Dark Benediction

“I don’t know, Joe. Everybody said homosexuality would force them to start looking for it—after Doc Reiber made his survey. The statistics looked pretty black, but they didn’t do anything about it except send us a shipful of ministers. The fairies just tried to make the ministers.”

“Yeah, but this is different.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Half the voters are women.”

“So? They didn’t do anything about homosex—”

“Relke, wise up. Listen, did you ever see a couple of Lesbians necking in a bar?”

Relke snickered. “Sure, once or twice.”

“How did you feel about it?”

“Well, this once was kind of funny. You see, this one babe had on—”

“Never mind. You thought it was funny. Do you think it’s funny the way MacMillian and Wickers bill and coo?”

“That gets pretty damn nauseating, Joe.”

“Uh-huh, but the Lesbians just gave you a giggle. Why?”

“Well, I don’t know, Joe, it’s—”

“I’ll tell you why. You like dames. You can understand other guys liking dames. You like dames so much that you can even understand two dames liking each other. You can see what they see in each other. But it’s incongruous, so it’s funny. But you can’t see what two fairies see in each other, so that just gives you a bellyache. Isn’t that it?”

“Maybe, but what’s that got to do with the voters?”

“Ever think that maybe a woman would feel the same way in reverse? A dame could see what MacMillian and Wickers see in each other. The dame might morally disapprove, but at the same time she could sympathize. What’s more, she’d be plenty sure that she could handle that kind of competition if she ever needed to. She’s a woman, and wotthehell, Wickers is only a substitute woman. It wouldn’t worry her too much. Worry her morally, but not as a personal threat. Relke, Mme. d’Annecy’s racket is a personal threat to the home girl and the womenfolk.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Half the voters are women.”

Relke chuckled. “Migod, Joe, if Ellen heard about that ship…”

“Ellen?”

“My older sister. Old maid. Grim.”

“You’ve got the idea. If Parkeson thinks of all this…” His voice trailed off. “When is Larkin talking about crippling that ship?”

“About sundown, why?”

“Somebody better warn the d’Annecy dame.”

The cosmic gunfire had diminished. The Perseid shrapnel still pelted the dusty face of the plain, but the gram-impact-per-acre-second had dropped by a significant fraction, and with it fell the statistician’s estimate of dead men per square mile. There was an ion storm during the first half of B-shift, and the energized spans of high volt-age cable danced with fluttering demon light as the trace-pressure of the lunar “atmosphere” increased enough to start a glow discharge between conductors. High current surges sucked at the line, causing the breakers to hiccup. The breakers tried the line three times, then left the circuit dead and waited for the storm to pass. The storm meant nothing to the construction crews except an in-crease in headset noise.

Parkeson’s voice came drawling on the general call frequency, wading waist-deep through the interference caused by the storm. Relke leaned back against his safety strap atop the trusswork of the last tower and tried to listen. Parkeson was reading the Articles of Discipline, and listening was compulsory. All teams on the job had stopped work to hear him. Relke gazed across the plain toward the slender nacelles of the bird from Algiers in the distance. He had gotten used to the ache in his side where Kunz had kicked him, but it was good to rest for a time and watch the rocket and remember brown legs and a yellow dress. Properties of Earth. Properties belonging to the communion of humanity, from which fellowship a Looney was somehow cut off by 238,000 miles of physical separation.

“We’ve got a job to finish here,” Parkeson was telling the men.

Why? What was in space that was worth the wanting? What followed from its conquest? What came of finishing the job?

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing anybody ever dreamed of or hoped for.