distant stars, a wind which whispered: The aliens are among us.

"General," Mr. Tucker said, "the formal charge is murder."

End of Project Gutenberg's General Max Shorter, by Kris Ottman Neville