Dark Benediction

by Walter M. Miller

  The spearhead groups pushed relentlessly across the gleaming blackness, and each generation grew more restless than the one before it. The restless moved ahead. The contented remained at home. Each exodus was a separation, and a selection of the malcontent.

  The biped came to believe his priests. He believed the legend of the lost home. He believed that Bion had touched him with the hunger curse. How else could they explain the pressing cry of the heart? How could they interpret the clamor of the young, the tears—except as a Divine Thirst.

  The star-craze. The endless search.

  There was a green planet beyond the heartland, and it was ripe for bursting its human star-seed. There was a launching field, and a ship, and teeming crowd, and a fence with guards to keep the others out. A man and a girl stood at the fence, and it was nearly dawn.

  He touched her arm and gazed at the shadows on the launching site.

  "We won't find it, Marka," he said quietly. "We'll never find it."

  "You believe the legend, Teris?" she whispered.

  "The Planet of Heaven? It's up there. But we can never find it."

  "Then why must you look?"

  "We are damned. Marka."

  There was a silence, then she breathed, "It can be found. The Lord Bion promised—"

  "Where is that written, Marka?" he scoffed coldly. "In a woman's heart."

  Teris laughed loudly. "What does the heart-writing say?"

  She turned to stare at the dark shadow of the ship against the graying sky. "It says: 'When Man is content —without his lost paradise—when he reconciles. himself —Bich will forgive, and show us the road home.' "

  He waved his hand fiercely at the fading stars in the west. "Ours, Marka. They're ours! We took them."

  "Do you want them?"

  He stiffened angrily and glared at the shadow of her face. "You ... you make me sick. You're a hanghacker."

  "No!" She shook her head wildly. "No!" She caught at his arm as he retreated a step. "I wish I could go! I want to go, do you hear?"

  "I hear," he snapped. "But you can't, so there's no use talking about it. You're not well, Marka. The others wouldn't let you aboard." He backed away another step.

  "I love you," she said frantically.

  He turned and stumbled away toward the sky-chariot. "I love you!"

  He began to trot, then burst into a wild sprint. Afraid, she thought in triumph. Afraid of turning back. Of loving her too much.

  "You'll never find it!" she screamed after him. "You can't find it up there! It's here—right here!"

  But he was lost in the crowd that milled about the ship. The ship had opened its hatches. The ship was devouring the people, two at a time. The ship devoured Teris and the space crew. Then it closed its mouth and belched flame from its rockets.

  She gasped and slumped against a fencepost. She hung there sobbing until a guard drove her away.

  A rocket bellowed the space song. The girl tore off her wedding bracelet and flung it in the gutter. Then she went home to fix breakfast for the children.

  I am the Weaver of space. T am a Merchant of new fabrics in flux patterns for five-space continua. I serve the biped who built me, though his heart he steeped in hell.

  Once in space, a man looked at me and murmured softly, "You are the cross on which we crucify ourselves."

  But the big hunger pushed him on—on toward the ends of space. And he encountered worlds where his ancestors had lived, and where his peaceful cousins still dwelt in symbiosis with their neighbors. Some of the worlds were civilized, some barbaric, and some were archaeological graveyards. My nomads, they wore haunted faces as they re-explored the fringes of the galaxy where Man had walked before, leaving his footprints and his peace-seeking children. The galaxy was filled.

  Where could he go now?

  I have seen the frantic despair in their faces when, upon landing, natives appeared and greeted them politely, or tried to kill them, or worshiped them, or just ran away to hide. The nomads lurked near their ships. A planet with teeming cities was no place for a wanderer. They watched the multifaceted civilizations with bitter, lonely eyes.

  Where were new planets?

  Across the great emptiness to the Andromeda galaxy? Too far for the ships to go. Out to the Magellanic clouds? Already visited.

  Where then?

  He groped blindly, this biped. He had forgottgn the trail by which his ancestors had come, and he kept re-crossing it, finding it winding everywhere. He could only plunge aimlessly on, and when he reached the last limit of his fuel—land. If the natives could not provide the 'fuel, he would have to stay, and try to pass another cycle of starward growth on the already inhabited world. But a cycle was seldom completed. The nomads intermarried with the local people; the children, the hybrid children, were less steeped in hunger than their fathers. Sometimes they built ships for economic purposes, for trade and commerce—but never for the hysterical starward sweep. They heard no music from the North End of Space, no Lorelei call from the void. The craving was slowly dying.

  They came to a planet. The natives called it "Earth." They departed again in cold fright, and a space commander blew out his brains to banish the memory. Then they found another planet that called itself "Earth"—and another and another. They smiled again, knowing that they would never know which was the true home of Man.

  They sensed the nearness of the end.

  They no longer sang the old songs of a forgotten paradise. And there were no priests among them. They looked back at the Milky Way, and it had been their royal road. They looked ahead, where only scattered stars separated them from the intergalactic wasteland—an ocean of emptiness and death. They could not consign themselves to its ultimate embrace. They had fought too long, labored too hard to surrender willingly to extinction.

  But the cup of their life was broken.

  And to the land's last limit they came.

  They found a planet with a single moon, with green forests, with thin clouds draping her gold and blue body in the sunlight. The breath of the snowking was white on her ice caps, and her seas were placid green. They landed. They smiled when the natives called the planet "Earth." Lots of planets claimed the distinction of being Man's birthplace.

  Among the natives there was a dumpy little professor—still human, though slightly evolved. On the night following the nomad's landing, he sat huddled in an easy-chair, staring at the gaunt nomadic giant whose bald head nearly touched the ceiling of the professor's library. The professor slowly shook his head and sighed.

  "I can't understand you people."

  "Nor I you," rumbled the nomad.

  "Here is Earth—yet you won't believe it!"

  The giant snorted contemptuously. "Who cares? Is this crumb in space the fulfillment of a dream?"

  "You dreamed of a lost Earth paradise."

  "So we thought. But who knows the real longing of a dream? Where is its end? Its goal?"

  "We found ours here on Earth."

  The giant made a wry mouth. "You've found nothing but your own smug existence. You're a snake swallowing its tail."

  "Are you sure you're not the same?" purred the scholar. The giant put his fists on his hips and glowered at him. The professor whitened.

  "That's untrue," boomed the giant. "We've found nothing. And we're through. At least we went searching. Now we're finished."

  "Not you. Its the job that's finished. You can live here. And he proud of a job well done."

  The giant frowned. "Job? What job?"

  "Why, fencing in the stars. Populating the galaxy." The big man stared at him in horrified amazement. "Well," the scholar insisted, "you did it, you know. Who populates the galaxy now?"

  "People like you."

  The impact of the scaring words brought a sick gasp from the small professor. He was a long moment in realizing their full significance. He wilted. He sank lower in the chair.

  The nomad's laughter suddenly rocked the room. He turned away from his victim and helped himself
to a tumbler of liqueur. He downed it at a gulp and grinned at the professor. He tucked the professor's liqueur under his arm, waved a jaunty farewell, and lumbered out into the night.

  "My decanter," protested the professor in a whisper.

  He went to bed and lay whimpering slightly in drowsiness. He was afraid of the tomorrows that lay ahead.

  The nomads settled on the planet for lack of fuel. They complained of the climate and steadfastly refused to believe that it was Earth. They were a troublesome, boisterous lot, and frequently needed psychoanalysis for their various crimes. A provisional government was set up to deal with the problem. The natives had forgotten about governments, and they called it a "welfare commission."

  The nomads who were single kidnapped native wives. Sometimes they kidnapped several, being a prolific lot. They begot many children, and a third-generation hybrid became the first dictator of a northern continent.

  I am rusting in the rain. I shall never serve my priest here on Earth again. Nuclear fuels are scarce. They are needed for the atomic warheads now zipping back and forth across the North Pole. A poet—one of the hybrids—has written immortal lines deploring war; and the lines were inscribed on the post-humour medal they gave his widow.

  Three dumpy idealists built a spaceship, but they were caught and hung for treason. The eight-foot lawyer who defended them was also hung.

  The world wears a long face; and the stars twinkle invitingly. But few men look upward now. Things are probably just as bad on the next inhabited planet.

  I am the spider who walked around space. I, Harpist for a pale proud Master, have seen the big hunger, have tasted its red glow reflected in my circuits. Still I cannot understand.

  But I feel there are some who understand. I have seen the pride in their faces. They walk like kings.

  Conditionally Human

  HE KNEW there was no use hanging around after breakfast, but he could not bear leaving her like this. He put on his coat in the kitchen, stood uncertainly in the doorway, and twisted his hat in his hands. His wife still sat at the table, fingered the handle of an empty cup, stared fixedly out the window at the kennels behind the house, and pointedly ignored his small coughings and scrapings. He watched the set of her jaw for a moment, then cleared his throat.

  "Anne?"

  "What?"

  "I can't stand seeing you like this."

  "Then go away."

  "Can't I do anything—?"

  "I told you what to do."

  Her voice was a monotone, full of hurt. He could neither endure the hurt nor remove it. He gingerly crossed the room to stand behind her, hoping she'd look up at him and let her face go soft, maybe even cry a little. But she kept gazing at the window in accusing silence. He chuckled suddenly and touched her silk-clad shoulder. The shoulder shivered away. Her dark hair quivered as she shuddered, and her arms were suddenly locked tightly about her breasts as if she were cold. He pulled his hand back, and his big pliant face went slack. He gulped forlornly.

  "Honeymoon's over, huh?"

  "Ha!"

  He backed a step away, paused again. "Hey, Baby, you knew before you married me," he reminded her gently.

  "I did not."

  "You knew I was a District Inspector for the F.B.A. You knew I had charge of a pound."

  "I didn't know you killed them!" she snapped, whirling.

  "I don't have to kill many," he offered.

  "That's like saying you don't kill them very dead."

  "Look, honey, they're only animals."

  "Intelligent animals!"

  "Intelligent as a human imbecile, maybe."

  "A baby is an imbecile. Would you kill a baby?— Of course you would! You do! That's what they are: babies. I hate you." He withered, groped desperately for a new approach, tried a semantic tack. "Look, 'intelligence' is a word applicable only to humans. It's the name of a human function, and . . . "

  "And that makes them human!" she finished. "Murderer!"

  "Baby—!"

  "Don't call me baby! Call them baby!"

  He made a miserable noise in his throat, backed a few steps toward the door, and beat down his better judgment to speak again: "Anne, honey, look! Think of the good things about the job. Sure—everything has its ugly angles. But just think: we get this house rent-free; I've got my own district with no local bosses to hound me; I make my own hours; you'll meet lots of people that stop in at the pound. It's a fine job, honey!"

  Her face was a mask again. She sipped her coffee and seemed to be listening. He blundered hopefully on.

  "And what can I do about it? I can't help my aptitudes. Placement Division checked them, sent me to Bio-Authority. Period. Okay, so I don't have to work where they send me. I could ignore the aptitudes and pick common labor, but that's all the law allows, and common laborers don't have families. So I go where they need my aptitudes."

  "You've got aptitudes for killing kids?" she asked sweetly. He groaned, clenched his eyes closed, shook his head fiercely as if to clear it of a sudden ache. His voice went desperately patient. "They assigned me to the job because I like babies. And because I have a degree in biology and an aptitude for dealing with people. Understand? Destroying unclaimed units is the smallest part of it. Honey, before the evolvotron, before anybody ever heard of Anthropos Incorporated, people used to elect animal catchers. Dogcatchers, they called them. Didn't have mutant dogs, of course. But just think of it that way—I'm a dog-catcher."

  Ice-green eyes turned slowly to meet his gaze. Her face was delicately cut from cold marble. One corner of her mouth twitched contempt at him. Her head turned casually away again to stare out the window toward the kennels again.

  He backed to the door, plucked nervously at a splinter on the woodwork, watched her hopefully for a moment.

  "Well, gotta go. Work to do."

  She looked at him again as if he were a specimen. "Do you need to be kissed?"

  He ripped the splinter loose, gulped, "See you tonight," and stumbled toward the front of the house. The honeymoon indeed was done for District Inspector Norris of the Federal Biological Authority.

  Anne heard his footsteps on the porch, heard the sudden grumble of the kennel-truck's turbines, choked on a sob and darted for the door, but the truck had backed into the street, lurched suddenly away with angry acceleration toward the highway that lay to the east. She stood blinking into the red morning sunlight, shoulders slumped. Things were wrong with the world, she decided.

  A bell rang somewhere, rang again. She started slightly, shook herself, went to answer the telephone. A carefully enunciated voice that sounded chubby and professional called for Inspector Norris. She told it disconsolately that he was gone.

  "Gone? Oh, you mean to work. Heh heh. Can this be the new Mrs. Norris?" The voice was too hearty and greasy, she thought, muttered affirmatively.

  "Ah, yes. Norris spoke of you, my dear. This is Doctor Georges. I have a very urgent problem to discuss with your husband. But perhaps I can talk to you."

  "You can probably get him on the highway. There's a phone in the truck." What sort of urgent problems could doctors discuss with dogcatchers, she wondered.

  "Afraid not, my dear. The inspector doesn't switch on his phone until office hours. I know him well, you see."

  "Can't you wait?"

  "It's really an emergency, Mrs. Norris. I need an animal from the pound—a Chimp-K-48-3, preferably a five year old."

  "I know nothing about my husband's business," she said stiffly. "You'll have to talk to him."

  "Now see here, Mrs. Norris, this is an emergency, and I have to have ...”

  "What would you do if I hadn't answered the phone?" she interrupted.

  "Why I—I would have—"

  "Then do it," she snapped, dropped the phone in its cradle, marched angrily away. The phone began ringing again. She paused to glance back at it with a twinge of guilt. Emergency, the fat voice had said. But what sort of emergency would involve a chimp K-48, and what would Georges do with t
he animal? Butchery, she suspected, was somehow implied. She let the phone ring. If Norris ever, ever, ever asked her to share his work in any way, she'd leave him, she told herself.

  The truck whirred slowly along the suburban street that wound among nestled groups of pastel plasticoid cottages set approximately two to an acre on the lightly wooded land. With its population legally fixed at three hundred million, most of the country had become one gigantic suburb, dotted with community centers and lined with narrow belts of industrial development. There was no open country now, nor had there been since the days of his grandparents. There was nowhere that one could feel alone.

  He approached an intersection. A small animal sat on the curb, wrapped in its own bushy tail. The crown of its oversized head was bald, but its body was covered with blue-gray fur. A pink tongue licked daintily at small forepaws equipped with prehensile thumbs. It eyed the truck morosely as Norris drew to a halt and smiled down out of the window at it.

  "Hi, kitten," he called. "What's your name?"

  The Cat-Q-5 stared at him indifferently for a moment, uttered a stuttering high-pitched wail, then cried: "Kitty Rorry."

  "Kitty Rorry. That's a nice name. Where do you live, Rorry?"

  The Cat-Q-5 ignored him.

  "Whose child are you, Rorry? Can you tell me that?"

  Rorry regarded him disgustedly. Norris glanced quickly around. There were no houses near the intersection, and he feared that the animal might be lost. It blinked at him, sleepily bored, then resumed its paw-bath. He repeated the questions.

  "Mama kiyi, kiyi Mama," it finally reported.

  "That's right, Mama's kitty. But where's Mama? Do you suppose she ran away?"

  The Cat-Q-5 looked startled. It stuttered for a moment. Its fur crept slowly erect. It glanced both ways along the street, shot suddenly away at a fast scamper along the sidewalk. Norris followed it in the truck for two blocks, where it darted onto a porch and began wailing through the screen: "Mama no run ray! Mama no run ray!"