Oberheim (Voices) | Page 6

ran to the wall, seized the rifle and would have shot. But a familiar voice stayed her.
"Put down the rifle, Elonna, or one of these times you really will shoot." The voice, she thought, came from the stranger, a square, Russian-looking man with dark eyes and a shaved head. He was clad in the blue and black of a Cantonese army officer, the emblem of the clenched white fist sewn to his breast, a small black cross in its center. His face wore the sharp look of command but his eyes, in that moment, seemed to contradict it.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "And what have you done with Lawrence?"
"I'm right here, Elonna." The officer opened his jacket and unfastened the garment beneath, pulling it open at the neck to reveal a dark collar and chest, with tight curls of hair like thorny bushes covering his breast.
"Lawrence!" One of her hands lost its grip on the rifle. "You scared me half to death."
"I'm sorry for that. I thought you had gone out."
At that moment she realized two things: that he was going into great danger, and that she cared for him very much.
"When must you go?"
"Very soon." He resealed the uniform.
"Be careful, will you?"
"Yes." He pulled a different weapon from among the equipment against the wall, examined it carefully. "I have to go." He started for the door. She stopped him halfway and embraced him, her eyes gleaming at the corners.
"Be careful."
"I will." He pulled away and stood in the entrance. He looked back at her strangely, hesitated as if wanting to say more, then turned and was gone. He did not return that night.
*
The next day the woman was genuinely concerned. She had just begun to lose hope, when the smoky film of the entrance dissolved and opened out onto the cleft. A man stepped through, but it was not Lawrence.
"Morgan? What's wrong, where's Lawrence?"
"He's dead."
Such an empty shock. "What? What happened?"
He was trying to sabotage a missile base, with several others. His papers were challenged and he was shot. I'm sorry."
"Dead," she stammered. "Dead. Will they kill us all, one by one?" She began to weep.
"Unless we stop them."
"How, damn it! How?"
"A piece at a time."
"But you said you had a plan. For ME."
"I do."
"Well what is it? Stop treating me like a child!"
"Not now. I'll come back tomorrow after dark."
"All right. God." She could not believe it. He turned to go.
Without turning. "You'd best harden your heart, Elonna, or it will freeze inside you. I'm sorry about Lawrence.
He was gone.
*
The next day seemed endless, but at last he came. He looked over the equipment leaned against the wall, then came and sat across from her. He was at once both kinder and colder.
"I have a plan, Elonna, and them is a reasonable chance it will work. But it may be more than your mind is equipped to handle. Also. . .it is sexual in nature."
"You think I don't know that, the way you're always looking at me?"
"Listen first. Save your scorn for the enemy. You will need it all."
"I'm sorry. I'm not mad at you."
"Never, NEVER apologize. And don't ever feel pity for a man who's done you wrong. If you do at a critical time in this, we're lost."
"You're worse than he was."
"Yes, and I'm still alive." He stirred uncomfortably in the chair. "I didn't mean that. Have you got any water?"
"Yes." She sent the boy to get some.
"Try to understand, Elonna. As undersecretary to Hunter, I'm surrounded by them constantly. These guerrillas, even Lawrence, flit in and out of the fire."
"Lawrence did more than flit."
"Yes he did. And if I could change that, I would..... But I live in the midst of it. I can't afford the luxury of emotion. And I want desperately to bring them down. That they're my own people doesn't help."
She studied him more closely.
"You say they're your own people. What about us? Are we just pieces on the board?"
"Not a fair question. You don't know what we're up against." The boy handed him a filled cup.
"Lawrence was found of saying that, and he's dead."
"Yes, and I'm likely to end the same way."
"Then why do you do it?"
"Because they ARE my own people. Maybe you pity them, try to understand. I don't. There's no excuse for this, Elonna. None. It's all been played out a hundred times before.
"There lives are empty and harsh," he continued. "So they say it must be somebody's fault. Surely their God can't want them to suffer, apple of his eye as they're supposed to be. So it must be anti-God. And who is this? The blacks and other minorities, the corrupt and inept liberals, a benign socialist colony two systems away. For God's sake, we've been in Space for two hundred years, we should know better. They