Oberheim (Voices) Part 40

The next morning after some time alone and a second examination, he returned to his rooms. Someone had extinguished the candle for him but it was still there, the igniter beside it. He resisted the urge to contact Mandlik and ask him how many hours, or had they yet been discovered. There was no reason, he knew, to go looking for a fight.

It would come to him. He had had time to work things through, and believed he now possessed a clearer understanding.

The first few moments in that place were difficult, for all his renewed spirit of resolve. To be left here in this state, weakened and sick..... He still feared for the future, which he knew stalked him inexorably. At stake, no more and no less than his spiritual life and death. It was no use trying to prepare himself against all contingencies. If his wife was not there, or was dead or unaccounted-for, a part of himself would die forever, and the tiny flame of faith to which he clung would be lost beyond recall. Even now it flickered feebly in that dark place, shivered by the cold winds of doubt.

He mastered his trepid nature as best he could, and stayed there. He lay down and read for many hours, somewhat heartened by his mind's endurance, and by the sudden turn from hopelessness he perceived in Joyce's work. 'Exiles.' It filled all his mind with true thought and carried him for a time from himself, and he loved in those moments both the medium and the man, so beyond his understanding.

Moved as it were to make some account of himself he rose, wrapped the robe about him, went to the desk-table and, without looking at the verses he had scrawled the day before, wrote a simple, pa.s.sionate poem to his wife.

But the feelings went too deep and he could not yet read back what he had written.

He called and a nurse brought him a soft and frugal meal, and before she left he looked into her face and said sincerely, "Thank you," for she had reminded him that other lives existed outside his own.

After he ate for a time he was unwell, and lay down in the bed and waited for the aching nausea to pa.s.s. Weariness and exhaustion came over him when the other left, and having little choice, yet also wanting to trust, he surrendered. And after a further time he slept.

He did not wake until late in the evening. Without looking or even thinking about the clock he went to his writing desk and flipped over the written pages of the pad. A thought had come to him, whether in dream or rising from it he could not recall, nor did it matter. He had his answer. He wrote on a blank sheet of paper with a quiet warm peace inside him:

If you believe in too much, or nothing at all, either way you will be hurt.

With this he became calm and thoughtful. What was the use of despair, or endless worry? Running around wildly, trying by one's own efforts to turn back an imagined tide of evil and malicious fate, or believing, at the most, that life was nothing but a primal struggle without order or lasting hope. If there truly was nothing beyond man and the grave, then what was the use of trying at all? when the bravest and most determined lives must eventually end in ruin and death? In this sense even the existentialists were wiser than the proponents of human will and self-made destiny.

And on the other side of the coin, were those who put their faith and trust in G.o.ds and religions they did not understand, accepting without trial or common sense the narrow dogmas of fearful (or even wise) old men. MEN. What made their observations and conclusions more enlightened than his own, or those of anyone who sought with both heart and mind, using Nature and experience as a guide?

It was all so obvious and clear; how could anyone not see it? Yet now he, Olaf Augustine Brunner, must take this lesson and apply it to that Universe, often cold and unreasoning, OUT THERE. He did not know if he was equal to the task. He only knew that he must try.

His mind and confidence thus piqued, he turned back to the poems written earlier, hoping, perhaps, to find some further sign of his own understanding---something to set against the huge, dark uncertainty beyond his window. There were the two from the previous night, as well as the poem to his wife.

NIGHT

Sipping sadness, from the young girl So afraid to go unnoticed

Young man, stalking forests in his dreams Heightens all his senses to you.

Madman, racing knives across a windstorm Searching For the blood that he will spill.

EVIL

Rising slowly hideous figure cast aside Black with bitter twisted pa.s.sions seeking only

The murder of a child.

And the last, to his wife:

PLIGHTED TROTH

Ara What is my life without you?

To be your knight to fight for you Is all that holds my will together Unraveled, and dispossessed by Distance, time and empty suffering

Now you are taken from me, One comfort only can I find: That I loved you then, not less than now And thanked dear Heaven you were mine.

A year, a month, a day ago he might have cried; but this was not the time. Emotion and sentiment would not bring her back to him, nor would dashing his heart upon the rocks. The mind was the stronger instrument now, a bit cold, but maybe that was best. He gave it free rein to pursue its ends.

The poems showed him that indeed, both elements, love and hatred, yielding and aggression, lived inside him. And both were needed.

Hadn't he felt them? Hadn't their constant battle for use and mastery tormented him? Yes! That was what had made him so miserable. Fool!

It was simply (or merely) a question of knowing which to listen to at a given moment---exerting supreme effort when called for, and having enough faith in G.o.d, or life, to accept the consequences of what was beyond human will to affect. Faith and disillusion, professed as different creeds, were one and the same, either half without the other like a man trying to stand on one leg.

With that he became calm again, knowing he must save his strength.

Later that night he lit the candle and set it beside the picture of his wife, and prayed a short, fervent prayer to Whom he did not know. His own image was no longer important. He vowed to find his wife, however long it took, and to do what he could in the war, though he detested violence and a part of his prayer was that it would soon end.

The next day, the second of his confinement, pa.s.sed without serious (personal) incident. That night he took one of the lozenges, knowing he would be unable to sleep without it. For the Morannon system, code-named Dracus by the Belgians, would be reached the following day, and they no longer moved in secret. The Alliance, apparently piercing their detection shields, had detached a fighter-destroyer group to intercept them. As near as anyone could tell, battle would be joined somewhere within the system itself.

In the morning he rose, and reported to the bridge, and with a hard bitter determination that grew out of and suppressed his anxiety, prepared himself for the fight. Because for all his introspection and self-doubt, there was another side of him, as yet only half realized.

Not for nothing had Dubcek made him his pupil; and not for nothing was he second officer to Mandlik. His military and psychological testing had revealed that whatever other characteristics he might possess, when cornered and left no option, he responded with a resourcefulness and tenacity that were almost off the scale. This fact was so striking in one of his (outwardly) skittish nature, that more than one of the military leaders who reviewed it (including Dubcek) went back to the examining psychologist to ask for an explanation.

The psychologist had told them simply, "It's no mistake. In ordinary circ.u.mstances he is much like Hamlet---wavering, indecisive, introspective to a fault. But when pushed to the final need, somehow he raises himself to another level, and reacts with a courage and cunning that are. . .remarkable."

And that was well, because the fight came, hard and long, and in it the upper bridge was wracked by internal explosion, killing Mandlik and half his officers. Without the Soviet cruiser, which the Belgian-Swiss had not detected, the battle would almost certainly have gone against them.

Brunner's first order, upon a.s.suming command, was to stay near, and protect the planet's prison complex, which in their late desperation he feared the Alliance commanders might try to destroy.

And he was right.

The browning, grapple wrist, raised stiffly before him like a manikin, or a marionette, preceded the old man from the chamber. The entire body moved with it in stiff, convulsive strides, out onto the porch of the Parthenon, between the pillars and onto the marble steps.

One not of that place might have been shocked by his appearance, distorted as it was by bony growths, the jaw torn to one side by a madman's rock. Some half-buried sense had drawn him---sight it might be called---to stand there and watch the night sky.

Distant lightnings played before his eyes, soft bursts of light and almost, a pool fancied, distant sounds. Perhaps Mars had come at last, to liberate and destroy them. Through the dull horror of his marrowmind, twisted like the frame, he recalled verses from a book long ago, that set his knife-tattered soul on edge.

From Olympus mighty thunderbolts rain down As futile, t.i.tans reach to steal the crown Of He whose strength and glory forged the lands For greater power, rests within His hands.