“Probably.”
“But up to now it has been just a troublesome nuisance. These stobor especially—I’ll show you one out in the field when—say!” Rod looked thoughtful. “These are stobor, aren’t they? Little carnivores heavy in front, about the size of a tom cat and eight times as nasty?”
“Why ask me?”
“Well, you warned us against stobor. All the classes were warned.”
“I suppose these must be stobor,” Matson admitted, “but I did not know what they looked like.”
“Huh?”
“Rod, every planet has its ‘stobor’…all different. Sometimes more than one sort.” He stopped to tap his pipe. “You remember me telling the class that every planet has unique dangers, different from every other planet in the Galaxy?”
“Yes…”
“Sure, and it meant nothing, a mere intellectual concept. But you have to be afraid of the thing behind the concept, if you are to stay alive. So we personify it…but we don’t tell you what it is. We do it differently each year. It is to warn you that the unknown and deadly can lurk anywhere…and to plant it deep in your guts instead of in your head.”
“Well, I’ll be a—Then there weren’t any stobor! There never were!”
“Sure there were. You built these traps for them, didn’t you?”
When they returned, Matson sat on the ground and said, “We can’t stay long, you know.”
“I realize that. Wait a moment.” Rod went into his hut, dug out Lady Macbeth, rejoined them. “Here’s your knife, Sis. It saved my skin more than once. Thanks.”
She took the knife and caressed it, then cradled it and looked past Rod’s head. It flashed by him, went tuck-spong! in a corner post. She recovered it, came back and handed it to Rod. “Keep it, dear, wear it always in safety and health.”
“Gee, Sis, I shouldn’t. I’ve had it too long now.”
“Please. I’d like to know that Lady Macbeth is watching over you, wherever you are. And I don’t need a knife much now.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“Because I married her,” Matson answered.
Rod was caught speechless. His sister looked at him and said, “What’s the matter, Buddy? Don’t you approve?”
“Huh? Oh, sure! It’s…” He dug into his memory, fell back on quoted ritual: “‘May the Principle make you one. May your union be fruitful.’”
“Then come here and kiss me.”
Rod did so, remembered to shake hands with the Deacon. It was all right, he guessed, but—well, how old were they? Sis must be thirtyish and the Deacon…why the Deacon was old—probably past forty.
It did not seem quite decent.
But he did his best to make them feel that he approved. After he thought it over he decided that if two people, with their lives behind them, wanted company in their old age, why, it was probably a good thing.
“So you see,” Matson went on, “I had a double reason to look you up. In the first place, though I am no longer teaching, it is vexing to mislay an entire class. In the second place, when one of them is your brother-in-law it is downright embarrassing.”
“You’ve quit teaching?”
“Yes. The Board and I don’t see eye to eye on policy. Secondly, I’m leading a party out…and this time your sister and I are going to settle down and prove a farm.” Matson looked at him. “Wouldn’t be interested, would you? I need a salted lieutenant.”
“Huh? Thanks, but as I told you, this is my place. Uh, where are you going?”
“Territa, out toward the Hyades. Nice place—they are charging a stiff premium.”
Rod shrugged. “Then I couldn’t afford it.”
“As my lieutenant, you’d be exempt. But I wasn’t twisting your arm; I just thought you ought to have a chance to turn it down. I have to get along with your sister, you know.”
Rod glanced at Helen. “Sorry, Sis.”
“It’s all right, Buddy. We’re not trying to live your life.”
“Mmm…no.” Matson puffed hard; then went on. “However, as your putative brother and former teacher I feel obligated to mention a couple of things. I’m not trying to sell you anything, but I’ll appreciate it if you’ll listen. Okay?”
“Well…go ahead.”
“This is a good spot. But you might go back to school, you know. Acquire recognized professional status. If you refuse recall, here you stay…forever. You won’t see the rest of the Outlands. They won’t give you free passage back later. But a professional gets around, he sees the world. Your sister and I have been on some fifty planets. School does not look attractive now—you’re a man and it will be hard to wear boy’s shoes. But—” Matson swept an arm, encompassed all of Cowpertown, “—this counts. You can skip courses, get field credit. I have some drag with the Chancellor of Central Tech. Hmmm?”
Rod sat with stony face, then shook his head. “Okay,” said Matson briskly. “No harm done.”
“Wait. Let me tell you.” Rod tried to think how to explain how he felt…“Nothing, I guess,” he said gruffly.
Matson smoked in silence. “You were leader here,” he said at last.
“Mayor,” Rod corrected. “Mayor of Cowpertown. I was the Mayor, I mean.”
“You are the Mayor. Population one, but you are still boss. And even those bureaucrats in the control service wouldn’t dispute that you’ve proved the land. Technically you are an autonomous colony—I hear you told Sansom that.” Matson grinned. “You’re alone, however. You can’t live alone, Rod…not and stay human.”
“Well, yes—but aren’t they going to settle this planet?”
“Sure. Probably fifty thousand this year, four times that many in two years. But, Rod, you would be part of the mob. They’ll bring their own leaders.”
“I don’t have to be boss! I just—well, I don’t want to give up Cowpertown.”
“Rod, Cowpertown is safe in history, along with Plymouth Rock, Botany Bay, and Dakin’s Colony. The citizens of Tangaroa will undoubtedly preserve it as a historical shrine. Whether you stay is another matter. Nor am I trying to persuade you. I was simply pointing out alternatives.” He stood up. “About time we started, Helen.”
“Yes, dear.” She accepted his hand and stood up.
“Wait a minute!” insisted Rod. “Deacon… Sis! I know I sound like a fool. I know this is gone…the town, and the kids, and everything. But I can’t go back.” He added, “It’s not that I don’t want to.”
Matson nodded. “I understand you.”
“I don’t see how. I don’t.”
“Maybe I’ve been there. Rod, everyone of us is beset by two things: a need to go home, and the impossibility of doing it. You are at the age when these hurt worst. You’ve been thrown into a situation that makes the crisis doubly acute. You—don’t interrupt me—you’ve been a man here, the old man of the tribe, the bull of the herd. That is why the others could go back but you can’t. Wait, please! I suggested that you might find it well to go back and be an adolescent for a while…and it seems unbearable. I’m not surprised. It would be easier to be a small child. Children are another race and adults deal with them as such. But adolescents are neither adult nor child. They have the impossible, unsolvable, tragic problems of all fringe cultures. They don’t belong, they are second-class citizens, economically and socially insecure. It is a difficult period and I don’t blame you for not wanting to return to it. I simply think it might pay. But you have been king of a whole world; I imagine that term papers and being told to wipe your feet and such are out of the question. So good luck. Coming, dear?”
“Deacon,” his wife said, “Aren’t you going to tell him?”
“It has no bearing. It would be an unfair way to influence his judgment.”
“You men! I’m glad I’m not male!”
“So am I,” Matson agreed pleasantly.
“I didn’t mean that. Men behave as if logic were stepping on crack in a sidewalk. I’m going to tell him.”
“On your head be i
t.”
“Tell me what?” demanded Rod.
“She means,” said Matson, “that your parents are back.”
“What?”
“Yes, Buddy. They left stasis a week ago and Daddy came out of the hospital today. He’s well. But we haven’t told him all about you—we haven’t known what to say.”
The facts were simple, although Rod found them hard to soak up. Medical techniques had developed in two years, not a pessimistic twenty; it had been possible to relax the stasis, operate, and restore Mr. Walker to the world. Helen had known for months that such outcome was likely, but their father’s physician had not approved until he was sure. It had been mere coincidence that Tangaroa had been located at almost the same time. To Rod one event was as startling as the other; his parents had been dead to him for a long time.
“My dear,” Matson said sternly, “now that you have thrown him into a whingding, shall we go?”
“Yes. But I had to tell him.” Helen kissed Rod quickly, turned to her husband. They started to walk away.
Rod watched them, his face contorted in an agony of indecision.
Suddenly he called out, “Wait! I’m coming with you.”
“All right,” Matson answered. He turned his good eye toward his wife and drooped the lid in a look of satisfaction that was not quite a wink. “If you are sure that is what you want to do, I’ll help you get your gear together.”
“Oh, I haven’t any baggage. Let’s go.”
Rod stopped only long enough to free the penned animals.
16
The Endless Road
MATSON CHAPERONED HIM THROUGH EMIGRANTS’ GAP, saved from possible injury a functionary who wanted to give Rod psychological tests, and saw to it that he signed no waivers. He had him bathed, shaved, and barbered, then fetched him clothes, before he let him be exposed to the Terran world. Matson accompanied them only to Kaibab Gate. “I’m supposed to have a lodge dinner, or something, so that you four can be alone as a family. About nine, dear. See you, Rod.” He kissed his wife and left.
“Sis? Dad doesn’t know I’m coming?”
Helen hesitated. “He knows. I screened him while Deacon was primping you.” She added, “Remember, Rod, Dad has been ill…and the time has been only a couple of weeks to him.”
“Oh, that’s so, isn’t it?” Used all his life to Ramsbotham anomalies, Rod nevertheless found those concerned with time confusing—planet-hopping via the gates did not seem odd. Besides, he was extremely edgy without knowing why, the truth being that he was having an attack of fear of crowds. The Matsons had anticipated it but had not warned him lest they make him worse.
The walk through tall trees just before reaching home calmed him. The necessity for checking all cover for dangerous animals and keeping a tree near him always in mind gave his subconscious something familiar to chew on. He arrived home almost cheerful without being aware either that he had been frightened by crowds or soothed by non-existent dangers of an urban forest.
His father looked browned and healthy—but shorter and smaller. He embraced his son and his mother kissed him and wept. “It’s good to have you home, son. I understand you had quite a trip.”
“It’s good to be home, Dad.”
“I think these tests are much too strenuous, I really do.”
Rod started to explain that it really had not been a test, that it had not been strenuous, and that Cowpertown—Tangaroa, rather—had been a soft touch. But he got mixed up and was disturbed by the presence of “Aunt” Nora Peascoat—no relation but a childhood friend of his mother. Besides, his father was not listening.
But Mrs. Peascoat was listening, and looking—peering with little eyes through folds of flesh. “Why, Roderick Walker, I knew that couldn’t have been a picture of you.”
“Eh?” asked his father. “What picture?”
“Why, that wild-man picture that had Roddie’s name on it. You must have seen it; it was on facsimile and Empire Hour both. I knew it wasn’t him. I said to Joseph, ‘Joseph,’ I said, ‘that’s not a picture of Rod Walker—its a fake.’”
“I must have missed it. As you know, I—”
“I’ll send it to you; I clipped it. I knew it was a fake. It’s a horrible thing, a great naked savage with pointed teeth and a fiendish grin and a long spear and war paint all over its ugly face. I said to Joseph—”
“As you know, I returned from hospital just this morning, Nora. Rod, there was no picture of you on the news services, surely?”
“Uh, yes and no. Maybe.”
“I don’t follow you. Why should there be a picture of you?”
“There wasn’t any reason. This bloke just took it.”
“Then there was a picture?”
“Yes.” Rod saw that “Aunt” Nora was eyeing him avidly: “But it was a fake—sort of.”
“I still don’t follow you.”
“Please, Pater,” Helen intervened. “Rod had a tiring trip. This can wait.”
“Oh, surely. I don’t see how a picture can be ‘a sort of a fake.’”
“Well, Dad, this man painted my face when I wasn’t looking. I—” Rod stopped, realizing that it sounded ridiculous.
“Then it was your picture?” “Aunt” Nora insisted.
“I’m not going to say any more.”
Mr. Walker blinked. “Perhaps that is best.”
“Aunt” Nora looked ruffled. “Well, I suppose anything can happen way off in those odd places. From the teaser on Empire Hour I understand some very strange things did happen…not all of them nice.”
She looked as if daring Rod to deny it. Rod said nothing. She went on, “I don’t know what you were thinking of, letting a boy do such things. My father always said that if the Almighty had intended us to use those gate things instead of rocket ships He would have provided His own holes in the sky.”
Helen said sharply, “Mrs. Peascoat, in what way is a rocket ship more natural than a gate?”
“Why, Helen Walker! I’ve been ‘Aunt Nora’ all your life. ‘Mrs. Peascoat’ indeed!”
Helen shrugged. “And my name is Matson, not Walker—as you know.”
Mrs. Walker, distressed and quite innocent, broke in to ask Mrs. Peascoat to stay for dinner. Mr. Walker added, “Yes, Nora, join us Under the Lamp.”
Rod counted to ten. But Mrs. Peascoat said she was sure they wanted to be alone, they had so much to talk about…and his father did not insist.
Rod quieted during ritual, although he stumbled in responses and once left an awkward silence. Dinner was wonderfully good, but he was astonished by the small portions; Terra must be under severe rationing. But everyone seemed happy and so he was.
“I’m sorry about this mix-up,” his father told him. “I suppose it means that you will have to repeat a semester at Patrick Henry.”
“On the contrary, Pater,” Helen answered, “Deacon is sure that Rod can enter Central Tech with advanced standing.”
“Really? They were more strict in my day.”
“All of that group will get special credit. What they learned cannot be learned in classrooms.”
Seeing that his father was inclined to argue Rod changed the subject. “Sis, that reminds me. I gave one of the girls your name, thinking you were still in the Corps—she wants to be appointed cadet, you see. You can still help her, can’t you?”
“I can advise her and perhaps coach her for the exams. Is this important to you, Buddy?”
“Well, yes. And she is number-one officer material. She’s a big girl, even bigger than you are—and she looks a bit like you. She is smart like you, too, around genius, and always good-natured and willing—but strong and fast and incredibly violent when you need it…sudden death in all directions.”
“Roderick.” His father glanced at the lamp.
“Uh, sorry, Dad. I was just describing her.”
“Very well. Son…when did you start picking up your meat with your fingers?”
Rod dropped the tidbit and blushed. “Excuse me.
We didn’t have forks.”
Helen chuckled. “Never mind, Rod. Pater, it’s perfectly natural. Whenever we paid off any of our girls we always put them through reorientation to prepare them for the perils of civil life. And fingers were made before forks.”
“Mmm…no doubt. Speaking of reorientation, there is something we must do, daughter, before this family will be organized again.”
“So?”
“Yes. I mean the transfer of guardianship. Now that I am well, by a miracle, I must reassume my responsibilities.”
Rod’s mind slipped several cogs before it penetrated that Dad was talking about him. Guardian? Oh… Sis was his guardian, wasn’t she? But it didn’t mean anything.
Helen hesitated. “I suppose so, Pater,” she said, her eyes on Rod, “if Buddy wants to.”
“Eh? That is not a factor, daughter. Your husband won’t want the responsibility of supervising a young boy—and it is my obligation…and privilege.”
Helen looked annoyed. Rod said, “I can’t see that it matters, Dad. I’ll be away at college—and after all I am nearly old enough to vote.”
His mother looked startled. “Why, Roddie dear!”
“Yes,” agreed his father. “I’m afraid I can’t regard a gap of three years as negligible.”
“What do you mean, Dad? I’ll be of age in January.”
Mrs. Walker clasped a hand to her mouth. “Jerome we’ve forgotten the time lag again. Oh, my baby boy!”
Mr. Walker looked astonished, muttered something about “—very difficult” and gave attention to his plate. Presently he looked up. “You’ll pardon me, Rod. Nevertheless, until you are of age I must do what I can; I hardly think I want you to live away from home while at college.”
“Sir? Why not?”
“Well—I feel that we have drifted apart, and not all for the best. Take this girl you spoke of in such surprising terms. Am I correct in implying that she was, eh…a close chum?”
Rod felt himself getting warm. “She was my city manager,” he said flatly.
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