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diff --git a/22102.txt b/22102.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3677b1e --- /dev/null +++ b/22102.txt @@ -0,0 +1,866 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hills of Home, by Alfred Coppel + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Hills of Home + +Author: Alfred Coppel + +Release Date: July 19, 2007 [EBook #22102] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HILLS OF HOME *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +THE HILLS OF HOME + +by Alfred Coppel + +[Illustration] + + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + | _"Normality" is a myth; we're all a little neurotic, and the | + | study of neurosis has been able to classify the general | + | types of disturbance which are most common. And some types | + | (providing the subject is not suffering so extreme a case as | + | to have crossed the border into psychosis) can be not only | + | useful, but perhaps necessary for certain kinds of work...._ | + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + +_The river ran still and deep, green and gray in the eddies with the +warm smell of late summer rising out of the slow water. Madrone and +birch and willow, limp in the evening quiet, and the taste of +smouldering leaves.... + +It wasn't the Russian River. It was the Sacred Iss. The sun had touched +the gem-encrusted cliffs by the shores of the Lost Sea of Korus and had +vanished, leaving only the stillness of the dusk and the lonely cry of +shore birds. + +From downstream came the faint sounds of music. It might have been a +phonograph playing in one of the summer cabins with names like Polly Ann +Roost and Patches and Seventh Heaven, but to Kimmy it was the hated cry +of the Father of Therns calling the dreadful Plant Men to their feast of +victims borne into this Valley Dor by the mysterious Iss. + +Kimmy shifted the heavy Martian pistol into his left hand and checked +his harness. A soft smile touched his lips. He was well armed; there was +nothing he had to fear from the Plant Men. His bare feet turned +up-stream, away from the sound of the phonograph, toward the shallows in +the river that would permit him to cross and continue his search along +the base of the Golden Cliffs--_ + + * * * * * + +The sergeant's voice cut through the pre-dawn darkness. "Oh, three +hundred, Colonel.... Briefing in thirty minutes." + +Kimball tried to see him in the black gloom. He hadn't been asleep. It +would have been hard to waste this last night that way. Instead he had +been remembering. "All right, Sergeant," he said. "Coming up." + +He swung his feet to the bare boards and sat for a moment, wishing he +hadn't had to give up smoking. He could almost imagine the textured +taste of the cigaret on his tongue. + +Oddly enough, he wasn't tired. He wasn't excited, either. And that was +much stranger. He stood up and opened the window to look out into the +desert night. Overhead the stars were brilliant and cold. Mars gleamed +russet-colored against the sable sky. He smiled, remembering again. So +long a road, he thought, from then to now. + +Then he stopped smiling and turned away from the window. It hadn't been +an easy path and what was coming up now was the hardest part. The goddam +psychs were the toughest, always wanting him to bug out on the deal +because of their brainwave graphs and word association tests and their +Rorschach blots. + +"You're a lonely man, Colonel Kimball----" + +"Too much imagination could be bad for this job." + +How could you sit there with pentothal in your veins and wires running +out of your head and tell them about the still waters of Korus, or the +pennons flying from the twin towers of Greater Helium or the way the +tiny, slanting sun gleamed at dawn through the rigging of a flyer? + +Kimball snapped on a light and looked at his watch. 0310. Zero minus one +fifty. He opened the steel locker and began to dress. + + * * * * * + +_The water swirled warm and velvety around his ankles. There, behind +that madrone, Kimmy thought. Was that a Plant Man? The thick white trunk +and the grasping, blood-sucking arms---- + +The radium pistol's weight made his wrist ache, but he clung to it +tightly, knowing that he could never cope with a Plant Man with a sword +alone. The certainty of coming battle made him smile a little, the way +John Carter would smile if he were here in the Valley Dor ready to +attack the white Therns and their Plant Men. + +For a moment, Kimmy felt a thrill of apprehension. The deepening +stillness of the river was closing in around him. Even the music from +the phonograph was very, very faint. Above him, the great vault of the +sky was changing from pink to gray to dusty blue. A bright star was +breaking through the curtain of fading light. He knew it was Venus, the +Evening Star. But let it be Earth, he thought. And instead of white, let +it be the color of an emerald. + +He paused in midstream, letting the warm water riffle around his feet. +Looking up at the green beacon of his home planet, he thought: I've left +all that behind me. It was never really what I wanted. Mars is where I +belong. With my friends, Tars Tarkas the great Green Jeddak, and Carter, +the Warlord, and all the beautiful brave people._ + + * * * * * + +_The phonograph sang with Vallee's voice: "Cradle me where southern +skies can watch me with a million eyes----" + +Kimmy's eyes narrowed and he waded stealthily across the sacred river. +That would be Matai Shang, the Father of Holy Therns--spreading his arms +to the sunset and standing safely on his high balcony in the Golden +Cliffs while the Plant Men gathered to attack the poor pilgrims Iss had +brought to this cursed valley. + +"Sing me to sleep, lullaby of the leaves"--the phonograph sang. Kimmy +stepped cautiously ashore and moved into the cover of a clump of +willows. The sky was darkening fast. Other stars were shining through. +There wasn't much time left._ + + * * * * * + +Kimball stood now in the bright glare of the briefing shack, a strange +figure in blood-colored plastic. The representatives of the press had +been handed the mimeographed releases by the PRO and now they sat in +silence, studying the red figure of the man who was to ride the rocket. + +They were thinking: Why him? Out of all the scores of +applicants--because there are always applicants for a sure-death +job--and all the qualified pilots, why this one? + +The Public Relations Officer was speaking now, reading from the mimeoed +release as though these civilians couldn't be trusted to get the sparse +information given them straight without his help, given grudgingly and +without expression. + +Kimball listened, only half aware of what was being said. He watched the +faces of the men sitting on the rows of folding chairs, saw their eyes +like wounds, red from the early morning hour and the murmuring reception +of the night before in the Officers' Club. They are wondering how _I_ +feel, he was thinking. And asking themselves why I want to go. + +On the dais nearby, listening to the PRO, but watching Kimball, sat +Steinhart, the team analyst. Kimball returned his steady gaze thinking: +They start out burning with desire to cure the human mind and end with +the shadow of the images. The words become the fact, the therapy the +aim. What could Steinhart know of longing? No, he thought, I'm not being +fair. Steinhart was only doing his job. + +The big clock on the back wall of the briefing shack said three +fifty-five. Zero minus one hour and five minutes. + +Kimball looked around the room at the pale faces, the open mouths. What +have I to do with you now, he thought? + + * * * * * + +Outside, the winter night lay cold and still over the Base. Floodlights +spilled brilliance over the dunes and the scrubby earth, high fences +casting laced shadows across the burning white expanses of +ferroconcrete. + +As they filed out of the briefing shack, Steinhart climbed into the +command car with Kimball. Chance or design? Kimball wondered. The +others, he noticed, were leaving both of them alone. + +"We haven't gotten on too well, have we, Colonel?" Steinhart observed in +a quiet voice. + +Kimball thought: He's pale skinned and very blond. What is it that he +reminds me of? Shouldn't there be a diadem on his forehead? He smiled +vaguely into the rumbling night. That's what it was. Odd that he should +have forgotten. How many rocket pilots, he wondered, were weaned on +Burroughs' books? And how many remembered now that the Thern priests all +wore yellow wings and a circlet of gold with some fantastic jewel on +their forehead? + +"We've done as well as could be expected," he said. + +Steinhart reached for a cigaret and then stopped, remembering that +Kimball had had to give them up because of the flight. Kimball caught +the movement and half-smiled. + +"I didn't try to kill the assignment for you, Kim," the psych said. + +"It doesn't matter now." + +"No, I suppose not." + +"You just didn't think I was the man for the job." + +"Your record is good all the way. You know that," Steinhart said. "It's +just some of the things----" + +Kimball said: "I talked too much." + +"You had to." + +"You wouldn't think my secret life was so dangerous, would you," the +Colonel said smiling. + +"You were married, Kim. What happened?" + +"More therapy?" + +"I'd like to know. This is for me." + + * * * * * + +Kimball shrugged. "It didn't work. She was a fine girl--but she finally +told me it was no go. 'You don't live here' was the way she put it." + +"She knew you were a career officer; what did she expect----?" + +"That isn't what she meant. You know that." + +"Yes," the psych said slowly. "I know that." + +They rode in silence, across the dark Base, between the concrete sheds +and the wooden barracks. Overhead, the stars like dust across the sky. +Kimball, swathed in plastic, a fantastic figure not of earth, watched +them wheel across the clear, deep night. + +"I wish you luck, Kim," Steinhart said. "I mean that." + +"Thanks." Vaguely, as though from across a deep and widening gulf. + +"What will you do?" + +"You know the answers as well as I," the Colonel said impatiently. "Set +up the camp and wait for the next rocket. If it comes." + +"In two years." + +"In two years," the plastic figure said. Didn't he know that it didn't +matter? + +He glanced at his watch. Zero minus fifty-six minutes. + +"Kim," Steinhart said slowly. "There's something you should know about. +Something you really should be prepared for." + +"Yes?" Disinterest in his voice now, Steinhart noted clinically. Natural +under the circumstances? Or neurosis building up already? + +"Our tests showed you to be a schizoid--well-compensated, of course. You +know there's no such thing as a _normal_ human being. We all have +tendencies toward one or more types of psychoses. In your case the +symptoms are an overly active imagination and in some cases an inability +to distinguish reality from--well, fancy." + + * * * * * + +Kimball turned to regard the psych coolly. "What's reality, Steinhart? +Do _you_ know?" + +The analyst flushed. "No." + +"I didn't think so." + +"You lived pretty much in your mind when you were a child," Steinhart +went on doggedly. "You were a solitary, a lonely child." + +Kimball was watching the sky again. + +Steinhart felt futile and out of his depth. "We know so little about the +psychology of space-flight, Kim----" + +Silence. The rumble of the tires on the packed sand of the road, the +murmur of the command car's engine, spinning oilily, and lit by tiny +sunbright flashes deep in the hollows of the hot metal. + +"You're glad to be leaving, aren't you--" Steinhart said finally. "Happy +to be the first man to try for the planets----" + +Kimball nodded absently, wishing the man would be quiet. Mars, a dull +rusty point of light low on the horizon, seemed to beckon. + +They topped the last hillock and dropped down into the lighted bowl of +the launching site. The rocket towered, winged and monstrously checkered +in white and orange, against the first flickerings of the false dawn. + + * * * * * + +_Kimmy saw the girls before they saw him. In their new, low waisted +middies and skirts, they looked strange and out of place standing by the +pebbled shore of the River Iss. + +They were his sisters, Rose and Margaret. Older than he at fifteen and +seventeen. But they walked by the river and into danger. Behind him he +could hear the rustling sound of the Plant Men as the evening breeze +came up. + +"Kimm-eeeee--" + +They were calling him. In the deepening dusk their voices carried far +down the river. "Kimmmmm--eeeeeeeeee--" + +He knew he should answer them, but he did not. Behind him he could hear +the awful Plant Men approaching. He shivered with delicious horror. + +He stood very still, listening to his sisters talking, letting their +voices carry down to where he hid from the dangers of the Valley Dor. + +"Where is that little brat, anyway?" + +"He always wanders off just at dinnertime and then we have to find +him----" + +"Playing with that old faucet--" Mimicry. "'My rad-ium pis-tol----'" + +"Cracked--just cracked. Oh, where IS he, anyway? Kimmm-eee, you +AN-swer!" + +Something died in him. It wasn't a faucet, it WAS a radium pistol. He +looked at his sisters with dismay. They weren't really his sisters. They +were Therns, with their yellow hair and their pale skins. He and John +Carter and Tars Tarkas had fought them many times, piling their bodies +for barricades and weaving a flashing pattern of skillful swords in the +shifting light of the two moons. + +"Kimmmm--eeee Mom's going to be mad at you! Answer us!" + +If only Tars Tarkas would come now. If only the great Green Jeddak would +come splashing across the stream on his huge thoat, his two swords +clashing---- + +"He's up there in that clump of willows--hiding!" + +"Kimmy! You come down here this instant!" + +The Valley Dor was blurring, fading. The Golden Cliffs were turning into +sandy, river-worn banks. The faucet felt heavy in his grimy hand. He +shivered, not with horror now. With cold. + +He walked slowly out of the willows, stumbling a little over the rocks._ + + * * * * * + +He lay like an embryo in the viscera of the ship, protected and quite +alone. The plastic sac contained him, fed him; and the rocket, silent +now, coursed through the airless deep like a questing thought. Time was +measured by the ticking of the telemeters and the timers, but Kimball +slept insulated and complete. + +And he dreamed. + +He dreamed of that summer when the river lay still and deep under the +hanging willows. He dreamed of his sisters, thin and angular creatures +as he remembered them through the eyes of a nine-year-old---- + +And his mother, tall and shadowy, standing on the porch of the rented +cottage and saying exasperatedly: "_Why do you run off by yourself, +Kimmy? I worry about you so----_" + +And his sisters: "_Playing with his wooden swords and his radium pistol +and never wanting to take his nose out of those awful books----_" + +He dreamed of the low, beamed ceiling of the cottage, sweltering in the +heat of the summer nights and the thick longing in his throat for red +hills and a sky that burned deep blue through the long, long days and +canals, clear and still. A land that he knew somehow never was, but +which lived, for him, through some alchemy of the mind. He dreamed of +Mars. + +And Steinhart: "_What is reality, Kimmy?_" + + * * * * * + +The hours stretched into days, the days into months. Time wasn't. Time +was a deep night and a starshot void. And dreams. + +He awoke seldom. His tasks were simple. The plastic sac and the tender +care of the ship were more real than the routine jobs of telemetering +information back to the Base across the empty miles, across the rim of +the world. + +He dreamed of his wife. "_You don't live here, Kim._" + +She was right, of course. He wasn't of earth. Never had been. My love +is in the sky, he thought, filled with an immense satisfaction. + +And time slipped by, the weeks into months; the sun dwindled and earth +was gone. All around him lay the stunning star-dusted night. + +He lay curled in the plastic womb when the ship turned. He awoke +sluggishly and dragged himself into awareness. + +"I've changed," he thought aloud. "My face is younger; I feel +different." + +The keening sound of air over the wings brought a thrill. Below him, a +great curving disk of reds and browns and yellows. He could see dust +storms raging and the heavy, darkened lines of the canals. + +There was skill in his hands. He righted the rocket, balanced it. Began +the tricky task of landing. It took all of his talent, all of his +training. Ponderously, the ship settled into the iron sand; slowly, the +internal fires died. + + * * * * * + +Kimball stood in the control room, his heart pounding. Slowly, the ports +opened. Through the thick quartz he could see the endless plain. Reddish +brown, empty. The basin of some long ago sea. The sky was a deep, +burning blue with stars shining at midday at the zenith. It looked +unreal, a painting of unworldly quiet and desolation. + +_What is reality, Kimmy?_ + +Steinhart was right, he thought vaguely. A tear streaked his cheek. He +had never been so alone. + +And then he imagined he saw something moving on the great plain. He +scrambled down through the ship, past the empty fuel tanks and the +lashed supplies. His hands were clawing desperately at the dogs of the +outer valve. Suddenly the pressure jerked the hatch from his hands and +he gasped at the icy air, his lungs laboring to breathe. + +He dropped to one knee and sucked at the thin, frigid air. His vision +was cloudy and his head felt light. But there _was_ something moving on +the plain. + +A shadowy cavalcade. + + * * * * * + +Strange monstrous men on fantastic war-mounts, long spears and +fluttering pennons. Huge golden chariots with scythes flashing on the +circling hubs and armored giants, the figments of a long remembered +dream---- + +He dropped to the sand and dug his hands into the dry powdery soil. He +could scarcely see now, for blackness was flickering at the edges of his +vision and his failing heart and lungs were near collapse. + +_Kimmm-eee!_ + +A huge green warrior on a gray monster of a thoat was beckoning to him. +Pointing toward the low hills on the oddly near horizon. + +_Kimmmm-eeeee!_ + +The voice was thin and distant on the icy wind. Kimball knew that voice. +He knew it from long ago in the Valley Dor, from the shores of the Lost +Sea of Korus where the tideless waters lay black and deep---- + +He began stumbling across the empty, lifeless plain. He knew the voice, +he knew the man, and he knew the hills that he must reach, quickly now, +or die. + +They were the hills of home. + + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note and Errata | + | | + | This etext was produced from "Future Science Fiction" No. 30 | + | 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that | + | the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. | + | | + | The following errors have been corrected: | + | | + | Error Correction | + | cooly coolly | + | fantasic fantastic | + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hills of Home, by Alfred Coppel + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HILLS OF HOME *** + +***** This file should be named 22102.txt or 22102.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/1/0/22102/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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