Bright Segment (43 page)

“But we discovered a peculiar thing. Even untrained adults—as opposed to the sharp division of pre- and post-entrance that you have—even untrained adults suffer to greater or less degree from an internal strife between childhood acceptances and the adult matrix. An exaggerated example would be a child’s implicit belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, existing at the same time with the adult’s total discrediting of the legends. The child (according to Dell, and to me) still exists and will fight like the very devil for survival, beliefs and all.

“The schism between you and Scampy was extreme; you were, in effect, born on different planets. To be a complete human being, you had to be rejoined; but to be rejoined successfully, you and Scampy had to make peace with one another. For Scampy it was not difficult—you, even in injustice and cruelty—were a real live heroimage. But you had a rather more stony path. But somewhere within yourself, somehow, you found an element of tolerance and empathy, and used it to bridge the gap. I may say,” the colonel adds severely, “that it takes a particularly fine kind of person to negotiate this difficult merger. You are not usual, Cadet; not usual at all.”

“Scampy,” you murmur. Impulsively you pull your shirt away from your chest and look down as if there were something hiding there. You look up. “But he—
talked
to me! Don’t tell me you’ve quietly invented a telepathic converter with band-pass filters.”

“Of course not. When the barrier was erected between you and Scampy, Scampy was conditioned to speak subvocally—that is, back in the throat and virtually without lip movement. You have a subminiature transmitter deposited surgically in your pharynx. The button on your bulkhead induced it to turn on. There had to be a button, you see; we couldn’t have you two speaking at the same time, as people in the same room invariably do.”

“I can’t get used to it. I can’t. I practically
saw
the boy! Listen, Colonel, can I keep my transmitter where it is, and have the same rig on my star ship?

“Who said you’re getting a star ship?” growls the colonel.

“Well, I thought—”

“Of
course
you’re getting a star ship.” He smiles, although I think it hurts his face. “You really want that transceiver set-up?”

“He’s a good kid.”

“Very well, Cadet. Commander. Dismissed.” He marches away. You look after him, shaking your head. Then you duck into the space can. You look at the bulkhead and at the button and at the scoring on the plate where you came
that
close to filling your hydrazine supply. You shudder.

“Hey,” you call softly. “Scamp!”

You push the button. You hear the carrier, then “I’m thirsty,” says Scampy.

You cut out of there and go down to the rec area and into the short-order bar. “A beer,” you say. “And put a lump of vanilla ice-cream in it. And straws.”

“You crazy?” says the man.

“No,” you say. “Oh, no.”

J
OY WAS NOT JOY
in Asgard, for all the ale and the heady mead, the singing and the wild hard laughter. Clink and clatter and clash rang the arms; whip and whicker and thud the arrows. Sinews were tuned and toned and honed and hardened, and speech was mighty, and much of the measureless night belonged to the unearthly yielding of the Aesir goddesses, whose limbs were magic.

Here were the heroes of Earth, here the dazzle-winged Valkyrs; here in the halls of not-quite-forever they feasted and fought and found that which mortality is too brief and too fragile to grant.

The Aesir were made for joy, and the heroes had earned it, and their joys were builded of battle, and to battle they built. The battle they faced was the battle of Ragnarok; they would fight the Giants at Ragnarok; they would dare death at Ragnarok, and there they would die.

There was woe in the winds about Asgard. It was there like a bitterness in the drinking horns and it cut like cold. Hope lay frozen in the iron ground, moon-silver mantled the battlements like a winding-sheet, and against the stars the eagles floated, crying a harsh despair.

Heroes new-come to Valhalla heard of it, after their feast of honor, after they settled into the halls of the brave and looked about them and called this cold and mighty land their own. Sooner or later they asked and were told:

In the spring of the world when the mountains were new and the sea not salt, and Yggdrasil, tree of trees, but a blooming shrub, good Odin the sky-father, seeker of wisdom, descended a Well where dwelt Mimir the Wise. For a terrible price, the least part of which was one of his eyes, he was given knowledge unthinkable.

Odin learned the Runes, and the way to take from the Giants the
skaldic mead which makes him who tastes it a poet. He learned the ways of wild things and the tricks of the halflings issuing from unspeakable unions between the Giants and the elf folk. But of all he learned, the greatest and most terrible was the doom of Asgard: the certain victory of the Giants at Ragnarok.

Ever after, Odin was dedicated to forestalling that Day. Never again did he laugh, and only his silent wife Frigga knew completely his torment, and would silently brood over it and weep as she spun threads of gold. At the feasts, Odin presided but would not eat; two great wolves who lay at his feet had his share. He seemed never to join altogether in the company, though he always attended.

He would sit at the board in his golden palace Gladsheim with his wolves and his two ravens—Hugin, who was Thought, and Munin, who was Memory—who used to fly the world and return to him with news of all that happened in it; and he would ponder. And sometimes in his kirtle of gray and his dazzling blue hood he would walk the battlements or stand searching the sky.

Then he might call Tyr, war’s god, or Thor, mightiest of them all, and give them tasks and duties, the purpose of which only he could know; these were the means of strengthening Asgard and delaying Ragnarok; but for what? for what? Asgard was doomed.

So it was that all colors in Asgard bore a tint of sadness, and a piece of every voice was mourning.

A sadness such as this was a wonder, but it was not the only wonder of Asgard. There was once a greater wonder than the wisdom of Odin or the strength of Thor: it was a thing more beautiful even than the one part of Asgard visible to mortal eyes, the rainbow bridge of Heimdall. The god Freyr, of the fruits of Earth, never served the world so well, the songs of Freyr herself lent less glory to the world than did the young god Balder.

In this atmosphere of awe and strangeness, of power and of powers, Balder moved with the confidence of a child in a loving home. His quality was a brightness—not like that of gold, or steel, but that of summer mornings, clean hair, first love, or high new notes from some seasoned lute. He was goodness and all kindness, and he was loved as no man nor no thing was ever loved before or since.

Balder was loved by god and hero alike, by Giant and elf and halfling, by the beasts, by the rocks and the very sky. It was said, in Balder’s time, that only he could keep life in doomed Asgard; only such light as his could cancel the dark shadow of Ragnarok.

He shed his light wherever he went, and he went everywhere. There lay in him no evil. He was welcomed, not only in Asgard, but in Jotunheim where the Giants dwelt. Hela, who ruled over the dead, found a smile—even she—for Balder, and in the blackest heart of the wilderness the bears sat like kittens and watched him pass.

As all things must somehow be matched and balanced, and since one of the Aesir could move freely in all realms, so there was the son of a Giant who drank and sang in Valhalla and Gladsheim when he willed; he was the laughing devil Loki. His eyes saw more than did the ravens of Odin, and his heart was a catacomb in which his loyalties and his loves could be led and lost.

Yet so quick was his wit and so hilarious his mischief that he might have been tolerated in doomed Asgard for these alone. But least of all things did he need to earn a place at the feasts of Gladsheim; he was sworn blood-brother to Odin in payment of an old partnership in the dawn of the world, and he could not be challenged.

So he went his way, careless; and about him was no fidelity nor anything which could be predicted, save his love for Balder: this, in the world, was as inescapable as sun, as frost, or any other pervading natural force.

Now on a terrible morning bright Balder woke wondering; he felt something which was, for him, most strange. He went to Frigga, his mother, and told her of it, and she listened and questioned him, and listened again, until she could tell him that what he felt was fear.

“Fear, Mother?” he said.

“Ay,” she said; “a kind of warning, a foreboding of danger.”

“I like it not, Mother.”

“Nor do I; I shall take it from thee.”

And take it she did.

What has never been done before or since, Frigga did; and if it were not that time is counted differently in Asgard than elsewhere,
she would never have had time enough. All about Asgard she went, and among the Vanir, their neighbors; even through Jotunheim she walked, her mission opening gates before her like a magic key. She went also to the world of men, where, they say, she walked in the season between flower and frost, so that to this day Earth turns glorious for a time in memory of her, and then the leaves fall and the trees feign death in memory of what followed.

And she went to places where dwelt neither gods nor men, nor Giants: places with names better not recalled.

And to everyone and every thing she met—to stones and sky and all who lived between them; to roots however deep and to high air-sucking blossoms; to the blood-bearers, warm and cold; to all with fangs, feathers or fins, hands or hooves; and to the wind, and to ice, and the sea; to all these she spoke, saying, “I bring tidings of evil: the unthinkable has happened, and Balder is touched by fear. Give me thy promise that, from thee, harm shall never come to him! That is all I ask of thee.”

Gladly then, gladly the high and the tall, the ancient, the once-living and the never-alive—all gave their bond; and not from them could harm come to Balder.

Back then to Asgard went Frigga, wearily. She noticed as she entered that high by the gate grew a tumble of glossy leaves and waxen white berries. She smiled then at the mistletoe, a green given to small and happy magics, and let it be, asking nothing of it. She sought out Balder and told him of what she had done, kissed his bright face and fell in a swoon.

She slept then, for a time long even in Asgard.

II

The news blew through stark Asgard like a warm wind, and the Aesir rejoiced. It was almost as if Ragnarok itself was removed from their thoughts—indeed, might not this be an inroad on their doom? For was not Balder of the Aesir? And were not the Aesir to die at Ragnarok? Yet now it was also true that no harm could come to Balder …

Ragnarok receded, and even Odin nearly smiled. He had, however,
the habit of pondering, and it was a trouble to him that Ragnarok could be, or that Balder might live through it, but not both. He buried this problem in a silent place within him and there worked on it mightily.

Balder was given a feast at Gladsheim, with such singing, such tries of arms, such mountains of succulent food and oceans of mead as were memorable even in Asgard.

And it came about that Balder found himself standing in the courtyard, laughing, while all about him the warriors of Gladsheim and of Valhalla rushed at him with sword and mace, nocked and aimed their arrows, plunged and lunged at him with sword and lance.

The lances bent away from his shining body and the swords met a stony nothingness about him and bounced away ringing. The arrows rose to pass him, or slipped aside.

Above on her throne, Frigga sat watching. She was pale still from her ordeal and perhaps overwrought because of it. She kept touching her lips as if to stop their trembling, or perhaps to check some warning she knew was unneeded. This was Balder’s pleasure and that of the gods and heroes about him; should she then call caution as if he were still her golden babe?

At length her eye fell upon Loki, who stood to the side, where Balder’s blind brother Hodar sat, stony eyes wide and an eager smile on his mouth, trying with all his heart to know the details of Balder’s joy. Summoning Loki, the god-queen waved her ladies back, and met the mischief-maker’s bold gaze with a great pleading.

“I say this to thee myself, good Loki,” she said quietly, “rather than send the message, that you may know it pains me. But I fear a mischief, and to think of mischief is to think of thee. No one loves Balder better than thee, and I believe it—yet I were happier with you gone from this hall. Indulge me, then …”

Something indescribable and ugly moved in Loki’s bright eyes, yet he smiled. “Since you ask, lady,” he said and turned away, adding arrogantly over his shoulder, “but do not command me, I shall go.”

He sprang down the steps and out into the night.

Frigga drew her shawl of tiny feathers close about her and shivered. Her ladies, cooing like a cote, closed about her. For long moments
they whispered to her and to each other, until her great kindness asserted itself and she began, in turn, to soothe them in their concern.

“I am weary and foolish,” she said; “none knows better than I how safe he is. Yet …” She paused while the laughing god turned his back to a black-armored hero swinging a knobbed mace, and paled until the weapon slipped from the mailed hand in midstroke and crashed into the wall. “Yet will I be happier when this noisy childishness is done.”

“But Lady Frigga—you missed nothing. Did not all the world promise not to harm him?”

“Whatever I missed matters not,” Frigga said.

“Was there something, then?” asked a soft voice.

Frigga widened her eyes and turned to the woman, a stranger to her—but the halls were populous and this a great festival; folk had come from afar.

“Only the mistletoe,” said Frigga comfortingly, and the other ladies laughed at the idea of the gentle mistletoe as a danger.

Later, the woman was gone from her side, and was seen kneeling by blind Hoder, to help him, with her words, see the action, it seemed. And Frigga was pleased, for she saw the blind god’s head come up, and heard him laugh and cry out, “Balder! May I cast at thee?”