“Eileen…” I stammered. “I mean-Mrs. David Hall? Isn’t she here?” Then I remembered that this woman could not know me. “I’m her brother- from Earth. Newsman Tarn Olyn.”
I was wearing cape and beret, of course, and in a way this was passport enough. But for the moment I had forgotten all about it. I remembered then as the woman fluttered a bit. She had probably never before seen a member of the Guild in the actual flesh.
“Why, she’s moved,” the woman said. “This place was too big for her alone. She’s down a few levels and north of here. Just a minute, I’ll get you her number.”
She darted away. I heard her talking to a male voice for a moment, and then she came back with a slip of paper.
“Here,” she said a little breathlessly. “I wrote it down for you. You go right along this corridor-oh, I see you’ve got a direction rod. Just set it then. It’s not far.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Not at all. We’re glad to-well, I mustn’t keep you, I suppose,” she said, for I was already beginning to turn away. “Glad to be of service. Goodbye. ”
“Good-bye,” I muttered. I was moving off down the corridor resetting the direction rod. It led me away and down and the door I finally pressed the call button on was well below ground level.
There was a longer wait this time. Then, at last, the door slid back-and my sister stood there.
“Tarn,” she said.
She did not seem to have changed at all. There was no sign of change or grief upon her, and my mind leaped suddenly with hope. But when she simply continued to stand there, looking at me, the hope sank once more. I could do nothing but wait. I stood there also.
“Come in,” she said finally, but without much change in tone. She stood aside and I walked in. The door slid closed behind me.
I looked around, shocked out of my emotion for the moment by what I saw. The gray-draped room was no bigger than the first-class compartment I had occupied on the spaceship coming there.
“What’re you doing living here?” I burst out.
She looked at me without any response to my shock.
“It’s cheaper,” she said indifferently.
“But you don’t need to save money!” I said. “I got that arrangement made for your inheritance from Mathias-it was all set with an Earth-working Cas-sidan to transfer funds from his family back here to you. You mean”-for the thought had never occurred to me before-“there’s been some hitch at this end? Hasn’t his family been paying you?”
“Yes,” she said calmly enough. “But there’s Dave’s family now to take care of, too.”
“Family?” I stared stupidly at her.
“Dave’s younger brother’s still in school-never mind.” She stood still. Nor had she asked me to sit down. “It’s too long a story, Tarn. What’ve you come here for?”
I stared at her.
“Eileen,” I said pleadingly. She only waited. “Look,” I said, snatching at the straw of our earlier subject, “even if you’re helping out Dave’s family, there’s no problem anymore. I’m a full Guild member now. I can supply you with anything in the way of funds you need.”
“No.” She shook her head.
“In heaven’s name, why not? I tell you IVe got unlimited-”
“I don’t want anything from you, Tarn,” she said. “Thank you anyway. But we’re doing fine, Dave’s family and myself. IVe got a good job.”
“Eileen!”
“I asked you once, Tarn,” she said, still unmoved. “Why’ve you come here?”
If she had been changed to stone, there could not have been a greater difference in her from the sister I had known. She was no one I knew. She was like a perfect stranger to me.
“To see you,” I said. “I thought-you might like to know-”
“I know all about it,” she said, with no emotion at all. “I was told all about it. They said you were wounded, too; but you’re well now, aren’t you, Tarn?”
“Yes,” I said, helplessly. “I’m well now. My knee’s a little stiff. They say it’ll stay that way.”
“That’s too bad,” she said.
“Damn it, Eileen!” I burst out. “Don’t just stand there talking to me as if you don’t know me! I’m your brother!”
“No.” She shook her head. “The only relatives I have now-the only relatives I want now-are Dave’s family. They need me. You don’t and never did, Tarn. You were always sufficient for yourself, by yourself.”
“Eileen!” I said, pleadingly. “Look, I know you must blame me-partly at least-for Dave’s death.”
“No,” she answered. “You can’t help being what you are. It was my fault, all these years, for trying to convince myself that you were something different from what you are. I thought there was something about you that Mathias never got to, something that just needed a chance to come out. It was that I was counting on when I asked you to help me decide about Jamie. And when you wrote you were going to help Dave, I was sure that what I’d always thought was in you was finally coming to the front. But I was wrong both times.”
“Eileen!” I cried. “It wasn’t my fault we ran into a madman, Dave and I. Maybe I should have done something different-but I did try to make him leave me after I got shot, only he wouldn’t. Don’t you understand, it wasn’t all my fault\”
“Of course it wasn’t, Tarn,” she said. I stared at her. “That’s why I don’t blame you. You’re no more responsible for what you do than a police dog that’s been trained to attack anyone who moves. You’re what Uncle Mathias made you, Tarn-a destroyer. It’s not your fault, but that doesn’t change anything. In spite of all the fighting you did with him, Mathias’ teaching about Destruct filled you up, Tarn, and didn’t leave anything.”
“You can’t say that!” I shouted at her. “It’s not true. Give me just one more chance, Eileen, and I’ll show you! I tell you, it’s not true!”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “I know you, Tarn, better than anyone alive. And I’ve known this about you for a long time. I just wouldn’t let myself believe it. But I have to, now-for the sake of Dave’s family, who need me. I couldn’t help Dave, but I can help them- as long as I never see you again. If I let you come close to them, through me, you’ll destroy them, too.”
She stopped talking then and stood looking at me. I opened my mouth to answer her, but I could think of nothing to say. We stood looking at each other across a couple of feet of distance that was a wider, deeper space and gulf than I had ever encountered in my life.
“You’d better go, then, Tarn,” she said at last.
Her words stirred me numbly to life again.
“Yes,” I said dully. “I guess I’d better.”
I turned away from her. As I stepped toward the door I think I still hoped she might stop me and call me back. But there was no movement or sound behind me; and as I went out the door I glanced back for a final time over my shoulder.
She had not moved. She was still standing where she had been, like a stranger, waiting for me to go.
So I went. And I returned to the spaceport alone. Alone, alone, alone….
CHAPTER 16
I got on the first ship out for Earth. I had priority now over all but people with diplomatic status, and I used it. I bumped someone with a prior reservation and found myself once more alone in a first-class compartment, while the ship I was on shifted, stopped to calculate its position, and shifted again between the stars.
That closed cabin was like a sanctuary, a hermit’s cell to me, a chrysalis hi which I could lock and reshape myself before entering once more into the worlds of men in a different dimension. For I had been stripped to the very core of my old self and no single self-delusion remained, that I could see, to cover me.
Mathias had cleaned the most of the flesh of self-deiusion off my bones early, of course. But here and there a shred had stuck-like the rain-washed memory of the ruins of the Parthenon that I used to gaze at in the vision screens as a boy after Mathias’ deadly dialectic had stripped away one more shred of nerve or sinew. Just by being there, above the dark, win-dowless house, the Parthenon had seemed to my young mind to refute all Mathias’ arguments.
It had been, once-and therefore he must be wrong, I used to comfort myself in thinking. It had existed, once it had been, and if the men of Earth were no more than Mathias said, it never could have been built. But it had been-that was what I saw now. For in the end it was no more than ruins and the dark defeatism of Mathias endured. So, at last now I came to it-I endured, in Mathias’ image, and the dreams of glory and lightness somehow, in some way, for those born on Harm in spite of those changed and greater children of younger worlds, were ruins, like the Parthenon, filed away with other childish delusions, filed and forgotten in the rain.