Star Bride
I always knew, ever since we were in school together, that he’d love me some day; and I knew somehow too that I’d always be in second place. I didn’t really care either, but I never guessed then what I’d come second to: a native girl from a conquered planet.
I couldn’t guess because those school days were before the Conquest and the Empire, back in the days when we used to talk about a rocket to a moon and never dreamed how fast it would all happen after that rocket.
When it did all begin to happen I thought at first what I was going to come second to was Space itself. But that wasn’t for long and now Space can never take him away from me and neither can she, not really, because she’s dead.
But he sits there by the waters and talks and I can’t even hate her, because she was a woman too, and she loved him too, and those were what she died of.
He doesn’t talk about it as often as he used to, and I suppose that’s something. It’s only when the fever’s bad, or he’s tried to talk to the Federal Council again about a humane colonial policy. That’s worse than the fever.
He sits there and he looks up at her star and he says, “But damn it, they’re people. Oh, I was like all the rest at first; I was expecting some kind of monster even after the reports from the Conquest troops. And when I saw that they looked almost like us, and after all those months in the space ship, with the old regulation against mixed crews . . .”
He has to tell it. The psychiatrist explained that to me carefully. I’m only glad it doesn’t come so often now.
“Everybody in Colonial Administration was doing it,” he says. “They’d pick the girl that came the closest to somebody back home and they’d go through the Vlnian marriage rite—which of course isn’t recognized legally under the C. A., at least not where we’re concerned.”
I’ve never asked him whether she came close to me.
“It’s a beautiful rite, though,” he says. “That’s what I keep telling the Council: Vln had a much higher level of pre-Conquest civilization than we’ll admit. She taught me poetry and music that. . .”
I know it all by heart now. All the poetry and all the music. It’s strange and sad and like nothing you ever dreamed of . . . and like everything you ever dreamed.
“It was living with her that made me know,” he says. “Being with her, part of her, knowing that there was nothing grotesque, nothing monstrous about green and white flesh in the same bed.”
No, that’s what he used to say. He doesn’t say that part any more. He does love me. “They’ve got to understand!” he says, looking at her star.
The psychiatrist explained how he’s transferring his guilt to the Council and the Colonial policy; but I still don’t see why he has to have guilt. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to come back. He meant to come back. Only that was the trip he got space fever, and of course after that he was planet-bound for life.
“She had a funny name,” he says. “I never could pronounce it right—all vowels. So I called her Starbride, even though she said that was foolish—we both belonged to the same star, the sun, even if we were of different planets. Now is that a primitive reaction? I tell you the average level of Vlnian scientific culture . . .”
And I still think of it as her star when he sits there and looks at it. I can’t keep things like that straight, and he does call her Starbride.
“I swore to come back before the child was born,” he said. “I swore by her God and mine and He heard me under both names. And she said very simply, ‘If you don’t, I’ll die.’ That’s all, just ‘I’ll die.’ And then we drank native wine and sang folksongs all night and went to bed in the dawn.”
And he doesn’t need to tell me about his letter to her, but he does. He doesn’t need to because I sent it myself. It was the first thing he thought of when he came out of the fever and saw the calendar and I wrote it down for him and sent it. And it came back with the C. A. stamp: Deceased and that was all.
“And I don’t know how she died,” he says, “or even whether the child was born. Try to find out anything about a native from the Colonial Administrator! They’ve got to be made to realize . . .”
Then he usually doesn’t talk for a while. He just sits there by the waters and looks up at the blue star and sings their sad folksongs with the funny names: Saint Louis Blues and Barbara Allen and Lover, Come Back to Me.
And after a while I say, “I’m not planet-bound. Some day when you’re well enough for me to leave you I’ll go to Vln—”
“ ‘Earth,’ ” he says, almost as though it was a love-word and not just a funny noise. “That’s their name for Vln. She called herself an earth woman, and she called me her martian.”
“I’ll go to Earth,” I say, only I never can pronounce it quite right and he always laughs a little, “and I’ll find your child and I’ll bring it back to you.”
Then he turns and smiles at me and after a while we leave the waters of the canal and go inside again away from her blue star and I can stand coming second even to
