For Every Man A Reason Page 2

them.

  The planetary stations were all in good shape except for minor repairs,which Aron attended to with the quiet joy of a man who loves machinery.He was home sooner than expected and just in time. The next day it beganto snow.

  The weather had opposite effects on the people in the station. Aron,long used to such confinements, settled down and began reading some ofthe great mass of books which he had brought, or working painstakinglyon hobbies.

  Martha grew more distraught as the snowbound months went by. The wildenthusiasm of her youth had left her, but she was not stoic enough totake the long confinement and inactivity. She tried to pick arguments,but Aron wouldn't argue. She tried to get interested in sometime-consuming hobby, but she lacked the patience.

  Spring finally came. On the first nice day Martha went on a long walk towatch the few flowers that Kligor boasted push their fragile buds intothe air. Aron spent the day working on the path and the clearing thatwas a spaceport.

  When night came, he was alone at the station.

  Aron waited up all night, knowing it would be futile to search in thedark, not knowing in which direction or how far she had gone on herstroll. Aron was not too worried, since there were no dangerous animals.She was probably lost or had a sprained ankle, in which case she wouldhave the sense to find a sheltered place and be safe for the night.

  When morning came he began searching. He used the atmosphere flier tocruise over the nearby country.

  Up and down hillsides he flew the craft, gliding slowly at a lowaltitude. He stopped over clumps of bushes for a careful scan,occasionally roaring towards what looked like a piece of cloth, butalways turned out to be a bright stone.

  When he found her, he knew before he landed. She was sprawled at thebottom of a high cliff.

  She was not pretty any more. She wasn't even a live animal, just deadflesh lying there, smeared with blood and covered with tattered clothes.

  Aron remained in a stage of pre-shock, a state of cold clearrationality, until he had taken her back to the station, dug a grave andburied her. He wasn't sad, it was just a job to be done. This wasn't hiswife he was burying.

  It wasn't until that evening that the fact of her death penetrated andwas accepted by his mind.

  * * * * *

  The next few days were spent in routine actions. Aron relied on hisusual anodyne--work. The pathway and the meadow were filled with cementby the end of the fifth day.

  He let his stunned mind become wrapped in the problem of completing thisjob--the weight of the shovel in his hand, the heat of the sun on hisback--these were what he thought about. It was not a solution or evenescape, just a stall.

  The sixth day brought a visitor.

  The shock of someone knocking at the door, walking in, introducinghimself and sitting down to talk yanked Aron's mind into awareness.

  The only way to achieve a landing would be for a friendly ship to signalhim and have him de-activate the defenses--which definitely had nothappened!

  Therefore it was hallucination, a miracle, or at least an interestingtrick that this man had appeared at his station. Aron took interest,demanding that the man start from the beginning again as he had missedthe introductions due to slight surprise.

  "I said I am Karl Rondwell, an agent and representative of the People'sRepublic, being a member of the Intelligence department of her imperialnavy," the man replied.

  "The first question is, naturally," Aron said, "How the Hell did you gethere?"

  A slight smile. "Your much-vaunted defenses that are supposed to be ableto snuff out the mightiest fleet, these defenses are easy to pass--forone man."

  Aron could see that easily enough. "What is your purpose here then?"

  "A deal, naturally!"

  "I imagined so. You will have to persuade me, because you can't removeme and take over those defenses. Lack of knowledge of the proper codewould trip you up when our United Empire ships came snooping around asthey do so often."

  "Since we understand the rules of the game," the enemy agent said,"let's proceed with it.

  "Let me begin with a discussion of civilization. You may have forgottensomething about it in your secluded life here."

  The agent went on to speak of civilization, its comforts. Since he was aspy, he had spent a good deal of time in the United Republic. He spokein terms of a man with money, the plush night spots, the beautiful girlsthat would be only too glad to be friendly with a wealthy man.

  "All right," Aron interrupted him. "That's clever oratory, but moneyisn't all I'll take to sell out my empire. What else have you to offer,and remember, I'm not buying--just looking."

  The agent made his case stronger by comparing plush civilization to thefutile hermit's existence of a TA observer, throwing in a few remarksabout the brevity of one's life to be wasted in such a barren pastime asfive years in solitary confinement.

  When he began talking about a comfortable married life in a civilizedcommunity, he noticed Aron growing distraught.

  "Why does talk of marriage so disturb you?" he asked.

  Aron looked at him with a sneer in his eyes, "You must know, you checkyour victims before you begin your Judas acts."

  With a rueful grin, the agent replied, "That is one place our agentscan't penetrate, your Personnel Records Office. You, being a hard man toknow, have made very few acquaintances that we could approach to getyour history."

  Silence. Then Aron said, "All right, here's a bone I'll toss you. Youmay use it, I don't give a damn!

  "My wife died five days ago on this planet." He said it with vehemence,probably imagining by some twist of thought that he was shocking,hurting the enemy agent, whereas he actually was deliberately shockinghimself. Masochism.

  "Your wife?" the agent was amazed. "I didn't know your TA observers tookwives with them."

  "I'll bet you didn't know. Though, most of them don't, come to think ofit."

  The agent relaxed, lighted a cigarette--an ancient habit that cropped upin all eras.

  "Men can take it," he began quietly. "Women are different. They can takeit if they want to, but it's hard to find the right woman; and even thenshe must want to take it by being with the man she loves, or perhaps itis psychological--martyring themselves to gain a subtle control of thatman, which they all want to do.

  "When you get a woman who can't, or doesn't want to take it, she canpull a beautiful crack-up. Without friends to appreciate her martyrdom,with a husband who refuses to acknowledge it, she sometimes uses thesupreme martyrdom to gain recognition."

  "Instinct tells me to slug you in the teeth," Aron said, "but apathyforbids me."

  "Couldn't it be that you refuse to slug me because you want me to keeptalking? Because you recognize the truth, that your wife committedsuicide because of the loneliness and now your devotion to state hasbecome meaningless? 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away' was theold maxim, but 'the State only taketh away' is the new."

  There was more talk and some drinking, for the agent had convenientlybrought some choice liquor.

  The next morning, after they had arisen from where they had fallenasleep in a stupor, the agent proposed his plan. With the disgust anddespair of the hangover, the agent's biting attack on his pride and hisstate, Aron listened. Later the agent was no longer the enemy, but apartner in a deal.

  * * * * *

  The next week the ships came. Twenty-seven proud cruisers of thePeople's Republic; also troop and supply ships. They landed in the broadvalley on the main continent of Kligor, twenty miles from Aron'sstation.

  The professional fighters emerged from their tools of war, the dullhulls of the ships and the dark uniforms lapping up the pleasantsunshine. The only reflection was from the polished bits of metal thathung at their sides, bits of metal that could spit destruction in tendifferent forms.

  They looked at the planet but did not see it, it was just their newlygained base. They did not see the poignant beauty of the seeminglysenescent hills covered w
ith wisps of green and bathed in blazingsunshine. They only saw strategic positions, avenues of approach andtactical advantages.

  The pebble had become a pawn. War had come to Kligor. The slow, subtleweavings of individual threads of human psychology were ripped andsnarled as the Mass Effort took over.

  Conferences were held, land surveyed, machinery trundled from thecavernous holds of supply ships and the base was begun. To the cadenceof barked orders, shuffling feet and grinding, pounding, thumpingmachinery, the buildings rose, the men moved in.

  There was the usual bustle of a new military operation, the normaltension of a top-secret operation, the usual bungling and mix-up ofsupplies. But there was a slightly different attitude toward thegradually growing base. This was not a standard military location, onethat had existed for