Song in a Minor Key by C. L. Moore
Beneath him the clovered hill-slope was warm in the sun. Northwest Smith moved his shoulders
against the earth and closed his eyes, breathing so deeply that the gun holstered upon his
chest drew tight against its strap as he drank the fragrance of Earth and clover warm in
the sun. Here in the hollow of the hills, willow-shaded, pillowed upon clover and the
lap of Earth, he let his breath run out in a long sigh and drew one palm across the grass
in a caress like a lover's.
He had been promising himself this moment for how long—how many months and years on
alien worlds? He would not think of it now. He would not remember the dark spaceways or
the red slag of Martian drylands or the pearl-gray days on Venus when he had dreamed of the Earth
that had outlawed him. So he lay, with his eyes closed and the sunlight drenching him
through, no sound in his ears but the passage of a breeze through the grass and a creaking
of some insect nearby—the violent, blood-smelling years behind him might never have been. Except
for the gun pressed into his ribs between his chest and the clovered earth, he might
be a boy again, years upon years ago, long before he had broken his first law or killed
his first man.
No one else alive now knew who that boy had been. Not even the all knowing Patrol. Not
even Venusian Yarol, who had been his closest friend for so many riotous years. No one would
ever know—now. Not his name (which had not always been Smith) or his native land or the
home that had bred him, or the first violent deed that had sent him down the devious paths
which led here—here to the clover hollow in the hills of an Earth that had forbidden
him ever to set foot again upon her soil.
He unclasped the hands behind his head and rolled over to lay a scarred cheek on his
arm, smiling to himself. Well, here was Earth beneath him. No longer a green star high in
alien skies, but warm soil, new clover so near his face he could see all the little
stems and trefoil leaves, moist earth granular at their roots. An ant ran by with waving
antennae close beside his cheek. He closed his eyes and drew another deep breath. Better
not even look; better to lie here like an animal, absorbing the sun and the feel of
Earth blindly, wordlessly.
Now he was not Northwest Smith, scarred outlaw of the spaceways. Now he was a boy again with
all his life before him. There would be a white-columned house just over the hill, with
shaded porches and white curtains blowing in the breeze and the sound of sweet, familiar
voices indoors. There would be a girl with hair like poured honey hesitating just inside
the door, lifting her eyes to him. Tears in the eyes. He lay very still, remembering.
Curious how vividly it all came back, though the house had been ashes for nearly twenty
years, and the girl—the girl ...
He rolled over violently, opening his eyes. No use remembering her. There had been that
fatal flaw in him from the very first, he knew now. If he were the boy again knowing
all he knew today, still the flaw would be there and sooner or later the same thing must
have happened that had happened twenty years ago. He had been born for a wilder age, when
men took what they wanted and held what they could without respect for law. Obedience was
not in him, and so—
As vividly as on that day it happened he felt the same old surge of anger and despair twenty
years old now, felt the ray-gun bucking hard against his unaccustomed fist, heard the hiss
of its deadly charge ravening into a face he hated. He could not be sorry, even now,
for that first man he had killed. But in the smoke of that killing had gone up the columned
house and the future he might have had, the boy himself—lost as Atlantis now—and the
girl with the honey-colored hair and much, much else besides. It had to happen, he knew.
He being the boy he was, it had to happen. Even if he could go back and start all over,
the tale would be the same.
And it was all long past now, anyhow; and nobody remembered any more at all, except
himself. A man would be a fool to lie here thinking about it any longer.
Smith grunted and sat up, shrugging the gun into place against his ribs.
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