There was a reason why the
city acted the way it did ...
and we were the reason!
I stepped back out of the gutter and watched the tight clot of men disappear around the corner. They hadn't really been menacing, just had made it obvious they weren't going to break up. And that I had better get out of their way. I got. We were well trained.
The neon of the bar across the street flickered redly on my uniform. I watched the slush trickle off my boots for a while, then made up my mind and headed into the bar. It was a mistake.
New York had always been considered safe for us. Of course there were many parts of the country that were absolutely forbidden "for your own good" and others that were "highly dangerous" or at least "doubtful." But New York had always been a haven. The stares there had even been admiring sometimes, especially in the beginning.
But things had changed. I had realized that about half an hour after touchdown, when we were being herded through Health Check, Baggage Check, Security Check ... you know the lot. Before, there had been friendly questions, genuine interest in the Mars colony, speculations about the second expedition to Venus, even a joke or two. This time the examiners' only interest seemed to be in fouling us up as much as possible. And when we finally got through the rat race, New York was bleak.
I should have stayed with the rest, I guess, and of course a public bar was the last place any smart spaceboy would have gone to. But I had some nice memories of bars, memories from the early days.
The whole room went silent, as though a tube had blown, when I shoved through the door. I got over to an empty table as quickly as I could and inspected the list of drinks on the dispenser. This one had a lot of big nickel handles sticking up over the drink names and the whole job was shaped like one of those beer kegs you used to see pictures of. What I mean is, this was an authentic bar.
Phony as hell.
From the way this sounds, you can guess the kind of mood I'd gotten in. The noise had picked up again right after I sat down and some of the drunker drunks were knocking the usual words around, in loud whispers and with lots of glances at me. One of the pro-girls (her hair was green and her blouse covered her breasts—another change while I was out) gave me a big wink and then jabbed the man next to her and squawked with laughter.
I fed a bill into the change machine at the table and then dribbled several coins (prices had gone up too) into the dispenser.
I guess I must have had several, because after a while I began to feel cheerful. The noise that was coming out of the box in the corner started to sound like music, and I got to tapping and rocking. And smiling, I guess. And that's what triggered it.
People had been coming and going, but mainly coming. And the crowd at the bar had been getting louder, and one guy there had been getting louder than the rest. All of a sudden, he slammed down his glass and headed for my table. He orbited around it for a while, staring at me, and then settled jerkily down in the chair across from me.
"Why all the hilarity, spaceboy? Feeling proud of yourself?"
He looked pretty wobbly and pretty soft and pretty old. And very angry. But I was kind of wobbly myself by that time. And anyway there are strict rules about us and violence. Very strict. So I just tried to make the smile bigger and said, "I'm just feeling good. We had a good run and we brought in some nice stuff."
"Nice stuff," he said, kind of mincing. "Buddy, do you know what you can do with your sandgems and your windstones?"
"We brought back some other things too. There was a good bit of uranium and—"
"We don't need it!" He was getting purple. "We don't need anything from you."
"And maybe we don't need you." I was getting sort of fired up myself. "Carversville is self-sufficient now. You can't give us anything."
"Well, why the hell don't you stay there? Why don't all of you stay off Earth? There's no place for you here."
I could have pointed out that we brought things that Earth really needed, that Mars and Venus had literally worlds of natural resources, while Earth had almost finished hers. But he began to quiet down then and I began to feel the loneliness again, the sense of loss. You can't go home again ... that phrase kept poking around in my skull.
Suddenly he sat up and looked straight at me, and his eyes really focused for the first time. "What lousy luck. What incredibly lousy luck. And how could anyone have known?"
It wasn't hard to peg what he was talking about. "It was probably good luck that the first space crew was selected the way it was," I said. "Otherwise you'd have had a dead ship full of dead men and no knowing why. But that one man brought the ship back."
"Yeah, yeah. I know. And the scientists figured everything out. About radiation in space being lethal to almost all types of man. But there was one thing that made a man immune. One thing."
"The scientists tried to find a protective covering that would be practicable. They tried to synthesize slaves that would protect you. It wasn't our fault that they couldn't."
"No, not your fault." His eyes had begun to dull again. "Just a matter of enough melanin in the skin. That's all...." Then he straightened up and slammed his fist on the table. "Damn you, did you know I was a jet pilot a long time ago? Did you know I was going to be one of the space pioneers? Open up brave new worlds for Man...."
He sat there staring at me for a minute or so and the last thing he said was, "Don't you come here again—nigger."
I got up and left the table and walked out of the bar. I wasn't provoked. As I said before, we were well trained.
The first time I realized where I was was when I bumped into the fence around the spacefield. I must have walked all the way over there from the bar. I had a memory of crumbling buildings and littered streets. Things had changed while I had been out there. They were letting the city run down.
As I started to walk along the fence to the gate, I saw the ship towering against the stars. The stars and the ship. And tomorrow there would be colonists getting aboard.
I stopped and looked till I knew where home was and who the real exiles were.
I stopped feeling sorry for myself. And started feeling sorry for them.