“You did not tell me,” he said in his quiet voice, “that you had already applied for a pass, and been refused.”
I stopped dead, still clutching the paper in midair, staring up and out at him.
“Who? That Groupman in there?” I said. “But he’s just a noncommissioned officer. And you’re not only a commissioned officer but an aide.”
“Nonetheless,” he said, “a refusal has been given. I cannot alter a decision already made. I’m sorry. No pass is possible for your brother-in-law.”
It was only then I realized mat the paper he had handed me back was unsigned. I stared at it, as if I could read it in the darkness and will a signature into being on the blank area where it should have gone. Then fury boiled up in me almost beyond control. I jerked my gaze up from the paper and stared out the open door of the floater at Jamethon Black.
“So that’s your way of getting out of it!” I said. “That’s how you excuse yourself for sending Eileen’s husband to his death! Don’t think I don’t see through you, Black-because I do!”
With his back to the light, with his face in darkness, I still could not see his face and any change that might have come over it at my words. But something like a light sigh, a faint, sad breath, came from him; and he answered in the same, even tones.
“You.see only the man, Mr. Olyn,” he said. “Not the Vessel of the Lord. I must get back to my duties now. Good morning.”
With that he swung closed the door of the floater, turned and went away across the lot. I sat, staring after him, boiling inside at the line of cant he had thrown at me in leaving by way of what I took to be excuse. Then I woke to what I was doing. As the door of the Command Building opened, his dark figure was silhouetted there for an instant, and then disappeared, taking the light with it as the door closed again. I kicked the floater into movement, swung it about and headed out of the military area.
As I drove out past the gateyard, they were changing guards for the three-A.M. watch; and the dismissed watch were drawn up in a dark clump, still under weapons, engaged in some ritual of their special worship.
As I passed them, they began to sing-chant rather-one of their hymns. I was not listening for the words, but the three beginning ones stuck in my ear in spite of me. “Soldier, ask not-” were the first three words, of what I later learned was their special battle hymn, sung at times of special rejoicing, or on the very eve of combat.
“Soldier, ask not-” It continued to ring in my ears, mockingly it seemed to me, as I drove away with Dave’s pass still unsigned in my pocket. And once more the fury rose in- me; and once more I swore that Dave would need no pass. I would not let him from my side for an instant during the coming day between the battle lines; and in my presence he would find his protection and his utter safety.
CHAPTER 9
It was six-thirty in the morning when I stepped out of the tube from the port into the lobby of my hotel in Molon. There was a gritty feeling to my nerves and a dryness to my eyes and mouth, for I had not slept for twenty-four hours. The day coming up was to be a big one, so that I could probably not look forward to rest for another twenty-four. But going two or three days without sleep is an occupational hazard of Newswork. You get hold of something, with the situation about to break at a second’s warning; and you simply have to stay with it until it does.
I would be alert enough; and if it came right down to the wire, I had medication to see me through. As it happened, though, at the desk I found something that knocked the need for sleep cheerfully right out of my head.
It was a letter from Eileen. I stepped aside and pressed it open.
Dearest Tarn: (she wrote]
Your letter about your plan to take Dave out of the battle lines and keep him with you as your assistant just reached here. I’m so happy I can’t tell you how I feel. It never occurred to me that someone like you, from Earth, and still only an Apprentice in the Newsman’s Guild, could do something like that for us.
How can I thank you? And how can you forgive me after the way I’ve been, not writing, or not caring what happened to you all these last five years? I haven’t been very much like a sister to you. But it was because I knew how useless and helpless I was; and ever since I was a little girl I Ve felt you were secretly ashamed of me and just putting up with me.
And then when you told me that day in the library how it would never work out for me to marry Jamethon Black-I knew you were right, even at the time, you were only telling me the truth about myself-but I couldn’t help hating you for it. It seemed to me then that you were actually proud of the fact you could stop me from going away with Jamie.
But how wrong I was, as this thing you are doing to protect Dave shows me now; and how bitterly, bitterly sorry I am for feeling the way I did. You were the only one I had left to love after Mother and Daddy died, and I did love you, Tarn; but most of the time it seemed to me you didn’t want me to, any more than Uncle Mathias did.
Anyway, all that has changed now, since I met
Dave and he married me. Someday you must come to Alban, on Cassida, and see our apartment. We were very lucky to get one this big. It is my first real home of my own, and I think you may be a little surprised at how well weVe fixed it up. Dave will tell you all about it, if you ask him-don’t you think he’s wonderful, for someone like me to marry, I mean? He is so kind, and so loyal. Do you know he wanted me to let you know about our marriage at the time it happened, in spite of the way I felt? But I wouldn’t do it. Only of course he was right. He is always right, just as I am nearly always wrong-as you know, Tarn.
But thank you, thank you again for what you’re doing for Dave; and all my love goes with both of you. Tell Dave I’m writing him, too, at this same time; but I suppose his army mail won’t reach him as fast as yours does you.
All my love, Eileen
I tucked the letter and its envelope away in my pocket and went up to my room. I had meant to show him the letter; but on the way up the tube I found myself unexpectedly embarrassed at the thought of the fullness of her thanks expressed in it, and the way she had accused herself of not being the best possible sister. I had not been the best possible brother, either; and what I was doing for Dave now might look big to her, but it was nothing great really. Hardly more than the sort of thing I might do for a total stranger, by way of returning a professional favor.
She had me, in fact, feeling somewhat ashamed of myself, absurdly warmed by having heard from her so. Maybe we could turn out to exist like normal people after all. The way she and Dave felt about each other, I would undoubtedly be having nephews or nieces one of these days. Who knew-I might even end up married myself (the thought of Lisa floated inexplicably through my mind) and with children. And we might all end up with relations spread over half a dozen worlds like most of the ordinary family groups, nowadays.
Thus I refute Mathias! I thought to myself. And Padma, too.
I was daydreaming in this absurd but cheerful fashion when I reached the door of my hotel suite and remembered the question of showing Dave the letter. Better to let him wait and read his own letter, which Eileen had said was on the way, I decided. I pushed open the door and went in.
He was already up, dressed, and packed. He grinned at the sight of me; and this puzzled me for a split second until I realized that I must have come in with a smile on my own face.
“I heard from Eileen,” I said. “Just a note. She says a letter’s on its way to you, but it may take a day or so to catch up from being forwarded on from your army unit.”