Farewell, Earth's Bliss by Compton D. G. (David Guy)

Author:Compton, D. G. (David Guy) [Compton, D. G. (David Guy)]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: San Bernardino, Calif. : R. Reginald, Borgo Press
Published: 1979-03-15T03:00:00+00:00

And the burial was over.

On the way back to the Settlement several of the settlers ran on ahead to get things ready. By the time the others reached their homes there was music playing in every ship. The music cut from each flight commentary was wired in turn to all the others. There were lights in strings along the sides of the track. The Settlement was noisier than Jacob had ever known it. Each craft had its own side-show got up by the residents, and containers of the Governor's hooch that made the alcohol-starved drinkers crazy after scarcely three mouthfuls. There were food stalls, and stalls of pretty polished pebble jewelry. Up in the church the rector was handing out the charity clothes. Dodging the unsteady legs of their elders the children were returning with fine garments hardly worn, some of them off the bodies they had just seen buried. In the midst of life they were in death, and in the midst of death they were in life. They held the clothes happily against themselves and pictured how they'd look cut down. And their parents snatched the shoes and tried them on and swapped and squabbled.

Jacob drank till his pocket was empty. It hardly touched him, filling him merely with a cold fury. He had read on the notice board of the marriages that were to take place in the morning. Homes had been allocated in the new ship for the new couples and none of them was to be his. Among the marriages would be Alun Jones, bachelor of this Settlement, to Martha, spinster recently from Earth. The drink froze like a knife in his

Farewell, Earth's Bliss

stomach. He wandered desperately from ship to ship, driven by the strength of his six-day manliness. Everywhere he went he asked for Martha. Just once he would have her, warm the cold in him against the fire of her anger and despising. And if Jones still wanted her after the defiling of his greasy, sore-covered body, he'd stand with the others at the back of the church and pray for their long and happy union.

The people he asked about her laughed and wriggled away. At last he caught a man drunker than he and held him up against a passage wall and would have beaten him.

"She's with her husband," said the man. "Where else would she be, you fool? Tomorrow night we have our fun with them. Tonight they have their fun ~ together."

He returned across the Settlement to the shop. Home. The music turned the pain inside him to an ecstasy. The music and the certainty that tonight he'd somehow find the comfort he needed. First there was something he had to tell Daisy Baker. Then perhaps he'd be free to dance.

He found his Daisy Baker and he told her nothing. She was under a trouserless giant of a man, and screaming faintly. He went softly away, not disgusted, having won his freedom from her more easily than he'd feared. He took with him three dollars he'd noticed on the corner of the table.

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