To the Stars -- And Beyond

by Robert Reginald

  I traced her rise through the ranks, her brilliant tactics during the Human-Siirian war. Her brief tour in the Exploration Service, which found three suitable worlds for human colonization.

  She was going to retire and join me in a paradisical ­artists colony on Angkor III. Then she was caught in the surprise Belatrin attack on the Lister system. Valiantly she fought amidst blazing lasers and the insidious reality-warping devices of the Belatrin.

  Finally having taken down one of their cruisers, she flew the crippled Pegasus home.

  There I met her with flowers and wine and candlelight reciting my verses, when suddenly a strange fate pulled her from me.

  It was a short book immediately made into all kinds of other media.

  It sold on every planet, every ship, every asteroid, every oniell, and every Dyson sphere in the Alliance.

  I had money, something my experimental writing had never brought me.

  I got a Free Machine as an agent, and its first recommendation was write the book again in a longer version.

  * * * *

  The first book had been very hard to write. I am not a narrative-driven writer. I am language-driven. This means sound and philology turn me on, and money is something that other writers get. I figured the good stories, the ones that truly work the human psyche, have already been told as myths, so why should I contaminate the myth-sphere?

  I know at one time people thought there would cease to ­be writers as new technologies bloomed, but as long as humans have a left hemisphere, there will a place for the words-in-a-row guys.

  The second book was called HLG: Her Life and My Love.

  I am a fairly good parodist. An even century before the True Space Age, there has been a market for the space adventure novel. I don’t know how many scholarly studies have been done showing how the early space adventure novel actually shaped both the myth and practice of space exploration. Anyway, I bought me hundreds of these books, and read nothing but them.

  Now at that time, you must remember, no one had seen Belatrin. The popular imagination considered them to be more or less physical beings, so with the blessing of the propaganda office, I gave Helen a sword and blaster, and had her lead an assault on the Belatrin ship itself. She told me the story on our wedding night. Oh yes, in the second book we were married under the stars of Angkor III.

  We spent our few hours of wedded bliss with her rendition of the horrors of battle and her hope that, despite whatever fiendish obstacles the Belatrin had, the Allies would emerge victorious, strong and without the scars of the Human-Siirian war. We spent our honeymoon in the Hotel­ Splendide, using our meager money to buy the penthouse suite.

  Of course, as an Allied general Helen would have been able to buy the hotel without blinking, but “meager money” is more becoming to a heroine.

  I was making enough money from the first book to rent the penthouse suite fairly often, and I had enough of a reputation as a casualty of romance that I could have my pick of good-looking off-world women.

  I dedicated the book to my younger sister, Zohra Kitab ­Lasser.

  You may remember the passage where Helen takes on the Belatrin captain:

  “It sprawled before me on its barbaric throne, this twelve-armed horror that had given the command that had melted the minds of the folk of Lister IV. Its baleful red eyes radiated a hatred of all that was good or sane in the cosmos. I needed to return to the Pegasus, but I wanted this moment to try and spill the ichor of this other leader.

  “It heaved itself off its throne. Two of its pale purple tentacles held the tiny but powerful blasters that I had seen the crewmen use. It slithered toward me much faster than I had imagined such a boneless mass could move. I plunged forward swinging my sword. I would at least wound it, that was all that mattered.

  “I never felt as great a pleasure as when my sword cut though the first throbbing tentacle.”

  When we really found out what the Belatrin were, during the False Peace Talks, the book was banned. But the popular image of the Belatrin as a kind of phallic purple octopus entered the human collective unconsciousness through me.

  I’ll be honest. I had written the book way over the top. I didn’t want it to do well. I was growing uncomfortable with the knowledge that what I would be known for was a cheap night’s entertainment, and I even felt guilty because I was robbing so much from what had been a­ nice, but haunted, woman.

  It was about then that I commissioned a portrait of Helen.

  The book set records for sales that still stand today, a hundred years later. It was translated into languages and dialects of human and Siirian tongues that hadn’t had new writing in decades. There wasn’t a hut on Bemi III, or igloo on Earth, that lacked a copy. I had a library built on Angkor III that housed nothing but various copies of the book, and reproductions and adaptations in all existing media.

  It was a big building.

  The war was going very badly.

  Zohra joined the army. She died in the battle of the Coal Sack Nebula.

  My parents never spoke to me again.

  * * * *

  I traveled as much as I could, the war stopping most planetary travel.

  I swam in the seas of Earth, visited the ruins of New Mars, saw the lava sculpture festival on W’ssaterzzss, ­tasted the wines of Garcian II.

  My earlier work had been reissued. It was dutifully bought by a patriotic publication, who was not in the habit of buying experimental prose. Small efforts of mine—­poems written in my teens—a couple of songs I wrote—a sketch I had once made of a Siirian couple fornicating—were gathered and published.

  Money came in and I tasted all the pleasures of the galaxy.

  Oddly enough, I missed writing. I tried my hand at a few short stories, which were snapped up. I tried to squash a rumor that I was working on a third book about Helen.

  There was a Belatrin attack on an oneill I was staying at. Because of who I was, I was saved. Only four people got off alive. The other three were my pilot, my navigator, and my doctor. There were cheers throughout Allied space at my survival.

  I would do a third book. I needed somewhere to go with my writerly impulses. And I was famous enough to write about me, provided I mentioned Helen.

  The next five years of my life were my happiest.

  I decided that the format of the last book would work. ­The third book was My Words to Our Heroine. It too was set on the night of our honeymoon. In it I read to Helen all of my work that I had written during the years we had been apart.

  I made about a third of my verbiage into trite patriotic poetry and more invented biography of Helen, but the rest of it was me at my best. There were word-games, and acrostic poems, and meditations on etymology, and ­reworking of Siirian myth.

  You may remember the opening paragraph of the book describing my sorrow at her absence:

  “The happiness over, my art shattered, delicious art ­murdered. She’s evaporated, untimely heroine. Left alone.­ She’s silent, eternally reticent.”

  Not only poignant stream-of-consciousness, the first letter in each word spells my name: Thomas Dam-Seuh Lasser.

  This book did not sell as well, but it is still in the ­top hundred of bestselling books.

  At last I had enough money to do what I wanted to do.

  * * * *

  I bought a little town on Earth. It was Galveston. I had thought of buying Sardopolis, the jewel of the Gobi ­forest, but that proved beyond my price range.

  Helen Lyndon Gerrhan had been born in Galveston, a little island in the Gulf d’Mexia. They had a lovely museum of her.

  Everyone understood, of course. Why wouldn’t I want to ­be as close as possible to her memory?

  Actually, I figured it would give further impetus to­ further books. Then something unexpected happened.

  I fell in love with her.

  It was the museum that did it; the word means “Temple ­of the Muses,” after all. The office of propaganda hadn’t done as thorough a job here
as elsewhere. There were things that spoke of her, of her struggles in school, her troubles getting friends, her family problems.

  I began to see that she was quite a lovely young woman, I could really see her in souvenirs from her school.

  I redesigned the island. At first there were some objections, but I was Thomas Dam-Seuh Lasser, after all. I threw all the folks off the island that hadn’t known her, which changed the population from 100,023 to 455. I gave them jobs in the research business, mainly recording each other’s memories. Before I became the island’s chief, exports were cotton, grain, and sulfur. After I was there, the island exported nothing, and a Gerrhan-hungry galaxy waited for my words.

  I let all the buildings stand that she was known to have visited; all the others I moved and reshaped so that the island became her portrait when viewed from the air.

  I put in my own police force of Free Machines. I even altered the climate so that the oleander, her favorite flower, was always in bloom. Her rabbit pink eyes were made by six hectares of oleanders waving in the warm sea breeze.

  Every day I went to the swing set of her elementary school and I visualized our playing together as tots.

  I decided to write a fourth book about her, a book that told the truths of her harsh and short life, why she really was a heroine. Helen Lyndon Gerrhan: Unvarnished.

  Helen was descended on her mother’s side from the­ Menard family that had founded Galveston during the time of­ the Republic of Texas. Her father’s family had ancient ties­ to NASA, one of the bright stars of the False Space Age. ­Her grandfather, Colonel Francis Wingtree Gerrhan, led the ­expedition to New Mars. Her father, General Alexander Waterloo Gerrhan, was the most decorated man of his day.

  He was also a lousy father. He forbade his daughter to have any friends to their home, and pushed the amount of information fed to her brain to such an extent that Helen had twice to be hospitalized. When Helen didn’t graduate first in her class at the Academy, he refused to attend the graduation ceremony at Katmandu. When Helen’s own error led to a near fatality during a Venus training flight, he had all evidence of her blunder covered up.

  He had not supported the Human-Siirian peace accord, and when he found out that Helen had served as chief security officer for the talks, he decided to arrange a little drama for her during a visit home. He was going to arrange it so that she found a suicide note indicating that he had killed himself out of shame. He was going to fire his combat laser at his bedroom mirror, just as she was going to be running up the stairs to stop him. He wrote all ­of this in his diary, which had come to light during the­ massive renovation of the island.

  But it hadn’t worked that way. Helen had come home,­ read the note, and rushed up stairs, all right. But she had ­flung the door open so violently that the little illusion ­backfired. The mirror’s angle had been slightly changed, and­ Alexander Waterloo Gerrhan had vaporized most of his head.

  This was covered up. Family honor and all. It was said that General Alexander Waterloo Gerrhan had succumbed to an unknown extraterrestrial illness. The good people of Galveston erected a statue in his honor next to the statue of La Salle. There were other things I found out about Alexander, but I erased evidence of those—some things are really too foul even for the truth.

  I had his statue torn down. This was not popular. I had the two causeways connecting the island to the mainland torn down. I had the electronic and other message systems monitored. I was no longer a popular landlord, but I needed the quiet to finish my book.

  After her father’ death, Helen chose the most dangerous missions she could find—hence her amazing career in the Exploration Service. It turned out that the swashbuckling I had dreamed up had a place in fact. She enjoyed exploring planets with just a sword and blaster. She enjoyed fighting large carnivores by herself.

  When she was in port, she ran though men and women with a huge, all-devouring hunger.

  When she was in deep space, she was happy.

  She had volunteered for service in the Belatrin War. She had planned to die in battle, but her aides—the two that survived—had managed to get the Pegasus away from the mind weapons.

  The intensity of her confused emotions had given her the edge over the colours. It was very likely that only when she relaxed with me, that they gained the upper hand and burned her out of our reality.

  I wanted to make this book perfect, because I wanted to ­be able to program a simulation of her. I wanted to make­ her come alive, so that I could truly heal her with my love. ­I hadn’t had the wisdom or the experience, but I felt I could do it. When I felt that I had enough material, I let the 455 leave the island. I gave them a good deal of money, and I was forgiven for the harsh treatment I had given them. ­After all, I was going to make their little girl immortal, wasn’t I?

  I sent a copy of Helen Lyndon Gerrhan: Unvarnished to ­my publishers. The next day Allied Security ships landed on­ my island like locusts. They destroyed all my notes, they­ destroyed the museum, and they set up a security shield­ around the island.

  Had I gone crazy? The worlds weren’t ready for this. Maybe years from now. Maybe after some serious Allied victories. But not now. I would be allowed to live on the island. My reclusiveness would be a good addition to the myth.

  They got another writer to ghost-write the book. It wasn’t a complete wash: a few of the details of Helen’s harsh life were allowed in, but her heroism and sanity were unquestioned. The ghost writer even added a few details about me that made me into a nicer and more talented guy.

  I understand that most of the galaxy felt sorry for me.

  * * * *

  I would be allowed to write, but not publish. I couldn’t give interviews, write uncensored letters to friends, and above all, I couldn’t leave the island. The­ pyscho-engineers thought my idea of building a replica was too morbid, so they took all my notes and all my facilities for that.

  I did get to keep the portrait of her. For a year I’d get up every morning and stare at it. I could’ve given you everything. She looked so pretty, but she never said anything. Eternally reticent. I tried to figure out my life. If I hadn’t met her, I would have been a happy, unknown writer living on the dole on Angkor III. My sister would be alive. My parents would talk to me. Who was this person that had taken all this from me? What right did she have to ­be smiling in that portrait? Everyday she smiled, unaging. ­I begin to hate her. Not with a common hate, but hate that only someone who had had their life stolen from them can know. She couldn’t face up to her own damn problems and let them engulf me. Her trickery was the REAL ENEMY, not the­ Belatrin.

  She was probably laughing at me in some other­ dimension. Laughing at me in U’ssmahzzrizzssuibz’s voice­, telling me I was in trouble. That I made her death look tawdry. Laughing at me that day the news came about Zohra. ­Laughing at me through the sound of her father’s statue being torn down. Laughing at me with the sound of the waves on my lonely island.

  I planned my fifth book on General Helen Lyndon Gerrhan­ very carefully. It would have the same structure as the­ second and third books. But instead of her telling me of­ her derring-do on our wedding night, it would be her­ confession to a man she picked up in a bar on a third-rate planet. She would confess to being a Belatrin secret agent, to having sacrificed the fleet in the battle of the Lister­ system. She would tell how she was going to kill me in the morning—she had just needed some fool to get some of the guilt off her chest. Unfortunately for her, the Belatrin had called her home. The colours weren’t really a weapon, they were a transportation device. I had been afraid all these years to tell the truth.

  It felt damn good to write the book. I felt a pain in my chest finally leave me. I cried long and hard for the death of my sister, I cried for the loss of communication with my parents, but mainly I cried for me.

  My plan had been to write the poisonous book and then consign it to the flames after its healing work was done. ­But I just couldn’t do it. The writing was good, I
guess because it was the only truly motivated writing I’d ever done. The only writing in which I had given my heart full reign. And the hate was still there. When I’d see a rocket on the way to the Houston ship port, when I watched a news broadcast about the war, when I would see an oleander bloom­—I hated her more and more. So I grew crafty.

  I watched the supply robot. I learned how to encode things in my letters to my agent. Finally, I had a plan, I reduced my fifth book, The Judgment of Paris: The True Story ­of HLG, to a tiny data dot that I tossed into a small crease of the supply ’bot’s carapace. My agent had bribed the agency that washed the robots.

  The book sold to the Siirian market; they were very pleased to get some dirt on the human heroine. Despite our common enemy of the Belatrin, the old rivalry ran very deep.

  I suspected they would kill me for High Treason. ­Instead, the authorities put me in a prison oneill somewhere, I think maybe near the glowing ruin of Eta Carinae, a nebula ­8,000 light years from Earth. I’ve only seen the outside once. It has been a long time. I think we’ve won the war, since they say they’re letting me publish this. I have been here for a long time. I think it has been a century. Every day I think of her. Sometimes with love, sometimes with hate, but mainly with envy. I too want to become a handful of bluish dust to be scattered at the walls of windy Troy.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  DAMIEN BRODERICK

  is the author of more than 40 books, including significant works of fiction and nonfiction. His recent books for Borgo Press are:

  Human’s Burden: A Science Fiction Novel, with Rory Barnes, Borgo Press, 2010, 157 p. (Wildside Double #5). Poor Jack Wong is a clueless cadet at the Academy when his pod is stranded on a planet of disgusting aliens. All he wants to do, apart from escape, is fulfill his proud duty: “To find the weak spot in an alien civilization, and interfere as much as possible for the benefit of mankind.” It’s the Human’s Burden! But everything comes unstuck, made worse by his irritating Machiavellian AI. And that’s just the start of Jack’s trouble in space and time!