Norb reached for the stud and made no contact.
“That’s it,” he said. “Let’s go. Hope you like cold weather, fellow Earthmen.”
They climbed silently down the catwalk and Kalvin led them through the path in the snow toward the little village of Earthmen. There would be all the time in the world to find the answers. But right now, the air seemed warmer and softer, as if Earth was happy, now that there were a hundred and six to comfort her dying days.
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
Originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction, February 1961.
Naturally, there was a tremendous fuss made over him, since he was the first man actually to buy his indenture up and return from a colony-world. He’d been away eighteen years, farming on bleak Novotny IX, and who knew how many of those years he’d been slaving and saving to win his passage home?
Besides, the rumor had it that there was a girl involved—that it was the big romance of the century, perhaps. Even before the ship carrying him had docked at Long Island Spaceport, John Burkhardt was a system-famed celebrity. Word of his return had preceded him—word, and all manner of rumor, legend, and myth.
He was on board the starship Lincoln, which was returning from a colony-seeding trip in the outer reaches of the galaxy. For the first time in its career, the Lincoln was carrying an Earthward-bound passenger. A small army of newsmen impatiently awaited the Lincoln’s landing, and the nine worlds waited with them.
When he stepped out onto the unloading elevator and made his descent, a hum of comment rippled through the waiting crowd. Burkhardt looked his part perfectly. He was a tall man, so lean that he hardly seemed to have an ounce of extra flesh. His face was solemn, his lips thin and pale, his hair going grey though he was only in his forties. And his eyes—deep-set, glowering, commanding. Everything fitted the myth—the face, the eyes, the figure. They were the eyes and figure and face of a man who could renounce Earth for unrequited love, and then toil for eighteen years out of the sheer strength of that love.
Cameras ground. Bulbs flashed. Five hundred reporters felt their tongues going dry with anticipation of the big story.
* * * *
Burkhardt smiled coldly and waved at the horde of newsmen. He did not blink, shield his eyes, or turn away. He seemed almost unnaturally in control of himself. They had expected him to weep, perhaps, or maybe to kneel and kiss the soil of Mother Earth. He did none of those things. He merely smiled and waved.
The Global Wire man stepped forward. He had won the lottery. It was his privilege to conduct the first interview.
“Welcome back to Earth, Mr. Burkhardt! How does it feel to be back?”
“I’m very glad to be here.” Burkhardt’s voice was slow, deep, measured, controlled like every other aspect of him.
“This army of pressmen doesn’t upset you, does it?”
“I haven’t seen this many people all at once in eighteen years. But no—they don’t upset me.”
“You know, Mr. Burkhardt, you’ve done something special. You’re the only man ever to return to Earth after signing out on an indenture.”
“Am I the only one?” Burkhardt asked easily. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
“You are indeed, sir. And I’d like to know, if I may—for the benefit of billions of viewers—if you care to tell us a little of the story behind your story? Why did you leave Earth in the first place, Mr. Burkhardt? And why did you decide to return?”
Burkhardt smiled gravely. “There was a woman,” he said. “A lovely woman, a very famous woman now. We loved each other, once and when she stopped loving me I left Earth. I have reason to believe I can regain her love now, so I have returned. And now, if you’ll pardon me—”
“Couldn’t you give us any details?”
“I’ve had a long trip, and I prefer to rest now. I’ll be glad to answer your questions at a formal press conference tomorrow afternoon.”
And he cut through the crowd toward a waiting cab, supplied by the Colonization Bureau, and was gone.
* * * *
Nearly everyone in the system had seen the brief interview or had heard reports of it. It had certainly been a masterly job. If people had been curious about Burkhardt before, they were obsessed with him now. To give up Earth out of unrequited love, to labor eighteen years for a second chance—why, he was like some figure out of Dumas, brought to life in the middle of the 24th Century.
It was no mean feat to buy one’s self back out of a colonization indenture, either. The Colonization Bureau of the Solar Federation undertook to transport potential colonists to distant worlds and set them up as homesteaders. In return for one-way transportation, tools, and land, the colonists merely had to promise to remain settled, to marry, and to raise the maximum practical number of children. This program, a hundred years old now had resulted in the seeding of Terran colonies over a galactic radius of better than five hundred light-years.
It was theoretically possible for a colonist to return to Earth, of course. But few of them seemed to want to, and none before Burkhardt ever had. To return, you had first to pay off your debt to the government—which was figured theoretically at $20,000 for round-trip passage, $5000 for land, $5000 for tools—plus 6% interest per year. Since nobody with any assets would ever become a colonist, and since it was next to impossible for a colonist, farming an unworked world, to accumulate any capital, no case of an attempted buy-out had ever arisen.
Until Burkhardt. He had done it, working round the clock, out-producing his neighbors on Novotny IX and selling them his surplus, cabling his extra pennies back to Earth to be invested in blue-chip securities and finally—after eighteen years—amassing the $30,000-plus-accrued-interest that would spring him from indenture.
Twenty billion people on nine worlds wanted to know why.
* * * *
The day after his return, he held a press conference in the hotel suite provided for him by the Colonization Bureau.
Admission was strictly limited—one man from each of the twenty leading news services, no more.
Wearing a faded purplish tunic and battered sandals, Burkhardt came out to greet the reporters. He looked tremendously dignified—an overbearing figure of a man thin but solid, with enormous gnarled hands and powerful forearms. The grey in his hair gave him a patriarchic look on a world dedicated to cosmetic rejuvenation. And his eyes, shining like twin beacons, roved round the room, transfixing everyone once, causing discomfort and uneasiness. No one had seen eyes like that on a human being before. But no one had ever seen a returned colonist before, either.
He smiled without warmth. “Very well, gentlemen. I’m at your disposal.”
They started with peripheral questions first.
“What sort of planet is Novotny IX, Mr. Burkhardt?”
“Cold. The temperature never gets above sixty. The soil is marginally fertile. A man has to work ceaselessly if he wants to stay alive there.”
“Did you know that when you signed up to go there?”
Burkhardt nodded. “I asked for the least desirable of the available colony worlds.”
“Are there many colonists there?”
“About twenty thousand, I think. It isn’t a popular planet, you understand.”
“Mr. Burkhardt, part of the terms of the colonist’s indenture specify that he must marry. Did you fulfill this part of the contract?”
Burkhardt smiled sadly. “I married less than a week after my arrival there in 2319. My wife died the first winter of our marriage. There were no children. I didn’t remarry.”
“And when did you get the idea of buying up your indenture and returning to Earth?”
“In my third year on Novotny IX.”
“In other words, you devoted fifteen years to getting back to Earth?”
“That’s correct.”
It was a young reporter from Tran universe News who took the plunge toward the real meat of the universe. “Could you tell us why you changed your mind about remaining a colonist? At the spaceport you said something about there being a woman—”
“Yes.” Burkhardt chuckled mirthlessly. “I was very young when I threw myself into the colonization plan—twenty-five, in point of fact. There was a woman; I loved her; she married someone else. I did the romantic thing and signed up for Novotny IX. Three years later, the news tape from Earth told me that she had been divorced. This was in 2322. I resolved to return to Earth and try to persuade her to marry me.”
“So for fifteen years you struggled to get back so you could patch up your old romance,” another newsman said. “But how did you know she hadn’t remarried in all that time?”
“She did remarry,” Burkhardt said stunningly.
“But—”
“I received word of her remarriage in 2324, and of her subsequent divorce in 2325. Of her remarriage in 2327, and of her subsequent divorce in 2329. Of her remarriage in the same year, and her subsequent divorce in 2334. Of her remarriage in 2335, and of her divorce four months ago. Unless I have missed the announcement, she has not remarried this last time.”
“Did you abandon your project every time you heard of one of these marriages?”
Burkhardt shook his head. “l kept on saving. I was confident that none of her marriages would last. All these years, you see, she’s been trying to find a substitute for me. But human beings are unique. There are no substitutes. I weathered five of her marriages. Her sixth husband will be myself.”
“Could you tell us—could you tell us the name of this woman, Mr. Burkhardt?”
The returned colonist’s smile was frigid. “I’m not ready to reveal her name, just yet,” he said. “Are there any further questions?”
* * * *
Along toward mid-afternoon, Burkhardt ended the conference. He had told them in detail of his efforts to pile up the money; he had talked about life as a colonist; he had done everything but tell them the name of the woman for whose sake he had done all this.
Alone in the suite after they had gone, Burkhardt stared out at the other glittering towers of New York. Jet liners droned overhead; a billion lights shattered the darkness. New York, he thought, was as chaotic and as repugnant to him as ever. He missed Novotny IX.
But he had had to come back. Smiling gently, he opaque the windows of his suite. It was winter, now, on Novotny Ax’s colonized continent. A time for burrowing away, for digging in against the mountain-high drifts of blue-white snow. Winter was eight standard months long, on Novotny IX; only four out of the sixteen standard months of the planet’s year were really livable. Yet a man could see the results of his own labor, out there. He could use his hands and measure his gains.
And there were friends there. Not the other settlers, though they were good people and hard workers. But the natives, the Aurania.
The survey charts said nothing about them. There were only about five hundred of them left, anyway, or so Donnie had claimed. Burkhardt had never seen more than a dozen of the Aurania at any one time, and he had never been able to tell one from another. They looked like slim elves, half the height of a man, grey-skinned, chinless, sad-eyed. They went naked against their planet’s bitter cold. They lived in caves, somewhere below the surface. And Donnie had become Burckhardt’s friend.
* * * *
Burkhardt smiled, remembering. He had found the little alien in a snowdrift, so close to dead it was hard to be certain one way or the other. Donnie had lived, and had recovered, and had spent the winter in Burckhardt’s cabin, talking a little, but mostly listening.
Burkhardt had done the talking. He had talked it all out, telling the little being of his foolishness, of his delusion that Lily loved him, of his wild maniac desire to get back to Earth.
And Donnie had said, when he understood the situation, “You will get back to Earth. And she will be yours.”
That had been between the first divorce and the second marriage. The day the new stapes had brought word of Lily’s remarriage had nearly finished Burkhardt, but Donnie was there, comforting, consoling, and from that day on Burkhardt never worried again. Lily’s marriages were made, weakened, broke up, and Burkhardt worked unfalteringly knowing that when he returned to Earth he could have Lily at last.
Donnie had told him solemnly, “It is all a matter of channeling your desires. Look: I lay dying in a snowdrift, and I willed you to find me. You came; I lived.”
“But I’m not Aurania,” Burkhardt had protested. “My will isn’t strong enough to influence another person.”
“Any creature that thinks can assert its will. Give me your hand, and I will show you.”
Burkhardt smiled back across fifteen years, remembering the feel of Donnie’s limp, almost boneless hand in his own, remembering the stiff jolt of power that had flowed from the alien. His hand had tingled for days afterward. But he knew, from that moment, that he would succeed.
* * * *
Burkhardt had a visitor the next morning. A press conference was scheduled again for the afternoon and Burkhardt had said he would grant no interviews before then, but the visitor had been insistent. Finally, the desk had phoned up to tell Burkhardt that a Mr. Richardson Elliott was here, and demanded to see him.
The name rang a bell. “Send him up,” Burkhardt said.
A few minutes later, the elevator disgorged Mr. Richardson Elliott. He was shorter than Burkhardt, plump, pink-skinned, clean-shaven. A ring glistened on his finger, and there was a gem of some alien origin mounted on a stickpin near his throat. He extended his hand. Burkhardt took it. The hand was carefully manicured, pudgy, somehow oily.
“You’re not at all as I pictured you,” Burkhardt said.
“You are. Exactly.”
“Why did you come here?”
Elliott tapped the newsfax crumpled under his arm. He unfolded it, showing Burkhardt the front-page spread. “I read the story, Burkhardt. I knew at once who the girl—the woman—was. I came to warn you not to get involved with her.”
Burckhardt’s eyes twinkled. “And why not?”
“She’s a witch,” Elliott muttered. “She’ll drain a man dry and throw the husk away. Believe me, I know. You only loved her. I married her.”
“Yes,” Burkhardt said. “You took her away from me eighteen years ago.”
“You know that isn’t true. She walked out on you because she thought I could further her career, which was so. I didn’t even know another man had been in the picture until she got that letter from you, postmarked the day your ship took off. She showed it to me—laughing. I can’t repeat the things she said about you, Burkhardt. But I was shocked. My marriage to her started to come apart right then and there, even though it was another three years before we called it quits. She threw herself at me. I didn’t steal her from anybody. Believe me, Burkhardt.”
“I believe you.”
Elliott mopped his pink forehead. “It was the same way with all the other husbands. I’ve followed her career all along. She exists only for Lily Leigh, and nobody else. When she left me, it was to marry Alderson. Well, she killed him as good as if she’d shot him, when she told him she was pulling out. Man his age had no business marrying her. And then it was Michaels, and after him Dan Cartwright, and then Jim Thorne. Right up the ladder to fame and fortune, leaving a trail of used-up husbands behind her.”
Burkhardt shrugged. “The past is of no concern to me.”
“You actually think Lily will marry you?”
“I do,” Burkhardt said. “She’ll jump at it. The publicity values will be irresistible. The sollie star with five broken marriages to millionaires now stooping to wed her youthful love, who is now a penniless ex-colonist.”
Elliot
t moistened his lips unhappily. “Perhaps you’ve got something there,” he admitted. “Lily might just do a thing like that. But how long would it last? Six months, a year—until the publicity dies down. And then she’ll dump you. She doesn’t want a penniless husband.”
“She won’t dump me.”
“You sound pretty confident, Burkhardt.”
“I am.”
For a moment there was silence. Then Elliott said, “You seem determined to stick your head in the lion’s mouth. What is it—an obsession to marry her?”
“Call it that.”
“It’s crazy. I tell you, she’s a witch. You’re in love with an imaginary goddess. The real Lily Leigh is the most loathsome female ever spawned. As the first of her five husbands, I can take oath to that.”
“Did you come here just to tell me that?”
“Not exactly,” Elliott said. “I’ve got a proposition for you. I want you to come into my firm as a Vice-President. You’re system-famous, and we can use the publicity. I’ll start you at sixty thousand. You’ll be the most eligible bachelor in the universe. We’ll get you a rejuvenation and you’ll look twenty-five again. Only none of this Lily Leigh nonsense. I’ll set you up, you’ll marry some good-looking kid, and all your years on Whatsit Nine will be just so much nightmare.”
“The answer is no.”
“I’m not doing this out of charity, you understand. I think you’ll be an asset to me. But I also think you ought to be protected against Lily. I feel I owe you something, for what I did to you unknowingly eighteen years ago.”
“You don’t owe me a thing. Thanks for the warning, Mr. Elliott, but I don’t need it. And the answer to the proposition is No. I’m not for sale.”
“I beg you—”
“No.”
Color flared in Elliott’s cheeks for a moment. He rose, started to say something, stopped. “All right,” he said heavily. “Go to Lily. Like a moth drawn to a flame. The offer remains, Mr. Burkhardt. And you have my deepest sympathy.”
The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction Megapack(r) Page 20
