Fallen Star (22 page)

The fact that nearly everything was white helped. I had been used to that, just before Elvers pulled his trigger, and still
my strongest, most recent memory of sight was that of looking for the outlines of things in a white world where colours did
not code, but only decorated.

With procaine in my eyes to ease the burning, they let me walk up and down corridors where there was nothing special to see,
and then they tried me in rooms with pieces of static meaninglessly-placed furniture. I did well. By this time I was able
to ask coherently after Harriet and Jayne and Harry, and was told that they were all right here with me on Ellesmere—which
was the first time I had been told where I was.

You mean I’m still in Alert?

Yes—they said—at the base hospital.

But where’s the wind?

Oh, you can’t hear the wind here—indulgently—we’re far underground. Now, Mr. Cole, how many fingers am I holding up?

Several. My God. When can I go home?

In a while. But
exactly
how many fingers?

That depends. How many pies do you need fingers for?

(Better let him rest a bit.)

It went on like that. Once in that wilderness which I could no longer hear howling, they brought in a mass of paper flowers
which they said somebody had sent me, and peered with lights into my eyes while I tried, under instruction, to tell one dusty
blossom from another. They were very satisfied with the results. The next day I had a copy—I am not making this up—of “Peter
Rabbit” in 36-point type. I recited it faultlessly, as indeed I had been able to do at the age of two, when I didn’t know
even one letter of the alphabet from another, but I did know at which word the page ought to be turned. I wondered how many
thousands of copies of that precise edition of the book they had bought—and when; had they been stocking “Peter Rabbit” against
global war when I was two?

But luck gave them an accurate picture of my progress. I could have recited the text in smaller type than that; they just
did not ask me to try. Any idiot knows that the key line on the eye chart reads FELOPZD, if he’s worn glasses from childhood;
whether he can see it or not—but evidently the Department of Defence wasn’t just any idiot. Had they brought me a letter in
smaller type, I would have broken my heart trying to
read
that, and failed; but they knew better than that; they never brought me any letters, if indeed any were being sent me at
Alert, and so I passed.

That was, evidently, good enough for them. The next day they dressed me in issue clothes and took me on a breathtaking elevator
ride. I had really had no idea how deeply that hospital was dug into the rock until then. The elevator settled itself with
infinite slow caution when it reached its stop—like all hospital elevators, it was designed for surgical patients who must
be rolled across the threshold on their litters without any appreciable jar—but even before it nudged itself that last half-inch
into true, I could hear the winds again, even through the doors of the cab. When they glided apart, the sound came in around
me in a rush of thin turbulence. I felt cold all over again.

It was bright and cheerfully sterile up there, with many windows, all of them blank and brilliant with nascent sunlight illuminating
nothing. The orderlies helped me—I was still throwing my foot a little where the invisible dog had cut
a
stabilizing muscle free of its attachment; they had saved the foot, but the muscle had withered before they’d been able to
hook it up again. We walked down a short stretch of corridor into a roomful of people.

I recognized five of them, including Col. McKinley and his aide. Jayne was there, sitting with her ankles crossed and her
hands folded in her lap. her face pale, composed, and without make-up. Across the room from me were Harry and Harriet, sitting
close together. I could not see their expressions; my eyesight wasn’t that good yet, especially since they had their backs
to a blazing window; they were little more than silhouettes. Nevertheless, just the way they were sitting suggested fright,
confusion, and a stubborn defiance. Also, they were holding hands, which did not require any interpretation; time and the
ice had shown them the one way out.

“Good morning, Mr. Cole,” Col. McKinley said. “Glad you’re making such good progress. Please sit down. There are a few questions
we’d like to ask.”

I could see that, all right. McKinley and his aide were seated behind a long table, together with two Army officers wearing
the insignia of the Attorney General’s Corps, and two enlisted men running stenotype machines.

“This looks like a court martial,” I said. “Either that, or you’ve got a unique notion of how to assemble a reception committee.
Jayne, have you been allowed to see Harry and Harriet before now? Obviously they’ve been separated from each other.”

Jayne shook her head. The Colonel tapped a pencil on the tabletop.

“Please, Mr. Cole,” he said. “This is not a court martial. You know very well that we can’t conduct legal proceedings against
civilians. It’s simply an informal board of inquiry. We communicated the bare facts of your arrival here to Washington, and
they authorized us to proceed. Obviously it would be impossible to assemble a grand jury in this part of the world.”

“What do you consider the bare facts?” I said. “To get such an authorization, you must have come damn close to rendering a
true bill of murder while you were making the request!”

He leaned forward and looked at me with slowly blinking eyes; I could see them turning blank, dark, blank, dark.

“Well, Mr. Cole,” he said coldly, “what would you call it? We brought back one severely mangled man with a crushed
skull, and another with a fatal gunshot wound in the chest. The shot was fired point-blank. We also brought back the weapon,
and a very simple series of checks showed that it was the one used in both cases. There are two members of your advance base
crew that we can’t account for at all, except by reference to your S.O.S. to Mr. Chain—which might have told the truth, and
then again might not. I told Washington no more than that. Since your expedition was an official Air Force mission, it was
quite sufficient, I assure you.”

He tapped twice more with the pencil, and then added: “I could well have done a little reading between the lines, Mr. Cole.
There is something about the North that makes a man forget where he came from. He feels isolated in a world of his own—as
though anything that happens to him here has no reference at all to the outside world. And mixed-sex expeditions have peculiar
problems of their own, no matter where they happen to be exploring. I said none of this, but I had to consider it.”

“I see,” I said. “When you reported your simple checks, you didn’t go into any advanced, highly technical details about the
fingerprints on the rifle, I suppose.”

He flushed slightly. “We checked the prints,” he said. “Naturally.”

“Before, or after?”

“After,” he said curtly, leaning back in his chair.

“Sure. There’s a right way, a wrong way, and an Army way —anywhere in the world. I see it also holds true for the Air Force.
What did the prints show?”

He was silent for several seconds. Then he said:

“Well, Mr. Cole, suppose you tell me. You seem to think you’re better qualified at legal procedures than we are.”

“I don’t know a tort from a tart,” I said. “All I know is the press, and the law of libel, and the laws relating to invasion
of privacy : that’s required of every newsman down to the lowliest cub. If you radioed your request to Washington, we’re being
tried unofficially for murder in every paper in the United States, right now—unless, of course, you sent the request in code.
Did you?”

He said nothing.

“I thought so; you sent it in clear. Evidently we’re not the only ones who are a little detached from the outside world. Would
you care to show me a copy of any newspaper you
got in your most recent mail? No? Hell, man, you know less about law than I do, and I’ve already admitted I’m a total incompetent.
As for those two shavetails with the Ay Gee lapel jewellery, they must be ambulance-chasers nobody wanted back stateside.”

Both the second lieutenants stiffened and bristled; so did McKinley’s aide.

“You’d better watch your language,” the aide said in a high, clear, unpleasantly penetrating voice. “You don’t seem to realize——”

McKinley flagged him down; the Colonel seemed to be repressing something perilously close to a sour smile.

“These officers,” he said, “happen to be experts in international law. We couldn’t operate up here without them, as I’m sure
you’ll appreciate.”

“I’ll give them that. All the same, if this were a civil action I’d have them up to their necks in malpractice suits by tomorrow
morning. Now I’ll answer your question. You found no prints on the Parkchester but Elvers’. And your serology lab right here
in the hospital was able to identify what was left of Elvers by blood-typing, and gastric analysis of the dead dogs; you’re
in no doubt about what happened to him. In fact, you’ve been unable to shake our account of what happened in any particular
whatsoever, and you’re pumping us now in a last desperate hope of salvaging a colossal blunder. Go on, deny it.”

“I deny it,” Col. McKinley said, his face wooden once more.

“Harry, have they been grilling you about this?”

“Twice a day,” Harry said, grimacing.

“Harriet?”

“Me too.”

“Fine,” I said “Colonel McKinley, you know yourself that neither of these two kids were in our advance camp, and couldn’t
stand up as anything but hearsay witnesses for ten seconds. They couldn’t know anything that we hadn’t told them by radio—which
you would have intercepted, just as you overheard our call for help before Harry relayed it. So any questions you asked them
represented the worst kind of a forlorn hope. You’ve been tormenting them solely to save your next promotion—which looks mighty
remote right now. Let’s hear you deny that.”

“For an incompetent, you’re a remarkably adept prosecutor,” McKinley said. His face, normally red from constant exposure,
was mottled with lobster-coloured patches.

“I’m a human being, God damn it,” I said savagely. “I wouldn’t be surprised if your Public Information Officer didn’t put
you up to this. From his point of view it must have been a sensational break, and to hell with the suffering it would cause.
Is that right?”

“Lieutenant Church asked for permission to send out a release,” McKinley said expressionlessly. “I suppose it’s possible that
he influenced my thinking. The responsibility for the decision, however, is entirely mine.”

I had to admire him for that, furious though I was. McKinley’s record, as I found out later, is clean; he had never been in
a position to bring off anything spectacularly heroic, but he is one of those unimaginative, workhorse career officers who
hold the armed services together between heroes. His admission redoubled my conviction that he had been booby-trapped by some
staff underlings intent on pulling a coup.

“Lieutenant Church never stopped to think that one of his pawns was a newspaperman,” I said. “Or maybe he didn’t know that
the Air Force Information Services are quite open about showing their manuals and other P.I.O. directives to accredited reporters,
especially those on science beats. I seem to remember that A.F.M. One-Ninety dash Four defines ‘sensationalism and exaggeration’
as
Not Releasable.
The same goes for ‘terminology or phraseology tending to convict the accused in advance trial’—I remember that one verbatim
because of the typo, the omitted ‘of’ before the last word. Would you like to show me his release? You might as well; after
all, it’s in the public domain now.”

McKinley nodded slightly to his aide, who was wearing an expression not far removed from open hatred. With a last glare at
me, the man got up and left.

I was sure of my grounds now. For a while there, especially at the start, I had only been shadow-boxing. I got up. The orderlies
stumbled after me, but I’d caught them by surprise. I was standing beside Harry and Harriet before they could catch up with
me; I stared at them until they went away.

Harry looked up at me without making any attempt to suppress his grin. Harriet’s eyes, however, were full of tears.

“Great, by God,” Harry said under his breath. “I thought
we were in a hell of a spot until now. Geoffrey knew what he was doing when he hired you on, Julian.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said in a low voice. “He had no eye for people at all, or he’d have left me home. And we
are
in a hell of a spot. Getting out from under this phony grand jury is child’s play—but we’re already ruined back home. Harriet
especially. McKinley’s ignorance is going to cost you your whole damn career up to now, carrot-top. No agency will sign you
on after this, let alone an industry p.r. department. You know that, don’t you?”

Harriet nodded. “I don’t care,” she said, almost inaudibly. She did not seem to dare raising her voice above a whisper. “It
was my own fault. If I’d stuck to Geoffrey, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. But at least I’m alive. But Julian, what about
you? Your reputation, your family “

“One mountain at a time,” I said. “You two are in love, aren’t you?”

The tears came running down Harriet’s cheeks. She reached out both of her hands for mine.

“No, Harriet, it doesn’t hurt me. I do love you, and I wish I’d known it before. But, forgive me, I love two other women,
too. Harry, it’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said gruffly.

“All right. I’m satisfied. Stick to it; you’ll need it.”

I disengaged Harriet’s hands as gently as I could and turned away. The wind behind them rose desolately. With care, I walked
to Jayne; I had been facing the light so long that the centre of the room was almost blotted out by floating purple-and-gold
rectangles. By the time I found her, my bad foot was hurting abominably, and so I got down on that knee, more or less necessarily.
The officers behind me rustled their papers busily; in my heart I thanked them and forgot them in a split second.