AN HONORABLE DEATH
From the arboretum at the far end of the patio to the landing stage of the transporter itself, the whole household was at sixes and sevens over the business of preparing the party for the celebration. As usual, Carter was having to oversee everything himself, otherwise it would not have gone right; and this was all the harder in that, of late, his enthusiasms seemed to have run down somewhat. He was conscious of a vague distaste for life as he found it, and the imminent approach of middle age, seeking him out even in the quiet backwater of this small, suburban planet? Whatever it was, things were moving even more slowly than usual this year. He had not even had time to get into his costume of a full dress suit (nineteenth to twentieth century) with tails, which he had chosen as not too dramatic, and yet kinder than most dress-ups to his tall, rather awkward figure—when the chime sounded, announcing the first arrival.
Dropping the suit on his bed, he went out, cutting across the patio toward the gathering room, where the landing stage of the transporter was—and almost ran headlong into one of the original native inhabitants of the planet, standing like a lean and bluish post with absolute rigidity in the center of the pretty little flagstone path.
“What are you doing here?” cried Carter?
The narrow, indigo, horselike face leaned confidentially down toward Carter’s own. And then Carter recognized the great mass of apple blossoms, like a swarming of creamy-winged moths, held to the inky chest.
“Oh—” began Carter, on a note of fury. Then he threw up his hands and took the mass of branches. Peering around the immovable alien and wincing, he got a glimpse of his imported apple tree. But it was not as badly violated as he had feared. “Thank you. Thank you,” he said, and waved the native out of the way.
But the native remained. Carter stared—then saw that in addition to the apple blossoms the thin and hairless creature, though no more dressed than his kind ever were, had in this instance contrived belts, garlands, and bracelets of native flowers for himself. The colors and patterns would be arranged to convey some special meaning—they always did. But right at the moment Carter was too annoyed and entirely too rushed to figure them out, though he did think it a little unusual the native should be holding a slim shaft of dark wood with a fire-hardened point. Hunting was most expressly forbidden to the natives.
“Now what?” said Carter. The native (a local chief, Carter suddenly recognized) lifted the spear and unexpectedly made several slow, stately hops, with his long legs flicking up and down above the scrubbed white of the flagstones—like an Earthly crane at its mating. “Oh, now, don’t tell me you want to dance!”
The native chief ceased his movements and went back to being a post again, staring out over Carter’s head as if at some horizon, lost and invisible beyond the iridescences of Carter’s dwelling walls. Carter groaned, pondered, and glanced anxiously ahead toward the gathering room, from which he could now hear the voice of Ona, already greeting the first guest with female twitters.
“All right,” he told the chief. “All right—this once. But only because it’s Escape Day Anniversary. And you’ll have to wait until after dinner.”
The native stepped aside and became rigid again. Carter hurried past into the gathering room, clutching the apple blossoms. His wife was talking to a short, brown-bearded man with an ivory-tinted guitar hanging by a broad, tan band over one red-and-white, checked-shirted shoulder.
“Ramy!” called Carter, hurrying up to them. The landing stage of the transporter, standing in the middle of the room, chimed again. “Oh, take these will you, dear?” He thrust the apple blossoms into Ona’s plump, bare arms. “The chief. In honor of the day. You know how they are—and I had to promise he could dance after dinner.” She stared, her soft, pale face upturned to him. “I couldn’t help it.”
He turned and hurried into the landing stage, from the small round platform of which were now stepping down a short, academic, elderly man with wispy gray hair and a rather fat, button-nosed woman of the same age, both wearing the ancient Ionian chiton as their costume. Carter had warned Ona against wearing a chiton, for the very reason that these two might show up in the same dress. He allowed himself a small twinge of satisfaction at the thought of her ballroom gown as he went hastily now to greet them.
“Doctor!” he said. “Lidi! Here you are!” He shook hands with the doctor. “Happy Escape Day to both of you.”
“I was sure we’d be late,” said Lidi, holding firmly to the folds of her chiton with both hands. “The public terminal on Arcturus Five was so crowded. And the doctor won’t hurry no matter what I say—” She looked over at her husband, but he, busy greeting Ona, ignored her.
The chime sounded again and two women, quite obviously sisters in spite of the fact that they were wearing dissimilar costumes, appeared on the platform. One was dressed in a perfectly ordinary everyday kilt and tunic—no costume at all. The other wore a close, unidentifiable sort of suit of some gray material and made straight for Carter.
“Cart!” she cried, taking one of his hands in both of her own and pumping it heartily. “Happy Escape Day.” She beamed at him from a somewhat plain, strong-featured face, sharply made up. “Ani and I—” She looked around for her sister and saw the kilt and tunic already drifting in rather dreamlike and unconscious fashion toward the perambulating bar at the far end of the room. “I,” she corrected herself hastily, “couldn’t wait to get here. Who else is coming?”
“Just what you see, Totsa,” said Carter, indicating those present with a wide-flung hand. “We thought a small party this year—a little, quiet gathering—”
“So nice! And what do you think of my costume?” she revolved slowly for his appraisal.
“Why—good, very good.”
“Now!” Totsa came back to face him. “You can’t guess what it is at all.”
“Of course I can,” said Carter heartily.
“Well, then, what is it?”
“Oh, well, perhaps I won’t tell you, then,” said Carter.
A small head with wispy gray hair intruded into the circle of their conversation. “An artistic rendering of the space suitings worn by those two intrepid pioneers who this day, four hundred and twenty years ago, burst free in their tiny ship from the iron grip of Earth’s prisoning gravitation?”
Totsa shouted in triumph. “I knew you’d know, Doctor! Trust a philosophical researcher to catch on. Carter hadn’t the slightest notion. Not an inkling!”
“A host is a host is a host,” said Carter. “Excuse me, I’ve got to get into my own costume.”
He went out again and back across the patio. The outer air felt pleasantly cool on his warm face. He hoped that the implications of his last remark—that he had merely been being polite in pretending to be baffled by the significance of her costume—had got across to Totsa, but probably it had not. She would interpret it as an attempt to cover up his failure to recognize her costume by being cryptic. The rapier was wasted on the thick hide of such a woman. And to think he once . . . you had to use a club. And the worst of it was, he had grasped the meaning of her costume immediately. He had merely been being playful in refusing to admit it . . .
The native chief was still standing unmoved where Carter had left him, still waiting for his moment.
“Get out of the way, can’t you?” said Carter irritably, as he shouldered by.
The chief retreated one long ostrichlike step until he stood half-obscured in the shadow of a trellis of roses. Carter went on into the bedroom.
His suit was laid out for him and he climbed into the clumsy garments, his mind busy on the schedule of the evening ahead. The local star that served as this planet’s sun (one of the Pleiades, Asterope) would be down in an hour and a half, but the luminosity of the interstellar space in this galactic region made the sky bright for hours after a setting, and the fireworks could not possibly go on until that died down.
Carter had designed the set piece of the finale himself—a vintage space rocket curving up from a representation of the Earth, into a firmament of stars, and changing into a star itself as it dwindled. It would be unthinkable to waste this against a broad band of glowing rarefied matter just above the western horizon.
Accordingly, there was really no choice about the schedule. At least five hours before the thought of fireworks could be entertained. Carter, hooking his tie into place around his neck before a section of his bedroom wall set on reflection, computed in his head. The cocktail session now starting would be good for two and a half, possibly three hours. He dared not stretch it out any longer than that or Ani would be sure to get drunk. As it was, it would be bad enough with a full cocktail session and wine with the dinner. But perhaps Totsa could keep her under control. At any rate—three, and an hour and a half for dinner. No matter how it was figured, there would be half an hour or more to fill in there.
Well—Carter worked his way into his dress coat—he could make his usual small speech in honor of the occasion. And—oh, yes, of course, there was the chief. The native dances were actually meaningless, boring things, but then he was the inquiring type of mind. Still, the others might find it funny enough, or interesting for a single performance.
Buttoning up his coat, he went back out across the patio, feeling more kindly toward the native than he had since the moment of his first appearance. Passing him this time, Carter thought to stop and ask, “Would you like something to eat?”
Remote, shiny, mottled by the shadow of the rose leaves, the native neither moved nor answered, and Carter hurried on with a distinct feeling of relief. He had always made it a point to keep some native food on hand for just such an emergency as this—after all, they got hungry, too. But it was a definite godsend not to have to stop now, when he was so busy, and see the stuff properly prepared and provided for this uninvited and unexpected guest.
The humans had all moved out of the gathering room by the time he reached it and into the main lounge with its more complete bar and mobile chairs. On entering, he saw that they had already split up into three different and, in a way, inevitable groups. His wife and the doctor’s were at gossip in a corner; Ramy was playing his guitar and singing in a low, not unpleasant, though hoarse voice to Ani, who sat drink in hand, gazing past him with a half-smile into the changing colors of the wall behind him. Totsa and the doctor were in a discussion at the bar. Carter joined them.
“—and I’m quite prepared to believe it,” the doctor was saying in his gentle, precise tones as Carter came up. “Well, very good, Cart.” He nodded at Carter’s costume.
“You think so?” said Carter, feeling his face warm pleasantly. “Awkward get-up, but—I don’t know, it just struck me this year.” He punched for a lime brandy and watched with pleasure as the bar disgorged the brimming glass by his waiting hand.
“You look armored in it, Cart,” Totsa said.
“Thrice-armed is he—” Carter acknowledged the compliment and sipped on his glass. He glanced at the doctor to see if the quotation had registered, but the doctor was already leaning over to receive a refill in his own glass.
“Have you any idea what this man’s been telling me?” demanded Totsa, swiveling toward Carter. “He insists we’re doomed. Literally doomed!”
“I’ve no doubt we are—” began Carter. But before he could expand on this agreement with the explanation that he meant in the larger sense, she was foaming over him in a tidal wave of conversation.
“Well, I don’t pretend to be unobjective about it. After all, who are we to survive? But really—how ridiculous! And you back him up just like that, blindly, without the slightest notion of what he’s been talking about!”
“A theory only, Totsa,” said the doctor, quite unruffled.
“I wouldn’t honor it by even calling it a theory!”
“Perhaps,” said Carter, sipping on his lime brandy, “if I knew a little more about what you two were—”
* * *
END OF SAMPLE
Buy this Ebook to finish reading the above story.