The Boneyard of Old Ezra Snow

              For Robert W. Service,
              Roland Mills,
              and Memories of Campfires
              Many Years Past
              (with apologies to Orson Scott Card)


I

Oh, the galloping stars can shoot by like bars
On a chromascope’s L*E*D scales;
And the vacuums of space can dilationally race
Like runaway carts on greased rails;

Oh, I’ve shot like a spark through vast cauldrons of dark;
And I’ve skimmed suns and come back alive—
But the worst thing I’ve seen was a swatch of Earth-green
In the Boneyard on Tiâmat Five.

It isn’t a boneyard displayed on an Ad-Card—
At least, not in the regular sense;
The corpses don’t pile for mile upon mile,
The headstones aren’t crowded and dense.

No, on all of that planet (should future scouts scan it)
The body-count’s set at “dead-low”—
From East clear to West, on that whole world there rests
Just the dry husk of old Ezra Snow.

Now old Ezra Snow was as small as they go,
And his puniness stuck in his craw;
If one hair had been shed from the crown of his head,
He’d’ve missed the base height set by law.

But Ez, he was scrappy—that old boy was happy
To take on six men twice his size;
And he gained a rough grace in weightless, dead space…
And on Tiâmat Five—dead—he lies.

II

Now, our worktour began with a random name-scan
When the Comp’ny computer decreed
That old Ez and I were prime meat to try
To find Class-M planets to seed.

(Class-M, that’s the label that means that we’re able
To transform a desolate planet;
Though if we glean data from life-bearing strata,
The Company’s ordered to ban it!)

But back to my story—…old Ez in his glory
Had set up a miniature station,
With everything shorter, from bunk to gene-sorter,   
A Lilliput-friendly creation.

Then he scuttled inside as if planning to hide
Or to sleep until Sol’s globe burned pink;
For subjective weeks I got nary a peek
Of old Ez—just his voice on the ’link.

But then came the day when he crawled out to stay,
All sweating and burned up inside.
I did all I could, but it wasn’t much good—
In four days and two hours, he died.

When he knew it was time, he put hand to mine
And pulled ’til we touched, face to face;
With fingers like claws, and his throat fever-raw,
He whispered, “Remember! —not space!”

Oh, who would have thought, when drunk on a pot
Of imported Rigellian wine
And we uttered an oath blood-binding on both…
That the proof of the pact would be mine.

Should one of us die, the other would try—
And try to the death!,  was our vow—
To bury  the other, and goddam the bother,
On a planet…somewhere and somehow.

And now Ez was dying, and I would be lying
If I said that I wasn’t disturbed;
He gripped my hand tighter—that scrappy old fighter—
And made me again pledge my word.

Then he rolled back his head like it was made of  pure lead,
His claw-hand fell limp at his side;
His heart gave a hitch that meant, “Life’s a bitch!”—
And old Ezra quit breathing and died.

In cold space the dead do not lie in a bed,
All painted for mourners to grieve—
But I made Ez a casket from a cargo-hold basket
And drank to his lost joie de vivre.

It set my flesh creeping to have Ezra sleeping,
A corpsicle stored in the hold;
I’d turn up my collar and unthinkingly holler
For old Ezra—but he lay stone cold.

In a month I arrived at Tiâmat Five—
Class-T, so I knew that no missions
Would labor below and disturb Ezra Snow
In his timeless and death-darkened visions.

I scanned the world’s surface, found a spot for my purpose,
Then landed and worked my fell chore—
I scooped out a hole by a thin sapling’s bole
And laid Ez there for time evermore.



III

O, the spaceways are wide, and since Ezra had died
Two years had flown by…almost three.
When T-5’s smooth bight hove into my sight,
Well, I just had to stop there to see.

I landed at night and was thus spared the sight
That startled my eyes at next dawn.
For acres around, the rock-studded ground
Lay dead grey—all the saplings were gone,

Except in the middle (a great, living riddle)
Stood a stories-high, bright Earth-green tree;
With branches swept low, where the dawn breeze would blow—
And I swear they were whispering to me!

I crept a bit nearer and hoped to hear clearer
The frustrating, murmured derision—
For I knew in my heart that I’d played a main part
In this mystery haunting my vision.

“Hey, Jake, is that you,” the leaves whispered through
An alien, sand-colored glow—
“Is it you come back here, to grin and to leer
In the boneyard of old Ezra Snow?”

I took a deep breath that tasted like death
And strode to the giant tree’s trunk;
I placed my palm flat on its bark, gave a pat
Like to say “I don’t take any bunk.”

But the whispering came like a murmur of fame, 
Soft at first, but growing in strength:
“Disbelieve if you will, but my friend, this is still
Old Ez—live in timber and length.”

I must have passed out; when I roused, looked about
At a landscape sharp, alien, and skewed,
My head pulsed with pain—but that voice fell like rain
From sick skies: “Now, I don’t blame you!

“You couldn’t have known, when you buried my bones,
“What this world was able to do
“With cryo-chilled cells and DNA wells
“Of raw protein—no, I don’t blame you!”

I started to mutter some stupid, weak stutter,
Base words meant to stave off cold fear,
But the branches bent lower and laced in a bower,
And their murmurs imprisoned my ear:

“When I first felt called back from the comfortless black
“Of the grave—from the depths of Death’s sea—
“I panicked in pain and dared not hope to strain
To this height—Oh! the height of a tree!

“I first felt warm light that shattered my night,
“Then moisture and soft, palming wind…,
“And at once was aware of this sun’s heat on bare
“Branches thin-pinioned and blind….”

There was more stuff like that—a comfy chit-chat
With some bark and some leaves weirdly painted—
But when one branch got bolder and twined on my shoulder,
I yelped…and I jumped…and I fainted!

This time I came to more slowly. The view
Had subtlely altered, had changed.
The tree still stood there in a spot nearly bare,
Its Earth-green still eerie and strange.

But the lattice-work wall that had once seemed to fall
All around me was gone—I lay sleeping.
The breezes whirled high—huge clouds scudded by—
And I heard the soft rhythms of weeping.

“Ez?  Ezra Snow?  Can you hear me?”  But no—no
More voices answered my call;
But the vivid green swirls, the skyscraping whirls
Of green branches stretched proudly and tall.

And I knew without doubt that old Ez was about—
That his spirit…his cells…or his genes
Were not just alive on Tiâmat Five—
But flourishing like nothing I’d seen.

And the weeping I’d heard—like the song of a bird
In bright branches at midday in fall—
Was the weeping of joy from a short, dead ol’boy
Now tall, taller…tallest of all!

I stepped back a pace to give myself space
And scanned that tree crown to trunk;
I cocked my head square into the still air,
And said, “It’s nothing but bunk!

“There’s no way in space that the ashes this place
“Once greeted could sprout into this!”
I stepped close again and fingered the grain
Of bark that suddenly hissed!

“It’s me, curse you, Jake—and make no mistake—
“It’s me just as sure as you breathe;
“And I’ll tell you this, lad, be you good or plain bad,
“I’ll be growing long after you leave!”

I could take it no more—I raced to the floor
Of the lander and lying there, panting,
Slapped the stud with dispatch that would close the space-hatch—
And I left that weird planet of haunting.

IV

Now the galloping stars still shoot by like bars
On a chromascope’s L*E*D scales;
And the vacuums of space dilationally race
Like runaway carts on greased rails;

And I still shoot my spark through vast cauldrons of dark;
And still skim suns and come back alive—
But the best thing I’ve seen is that swatch of Earth-green
In the Boneyard on Tiâmat Five.