by Roger Elwood
He paused, a worried look on his face. “But come, Dor, the vistascope people are ready for you. The whole world is tuned in to see you and hear you. I would have preferred to delay this talk until we had had a chance to go over what you should say. But I know you are anxious to talk to your father and tell him you are among friends. Right now all you need to do is reassure him that all is well with you. Later, when our plans are more definite, we can tell him about when he can expect your return.”
In the family room, Dor was almost blinded by the strong lights. She was seated in the center of the room. She could see several vistascope cameras leveled at her. The room was crowded with technicians. Over to one side she could see Renna and Bob with their mother.
“As soon as you hear your father’s voice, you can begin talking,” Cahorn said to her.
For a moment or two, Dor waited in silence, listening for her father’s voice. When it came through, amplified, as clear as if he were in the same room, Dor had difficulty holding back a sigh of relief.
Then she spoke, very slowly and carefully, in the graceful, lilting Tyroxan language.
“Father,” she said, “I am a prisoner on a planet called Terra.
“The people here are desperate. I feel sorry for them. There are billions and billions of them. Everything is polluted. They are looking for other planets to colonize to relieve the horrible pressure.
“Yes, Father, they want to send many of their people to Tyrox, at least a billion. But as I love you and you love me, don’t let even that first ship land.
“They are sending a ship next week with some of their top scientists. You must prevent it from landing. You have not quite three hundred Tyroxan days to prepare your defenses. I recall hearing that special machinery for laser disintegrators and magnetic shields were developed a century ago when we thought we were in danger from another invader. Use those three hundred days to reactivate the shields and the disintegrators.
“No, Father, all Terrans are not evil. They are like people caught in a deadly plague. They are frightened. The people I am living with are very kind to me. I wish we could help them. But it’s only common sense to refuse to admit the plague. If they are unable to land on Tyrox, it will force them to search further for other habitable planets, preferably unpopulated. Tyrox must be saved!
“No, Father, they do not understand what I am saying to you. I know their language. They do not know ours.
“Tell Mother and all my friends that I am well treated. I admit I am frightened. Perhaps I should say I am Terrafied . . . terrified of what Terra could do to Tyrox. Don’t let that first ship land, Father.”
Dor raised her three eyes, glistening with half-shed tears, to look up at Captain Cahorn.
“And now could you tell us what you told your father?” the spaceman asked.
Dor nodded. “I told him that life is quite different here than it is on Tyrox. I told him that I was well and that I was being very well treated.”
“Did you tell your father that you were going to be on the first ship to go to Tyrox? I’m anxious that we are favorably welcomed.”
Dor looked back at the Terran spaceman. “No,” she said with a half smile of a secret unshared, “I didn’t say anything about my being on that first ship. I did tell him, however, how to welcome it.”
rachel cosqrove payes
Half Life
As Benji washed up for lunch at the Dake Cent, the tattoo on the back of his right hand reminded him that Half Life was only two short months away, and he hadn’t filed yet on an Expired. It was harder on Dake Cent kids, with no parents to use. He had to go looking, find himself an Expired who hadn’t already been tabbed, and file, hoping that someone else hadn’t beaten him to it. Benji had been taken from his mother when he was only three, too young to remember her except as a vague dream. And his father had disappeared five years ago.
Marc, who bunked above him, came in to wash.
“Hey, Benji, filed yet?”
“Not yet.” He wished Marc would quit asking-gloating, really. Marc had located a recluse in the bombed-out buildings down by the river, and had hied on him already.
“How about the Old Man of the Hills? Huh, Benji? He oughta be so old that you’d win the prize for this year.”
Everybody knew the Old Man of the Hills was a myth, created by the cruel to taunt those who couldn’t find an Expired by filing date. Benji sneaked another look at his hand. The tattoo mocked him. The numbers were indelible, unchangeable, inexorable. His birthdate, 6/21/20, and his ID number. And today was March 15, 2035. In just two months and six days, Benji would be fifteen—Half Life. If he didn’t file at least two weeks prior to that date, and bring in a hand before his own Half Life, he’d have a large red X tattooed over the date on his hand, automatically classifying him as a Technical Expired, although he was only fifteen instead of the legal cutoff age of thirty. Then he would have to guard his own life constantly, so that someone nearing Half Life would not file on him and kill him for his tattooed hand, to fulfill the requirements of the law and retain their own immune status until they Expired in another fifteen years.
These days, scarcely anyone lasted through his thirtieth year. There was a prize each year for the oldest hand turned in—the prize being a royal blue hand tattoo that gave the lucky winner an extra year of life before he Expired.
Benji decided to start getting up at dawn to prowl the city, trying to ferret out hidden Expireds. But when another week passed without his finding an untagged Expired, he began to panic. At dawn he flitted silently along the edges of Bargetown, where dilapidated old boats and barges clogged the polluted waters of the river. He had had the barges under surveillance for a week, keeping his eye glued to a homemade scope.
Then he spied one person with a red X over his tattoo, an eligible. He was even able to make out the ID number without allowing himself to be seen. Surely he would be first to hie on this legal Expired, as the boy stayed on the river side of the barges, never approaching the shore. So Benji hurried back to the Half Life Bureau and hied the ID number he had read through his scope.
“Run it through the computer immediately,” the bored programmer told him.
Benji’s emotions were a mixture of anxiety and elation. He was sure this would be a good one. Then his only remaining problem would be to kill the Technical Expired, cut off his tattooed right hand, and bring it in for confirmation.
The computer lights flickered, the reels spun, the printer clacked, and the technician pulled off the printout sheet. “Filed on two hours ago. You can’t use him.”
Out in the street, Benji found that he was trembling. It wasn’t just fear; it was a combination of many emotions—frustration, anger, desperation. It was then that he remembered Marc’s taunt about the Old Man of the Hills. Maybe there was someone out there in the rugged, wooded slopes to the north of the City. He would have to get a special permit to leave, but with his Half Life rapidly approaching, he was sure he would get the okay.
Benji was in luck, since the clerk who issued permits for Outside had lived in Benji’s Dake Cent until his own Half Life two years earlier.
“I’ll even issue you a scoot, if you can scrounge batteries.”
Benji grinned, elated. He knew where he could swipe a battery or two, and with a scoot to ride, he would have lots more time to search the hills before he had to come back to the City to celebrate his Half Life.
“Thanks, Jon. Come to my Half Life party.”
He waited until dark, slid quietly into a locked scoot repair shop via a loosened board on a back window, and took two batteries, one as a spare. I’ll repay when I reach Half Life and am eligible to work, he promised himself.
At first light he was at the north gate, astride the scoot, permit badge stuck firmly to his wrist.
“Lookin’ fer the Old Man of the Hills, kid?” the guard asked jokingly, as he moved the coiled barbed wire aside just enough to allow Benji through the gap. “Don’t forget you have to return in time for y
our Half Life.”
Benji accelerated, purring along the broken, overgrown ancient road that wound north through the foothills. Ahead the dark green of mountains beckoned, and Benji breathed thanks to Jon for the scoot. Without it, he would have walked for days just reaching the mountains.
In all that first day of bouncing along increasingly rough tracks that steadily rose into the hills, he saw no one. There were ruins of houses. He even rode, once, through the deserted streets of a ghost town. At the time of the Trouble, everyone had come into the City to the tunnel shelters. No one returned to the Outside.
His early elation rapidly changed to worry. No one lived Outside. The stories of the Old Man were just stories, not fact. By the end of this third day of riding, Benji was out of sight of the broken towers of the City, high in the mountains that grew wilder with each mile he rode. He had to reserve some battery power for the return trip.
Benji began to regret his decision to search Outside. No one had ever found an Expired outside the City. He should have stayed at home and prowled the streets and tunnels. He would have found someone eventually. Now he had wasted precious days on this folly. He would ride to the top of the ridge, along this faint track that was the only remnant of an earlier road. If he saw no sign of life, he would turn back and take his chance in familiar territory.
Topping the rise, Benji looked down into a small valley, a twinkling blue oval of lake at the bottom, with trees growing almost to its waters except on one side where there was a fair-sized clearing—and a small hut that did not seem to be the usual ruin he had been seeing. Excited, he got off the scoot and lay full length on the ground with the scope to his eye. The scene leaped up at him. It was a small house, not a ruin. A tiny drift of smoke came from a tall stone chimney. Someone lived there. Even as Benji watched, his mouth dry with emotion, he saw the hut door open, and a man stepped outside. The distance was too great for Benji to be able to see the man’s tattoo. He would hide his scoot here on the ridge and go down into the valley on foot. Less chance of having the man spot him and flee.
A cautious thirty minutes later, Benji had worked his way to within a thousand feet of the house. Dusk was falling. As he crouched in a thicket of berry bushes, the hut door opened again and the man stood silhouetted in the doorway. Whipping his scope to his eye, Benji focused on the man’s right hand. The date stood out clearly, even though it was X’d in red—2/14/90. The man was forty-five years old! Benji had never seen anyone that old before. He would win this year and earn an extra year of life for himself.
Then a terrible thought hit him. He hadn’t filed on this man. Legally he had to file before the kill. How could he have forgotten? It meant the long trip back to the City, filing, getting confirmation, then receiving permission to leave for Outside again. He would have to retrace his route and hope that the man was still living here. It would take at least a week; and, if he couldn’t steal more scoot batteries for the return trip, much longer by foot. He might not be able to do it in the allotted time.
Desperation brought Benji to a terrible decision. He would kill the man now, take the hand, and ride back toward home. Before entering the gate, he would hide the hand. Then, after he had filed on the man in this hut, he could go back out, get his grisly cache, and pretend he had killed the man just outside the City.
Perhaps it would be best to wait until the man was asleep. Benji had heard the old tales of mighty warriors who declined with age, but this man looked robust. With only his knife as a weapon, Benji couldn’t risk normal combat.
Darkness fell, the man went back inside, and Benji moved closer to the hut. Suddenly he heard something so beautiful that his heart ached, and tears came to his eyes. It was music, he guessed, but not the thump he was used to. The sound went up, up, up, then rippled down, a waterfall splashing in a pool, like the one he had seen on the trail yesterday. It was haunting, with none of the hard beat of thump. Yet, unfamiliar as it was, it called to Benji in a language he knew was his own.
He had to find out what was making the glorious sound. Like a ghost, he drifted close to the hut. On one side light filtered out of a window only partially curtained. Holding his breath, Benji eased into position so that one eye peered through a gap in the rough fabric hiding the interior.
The man was sitting in front of something that looked like a modified computer console. A row of white and black levers ran along one side, and the man was pushing them with his fingers, producing the enchanting sounds Benji had heard. Benji remembered that he had seen a picture once, in a tattered book of the Ancients, of such a thing—called a piago, or some such odd word. He was familiar with the drums and gitjos the thumpers played, but this was—his mind refused to put a name to it.
The concert went on for a long time, melting Benji’s heart. Then the man leaned back, dropped his hands, and the glorious sounds stopped.
“More!”
The man spun around and was on his feet before Benji realized he had cried the word aloud.
“Who’s there?”
Shaken by the spell of the music, paralyzed by fright at being discovered, Benji just stood there. The man snatched open the door. Seeing him move galvanized the boy, but it was too late. Benji turned to flee into the bushes, when a heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder and spun him around.
Benji flashed his knife, only to have his wrist caught in a numbing grip. Then he was marched into the house.
Relieved of the knife, Benji stood shaking. Yet, in here, the power of the music returned, and his eyes strayed away from the hard face of his captor to the instrument against the wall.
“Have you never heard a piano?” The man’s voice didn’t match his brutal strength. It was low and gentle.
Benji shook his head. “I’ve only heard the thumpers.”
The man eased his grip after taking Benji’s knife. Then he held up Benji’s tattooed hand. “Yes, I understand. Soon it will be your Half Life.” His voice held pain, and it made Benji want to cry, just as the music had.
“Are you hungry, boy?”
Benji didn’t answer, but the man went to a cupboard, brought out bread and some meat Benji didn’t recognize, and used Benji’s own knife to cut huge portions.
“Come on, eat—and I’ll play for you.”
He left Benji’s knife on the table with the food, turned his back as if unafraid, and seated himself before the piano. His fingers ran up and down the black and white levers, and the sound poured out, filling the room, filling Benji’s soul just as the food filled his empty stomach.
When the boy was full, the man stopped playing and turned to face him. He held out his right hand, so that the tattoo showed plainly.
“You’ve come for my hand, haven’t you?” His dark eyes were sad. “I’ve lived the span of two Half Lives since I left the City. I had hoped that the madness would die away; but it must be worse, if you’ve come this far, just for my hand. Are Expireds that hard to find now?”
Benji nodded. There was a queer lump in his throat, as if a chunk of the bread he had eaten was stuck there.
“I left, you know. I found I couldn’t kill anyone. So, when I refused, they marked me Expired. I slipped away one night and fled to the hills. So many years ago—I’d almost forgotten the old horrors. I found this house, and the piano someone had loved before the Trouble—and I’ve lived here, at peace with my neighbors.”
Benji gasped. “Neighbors? There are others?”
His host smiled. “In the next valley, and the one beyond that. A few who, like me, wouldn’t fulfill their obligation to kill another human, just to get a hand.”
Benji’s head ached. He had never met anyone like the Old Man of the Hills. His eyes couldn’t stay away from the date on his hand—he would win; no one else in the world could be this old. Benji’s hand stole toward his knife, so foolishly, so trustingly returned to him.
As his fingers curled around the hilt, his host said softly, “Would you like to learn to play the piano?”
It was a hea
rt-stopping moment. Play? Make that lovely sound that had drawn him, that called to him in a language at once strange and yet achingly familiar? “Could I—no, I have to get back by—”
“By your Half Life. You have a few days yet. What is your name, boy?”
“Benji.”
“And I am Rolf. Let me teach you to play. Then, when you achieve your legal Half Life, you can return here, if you wish, and have the piano for your own.”
“But—but—you—”
“I’ll not be here, will I? Not if you kill me and take my hand.”
It was a terrible decision. Benji knew he would win the prize with Rolf’s tattoo; yet suddenly he felt sick inside. To kill the man would kill the music. Benji knew that he couldn’t learn, in a few short weeks, to make the sounds he had heard tonight. It must have taken Rolf years—more years than Benji had realized anyone had in this life.
As terrible sobs shook his body, he felt Rolfs arms about him, in a way he had never known before. The man rocked him gently and made little crooning, soothing sounds.
“Tell me, Benji. Talk about it.”
Calmer, Benji explained about the prize.
“They didn’t do that thirty years ago. It’s worse, much worse than I’d dreamed. I’m glad I fled.”
“So you see, you’re so old—with your hand, I’d earn myself one more year before I Expired.”
“Yes, I see. And one extra year is very precious. Well, Benji, you don’t want to kill me.” Benji shook his head fiercely, and sniffed loudly. “Yet you need my hand.” Rolf paused, and reluctantly, Benji nodded. “Then let me give you that hand.”
For a moment, Benji didn’t understand. Then, slowly, the meaning seeped into his mind. “You—you’d let me cut off your hand—just so that I—”
“It means so much to you, doesn’t it?”
Benji’s eyes strayed to the piano, silent now that its master no longer commanded it to make its melodies.
