X
Crowds gather in the streets, watching enormous monitors suspended by dirigible in the sky, carrying the progress of the ship. There is to be an enormous celebration at the moment of landing and a series of national holidays which will continue until the ship is safely home again.
Screens have been set up on the periphery of the project in Nebraska; for a circumference of hundreds and hundreds of miles, people have come to park in their transport against the screens and share the experience together. A small number of revolutionaries with incendiary devices have joined the parked transport but with no hope of doing anything unless the mood of the crowd, inexplicably it would seem, should turn ugly.
* * * *
XI
As the first jolt hits the ship, the gravitational devices fail and the captain finds himself suspended in ozone, crouched tailor-fashion near the ceiling, rubbing his hands uselessly together as the ship falls toward the sun. He realizes immediately what has happened because of his excellent training and background, and transmits an order to have the transmission halted immediately, but because all intra-ship communications are wrecked in the jolt the order is neither heard nor followed. The ship falls toward the sun at a speed of several thousand feet a second. It takes twelve hours, altogether, for the ship to be cut off and all of these twelve hours are seen on Earth by two and a half billion adults and many million children.
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* * * *
This is a ghost story, but it’s like no ghost story I’ve ever read. It concerns Alexander the Great and his friend Cleitus the Black, whom he killed in a drunken rage. It’s about glory and love and the need for change, and other human necessities. But I think the thing I like most about it is its thoughtful speculation on what a ghost really is. (No, not what it’s made of: what it is.)
POOR MAN, BEGGAR MAN
Joanna Russ
A strange man, with a black cloak wrapped about him and a fold of it drawn over his head to hide his face, with the easy, gliding step of one who no longer cares if his feet go over rough or smooth, a man who smelled the smell of cooking at a turn in the narrow, rocky path, but to whom it meant nothing but a signal about what somebody else was doing, nothing more, this fellow-who was of a fairly ordinary and nonformidable appearance (though perhaps a bit mysterious)-slipped along the winding path outside Alexander’s camp near the Indus River as if he knew where he was going. But he had no business being there, certainly not in the heat of the afternoon, though the vegetation around him cast the path into a certain tenebrous gloom. Light and shade spotted him. It was early in the Indian summer and petals and yellow dust dropped on the path and on the leaf mold to either side. He shook himself free. He reached an open place and continued, not looking round.
A quarter of a mile from the general’s tent the path ascended, became rockier and more open; a guard lounged on a rock, absorbed in a bluebottle he held between thumb and forefinger. He did not see the stranger as he passed, nor did he return his salute. Muffled to the chin, the stranger passed servants clearing dishes from a board table set up in the open sunlight (for the general’s tent commanded a view of the valley from an uninterrupted but therefore somewhat inhospitable height). He stepped inside the tent, bending under the canvas flap, his black cloak trailing. He found his man seated at a low table, calling for a map; he put one hand on his shoulder and then he said quite diffidently-
“Come, I’m still a civilized fellow.”
“Apollo guard us!” choked the conqueror, turning pale. The stranger laughed and shook his head, still with the inoffensive and friendly manner that had made him so popular, and that had ` occasioned such grief when Alexander had murdered him at the age of twenty-eight.
“Your teacher, Aristotle, wouldn’t like that,” he said, shaking his y head humorously, and he sat down on the edge of the table, closing his hand around a wine cup.
“Take your hands off that!” said Alexander automatically, and ‘- then he said, his color coming back, “Take it.”
“Oh no, thank you,” said his dead friend, smiling apologetically, “I couldn’t, now. You have no idea what an inconvenience it is, to be dead-”
“Take it!” said the conqueror.
“Ah, but-- and his murdered friend put the wine cup down.
“Well?” said Alexander. The dead man smiled, the mild smile of those who provoke and endure insult; he smiled, backing away. .: “I thought,” he said, “that the novelty of my appearance-”
“Doesn’t last.”
“Ah, but you owe me-”
“What?”
The ghost wandered away a few steps, past the ray of brilliant f sunlight that entered the tent through the front flap, brushing the canvas wall with his shoulder and causing not a ripple. “I remember,” he said, “I remember.” Alexander watched him intently in the half light the light that made of the conqueror, of his handsome face and bronze figure, a statue.
“Ah, what I remember!” broke out the ghost, with a genuine laugh. “I remember your amazing forcefulness when you got drunk.” The man at the table watched him. “And I remember,” added the ghost, padding round the room, “sitting with my feet up and my knees under my chin on some kind of marble shelf, like a schoolboy, and watching you rant-”
“I never rant.”
“Rave, then. But you mustn’t split hairs. My word, they tried to hold you back, didn’t they? And my sister was your old nurse what a scandal! I hear you shut yourself up for three days.” Here he paused in the darkest corner of the tent. “You know,” he said, coming out into the light, dragging his cloak carelessly off one shoulder, “you know,” he said, his whole face becoming clearer, his brow rising, his eyes opening as they do in strong feeling when the face is about to become a mask, “you know” (with an expression almost of amazement) “I do remember it quite well. I have analyzed it a hundred times. I had no idea what hit me. I thought the room had turned round and the floor had come up and thrown itself against me. And then something hit me in the chest and I bit my tongue, do you know, and I saw your face-”
Here Alexander broke into a roar of laughter that might have been heard even outside the tent, but the tent flaps did not move; they hung quite still.
“My dear friend,” he said affectionately, “really I am very sorry, but you know you might have come back four years ago. I feel for you, I do, but I’m afraid time has rather worn the whole affair away. You see” and he pointed to the litter of papers on his desk.
“Ah,” said the ghost wisely, “but 1 don’t age, you see.”
“That’s too bad,” said the emperor, putting his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands, “and now-”
“Now?” said the ghost expectantly.
“Now be a good fellow and go away.”
“No.”
“Then I shall,” but when the emperor pushed back his chair and got up, he saw that the friend he had killed was somehow sitting in it and fingering his papers and that he did not like.
“My, look at this,” said his friend.
“Let that be!”
“You’re going to India; how nice.”
“Will you-!” and he snatched the stranger’s hand, but the shock of finding it flesh and blood was too much for him and he started back, shouting, “Guards!” No one came.
“Ah, nonsense,” said his friend quietly. He sat at the table as a secretary or accompanying philosopher sits and writes down a great man’s words; his black cloak had slipped off his shoulders and lay half on the seat and half on the dirt floor, like a pool of ink. He picked up one document after another, carefully and respectfully. It had always been remarkable how this man could pick things up; his hand closed around a cup, a vase, a woman’s hand, with such gentleness and such attentive curiosity that one might almost imagine inanimate objects feeling actual pleasure at his touch. Women had liked him and he had evaded them.
“You’re going to India,” he said. He was looking at marks
on a map. Alexander strode matter-of-factly to the tent flap to get friends or attendants who would rid him of this annoyance, but the tent flap hung straight as stone. He could not move it.
“What do you want from me?” he said between his teeth.
“We-ell,” drawled the stranger.
“What?” shouted the king, losing his patience.
“You’re growing afraid.”
“Not I!”
“Yes you are, and you’ll do it.”
“Do what!”
“Quietly.” He studied the map. “Look at this,” he said. “You’re going to cross the Indus, you’ll be another seven years away from home, your army will mutiny and by the time you establish another Alexandria-how many Alexandrias are there by this time? -at the eastern edge of the world, your government in the west will have collapsed and you’ll have to begin all over again. Good Lord, what an agenda!”
“Stop playing with me,” said the king, and he sat, with considerable dignity, on a low bench near the opening of the tent.
“Why not? You used to play with me,” said the ghost reasonably. “I used to.”
“Precisely. You used to.”
“Death hasn’t steadied your character,” said Alexander.
“Or sweetened yours!”
“Those who want to get kicked will get kicked,” said the king.
“Yes, precisely,” said his friend, blinking. “Well, what I want is this. I want you to turn back, go spend the next winter in Heliopolis, renamed from Babylon (what a change!), and withdraw your borders to the edge of Persia. You’re a fool. You can’t keep what you’ve got. As it is, the empire will fall apart three days after your death. You think you can put up a few carved pillars, appoint a satrap and a place is yours. Nonsense.”
“And-”said Alexander.
“And,” repeated the ghost, looking a little bewildered, “and well-there you are.” Alexander rose to his feet. “I’m not done-” But a sudden breeze blasted the tent flap into the air as if someone’s violent enthusiasm had flung it skyward. Grinning cheerfully, though perhaps with a certain awkwardness, Alexander walked to his friend and embraced him.
“Would you believe me,” he said, “if I told you that I had repented? Sincerely repented? Why, man, I saw no one for three days; they thought I would abandon them in the middle of the desert. So much grief! But you should have known enough to keep away from me.” He patted, without shrinking, his friend’s unnaturally solid back. “And the story about your sister was true,” he said, “though embroidered a little, I’ll admit. I was truly fond of her and hated to cause her pain. And you” His voice thickened. “Well, you know-”
“Ah,” said the ghost, helplessly blinking.
“You know,” said Alexander tenderly. “You know.” And then, without another word, only looking back with smiling and compassionate regret, he walked out of the tent.
Left alone, the stranger gazed thoughtfully after him for the space of a minute. Then, with extraordinary rapidity, he whipped his cloak from the chair near the low table, wrapped it into a small package, and flung it into the air. Watching it as it hung suspended between the roof and the floor, he laughed to himself, a noiseless fit that doubled him up. As soon as he took his gaze off the cloak, it fell like any other object, gracelessly unfolding itself in a scattered bundle like a wounded goose. He picked it up and put it on.
Nom for the other one, he thought, and he sat down on the bench near the canvas wall, quite composed. His name was Cleitus. He had been known in life as Cleitus the Black.
In Persia, in order to secure his political position, Alexander had married (and caused two hundred of his nobles to do likewise, although their sentiments on the matter had not been ascertained at the time) a Persian lady of aristocratic birth. Roxane, as his wife was called, had spent most of her childhood in a courtyard with a mosaic marble floor, either learning to read and write (which she despised) or chasing a striped ball with several other girls who kissed her hand in the morning and in the evening and said “my lady.” When she was seventeen she was surprisingly and suddenly married to a man famous, handsome, young and formidable Three weeks’ absence from home made her desperately sick for her courtyard, which she had always considered a prison before, and in which she had longed to stand on a chair piled on another chair piled on a table so that she could see out of it and view the great world.
She came into the tent five minutes after Alexander had left it and two minutes after the stranger had seated himself on a bench.
“Eh!” she said, startled. He was down on his knees, bowing, before she could take fright and run. Then he kissed her hand, which comforted her because that was so familiar.
“Who are you?” said she, sensibly. He only smiled at her, as vaguely and disarmingly as a man who has never been anything else but a woman’s bumbling pet, and he kissed her hand again “I, madam,” he said, “am called Theophrastus.”
“What a foolish name!” said Roxane, giggling, for she had never learned to lie or be polite either.
“My lady,” he said, suddenly affecting to look alarmed, “should you be here alone with me? That is-I mean-I believe-” Roxane tossed her head.
“Nobody follows me around,” she said, “here. Nobody would dare hurt me,” she added, “I suppose.”
“Yes,” she said. “Are they-are they-” (she whispered this)”bloodsuckers?”
“Uh-no,” said the ghost, his wits scattered.
“Oh, then it’s all right,” she said, relieved. “You can keep away the other kinds, but that kind-” Suddenly she looked at him keenly. “You don’t really know, do you?” she said.
“Of course I do,” he said. She frowned. “No-you-don’t,” she said with emphasis. Her face darkened. “You’re Greek!”
He admitted it.
“Ha!” she said. “You probably don’t believe in them at all.”
He protested that he did.
“No you don’t,” she said. “I can tell. You’ll tell my husband it’s a lot of nonsense. I know.”
“Madam!” he protested. “On my honor-”
“Greek honor!” she cried. “You’ll tell my husband it’s some Asiatic foolishness.” She darted to him, grabbing his shoulders and furiously shaking him. “Yes you will!” she shouted. “You’ll tell him it’s nonsense and then he’ll go out there and then-” and she turned away and screwed up her face. She began to cry.
“Now, now, now,” he said.
“He’ll get killed!” wailed little Roxane. “He will! He will!”
“No, no, no,” said the stranger, stroking her hair. She leaned against him, sobbing a little. Then she pulled away.
“I’m rather homesick,” she said sharply, explaining her conduct.
“Of course, of course,” said the ghost in the tone women used to love so when he was alive. “It’s only natural, of course.”
“You shouldn’t pat my head,” said Roxane, sniffling.
“Yes, of course,” he said smoothly, “of course.-But it calms you, doesn’t it? and it does so distress me to see you upset.”
“It makes my eyes red,” said Roxane, blowing her nose in her long, Persian sleeve.
“It makes you unhappy,” said he, “and I don’t like to see people unhappy, you know, though I have so few feelings myself.” He smiled. “I had a wife like you once; she was much cleverer than I and she hated the court: a real intellectual.”
“Nobody with any heart would,” said he. She colored.
“Madam,” he said quickly, “I must find the emperor.”
“I don’t know where he is,” said she, sitting plump on the bench. She looked interested and expectant. The ghost began to walk up and down like a man tormented in his mind by the urgency of something. He said “Ah, but madam!” and then he shook his head to himself a few times and said, “Madam-”
“Why, what’s the matter?” cried Roxane, who was entirely ignorant and hence unafraid. The ghost came and sat down beside her with his black c
loak (looking rather foolish) dragging behind him.
“You know, madam,” he said earnestly, “that your husband, his Imperial Majesty, pai dios-”
“Yes, yes,” said Roxane impatiently, clasping her hands.
“Your husband,” said the ghost, looking round as if afraid they might be overheard, “has no doubt told you, madam, that he intends to cross the river in a few days’ time and for this he will need native scouts, guides, madam, to acquaint him with the towns and villages that may lie beyond.” Roxane nodded, perfectly attentive. “Well now,” continued the ghost, “and, madam, I tell you-I tell you, I am nearly out of my senses-these guides whom your husband has engaged now refuse to go anywhere. They have scattered to the four winds, madam.” He looked at her apologetically, as if what he was about to say was too foolish to be believed and in any case utterly beyond her notice, and then he said, “They are afraid, madam, of the ghosts.”
Universe 1 - [Anthology] Page 13
