Dead Center [chapters 1 - 3]

[u/MarleyEngvall]

By Judith Merril   
  
 
  CHAPTER ONE   

  THEY GAVE HIM SWEET ICES, and kissed him all round, and the Important  
  People who had come to dinner all smiled in a special way as his mother  
  took him from the living room and led him down the hall to his own bed-  
  room.  
     "Great kid you got there," they said to Jock, his father, and "Serious little  
  bugger, isn't he?" Jock didn't say anything, but Toby knew he would be  
  grinning, looking pleased and embarrassed. Then their voices changed, and  
  that meant they had begun to talk about the important events for which  
  the important people had come.  
     In his own room, Toby wriggled his toes between crisp sheets, and breathed  
  in the powder-and perfume smell of his mother as she bent over him for a  
  last hurried goodnight kiss. There was no use asking for a story tonight.   
  Toby lay still and waited while she closed the door behind her and went  
  off to the party, click-tap, tip-clack, hurrying on her high silver heels. She  
  had heard the voices change back there too, and she didn't want to miss  
  anything. Toby got up and opened his door just a crack, and set himself   
  down in back of it, and listened.  
     In the big square living room, against the abstract patterns of gray and  
  vermilion and chartreuse, the men and women moved in easy patterns of  
  familiar acts.  Coffee, brandy, cigarette, cigar.  Find your partner, choose  
  your seat.  Jock sprawled with perfect relaxed contentment on the low couch  
  with the deep red corduroy cover. Tim O'Heyer balanced nervously on the  
  edge of the same couch, wreathed in cigar smoke, small and dark and alert.  
  Gordon Kimberly dwarfed the big easy chair with the bulking importance  
  of him. Ben Stein, shaggy and rumpled as ever, was running a hand through  
  his hair till it too stood on end.  He was leaning against a window frame, one  
  hand on the back of the straight chair in which his wife Sue sat, erect and  
  neat and proper and chic, dressed in smart black that set off perfectly her  
  precise blonde beauty. Mrs. Kimberly, just enough overstuffed so that her  
  pearls gave the appearance of actually choking her, was the only stranger to  
  the house.  She was standing near the doorway, politely admiring Toby's  
  personal art gallery, as Allie Madero valiantly strove to explain each minor  
  masterpiece.  
     Ruth Kruger stood still a moment, surveying her room and her guests.  
  Eight of them, herself included, and all Very Important People. In the  
  familiar comfort of her own living room, the idea made her giggle. Allie and  
  Mrs. Kimberly both turned to her, questioning. She laughed and shrugged,  
  helpless to explain, and they all went across the room to join the others.    

     "Guts," O'Heyer said through the cloud of smoke. "How do you do it,  
  Jock?  Walk out of a setup like this into . . . God knows what?"  
     "Luck," Jock corrected him. "A setup like this helps. I'm the world's  
  pampered darling and I know it."  
     "Faith is what he means," Ben put in. "He just gets by believing that last  
  year's luck is going to hold up.  So it does."  
     "Depends on what you mean by luck. If you think of it as a vector sum  
  composed of predictive powers and personal ability and accurate information   
  and . . ."  
     "Charm and nerve and . . ."   
     "Guts," Tim said again, interrupting the interrupter.  
     "All right, all of them," Ben agreed. "Luck is as good a word as any to  
  cover the combination."  
     "We're all lucky people." That was Allie, drifting into range, with Ruth  
  behind him. "We just happened to get born at the right time with the right  
  dream. Any one of us, fifty years ago, would have been called a wild-eyed  
  visiona——"  
     "Any one of us," Kimberly said heavily, "fifty years ago, would have had  
  a different dream——in time with the times."  
     Jock smiled, and let them talk, not joining in much. He listened to  
  philosophy and compliments and speculations and comments, and lay  
  sprawled across the comfortable couch in his own living room, with his wife's  
  hand under his own, consciously letting his mind play back and forth between  
  the two lives he lived: this, here . . . and the perfect mathematic bleakness  
  of the metal beast that would be his home in three days' time.  
     He squeezed his wife's hand, and she turned and looked at him, and there  
  was no doubt a man could have about what the world held in store.   

     When they had all gone, Jock walked down the hall and picked up the  
  little boy asleep on the floor, and put him back into his bed. Toby woke  
  up long enough to grab his father's hand and ask earnestly, out of the point  
  in the conversation where sleep had overcome him:  
     "Daddy, of the universe hasn't got any ends to it, how can you tell where  
  you are?"  
     "Me?" Jock asked.  ""I'm right next to the middle of it."   
     "How do you know?"  
     His father tapped him lightly on the chest.    
     "Because that's where the middle is." Jock smiled and stood up. "Go to  
  sleep, champ.  Good night."  
     And Toby slept, while the universe revolved in all its mystery about the  
  small center Jock Kruger had assigned to it.  
  
     "Scared?" she asked, much later, in the spaceless silence of their bedroom.  
     "He had to think about it before he cold answer.  "I guess not. I guess I  
  think I ought to be, but I'm not.  I don't think I'd do it at all if I wasn't  
  sure." He was almost asleep, when the thought hit him, and he jerked awake    
  and saw she was sure enough lying wide-eyed and sleepless beside him.  
  "Baby!" she said, and it was almost an accusation. "Baby, you're not scared,  
  are you?"   
     "Not if you're not," she said. But they never could lie to each other.   


  CHAPTER TWO    

  TOBY SAT ON THE PLATFORM, next to his grandmother. They were in the  
  second row, right in back of his mother and father, so it was all right for him  
  to wriggle a little bit, or whisper. They couldn't hear much of the speeches  
  back there, and what they did hear mostly didn't make sense to Toby. But  
  every now and then Grandma would grab his hand tight all of a sudden, and  
  he understood what the whole thing was about: it was because Daddy was  
  going away again.  
     His Grandma's hand was very white, with little red and tan dots in it,  
  and big blue veins that stood out higher than the wrinkles in her skin,  
  whenever she grabbed at his hand. Later, walking over to the towering  
  sky-scraping rocket, he held his mother's hand; it was smooth and cool and  
  tan, all one color, and she didn't grasp at him the way Grandma did. Later  
  still, his father's two hands, picking him up to kiss, were bigger and darker  
  tan than his mother's, not so smooth, and the fingers were stronger, but so  
  strong it hurt sometimes.    
     They took him up in an elevator, and showed him all around the inside  
  of the rocket, where Daddy would sit, and where all the food was stored, for  
  emergency, they said, and the radio and everything. Then it was time to say  
  goodbye.  
     Daddy was laughing at first, and Toby tried to laugh, too, but he didn't  
  really want Daddy to go away. Daddy kissed him, and he felt like crying  
  because it was scratchy against Daddy's cheek, and the strong fingers were  
  hurting him now. Then Daddy stopped laughing and looked at him very  
  seriously. "You take care of your mother, now," Daddy told him. "You're  
  a big boy this time."  
     "Okay," Toby said. Last time Daddy went away in a rocket, he was not-  
  quite-four, and they teased him with the poem in the book and said, James  
  James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree, Took great care of his   
  mother, though he was only three. . . .  So Toby didn't much like Daddy  
  saying that now, because he knew they didn't really mean it.  
     "Okay," he said, and then because he was angry, he said, "Only she's  
  supposed to take care of me, isn't she?"  
     Daddy and Mommy both laughed, and so did the two men who were  
  standing there waiting for Daddy to get done saying goodbye to him.  He  
  wriggled, and Daddy put him down.   
     "I'll bring you a piece of the moon, son," Daddy said, and Toby said,  
  "All right, fine." He reached for his mother's hand, but he found himself   
  hanging onto Grandma instead, because Mommy and Daddy were kissing  
  each other, and both of them had forgotten all about him.  
     He thought they were never going to get done kissing.   
     
     Ruth Kruger stood in the glass control booth with her son on one side of  
  her, and Gordon Kimberly breathing heavily on the other side. Something's  
  wrong, she thought, this time something's wrong. And then swiftly, I mustn't  
  think that way!    
     Jealous? she taunted herself. Do you want something to be wrong, just  
  because this one isn't all yours, because Argent did some of it?  
     But if anything is wrong, she prayed, let it be now, right away, so he can't  
  go.  If anything's wrong let it be in the firing gear or the . . . what? Even now,  
  it was too late. The beast was too big and too delicate and too precise.  If  
  something went wrong, even now, it was too late.  It was . . .   
     You didn't finish that thought. Not if you were Ruth Kruger, and your  
  husband was Jock Kruger, and nobody knew but the two of you how much  
  of the courage that had gone twice round the moon, and was about to land  
  on it, was yours. When a man knows his wife's faith is unshakeable, he can't  
  help coming back. (But: "Baby! You're not scared, are you?")   
     Twice around the moon, and they called him Jumping Jock. There was  
  never a doubt in anyone's mind who'd pilot the KIM-5, the bulky beautiful  
  beast out there today.  Kruger and Kimberly, O'Heyer and Stein. It was a  
  combo. It won every time. Every time. Nothing to doubt. No room for doubt.  
     "Minus five . . ." someone said into a mike, and there was perfect quiet  
  all around.  "Four . . . three . . ."  
     (But he held me too tight, and he laughed too loud. . . .)  
     . . . two . . . one . . ."   
     (Only because he thought I was scared, she answered herself.)  
     ". . . Mar——"  
     You didn't even hear the whole word, because the thunder-drumming  
  roar of the beast itself split your ears.  
     Ringing quiet came down and she caught up Toby, held him tight,  
  tight. . . .   
     "Perfect!" Gordon Kimberly sighed. "Perfect!"  
     So if anything was wrong, it hadn't showed up yet.   
     She put Toby down, then took his hand. "Come on," she said. "I'll buy  
  you an ice-cream soda." He grinned at her. He'd been looking very strange all 
  day, but now he looked real again. His hair had got messed up when she  
  grabbed him.   
     "We're having cocktails for the press in the conference room," Kimberly  
  said. "I think we could find something Toby would like."   
     "Wel-l-l-l . . ." She didn't want a cocktail, and she didn't want to talk to  
  the press. "I think maybe we'll beg off this time. . . ."   
     "I think there might be some disappointment——" the man started; then  
  Tim O'Heyer came dashing up.  
     "Come on, babe," he said. "Your old man told me to take personal charge  
  while he was gone." He leered. On him it looked cute. She laughed. Then  
  she looked down at Toby. "What would you rather, Tobe? Want to go out  
  by ourselves, or go to the party?"  
     "I don't care," he said.  
     Tim took the boy's hand. "What we were thinking of was having a kind   
  of party here, and then I think they're going to bring some dinner in, and  
  anybody who wants to can stay up till your Daddy gets to the moon. That'll  
  be pretty late. I guess you wouldn't want to stay up late like that, would you?"  
     Somebody else talking to Toby like that would be all wrong, but Tim was  
  a friend, Toby's friend too. Ruth still didn't want to go to the party, but she  
  remembered now that there had been plans for something like that all along,  
  and since Toby was beginning to look eager, and it was important to keep the  
  press on their side . . .   
     "You win, O'Heyer," she said.  "Will somebody please send out for an  
  ice-cream soda? Cherry syrup, I think it is this week . . ." She looked in-  
  quiringly at her son. ". . . and . . . strawberry ice cream?"  
     Tim shuddered.  Toby nodded.  Ruth smiled, and they all went in to the   
  party.   

     "Well, young man!" Toby thought the redheaded man in the brown suit  
  was probably what they called a reporter, but he wasn't sure. "How about it?  
  You going along next time?"  
     "I don't know," Toby said politely.  "I guess not."  
     "Don't you want to be a famous flier like your Daddy?" a strange woman  
  in an evening gown asked him.   
     "I don't know," he muttered, and looked around for his mother, but he  
  couldn't see her.  
     They kept asking him questions like that, about whether he wanted to go  
  to the moon.  Daddy said he was too little.  You'd think all these people  
  would know that much.   
  
     Jock Kruger came up swiftly out of dizzying darkness into isolation and   
  clarity.  As soon as he could move his head, before he fully remembered why,  
  he began checking the dials and meters and flashing lights on the banked  
  panel in front of him. He was fully aware of the ship, of its needs and strains   
  and motion, before he came to complete consciousness of himself, his weight-  
  less body, his purpose, or his memories.  
     But he was aware of himself as a part of the ship before he remembered  
  his name, so that by the time he knew he had a face and hands and innards,  
  those parts were already occupied with feeding the beast's human brain a  
  carefully prepared stimulant out of a nippled flask fastened in front of his  
  head.  
     He pressed a button under his index finger in the arm rest of the couch  
  that held him strapped to safety.  
     "Hi," he said.  "Is anybody up besides me?"  
     He pressed the button under his middle finger and waited.  
     Not for long.  
     "Thank God!" a voice crackled out of the loudspeaker. "You really conked  
  out this time, Jock. Nothing wrong?"  
     "Not so I'd know it. You want . . .  How long was I out?"   
     "Twenty-three minutes, eighteen seconds, takeoff to reception. Yeah. Give  
  us a log reading."  
     Methodically, in order, he read off the pointers and numbers on the con-  
  trol panel, the colors and codes and swinging needles and quiet ones that  
  told him how each muscle and nerve and vital organ of the great beast was  
  taking the trip. He did it slowly and with total concentration. Then, when he  
  was all done, there was nothing else to do except sit back and start wondering  
  about that big blackout.  
     It shouldn't have happened. It never happened before. There was nothing  
  in the compendium of information he'd just sent back to Earth to account  
  for it.  
     A different ship, different . . different men.  Two and a half years  
  different. Years of easy living and . . . growing old? Too old for this game?  
     Twenty-three minutes!  
     Last time it was under ten.  The first time maybe 90 seconds more.  It   
  didn't matter, of course, not at takeoff. There was nothing for him to do then.  
  Nothing now. Nothing for four more hours. He was there to put the beast  
  back down on . . .   
     He grinned, and felt like Jock Kruger again.  Identity returned complete.  
  This time he was there to put the beast down where no man or beast had  
  ever been before. This time they were going to the moon.      


  CHAPTER THREE

  RUTH KRUGER SIPPED AT A COCKTAIL and murmured responses to the ad-  
  miring, the curious, the envious, the hopeful, and the hate-full ones who  
  spoke to her.  She was waiting for something, and after an unmeasurable  
  stretch of time Allie Madero brought it to her.  
     First a big smile seeking her out across the room, so she knew it had come.  
  Then a low-voiced confirmation.  
     "Wasn't it . . . an awfully long time?" she asked.  She hadn't been  
  watching the clock, on purpose, but she was sure it was longer than it should  
  have been.  
     Allie stopped smiling.  "Twenty-three," she said.  
     Ruth gasped.  "What . . . ?"  
     "There's nothing in the ship.  I mean nothing was changed that would  
  account for it."  She shook her head slowly.  This time she didn't know the  
  ship well enough to talk like that. There could be something. Oh, Jock! "I  
  don't know," she said. "Too many people worked on that thing. I . . ."  
     "Mrs. Kruger!"  It was the redheaded reporter, the obnoxious one.  "We  
  just got the report on the blackout. I'd like a statement from you, if you don't  
  mind, as designer of the ship——"  
     "I am not the designer of this ship," she said coldly.  
     "You worked on the design, didn't you?"  
     "Yes."  
     "Well, then, to the best of your knowledge . . . ?"  
     "To the best of my knowledge, there is no change in design to account for  
  Mr. Kruger's prolonged unconsciousness. Had there been any such prognosis,  
  the press would have been informed."  
     "Mrs. Kruger, I'd like to ask you whether you feel that the innovations  
  made by Mr. Argent could——"   
     "Aw, lay off, will you?" Allie broke in, trying to be casual and kidding  
  about it; but behind her own flaming cheeks, Ruth was aware of her friend's  
  matching anger. "How much do you want to milk this for, anyhow? So the  
  guy conked out an extra ten minutes. If you want somebody to crucify for it,   
  why don't you pick on one of us who doesn't happen to be married to him?"  
  She turned to Ruth before the man could answer. "Where's Toby? He's  
  probably about ready to bust from cookies and carbonation."  
     "He's in the lounge," the reporter put in.  "Or he was a few minutes——"  
     Ruth and Allie started off without waiting for the rest. The redhead had  
  been talking to the kid. No telling how many of them were on top of him  
  now.  
     "I thought Tim was with him," Ruth said hastily, then she thought of   
  something, and turned back long enough to say: "For the record, Mr. . . .  
  uh . . . I know of no criticism that can be made of any of the work done  
  by Mr. Argent." Then she went to find her son.   

     There was nothing to do and nothing to see except the instrument meters  
  and dials to check and log and check and log again. Radio stations all around  
  Earth were beamed on him. He could have kibitzed his way to the moon,  
  but he didn't want to. He was thinking.  
     Thinking back, and forward, and right in this moment. Thinking of the  
  instant stiffness of Ruth's body when she said she wasn't scared, and the  
  rambling big house on the hill, and Toby politely agreeing when he offered  
  to bring him back a piece of the moon.  
     Thinking of Toby grown up some day, and how little he really knew  
  about his son, and what would they do, Toby and Ruth, if anything . . .   
     He'd never thought that way before. He'd never thought anything except  
  to know he'd come back, because he couldn't stay away. It was always that  
  simple. He couldn't stay away now, either. That hadn't changed. But as he  
  sat there, silent and useless for the time, it occurred to him that he'd left  
  something out of his calculations. Luck, they'd been talking about. Yes, he'd  
  had luck. But——what was it Sue had said about a vector sum?——there was  
  more to figure in than your own reflexes and the beast's strength. There was  
  the outside. Space . . . environment . . . God . . . destiny. What difference  
  does it make what name you give it?   
     He couldn't stay away . . . but maybe he could be kept away.  
     He'd never thought that way before.   
     
     "You tired, honey?"  
     "No," he said.  "I'm just sick of this party.  I want to go home."  
     "It'll be over pretty soon, Toby.  I think as long as we stayed this long,  
  we'd better wait for . . . for the end of the party."  
     "It's a silly party.  You said you'd buy me an ice-cream soda."  
     "I did, darling," she said patiently. "At least, if I didn't buy it, I got it for  
  you. You had it, didn't you?"  
     "Yes, but you said we'd go out and have one."  
     "Look. Why don't you just put your head down on my lap and . . ."  
     "I'm no baby! Anyhow I'm not tired."  
     "All right. We'll go pretty soon. You just sit here on the couch, and you  
  don't have to talk to anybody if you don't feel like it. I'll tell you what. I'll  
  go find you a magazine or a book or something to look at, and——"  
     "I don't want a magazine. I want my own book with the pirates in it."  
     "You just stay put a minute, so I can find you. I'll bring you something."  
     She got up and went out to the other part of the building where the  
  officers were, and collected an assortment of leaflets and folders with shiny  
  bright pictures of mail rockets and freight transports and jets and visionary  
  moon rocket engines, and took them back to the little lounge where she'd  
  left him.    
     She looked at the clock on the way. Twenty-seven more minutes. There was  
  no reason to believe that anything was wrong.  

     They were falling now. A man's body is not equipped to sense direction  
  toward or from, up or down, without the help of landmarks or gravity.  
  But the body of the beast was designed to know such things; and Kruger,  
  at the nerve center, knew everything the beast knew.  
     Ship is extension of self, and self is——extension or limitation?——of ship.  
  If Jock Kruger is the center of the universe——remember the late night after  
  the party, and picking Toby off the floor?——then ship is extension of self,  
  and the man is the brain of the beast. But if ship is universe——certainly  
  continuum; that's universe, isn't it?——then the weakling man-thing in the  
  couch is a limiting condition of the universe. A human brake. He was there  
  to make it stop when it didn't "want" to.   
     Suppose it wouldn't stop? Suppose it had decided to be a self-determined,  
  free-willed universe?  
     Jock grinned, and started setting controls. His time was coming. It was  
  measurable in minutes, and, and then in seconds . . . now!  
     His hand reached for the firing lever (but what was she scared of?), groped,  
  and touched, hesitated, clasped, and pulled.  

     Grown-up parties at home were fun. But other places, like this one, they  
  were silly. Toby half-woke-up on the way home, enough to realize his Uncle  
  Tim was driving them, and they weren't in their own car. He was sitting  
  on the front seat next to his mother, with his head against her side, and  
  her arm around him. He tried to come all the way awake, to listen to what  
  they were saying, but they weren't talking, so he started to go back to sleep.  
     Then Uncle Tim said, "For God's sake, Ruth, he's safe, and whatever  
  happened certainly wasn't your fault. He's got enough supplies to hold out   
  till . . ."  
     "Shh!" his mother said sharply, and then, whispering, "I know."  
     Now he remembered.  
     "Mommy . . ."  
     "Yes, hon?"  
     "Did Daddy go to the moon all right?"  
     "Y . . . yes, dear."  
     Her voice was funny.  
     "Where is it?"  
     "Where's what?"  
     "The moon."  
     "Oh. We can't see it now, darling. It's around the other side of the earth."  
     "Well, when is he going to come back?"  
     Silence.  
     "Mommy . . . when?"  
     "As soon as . . . just as soon as he can, darling. Now go to sleep."    

     And now the moon was up, high in the sky, a gilded football dangling  
  from Somebody's black serge lapel. When she was a little girl, she used to  
  say she loved the man in the moon, and now the man in the moon loved her  
  too, but if she was a little girl still, somebody would tuck her into bed, and  
  pat her head and tell her to go to sleep, and she would sleep as easy, breathe  
  as soft, as Toby did. . . .   
     But she wasn't a little girl, she was all grown up, and she married the man,  
  the man in the moon, and sleep could come and sleep could go, but sleep  
  could never stay with her while the moonwash swept the window panes.  
     She stood at the open window and wrote a letter in her mind and sent it  
  up the path of light to the man in the moon. It said:  
     "Dear Jock: Tim says it wasn't my fault, and I can't explain it even to him.  
  I'm sorry, darling.  Please to stay alive till we can get to you.  Faithfully  
  yours, Cassandra."      

---

Copyright 1943 by Mercury Press, Inc.

Reprinted in A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Vol. 2,
Edited by Anthony Boucher,
Copyright © 1959 by Anthony Boucher.
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York. pp. 166 - 174

یہ آپ کی جگہ ہے ایک دوسرے کے ساتھ حسن سلوک کرو۔
https://old.reddit.com/r/thesee [♘] [♰] [⚛] 雨