The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton, page 24
They went into the trading post. I went back to the gobbledegook. Whatever he was here for, the reporter could not hurt me. I was already the lowest scum, too small to interest him at all.
The next time I looked up, MacNab was sitting in the pilot seat again, trying out the buttons and levers with patient resignation.
“Won’t it start?” I called out to him. All right, it was a stupid question, and I knew it, but I felt I should show some interest.
MacNab didn’t feel called upon to answer. From the sudden set of his neck and back, I could see he was forcing himself not to answer. I suspected he was past all words. Apparently, he regained a measure of control.
“You might as well go back to the trading post,” he said slowly. “I’ll call you when the ship is ready to move.”
It was no more comfortable in the trading post than in the shuttle, but perhaps my presence bothered MacNab. I left my luggage where it was, along with my brief case. MacNab let me out the door and I walked around the Press yacht and back to the store.
The photographer was lounging indolently near a stack of canned peaches. The reporter had old Sam back in a corner, talking to him.
“But there’s got to be something around here worth a feature story.” There was a spoiled petulance in his voice. “The boss said get a feature story about a back hills mine. Don’t ask me why, but by damn if there isn’t a story here, I’ll make one.”
He stuck out a square chin in a bellicose pose of a fighter who hadn’t yet learned the feel of an opponent’s fist. His whole face was a shallow mask of unfeeling arrogance. There was no sensitivity around his eyes or mouth. To him, beauty would be an exercise in semantics, deliberately false, measured in column inches.
Old Sam was responding with truculence and stupidity.
“I don’t know anything to tell about,” he was mumbling contrarily. “We just mine Dural ore and that’s all there is to it.”
“But my damn,” the reporter shouted, as if trying to get through the wall of stupidity by volume of voice. “Aren’t there even any colorful characters? What the hell do men come to work here for? Something must drive them here. A sane man wouldn’t come out of choice. Hell, give me a man—any man—and I’ll make a story out of him. I gotta have something!”
“What about MacNab?” I heard myself asking. I could have kicked myself, because I had intended to stay out of it.
The reporter whirled around.
“Who are you?” he asked belligerently. “Who asked you to stick your nose in?”
“He’s a government inspector,” Sam replied. Then, defensively: “And a decent one.”
“Oh.” The reporter grunted the word contemptuously. His lip curled and he stared insolently at me. I was more polite. I kept my lip straight when I looked back at him.
“Who’s MacNab?” he asked, after his look had put me in my place.
“MacNab is the man who conquered Callisto single handed, and opened up the trade in diamonds,” I answered hotly. Then I rushed on: “MacNab is the man—the only man in history—who nursed a ship on manual control through the rings of Saturn—back in the days when there weren’t any meteor shields.”
I heard a step behind me, but I thought it was the photographer.
“Is that something important?” the reporter asked insultingly.
“Important—” I felt my anger beginning to get out of control. But I was interrupted by a quiet voice behind me.
“No,” the voice said quietly. “It wasn’t important.”
I whirled around and saw MacNab standing behind me. His flesh was pale, and the planes of his face were frozen into a slender mask. Even the reporter was abashed by the quiet dignity.
“What I mean, is—” the reporter faltered. “Well, if it really was important—but then, you see it happened so long ago—well, you certainly couldn’t call it news—but—”
“It wasn’t important,” MacNab repeated with finality. Then he turned to me.
“I’ve got the ship firing,” he said. “We can leave now.”
I started to turn and follow him out, when there was a low rumble, then a roar—the devastating roar of the world coming to an end. The frame building of the store shivered and trembled as if a gigantic hand was shoving it around.
“The mine!” old Sam gasped in a shrill, bleating voice.
“Those explosives!” I yelled an answer.
All of us were running for the door. The photographer was blocking it with his equipment. I was able to feel a faintly malicious taste of glee as I pushed him, hard, to one side and plunged through. MacNab was directly behind me, running fast.
We rounded the corner of the building, and saw the open shaft of the mine entrance in the hill back of the store. Smoke and dust were pouring out of it, and I saw the figure of a man stumbling through.
“Faster,” I gasped. “Oh, those fools. That condemned explosive!”
The reporter had caught up with me now, and MacNab was drawing ahead. Far behind, the photographer and old Sam were running as best they could; the one handicapped by equipment, the other by age. MacNab didn’t seem to know his age. He was drawing further ahead of us—running lithe and straight as a lad.
“What about the explosive?” the reporter gasped as we ran up the rocky slope toward the mine entrance.
“I condemned it,” I gasped back between breaths. “Damned owners—must have tried—to use it up—all at once—before I could turn—in my report.”
We were close enough now to hear the faint, hopeless screams of men down in the darkness of the mine. MacNab, running strong, shot into the black entrance before the reporter and I had even reached the level at its mouth.
There was another roar of explosives letting go.
We faltered. I remembered MacNab was in the mine. The rest of the miners might be unreal figures, statistics to be read about in the newspapers, but MacNab was something else again—a human being. One of the few I’d ever met.
“Come on,” I shouted to the reporter, who was hanging back.
I rushed into the entrance of the shaft and heard him coming behind me.
It was as if I rushed into a crashing, roaring blackness. I knew nothing more.
There is an unreality about partial unconsciousness. One hears sounds, and dimly sees hazy sights, but they have no connection with one another and fit into no pattern, until later, when one reasons them out. Seconds stretch into eternity, and eternity collapses into seconds.
I was dimly conscious of rushing feet. I remembered seeing MacNab pass by me, again and again—going toward the light with a man across his shoulder, going back into the blackness for another, gasping and sobbing for breath—but going.
I remembered lying there, unable to move, to pull myself together, mentally cursing myself for not helping, for being a waste. So typical of me.
I became conscious of a raving, a shouting near my head—the bellowing bawl of a brat who has stubbed his toe and thinks he’s killed. The cobwebs cleared a little more and I realized it was the reporter. That strange sense of time we have made me realize that ten, maybe fifteen minutes had passed.
I turned myself over and sank, exhausted and prone, to the rubble floor of the mine. I rested another minute. The bellowing bawl became louder and my mind cleared more. I pushed myself up to my knees and hands, my head hanging down. The weight of the world was on it, but I lifted it far enough to look over at the voice. The reporter was caught under a timber. There was another timber, partly supporting it. Even then, I knew the reporter wasn’t badly hurt.
The timbers must have shaken loose after the last explosion, knocking me out with a glancing blow, and pinning him beneath them.
I tried to stand up, and after an age I found I could make it. My knees were shaking, ready to crumble, and I was sick with a terrible nauseating sickness, but I made it. I staggered over to the timber and began to tug at it. The reporter was shrieking at me.
“Lift it, you fool! Don’t drag it! Lift it!”
“It’s too heavy,” I gasped. “Next time I tug on it, slide out from under it.”
I tugged upward. He slid. The weight was too great. I had to let it down again. He screamed.
“You’re crushing me!” But I could see the bottom timber still held up most of the weight.
I tugged upward again. He slid again. This time he slid all the way. I dropped the timber and went down on top of it. I felt myself blacking out again. Faintly, I heard the reporter cursing.
“Damned senseless fool. You tore my pants!”
I was glad I couldn’t hear anything more.
The next time I came to, I was outside the mine shaft, and old Sam was bending over me, squeezing a moisture bulb into my mouth. All about us were groaning men, bleeding, suffering—some staggering about, some lying supine—some courageous, some afraid. The lichen plants had been cleared away to keep them from shooting tendrils into the open wounds. The fat-butted mine owner was crouched over to one side, his back up against a rock, and with one hand squeezed tightly around the stump of an arm.
I felt an unworthy rush of gladness. It is so seldom the instigators of such actions get caught up in their own greed. It’s usually poor devils who can’t help themselves.
The reporter was standing at my feet.
“Holy damn,” he was saying over and over. “What a story! Holy damn! I wanted a story and I got it.” He laughed loudly. “I’ll have to compliment you stinking Martians. You’re damned obliging!” He looked around the scene of suffering men triumphantly.
None looked in his direction.
I pushed Sam away and sat up.
“Doctors?” I questioned.
“On their way,” Sam answered. “I sent a radio call from the mine office. Due any minute now.”
I looked over at the mine owner and felt a little regret. Somehow, I wished he could be made to suffer more, to know all the suffering he had caused. But it probably couldn’t be helped. He’d be rescued, too, when the doctors came. It was a pity.
I felt unworthy for my regret, because there were a dozen men writhing in agony, while I wasn’t really hurt. There were three men lying very still. They would never know pain again. I felt another rush of anger in my head.
“I don’t condemn explosives for the fun of showing my badge!” I shouted senselessly at the mine owner. He did not look in my direction.
“Damn!” I shouted. “Damn all greedy humans anyway. I’m sick to death of humans.
I’m goddamned ashamed I was born a human!”
Old Sam started rubbing my head between his hands, palms over my temples, massaging evenly.
I shook my head and came out of it.
“What’s the use?” I groaned. “Oh, what’s the use?”
The reporter was still standing at my feet, looking at me. His face was alive with a scheming delight.
“You saved my life, fellow!” he shouted at me.
“Nuts!” I answered disgustedly.
“You saved my life!” he shouted again. “Boy, I can see the headlines now. Headlines I’m responsible for. You’re gonna be a hero, fellow.”
I spat upon the ground, and then, irrelevantly, thought I should have saved it for Sam’s pet lichen.
“Yes, sir,” the reporter was still raving. “What better material for a hero? A cheap chiseling little government stooge! I’ll show you what
I can do, what a big man I am. I’ll take a little snotnose such as you, and make a world hero out of you. The publicity won’t hurt me any, either.”
“Look,” I said wearily. “There’s the hero.” I pointed toward MacNab, who had got to his feet and was watching us. “If you’ve got to have a hero, pick on him. He deserves it. While I was lying there unconscious, and you were yelling your head off, he went into the mine and got the men out.”
“That sonofabitch!” the reporter shouted, suddenly raving mad. “I’ll break him. I’ll hound him out of every job he gets for the rest of his life. Let me lay there and suffer, will he? While he pays more attention to the scummy miners than he does to me—ME! Kick loose, will he, when I grab at his feet, trying to get him to help me!”
I struggled to my feet. I staggered over to MacNab.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Do you feel like driving the shuttle? Can you make it?
I need to get to Marsport. Mines can blow up and the world come to an end, but the government wants its pretty reports made out on time.” I was using it as an excuse. Suddenly I couldn’t stay around the reporter any longer.
“Don’t you want to be a hero?” MacNab asked, with a speculative look in his eyes.
“Hell!” I exclaimed in disgust. I looked at the reporter and my lip curled at him. I had forgotten to be polite.
He caught the sneer, it even penetrated his thick hide. He started to make a rush at me, to carry his bravado to its limit. He thought better of it. I was standing, ready to find out if that jutting jaw was glass.
“Why, you cheap little stooge,” he shouted. “I’ll fix you, too. Hero, huh? Why I’ll show you up as the blackest little tinhorn chiseler that ever took a bribe!”
“Let’s go,” MacNab said to me in a tone of respect.
We started walking through the rubble toward the beat-up old shuttle.
I suppose, grandfather, that each of us, at one time or another, would like to feel he has done something significant—that the world recognizes a thing we have done—a special thing—a thing of valor. I suppose we consider recognition as the reward for valor. But now it has been brought home to me how cheap recognition can be—how often it serves only some ego-maniac’s desire to build himself through reflected glory. This is no reward for valor, grandfather. I would not have such a reward.
MacNab opened the door of the ship, and we went inside. My head was splitting with pain, and I sank down into my seat with thankfulness.
Without a word, MacNab went up into the driver’s seat and touched the starter button. The shuttle took off in a roar.
We began to climb. We climbed farther. It was not necessary to climb so high. Eons before, the mountain ranges on Mars had been worn down to rolling hills.
Wearily, I turned my eyes from the scene below, and looked in puzzlement toward MacNab. He was pawing at the levers, jerking them to and fro. They moved readily, too readily. They moved as if they were free to move, unencumbered by any pull upon them. The ship continued to climb.
MacNab looked back at me. His face was pale, but there was no fear in it.
“The controls snapped,” he said quietly. “I reported how worn they were, dozens of times, to the Company. They ignored my reports. Now they’ve snapped. I can’t control the ship.”
“There’s nothing to do?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he answered. “Nothing at all.”
“I’m glad,” I said, and was puzzled to hear myself saying it.
He looked at me strangely. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. Or rather, I guess I meant it for myself, without thinking about you.”
“Then you can say it for both of us,” he answered. He turned away and looked through the window in the nose of the ship. He was silent for a while, a few minutes. It was as if he felt the certainty of nothing to do, and did not pretend by futile motions to be doing anything. He knew the mechanism of the ship, what could be done in flight, and what could be done only on the ground.
It was a life raft, built to get passengers from a space liner to a landing place in emergency. No more suitable for continuous and commercial use than the olden rubber life rafts upon the sea of Earth. Except for greed and graft, it would not have been put into commercial use at all. And this time the men responsible would not be caught in their trap; they could still sit behind their desks and shake their heads and hypocritically say it was too bad, pilot must have been drinking.
“Up here,” MacNab called back to me, “you can see the stars. Come up and sit in the co-pilot’s seat. See the stars!” There was a singing ecstasy in his voice.
I left my seat and went up front.
“Just for the record,” I said, “not that I really care, but what about safety devices, escape hatches, things like that?”
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “On an ore shuttle?”
“I’m surprised the inspectors let it operate,” I commented.
“Are you?” He looked at me and smiled.
I said no more.
Yes, there were the stars beginning to show through the thin air of Mars.
MacNab was rapt again. He was in his beloved space, out among his glittering stars, the understandable stars which operated according to patterns of logic. The friendly stars—because they were not human. His eyes took on a glow to match the stars.
A strange impulse came over me. Have I a measure of ego, after all? Some futile urge to construct a monument to myself? An unworthy, human weakness, such as that?
At any rate, I took out my notebook and pencil from my pocket. I began to write. I write the new shorthand, very rapidly. It has taken me but a few minutes to jot down these concepts—all that has happened.
No, I think I am not writing to build a monument, after all. I think perhaps it is a summing up, a habit of analyzing, born of years of analyzing government regulations. I cannot let this end of life be government gobbledegook, with no sense in it. I must find out what it means.
The air is growing thinner. I know our moments are few. MacNab is leaning forward now, almost straining, as if he were trying to help the shuttle climb higher, higher into his beloved space before it falters, turns, and begins its straight downward plunge.
MacNab belongs to space and it is right that he should die in space.
And I? I belong nowhere. It does not matter where I die.
As with everyone else, I have often speculated on what I might do if I knew I must die immediately. Could I face the moment with courage?
I find it takes no courage. I find a sense of relief—almost release. I need no longer be an outcast—an honorable man in a world which knows no honor. Death reduces us all to the same level.
