“First thing in the mornin’,” Johnston said. He didn’t even glance her way. He simply wrapped up in his robes and turned his face against the wall.
Emily felt the heat rise to her cheeks, and this brought further irritation. Anger at Johnston, but mostly at herself. What did she care what he did? They certainly had nothing to talk about. No topic that would interest her in the least. Still, the man’s rudeness had no bounds at all. He had no concept of social intercourse.
“You are just going to—sleep?” she said. “Right now?”
“I was plannin’ on it,” Johnston said.
“Well you could at least impart information. There are things one needs to know.”
“‘Bout what?”
“About the trip.” Emily waited. Johnston didn’t answer. “What I mean, is how long will it take? I have no idea of the distance to Fort Laramie. As you know, I left under unusual circumstances.”
“Ain’t goin’ to Fort Laramie. Goin’ to Fort Pierre.”
Emily sat up. “Mr. Johnston, I demand to be returned to Fort Laramie. I have no intention of going anywhere else.”
“Fort Pierre’s whar I’m headed,” Johnston said.
“Whatever for?”
“Meetin’ someone.”
“Well who?”
“Like you’re fonda sayin’, Miz Dickinson, that ain’t no concern of yours.”
Emily tried to contain herself. To show Christian restraint. A sudden thought occurred. A woman, that was it. He was going to see a woman. Possibly a wife. The thought defied imagination. What sort of woman would this backwoods ruffian attract?
“Are you married, Mr. Johnston?” Emily asked. “I don’t believe you’ve ever said. But of course you’re quite correct. That is no concern of mine.”
Johnston kept his silence. He had likely gone to sleep and hadn’t heard a word she said. The man had no consideration.
“My wife’s dead,” Johnston said. The tone of his words brought a chill. “Her an’ the chile too. Crows killed ‘em both.”
Emily felt ashamed. “I’m … terribly sorry, Mr. Johnston. Really.”
“Reckon I am too.”
“You are angry with me I know.”
“Ma’am, I ain’t angry at all.”
“Yes now, you are. I do not fault you for it, Mr. Johnston. I have intruded upon your life. I am guilty of certain violations. And you are still upset about the poems.”
“No I ain’t.”
“Yes you are. That is quite clear to me. I want you to know that I have since shown respect for your possessions. I was tempted, yes. We are all weak vessels, and there is nothing at all to do in this place. Still, I did not succumb. Lord Jesus gave me strength.”
“Git some sleep,” Johnston said, and pulled the buffalo robe about his head.
* * *
He awoke in fury and disbelief, clutched the Hawken and came to his feet, saw the dull press of dawn around the door, heard the faint sound of horses outside, hardly there at all, as if they’d come up with him out of sleep.
Great God A’Mighty, they’d played him for a fool, him sleeping like a chile and sure he’d got the only two. Maybe it wasn’t Crow, he decided. Maybe it was Sioux coming back. And what in tarnation did it matter which brand of red coon it might be—they flat had him cold like a rabbit in a log.
The woman came awake, a question on her face. “Jes’ get back in yer corner and keep quiet,” Johnston said harshly. He turned to face the door, made sure the Walker Colt was in his belt. How many, he wondered. The horses were silent now.
“Come an’ git your medicine,” he said softly, “I’m a-waitin’ right here.”
“Inside the cabin,” a man shouted. “This is Lieutenant Joshua Dean. We are here in force, and I must ask you to come out at once unarmed.”
Johnston laughed aloud. He decided he was plain going slack. A man who couldn’t tell shod horses in his sleep was a man who maybe ought to pack it in.
* * *
“I am grateful for what you have done,” Emily said. “I owe you my thanks, Mr. Johnston.”
“Nothin’ to thank me for,” Johnston said. The troopers had stopped fiddling about and seemed ready to depart. He wondered why a soldier took an hour to turn around. The lieutenant had eyed the Indian ponies but didn’t ask where their riders might be. If he recognized Johnston or knew his name he didn’t say.
“We have had our differences, I suppose,” Emily said.
“I reckon so.”
“God has a reason for what he does, Mr. Johnston. I am sure this adventure serves a purpose in His plan.”
Johnston couldn’t figure just what it might be. “You have a safe trip, Miz Dickinson,” he said.
“I will do just that,” Emily said. “I expect Massachusetts will seem dear to me now. I doubt I’ll stray again.”
She walked away through the snow and the lieutenant helped her mount. Johnston watched till they were well out of sight then went inside to get his things.
* * *
As he rode through the flat white world with the slate-dark sky overhead, he thought about the Bitter Root Mountains and the Musselshell River. He thought about the Platte and the Knife and the Bearpaw Range, every peak and river he’d ever crossed clear as glass in his head. He thought about Swan, eight years dead in the spring and it didn’t seem that long at all, and in a way a lot more. Dead all this time and he still saw her face every day.
Before dark he found a spot near the Belle Fourche and staked the horses out safe. One Crow pony had a blaze between its eyes. He favored an Injun horse with good marks. He wondered if Del Gue was still waiting at Fort Pierre. They’d have to get moving out soon to get some hides. He thought again how he’d waited too long to get in the trapping trade, the beaver near gone when he’d come to the mountains and hooked up with old Hatcher. Just bear and mink now and whatever a man could find.
Scooping out a hole in the snow, he snapped a few sticks and stacked them ready for the fire, then walked back and got his leather satchel and dipped his hand inside. Johnston stopped, puzzled at an unfamiliar touch. He squatted on the ground and started pulling things out. There was nothing but an old Army blanket. His paper was all gone.
“Well cuss me fer a Kiowa,” he said aloud. That damn woman had filched the whole lot. He was plain irritated. It wasn’t like he couldn’t spark a fire, but a man fell into easy habits. A little paper saved time, especially if your wood was all wet. Came in handy too if you had to do your business and there wasn’t no good leaves about.
She’d gotten every piece there was. He hadn’t ever counted, but there were likely near a thousand bits and scraps, rhymes he’d thought up and set down, then saved for the fire. This was by God pure aggravation. He grumbled to himself and found his flint. A man sure couldn’t figure what was stewing in a white woman’s head. An Injun wasn’t like that at all.
ROBERT SILVERBERG
Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another
Here’s another powerful story by Robert Silverberg. In this one, Silverberg examines a fascinating new technology that enables a group of scientists to pit two very different kinds of soldiers against each other in a tense and absorbing contest of brains and heart and spirit … one with some very unexpected results.
Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another
ROBERT SILVERBERG
It might be heaven. Certainly it wasn’t Spain and he doubted it could be Peru. He seemed to be floating, suspended midway between nothing and nothing. There was a shimmering golden sky far above him and a misty, turbulent sea of white clouds boiling far below. When he looked down he saw his legs and his feet dangling like child’s toys above an unfathomable abyss, and the sight of it made him want to puke, but there was nothing in him for the puking. He was hollow. He was made of air. Even the old ache in his knee was gone, and so was the everlasting dull burning in the fleshy part of his arm where the Indian’s little arrow had taken him, long ago on the shore of that island of pearls, up by Pa
nama.
It was as if he had been born again, sixty years old but freed of all the harm that his body had experienced and all its myriad accumulated injuries: freed, one might almost say, of his body itself.
“Gonzalo?” he called. “Hernando?”
Blurred dreamy echoes answered him. And then silence.
“Mother of God, am I dead?”
No. No. He had never been able to imagine death. An end to all striving? A place where nothing moved? A great emptiness, a pit without a bottom? Was this place the place of death, then? He had no way of knowing. He needed to ask the holy fathers about this.
“Boy, where are my priests? Boy?”
He looked about for his page. But all he saw was blinding whorls of light coiling off to infinity on all sides. The sight was beautiful but troublesome. It was hard for him to deny that he had died, seeing himself afloat like this in a realm of air and light. Died and gone to heaven. This is heaven, yes, surely, surely. What else could it be?
So it was true, that if you took the Mass and took the Christ faithfully into yourself and served Him well you would be saved from your sins, you would be forgiven, you would be cleansed. He had wondered about that. But he wasn’t ready yet to be dead, all the same. The thought of it was sickening and infuriating. There was so much yet to be done. And he had no memory even of being ill. He searched his body for wounds. No, no wounds. Not anywhere. Strange. Again he looked around. He was alone here. No one to be seen, not his page, nor his brother, nor De Soto, nor the priests, nor anyone. “Fray Marcos! Fray Vicente! Can’t you hear me? Damn you, where are you? Mother of God! Holy Mother, blessed among women! Damn you, Fray Vicente, tell me—tell me—”
His voice sounded all wrong: too thick, too deep, a stranger’s voice. The words fought with his tongue and came from his lips malformed and lame, not the good crisp Spanish of Estremadura but something shameful and odd. What he heard was like the spluttering foppishness of Madrid or even the furry babble that they spoke in Barcelona; why, he might almost be a Portuguese, so coarse and clownish was his way of shaping his speech.
He said carefully and slowly, “I am the Governor and Captain-General of New Castile.”
That came out no better, a laughable noise.
“Adelantado—Alguacil Mayor—Marques de la Conquista—”
The strangeness of his new way of speech made insults of his own titles. It was like being tongue-tied. He felt streams of hot sweat breaking out on his skin from the effort of trying to frame his words properly; but when he put his hand to his forehead to brush the sweat away before it could run into his eyes he seemed dry to the touch, and he was not entirely sure he could feel himself at all.
He took a deep breath. “I am Francisco Pizarro!” he roared, letting the name burst desperately from him like water breaching a rotten dam.
The echo came back, deep, rumbling, mocking. Frantheethco. Peetharro.
That too. Even his own name, idiotically garbled.
“O great God!” he cried. “Saints and angels!”
More garbled noises. Nothing would come out as it should. He had never known the arts of reading or writing; now it seemed that true speech itself was being taken from him. He began to wonder whether he had been right about this being heaven, supernal radiance or no. There was a curse on his tongue; a demon, perhaps, held it pinched in his claws. Was this hell, then? A very beautiful place, but hell nevertheless?
He shrugged. Heaven or hell, it made no difference. He was beginning to grow more calm, beginning to accept and take stock. He knew—had learned, long ago—that there was nothing to gain from raging against that which could not be helped, even less from panic in the face of the unknown. He was here, that was all there was to it—wherever here was—and he must find a place for himself, and not this place, floating here between nothing and nothing. He had been in hells before, small hells, hells on Earth. That barren isle called Gallo, where the sun cooked you in your own skin and there was nothing to eat but crabs that had the taste of dog-dung. And that dismal swamp at the mouth of the Rio Biru, where the rain fell in rivers and the trees reached down to cut you like swords. And the mountains he had crossed with his army, where the snow was so cold that it burned, and the air went into your throat like a dagger at every breath. He had come forth from those, and they had been worse than this. Here there was no pain and no danger; here there was only soothing light and a strange absence of all discomfort. He began to move forward. He was walking on air. Look, look, he thought, I am walking on air! Then he said it out loud. “I am walking on air,” he announced, and laughed at the way the words emerged from him. “Santiago! Walking on air! But why not? I am Pizarro!” He shouted it with all his might, “Pizarro! Pizarro!” and waited for it to come back to him.
Peetharro. Peetharro.
He laughed. He kept on walking.
* * *
Tanner sat hunched forward in the vast sparkling sphere that was the ninth-floor imaging lab, watching the little figure at the distant center of the holotank strut and preen. Lew Richardson, crouching beside him with both hands thrust into the data gloves so that he could feed instructions to the permutation network, seemed almost not to be breathing—seemed to be just one more part of the network, in fact.
But that was Richardson’s way, Tanner thought: total absorption in the task at hand. Tanner envied him that. They were very different sorts of men. Richardson lived for his programming and nothing but his programming. It was his grand passion. Tanner had never quite been able to understand people who were driven by grand passions. Richardson was like some throwback to an earlier age, an age when things had really mattered, an age when you were able to have some faith in the significance of your own endeavors.
“How do you like the armor?” Richardson asked. “The armor’s very fine, I think. We got it from old engravings. It has real flair.”
“Just the thing for tropical climates,” said Tanner. “A nice tin suit with matching helmet.”
He coughed and shifted about irritably in his seat. The demonstration had been going on for half an hour without anything that seemed to be of any importance happening—just the minuscule image of the bearded man in Spanish armor tramping back and forth across the glowing field—and he was beginning to get impatient.
Richardson didn’t seem to notice the harshness in Tanner’s voice or the restlessness of his movements. He went on making small adjustments. He was a small man himself, neat and precise in dress and appearance, with faded blond hair and pale blue eyes and a thin, straight mouth. Tanner felt huge and shambling beside him. In theory Tanner had authority over Richardson’s research projects, but in fact he always had simply permitted Richardson to do as he pleased. This time, though, it might be necessary finally to rein him in a little.
This was the twelfth or thirteenth demonstration that Richardson had subjected him to since he had begun fooling around with this historical-simulation business. The others all had been disasters of one kind or another, and Tanner expected that this one would finish the same way. And basically Tanner was growing uneasy about the project that he once had given his stamp of approval to, so long ago. It was getting harder and harder to go on believing that all this work served any useful purpose. Why had it been allowed to absorb so much of Richardson’s group’s time and so much of the lab’s research budget for so many months? What possible value was it going to have for anybody? What possible use?
It’s just a game, Tanner thought. One more desperate meaningless technological stunt, one more pointless pirouette in a meaningless ballet. The expenditure of vast resources on a display of ingenuity for ingenuity’s sake and nothing else: now there’s decadence for you.
The tiny image in the holotank suddenly began to lose color and definition.
“Uh-oh,” Tanner said. “There it goes. Like all the others.”
But Richardson shook his head. “This time it’s different, Harry.”
“You think?”
“We aren’t lo
sing him. He’s simply moving around in there of his own volition, getting beyond our tracking parameters. Which means that we’ve achieved the high level of autonomy that we were shooting for.”
“Volition, Lew? Autonomy?”
“You know that those are our goals.”
“Yes, I know what our goals are supposed to be,” said Tanner, with some annoyance. “I’m simply not convinced that a loss of focus is a proof that you’ve got volition.”
“Here,” Richardson said. “I’ll cut in the stochastic tracking program. He moves freely, we freely follow him.” Into the computer ear in his lapel he said, “Give me a gain boost, will you?” He made a quick flicking gesture with his left middle finger to indicate the quantitative level.
The little figure in ornate armor and pointed boots grew sharp again. Tanner could see fine details on the armor, the plumed helmet, the tapering shoulder-pieces, the joints at the elbows, the intricate pommel of his sword. He was marching from left to right in a steady hip-rolling way, like a man who was climbing the tallest mountain in the world and didn’t mean to break his stride until he was across the summit. The fact that he was walking in what appeared to be mid-air seemed not to trouble him at all.
“There he is,” Richardson said grandly. “We’ve got him back, all right? The conqueror of Peru, before your very eyes, in the flesh. So to speak.”
Tanner nodded. Pizarro, yes, before his very eyes. And he had to admit that what he saw was impressive and even, somehow, moving. Something about the dogged way with which that small armored figure was moving across the gleaming pearly field of the holotank aroused a kind of sympathy in him. That little man was entirely imaginary, but he didn’t seem to know that, or if he did he wasn’t letting it stop him for a moment: he went plugging on, and on and on, as if he intended actually to get somewhere. Watching that, Tanner was oddly captivated by it, and found himself surprised suddenly to discover that his interest in the entire project was beginning to rekindle.
“Can you make him any bigger?” he asked. “I want to see his face.”
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection Page 62
