No Direction Home Read online

  “This is the way it really is,” Jonesy said. “People used to live in this bummer all the time. It’s the way it is, and nothing we can do can change it.”

  “I can change it,” Kip said, taking his pillbox out of his pocket. “Just say the word. Let me know when you’ve had enough and I’ll bring you out of it. Lebemil, peyotadrene, mescamil, you name it.”

  “You don’t understand, man, it’s real. That’s the trip I’m on. T haven’t taken anything at all for twelve hours, remember? It’s the natural state, it’s reality itself, and, man, it’s awful. It’s a horrible bummer. Christ, why did I have to talk myself into this? I don’t want to see the universe this way. Who needs it?”

  Kip was starting to get pissed off—Jonesy was becoming a real bring-down. Why did he have to pick a beautiful day like this to take his stupid nothing-trip?

  “Then take something already,” he said, offering Jonesy the pillbox.

  Shakily, Jonesy scooped out a cap of peyotadrene and a fifteen-milligram tab of lebemil and wolfed them down dry. “How did people live before psychedelics?” he said. “How could, they stand it?”

  “Who knows?” Kip said, closing his eyes and staring straight at the sun, diffusing his consciousness into the universe of golden orange light encompassed by his eyelids. “Maybe they had some way of not thinking about it.”

  HEIRLOOM

  “So Bornok was your last campaign, Grandpa?” the boy said, settling back on the couch.

  “Uh,” said the old man, lighting his blackened pipe, “Bornok was the end of it.” He seemed content to leave it at that.

  “Why?” said the boy, hoping to draw the old man out. His small experience with old men taught him to expect them to ramble on about the past at the slightest provocation, but Grandpa, who had risen to the rank of captain in the defense force, who had been in on the invasion of seven solar systems, was different. Getting him to talk was like pulling teeth.

  “You’re too young to remember Bornok,” the old man said. “Happened before you were born. We’d grabbed off twelve solar systems before Bornok, and I was in on six of ’em. The Knockers were the only gooks that beat us.”

  “Beat us? But we learned in school that we won on Bornok. The Draadens grabbed bases on the other two planets in the system, and on the outer moon, and they were all set to invade Bornok itself, so we temporarily—”

  “Crap!” the old man said.

  “It’s not true?”

  “ ’Course not. Lot of rot. First of all, we had a base on the inner moon before the Draadens even showed up. And second… Tell me, just what do they teach you about the Knockers? That oughta be good for a laugh!”

  The boy could see that the old man was beginning to warm up. All he seemed to need was something to get mad at.

  “Well… the Bornoks are a very humanoid race inhabiting the only—”

  “Yeah, sure!” the old man grunted. “Very humanoid. Believe me, it’s the gooks that look the humanest you gotta watch out for. Never forget that.”

  “But—”

  “Look, everything they tell you about Bornok is a pack of lies. Not that I blame them. They damn well better keep it a secret… if it ever got out…” The skin at the corner of the old man’s left eye began to twitch.

  “Tell me about it, Grandpa. You were there.”

  “I was there, all right,” the old man said. “Ain’t ever likely to forget that. But we were told to keep our mouths shut, and for once the brass was right.”

  “Grandpa!”

  The old man sighed. His pipe had gone out again. He relit it, shaking his head.

  “Ah… aw, hell!” he said. “Maybe you got a right to know. Someday you may end up on some lousy mudball wondering what the hell’s coming off. All right, son, hang on to your illusions…”

  First of all, let’s get one thing straight—we were in the Bornok system before the Draadens. Survey had cased the planet for future solar expansion. Warm, fertile, ninety-nine and eight tenths Earthlike, humanoid natives without any technology, an agrarian planet that could be subjugated with no sweat at all.

  Don’t interrupt! I know how horrible that sounds to your tender young ears. They fill you full of hogwash about how we just accidentally ended up controlling twelve inhabited systems in the past hundred years. Rot! We wanted those planets, and we got ’em, one way or another.

  And we had a real slick little scheme worked out for Bornok, with the help of the Draadens.

  You heard me, the Draadens! Not that, the little green devils helped us out of love. It was strictly quid pro quo. We withdrew our claim to Moali in favor of Draada, and in return the Draadens gave us an excuse to seize Bornok.

  Oh, it was quite a little gem, it was. We set up a scientific base on the inner moon. A year later, the Draadens set up a scientific base on the outer moon. Our politicians make a few nasty speeches. Then the Draadens set up another “scientific base” on one of the worthless rocks in the Bornok system, only this time they made it look like a cover for a military base. Now, our politicians can make threatening speeches. They proceeded to do so. So then the Draadens set up an overt military base on the third planet. And their politicians make threatening speeches.

  What was it all for? Use your head, son! All this Mickey-Mousing around sets it up for us to invade Bornok on the pretext of protecting our “humanoid brothers” from the “inhuman reptilian Draadens.” We get Bornok, Draada gets Moali. Quid pro quo, and everyone’s happy but the local gooks.

  So we set up an invasion of Bornok. No big deal, nothing fancy—remember, the Knockers were strictly hayseeds, no technology, not even an army. Not even a government you could shake a gun at. The defense force command figured we could pull it off with twenty divisions of mechanized light infantry, and, by every rule in the book, they should’ve been right.

  Only they were wrong.

  Who knows where it first happened? Could’ve been anywhere on Bornok. Maybe it was in a little village near a small river about fifty miles from a range of mountains which was scheduled to be occupied by a company of light infantry. Maybe it started somewhere else. It doesn’t really matter.

  The company wasn’t very heavily armed—heat rifles, hand guns, three personnel-carrier tanks. And even that was an awful lot of hardware to haul into a village where the most dangerous weapon was a pickaxe. Bornok had no governments, planet-wide or local; hence, not even the beginnings of a primitive army. Not even a warrior caste.

  There was some kind of council that met whenever there was something really important to consider, which was about once every three hundred years, according to what passed as the local historians. The council had met, had passed a resolution to the effect that Bornok did not recognize the right of Sol to occupy the planet, and had gone home without being stupid enough to make hollow threats. A piece of cake.

  Or so we thought.

  It was a nothing little village: clusters of sod-and-thatch huts around a dirt village square, corrals, scrubby vegetable gardens, and three big wooden longhouses on three sides of the square. A sleepy little village on a sleepy little planet…

  The captain ordered his three PCT’s into the square. Because they were riding PCT’s, the soldiers knew that the brass expected no trouble. If you ever end up in the defense force, you’ll find out that whenever there’s a real fight and PCT’s’d do the most good, they make you walk. When they let you ride, it’s a sure sign they expect you to get off with a whole hide.

  So the whole company was feeling loose and easy as they got out of the PCT’s. It was the usual mix of sappy eager kids and old pros, and the pros were maybe a little happier than the kids, knowing there would be no fight.

  The captain jumped down from the lead PCT and signaled to his driver, who hit the klaxon button. You can bet that klaxon was the loudest thing the local gooks had ever heard. Still, they just kind of drifted into the square real slowly, milled around a bit, looking the soldiers over without even getting sullen about it.

/>   Good-looking gooks, those Bornoks. Tall as humans on the average, mostly red-haired. Hard to tell ’em from humans, if not for the light green skin. And the women looked good and seemed to know how to smile. That always makes for an easy occupation.

  When the square was more or less full, the captain began his little speech, in hypno-learned Bornok.

  “We… soldiers of Sol… greet you. We are your protectors. We promise that as long as we are on Bornok the scaly Draadens…” Blah, blah, etcetera. The standard baloney. The Bornoks didn’t seem very interested, even when the young captain got to the kicker: “Naturally, we will need to set up a security system. For that purpose, we have been assigned to this village. All citizens of this village will be issued identity cards which they are to carry on their person, at all times. You will now line up in front of the machine on your left for—”

  Suddenly an old man at the rear of the crowd shouted something in gook. He must’ve been the mayor or the medicine man or something, because just as calm as you please the Knockers started walking out of the square.

  “Stop!” the captain yelled, “Stop! Form a single line in front of the machine to your left!”

  But the damned Knockers kept on walking. They didn’t even look back.

  “Stop! I order you to stop!”

  The gooks kept on walking, silently.

  “Stop, or I shoot!” the captain shouted. He had expected some kind of minor trouble, maybe even a riot, but this…

  “Fire a volley over their heads,” he ordered in English.

  A hum of heat beams and the crack of bullets.

  The gooks kept on walking. They didn’t look back.

  The captain was turning beet-red. He had seen plenty, but he had never seen anything like this. His blue eyes narrowed.

  “Stop!” he shouted in Bornok. “Stop, or I shoot your… your chief…” He pointed at the old man. The soldiers tensed. Guns were recocked, aimed lower. The three PCT turrets swiveled to bear on the slowly retreating Bornoks.

  The captain drew his pistol. It was an antique, non-reg forty-five, a regular hand-cannon. The old gun gave the captain a sense of continuity with the past, and he loved it And he was a crack shot.

  He sighted along the barrel, “Last chance!” he yelled, and then gritted his teeth. It looked like these people would have to be taught a lesson. The captain was not used to teaching unarmed civilians lessons.

  The Bornoks kept on walking.

  There was a loud crack and the old man’s head flew apart like a mashed watermelon.

  A few of the more nervous and less experienced soldiers, expecting the Bornoks to turn and charge, began firing. A few Knockers fell in the dusty square.

  But the rest kept on walking. They did not look back.

  And in a minute or two, the soldiers were alone, in the dusty square, in the waning afternoon sun.

  The puzzled and shaken captain deployed his men around the village, posted sentries around the PCT’s, and sent out patrols along the nearby roads.

  That evening, a Bornok led his animal, laden with wicker baskets, down a road from his fields to the village.

  An old sergeant, fat and grizzled, and two young privates were posted on the road just around a bend from the village.

  “Halt for inspection,” the sergeant grunted as the Bornok and his animal approached the bend.

  The Bornok and his animal continued on their way; the Knocker seemed to be looking right through the sergeant and his men.

  “I said halt!” roared the sergeant, raising his heat rifle.

  The Bornok kept on walking.

  The sergeant trained his rifle on the Bornok, now no more than five feet from him. The Bornok seemed not to notice.

  “Halt, damn you!” the sergeant screamed shrilly. “Last chance!”

  The Bornok walked past the soldiers. The sergeant cursed and fired. The Bornok’s body flamed, crisped, and fell. The animal kept on walking.

  The soldiers were alone, on the road, in the red twilight.

  For a week it went on, in silence. Not a word was spoken by the Bornoks to the soldiers. Fields were burned in retribution; the Bornoks stood idly by. If they were struck, they might bleed, nothing more. When their food was seized, they said nothing.

  The captain didn’t know what to do. He was young, but he was experienced; nevertheless, neither experience nor The Book covered this situation. His men were restless; morale was shot. The women would not speak to them.

  There were rapes; the women neither responded nor resisted. Their men stood by and pretended not to see. There were attempts to start fights; the Bornoks would not fight back.

  The soldiers began to fight among themselves, as soldiers will.

  On the seventh night the captain, accompanied by two sergeants, entered one of the longhouses. It was a kind of primitive tavern. One wall was lined with kegs of wine; in front of the kegs was a long, narrow, wooden table with several score clay mugs on it. A Bornok stood behind the table, mopping it with a dirty rag. In the far corner a Knocker was playing a ten-stringed lutelike instrument and a woman was singing softly. Several Bornoks stood in front of the rude bar, drinking wine out of the clay mugs and talking loudly.

  There was no stir when the soldiers walked in. The musician kept playing, the woman kept singing, the Bornoks kept talking.

  The tavern keeper mopped the table with his dirty rag.

  The captain walked up to the long, narrow table.

  “Wine,” he said in Bornok.

  The tavern keeper continued mopping the bar.

  “Wine!”

  The tavern keeper did not look up.

  The captain’s face grew red. He drew his gun and shoved its muzzle in the tavern keeper’s face.

  “Wine, goddamn yon, wine!” he roared.

  The tavern keeper ignored him.

  Savagely, the captain smashed his gun into the tavern keeper’s face. The tavern keeper drooled blood.

  He continued mopping the bar.

  The captain could not support his rage, not against someone who simply refused to acknowledge his existence. Dazedly, in retreat, he strode out of the longhouse, the two sergeants following silently in his wake.

  The captain dismissed the sergeants. He stood alone, in the empty square, in the moonlight.

  The captain’s world was thoroughly shaken. He was experienced, he was a professional, he had learned the in’s and out’s of invasion and occupation on six other planets. The Book had ways of dealing with insurrections, guerrillas, even the most subtle techniques of passive resistance, but this… this… It didn’t even have a name.

  The captain sighed. He walked moodily toward the PCT’s parked in the center of the square, troubled, confused, staring at his feet…

  A small figure darted out of the dark and bumped against him.

  The captain, startled out of his reverie, whirled, his gun already in his hand.

  A young Bornok girl lay sprawled at his feet. Instinctively, he reached down and helped her to her feet. His face had softened.

  “Why?” he asked almost plaintively. “What…? What are you doing to us?”

  It might have been because she was very young. It might have been because the captain was not unhandsome when he was not being The Captain. Or it might have been… planned. He would wonder about it many times in the years to come and he would never know.

  “You can kill us,” the girl said, staring at a point three feet to the right of the captain’s head. “All of us. You can do anything you want to to us; the power is yours. But nothing you can do will ever make us acknowledge your existence on Bornok. Nothing. To us, you do not exist.”

  Then, more softly, “I’m sorry.”

  She darted away, and the captain was alone, terribly alone, in the empty square.

  The soldiers stayed for another two days; while the captain spoke with the colonel, and the colonel spoke with the general, and the general spoke with the commander of operations; while the reports filtered upwar
d, and then the orders came.

  On the third day, the soldiers piled their equipment and their bodies into the PCT’s and left. The village took no note of their passing.

  By the end of the week, the entire twenty divisions had been evacuated. The solar government agreed to take over the Draaden bases in lieu of Bornok and reluctantly let Draada keep Moali. At least the appearance of victory had been maintained.

  But since then, no Solarian ship has ever set down on Bornok.

  The old man emptied the gray ashes from his pipe.

  “I don’t understand,” said the boy. The old man sighed. “Of course you don’t,” he said. “You’re too young. Maybe we’re all too young.”

  “You’re too young, Grandpa?”

  The old man laughed shortly. “Maybe I’ve just grown up,” he said. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a key chain. He detached a charm and placed it in the boy’s palm.

  “Here,” he said. “That’s for you.”

  The boy stared happily at the tarnished captain’s bars in his hand.

  THE BIG FLASH

  T minus 200 days… and counting…

  They came on freaky for my taste—but that’s the name of the game: freaky means a draw in the rock business. And if the Mandala was going to survive in L.A., competing with a network-owned joint like The American Dream, I’d just have to hold my nose and out-freak the opposition. So after I had dug the Four Horsemen for about an hour, I took them into my office to talk turkey.

  I sat down behind my Salvation Army desk (the Mandala is the world’s most expensive shoestring operation) and the Horsemen sat down on the bridge chairs sequentially, establishing the group’s pecking order.

  First the head honcho, lead guitar, and singer, Stony Clarke—blond shoulder-length hair, eyes like something in a morgue when he took off his steel-rimmed shades, a reputation as a heavy acid-head, and the look of a speed-freak behind it. Then Hair, the drummer, dressed like a Hell’s Angel, swastikas and all, a junkie, with fanatic eyes that were a little too close together, making me wonder whether he wore swastikas because he grooved behind the Angel thing or made like an Angel because it let him groove behind the swastika in public. Number three was a cat who called himself Super Spade and wasn’t kidding—he wore earrings, natural hair, a Stokeley Carmichael sweatshirt, and on a thong around his neck a shrunken head that had been whitened with liquid shoe polish. He was the utility infielder: sitar, base, organ, flute, whatever. Number four, who called himself Mr. Jones, was about the creepiest cat I had ever seen in a rock group, and that is saying something. He was their visuals, synthesizer, and electronics man. He was at least forty, wore early-hippie clothes that looked like they had been made by Sy Devore, and was rumored to be some kind of Rand Corporation dropout. There’s no business like show business.