Hard Landing

by Algis Budrys

  Stablits is a rawboned, awkwardly constituted, very large middle-aged man with a jutting jaw, slate-blue eyes, and sparse black hair. He has a tendency to stay on his feet and grip things with his gnarled hands – the back of a chair, by preference – as he speaks to visitors asking questions in his small, orderly office. He stands behind his chair, in constant incomplete motion, as if trying to find exactly the proper location to push the chair into but not sure it’s not already in the right place.

  He chooses his words with the same sort of effect:

  I was never – I never thought I’d get into enforcement work. Law enforcement. I come from Mennonite people, you know, from around Millersburg and Honeyville. Farmers; always been farmers. There’s Stablitses living on their farms yet in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. There, we’re platdeutsch – what they call Pennsylvania Dutch. We don’t believe in engine-powered machinery, would you believe it, and the best job I had before I went on the cops was driving a gasoline tanker truck for Standard Oil of Indiana.

  I was – I don’t know, I was never the kind of person who sits down and says here I am, here’s where I want to be, this is what I’ll do. I’ve moved around a lot. I’m not the kind of person who says I don’t understand it so I won’t look at it, I’ll never do it. A lot of us – there’s just so much land, you know, and there’s always a lot of brothers and sisters – there’s no room on the place to feed us, a lot of us had to get jobs, and in the way it worked out, later, most of your RVs – your travel trailers and pickup truck camper inserts, your motor homes; your recreational vehicles – was Mennonite-built in factories all over this part of the state. The women would sew the curtains and make the cushions, and the men would be the cabinetmakers and body builders. And every once in a while, when the elders weren’t looking, some of the younger men would run a forklift in the lumber shed or actually go out on the road with a unit for a test run. Well, you know, you do that kind of thing when you’re young. Then you get older. I think maybe most of the elders know all about that. They see but they don’t say, because they know everybody gets older.

  I was – well, I was taken with this one girl. And she went to Chicago; her aunt there died, and her uncle needed somebody to cook and clean, he was old. I went and looked for work up there so I could live and call on her. Well, the uncle died and it came out at the wake she was expecting. Then she had – she got the idea to be a barmaid. There are people who will get into that because they can sleep while the kid is in the day-care and work while the kid is sleeping. And there are then people who will like that kind of life, and I have never seen one of those change away from it until they got too crippled up for the action. So I went on the Chicago PD with a fellow I met delivering gasoline in the middle of the night. But that was no work for me, it was in the Summerdale District, maybe you heard about that, and I quit there before that burglar testified and it all blew up. I went to Shoreview, the next town, because they were making a lot of sergeants up there fast and I liked the work, basically. I still like it. It’s good.

  I, well, I was getting along, and this guy went down on the CTA tracks. I have to tell you, I worried about that. But I couldn’t handle – I couldn’t get a handle on it. There was – well, look, it’s not like Sherlock Holmes. I have never seen a case solved yet by adding up all the clues and dividing by logic. You don’t say ‘solved.’ You say ‘cleared.’ You don’t say ‘clue.’ You say ‘lead’ – you get a lead to somebody who saw something, or heard something, and you get that person to tell you what they saw or heard in such a way that it gives you the next lead. And I couldn’t get any. But – but I knew – I know to this day – there’re leads out there somewhere.

  Are you trying to tell me the man fell? Then he fell when there were still people around who had been on the train with him. If they were within a hundred yards, they must have seen something; I mean, there’s a flash, and there’s noise. Where are they? Or else he waited until they were a ways off.

  Do you want me to think he was a jumper? What the dickens did he go all the way up to Borrow Street to jump for? Was he trying to leave a message for somebody lived around there – see what you made me do? Then where is that person?

  Was he pushed? Then that person knows what happened. He remembers. He could tell me. Or he could tell somebody. You don’t forget a thing like that; it lives in you. It makes you move in ways different from the way you’d move if it had never happened. Little ways, maybe, at first. But they add up, and someday you put your feet entirely different from how you would have if you hadn’t pushed him. And that will be a lead. Anybody knows me, knows I can wait a long time for a lead.

  At this point, Chief Stablits shrugs and looks around his office as if discovering it was some other room; his arms rise and fall, his hands slap his thighs.

  But there’s just so long you can keep a file active when your commander says it was just some guy on the tracks, it wasn’t dope or bets or the Mafia; it’s not something the city manager’s going to feel heat, the town’s going to the dogs, do something. And there’s just so much time in a day, and sometimes these things can take years … well, a lot of them never come to anything, really – you can’t be sure, they could just as lief pop open on you, I have to admit that. But you can’t hang your hat on it. And one day there’s a letter from here, from Gouldville, it’s the town council, they say they’re looking for a new chief and I’ve been recommended. Well, there’s the pay, and there’s the being the commander, and, tell you the truth, there’s the getting away from the man on the tracks and all the other open files. So I came here and talked to them, and I got hired.

  Do I wonder how they got my name, in particular? You mean, why would they write to a sergeant in Shoreview, in particular? No, there’s nothing to wonder about that. They had a list made up by this company, and I was on it, that’s all. Yeah, it took me off that case; it took me off a lot of cases.

  He pushes the chair to a new place and shortly thereafter the interview is over.

  Stablits’s name did, indeed, appear on a list prepared by an employment search agency specializing in municipal positions. A similar list was furnished to a number of other communities within reasonable distance of Shoreview. The list was accompanied by brief dossiers on the subject individuals. It was sent to every community with a high-rank opening in its police department, and Stablits’s is the best dossier in every instance. It is also the only one common to all the lists, which contained no other duplications. I have been able to establish this much by examination of records stored by those municipalities.

  The lists were volunteered. The firm had not been contacted, but apparently had some means of compiling a roster of openings. The firm was not one of the leading agencies specializing in this sort of work, and has long since gone out of business without a trace. And therefore there is no way to tie it back to whoever is behind the National Register of Pathological Anomalies.

  – A.B.

  DITLO RAVASHAN’S STATEMENT ON EVENTS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE CRASH

  I am Ditlo Ravashan. On the night in question, I succeeded in making a forced landing in the New Jersey cranberry swamps. With me were Hanig Eikmo, Olir Selmon, Dwuord Arvan and Inava Joro. Joro was severely wounded by the breakup of the engine; the others sustained no wounds.

  After we had disposed of the ship, we set out in different directions and I did not ever see my crewmen again. I carried Joro for a time, but he was getting worse and worse despite everything I could do for him, and shortly he died.

  I buried the body deep, and not even I could find it again. It has never been found. I managed to reach a highway, and in due course was able to hitch a ride to Atlantic City Naval Air Station, where I entered the service of the United States, to which I have been completely loyal from that day to this.

  This is a true and accurate account, and it is complete.

  – Ditlo Ravashan

  A TRUE AND ACCURATE, COMPLETE ACCOUNT BY DITLO RAVASHAN FOR HIS OWN FILES

 
Unlike the others, I had an exact idea of where I was, and a fair outline of what I would do if possible. I waited until the other three had gotten over their first confusion, waiting as usual with perfect patience since it cost me nothing, and after a time the three of them set out in different directions, as they had been taught.

  Once we had parted company, I moved off in the direction of a two-lane highway, carrying Joro for a time. I remember that except for Joro’s incessant moaning the night was still and clear. ‘I don’t – don’t think I can – stand the pain!’ he said at one point. What did he expect that to do – make the pain go away? In truth, I was sick and tired of him since considerably before the crash. I would certainly have left him – would have never picked him up in the first place – but he was needful for my plan, and so I carried him patiently. But after a time I laid him down, for his gasps had grown both more frequent and more shallow, and it was obvious that soon I would be alone.

  Joro lay staring blindly up at me, his hands hugging his belly. ‘What’s going to become of me?’ he asked.

  ‘Chaplain,’ I said, ‘you’re going to die. If I had all of a military hospital here to help, I think you’d still die. And that’s the truth.’

  ‘But I don’t want to—’

  ‘Chaplain, you have the choice between going down a whimpering, puling babe, or dying like a man. That’s your only choice.’

  ‘Oh, Ravashan, why – why did we come all this way?’

  ‘Chaplain, we really don’t have time for this. Be useful. There is a question I hope you can answer.’

  ‘Wh-what do you want to know?’

  ‘What is the meaning of life?’

  ‘Wh—’ He did not answer at first, so I struck him lightly in the face.

  ‘Chaplain Joro.’

  He stopped his moaning, but did not otherwise respond. I struck him a little harder. ‘Chaplain. Answer the question.’

  Joro looked at me, and it seemed some sort of remission were temporarily taking place, for his breathing steadied for a moment. ‘Ravashan,’ Joro said. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Chaplain, there is nothing I or anyone else can do for you. You are dying. Tell me, if you can, the meaning of life.’ I struck him again, but all he did was weep. ‘Ssss …’ His eyes had closed and his head drooped. I struck him again.

  ‘Chaplain – what is the meaning of life? Do you hear me? What is the meaning of life?’ I crouched over him in the darkness, repeating the question tirelessly, but all he said was ‘Hurt—’ and then he lapsed into incoherent gibberish until he died.

  Somehow, the night did seem a little more alien with him gone, for a moment or two. But I was … buttering no parsnips … where I was, and I wanted to be far away from the swamp by the time dawn occurred. So I shouldered my burden – it was a dead weight now, but on the other hand it was quiet – and in due course found the highway, a clear cut through the countryside, with soft sand shoulders. There was no appreciable light, but there were stars, and by the starlight I could tell that I had happened upon country in transition from the bogs and trees to bulrushes. I was not really near the coast, as yet, but I could expect estuaries, and creeks running to meet them.

  The highway was deserted. Well, at that time of the morning it would be, for the most part. But somebody was bound to come along. I set Joro down on the shoulder and waited.

  I remember what I thought. Two things, leading up to a third:

  From time to time, birds went by overhead, on their own errands. Birds as such were not known on my home world, though they were on some others – including this one, obviously. We had, instead, creatures that navigated the air using the displacement of their bodies, distended by digestive gases. These were capable of a slow sort of dirigibility, enough to eat seeds and insects, and at the higher end of the chain, predatory types that ate lesser flying creatures. So they served the same purpose.

  I have heard it said that the lack of birds on my home world can be explained by the fact that birds are actually descended from dinosaurs, or the equivalent. And dinosaurs, or the equivalent, were unknown to my people’s paleontology. The theory is that we are the dinosaurs – that in due course, we shall devolve into birds. So I followed the flight of these Terrestrial birds with some interest.

  I watched the man-made air traffic, too, wondering if they were attempting a search for us. But I noticed nothing concentrating on the swamp. In fact, I noticed nothing out of the ordinary: propeller planes, almost exclusively, and mostly commercial, judging by their height and size. One or two jets went by overhead; those were military, but none of them showed any interest in my particular part of the darkness below them.

  And the upshot of these thoughts, for what it’s worth, was that this was a relatively primitive world, and so I was comparatively safe from anything the natives might do. And at the same time it was a world sufficiently advanced for me to enjoy myself upon it. I was not at all sure that I would have been as happy on my own world, all things considered. There were quite a few Ditlo Ravashans back there. Here there was only one, and I was he, and this planet would support me in the style to which I intended to become accustomed. It was not an unpleasant thought.

  After a while, the lights of a car began to glow in the distance, and I stepped out into the road. I reckoned that a uniformed man, which I was, so soon after the war, in trouble – which I was – would be able to flag down most forms of transportation. I was almost wrong, as it turned out. The car swerved and slid, and almost made it around me, in which case it might have sped up again and gone, but in the end it did stop, and the driver rolled down his window and poked a pale and bewildered face at me. ‘Wha-what do you want?’ he said in a breathless and slightly drunken voice.

  He was a middle-aged man, with his tie undone, who was probably returning home to wife and children after a night partly spent with another woman. There was a smell to him of cheap perfume, and there was lipstick on his left ear. And he could not make up his mind about me, as I suspected he could not make up his mind about many other things as well.

  I said, as he looked at me with his mouth slightly open and his eyes trying for sharper focus: ‘Get me to Atlantic City Naval Air Station as fast as you can. My buddy’s hurt bad.’ I said it just like that, and if my accent wasn’t quite right, my uniform wasn’t, either; it was just a coverall with a couple of badges sewn on. But I didn’t expect either one of these things to give me trouble with this man, and they didn’t.

  He demurred only about the destination. He looked for a moment at Joro, lying huddled on the shoulder, a dim figure in the backscatter from the headlights, and said, ‘But there’s lots of places closer than Atlantic City.’

  Not with military personnel. Not that I knew of. ‘Atlantic City is where we have to go.’

  ‘Well, all right, I was just—’ But I was gone away from his window, opening his offside door, wrestling Joro into the backseat, and settled in beside the driver, before he could complete the thought. And if he was a little amazed at how fast I did all that, he did not speak of it. He craned his neck to look at Joro again, and I said, ‘Let’s go.’

  He nodded uncertainly, but put the car in gear, and began climbing up the ladder of speeds until he had the car up to highway velocity. ‘You got it,’ he said, having decided that, really, it was all his idea.

  It was too much to hope, of course, that the Earthman would just drive and do his job. He was a man who thought of himself as being different from other men because he had a woman on the side, and he was a man who, underneath that, realized that he was overweight and over age and not especially lovely to look at, so that some small but vital part of him knew that his woman on the side was either desperate or playing him for a fool, or perhaps both, and therefore he actually got no pleasure from his pleasure. So every opportunity to open up his life, to give it meaning and texture, was, necessarily, exploited. So about ten minutes into it, he began talking. ‘Can’t get much more than seventy out of this bucket without goin’ al
l over the road,’ and ‘Boy! Have I got a story to tell my wife!’ and similar expressions. Well, Joro wasn’t in any kind of a rush, actually. As for the Earthman’s wife, whatever he told her wasn’t going to be believed. ‘Your buddy doesn’t look too good, what I could see of him. What kind of outfit you in?’ was closer to the mark.

  ‘Brazilian Naval Air Force,’ I said. ‘We’re allies of yours. Night flying exercise. Couple of things went wrong.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a pause. ‘Hadn’t you better check on your buddy?’

  ‘My buddy’s as all right as he needs to be.’

  ‘Oh.’ More thought. ‘What about your plane?’

  ‘I know where it is. The naval station will send out a recovery vehicle, have it back at the air station by dawn.’

  ‘Oh.’ I could see him pondering that. The next thing out of his mouth might be You know, there’s something fishy about this story, so I said: ‘Sooner we get to the authorities, the better,’ and he remembered that we were, after all, headed for the authorities. Which meant, I suppose, that no matter how fishy the story, it had the official sanction of the United States government; which meant, since he was too clever to be taken in by it but it was the story the government wanted told, that he could tell the story without feeling like a fool, and with the feeling he was on the inside of something. It never occurred to him, I reckon, that somebody would head to the authorities who didn’t belong to the authorities.

  We pulled up, finally, at the main gate of the naval air station. It was before you actually got to Atlantic City, on the highway that ran through the cattails, and though it was off to one side it was easy enough to direct him to it … it was, really, the only thing that looked like a naval station, and one of the few things that were lit up at night.