by Ted White
When the first rays of sunlight peered through the window I kissed her nose and murmured, “Thank you, Dian. I love you.” And then fell into exhausted sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ditmas and Tucker drove down to Bay Complex with me. I felt euphoric; it seemed we’d all been transformed from shallow shells of people into solid substance. The old friction, the old manipulative game-playing was gone.
“You know,” I told Tucker after we’d settled into our adjacent seats on the HST, “I really pulled some pretty bad stunts on you, didn’t I?”
He nodded. “You did, at that,” he chuckled. “How do you feel about them now?”
“How do you feel about them?”
“Well,” he said, deliberately lapsing into his old cornpone drawl, “I reckon if you could take me, I could take you. Let’s not worry about it anymore. We’re two people who were sick for a long time. Now we’re on the mend.”
“I thought you were stringing on half the girls in the office,” I said. “I deliberately chased those girls just to give you a hard time.”
“You were right, too,” he said. “You did give me a hard time. But it was nothing like what I was doing to my wife.”
“Oh,” I said. “You know, I’ve never met your wife.”
“The problem is,” he said, “neither have I.”
I knew what he meant.
“Thing is, now I have to start all over,” Tucker continued. “Bjonn’s been instructing me so that I can create the Sacrament of Life myself. I’m taking a vacation from the Bureau—it doesn’t need me that badly now, anyway. We’ve got arapads through all the higher echelons, and the filtering-down process will go right on without me—and I think it’s time Fern and I had a second honeymoon. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Tucker,” I said, “how old are you?”
“Old enough to be your father, son, and that’s a fact.”
Tears came unbidden to my eyes. Old enough to be my father—and he’d lived over half his life in darkness.
I changed the subject. “You know,” I said, “only one thing still puzzles me.”
“What’s that?”
“Why did you devote so much attention to me? I mean, here I was, running around making a paranoiac fool of myself—but why care about a crummy Level Seven agent? What difference did it make? Couldn’t you have assumed I’d wake up someday by myself?”
“That’s a hard question, Tad,” he said. “I’m not sure in my own mind about that. You were a sore point with me—before, I mean. I had only daughters, you know—no sons. In a way I tried to make a son out of you. But you, damn your soul, you were so ornery with me, it was like you wanted to stay inside that sick box of yours, no matter how hard I tried to jolt you out of it. Not, of course, that I knew what I was doing at the time. But I’ve thought about it some, since. I liked you; that was the problem. You were smart, you had a lot going for you, up here”—he tapped his forehead—”more than you seemed to realize. But stubborn—! You had your horns locked on the Deep Space thing so badly it threw you every time.
“I wanted to kick you so hard, you wouldn’t believe it! I wanted to rub your nose in the miserable failure you were making of yourself and say, ‘You’re making a mess, boy; clean yourself up.’ I tried. But of course I went at it all wrong.”
“You mean, you really wanted me to jump out of that whole rut I was in?”
“Sure I did. That’s why I kept harping on it. I figured sooner or later you’d get so mad that you’d prove you could do it, just to spite me.”
I smiled, ruefully. “It didn’t work quite that way.” I didn’t have to state the obvious, now: my sickness had run a lot deeper than that.
When we disembarked in Megayork, I found myself looking around me with fresh eyes, my attention divided between the griminess of the megacity—an unpleasant contrast to the countryside above Cloverdale, I discovered—and the throngs of people surrounding me. As before, when we’d entered Bay Complex, I found myself searching faces for the signs … for the awareness that signaled the presence of an arapad. I felt like the new inductee in a secret and exclusive fraternity, looking for the Secret Handclasp, the telltale tunic-pin. It was a little childish of me, but it was also a harmless amusement—and while my fellow hosts were far from ubiquitous in the milling crowds, I sighted several. Usually we exchanged knowing smiles, then pressed on about our own business.
“Some of the people who have taken arapads,” Bjonn had told me, “are not aware of their origin, or of their real meaning. This is inevitable when something like this begins to grow. It quickly outgrows the bonds of easy communication. I’m told that over five billion people in New Africa now have arapads; yet, I know none of them myself. That’s why we started up the Church of the Brotherhood of Life. Those who have arapads will recognize us when they encounter us—and we’re establishing many branches now wherever we can find hospitable settings. This is our way of letting them know about us.”
“But what do they really need your Church for?” I’d asked.
“The arapad confers good health upon its host,” Bjonn told me. “But it does so in an ethical, moral vacuum. And it doesn’t volunteer any information about its conscious uses. We evolved our knowledge in Farhome over three generations, by trial and error. We haven’t filled the tape yet, but we do know a good deal. More than you’ve learned yet, I might add, although you’ve done well for yourself, Tad. Our Church exists as a sanctuary for this accumulated knowledge and experience. It offers a moral, an ethical framework, a structure for the symbiosis between arapad and human. Not everyone will need us. But most could profit from us. What we offer is not religious dogma. We offer insights, truths, and methods for self-realization. There’s mental health—and there’s mental health. An arapad cleans up an unbalanced brain; it doesn’t attack the old memories or the ingrained compulsions. That one must do for himself. And we can help. We exist, as a Church, to help.”
“What’s your ultimate goal, Bjonn?” I’d asked, finally. “Why did you really bring the arapads to Earth?”
“I’m an altruist, I guess,” he’d said. “Earth is a vast planetary slum—and so unnecessarily so. Man has always had it within his technological power to change things for the better. But he’s lacked the will, the common drive toward that goal. Man has been crippled, all his life on this planet. And he’s been poisoning his world with his own sickness.
“It is such a terrible tragedy. And it was almost repeated on Farhome, you know. If we hadn’t discovered the arapads, well… we’re only human. We’d have eventually despoiled another planet.”
“The arapads will turn Earth into a utopia?”
“No. Man will have to do that, if he wants it done. But the arapad is a handy lever for starting things rolling in that direction. You know it yourself, Tad. Compare yourself, now, with the person you were, then. You tell me which way the balance has shifted.”
“Hello, Mother,” I said. “I’ve brought you a gift.”
She looked harried and unhappy and not at all pleased to see me. I wasn’t surprised; I hadn’t exactly left her with pleasant memories of me.
“What happened to you?” she asked, rising from the couch to approach me. “You missed all your appointments for the last, oh, two weeks at least. Did you just set them up in order to break them? Is that what you had in mind all along? A way to punish your mother? Every single one of those appointments—do you know how I felt, wondering if you’d show up each time, wondering what you’d say, how you’d explain yourself? I left time open for you, and every appointment you missed was time I could have been seeing someone else, if I hadn’t made an appointment for you, time I could have been working—”
“Mother, please,” I said. “Calm down, and sit down. I’m sorry I broke those appointments, but it was unavoidable. Anyway, I’ve—”
“Unavoidable.” Her lip curled. “Of course it was. And you couldn’t call your mother—your own mother-to tell her about it!”
<
br /> “Mother, I was in Geneva, and then on the West Coast and then the Moon—”
“I suppose they don’t have infomats on any of those places—?”
“Sit down and be quiet!” I said. It was interesting to discover that I was still capable of anger. “Listen to yourself! Is that any way to talk to a patient?”
“You’re not my patient; you’re my son,” she said.
“That’s right,” I said. “I am. You might think about that, too.”
“I’m—sorry.”
“I came to tell you that I wouldn’t be needing to see you anymore,” I said. “At least, not in your professional capacity. And I brought you a goodbye present.”
Her eyes sharpened a little. “I can see you’ve changed,” she said. “And I’m glad to see that. But what’s this goodbye business?”
“I’m going on a trip,” I said. I didn’t elaborate. “Before I go, though, I need the answer to one more question from you.”
“What is it?” she asked, a little tremulously.
I eased myself down into the couch opposite hers. It felt good to relax in, and I smiled at her. “Relax,” I said. “I’m not going to eat you.” Her eyes widened, and I realized that she really was afraid of me. Why? Old guilts? Or did my presence seem somehow threatening to her?
“You said you had a question?”
“Yes. What happened to my father?”
A veil seemed to fall over her face. “He left me. I told you that.”
“Yes, but where did he go? What did he do?”
“Is it important, now, at this late date?”
“Yes,” I said, firmly, “it is important to me, now. Please tell me.”
“He went into space,” she said.
The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle fitted itself into piece. Suddenly I felt completely whole.
Captain David Dameron took The Searcher out when I was eight. It was a hundred-twenty-year round trip. I remembered now the lean face with sandpaper cheeks that bent down to me and told me goodbye, that long, long ago day.
My den mother had called me out to one of the offices which was off limits for us kids, and there a man with dark eyebrows and a long nose looked down at me and smiled hesitantly.
“Daddy!” I cried. “You’re taking me home!”
The smile had gone as if suddenly erased. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I wish I could, Taddy, but I’m going away.”
I’d stopped dead and stared at him, feeling hurt and bewildered. I’d lived each day as though it might be my last in the hated den; I’d dreamed each night of returning home the next day. I ached with homesickness. I missed the comfort and security of my parents more than I could comprehend.
“Where are you going?” I’d asked.
“Deep space,” he’d said, and his eyes seemed already far away. “I’ve got command of The Searcher, and we’re going out a long way, son.”
“Take me with you,” I begged.
Again, the wistful smile. “Wish I could, son. But I can’t. I just can’t.”
“I’ll wait for you. When are you coming back?”
He shook his head. “Too long,” he said. “A long, long time from now.”
“When I’m grown up?”
“After that.”
“After that…?”
“One hundred and twenty years, Taddy; one hundred and twenty years at least. You’d be a hundred and twenty-eight.”
He didn’t have to say it, and I hadn’t wanted to. After you’re dead, son. I’m going away and I won’t be coming back until after you’re dead.
It was as if he’d struck me. Tears blinded my eyes and I turned and ran heedlessly out the door of the room. It was the last time I’d ever seen my father.
“I thought you remembered,” my mother said. “You were so hipped on space—they used to tell me about you, you know, for a while; I had a friend in Den Administration—wasn’t that why?”
“Yes,” I said. “And no.”
Yes, it explained my frantic drive to follow my father. And perhaps it also explained why, alone of the seven Feinberg Drive ships, The Searcher remained completely unrepresented in my collection of childhood trivia.
I remembered now that I had dried my tears and told my fellow denmates that my father was commanding a starship. They’d laughed at me with all the innate cruelty of children who envied me that precious intangible possession. They ridiculed me, and called me a liar, and in their blind fashion they’d stripped my last defense from the face of my tragedy. They took from me even my pride in my father’s position.
I killed my father that night. This was the night I knew at last that I’d never go home again. I burned my father’s memory and buried it with dry sobs and when at last I fell asleep it was to the lonely knowledge that I had finally been abandoned and lost.
I made my mother a parting gift: an arapad. I told her how to contact the local branch of the Church of the Brotherhood of Life—it was in northern Maine, only a few hours away—and wished her luck. She needed it, I felt. I hoped things would improve for her now—and I was reasonably certain they would. She had fallen into her own box, and clutched it closed around her for all these many years. She was of Tucker’s generation, and his lesson was hers: it’s never too late.
I half wished I could stick around, just to be there for her. But of course I couldn’t.
I’ve been taping this on and off over the last few weeks, while on my free time and during those rare moments when Dian has not commanded my attention. I’ve been busy learning a lot of new skills, for which, fortunately, the shipboard library is well stocked.
I’ve tried to make this an honest chronicle—not because anyone requires it of me (no one else but Dian knows I’ve been taping it), but because I demand it of myself. You might say I’ve been laying the past to rest. I’ve tried to recreate the self I was during each point of each episode I’ve related. The recall hasn’t been difficult—I have fine tuning on my memories, thank you!—but there are parts I don’t like to tell. It’s easy to stand outside my old self and point the finger of judgment at him. He was a shallow, conceited, deeply neurotic fool. That much is obvious. But he is also me. For all of my arapad-assisted growth, I am still Tad Dameron: different, and yet the same. It is as Bjonn said. I was very sick, but I can’t avoid the responsibility for what I did. I must face it, acknowledge it, accept it, and be done with it. My actions of the past are set; they are milestones … but not, I hope, millstones.
Now that I am making the great crossing between the stars, I wonder what it was that once so fascinated me about this voyage. My anticipations were so shallow, so meaningless, and yet, so compulsive. They blinded me and they obsessed me. Had I followed them into space then, I should have missed it all.
It’s better this way. Dian and I are making the return trip to Farhome aboard the Longhaul II. Officially, we are Earth’s representatives on the new world. Off the record, we are new colonists. We’ve been going through the library for holograms and recordings of Farhome, and the more we see of it the more it enchants us. Green and open, rolling hills and abundant nature … this is a world where man has a second chance. This time we know enough to avoid the ecological pitfalls. This time we hope to find a niche of coexistence.
Somehow, I have the feeling that’s what the arapads are all about: they’re Farhome’s ecological insurance policy, paid in full. The Furies will never come to this new world of ours—and perhaps some day they’ll be banished from the old world too.
I hope so. That’s what we’re dedicating our lives toward.
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Also By Ted White
Android Avenger (1965)
The Spawn of the Death Machine (1968)
Phoenix Prime (1966)
The Sorceress of Qar (1966)
Star Wolf! (1971)
Invasion from 2500 (1964) (with Terry Carr) (writing as Norman Edwards)
The Jewels of Elsewhen (1967)
Sideslip (1968) (with Dave van Arnam)
By Furies Possessed (1970)
Forbidden World (1978) (with David Bischoff)
To Roger Zelazny—friend and patron
Ted White (1938 – )
Theodore Edwin White is an author, critic, musician and DJ. In addition to books and stories written under his own name, he has also co-authored novels with Dave van Arnam (as Ron Archer) and with Terry Carr (as Norman Edwards). His CV as an editor is impressive: assistant editor for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1963 – 1968, editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic from 1969-1978 and editor of Heavy Metal from 1979-1980. A prolific contributor to science fiction fanzines since his teens, he won a Hugo Award in 1968 for Best Fan Writer.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Ted White 1970
All rights reserved.
The right of Ted White to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11791 4
