Anderson turned away from him and regarded the statuette gravely. He
extended the bottle toward it, muttered a greeting, and drank. "I
wonder...."
The words hung there until Paresi twisted up out of his forlorn reverie
to bat them down. "Damn it--_what_ do you wonder?"
"Oh," said the Captain jovially, "I was just wondering what you'll be."
"What are you talking about?"
Anderson waved the bottle at the figurine, which called it to his
attention again, and so again he drank. "Johnny turned into what he
thinks he is. A little guy with a big victory. Hoskins, there, he's
going to be a slide-rule, jus' you wait and see. Ol' Ives, that's easy.
He's goin' to be a beer barrel, with beer in it. Always did have a head
on him, Ives did." He stopped to laugh immoderately at Paresi's
darkening face. "Me, I have no secrets no more. I'm going to be a coat
of arms--a useless philosophy rampant on a field of stars." He put the
open mouth of the bottle against his forehead and pressed it violently,
lowered it and touched the angry red ring it left between his eyes.
"Mark of the beast," he confided. "Caste mark. Zero, that's me and my
whole damn family. The die is cast, the caste has died." He grunted
appreciatively and turned again to Paresi. "But what's old Nicky going
to be?"
"Don't call me Nicky," said the doctor testily.
"I know," said the Captain, narrowing his eyes and laying one finger
alongside his nose. "A reference book, tha's what you'll be. A treatise
on the ... the post-nasal hysterectomy, or how to unbutton a man's
prejudices and take down his pride.... I swiped all that from
somewhere....
"No!" he shouted suddenly; then, with conspiratorial quiet, he said,
"You won't be no book, Nicky boy. Covers aren't hard enough. Not the
right type face. Get it?" he roared, and dug Paresi viciously in the
ribs. "Type face, it's a witticism."
Paresi bent away from the blow like a caterpillar being bitten by a
fire-ant. He said nothing.
"And finally," said the Captain, "you won't be a book because you got
... no ... spine." He leapt abruptly to his feet. "Well, what do you
know!"
He bent and scooped up an unaccountable object that rested by the
nearest shadows. It was a quarter-keg of beer.
He hefted it and thumped it heavily down on the table. "Come on, Nick,"
he chortled. "Gather ye round. Here's old Ives, like I said."
Paresi stared at the keg, his eyes stretched so wide open that the lids
moved visibly with his pulse. "Stop it, Anderson, you swine...."
The Captain tossed him a disgusted glance and a matching snort. From the
clutter of radar gear he pulled a screwdriver and a massive little
step-down transformer down on its handle. The bung disappeared
explosively inside the keg, and was replaced by a gout of white foam.
Paresi shrieked.
"Ah, shaddup," growled Anderson. He rummaged until he found a
tube-shield. He stripped off a small length of self-welding metal tape
and clapped it over the terminal-hole at the closed end of the shield,
making it into an adequate mug. He waited a moment while the weld
cooled, then tipped the keg until solid beer began to run with the foam.
He filled the improvised mug and extended it toward Paresi.
"Good ol' Ives," he said sentimentally. "Come on, Paresi. Have a drink
on Ives."
Paresi turned and covered his face like a frightened woman.
Anderson shrugged and drank the beer. "It's good beer," he said. He
glanced down at the doctor, who suddenly flung himself face down across
the couch with his head hanging out of sight on the opposite side, from
which came the sounds of heaving and choking.
"Poor ol' Nick," said the Captain sadly. He refilled the mug and sat
down. With his free hand he patted Paresi's back. "Can't take it. Poor,
poor ol' Nick...."
After that there was a deepening silence, a deepening blackness. Paresi
was quiet now, breathing very slowly, holding each breath, expelling air
and lying quiet for three full seconds before each inhalation, as if
breathing were a conscious effort--more; as if breathing were the whole
task, the entire end of existence. Anderson slumped lower and lower.
Each time he blinked his lids opened a fraction less, while the time his
eyes stayed closed became a fraction of a second longer. The cabin
waited as tensely as the taut pose of the rigid little victory trophy.
Then there was the music.
It was soft, grand music; the music of pageantry, cloth-of-gold and
scarlet vestments; pendant jewels and multicolored dimness shouldering
upward to be lost in vaulted stone. It was music which awaited the
accompaniment of whispers, thousands of awed, ritualistic sibilants
which would carry no knowable meaning and only one avowed purpose. Soft
music, soft, soft; not soft as to volume, for the volume grew and grew,
but soft with the softness of clouds which are soft for all their
mountain-size and brilliance; soft and living as a tiger's throat, soft
as a breast, soft as the act of drowning, and huge as a cloud.
Anderson made two moves: he raised his head, and he spun the beer in his
mug so its center surface sank and the bubbles whirled. With his head up
and his eyes down he sat watching the bubbles circle and slow.
Paresi rose slowly and went to the center of the small lighted space
left to them, and slowly he knelt. His arms came up and out, and his
upturned face was twisted and radiant.
Before him in the blackness there was--or perhaps there had been for
some time--a blue glow, almost as lightless as the surrounding dark, but
blue and physically deep for all that. Its depth increased rather than
its light. It became the ghost of a grotto, the mouth of a nameless
Place.
And in it was a person. A ... _presence_. It beckoned.