Second Stage Lensman (39 page)

"QX, Cris?" Kinnison Lensed the thought as he entered the grounds: she had known that he was coming. "Kinda late, I know, but I wanted to see you, and you don't have to punch the clock."

"Surely, Kim," and her low, infectious chuckle welled out. "What's the use of being a Red Lensman, else? This is just right—you couldn't make it any sooner and tomorrow would have been too late—much too late."

They met at the door and with arms around each other strolled wordless down a walk. Across the resilient sward they made their way and to a bench beneath one of the spreading trees.

Kinnison swept her into both arms, hers went eagerly around his neck. How long, how unutterably long it had been since they had stood thus, nurse's white crushed against Lensman's Gray!

They had no need, these Lensmen, of sight. Nor of language. Hence, since words are so pitifully inadequate, no attempt will be made to chronicle the ecstasy of that reunion. Finally, however:

"Now that we're together again I'll never let you go," the man declared aloud.

"If they separate us again it will simply break my heart," Clarrissa agreed. Then, woman-like, she faced the facts and made the man face them, too. "Let's sit down, Kim, and have this out. You know as well as I do that we can't go on if… if we can't… that's all."

"I do not," Kinnison said, flatly. "We've got a right to some happiness, you and I. They can't keep us apart forever, sweetheart—we're going straight through with it this time."

"Uh-uh, Kim," she denied gently, shaking her spectacular head. "What would have happened if we'd have gone ahead before, leaving those horrible Thralians free to ruin Civilization?"

"But Mentor stopped us then," Kinnison argued. Deep down, he knew that if the Arisian called he would have to answer, but he argued nevertheless. "If the job wasn't done, he would have stopped us before we got this far—I think."

"You hope, you mean," the girl contradicted. "What makes you think—if you really do—that he might not wait until the ceremony has actually begun?"

"Not a thing in the universe. He might, at that," Kinnison confessed, bleakly.

"You've been afraid to ask him, haven't you?"

"But the job must be done!" he insisted, avoiding the question. "The prime minister—that Fossten—must have been the top; there couldn't possibly be anything bigger than an Arisian to be back of Boskone. It's unthinkable! They've got no military organization left—not a beam hot enough to light a cigarette or a screen that would stop a firecracker. We have all their records—everything. Why, it's just a matter of routine now for the boys to uproot them completely; system by system, planet by planet."

"Uh-huh." She eyed him shrewdly, there in the dark. "Cogent. Really pellucid. As clear as so much crystal—and twice as fragile. If you're so sure, why not call Mentor and ask him, right now? You're not afraid of just the calling part, like I am; you're afraid of what he'll say."

"I'm going to marry you before I do another lick of work of any kind, anywhere," he insisted, doggedly.

"I just love to hear you say that, even if I do know you're just popping off!" She snuggled deeper into the curve of his arm. "I feel that way too, but both of us know very well that if Mentor stops us… even at the altar…" her thought slowed, became tense, solemn. "We're Lensmen, Kim, you and I. We both know exactly what that means. We'll have to muster jets enough, some way or other, to swing the load. Let's call him now, Kim, together. I just simply can't stand this not knowing… I can't, Kim… I can't!" Tears come hard and seldom to such a woman as Clarrissa MacDougall; but they came then—and they hurt.

"QX, ace." Kinnison patted her back and her gorgeous head. "Let's go—but I tell you now that if he says 'no' I'll tell him to go out to the Rim and take a swan-dive off into inter-galactic space."

She linked her mind with his, thinking in affectionate half-reproach, "I'd like to, too, Kim, but that's pure balloon juice and you know it. You couldn't…" she broke off as he hurled their joint thought to Arisia the Old, going on frantically:

"You think at him, Kim, and I'll just listen. He scares me into a shrinking, quivering pulp!"

"QX, ace," he said again. Then: "Is it permissible that we do what we are about to do?" he asked crisply of Arisia's ancient sage.

"Ah, 'tis Kinnison and MacDougall; once of Tellus, henceforth of Klovia," the calmly unsurprised thought rolled in. "I was expecting you at this time. Any mind, however far from competent, could have visualized this event in its entirety. That which you contemplate is not merely permissible; it has now become necessary," and as usual, without tapering off or leave-taking, Mentor broke the line.

The two clung together rapturously then for minutes, but something was obtruding itself disquietingly upon the nurse's mind.

"But his thought was 'necessary', Kim?" she asked, rather than said. "Isn't there a sort of a sinister connotation in that, somewhere? What did he mean?"

"Nothing—exactly nothing," Kinnison assured her, comfortably. "He's got a complete picture of the macro-cosmic universe in his mind-his 'Visualization of the Cosmic All', he calls it—and in it we get married now, just as I've been telling you we are going to. Since it gripes him no end to have even the tiniest thing not conform to his visualization, our marriage is NECESSARY, in capital letters. See?"

"Uh-huh… Oh, I'm glad!" she exclaimed. "That shows you how scared of him I am," and thoughts and actions became such that, although they were no doubt of much personal pleasure and satisfaction, they do not require detailed treatment here.

Clarrissa MacDougall resigned the next day, without formality or fanfare. That is, she thought that she did so then, and rather wondered at the frictionless ease with which it went through: it had simply not occurred to her that in the instant of being made an Unattached Lensman she had been freed automatically from every man-made restraint. That was one of the few lessons hard for her to learn; it was the only one which she refused consistently even to try to learn.

Nothing was said or done about the ten thousand credits which had been promised her upon the occasion of her fifteen-minutes-long separation from the Patrol following the fall of Jarnevon. She thought about it briefly, but with no real sense of loss. Some way or other, money did not seem important. Anyway, she had some—enough for a fairly nice, if limited, trousseau—in a Tellurian bank. She could undoubtedly get it through the Disbursing Office here.

She took off her Lens and stuffed it into a pocket. That wasn't so good, she reflected. It bulged, and besides, it might fall out; and anyone who touched it would die. She didn't have a bag; in fact, she had with her no civilian clothes at all. Wherefore she put it back on, pausing as she did so to admire the Manarkan star-drop flashing pale fire from the third finger of her left hand. Of Cartiff's whole stock of fine gems, this was the loveliest.

It was not far to the Disbursing Office, so she walked; window-shopping as she went. It was a peculiar sensation, this being out of harness—it felt good, though, at that—and upon arriving at the bank she found to her surprise that she was both well known and expected. An officer whom she had never seen before greeted her cordially and led her into his private office.

"We have been wondering why you didn't pick up your kit, Lensman MacDougall," he went on, briskly. "Sign here, please, and press your right thumb in this box here, after peeling off this plastic strip, so." She wrote in her boldly flowing script, and peeled, and pressed; and watched fascinatedly as her thumb-print developed itself sharply black against the bluish off-white of the Patrol's stationery. "That transfers your balance upon Tellus to the Patrol's general fund. Now sign and print this, in quadruplicate… Thank you. Here's your kit. When this book of slips is gone you can get another one at any bank or Patrol station anywhere. It has been a real pleasure to have met you, Lensman MacDougall; come in again whenever you happen to be upon Thrale," and he escorted her to the street as briskly as he had ushered her in.

Clarrissa felt slightly dazed. She had gone in there to get the couple of hundred credits which represented her total wealth; but instead of getting it she had meekly surrendered her savings to the Patrol and had been given—what? She leafed through the little book. One hundred blue-white slips; small things, smaller than currency bills. A little printing, two lines for description, a blank for figures, a space for signature, and a plastic-covered oblong area for thumb-print. That was all—but what an all! Any one of those slips, she knew, would be honored without hesitation or question for any amount of cash money she pleased to draw; for any object or thing she chose to buy. Anything—absolutely anything—from a pair of half-credit stockings up to and beyond a hundred-million-credit space-ship. ANYTHING! The thought chilled her buoyant spirit, took away her zest for shopping.

"Kim, I can't!" she wailed through her Lens. "Why didn't they give me my own money and let me spend it the way I please?"

"Hold everything, ace—I'll be with you in a sec." He wasn't—quite—but it was not long. "You can get all the money you want, you know—just give them a chit."

"I know, but all I wanted was my own money. I didn't ask for this stuff!"

"None of that, Cris—when you get to be a Lensman you've got to take what goes with it. Besides, if you spend money foolishly all the rest of your life, the Patrol knows that it will still owe you plenty for what you did on Lyrane II. Where do you want to begin?"

"Brenleer's," she decided, after she had been partially convinced. "They aren't the largest, but they give real quality at a fair price."

At the shop the two Lensmen were recognized at sight and Brenleer himself did the honors.

"Clothes," the girl said succinctly, with an all-inclusive wave of her hand. "All kinds of clothes, except white uniforms."

They were ushered into a private room and Kinnison wriggled as mannequins began to appear in various degrees of enclothement.

"This is no place for me," he declared. "I'll see you later, ace. How long—half an hour or so?"

"Half an hour?" The nurse giggled, and:

"She will be here all the rest of today, and most of the time for a week," the merchant informed him severely—and she was.

"Oh, Kim, I'm having the most marvelous time!" she told him excitedly, a few days later. "But it makes me feel sick to think of how much of the Patrol's money I'm spending."

"That's what you think."

"Huh? What do you mean?" she demanded, but he would not talk.

She found out, however, after the long-drawn-out business of selecting and matching and designing and fitting was over.

"You've only seen me in real clothes once, and that time you hardly looked at me. Besides, I got myself all prettied up in the beauty shop." She posed provocatively. "Do you like me, Kim?"

"Like you!" The man could scarcely speak. She had been a seven-sector call-out in faded moleskin breeches and a patched shirt. She had been a thionite dream in uniform. But now—radiantly, vibrantly beautiful, a symphony in her favorite dark green… "Words fail. ace. Thoughts, too. They fold up and quit. The universe's best, is all I can say…"

And—later—they sought out Brenleer.

"I would like to ask you to do me a tremendous favor," he said, hesitantly, without filling in any of the blanks upon the blue-white slip the girl had proffered. "If, instead of paying for these things, you would write upon this voucher the date and 'my fall outfit and much of my trousseau were made by Brenleer of Thrale…' " His voice expired upon a wistful note.

"Why… I never even thought of such a thing… would it be quite ethical, do you think, Kim?"

"You said that he gives value for price, so I don't see why not… Lots of things they never let any of us pay for…" Then, to Brenleer, "Never thought of that angle, of what a terrific draw she'd be… you're figuring on displaying that chit unobtrusively in a gold and platinum frame four feet square."

Brenleer nodded. "Something like that. This will be the most fantastically lucky break a man in my position ever had, if you approve of it."

"I don't see why not," Kinnison said again. "You might as well give him a break, Cris. What tore it was buying so much stuff here, not admitting the fact over your signature and thumb-print.''

She wrote and they went out.

"You mean to tell me I'm so… so…"

"Famous? Notorious?" he helped out.

"Ufa-hull. Or words to that effect." A touch of fear darkened her glorious eyes.

"All of that, and then some. I never thought of what your buying so much plunder in one store would do, but it'd have the pulling power of a planetary tractor. It's bad enough with us regulars—half the chits we issue are never cashed—but you are absolutely unique. The first Lady Lensman—the only Red Lensman—and what a Lensman! Wow! As I think it over one gets you a hundred if any chit you ever sign ever will get cashed. There have been collectors, you know, ever since Civilization began—maybe before."

"But I don't like it!" she stormed.

"That won't change the facts," he countered, philosophically. "Are you ready to flit? The
Dauntless
is hot, they tell me."

"Uh-huh, all my stuff is aboard," and soon they were en-route to Klovia.

The trip was uneventful, and even before they reached that transformed planet it became evident that it was theirs from pole to pole. Their cruiser was met by a horde of spaceships of all types and sizes, which formed a turbulent and demonstrative escort of honor. The seething crowd at the space-port could scarcely be kept out of range of the dreadnought's searing landing-blasts. Half the brass bands of the world, it seemed, burst into "Our Patrol" as the Lensmen disembarked, and their ground-car and the street along which it slowly rolled were decorated lavishly with deep-blue flowers.

"Thorn-flowers!" Clarrissa choked. "Thralian thorn-flowers, Kim—how could they?"

"They grow here as well as there, and when they found out that you liked them so well they imported them by the shipload," and Kinnison himself swallowed a lump.