Beyond the Barriers of Space and Time

by Judith Merril (ed. )

  She had grown like a strange moth in the chrysalis of his mind, born of a slow metamorphosis that began with a memory image of Ruth. The metamorphosis had changed a pleasant, comfortable, homey sort of a girl into a sleek, intense, moody creature of tender passion, whom he called “La” or “La Femme” because he knew she was no longer Ruth. But who was this wraith who came to him across the frozen tundra of his psyche?

  Don’t kid yourself, fly-boy, it’s happened to other guys. Idealization, they call it. You revise Ruth because you’re not quite satisfied with the way she is. You substitute the thing you want for the thing that’s true, and if you didn’t have a pocketful of pictures for reference, you’d think your La was Ruth, you stupid ape. Guys have thought it before, and it’s a helluva shock, they say, to bump buck teeth with the girl you remembered as a delectable siren instead of a toothy frump. La is an idealized Ruth, and a part of you damn well knows it.

  But he couldn’t sell himself. It hurt. There was a La somewhere, and he had to believe in her. He groped for ways to support the belief: telepathy—or a chance meeting that lingered in unconscious memory without details of time and place. She came to him in dreams with such clarity that he was frequently certain that somewhere he had seen her. Perhaps one of those brief meetings at some moronic party where two people meet and chat and sense some strong attraction between them, but never manage to get beyond the usual polite inanities because of surging friends with cocktail glasses and the restrained sub-note of hysteria that pervades a roomful of yammering humanity which is having a lousy time but pretending to enjoy itself. So maybe he met La that way, and she haunted him.

  She was a physical touch in the night, a whispered voice in lonely moments. He knew her moods, her weaknesses, her strengths. They fitted his own, and the two halves dovetailed into one flesh, one spirit. There was a lock, and a key to fit it—a sword, and a sheath to match. There were two clocks, running back to back, keeping the same time by heartbeat pendulums. But she was lonesome and frightened, and he knew not why.

  The fighters came sidling in out of the hot blue sky, friendly killers that met the wolf pack off the coast near Bari to escort it northward for the strike. A Lockheed Lightning slipped in close to Kessel’s flight, throttled back, waggled its wings. Kessel exchanged a thumbs up with the fighter jockey, then watched the haughty killer flip away and climb to fly far out at nine o’clock high, guarding the pack against steel-beaked falcons of the Luftwaffe.

  The sun poured into the cockpit and warmed it. The sun washed the coastline far off to the left below. The sun baked the dun-colored ships and made the formation a thing of beauty against the Mediterranean blue. Sky and sea were full of turquoise peace that made the waiting violence seem unreal, a battle game played under the auspices of a jovial Wotan who saw that killing was not for keeps.

  Kessel gave the controls to Surges while he lit a cigarette and settled back to relax for a while. He stared down at the lace-fringed sea where triremes had sailed and Caesar s ships had sped toward other wars. It was the same. Add wings and replace the slaves with 1750-horsepower radial engines, and the catapults with demolition bombs. It was always the same. It was destructive, but because it was patterned and planned, because it was systematized and rhythmic, because it was dynamic and flowing toward a goal, it was somehow creative through its functioning. Through crucifixion came redemption; through war, new pattern and synthesis.

  “Pilot to crew,” he called over the interphone. “We’re coming onto posted property. Better test your guns.”

  La would not like what he was feeling now, he thought. She hated the whole bloody mess, and would be unable to understand his own mixed feelings and ambivalences. Look through my eyes, my La. See what I am seeing and feel my feelings while I am a part of this Mechanthrope. For here we fail to fit, and though here be difference between us, so must there be understanding. Look with my eyes! See the sleek wolf pack running across cold sky, feel the icy air that leaks in around my feet, and the warm sun on the slippery leather of my jacket. Look north to the clear horizon where death will soon meet death and a city shall be consumed. Know that we in the pack must move and live as brothers, even though we must kill our brothers down below, whom we will never see—never know.

  Do you feel me. La? For I know that you are sitting on a stone bench beneath a trellis with a book in your lap, gazing dreamily out toward the lake where we walk in the breeze by night. A small child plays at your feet, and he is your cousin.

  But it was no good. He could never seem to drag her to him while he flew. It was as if she resisted knowing what he was and what he did.

  The ship’s guns burped above the thunder of the engines as Burnes, Bixby, Sparley and Winters each rattled off a few rounds from the fifty-caliber guns in their respective positions. Mark nosed the ship down slightly and squeezed the firing stud for the fixed nose guns. A belch shuddered up through the cockpit, and a momentary haze flickered up across the plexiglass, and four streaks of tracers squirted out ahead to vanish toward the ocean. Other ships were doing the same. A flexing of the muscles before the brawl.

  If only the target were not Perugia! Perhaps it was the length of the mission and the time over enemy territory that made him uneasy, but Sofia and Ploesti were even farther and they gave him no such discomfort. He had a quick knotting of his belly with the bombing of Perugia, and there was no logic in it. Maybe it was something about the countryside that stirred some old memory of home, but it was as if the reproving eyes of monks and urchins and old women were upon him, as if hatred were a palpable thing, radiating up from the land below. As if the Christ that was suffused in the flesh of Italian masses called softly in rebuke to the wolf pack.

  O my people, what have I done to thee?

  In what have I grieved thee?

  Answer me,

  For I gave thee a royal scepter,

  And thou hast given to me a scourge.

  “Hey, Pappy, this is Bix,” croaked his headsets.

  “Yeah?”

  “Look at the coastline—up about eleven o’clock low. See those specks?”

  Mark leaned close to the window and stared down for a few seconds. Three gnats were flitting out across the water, close to the drink. “Fighters,” he answered absently.

  “Maybe our own, boss.”

  “Maybe… Pilot to crew, you get that?”

  They answered in turn that they got it.

  “Burnes, you keep your eyes on them. The rest of you keep looking around.”

  He switched his jackbox to command radio and called the escort craft. “Hello Jackknife, this is Eggbeater. Sharks at curfew time below. Over.”

  “Roger, Eggbeater. Out,” came the reply.

  But the fighters remained close to the formation, except for two that broke away and began climbing instead of diving. Mark watched them for a moment, then called the crew again.

  “Everybody but Burnes—keep an eye out above. Those may be decoys down below. Don’t get caught with your pants down if a bunch of pigeons come out of the sun.”

  “Say, Pappy,” Burnes called five minutes later. “I think those are P-47s. They’re heading on south.”

  “Roger, but watch it. Jerry knows we’re coming.”

  The wolf pack came to Fermo and turned inland, feinting toward Terni. Over the coast, hell broke. The first black blossom of flak opened suddenly inside the formation, blotting Mark’s view of the 487th Squadron for an instant, then dropping behind. The wolf pack spread quickly apart, the ships weaving and swaying evasively while they kept the general shape of the formation. The inky flak bursts followed the pack, and Mark felt an occasional thud shiver the ship from a close burst. The death blossoms trailed behind as they drove inland, and a few miles from the coast the blossoms were gone.

  Ahead lay the snow-blanketed slopes of the Apennines with villages like eagles’ nests on their sides. Mark stared down at the land. “Enemy,” he told himself. If you had to bail out, these hillbillies would gut you and fla
y you and hang you by the heels in the market place. But you couldn’t hate them for that. You could only figure that maybe you deserved it.

  Cut the horse manure, fly-boy. This is business, and it’s during office hours. That’s the turning point up there, and there’s hell beyond the mountains.

  “BANDITS AT SEVEN O’CLOCK HIGH!” howled a sudden voice in the intercom.

  And an instant later, Sparley loosed a three-second burst from the upper turret. Burnes got a burst from the waist, and then Mark saw the Focke-Wulf zipping down and turning sharply into a dive at about eight hundred yards, while two P-38s stabbed toward it. Another Focke-Wulf crossed like a flash in a pursuit curve aimed at the squadron just ahead and above. Bixby slashed at it with the flexible nose gun, as it cut back and under, out of sight.

  The interphone was yammering as Mark’s crew stabbed out at the flitting falcons. He saw a plume of smoke trailing earthward about two miles away, but the range was too great to recognize it as friend or foe. One ship in the lead flight had a slightly chewed-up tail, but no ships dropped out of the pack.

  Flak began bursting around the ship when they were still five minutes from target, and six Messerschmitts whipped out of the sun, screaming in slashing arcs across the rear of the formation. One went down, but a twenty-five began trailing smoke, fell from formation, one wing blazing. White silk puffs flowered beneath it. It fell into the blazing wing and spun earthward. The black death flowers rocked the ship with their blooming, and Mark Kessel’s nostrils quivered at the scent of cordite as the Prince ploughed through the smoke balls of a steady barrage. The wolf pack waved and dodged. The wolf pack tumbled across the sky in seeming consternation, but the pattern lingered as in a frightened flock of geese. Ahead lay the city, and beyond it the marshaling yards, the arterial bulge in the long flow to the South. It was wide and hard to miss. And beyond the marshaling yards—the broad blue waters of Lake Trasimeno.

  The lake, it reminded him of La. His scalp crawled, and his hands were fists on the controls. Surges sat smiling sourly at the flak bursts, chin propped on one elbow, smoking a lazy cigarette. Mark glared at him and cursed under his breath. Voices were tense on the interphone.

  “Bandit, four o’clock low—no, it’s a Spitfire. One of ours.”

  “Hey! Flak heavy at one o’clock low. Pappy.”

  “Get a burst on this Focke-Wulf, Burnes.”

  “Goddam it, bomb bays open! The stupid bastard, he’ll make this a long one!”

  “Rake him! Rake hell out of him!”

  “Bomb bays open, Pappy.”

  “Straight and level.”

  “Lead man’s bucking for a Purple Heart.”

  “Shut up and watch your business!”

  “Blow it, Pappy.”

  “Damn! Surges! Take it!”

  “What’s wrong, Pappy?”

  “Just take it and shut up!”

  Surges gave him a look and grabbed the controls. The wolf pack had plunged from fifteen to nine thousand feet, and whipped toward the target with the instruments hugging the red line. The crack of a bull whip snapped through the ship as a shard of shrapnel stung the fuselage.

  “That one bite anybody?” Surges called.

  “Nope, nope. Goddam, get it over with!”

  Mark Kessel sat panting, fists clenched and pressed together. She was with him now, for the first time she was with him, and her meanings, if not her voice came to him like a savage song:

  “Che brutto!… How hateful you are. I hate you hate you hate you hate you! You goddam murderer, you killed my mother! You wrecked my church, and you shattered my city, and now you come again! They’ll get you, they’ll rake you and rip you and slash you to ribbons. You gutless apes! Che brutto!”

  She stood under the trellis with her fists clenched, her hair in the wind, ignoring the black hell in the sky that rained spent shrapnel over the city. Her breasts were sharp and proud and heaving. Her face was flushed with fury. Near by, a frightened child was wailing.

  He saw her, and she was with him like a scourge, and she knew that it was he. He swallowed a sick place in his throat and grabbed for his throat mike switch.

  “Bixby! Close the bomb bays!”

  “What’s that, Pappy?”

  “Close ’em, goddam you!”

  “Pappy, you’re out of your head.”

  Mark cursed and grabbed for the salvo lever. Surges knocked his arm aside and slapped him hard across the mouth.

  “Pappy! Get the hell out of here. You’re blowing your top!”

  Mark doubled his fist and drove it hard against the copilot’s cheekbone. The ship fell out of formation as Surges dropped both hands from the controls and shook his head dizzily. Mark swung again, but Surges caught it on his shoulder.

  Suddenly the muzzle of a forty-five jammed his ribs, and Surges hissed, “Damn you. Pappy, I’ll blow your guts halfway to Naples. Sit still, or I’ll kill you. We’ve got six men aboard.”

  He swung again. Surges let the ship go, jammed a foot against Mark’s side, pistol-whipped him until the pilot fell bleeding against the side of his seat.

  La, La! his mind whimpered.

  The only answer was a tempest of hatred that engulfed him.

  La, I couldn’t know!

  But he could have known. He had flown this mission before. He knew about the lake, and it was the same lake. He knew about her language and her mannerisms. He knew down deep—who she was, and where she was, and what she was.

  Then he heard Bixby howl “Finally!” as the lead ship began toggling its bombs. One… two… three… and the Prince lost weight in gulps of five hundred pounds. He felt them leave the ship, and he wanted to dive after them. Looking back, he saw that the radio op had crawled atop the bomb bays for a sneak look through the hatch at the plummeting projectiles. The man was grinning. “Bombs away!” and the formation banked sharply.

  I’ll beat Burnes till his face is pulp, he thought. But La called out, It’s you, it’s you, Marco, you foul coward.

  I’m not after your city, La! It’s Jerry we’re trying to kill! I can’t help it, none of us can help it! For God’s sake. La. For God’s sake!

  Yes, Marco, for God’s sake.

  He kept staring back at the city, waiting for the hell to break. Twenty-four seconds after bombs away, it broke. Thunder walked across the city and over the marshaling yards. Hell plumed up from a festered wound of fire and belching dust.

  La—La with your wind-tossed hair and slender moon-blessed face, with your grace and your love and your laughter. La—La, in your plain stone house with gypsum floors and charcoal foot warmers and coral Virgins that look down from wall niches, a house of human birth and growth and death. La—La—it was us. I’m sorry. If I’d known… He choked off, feeling the grinding pain.

  If you had known, came a feeble whisper, would all be spared for the sake of one?

  It stabbed him in a clenched belly, and it was mockery. He spat a shard of broken tooth from Surges’ pistol-work, and he was sick. Because her question was demanded of a god.

  No, Marco, only of men.

  And the flak trailed away behind them, as did the last whisper of her consciousness.

  He crawled out of the cockpit and lay on the floor just forward of the bomb bays. He lay choking and panting and spitting blood. There was a black fog, full of fractured steel and bright red death that throbbed within it. There was fear, and the face of a woman. He was priest at a screaming ritual, and the dull blade bit a blue-fringed wound.

  There was a rubble heap where a bit of cloth was caught between broken stones, and a shattered wall where once had been a garden and a trellis. It was finished now, all finished.

  “You can relax, Pappy, you’re okay now.”

  “Man, you’re lucky, Pappy! They’ll send you home right away. Hell, no need to finish those last four missions.”

  “Combat fatigue? Hell, Pappy, it could happen to anybody.”

  He was in the hospital. He sat up and looked around. There w
as Burnes, and Surges—hanging back—and Winters and Bix and Sparley. He shook his head and tried to remember.

  La was gone. And her absence was sufficient proof that she had been there.

  “It was a good strike, Pappy. We clobbered half the town.”

  He wanted to order them out. He got them out as quick as he could, but loneliness was no better.

  With stories, as with jobs and homes and people, those that are hardest to come by are likely to he most prized.

  I read this first when it appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in the spring of 1948. 1 liked it and clipped it for filing.

  Since then, I have several times taken out the tear sheets, reread them, and—till now—reluctantly returned them because till now the story didn’t quite fit the book I was doing.

  It is unusual for a story to improve so much upon rereading. I was, then, all the more dismayed when a letter from the SEP regretfully informed me that Mr. Thompson had died shortly after the publication of this story, and that the whereabouts of his heirs were unknown.

  I turned sleuth: tracked down the names of other magazines in which Mr. Thompson’s work had appeared, and the name of a possible collaborator of his; prepared a letter to the Registrar of Wills in the city where he had lived; and wrote again to the SEP. Each lead brought me to a new dead end—until the second reply from the Post came to say that “by a happy coincidence” my letter had “landed on the desk of possibly the only editor here” who had personal knowledge of the authors family.

  The story is reprinted here with a certain sense of triumph, and with my warm thanks to the unknown editor at the Saturday Evening Post, as well as to Miss Clara Belle Thompson and Mrs. Grace Thompson.

  No One Believed Me by Will Thompson

  It’s late, awfully late, two o’clock. I guess really I should be tired, but I’m not. Standing here by my window, looking out at the night, I don’t see the stars or the shapes of the trees, or hear the rustling of the leaves. I know they are all there, but they don’t seem to count. What does count is, there are no bars across this window. For tonight I am not at Green Mills.