boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

Man’s Reach 277
mechanisms of bones and veins which had once been hands plucked senselessly at
the covers, and the pallid eyes stared at the face of Mme. Storm (with the mouth
of a coquette and the eyes of a widow) or at nothing at all. But Arthur could feel,
almost extrasensorily, the desire to respond.
“You can save us,” he insisted. “An authentic message from you—I’ll take care
of identity checks that will satisfy every expert. You’re the man that they’ll all listen
to. To the Academy, you’re the one man that even Weddergren feels damned near
humble before. To the Populists—maybe not to their leaders, but to the millions
who act and vote—you’re a symbol, as Einstein was before you and as no Academist
is: a symbol of something wonderful and strange but very human. You’re the bridge,
the link, the greatness that synthesizes opposites. A word from you—and the Center
falls together behind that word, leaving the extremists where they belong, on the
sidelines of man’s march …”
“Shh!” Mme. Storm whispered. She had sensed the effort in the sunken face
before Arthur could realize that the old man intended to speak.
The first words were in German: “Es irrt der Mensch …”
The emaciated voice dwindled to nothing. Arthur remembered the passage from
Faust; something about how man must still strive and err as he strives …
The next words were in English, and were two: “Man’s reach …”
Then there was silence in the little room. From some faraway world, certainly
no nearer this than the orbit of Mercury, came sounds of scales and vocalizing, those
jarring preliminaries to beauty which characterize a school of singing.
Arthur never knew how long the room was silent before he realized that it was
too silent.
There had been three different rhythms of breathing. Now there were two.
Mme. Storm looked up at him, at once older and younger than he had yet seen
her. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Don’t blame yourself. You didn’t … It was only
days, perhaps hours …”
He leaned over and kissed her on the thin roughed lips. “ From him,” he said.
He looked at the dried thing on the bed. “Cover his face,” he said gently. “He died
old.”
To musicians, artists, writers, Venusberg means The Colony; to spacemen it means
the most wide-open port in the system.
The first aspect had afforded Jon Arthur his excuse for coming; the second provided
oblivion against the tragic failure of a mission.
It was two weeks before he even attempted to sober up. It was another week
before he emerged from the pea soup fog of his hangover.
He emerged to find a batch of cryptically phrased spacegrams from Steele Morrison,
Morrison, whose general tenor was “any luck?” and another batch from his
managing editor, whose general tenor was “Where the hell is the first article of the
series on Storm?” He tore up both batches unanswered.
“The dark night of the soul” is a phrase invented by a great mystic to describe
a certain indescribable and enviable state of mystic communion and dissolution,
but it sounds as though it described what a less mystic religious writer called “the
Slough of Despond.”