He sat down.
She didn't recline again. Her dress went opaque, but her voice grew
silken once more. "Listen, Clarey, I don't want you to think we're
cheating you out of anything we promised. Even though you stayed only
five years, you're going to have it all. You'll have U-E status--"
"What do I want that for?"
"Doesn't it mean anything to you any more, Clarey? It used to mean a
lot, though you denied it even to yourself."
"Did it?" He forced his thoughts back through time. "I suppose it did.
But I've changed. You know, those five years on Damorlan seem like--"
"Like a lifetime," she finished. "Couldn't we dispense with the
clichés?"
"On Damorlan the things I said were fresh and interesting. On Damorlan
I was somebody pretty special. I'd rather be a big second-hand fish in
a small primitive puddle. Isn't there some way--"
"No way at all, Clarey! The puddle's drying up. We've got a nice
aquarium ready for you. Why not dive in gracefully?"
"It was my puddle," he said. "I belonged."
* * * * *
She closed her eyes and sank back into the chair which arched to meet
the arch of her body. Lying down, she didn't look nearly as tall. "All
right, let's give the whole opera one final run-through. Nobody cared
for you on Earth; on Damorlan your friends liked you; your wife loved
you. On Earth you never felt welcome and/or appreciated; on Damorlan
you felt both welcome and appreciated. On Earth--"
He was stung out of his apathy. "That's right! I'm not saying I'm
unique, only that I fitted--"
"How about trying to look at it from another point of view? Did it ever
occur to you that, if the Damorlanti accepted you, so might your own
people, if you approached them in the same way? Did you ever _try_ to
make friends on Earth?"
"But on Earth I shouldn't have to. They were my own people."
"Aha!" she cried gleefully.
"I mean--well, General Spano said it would be wrong to stoop to
hypocrisy to win the friendship of my own people; that, if I did, their
friendship wouldn't be worth anything. You can't buy friendship."
"You bought your ulerin. Does it play any the worse because you paid
for it? Does it mean any the less to you?"
"What you're getting at," he said cautiously, "is that that's the way
to make friends? By being a hypocrite?"
"Was it a sham with the Damorlanti?"
He had to stop for a moment before he could bring out an answer. "It
started out as a sham--but I really got to like them afterward. Then
it was real."
"So then you weren't a hypocrite, Clarey." Her voice grew more
resonant. "Open yourself to people, show them that you want to be
friends. Basically, everybody's shy and timid inside."
"Like you?" he said, casting an ironical glance at her dress.
"That's still the outside," she smiled, making no move to adjust it.
"Listen to me, Clarey, and don't go off on sidetracks: The people of
Earth are your own people. Your loyalties have always been with them."
She had almost had him convinced, but this he couldn't swallow. "If my
loyalties had been with Earth, I would have sent back reports of the
trouble. But I didn't. I tried to stop it from happening. There just
wasn't anything I could do."
"The deep-probe never lies, Clarey. You didn't really try to stop it."
She paused, and then went on deliberately: "Because you could have
stopped it, you know quite easily."
"There was nothing I could have done," he stated. "Nothing."
"Remember the first time the staff ship came? Just before you left for
Barshwat, the woman told you she suspected you were an Earthman. You
were afraid for her. Do you remember that?"
He nodded. Yes, he remembered how terrified he had been then, how
relieved afterward, thinking everything was going to be all right.
Lucky he hadn't realized the truth, or he wouldn't have had those extra
years of happiness.
* * * * *
Han went on remorselessly: "And you thought if only something would
happen to you en route, she would be safe. We might guess why it had
happened, but we couldn't know for sure. We'd have had to start all
over again."
He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't think. She spaced each word
carefully, sweetly. "You were quite right. Because you were the only
man on Earth, Clarey, who had the particular physical requirements and
the particular kind of mental instability that we needed for the job.
You just said you weren't unique, Clarey. You were too modest; you are.
If you'd killed yourself then, your death would have served a purpose;
you would have died a hero. Kill yourself now and you die a coward."
"But at least I'd be dead. I wouldn't have to live with a coward for
the rest of my life."
"You're not a coward, Clarey," she said. "You wouldn't admit it, but
you are and always have been a patriot. To you, Earth came first. It's
as simple as that."
She had deep-probed his mind. She must know his true feelings. There
was no gainsaying that. He could know only his surface thoughts; she
knew what lay behind and beneath. And, he reminded himself, at the end
the Damorlanti were actually turning on him.
"Try to think of the whole thing as a course in charm that you've
passed with flying colors," she said.
"It seems rather an expensive way of making me charming," he couldn't
help saying, with the last struggle of something that was dying in him,
something alien that perhaps should never have been there in the first
place.
"Whole civilizations have been sacrificed for nothing at all. This one
will not be sacrificed, only quarantined. But its contribution could be
of cosmic magnitude."
"Now what are you going to try to sell me?" he asked drearily. "Are
you saying that the essence of the Damorlant civilization is going to
live on in me, that I carry its heritage inside myself, and so I have a
tremendous responsibility to the Damorlanti on my shoulders?"
She laughed. "You're really getting sharp, Clarey. If you stayed in the
service, you could be one of our best operatives. But you're not going
to stay in the service. Yours is a higher destiny. Here, catch!"
She tossed him something that glittered as it arched through the air.
It was a U-E identcube, made out in his name. He had only seen them at
a distance, and now he was holding one warm and gleaming in his hand,
with his name and his face in it. His face ... and yet not his face.
"That's what you're going to look like when the plastosurgeons get
through," she explained. "They'll pigment your eyes and skin and hair,
and they may be able to add a few inches to your height. Though I think
you actually have grown a little. Something about the air, or, more
likely, the food."
"Embelsira thought I was handsome the way I was. Embelsira...."
But Embelsira was light-years away. Embelsira was part of a fading
dream--and he was awakening now to reality.
"Look at the cube. Look at your status symbol."
He looked at it, and he kept on looking at it. He couldn't tear his
eyes away. He was hypnotized by the golden glitter of it, the golden
meaning of it. "Musician," he said aloud. "Musician...." A dream word,
a magic word. He hadn't thought of it for years, but this he didn't
have to reach back for. Once touched on, it surged over him, complete
with its memories.
* * * * *
But she had made it meaningless, too. He managed to tear a laugh out of
his throat. "Spano said I'd be able to buy the Musicians' Guild when I
had my million and a half. Apparently you've been able to bargain them
down."
"This cost nothing except the standard initiation fee," she told him.
"You came by it honestly--through your music, nothing else. And you
have more than a million and a half credits, Clarey--nearly ten times
that, with more pouring in' every day."
She touched a boss on the side of her chair and white light hazed
around them. "I think we're close enough to Earth to get some of the
high-power tri-dis," she said, "although we can't expect perfect
reception."
Blurrily, a show formed--a variety show. At first it seemed the same
sort of thing that he remembered dimly, more interesting now because
it had almost the character of novelty. Then an ornate young man
appeared and it took deeper significance. He was carrying a musical
instrument--refined, machined, carefully pitched. He played music on
the ulerin while a trio sang insipid Terrestrial words. "Love Is a
Guiding Star" they called it, but that didn't matter. It was one of the
tunes Clarey had taped.
She touched another boss. The blur reformed to a symphony orchestra,
playing as background music to a soloist with another ulerin. "That's
your First Ulerin Concerto," she said. "There are three more."
Another program was beginning, an account of the tribulations of an
unfortunate Plutonian family. It faded in to the strains of ulerin
music, to a tune of Clarey's. If they could have endured it to the end,
she told him, it would have faded out the same way. "Every time they
play it," she said, "somewhere on Earth a cash register rings for you.
And this one's a daily program."
He watched transfixed and transfigured as program after program
featured his music, his ulerin.
"Not just on Earth," Han said, "but on all the civilized planets, even
in a few of the more sophisticated primitive ones. You're a famous man,
Clarey. Earth is waiting for you, literally and figuratively. There'll
be ulerin orchestras to greet you at the field; we sent a relay ahead
to let them know you were coming."
But his mind was slowly alerting itself. "And where am I supposed to be
coming from, then, since they're never to hear about Damorlan?"
"They've been told that you retired to a lonely asteroid to work--to
perfect your art and its instrument."
Of course they couldn't divulge the truth about Damorlan. "It seems a
little unfair, though," he said.
"Why unfair? After all, Clarey, the music is yours. You took Damorlan's
melodies and made them into music. You took their ulerin and made it
into a musical instrument. They're all yours, every note and bladder of
them."
She reached over and put out a hand to him. "And I'm yours, too,
Clarey, if you want me," she breathed. There was obviously no doubt in
her mind that he did want her. And in his, too. One didn't reject the
Secretary of Space.
He took the chilly hand in his. The skin was odd in texture. I'm
imagining things, he thought. It's a long time since I touched a human
female's hand.
"I must be a very important Musician," he said aloud.
* * * * *
She nodded, not pretending to misunderstand. "Yes, important enough to
rate the original and not a reasonable facsimile. You're a lucky man,
Clarey." And then she smiled up at him. "I can be warm and tender, I
assure you."
It took him a moment to realize what she meant. For a moment he had
that pang again. She would never be the same as Embelsira, but a man
needed change to develop.
He was still troubled, though. "I want to do _something_. Even an empty
gesture's better than none at all. The last few months, I started
putting together a longer thing; I guess it could be a symphony. When I
finish it, I'd like to call it the 'Damorlant Symphony.'"
"Why not?" she said. He thought she was humoring him, but she added,
"They'll think you just picked the name from an astrogation chart."
In a final burst of irony he dedicated the "Damorlant Symphony" to the
human race, but, as usual, he was misunderstood. In fact, one of the
music critics--all of whom were enthusiastic over the new work--wrote,
"At last we have a great musician who is also a great humanist."
Eventually Clarey forgot his original intent and came to believe it
himself.