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.
Sentry of the Sky, by Evelyn E. Smith
Clarey had checked in at Classification Center so many times that he came now more out of habit than hope. He didn’t even look at the card that the test machine dropped into his hand until he was almost to the portway. And then he stopped. “Report to Room 33 for reclassification,” it said.
Ten years before, Clarey would have been ecstatic, sure that reclassification could be only in one direction. The machine had not originally given him a job commensurate with his talents; why should it suddenly recognize them? He’d known of people who had been reclassified—always downward. I’m a perfectly competent Sub-Archivist, he told himself; I’ll fight.
But he knew fighting wouldn’t help. All he had was the right to refuse any job he could claim was not in his line; the government would then be obligated to continue his existence. There were many people who did subsist on the government dole: the aged and the deficient and the defective—and creative artists who refused to trammel their spirits and chose to be ranked as Unemployables. Clarey didn’t fit into those categories.
Dispiritedly, he passed along innumerable winding corridors and up and down ramps that twisted and turned to lead into other ramps and corridors. That was the way all public buildings were designed. It was forbidden for the government to make any law-abiding individual think the way it wanted him to think. But it could move him in any direction it chose, and sometimes that served its purpose as well as the reorientation machines.
So the corridors he passed through were in constant eddying movement, with a variety of individuals bent on a variety of objectives. For the most part, they were of Low Echelon status, though occasionally an Upper Echelon flashed his peremptory way past. Even though most L-Es attempted to ape the U-E dress and manner, you could always tell the difference. You could tell the difference among the different levels of L-E, too—and there was no mistaking the Unemployables in their sober gray habits, devoid of ornament. It was, Clarey sometimes thought when guilt feelings bothered him, the most esthetic of costumes.
The machine in Room 33 extracted whatever information it was set to receive, then spewed Clarey out and sent him on his way to Rooms 34, 35, and 36, where other machines repeated the same process. Room 37 proved to be that rare thing in the hierarchy of rooms—a destination. There was a human Employment Commissioner in it, splendidly garbed in crimson silvet and alexandrites—very Upper Echelon, indeed. He wore a gold mask, a common practice with celebrities who were afraid of being overwhelmed by their admirers, an even more common practice with U-E non-celebrities who enjoyed the thrill of distinguished anonymity.
Then Clarey stopped looking at the Commissioner. There was a girl sitting next to him, on a high-backed chair like his. Clarey had never seen a U-E girl so close before. Only the Greater Archivists had direct contact with the public, and Clarey wasn’t likely to meet a U-E socially, even if he’d had a social life. The girl was too fabulous for him to think of her as a woman, a female; but he would have liked to have her in his archives, in the glass case with the rare editions.
“Good morning, Sub-Archivist Clarey,” the man said mellowly. “Good of you to come in. There’s rather an unusual position open and the machines tell us you’re the one man who can fill it. Please sit down.” He indicated a small, hard stool.
Clarey remained standing. “I’ve been a perfectly competent Sub-Archivist,” he declared. “If MacFingal has—if there have been any complaints, I should have been told first.”
“There have been no complaints. The reclassification is upward.”
“You mean I’ve made it as a Musician!” Clarey cried, sinking to the hard little stool in joyful atony.
“Well, no, not exactly a Musician. But it’s a highly artistic type of job with possible musical overtones.”
Clarey became a hollow man once more. No matter what it was, if it wasn’t as duly accredited Musician, it didn’t matter. The machine could keep him from putting his symphonies down on tape, but it couldn’t keep them from coursing in his head. That it could never take away from him. Or the resultant headache, either.
“What is the job, then?” he asked dully.
“A very important position, Sub-Archivist. In fact, the future welfare of this planet may depend on it.”
“It’s a trick to make me take a job nobody else wants,” Clarey sneered. “And it must be a pretty rotten job for you to go to so much trouble.”
The girl, whom he’d almost forgotten, gave a little laugh. Her eyes, he noticed, were hazel. There were L-E girls, he supposed, who also had hazel eyes—but a different hazel.
“Perhaps this will convince you of the job’s significance,” the interviewer said huffily. He took off his mask and looked at Clarey with anticipation. He had a sleek, ordinary, middle-aged-to-elderly face.
There was an awkward interval. “Don’t you recognize me?” he demanded.
Clarey shook his head. The girl laughed again.
“A blow to my ego, but proof that you’re the right man for this job. I’m General Spano. And this is my Mistress, Secretary Han Vollard.”
The girl inclined her head.
“At least you must know my name?” Spano said querulously.
“I’ve heard it,” Clarey admitted. “‘The Fiend of Fomalhaut,’ they call you,” he went on before he could catch himself and stop the words.
The girl clapped her hand over her mouth, but the laughter spilled out over and around it, pretty U-E laughter.
Spano finally laughed, too. “It’s a phrase that might be used about any military man. One carries out one’s orders to the best of one’s ability.”
“Besides,” Clarey observed in a non-Archivistic manner, “what concern have I with your military morality?”
“He’s absolutely perfect for the job, Steff!” she cried. “I didn’t think the machines were that good!”
“We mustn’t underestimate the machines, Han,” Spano said. “They’re efficient, very efficient. Someday they’ll take over from us.”
“There’re