Operation Ares by Gene Wolfe

Author:Gene Wolfe [Wolfe, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Berkeley Medallion
Published: 1970-07-06T23:00:00+00:00

The Russian had told the truth, the Captain realized. The flickerings were pictures, and by concentrating he could get at least a vague idea of what they were. That row of jumping, dark objects, appearing and almost instantly vanishing again, was perhaps a line of trees. Whizzing shapes that might be people crossed and recrossed the screen while the squeaking became a high-pitched voice. Fright was absent, but it had a swift urgency that reminded him of the voice of a prisoner whose nerve was about to run out: “Over five hundred annually per disadvantaged person of which two hundred and forty go to pay administrative costs . .

The flickering picture was definitely scenery now. The camera raced at incredible speed along a mountain road, and he felt that he himself was racing with it while stunted trees and rocky outcrops reeled past. The urgent voice was silent now.

Gradually the pace was slowing enough for him to see detail: leaning, weathered cabins that looked abandoned but had emaciated children clustering in their doorways. Occasional fields where yellowing crops grew spottily, leaving large bare spots of sterile clay.

At a hovel even more wretched than the others he halted. A man no larger than a child was sitting on the warped boards of its tiny porch. His head was buried in his hands, but as though he had heard the sound of steps he lifted it, looking up with a face saintly in its acceptance of suffering and its unquenchable hope, imbecilic in its incompetence for any practical activity. “I knew you’d come,” the man said. It was the tone a dog able to speak would use to its master.

He was aware of no effort, but his own voice, resonant and virile, answered. “We are going to get you out of here. You will have a fine new home with a roof that doesn’t leak and walls that keep out the cold.”

The man said, "I'll hate to leave here, all my kin live here,” but the protest was submission.

“Your relatives will be with you,” he heard himself saying. “Your Father in Arlington has built you all a wonderful farm—he calls it a Community Farm. There is milk there for your children; and you will have a bathroom, but you must learn to close the faucets when you do not need the water.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said. "I promise I will.”

“There will be a man there like me to help you and tell you what to do. You must do whatever he says.”

The man’s wife, in a dress sewn of dirty feed sacks, had appeared in the doorway of the hovel behind him. She wiped her hands on the cloth in a nervous, suppliant gesture and he saw that her body was as sexless as a lizard's. “Oh yes, sir, we will,” she said. “Tom and I will work at the farm very hard.”

In some remote corner of his mind it occurred to the Captain that the Russian had been right; it was just what he had always believed.

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