Having done this, trying to maintain an elaborate casualness, Folsom strode from the shack. In his hand he clutches the sheet on which the Bureau’s final message is printed, it curls into his palm, nestles there like an animal, the letters glowing. They seem to have the same sensation of upraised surfaces and fiery messages that his rock did but he does not need, unlike the rock, to look at them in verification; he knows that they will not change. His breath is even, regular, his gross motor signs continue to be controlled and well-regulated. He would give to no external appearances whatsoever the appearance of a man in deep shock.
No. The commander must be controlled at all times; there is no excuse, regardless of the circumstances, to let slip the mask of his efficacy. He will not betray feeling. If any alien had moved out from the village to spy upon him, which is the kind of thing that they might do (despite their apparent fear of him), the filthy little buggers, that alien will see nothing. No one will see anything. He is Hans Folsom, the commander. He has fulfilled the obligations of command. He is in perfect control of himself.
Nevertheless, despite these thoughts, despite frantic little monologues which he gives to himself consisting of approval for his appearance, his demeanor, his wonderful self-control—Folsom finds that his control finally breaks. It might be the fifth tree he passes or then again the sixth; it might be in mid-stride or at the conclusion of a step when he lands wrong, twists his ankle on a stone, goes plummeting to the ground at one of the very places where he and Nina have copulated; it might be some accumulation of all these factors, but finally his wonderful commander’s self-control breaks and Folsom finds himself weeping helplessly into the foliage, little knives of vegetation prodding into his eyes as he draws a cupped palm to his face, hears as if he were someone else, his sobs beginning conversion into racking, vomitous moans. It is not fair, that is all. They do not understand him. They have never paid him the proper credence, they have never from the first taken him seriously and now, at last, his wonderful old commander’s heart has been torn apart and he cannot understand why it has happened or whether he will be able to live with this new condition. How could they have done this to him? Truly it is not fair.
And lying there, sobbing in the vegetation, the response from headquarters curled into his pocket, the past begins to filter through Folsom in little bits and pieces, first slowly, then more rapidly like a great torrent of water pressing from some weakening point of a dam or then again possibly the image he is striving for is that of a cerebral hemorrhage, a colorful cerebral hemorrhage opening up layer after layer of capillaries in the skull, flooding the brain in fluid, the brain slowly inverting in its case, the past pouring from the brain like blood and Folsom finds himself in a clear, lighted place, a glade that must be where he had just finished fucking Nina, and now he is standing, his face distended with feeling, little pockets of emotion bulging in his face, his cheeks bloated and he looks at her down on the floor of the forest, his love, his necessity, his receptable, broken like an hourglass below his feet, her mouth staring up at him quavering and Folsom says, “You lousy bitch, you lousy bitch, how could you have done this to me?”
She looks up at him saying nothing. Her face is bruised, her eyes blotched with small marks where he has struck her, her body collapsed to vulnerability beneath his, her breasts devastated with the small and terrible marks he has left upon her and yet she will say nothing at all. Stubborn, that is all it is, the quality of stubbornness but there is nothing devine about it, quite the opposite, there is scatology and the diabolic in her stubbornness, her refusal to break under him.
“You bitch,” Folsom says again, “everything could have been fine, everything could have worked out perfectly and then you had to start dealing with them. You and the others.” His handsome face twitches in an ugly and tormented expression. He bends, searches his discarded clothing for the weapon which has been there all the time in preparation for a moment such as this.
“It could have been wonderful,” Folsom says, stroking the cool surfaces of the barrel, so unlike and yet so reminiscent of the shape of her body underneath his grasp just a few moments ago, “We could have taken care of everything, it could have been a simple project and then out of here but no, no, you had to get scientific, you had to start negotiating, you had toteach them things and now you won’t even tell me about the writing on the rock. It’s a plot, that’s all it is, a plot which you’ve worked up to humiliate me but I’m too smart for this. I’m too smart for any of you; I’m the commander of this expedition and that means that I don’t have to put up with any of this shit. I can assert control anytime I want to; you just think I’m stupid because I don’t have a scientific speciality or don’t know how to talk to those filthy disgusting little natives but that doesn’t mean a goddamned thing. Not a goddamned thing,” he repeats and pauses, listening to the sound of his heartbeat, rocketing away in his chest like the explosive drive of the engines on takeoff. Really, Folsom knows, he should get hold of himself. Everything that he is saying is absolutely true but she is in no position to take any of it and besides he should be restrained. He should control himself. He should keep a lid on his emotions; that after all is the commander’s responsibility.
Still, it is hard to do so considering everything that he has been through. He levels the weapon again at her, fixing her in the sights and realizes that his finger is shaking, sweating, straining against the trigger. Would he really shoot her? No, this is impossible, it is inconceivable that he would so lose control of himself and yet it is with a wrench of effort that he forces that palpitating finger away from the trigger, drops the gun to his side. Little drops of sweat gather and fall into his eyes like rain. “Don’t you have anything to say?” he says then, “don’t you have anything at all you want tosay ?” She lies there, still in broken position, but he takes her impassivity for stubbornness and not for the pain that it might really be. “You had better say something,” he says, and raises the weapon again. “I can’t go on this way. You’ve got to talk.”
“You’re crazy,” she says then in a low, parched voice, drawing breath on every syllable.You’recrayzee . “What’s wrong with you? Get away from me.”
“You don’t like it, do you?” Folsom says vaguely. He does not quite know what he is referring to but it has the ring of absolutism. “You don’t like it at all.”
“Get away,” she says again. She flexes her thighs, a fine droplet of semen seems to wink from the orifice, drip like a tear on the ground and it is this, like a finger at the back of his brain, tearing his brain across, that must send Folsom over the ledge of uncertainty and into action; action is after all what he craves, he is a man of action pure and simple . . . he would not have gotten into any of his current difficulties if he had from the beginning followed the path of activity. Was that not right?—of course it was right. Folsom lifts the gun and as rage sings through him much as tunes and lyrics had done much earlier, producing the same burble now in the esophagus he levels the gun and . . .
He takes the gun and he . . .
He points the gun all the way into her and he . . .
Surely he recollects this perfectly; what Folsom does, the righteous rage moving through him like blood, is to take the gun and pointing it down at the shrieking woman he manages, finally, to . . .
Well, something has happened to his mind. Folsom, strolling through the little tunnels and burrows of the past, hunched sobbing in the vegetation, is yet unable to bring clearly to mind. It has something to do with what he did to the woman with the gun, that is clear, but try as he might he cannot quite push aside the stony obstacles, see what has happened. It is as if the rock which he had discovered were leaning in the cave of his consciousness, blocking off his vision of the scene and struggle as he might, he cannot twist the rock aside so that he can see. Very well. So be it. It will come back to him later, Folsom is quite sure of that and if it does not, well, that part is all right too. There is a reason foreverything. The world makes sense. If he was meant to remember what had happened, he would have, in due time he will. Of course he will. He twitches a little on the ground, sweat ballooning to fill up the eaves of his clothing. He feels a little nervous and a little distracted but basically he supposes he feels well. Continue to probe. Probe the past. He fondles the sheet of paper containing the response from the Bureau. Look at it again? No. He is not quite ready to do that either. Everything in its place. When there is a time there will be a season, a reason forevery place under Heaven.
After the woman. After what had happened on the floor of the forest. He had moved away from her, leaving her there, walking toward the enclosure where Stark and Closter had been. To see them. To see what they were doing, that they were well. Even though he had had his disagreements with them, he was still the commander and responsible for their health and well being. That was a commander’s obligation. Insubordinate, defiant, dangerous as they were, they were still in his charge and Folsom accepted that responsibility. He wanted them to be well. He wanted them to continue to remain in good health and spirits so that they could be transported back to Earth, taken to the Bureau, subject to departmental hearing on their insubordination, taken out and shot.
Surrounding the enclosure where the two of them were, a nest of insects swarmed out, attacked Folsom, biting him fiercely on the cheeks, energetic, vicious little pellets darting through and around him. He had never before been aware of insects in this forest; he had been taken by surprise. The reports had been clear: there were no identifiable animals on this planet, nevertheless, there were the insects. Folsom had no idea where they could have come from, nevertheless there they were and with little wheezes of fury he wiped them from his face, flinging them in small, gnarled handfuls to the ground and then, as he stalked toward the enclosure, the insight came clear:they had done this to him. Stark and Closter had turned the insects upon him. All of the time that they had been in confinement they had been sniggering and collaborating working out their wretched plan to strike back at him and now, in the aftermath of the attack they were probably whinnying with laughter underneath the burlap, laughing at his condition.
Well, he did not have to take that. He could put up with a good deal in his capacity as commander, it was hisduty to suffer the excesses of the crew but there were limits; he had passed them. Once again Folsom felt the weapon leap into his hand, once again he felt the power surging through the metal as he plunged wildly toward the enclosure where the two villains skulked after having committed their terrible deed.
Outside the enclosure they were waiting for him. He had not seen the villains in the off-angle of light, the sudden gloom (perhaps a projection of his mood) which had fallen upon the shelf of the forest, but as he came close upon the enclosure, waving his weapon bravely, daring them to come and confront him, he saw that the villains had indeed emerged, were standing there, Stark still in his chains, Closter holding him protectively, looking at Folsom.
Folsom at once deduced the seriousness of the situation. Against his explicit instructions Closter had been released; this should not have been. But it was even more serious than that: having released the insects (which still seemed to buzz and chatter busily around his head although not with the abandon of a few moments before) they had perpetrated a direct attack against the person and position of their commander, Hans Folsom, leader of the expedition, discoverer of Folsom’s Planet.
Now it was not the person under siege which bothered Folsom; he was a mild and unassuming man, a man utterly without vanity and indeed with a certain becomingjenesaisquoi of modesty which ideally suited his even-tempered application of the commander’s role, no, it was not personal abuse which bothered Folsom for he had been prepared from the very outset to take abuse from this mutinous lot . . . but the attack upon the position of the commander, the mighty and terrible office which he held, this is what Folsom resisted and what he could not bear.
For in insulting the command function the villains were not only undermining the mission, they were undermining, eviscerating, detonating the very nature of command itself which went back through untold generations, through the history of the great Federation and the Bureau which administered it, which stretched in a great, gray unbroken line back to those primitive days when the teams had just begun, when the Federation had been a struggling union of two or three planets deemed to fight for common ends to save the universe from barbarism . . . but even then the Federation and the Bureau had been under the dictates of what had been the truism which had led them to greatness: that command was absolute, that the office was to be respected, and that the fate of the commander was inextricably bound with the mission and with the great agencies which administered it.
They had fought for the primacy of command. They had fought for it on the glaring, red sands of Mars, they had fought in the green and swampy jungles of Venus, in the louse-filled pit of Jupiter they had struggled with gasses and the beasts of a captain’s word. On Saturn’s rings hundreds of men had died to uphold the word of the commander and his right to do as he saw fit, on the cold, dead plains of Neptune that message had been known again and again for which twelve thousand had been doomed. And so this message had been taken out of the barracks of the solar system and onto the stars themselves—that from command radiated the great power, the force, the control which would take over the universe in man’s image but only if it were respected. To dishonor command was to dishonor mankind itself, to undercut the commander was to crush man, to defy the captain then was to fling disrepute upon the millions who had denied themselves so that quality could be preserved, could be exalted.
It had been the command function on Sirius the Dog Star, had been command again in the Rigel System where the invaders and monstrous beings had been crushed, had held true on Algol VII where the great war of the frog men had resulted in their rout and in the glorious victory of the Federation even at the cost of several hundred thousand brave troops . . . and now, on Folsom’s Planet, the villains Stark and Closter heedless of all history, mocking the past, mocking the quick and the dead, the brave and the fallen, the followers and the crusaders alike had chosen to defy Folsom by freeing themselves from arrest and sending a mass of insects to buzz around his head. Folsom could not put up with it. There was no reason why he should take it. If he did he would open the door by implication to the rout of the Federation and if there was one thing which Folsom was not going to do it would be to dishonor the Federation in any way at all. For he had dedicated his life to doing nothing that would bring discredit upon the Federation and upon that in which its spirit dwelt, the Bureau, even though the Bureau was certainly acting very strangely these days and was doing little to help him in his desperate and awful mission.
“I’ve got to do it,” Folsom said and saying this levelled his weapon; in the next moment the two knaves had scattered before the bore of it, looking for positions of safety within the enclosure but Folsom knew all of their crude and desperate trickeries and was not going to be cheated of his just and terrible revenge. “You cannot do this to me, I don’t mind it personally but the Federation can’t stand it!” Folsom cried and saying no more levelled the giant weapon and cut them down in their . . .
He cut them down . . .
He hurt them very badly . . .
The blood was leaping; their bodies seemed to explode . . .
Explode rising into the air, the deadly fountains, the . . .
Folsom took the weapon and aiming it pointed . . .
He tried to take the weapon and . . .
But he can take it no further; once again the walls are sealed up, the great rock has filled the crevice and Folsom, try as he must to break through the seal, cannot do so. He does not remember exactly what happened. It had something to do with what he did to the villains of course, the same thing, probably, he had done to the female who had opposed him but he is not too good on the specifics of the thing. Perhaps it would be best not to think about it anymore. This kind of retrospection can only lead to difficulty and in any event Folsom must put the past behind him. The past does not matter; the mission has been wretched, this is true, but it does not have to continue within that state of wretchedness if he will only put it behind him and concentrate upon the future. The future looks considerably brighter; it is of a different aspect than the past; while the past seems to be a closed tunnel of gloom, the future is bright and yellowing before him if only he can break through this sudden enclosure of thought to come out the other end to see it. He will have to see it whole. Bureau was all wrong to do what they have done but, Folsom thinks, to hell with the Bureau also. What do they matter? Ultimately they must defer to the decisions of the field commander; the word of the field commander is supreme and if they do not like what he is doing, then they can take it and, well, they can stuff it. This is what they can do.Stuffit . Folsom finds that he feels considerably better. Having wrenched these words, this attitude out of himself it is as if some enormous weight has rolled away and he is fully restored to the man that he was.
And indeed it is true, it is true: weight has been displaced. It has been taken away, the enormous rock cleaved to the walls has rolled to the side and in the cave of consciousness Folsom can see the clear light filtering. He sees not only the future in this sudden input of light but, if he wished, he could see the past as well. It is there now if he only wanted to look.
He does not want to look. Having resolved to put it behind him, he can no longer be concerned. The past happened to some other man in a different stage of life; he is always changing, now, despite all of his difficulties, he is still growing. He has moved beyond it.
Folsom’s limbs twitch, scramble on the ground. He puts his palms flat to the floor of the forest, arches his body, gathers his feet underneath him. Slowly, he rises, wavering slightly in the shade of the trees, adjusting his eyes to this arching gloom revealed from a different perspective. Little shadows cleave in and out of his damp eyes, shattering his vision. Then it is pieced together slowly and he can see.
Slowly, as if with the weight of all the great responsibilities of command itself—which he will never, never be able to leave—Folsom shuffles off into the forest and into his future.