Masterpieces

by Orson Scott Card

  For a while Gillette was incapacitated by his emotions. When Jessica died, he had bottled up his grief; he had never really permitted himself the luxury of mourning her. Now, with the added weight of his new convictions, her loss struck him again, harder than ever before. He allowed the machines around him to take complete control of the mission in addition to his well-being. He watched the stars shine in the darkness as the ship fell on through real space. He stroked Benny’s thick gray fur and remembered everything he had so foolishly abandoned.

  In the end it was Benny that pulled Gillette through. Between strokes the man’s hand stopped in mid-air; Gillette experienced a flash of insight, what the oriental philosophers call satori, a moment of diamond-like clarity. He knew intuitively that he had made a mistake that had led him into self-pity. If life had been created on Earth, then all living things were a part of that creation, wherever they might be. Benny, the gray-haired cat, was a part of it, even locked into this tin can between the stars. Gillette himself was a part, wherever he traveled. That creation was just as present in the spacecraft as on Earth itself: it had been foolish for Gillette to think that he ever could separate himself from it—which was just what Jessica had always told him.

  “Benny!” said Gillette, a tear streaking his wrinkled cheek. The cat observed him benevolently. Gillette felt a pleasant warmth overwhelm him as he was released at last from his loneliness. “It was all just a fear of death,” he whispered. “I was just afraid to die. I wouldn’t have believed it! I thought I was beyond all that. It feels good to be free of it.”

  And when he looked out again at the wheeling stars, the galaxy no longer seemed empty and black, but vibrant and thrilling with a creative energy. He knew that what he felt could not be shaken, even if the next world he visited was a lush garden of life—that would not change a thing, because his belief was no longer based on numbers and facts, but on a stronger sense within him.

  IT MADE NO difference at all where Gillette was headed, what stars he would visit: wherever he went, he understood at last, he was going home.