Fire Time

AFTERWORD

The night was old when we finished our tale.

Espina had well-nigh told it with us, so sharp and knowing were his questions. He had not flagged though we grew weary who were two generations his juniors. But when at last he said, “Yo comprendo… bastante,” he closed his eyes for a while; and stillness brimmed the big room. Only the grandfather clock talked on, and that slow dk, dk, dk seemed only the falling away of time.

He had left the lights dim throughout. Hour after hour we had watched the stars wheel by. Now they were a faded crown for him, as the east turned silver. In hope and dread we waited.

The eagle visage swung back to us, the wrinkled lids drew away from brilliance. “My apologies,” said the president of the Federation Tribunal. “I should not have kept you in suspense. But I had to contemplate this.”

“Certainly, sir,” I mumbled.

“No doubt you wondered if I wanted you for a game of cat and mouse—”

“Oh, no, sir!”

Espina grinned. “I gave you no hint of my real wish, my ultimate intention. I could not have done that if I wanted as complete a revelation as I have obtained. You thought perhaps by stating your case you could persuade me to give you a lenient sentence. But perhaps I was merely indulging curiosity or—in cold anger or idle cruelty—adding a more subtle chastisement than the law allows. Well, whatever it was, it is almost ended.”

He bleakened. “Almost,” he said. “Before I explain, there is one last necessary pain to inflict. You must realize in depth how grave the charges are against you.

“You, Ian Sparling and Jill Conway, committed piracy, and upon a naval vessel in time of war. You compelled the violation not alone of a directive, which would have been abundantly criminal, but of a prime policy of the entire Federation. Thereafter you, Yuri Dejerine, a naval officer, continued such violations. Falsifying your orders, you suspended the operations entrusted to you and employed the men, equipment, and materials in your care for civilian purposes irrelevant to your assignment. To those ends, the three of you continually conspired, which is a felony per se.

“Yes, yes, you have heard this before. Now I have heard, in detail rather than emotional catchphrases, your justification: that you had to assist a remote, non-human, technologically backward civilization, of interest to nobody except scientists; and that your action kept a few thousand residents, many of whom would not have stayed, from a secession which, could it succeed, would have been insignificant to Earth. In short, you deemed your tiny purposes and judgments superior to those of every authority and several billion private persons, and arrogated to yourselves the right to act accordingly.

“Why should your rehabilitation not require the rest of your lives?”

Before that sternness I surrendered my dreams, and surely my comrades did likewise.

No, not altogether, not for more than some clockbeats. Then Jill sat straight. Her voice lashed back: “Sir, whatever we’ve done, this law you claim to stand for gives us rights. Including, God damn it, the right to be heard. In public! Why the hell else do you think we went meekly along when the warrant arrived? We could’ve taken rations into the wilderness and stayed unfindable till your domesticated men left. But we wanted Earth to know!”

Ian and I took fire from her. “Yes,” he said. “Captain Dejerine may be under Navy discipline, but Miss Conway and I are not. Your closed-chamber hearings, your holding us incommunicado, are illegal under the Charter of the World Federation. Your Tribunal can pass sentence, but it may not keep us from issuing our statement.”

“Nor may the Navy,” I joined in. “That’s a reason why I was proud to wear its uniform—why I could be again.”

Espina met our stares. The clock struck off an hour.

He smiled. “Excellent,” he said. I had not imagined he could speak this gently. “I thank you for your spirit as well as your patience. Be at ease. Your torment is over.”

He pressed the call button on his chaise. Steeliness returned. “This part is over,” he corrected himself. “What follows will be in many ways worse.”

“You see, what you have told me confirms and fills out what my studies had seemed to prove. God knows I am not a very merciful man; but I try to be a just one.”

“When court reconvenes, proceedings will be open. Current rumors about the case will assure worldwide coverage. We will go through the motions, the indictment, your plea of guilty, the sentence, which my colleagues do indeed plan to make extreme.”

“Then I, invoking my powers, will grant you an unconditional pardon.”

I do not remember the next minutes well, except that we three embraced and wept through laughter.

When quietness was back among us, we found the servant had brought brandy. That was a noble cognac, a benediction. But after our toast, sitting crippled under the last stars, Espina started yet another cigarette, coughed, blew smoke, and told us in the same hard tone as before:

“Essentially, you aimed at a cause celebre which would rouse sympathy for Ishtar, sufficient for the resumption of aid. Tonight you catalyzed my tentative resolution. With my help—I have managed things as I did in order to create the maximum sensation—you will assuredly wake a storm. Prepare yourselves. You do not know how all-consuming it is to be a symbol.

“My purpose goes beyond yours, though. In the long run, yours is the larger and more meaningful. But in the short run, it is incidental to mine. I want to end the war.”

He puffed and sipped violently while we sat in an interior peace of exhaustion—

“The war.” His mummy countenance grimaced. “This senseless, bootless, justiceless, finishless war. Our sole proper business there was to lend our good offices toward settling the dispute. Instead, out of romanticism we turned friends into enemies. Out of sentimentalism we turned ourselves into butchers. Out of guilt-sense we turned reparation into a monstrously greater guilt.

“The time is overpast to make an end. It can be done. Between them. Earth and Naqsa can impose an arrangement that is not too unfair to either side, and certainly free of the unfaimess that young men die while old men live. We have an undercurrent of wish for it throughout the Federation, as our cost and commitment rise without limit and without result. But as yet this is an undercurrent. The politicians, the media, practically no one and nothing public will take any initiative. They simply do not discuss the politically awkward subject of a negotiated peace.”

“I will use you to whipsaw them into it.”

The face grinned anew, the hand waved his cigarette. “Oh, I have my selfish reasons, too,” he admitted. His chuckle went dry as phoenix boughs rubbed together by the Fire Time wind. “What a marvelous last battle! They will cry for my impeachment, a sanity hearing, revision of the Charter to strip my office of powers, every revenge that hysteria can mouth. And I will fight back in my fashion… Win or lose, have no fears for yourselves. You will be protected by the double jeopardy rule.”

“But—you must also be in the fight.”

Contempt crackled forth: “Don’t fear, either, that you need become fashionable radicals. Leave oratory, demonstrations, riots, denunciatory essays in chic magazines, solidarity with every grubby Cause that wants to hitch a ride, sermons which don’t mention God because he isn’t relevant—leave such things to the monkeys. Better, disown them, reject them. You shall simply be witnesses to the truth. You will not find that easy. The intellectual establishment that opposes you contains many skilled picadors as well as contortionists. Hardest of all will be to remain calm, reasonable, yes, truthful.”

His lips twisted, “What truth can you state? What effects of this unnecessary war have you personally experienced?

“The preventable deaths of millions of beings who may well stand above us in the eyes of eternity, made probable. Peril to a high civilization which we know has unguessably much to teach us, and someday not far off ought to take its place among the stars. You have verily seen destruction and grief which need not have happened, including—as far as can be discovered—the loss of two leaders who might well have worked together for incalculable good, had we provided them a chance.

“And Earth—on Ishtar, Earth has lost the trust of first-class minds, a trust not readily regained. Earth has lost the services of an outstanding officer; for though you be pardoned, Captain Dejerine, it is impossible for the Navy not to cashier you.” Once more an unexpected softness flitted across him in a smile. “I daresay they will make a place for you yonder, and a hearty welcome.”

The milder mood continued: “Providentially, you likewise bring positive news, of an entire intelligent species and relics of a powerful bygone race—from either of which we may quite conceivably learn what will open whole universes. But to do that, in living lifetimes, requires vastly enlarged assistance to the Gathering; furthermore, it requires help for the Valennen folk, that they in turn may help us. And this requires peace!”

“I think, in a year or so, Earth will realize where its true interests lie.”

His head drooped. Daniel Espina was mortal, too. Soon we said farewell, and the attendant woke the pilot who would take us back to our hidden quarters.

We waited outside for him. The air was quiet, thin, relentlessly cold, exultantly clear. The sun had now cleared the peaks, down whose granite its beams hunted shadows, and heaven reached sapphire.

“A year,” Ian breathed. Each work smoked white. “Or two at most. Then we go home.”

And if we’re fortunate, start over on our work. I thought.

“That many months—” Jill answered him. They had long stopped keeping secrets from me, or I from them. We are three. But this hour was theirs alone. “You’ll send for Rhoda.”

“How can she come?” he wondered against his own knowledge.

“The Judge can fix that. You wouldn’t be who you are, my darling, if you didn’t ask him to.” She squared her shoulders. “Meanwhile—” Presently: “Afterward—Well, we’ll see.” She did not trouble to speak of matters like the fact that loving and being loved bring duties. Her glance told me I was among her “we.”

The pilot came. Jill led us to the flyer. Following her, I dared hope.