The Stars Are Also Fire Read online

  “Huh?” Anson raised his shaggy brows. “What makes you think so?”

  “I don’t think it, I feel it,” Juliana replied. “She’s fond of me; she worships you.”

  He harked back to their own daughter—she was in Quito, happily married, but he remembered certain desperate confidences—and after a moment nodded. “Okay. I dunno as how I rate that, but okay.”

  When he rumbled to Dagny, “Hey, you’re looking as peaked as Mount Rainier. Let’s get some salt air in you and some klicks behind you,” she came aglow.

  The resort was antiquated, shingle-walled cottages among trees. Across the crumbling road that ran past it, evergreen forest gloomed beneath a silver-gray sky and soughed in the wind. A staircase led down a bluff to a beach that right and left outreached vision. Below the heights and above the clear sand, driftwood lay tumbled, huge bleached logs, lesser fragments of trees and flotsam. Surf brawled white. Beyond it the waves surged in hues of iron. Where they hit a reef, they fountained. A few gulls rode the wind, which skirled bleak, bearing odors of sea and bite of spindrift. At this fall of the year and in these hard times, Guthrie’s party had the place to themselves.

  He and the girl turned north. For a while they trudged in silence. They made an odd pair, not only because of age. He was big and burly, his blunt visage furrowed beneath thinning reddish hair. Her own hair, uncovered, tossed in elflocks as the single brightness to see. Thus far she still walked slim and light-foot, her condition betrayed by no more than a fullness gathering in the breasts. Whenever she crossed a sprawl of kelp she popped a bladder or two under her heel. When she spied an intact sand dollar, she picked it up with a coo of pleasure. She was, after all, just sixteen.

  “Here.” She thrust it into Guthrie’s hand. “For you, Uncans.”

  He accepted while asking, “Don’t you want it yourself, a souvenir?”

  She flushed. Her glance dropped. He barely heard: “Please. You and … and Auntie—something to ’member me by.”

  “Well, thanks, Diddyboom.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze, let go again, and dropped the disc into a jacket pocket. “Muchas gracias. Not that we’re about to forget you anyhow.”

  The pet names blew away on the wind as though the wind were time, names from long ago when she toddled laughing to him and hadn’t quite mastered “Uncle Anson.” They walked for another span, upon the wet strip where the sea had packed and smoothed and darkened the sand. Water hissed from the breakers to lap near their feet.

  “Please don’t thank me!” she cried suddenly.

  He threw her a pale-blue glance. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  Tears glimmered. “You’ve done so much for me, and I, I’ve never done anything for you. Can’t I even give you a shell?”

  “Of course you can, honey, and we’ll give it a good home,” he answered. “If you think you owe Juliana and me something, pay the debt forward; give somebody else who needs it a leg up someday.” He paused. “But you don’t owe, not really. We’ve gotten plenty enjoyment out of our honorary status. In fact, to us, for all practical purposes, you’re family.”

  “Why?” she half challenged, half appealed. “What reason for it, ever?”

  “Well,” he said carefully, “I’m auld acquaintance with your parents, you know. Your mother since she was a sprat, and when your dad-to-be married her, I was delighted at what a catch she’d made. Juliana agreed.” He ventured a grin. “I expected she’d call him a dinkum cobber, till she reminded me Aussies these days don’t talk like that unless they’re conning a tourist.”

  “But we, we’re nobody.”

  “Nonsense. Your sort doesn’t take handouts, nor need them. If I gave a bit of help, it was a business proposition.”

  Already in her life she knew otherwise. Helen Stambaugh’s father had been master of a fishing boat till the fisheries failed. Guthrie put up the capital, as a silent partner, for him to start over with a charter cruiser that went up to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and around among the islands. For a while he prospered modestly. Sigurd Ebbesen, immigrant from Norway, became his mate, then presently his son-in-law, and then, with a further financial boost from Guthrie, a second partner captaining a second boat. But the venture collapsed when the North American economy in general did. The old man was able to take an austere retirement. Sigurd survived only because Guthrie persuaded various of his associates and employees that this was a pleasant way to spend some leisure time. However, Dagny, first child of two, must act as bull cook when school was out. She graduated to deckhand, then mate-cum-engineer, still unpaid, her eyes turned starward each night that was unclouded.

  “No,” she protested. “Not business, not really. You, you’re just p-plain good—”

  Her stammer ended. She swallowed a ragged breath, knuckled her eyes, and walked faster.

  Guthrie matched the pace. He allowed her a hundred meters of quietness, except for the wind and surf and sea-mews, before he laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “Friends are friends. I don’t gauge anybody’s worth by their bank accounts. Been poor too damn often, myself, for that.”

  She jarred to a stop. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

  “Sure.” A smile creased his face. “I know you that well, at least.” He sighed. “Wish it was better. If I could’ve seen you folks more than in far-apart snatches—” It trailed away.

  She mustered the calm, though fists clenched at her sides, to look straight at him and say almost levelly, “Then maybe you could’ve steered me off this mess I’ve gotten myself into? Is that what you’re thinking, Uncans? Prob’ly you’re right.”

  Again he smiled, one-sidedly. “You didn’t get into it all by yourself, muchacha. You had enthusiastic help.”

  The color came and went in her cheeks. “Don’t hate him. Please don’t. He never would have if I—I hadn’t—”

  Guthrie nodded. “Yeah. I understand. Also, when the word got to me, I looked into the situation a bit. Love and lust and more than a little rebellion, right? By all accounts, Bill Thurshaw’s a decent boy. Bright, too. I figure I’ll hire an eye kept on him, and if he shows promise—But that’s for later. Right now, you are too young, you two, to get married It’d be flybait for a thousand assorted miseries, till you broke up; and your kid would suffer worst.”

  Steadier by the minute, she asked him: “Then what should I do?”

  “That’s what we brought you here to decide,” he reminded her.

  “Dad and Mother—”

  “They’re adrift with a broken rudder, poor souls. Yes, they’ll stand by you whatever you choose, whatever the sniggering neighbors say and the dipnose government does, but what’s the least bad course? They’ve also got your brother to think about. School alone could become an endurance contest, in the clammy piety that’s settled on this country.”

  Momentarily, irrelevantly surprised, she wondered, “Piety? The Renewal doesn’t care about God.”

  “I should’ve said pietism,” he growled. “Puritanism. Masochists dictating that the rest of us be likewise. Oh, sure, nowadays the words are ‘environment’ and ‘social justice,’ but it’s the same dreary dreck, what Churchill once called equality of misery. And Bismarck, earlier, said that God looks after fools, drunks, and the United States of America; but when the North American Union elected the Renewal ticket, I suspect God’s patience came to an end.”

  Shared need brought unspoken agreement that they walk on. The sand squelped faintly beneath their shoes; incoming tide began to erase the tracks. “Never mind,” Guthrie said. “My mouth’s too apt to ramble. Let’s stay somewhere in the vicinity of the point. You’re pregnant. That’s shocking enough, in the national climate today, but you’re also reluctant to do the environmentally responsible thing and have it terminated.”

  “A life,” she whispered. “It didn’t ask for this. And it, it trusts me. Is that crazy?”

  “No. ‘Terminate’ means they poison that life out of you. If you wait till later, it means they crush the skull and slice off a
ny inconvenient limbs and haul it out of you. Yeah, there are times when that may seem necessary, and there are too many people. But when across half the planet they’re dying by the millions of famine and sickness and government actions, I should think we can afford a few new little lives.”

  “But I—” She lifted her hands and gazed at the empty palms. “What can I do?” The fingers closed. “Whatever you say, Uncans.”

  “You’re a proud one, you are,” he observed. “I’ve a hunch this whole business, including your hope you can save the baby, is partly your claim to a fresh breath in all the stifling smarminess around you. Well, we’ve been over and over the ground, these past several days. Juliana and I, we never wanted to lay pressure on you, one way or another. We only want to help. But first we had to help you grope forward till you knew what your own mind was, didn’t we?”

  “I could always talk to you … better than to anybody else.”

  “M-m, maybe because we haven’t been around so much.”

  “No, it was you, Uncans.” With haste: “And Auntie. All right. What should I do?”

  “Have the baby. That’s pretty well decided. Juliana believes if you don’t, you’ll always be haunted. Not that your life would be ruined, but you’d never feel completely happy. Besides the killing itself, you’d know you’d crawfished, which plain isn’t in your nature. Trust Juliana’s insight. If I hadn’t had it to guide me dealing with people, I’d be flat broke and beachcombing.”

  “You understand me too. You made me see.”

  “Naw. I simply remarked that considering how morons and collectivists breed, DNA like yours and Bill’s oughtn’t be flushed down the toilet.” His tone, deliberately coarse, gentled. “That was no basis for decision. You were what counted, Dagny, and Juliana was who eased the confusion out of you. Okay, now it’s my turn. We’ve settled the what and why, we need to settle the how.”

  Her stride faltered. She recovered, gulped, looked into the distances before her, and asked quietly, “You don’t think I should keep the baby, do you?”

  “No. You aren’t ready to be tied down. My guess is you never will be, unless it’s in the right place, a place where you can really use your gifts. It’ll hurt, giving up the young’un as soon as you’ve borne it, but that will heal. You see, naturally we’ll get the best foster parents we can; and I’ve got the money to mount a proper search for them. Not in this country, under this wretched regime, but abroad, Europe maybe. Don’t worry, I’ll find my way around any laws there are. You’ll know you did the right thing, and can put the whole matter behind you.”

  Once more, briefly, she caught his hand. “I won’t ever—not quite—but … thank you.”

  “Meanwhile and afterward, what about you?” he went on in methodical fashion. “Let’s do what I should’ve seen to before and get you out of here, permanently.”

  She stiffened. Her voice came thin. “No. I told you when you first suggested it. Dad needs me.”

  “And is too proud to let me hire him the kind of labor you’ve provided for free. I know. That’s how come I never pushed the idea of putting you in a school where they teach facts and how to think for yourself instead of the Renewal party line. But the chips are down, honey. If you stay home and have the child, I doubt the community will be habitable for your family. And the story will forever be in your file, available at a keystroke to any busybody. If you drop out of sight, though, more or less immediately, the petty scandal won’t grow, it’ll die out in people’s minds. You’ll just be a black sheep that left the flock, soon forgotten. As for your father’s business, why, your brother’s pushing fourteen. Quite able to take over from you, and eager, if I judge aright.”

  “I … I suppose so—”

  They were mute for half a kilometer, alone between the sea and the driftwood.

  Then she blurted, “Where? What?”

  He chuckled. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  She turned her head to stare at him. Hope went in tides, to and fro with her blood.

  Guthrie shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t come right out and say it till we had a notion of where you’d take your stand. But you know Fireball’s more and more arranging for the education of its people’s children, and we’re starting up an academy for professional training. Me, I know you’ve always been space-struck. For openers, how’d you like to come to Quito with us, and we’ll see what develops?”

  She stopped. “Ecuador,” she gasped—to her, Camelot, Cíbola, Xanadu, the fabled country that Fireball had made its seat because there the government was still friendly to enterprise, the gateway to the universe.

  She cast herself into his arms and wept against his shoulder. He stroked the ruddy hair and shuddering back and made bearlike noises.

  Finally they could sit down in the lee of a log, side by side. The wind whistled past, driving a wrack of clouds beneath the overcast, but the waters lulled, hush-hush-hush. The chill made them shiver a bit, now that they were at rest. She spoke in weary calm:

  “Why are you so good to us, Uncans? Sure, you like Dad and Mother, same as you do Mother’s parents, but you’ve told us about friends all over the world. What’ve we done to deserve this much kindness?”

  “I expected I’d have to tell you,” he said slowly. “It’s got to stay a secret. Promise me you’ll never tell anybody without my leave, not your folks, not Bill when you say goodbye to him—which ain’t going to be easy, even if the affair is over—not anybody, ever.”

  “I promise, honest to Dr. Dolittle,” she replied, as grave as the child who had learned it from him.

  He nodded. “I trust you. The ones who make their own way through life, paying their freight as they go, they’re who you can rely on.

  “All right. I know your mother’s mentioned to you that she wasn’t born to the Stambaughs, she was adopted. What she’s never known is that I am her father.”

  Dagny’s eyes widened, her lips parted, she kept silence.

  “So I can be simpático with you on your bind,” Guthrie continued. “Of course, things were quite different for me. This was way back when Carla and I were in high school in Port Angeles. Carla Rezek—Never mind. It was wild and beautiful and hopeless.”

  “And it hurts yet, doesn’t it?” Dagny murmured.

  His grin flickered. “Mainly I cherish certain memories. Carla went on to marry and move elsewhere; I’ve lost track and she hasn’t tried to get back in touch, being the good people she is. Her folks were less tolerant than yours; they got her well and thoroughly away from me, but on religious grounds they didn’t countenance abortion. When the baby was born, it was adopted out. Neither Carla nor I were told where. Back then, that sort of incident was no great rarity, no enormous deal. Besides, I soon went off to college, and on to foreign parts.”

  “Till at last—”

  “Yeah. I came back, not to stay but to revisit the old scenes, well-heeled and … wondering.”

  The girl flushed. “Auntie?”

  “Oh, Juliana knew, and in fact urged me to try and find out. I might have a responsibility, she said. A detective followed up some easy clues and located the Stambaughs in Aberdeen. It wasn’t hard to scrape up an acquaintance. I never meant to intrude, you realize, just be a friend, so I kept mum and swear you to the same. Wouldn’t have told you, either, if I could’ve avoided it. Among other things, the secret will be a burden on you, because I can’t very well show you any favoritism if you elect a Fireball career. Space is too unforgiving. This day, however, well, you have a pretty clear need to know. For your heart’s sake, anyhow.”

  Dagny blinked hard. “Uncans—”

  Guthrie cut back to years agone. “Helen was growing up a charming little lady. Shortly after, she married. We’re a headlong breed in that regard, it seems. You—Me, in my fifties, you’re about to make a great-grandfather of me!” Brief laughter boomed.

  “And—and you’ll make of me—”

  “Nothing, sweetheart. All we offer is a chance for you to make of yourself whateve
r you will and can.”

  They talked onward, until the cold drove them to walk farther. The sun had gone low. It was still no more than a brightening behind the cloud deck, but a few rays struck through to kindle the waters.

  3

  He who sometimes called himself Venator was also known, to those who had a need to know, as an officer in the secret service of the World Federation Peace Authority. In truth—for the ultimate truths about a human are in the spirit—he was a huntsman.

  In late mornwatch of a certain day on the Moon, he finished his business with one Aiant and left the Lunarian’s dwelling. After the twilight, birdsong, white blooms, and vaulted ceiling of the room where they had spoken, the passage outside glared at him. Yet it too was a place of subtle curves along which colors flowed and intertwined, ocher, mauve, rose, amber, smoke. At intervals stood planters where aloes, under this gravity, lifted their stalks out of spiky clusters as high as his head, to flower like fireworks six meters aloft. The breeze had a smell as of fresh-cut grass, with a tinge of something sharper, purely chemical. He could barely hear the music in it, fluting on a scale unknown to Earth, but his blood responded to a subsonic drumbeat.

  Few others were afoot. This being a wealthy section, some went sumptuous of tunic and hose or sweeping gown, while the rest were retainers of this or that household, in livery not much less fine. One led a Siamese-marked cat on a leash—metamorphic, its genes transformed through generations to make it of tiger size. All moved with the same grace and aloofness as the animal. A pair who were talking in their melodious language did so very softly.

  They were doubtless a little surprised by the huntsman. Terrans seldom came here, and he was obviously not one who lived on their world but from Earth. Under the former Selenarchy his kind had been debarred from entering the neighborhood at all except by special permission. However, nobody said or did anything, though the big eyes might narrow a bit.

  He could have given them back those looks, and not always upward. Many Lunarians were no taller than a tall Terran, which he was. He refrained. A huntsman on the hunt draws no needless attention to himself. Let them glance, inwardly shrug, and forget him.