Bright Segment

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Eating and breeding, hunting and escaping filled the days and the cacophonous nights. It was hard in the beginning to see a friend cut down, to watch a slender silver shape go spinning down a river and know that with it went some of your brother, some of your mate, some of yourself. But as the hundreds became thousands and the thousands millions, witnessing death became about as significant as watching your friend get his hair cut. The basic ids each spread through the changing, mutating population like a stain, crossed and recrossed by the strains of the others, co-existing, eating each other and being eaten and all the while passing down through the generations.

  There was a cloud over the savannah, high over the ruins of the compound. It was a thing of many colors and of no particular shape, and it was bigger than one might imagine, not knowing how far away it was.

  From it dropped a golden spot that became a thread, and down came a golden mass. It spread and swung, exploded into a myriad of individuals. Some descended on the compound, erasing and changing, lifting, breaking—always careful to kill nothing. Others blanketed the planet, streaking silently through the green aisles, flashing unimpeded through the tangled thickets. They combed the river-banks and the half-light of hill waves, and everywhere they went they found and touched the mushroom and stripped it of its spores, the compaction and multiplication of what had once been the representatives of a very high reptile culture.

  Primates climbed and leaped, crawled and crept to the jungle margins to watch. Eater lay by eaten; the hunted stood on the hunter’s shoulder, and a platypoid laid an egg in the open which nobody touched.

  Simian forms hung from the trees in loops and ropes, in swarms and beards, and more came all the time, brought by some ineffable magnetism to watch at the hill. It was a fast and a waiting, with no movement but jostling for position, a crowding forward from behind and a pressing back from the slightest chance of interfering with the golden visitors.

  Down from the polychrome cloud drifted a mass of the golden beings, carrying with them a huge sleek ship. They held it above the ground, sliced it, lifted it apart, set down this piece and that until a shape began to grow. Into it went bales and bundles, stocks and stores, and then the open tops were covered. It was a much bigger installation than the one before.

  Quickly, it was done, and the golden cloud hung waiting.

  The jungle was trembling with quiet.

  In one curved panel of the new structure, something spun, fell outward, and out of the opening came a procession of stately creatures, long-headed, bright-eyed, three-toed, richly plumed and feathered. They tested their splendid wings, then stopped suddenly, crouched and looking upward.

  They were given their obeisance by the golden ones, and after there appeared in the sky the exquisite symbol of a beauty that rides up and up, turns and spirals down again only to rise again; the symbol of that which has no beginning and no end, and the sign of those whose worship and whose work it is to bring to all the Universe that which has shown itself worthy in parts of it.

  Then they were gone, and the jungle exploded into killing and flight, eating and screaming, so that the feathered ones dove back into their shelter and closed the door …

  And again to the green planet (when the time was right) came the cloud-ship, and found a world full of birds, and the birds watched in awe while they harvested their magic dust, and built a new shelter. In this they left four of their own for later harvesting, and this was to make of Viridis a most beautiful place.

  From Viridis, the ship vaulted through the galaxies, searching for worlds worthy of what is human in humanity, whatever their manner of being alive. These they seeded, and of these, perhaps one would produce something new, something which could be reduced to the dust of Viridis, and from dust return.

  Extrapolation

  “READ IT FOR YOURSELF,” said the Major.

  She took the sheaf of flimsies from him and for a moment gave him that strange dry gaze. The woman’s in shock, he thought, and did what he could to put down the other two memories he had of eyes like that: an injured starling which had died in his hand; his four-year-old niece, the time he struck her, and the long unbearable moment between the impact and her tears.

  Mrs. Reger read carefully and slowly. Her face slept. Her eyes reflected and would not transmit. Her long hands were more vulnerable. The Major heard the whisper of the thin paper; then she turned far enough away from him to steady the backs of her fingers against the mantel. When at last she was finished, she put the report down on the black coffee table gently, gently, as if it might shatter. They stood together looking down on it and its blue blare of stamp-pad ink: TOP SECRET.

  She said, at last, “That is the foulest thing a human being has ever done.” Then her mouth slept again.

  “I’m glad you agree,” he said. “I was afraid that—” and then she was looking at him again and he could not go on.

  “I don’t think I understood you,” he said tonelessly. “You meant the report. I thought you meant Wolf Reger.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” she said.

  She glanced down at the report. “That isn’t Wolf. Wolf might be a lot of things … things that are … hard to understand. But he isn’t a traitor.” The Major saw her face lifting and turned his head to avoid those hurt eyes. “I think,” she said quietly, “that you’d better go, Major, and take those lies with you.”

  He made no move toward the report. “Mrs. Reger,” he suddenly shouted, “do you think I’m enjoying this? Do you think I volunteered for this job?”

  “I hadn’t thought about you at all.”

  “Try it,” he said bitterly. Then, “Sorry. I’m sorry. This whole thing …” He pulled himself together. “I wish I could believe you. But you’ve got to realize that a man died to make that report and get it back to us. We have no choice but to take it for the truth and act accordingly. What else can we do?”

  “Do what you like. But don’t ask me to believe things about my husband that just aren’t so.”

  Watching her, he felt that if she lost that magnificent control it would be more than he could bear. God, he thought, where did a rat like Reger ever find such a woman? As gently as he could, he said, “Very well, Mrs. Reger. You needn’t believe it … May I tell you exactly what my assignment is?”

  She did not answer.

  He said, “I was detailed to get from you everything which might have any bearing on—on this report.” He pointed. “Whether I believe it or not is immaterial. Perhaps if you can tell me enough about the man, I won’t believe it. Perhaps,” he said, knowing his voice lacked conviction, “we can clear him. Wouldn’t you help clear him?”

  “He doesn’t need clearing,” she said impatiently. Then, when he made a tiny, exasperated sound, she said, “I’ll help you. What do you want to know?”

  All the relief, all the gratitude, and all the continuing distaste for this kind of work were in his voice. “Everything. Why he might do a thing like that.” And quickly, “Or why he wouldn’t.”

  She told him about Wolf Reger, the most hated man on Earth.

  Beware the fury of a patient man.

  Wolf Reger had so many talents that they were past enumerating. With them he had two characteristics which were extreme. One was defenselessness. The other was an explosive anger which struck without warning, even to Reger himself.

  His defenselessness sprang from his excess of ability. When blocked, it was all too easy for him to excel in some other field. It was hard to make him care much for anything. Rob him, turn him, use him—it didn’t matter. In a day, a week, he could find something better. For this he was robbed, and turned, and used.

  His anger was his only terror. When he was eight he was chasing another boy—it was fun; they ran and laughed and dodged through the boy’s large old house. And at the very peak of hilarity, the other boy ran outside and slammed the French doors in Wolf’s face and stood grinning through the glass. Wolf instantly hit the face with his fist. The double-thick glass
shattered. Wolf severed two tendons and an artery in his wrist, and the other boy fell gasping, blood from his carotid spurting between his futile fingers. The boy was saved, but the effect on Wolf was worse than if he had died. His anger had lasted perhaps three microseconds, and when it was gone, it was gone completely. So brief a thing could hardly be termed a madness—not even a blindness. But it left the boy with the deep conviction that one day this lightning would strike and be gone, and he would find himself looking at a corpse.

  He never ran and shouted again. He lived every moment of the next four years under the pressure of his own will, holding down what he felt was an internal devil, analyzing every situation he met for the most remote possibility of its coming to life again. With that possibility visualized, he would avoid the situation. He therefore avoided sandlot baseball and school dances; competitions and group activities; friendship. He did very well with his school work. He did very badly with his fellows.

  When he was twelve he met a situation he could not avoid. He was in his second year of high school then, and every day for three weeks a bulky sophomore twice his size would catch him on his way from English to Geometry II, wrap a thick arm around his neck, and grind a set of knuckles into his scalp. Wolf took it and took it, and one day he tore himself free and struck. He was small and thin, and the chances are that the surprise of the attack was more effective than its power. Their legs were entangled and the bigger boy was off balance. He hit the tile floor with his head and lay quite still with his lips white, and blood trickling from his ear. For six weeks they did not know if he would live or not. Wolf was expelled from school the day it happened, and never went to another. From that point on he never dared be angry.

  It was easy to hate Wolf Reger. He surpassed anyone he worked with and was disliked for it. He retreated from anyone who wanted what he had, and was despised for it. He communicated but would not converse. He immediately and forcefully rejected any kind of companionship; apparently because he did not need it, but actually because he did not dare let anyone come close to him. And his basic expertness was extrapolation—the ability to project every conceivable factor in a situation to every possible conclusion. He chose his work this way. He chose his restaurants this way, his clothes—everything he did and was. He lived to avoid others for their own protection.

  He had two great successes—one a chemical process and one an electronic device. They taught him enough about fame to frighten him away from it. Fame meant people, meetings, associates. After that he let others take the credit for the work he did.

  At thirty he was married.

  “Why?”

  The question hung offensively in the air between them for an appreciable time before the Major realized that he had spoken it aloud and incredulously.

  She said, carefully, “Major, what have you in your notebook so far?”

  He looked down at the neat rows of symbols. “A few facts. A few conjectures.”

  With an accuracy that shook him in his chair, she said coldly, “You have him down as a warped little genius with every reason to hate humanity. If I weren’t sure of that, I wouldn’t go on with this. Major,” she said suddenly in a different voice, “suppose I told you that I was walking down the street and a man I had never seen before suddenly roared at me, leapt on my back, knocked me down, beat me and rolled me in the gutter. Suppose you had fifty eyewitnesses who would swear it happened. What would you think of the man?”

  He looked at her sleek hair, her strong, obedient features. Despite himself he felt a quixotic anger toward her attacker, even in hypothesis. “Isn’t it obvious? The man would have to be a drunk, a psychopath. At the very least he would have to be deluded, think you were someone else. Even if he did, only a real skunk would do a thing like that to a woman.” He suddenly realized how easily she had pulled him away from his subject, and was annoyed. “What has this to do—”

  “You’ll see.” She captured his gaze, and he had the sensation that for the very first time she was examining him, looking at his eyes, his mouth; looking at him as a man instead of an unavoidable talking-machine in uniform. “I hope you’ll see,” she said thoughtfully. Then, “You wanted to know why he married me.”

  The Army wants to know that, he corrected silently. I’d like to know why you married him.

  She committed suicide.

  Relentlessly she told the Major why, and he put his pencil down until she had finished with that part of the story. This was a report on Reger, not on his wife. Her reasons were good, at the time, and they constituted a tale of disillusion and defeat which has been, and will be, told again and again.

  She stumbled out into the desert and walked until she dropped; until she was sure there could be no rescue; until she had barely strength to lift the phial and drink. She regained consciousness eight months later, in civilian married quarters at Space Base Two. She had been dead twice.

  It was a long time before she found out what had happened. Reger, who would not permit himself to move about among people, took his exercise at night, and found her; she had walked almost to the Base without knowing it, and Reger all but tripped over her body. It was not a small body, and he was not a large man, but somehow he got her back to his quarters, a one-room-and-bath affair as near to the edge of the housing area as it could be and still be in the Base. She was still alive—barely.

  How he saved her, no one but Reger could know. He knew she was drugged or poisoned, and exhausted. He found the right medication to keep her from slipping further away, but for weeks he could not bring her back. He did the job for which he was hired, and he worked over her as well, and no one knew she was there. Twice her heart stopped and he started it again, once with adrenalin and once with electric shock.

  Her autonomic nervous system was damaged. When she began to convalesce, he started drug therapy. He kept her paralyzed and at the edge of unconsciousness, so that the slow business of repair could proceed without hindrance. He fed her intravenously.

  And still he kept his job, and no one knew.

  And then one day there was a knock on his door. One room and bath; to open the door was to open the whole room to an outsider. He ignored the knock and it came again, and then again, timidly but insistently. He extrapolated, as always, and disliked his conclusion. A woman in his bachelor quarters created a situation which could only mean people and people, and talk and talk—and the repeated, attenuated annoyance which, of all things, he feared most.

  He picked her up and carried her into the bathroom and shut the door. Then he answered the knock. It was nothing important—a chirping little bird of a woman who was taking up a collection for a Thanksgiving party for the orphans in town. He wrote her a check and got rid of her, snarling suddenly that she must never bother him again—and pass the word. That, and the size of the check, took care of her and anyone like her.

  He nearly collapsed from reaction after she had gone. He knew he could not possibly outguess the exigencies which might arise to bring other people on other errands. A power failure, a fire, even curious boys or a peeping Tom; the law of averages dictated that in spite of his reputation for being a recluse, in spite of the isolation of his quarters, somebody had to discover his secret. She had been with him for four months now. How could he explain her? Doctors would know she had been under treatment for some time; the Air Force people at the Base, and their cackling wives, would make God only knew what sort of racket about it.

  So he married her.

  It took another six weeks to build her up sufficiently to be moved. He drove her to a town a hundred and fifty miles away and married her in a hotel room. She was under a skilfully applied hypnotic, and carefully instructed. She knew nothing about it at the time and remembered nothing afterward. Reger then applied for married quarters, moved her back to the Base and continued her therapy. Let them pry. He had married, and his bride was not only ill but as anti-social as he.

  “There’s your androphobe,” said Mrs. Reger. “He could have let me die. He c
ould have turned me over to the doctors.”

  “You’re a very attractive woman,” he pointed out. “You were that, plus a challenge … two kinds of challenge. Could he keep you alive? Could he do it while doing his job? A man who won’t compete with people generally finds something else to pit himself against.”

  “You’re quite impartial while you wait for all the facts,” she said bitterly.

  “No, I’m not,” he said, and quite astonished himself by adding, “It’s just that I can’t lie to you.” There was a slight emphasis on the last word which he wished he could go back and erase.

  She let it pass and went on with her story.

  She must have had consciousness of a sort long before he was aware of it. She was born again, slowly, aware of comfort and safety, an alteration of light and dark, a dim appreciation of the way in which her needs were met, a half-conscious anticipation of his return when she found herself alone.

  He surrounded her with music—the automatic phonograph when he was away, the piano when he was home and not busy. Music was his greatest escape, and he escaped deeply into it. She had been musical all her life, and recognized an astonishing sensitivity in the silent man. Security and the wordless reaches of music broadened her consciousness from a thin line to a wide swath, forward and back, past and future. The more she fumbled her way back, the more she appreciated her present, and the more it mystified her. Because of this she lay quiet for many days when she could have spoken to him, trying to understand. When at last she was ready, she frightened him badly. She had never dreamed that anyone could be quite so shy, so self-abasing. She had not known that a human being could dislike himself so much. Yet he had an inner strength and unlimited resourcefulness. He was completely efficient in everything he did except in his effort to talk with her.