CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Don Slade slept in a comfortable room. If he wished, he could have opened it into a porch by cranking the roof and west wall into recesses. There was no need for that. This night on Elysium, Slade was tired enough to sleep on a heap of cinders.

No resident of the planet above the age of six was asleep.

The mental netting that linked the folk of Elysium was as real and as resilient as a spider's web, but it did not change the fact that humans evolved as social individuals. It was as individuals that they talked now in family groupings before they joined again in the decision that the society would make—as an individual.

Onander filled a mug that he had thrown and fired himself in youth. He handed it to his daughter. Nan already sipped from a similar mug at the astringent blend of coffee, cacao, and milk.

"Well, we certainly can't keep him here," said Onander. By watching himself fill the third mug, he did not have to catch the eyes of either woman.

"No, dear," said Nan in a tone which was further from agreement with her husband than the words themselves were. "That wouldn't be at all fair to him, would it?" In a slightly different voice she added, "The Terzia acts in such human ways on occasion. It's a little hard to believe, sometimes."

The surface of Risa's drink began to tremble until the girl set the mug down with a thump. The blush on her cheekbones clashed with the coppery tinge of her hair. "He's not something we have to be afraid of, you know," Risa said. "He's alone. And he's been acting quite nicely. Well? Hasn't he?"

"Well, he's certainly been acting," said her father. His tone was sharpened by the rasp of Risa's demand.

"Now, dear, that isn't fair," said his wife before Risa could respond. That would raise the emotional temperature still further. "Everyone tries to be pleasant to strangers. That's all Don's doing. But of course, Risa—" She looked calmly over to her daughter—"he is very dangerous. And we couldn't allow him to stay, even if he wanted to."

"Well, what is the mural in the Hall?" the girl demanded, more in frustration now than anger. "What sort of men—and women!—fought the mutants? Weren't they like him? Our ancestors. Why should we be afraid of Don?"

"Oh, Risa," Onander said softly. He reached out a hand. His daughter took it willingly, greedily. "The battle was no myth; but the mural is a warning, not a trophy. Those were our ancestors, yes. Some of our genes . . . . And we all of us, despite the unity we've begun to achieve; all of us could be back in that Hell of violence and slaughter, very easily."

"But the mutants aren't here, Father," Risa said. "They're still on the colony ship or they've died out. Or maybe they landed somewhere after all, have their own world—but they aren't on Elysium."

Onander turned his daughter's hand palm-upward. He cupped his own much larger hand above it on the table. "The mutants were half the war, my dearest. When our ancestors built the matter transmitter, they left the mutants behind. But they couldn't leave themselves behind."

He paused, looking from the paired hands to the eyes of his daughter. "Don Slade is a credit to the race in many ways," Onander continued softly. "And no, if it hadn't been for souls like his among our ancestors, we would never have survived to settle Elysium, to make it what we have for the past millennium. But there are things in us which if awakened would drop us back into chaos as suddenly as our ancestors escaped it. And you know that also, my Risa."

"He wouldn't be happy, dearest," Nan said sadly. It was hard to tell whether the sadness was on her daughter's behalf or for more personal reasons. "Not even for a little while, now that he's so focused on getting back to Tethys. He really does believe it will be home to him after twenty years, you know."

"Yes," Risa said with a sharp movement of her head, a nod or a peck. She slipped her hand from beneath her father's. When Risa drank from her mug, it was with loud gulping noises.

"I think," said Onander heavily, "that it's about time to make a decision." Nan met his eyes and nodded; Risa nodded to her mug of bitter drink.

The trio fell silent around the handsome kitchen table. The alcohol lamp burbled softly beneath the pot of drinks. Occasionally a local equivalent of insects would be batted away by the repulsion field guarding the open window.

Physically, the family was of three separate entities . . . but their minds were merging, and all over Elysium minds were merging to decide the fate of a sleeping castaway.

* * *

"Captain Slade?" the voice whispered. "Don?"

Hours of tension and a heavy meal had drugged Slade as thoroughly as a deliberate anesthetic. The reflexes were still there, however, even if they had to fight to the surface through meters of cotton batting. "Roger," the tanker said, groping for the equipment belt that should have been close to his head.

Risa touched Slade's hand with one of hers. He felt the edge of the bed give under her slight weight. "I came to tell you," the girl said, "that they—that we are going to send you to Tethys."

"That's—" Slade said. "Well, I don't know how I'll ever be able to thank you. But if Elysium ever—has need for what I have or what I am, it's yours."

Slade had been momentarily blind when he rolled out of sleep. Now the tanker's eyesight was returning with a rush. The door of his room was closed. Starlight through the window above the bed showed that Risa wore a pastel garment, high-necked and frothy. The garment covered a great deal more of the girl's skin than had the suit she wore in the air car, but it covered that skin with little more than the shadow it threw.

"Girl" was the wrong word. Dear Lord, but there could be no doubt but that Risa was a woman.

"You won't be able to remember us, though," Risa said as she sat primly. "We—we're peaceful here on Elysium, and they think that if word got around . . . ."

"Sure," the tanker said. He shifted so that he was upright with his back against the window ledge. His legs were tucked beneath him and covered with the sheet. "I, well . . . . There's some places like yours where I figure they wouldn't let a stranger go at all. For the reason stated. I'll admit I half thought . . . ."

Slade's voice trailed off. The woman beside him had been in his mind, however. She knew that the thought had been multiple, not partial. A door closing and the hiss of lethal gas from vents. Burly men holding Slade on either side and the prick of an injection. A greeting, and as Slade turned, a blast of gunfire. The tanker had known too many situations in which an individual did not fit the circumstances. It was never something he had liked; Slade preferred to think of his enemies as gunmen facing him. But he had heard the stories, sure he had.

Lord have mercy on the soul of Joachim Steuben; and on the soul of Donald Slade, who was headed the same way in the Lord's good time.

"Ah," Slade added, "I wouldn't have anybody think I was in the habit of shafting people who'd done me favors. I don't blame you folks for wiping my memory, but—it wasn't something I'd have talked about anyway."

"There will be some things that will remain;" Risa said. She twisted slightly toward the man. Her knee bumped Slade's. When he edged away, she twisted further. "You'll remember meals, probably, though not where you ate them. You'll even remember faces. A memento of . . . us here on Elysium."

The tanker was frowning in concentration. Aloud he said, "The kindness you've done me will be that, Risa. That will stay, I'm sure. I don't forget help I've been given, or who gave it."

"Don, I'm not a child," she said. Her left hand touched the sheet over Slade's thighs, then slipped with a butterfly's delicacy to the man's bare torso.

Slade touched Risa's hand loosely enough for affection but not so loosely that the hand could fumble the way it seemed to want to do. "I know that," the tanker lied. Then he went on fiercely. "And you know that I'm not an adult, not like anybody here would recognize. I never will be. You know that!"

"Don, that doesn't matter," Risa said. She tugged her hand, away now and not downward. It came free at once.

"Sure it matters, Risa," the tanker replied. "It would matter to you if you saw a friend getting into something that was going to do a lot more harm than good. Wouldn't it?"

Risa sat bolt upright again. "I think that's my decision, isn't it?" she said in a voice harder than any she had used before to Slade. Her garment blurred away from her bosom like shock waves from bullets.

"No, Risa, it's not," Slade said gently. "Not unless I'm—do you have dogs, here? Domestic animals of some sort, anyway. Not unless I'm an animal. If I'm a human being, then it does matter. That's your decision, Risa. Am I a human being, to you?"

The girl burst into tears.

Slade wrapped her to his chest, safely now and a little sorry of that fact, but . . . .

"I didn't mean," Risa gurgled. "I just didn't want you to, to leave and—"

"I'm not going to forget," Slade whispered to the soft, curly hair. "Anything that leaves me mind enough to remember meals is going to let me remember you saving my life. And . . . you being you. You being here makes it a better universe, Risa. And I'll know that too."

Risa straightened, sniffled, and stood up. "I—" she began. Then she said, "You've been good for us here on Elysium, Don. It doesn't usually happen, but I think . . . it might be that if you went traveling again, after you've settled your business on Tethys, that you could find your way here again. I'd be a little older then, of course."

Risa turned and walked out of the room. She closed the door softly behind her.

Blood and Martyrs, Slade thought. Sixteen going on forty . . . . And here he was, forty himself and that a miracle the way he'd lived. He had been going to lay back on Tethys, he'd told himself that. But Tom with his chest split open and Marilee calling for help, well . . . . Marilee knew the sort of help you got from Hammer's Slammers. She knew what to expect from Don Slade when she told him there was trouble.

And if they were no more than fancies in a madman's skull, Tom and Marilee and the others—then they were Don Slade's fancies. Maybe there would be a chance to settle down afterwards, if he lived to be forty-one.

Blood and Martyrs. Slade was smiling as he drifted off to sleep again.

In a room not far from Slade's, Nan and Onander held one another. The man was weeping softly.