Dearest Enemy
BY FOX HOLDEN
Well trained actors are taught
the old tradition that the
show must go on. But what's
the point of it all when your
audience is very, very dead?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
From somewhere there was a buzzing sound. It kept repeating. The gentlethrob of it vibrated his eardrums; the vibrations registered somewhereat the bottom edges of his brain. Buzzzz. Insistently, like a wasp.Like a trapped wasp.... But there were no wasps in the streamlinedmetal shell of Vanguard-I.
Better answer, another part of his brain whispered. Betteranswer ... they want to tell you what to do....
God!
Some sweat oozed from the dark bunches of his eyebrows, fogged thebinocular eye-piece of the orbit-synchronized refractor, but he keptwatching, he could not stop watching. Buzzz! Buzzzz!
Red gouts of flame, as big as a pin-head, as big as a shirt-button,as big as—damn the fogging—up! No, no it was the mushrooms, notthe fogging; you could count them, like puffs of gunsmoke along afiring-line stippling the Atlantic seaboard, now branching, riddlingwestward—others drifting eastward from the Pacific as though gropingtoward a pre-planned rendezvous.
Buzzzz! Buzzzz!
He would answer. There would be the sound of another man's voice andthat would make it all real. If he silenced the buzzer and listenedto the voice it would be real and not a final training-film; thefilms would be over, the lectures over, the flight-tests over, theeliminations over and he and Streeter chosen and Streeter dead andburied at Space and now he was alone up in Vanguard-I....
Vanguard-I was "up" and Earth was "down" and both were real. Beyondthe buzzing, both would be real.
The strong young voice was an old voice as it answered the buzzing, asit gave sound to words for the UHF's panel-mike.
"Home Plate, Home Plate, this is Mrs. Grundy, over..."
"Mrs. Grundy this is Home Plate. Are you reading? Are you ready for acircus or is all your money gone? Over..."
"Ready for a circus. Regret delay in acknowledging. I—was inObservation, over."
"Mrs. Grundy, your Daddy-o wants to talk to you so bye bye baby...."
General Knight himself. Knight himself to talk to him ... so it wasthat bad.
Of course it was that bad!
"Mrs. Grundy can you read, over...." Knight's voice. It sounded calm.It sounded unruffled. You had to know Knight, you had to have heard himoften to know that it was not calm, that it was not at all unruffled....
"Even the small print Daddy-o, over...."
"No words twice so baby make marks—" Thorn's hand flashed tothe card-punch and magnetic-tape unit switches, flicked them toON-RECORD. "—been surprised, but not taken completely off balance;retaliation now in progress as you have probably already observed orwill observe in course of orbital passage. Plan Able Zebra effectiveimmediately...." The words were coming so fast they were slurred, andKnight was exaggerating his own Alabama accent. "Expect report onceeach turn...."
He would not have needed the recording or even words twice. Each ofKnight's directions was graven into him as it was spoken.
To cease all scientific observation and recording at once; to beginmilitary observation of the Enemy and his puppet-states, and allpossibly-d