Song in a Minor Key. C. L. Moore.

 Song in a Minor Key

C. L. Moore

Fantastic Universe, January 1957

Northwest Smith is one of the great adventurers of Science Fiction, one of that group of cool, gray-eyed men who roam the spaceways and provide much of the inspiration for the legends that are a part of the folklore of space. Here is Northwest Smith, in a rare moment of peace, in a remarkable vignette, published here by permission of the author.

He had been promising himself this moment for how many lonely months and years on alien worlds?

Beneath him the clovered hill-slope was warm in the sun. Northwest Smith moved his shoulders against the earth and closed his eyes, breathing so deeply that the gun holstered upon his chest drew tight against its strap as he drank the fragrance of Earth and clover warm in the sun. Here in the hollow of the hills, willow-shaded, pillowed upon clover and the lap of Earth, he let his breath run out in a long sigh and drew one palm across the grass in a caress like a lover's.

He had been promising himself this moment for how long—how many months and years on alien worlds? He would not think of it now. He would not remember the dark space-ways or the red slag of Martian drylands or the pearl-gray days on Venus when he had dreamed of the Earth that had outlawed him. So he lay, with his eyes closed and the sunlight drenching him through, no sound in his ears but the passage of a breeze through the grass and a creaking of some insect nearby—the violent, blood-smelling years behind him might never have been. Except for the gun pressed into his ribs between his chest and the clovered earth, he might be a boy again, years upon years ago, long before he had broken his first law or killed his first man.

No one else alive now knew who that boy had been. Not even the all-knowing Patrol. Not even Venusian Yarol, who had been his closest friend for so many riotous years. No one would ever know—now. Not his name which had not always been Smith) or his native land or the home that had bred him, or the first violent deed that had sent him down the devious paths which led here—here to the clover hollow in the hills of an Earth that had forbidden him ever to set foot again upon her soil.

He unclasped the hands behind his head and rolled over to lay a scarred cheek on his arm, smiling to himself. Well, here was Earth beneath him. No longer a green star high in alien skies, but warm soil, new clover so near his face he could see all the little stems and trefoil leaves, moist earth granular at their roots. An ant ran by with waving antennae close beside his cheek. He closed his eyes and drew another deep breath. Better not even look; better to lie here like an animal, absorbing the sun and the feel of Earth blindly, wordlessly.

***

Now he was not Northwest Smith, scarred outlaw of the space-ways. Now he was a boy again with all his life before him. There would be a white-columned house just over the hill, with shaded porches and white curtains blowing in the breeze and the sound of sweet, familiar voices indoors. There would be a girl with hair like poured honey hesitating just inside the door, lifting her eyes to him. Tears in the eyes. He lay very still, remembering.

Curious how vividly it all came back, though the house had been ashes for nearly twenty years, and the girl—the girl...

He rolled over violently, opening his eyes. No use remembering her. There had been that fatal flaw in him from the very first, he knew now. If he were the boy again knowing all he knew today, still the flaw would be there and sooner or later the same thing must have happened that had happened twenty years ago. He had been born for a wilder age, when men took what they wanted and held what they could without respect for law.

Obedience was not in him, and so—

As vividly as on that day it happened he felt the same old surge of anger and despair twenty years old now, felt the ray-gun bucking hard against his unaccustomed fist, heard the hiss of its deadly charge ravening into a face he hated. He could not be sorry, even now, for that first man he had killed.

But in the smoke of that killing had gone up the columned house and the future he might have had, the boy himself—lost as Atlantis now—and the girl with the honey-colored hair and much, much else besides. It had to happen, he knew. He being the boy he was, it had to happen. Even if he could go back and start all over, the tale would be the same.

And it was all long past now, anyhow; and nobody remembered any more at all, except himself. A man would be a fool to lie here thinking about it any longer.

Smith grunted and sat up, shrugging the gun into place against his ribs.

End

The photo (a Beretta 70 series .32 mm ACP) is in the collection of the author, who probably got it off of Wikipedia.

See, ladies and gentlemen: that is one great story. And now you know why I do this.

If the reader is a member of Scribd, Louis Shalako has some books and stories available over there. If you’re a member, they must be free, right?

Thank you for reading.

Psi-Ops

Louis Shalako

It was a hazy memory, but it was there nevertheless.

.............U.S. Army Classified Document

In the modern context warfare is no longer constrained to the battlefield or geographic locations. Psi-ops shall be considered to be any extension of battlefield operations conducted by alternate means. Psychic ops are an important adjunct to conventional weapons. Wars are still won by boots on the ground. That victory will be prepared and sustained by psi-ops. Victory will be assured by the proper use of psychic operations. Psi-ops personnel will be highly-trained and fully utilize unusual senses or attributes of the brain involving projection of thoughts and the dominance of enemy and other minds, as well as the use of technologies and systems associated with psi-ops.

This includes electronic intelligence gathering, data-mining, surveillance of human resources friendly and otherwise, psi-hacking and counter psi-hacking, and significant other forms of psychological and psychic operations.

#

Bancroft Emerald allowed the suspect to sleep. Much of the training was murky, necessarily so. The average recruit would go mad at the deeper implications of policy if taken to their logical extension. 

Even so, he was pleased. It was one step closer to success. The lean features of the figure on the bed mirrored his own. The fellow was a slightly-shorter, lighter version of himself of just a few years ago. 

The red hair and blue eyes were uncomfortable reminders of his own humanity.

This one was relatively well-trained, but in the end, weakness prevailed. This wasn’t unusual, what was unusual was for Bancroft to have a moment of conscience, an introspective mood that had hit him as soon as he woke up this morning. Perhaps the dankness in the bleak little flat in the three-floor battleship grey painted brick house overlooking the projects by the river had something to do with it. 

Perhaps drab rations and bad air also had something to do with it. Loneliness and isolation had much to do with it.

He felt a twinge of something. It was strong, but he shrugged it off. He had been engaged in a background battle with something, with someone or other, all week long. He was convinced this was the case. It had to be it—it was a feeling like no other. It only stood to reason, that having made great progress in the use of practical psychic warfare, their enemy was bound to respond.

They could only hold a secret so long. All competitive edges became dulled over time. The signs were there, ambushes, timely reinforcement by the enemy of key sectors vulnerable to attack, new technologies arising to defeat new weapon systems thought to have been developed in great secrecy…

Sooner or later, someone was bound to get caught. Someone had been captured, interrogated, just as he was doing with Henry ‘Hank’ Maloney, and sooner or later someone would have talked, not so much to save their own skin, although that was always a consideration. Prisoners would be exchanged from time to time, if only to prove their existence. But more likely they would talk to earn a quick and easy execution. Bancroft knew the feeling. He’d been there, but only once, and having been liberated in the nick of time, ensured the execution of those operatives involved in his breaking. 

For surely that was what they had done. He was suspect now, and would always be relegated to lesser duties. Even so, he hadn’t taken it personally. It was standard operating procedure. It was war. It worked both ways. The opposition knew that very well.

But the enemy was making progress.

It was only a matter of time before they caught up, or made a breakthrough in another area, one where perhaps the Conglomerate had a weakness. Maybe they just got lucky one day and bred a super-psychic warrior that would dominate the battlefield. Every so often he acknowledged that presence, as enemies do from one trench to another, just as they had for millennia. He sensed its caress, as it sought him out and explored him in a cautious reconnaissance, and at the same time tried to disguise its presence by the equivalent of smoke and mirrors. It, whoever it was, still thought he was stupid…he had a kind of contempt for the clumsy thing.

This was the equivalent of heavy shelling just over the horizon in the conventional sense. It was annoying, and of course it would go on all night. It really wasn’t much of a threat.

The fellow sleeping across from him had been trained by the U.S. Army, but that meant nothing. He was a shell, one who had his own thoughts and his own identity, but he was one who had somehow submitted a little too deeply to the indoctrination. Once that indoctrination had been broken down and overcome, at least three other agencies had made use of him. He was a lost soul.

He would be shot if the Army ever caught up with him again, and perhaps that was merciful. It wasn’t so much his guilt, for he was surely a casualty as much as any man. He was a hazard—he could no longer be trusted with useful work. He was a threat and an embarrassment to those who had created him.

While the dreams could be so helpful, it was the nightmares that marked him out as special, although actual sympathy for the damned was somehow foreign to him. Bancroft had been very well trained, when you got right down to the facts.

The problem was what to do with Hank. Would he be useful, albeit expendable against the higher-value targets?

He burrowed more deeply into the sleeping man’s head, now that the subject was no longer in a position to resist, although many actually helped their examiners by compensating for perceived insecurities.

What he saw next didn’t shock him, exactly. He had seen it all before. It was a common element in all of their stories.

Children of the labs, is what they were called unofficially. Hank had been afraid of something under the bed, a discovery which brought a faint smile of humanity to Bancroft’s placid features. Youthful dreams had a consistency which often surprised the outside observer. All children were created equal.

He felt himself slipping, and then, stunned by a spike of pain that impaled him from the top of his skull down through his rectum, he flew up into the flames, smoke and darkness of a whole new phase of reality. His guts lurched when he realized that he had stumbled into a trap, and in a sense of complete comfort had left himself wide open to attack.

He just had time to know what hit him.

END