The Hills of Home

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  THE HILLS OF HOME

  by Alfred Coppel

  +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | _"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 thewarm smell of late summer rising out of the slow water. Madrone andbirch and willow, limp in the evening quiet, and the taste ofsmouldering leaves....

  It wasn't the Russian River. It was the Sacred Iss. The sun had touchedthe gem-encrusted cliffs by the shores of the Lost Sea of Korus and hadvanished, leaving only the stillness of the dusk and the lonely cry ofshore birds.

  From downstream came the faint sounds of music. It might have been aphonograph playing in one of the summer cabins with names like Polly AnnRoost and Patches and Seventh Heaven, but to Kimmy it was the hated cryof the Father of Therns calling the dreadful Plant Men to their feast ofvictims borne into this Valley Dor by the mysterious Iss.

  Kimmy shifted the heavy Martian pistol into his left hand and checkedhis harness. A soft smile touched his lips. He was well armed; there wasnothing he had to fear from the Plant Men. His bare feet turnedup-stream, away from the sound of the phonograph, toward the shallows inthe river that would permit him to cross and continue his search alongthe base of the Golden Cliffs--_

  * * * * *

  The sergeant's voice cut through the pre-dawn darkness. "Oh, threehundred, Colonel.... Briefing in thirty minutes."

  Kimball tried to see him in the black gloom. He hadn't been asleep. Itwould have been hard to waste this last night that way. Instead he hadbeen remembering. "All right, Sergeant," he said. "Coming up."

  He swung his feet to the bare boards and sat for a moment, wishing hehadn't had to give up smoking. He could almost imagine the texturedtaste of the cigaret on his tongue.

  Oddly enough, he wasn't tired. He wasn't excited, either. And that wasmuch stranger. He stood up and opened the window to look out into thedesert night. Overhead the stars were brilliant and cold. Mars gleamedrusset-colored against the sable sky. He smiled, remembering again. Solong a road, he thought, from then to now.

  Then he stopped smiling and turned away from the window. It hadn't beenan easy path and what was coming up now was the hardest part. The goddampsychs were the toughest, always wanting him to bug out on the dealbecause of their brainwave graphs and word association tests and theirRorschach 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 runningout of your head and tell them about the still waters of Korus, or thepennons flying from the twin towers of Greater Helium or the way thetiny, slanting sun gleamed at dawn through the rigging of a flyer?

  Kimball snapped on a light and looked at his watch. 0310. Zero minus onefifty. He opened the steel locker and began to dress.

  * * * * *

  _The water swirled warm and velvety around his ankles. There, behindthat madrone, Kimmy thought. Was that a Plant Man? The thick white trunkand the grasping, blood-sucking arms----

  The radium pistol's weight made his wrist ache, but he clung to ittightly, knowing that he could never cope with a Plant Man with a swordalone. The certainty of coming battle made him smile a little, the wayJohn Carter would smile if he were here in the Valley Dor ready toattack the white Therns and their Plant Men.

  For a moment, Kimmy felt a thrill of apprehension. The deepeningstillness of the river was closing in around him. Even the music fromthe phonograph was very, very faint. Above him, the great vault of thesky was changing from pink to gray to dusty blue. A bright star wasbreaking through the curtain of fading light. He knew it was Venus, theEvening Star. But let it be Earth, he thought. And instead of white, letit 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 leftall that behind me. It was never really what I wanted. Mars is where Ibelong. 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 southernskies 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 armsto the sunset and standing safely on his high balcony in the GoldenCliffs while the Plant Men gathered to attack the poor pilgrims Iss hadbrought to this cursed valley.

  "Sing me to sleep, lullaby of the leaves"--the phonograph sang. Kimmystepped cautiously ashore and moved into the cover of a clump ofwillows. 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 strangefigure in blood-colored plastic. The representatives of the press hadbeen handed the mimeographed releases by the PRO and now they sat insilence, studying the red figure of the man who was to ride the rocket.

  They were thinking: Why him? Out of all the scores ofapplicants--because there are always applicants for a sure-deathjob--and all the qualified pilots, why this one?

  The Public Relations Officer was speaking now, reading from the mimeoedrelease as though these civilians couldn't be trusted to get the sparseinformation given them straight without his help, given grudgingly andwithout expression.

  Kimball listened, only half aware of what was being said. He watched thefaces of the men sitting on the rows of folding chairs, saw their eyeslike wounds, red from the early morning hour and the murmuring receptionof 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, satSteinhart, the team analyst. Kimball returned his steady gaze thinking:They start out burning with desire to cure the human mind and end withthe shadow of the images. The words become the fact, the therapy theaim. What could Steinhart know of longing? No, he thought, I'm not beingfair. Steinhart was only doing his job.

  The big clock on the back wall of the briefing shack said threefifty-five. Zero minus one hour and five minutes.

  Kimball looked around the room at the pale faces, the open mouths. Whathave I to do with you now, he thought?

  * * * * *

  Outside, the winter night lay cold and still over the Base. Floodlightsspilled brilliance over the dunes and the scrubby earth, high fencescasting laced shadows across the burning white expanses offerroconcrete.

  As they filed out of the briefing shack, Steinhart climbed into thecommand car with Kimball. Chance or design? Kimball wondered. Theothers, he noticed, were leaving both of them alone.

  "We haven't gotten on too well, have we, Colonel?" Steinhart observed ina quiet voice.

  Kimball thought: He's pale skinned and very blond. What is it that hereminds me of? Shouldn't there be a diadem on his forehead? He smiledvaguely into the rumbling night. That's what it was. Odd that he shouldhave forgotten. How many rocket pilots, he wondered, were weaned onB
urroughs' books? And how many remembered now that the Thern priests allwore yellow wings and a circlet of gold with some fantastic jewel ontheir forehead?

  "We've done as well as could be expected," he said.

  Steinhart reached for a cigaret and then stopped, remembering thatKimball had had to give them up because of the flight. Kimball caughtthe 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'sjust 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," theColonel 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 finallytold 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 shedsand the wooden barracks. Overhead, the stars like dust across the sky.Kimball, swathed in plastic, a fantastic figure not of earth, watchedthem 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. "Setup 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'tmatter?

  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. Naturalunder the circumstances? Or neurosis building up already?

  "Our tests showed you to be a schizoid--well-compensated, of course. Youknow there's no such thing as a _normal_ human being. We all havetendencies toward one or more types of psychoses. In your case thesymptoms are an overly active imagination and in some cases an inabilityto 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," Steinhartwent 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 thepsychology of space-flight, Kim----"

  Silence. The rumble of the tires on the packed sand of the road, themurmur of the command car's engine, spinning oilily, and lit by tinysunbright flashes deep in the hollows of the hot metal.

  "You're glad to be leaving, aren't you--" Steinhart said finally. "Happyto be the first man to try for the planets----"

  Kimball nodded absently, wishing the man would be quiet. Mars, a dullrusty point of light low on the horizon, seemed to beckon.

  They topped the last hillock and dropped down into the lighted bowl ofthe launching site. The rocket towered, winged and monstrously checkeredin white and orange, against the first flickerings of the false dawn.

  * * * * *

  _Kimmy saw the girls before they saw him. In their new, low waistedmiddies and skirts, they looked strange and out of place standing by thepebbled shore of the River Iss.

  They were his sisters, Rose and Margaret. Older than he at fifteen andseventeen. But they walked by the river and into danger. Behind him hecould hear the rustling sound of the Plant Men as the evening breezecame up.

  "Kimm-eeeee--"

  They were calling him. In the deepening dusk their voices carried fardown the river. "Kimmmmm--eeeeeeeeee--"

  He knew he should answer them, but he did not. Behind him he could hearthe awful Plant Men approaching. He shivered with delicious horror.

  He stood very still, listening to his sisters talking, letting theirvoices 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 findhim----"

  "Playing with that old faucet--" Mimicry. "'My rad-ium pis-tol----'"

  "Cracked--just cracked. Oh, where IS he, anyway? Kimmm-eee, youAN-swer!"

  Something died in him. It wasn't a faucet, it WAS a radium pistol. Helooked at his sisters with dismay. They weren't really his sisters. Theywere Therns, with their yellow hair and their pale skins. He and JohnCarter and Tars Tarkas had fought them many times, piling their bodiesfor barricades and weaving a flashing pattern of skillful swords in theshifting 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 wouldcome splashing across the stream on his huge thoat, his two swordsclashing----

  "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 intosandy, river-worn banks. The faucet felt heavy in his grimy hand. Heshivered, 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 quitealone. The plastic sac contained him, fed him; and the rocket, silentnow, coursed through the airless deep like a questing thought. Time wasmeasured by the ticking of the telemeters and the timers, but Kimballslept insulated and complete.

  And he dreamed.

  He dreamed of that summer when the river lay still and deep under thehanging willows. He dreamed of his sisters, thin and angular creaturesas he remembered them through the eyes of a nine-year-old----

  And his mother, tall and shadowy, standing on the porch of the rentedcottage 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 pistoland never wanting to take his nose out of those awful books----_"

  He dreamed of the low, beamed ceiling of the cottage, sweltering in theheat of the summer nights and the thick longing in his throat for redhills and a sky that burned deep blue through the long, long days andcanals, clear and still. A land that he knew somehow never was, butwhich lived, for him, through some alchemy of the mind. He dreamed ofMars.

  And Steinhart: "_What is reality, Kimmy?_"

  * * * * *

  The hours stretched into days, the days into months. Time wasn't. Timewas a deep night and a starshot void. And dreams.

  He awoke seldom. His tasks were simple. The plastic sac and the tendercare of the ship were more real than the routine jobs of telemeteringinformation back to the Base across the empty miles, across the rim ofthe 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 loveis in the sky, he thought, filled with an immense satisfaction.

  And time slipped by, the weeks into months; the sun dwindled and earthwas gone. All around him lay the stunning star-dusted night.

  He lay curled in the plastic womb when the ship turned. He awokesluggishly and dragged himsel
f into awareness.

  "I've changed," he thought aloud. "My face is younger; I feeldifferent."

  The keening sound of air over the wings brought a thrill. Below him, agreat curving disk of reds and browns and yellows. He could see duststorms raging and the heavy, darkened lines of the canals.

  There was skill in his hands. He righted the rocket, balanced it. Beganthe tricky task of landing. It took all of his talent, all of histraining. Ponderously, the ship settled into the iron sand; slowly, theinternal fires died.

  * * * * *

  Kimball stood in the control room, his heart pounding. Slowly, the portsopened. Through the thick quartz he could see the endless plain. Reddishbrown, empty. The basin of some long ago sea. The sky was a deep,burning blue with stars shining at midday at the zenith. It lookedunreal, a painting of unworldly quiet and desolation.

  _What is reality, Kimmy?_

  Steinhart was right, he thought vaguely. A tear streaked his cheek. Hehad never been so alone.

  And then he imagined he saw something moving on the great plain. Hescrambled down through the ship, past the empty fuel tanks and thelashed supplies. His hands were clawing desperately at the dogs of theouter valve. Suddenly the pressure jerked the hatch from his hands andhe gasped at the icy air, his lungs laboring to breathe.

  He dropped to one knee and sucked at the thin, frigid air. His visionwas cloudy and his head felt light. But there _was_ something moving onthe plain.

  A shadowy cavalcade.

  * * * * *

  Strange monstrous men on fantastic war-mounts, long spears andfluttering