by Jerry
“Trying to pick up a few crumbs you overlooked.” He shifted position to keep their helmets in contact and told her what he was after. Due to having a comparatively small land area, the people of Tau Ceti Two raised most of their food in the planets seas, and the plant plankton they had brought from Earth, the base of all edible sea-life, grew slowly in Two’s weak sunlight. The individual cells of the great berg they were huddling in were plant in origin and contained chloroplasts that had to be periodically exposed to sunlight, but the strange life pattern in the great aggregates reduced exposure time to a few hours a month. During their brief period in the sun, the hyperactive chloroplasts synthesized enough energy compounds to last the cell through a month of darkness. If their secret could be discovered and applied on Tau Ceti Two, the transplanted higher forms at the edible end of the life-chain would greatly increase in number.
The proposed adaptation would be relatively simple, nothing to compare with their earlier discovery—Valeries earlier discovery!—but very helpful on his adopted planet. In a sense the high energy output of the chloroplasts was the key to survival of the trillions of individual cells that formed a cellberg. Each was independently alive and mobile, but exercised the cooperation usually found only in a compound body. The berg as a whole was penetrated by a complex network of arteries, starting as small tunnels in the hollow interior and branching off into smaller and smaller passages as they approached the surface layers. Vascular action on the part of all cells kept a slow but steady current moving outward through this circulation system, and every cell was bathed in the flow. The larger open tunnels, such as the one through which they had entered, served as veins for fluid return to the center.
The cellbergs were the known ultimate in free cell cooperation. On Earth some amoeboid slime mold, such as the Dictyostelium, combined at intervals to form a mobile composite body, but this was only for spore propagation; afterwards each cell went its own way. In the berg, cells moved at regular intervals from the interior to the outer layer, where each cell reattached itself for its time in the sun. Other cells followed and accumulated on top, gradually forcing the original one back to the center again, where the cycle was repeated. The entire berg revolved steadily by water displacement, providing both forward motion and periodic exposure of the entire surface. The nineteen huge aggregates moved in a regular circle around the perimeter of their shrinking lake, absorbing from the mineral-rich water the compounds needed to keep the individual cells alive. The dense liquid provided such a poor medium for diffusion that not all solids were well distributed, making regular movement mandatory.
The cellbergs were the last defense of the last life on this drying, dying planet. Somehow, individual cells living free in the water had combined to form an entity with all the advantages of a body, yet each cell retained its separate identity. When the planetary exploration team who had found these unique globes returned home, their report had caused a small stir of interest in biological circles. Two graduate students in extraterrestrial biology, who had a required field trip on their schedules, had been more than interested. They had decided to combine their first off-Earth study with marriage, and a couple who took the name “Victory” left seeking the answer to a puzzle that had long baffled biology. And one of them had found it. The Principle of Summative Control was applicable to every living creature with more than one cell in its body. The new knowledge gained was rapidly becoming a cornerstone of modern biology.
“The adaptation should be fairly easy, Lance,” Valerie said when he finished. There was a brief moment of silence, and then she whispered, “Talk to me!”
He recognized the thin edge of hysteria, placed an arm around her broad shoulders and started talking. Two hours later, when he realized she had gone peacefully to sleep, he stopped; and two hours after that, when she trembled under his arm and awoke with a gasp of fright, he told her it was probably safe to leave their shelter.
They emerged from the berg into a day washed clean by sand. Only the layer of grit slowly settling through the gel proved the storm had ever existed. Valence stood on the sloping sphere and examined the shore, now some distance away, through his scratched faceplate. To his surprise the station was still there, though the walls around the window opening were ragged and torn. He looked beyond the dome, to the rock outcropping, and saw his scout resting undisturbed on its center. It was standing alone. After a moment he located the other ship, a broken cylinder of metal at the base of the low cliff. Valerie had probably forgotten to leave the main gyro on when she cut power.
His former mate had also seen her scout. She clutched his arm, and her voice was frantic when she said, “What are we going to do! I have to get back to Earth, I can’t go with you to Tau Ceti!”
“Simple. Take my ship, have your university credit mine with the cost. Notify the Patrol to come by for me on their next trip through this sector.”
She calmed down immediately. “But how will you live, Lance? It may be months.”
“I think we can repair the damage,” he said shortly, and led her into the water and toward shore. The intimacy they had shared in the bergs core, a product of her fear, was gone. It often worked that way with Valerie. She lowered her personal barriers only when in physical or emotional need.
It took only an hour to establish that the station had suffered surprisingly little damage. There was plenty of stored foamfab, and he quickly filled in the window space and repaired the cracks. The power distribution system was out again, but this time it was a sand-damaged wire, which he located and repaired within minutes. The solar cells on the roof had been protected by automatic covers; within four hours he had the condenser operating on station power. Seven hours later they were able to take off the jumpsuits. The one really large job left was cleaning out a few thousand kilograms of silicon.
“I can take it from here,” he said briefly, stopping her tentative gesture toward gathering sand. She had realized as well as he that now was the logical time for her to leave.
She turned to face him, and the final confrontation was joined as suddenly as that.
Valerie had the high, hot pride of her genius, and Valence his solid, enduring strength. The man waited silently, wondering if it was in him to give, to yield and say the first word. He saw her shoulders stiffen slightly in the old arrogance, the expressive mouth tighten into grimness, and he knew he faced months of loneliness unless he spoke.
Valence lowered his gaze from her taut face, found himself staring at his hands, now rough and dirty. Strange; he would be forever famous as a man of intellect, a major contributor in a demanding scientific discipline, and yet he never felt truly competent or useful except when handling a tool or an instrument. And he had been lying all these years when he told himself his perseverance would have eventually brought him to the answer Valerie had reached in one soaring mental flight. It was far more likely he would have plodded steadily along below the higher range of thought, contributing small gems such as his present project and never climbing upward to the rarefied heights where great universal truths awaited discovery. He was not a brilliant man, and the conflicting emotional currents now washing over his defenses were forcing him to face this essential fact. His hands could not aid him in this present crisis, and he realized with bitter clarity that the small physical problems of repair and operation in which they excelled were of little importance. Life’s more important climaxes in the modern world were cerebral and emotional, and conflict with another person seldom lent itself to a settlement by force. But unless he could invert his strength, force himself to speak, to acknowledge his dependence, he would lose Valerie again, and his life would fall back into the meaningless pattern he had followed for the past twelve years. It was cold comfort to know that she also had accomplished nothing more after breaking up the Victory team.
He lifted his eyes again and waited, helpless, for the ice of her rejection to freeze his life into uselessness. He could not speak.
Valerie turned abruptly away, b
ut after one step spun around again and speaking very quickly said, “Just one thing. Just one. I didn’t hold back on you; the Principle jumped out at me when I was discussing our work with Able, and I saw it, clear and true, all the way through; and when I explained, he realized it was a breakthrough and called the communicay people immediately. I tried to reach you but it was impossible; you were deep in the woods and they rushed me before the camera that same night. When you came back you left without calling me, no explanation, nothing. But you had half-credit all the way through, I saw to that, and half the book royalties.”
He felt his mouth grow as dry as the sand at his feet, and his tongue seemed coated with it when he said, “And the contract renewal? And your taking out one with Able after I left?”
The clean, sharply defined angles of her face suddenly seemed strained, haggard, older than he remembered. “I . . . had already decided to wait a bit before renewing our contract. I wanted to learn if I really needed you, either professionally or emotionally. You’re so slow, so—so damnably dull in your thoroughness! After you left I signed one with Able because . . . I was lonely, and he was there. But Able didn’t have your strength, and I—burned him. He left me after six months, saying I was too temperamental. The truth is we were very much alike, but I jumped ahead of him top often, and he had no compensating qualities to make him feel equal.”
For the first time he felt a faint stirring of hope. “And now?”
She lowered her eyes to his feet and surrendered the last of her pride. “I saw in the ExTresBio Journal that you were coming back here. I got the date from your school and came, hoping . . . I’m a cripple. You want to hear me say it, and I will. I have to build on someone else’s groundwork, function as a member of a team. I can’t stand alone, either as a scientist or a—a person. You have known it all along. I had to find out the hard way.” He moved very quickly and took her in his arms, hoping Valerie would never know how close she had come to shattering the strength she respected, and held and petted her through a purging flood of tears. When the sobbing eased to a slow sad hiccupping, he kissed her gently on the lips, and then harder, and then with the repressed passion of twelve long years. Suddenly Valerie whirled out of his arms, ran to the broad low couch and began frantically scraping off sand, looking back over her shoulder, the tilted grin fighting its way across the wide mouth to confound the tears, and he knew again the feeling of being whole.
A BOY AND HIS DOG
Harlan Ellison
I WAS OUT with Blood, my dog. It was his week for annoying me; he kept calling me Albert. He thought that was pretty damned funny. Payson Terhune: ha ha. I’d caught a couple of water rats for him, the big green and ochre ones, and someone’s manicured poodle, lost off a leash in one of the downunders; he’d eaten pretty good, but he was cranky. “Come on, son of a bitch,” I demanded, “find me a piece of ass.” Blood just chuckled, deep in his dog-throat. “You’re funny when you get horny,” he said.
Maybe funny enough to kick him upside his sphincter asshole, that refugee from a dingo-heap.
“Find! I’m not kidding!”
He knew I’d reached the edge of my patience. Sullenly, he started casting. He sat down on the crumbled remains of the curb, and his eyelids flickered and closed, and his hairy body tensed. After a while he settled forward on his front paws, and scraped them forward till he was lying flat, his shaggy head on the outstretched paws. The tenseness left him and he began trembling, almost the way he trembled just preparatory to scratching a Ilea. It went on that way for almost a quarter of an hour, and finally he rolled over and lay on his back, his naked belly towards the night sky, his front paws folded mantis-like, his hind legs extended and open. “I’m sorry.” he said. “There’s nothing.”
I could have gotten mad and booted him, but I knew he had tried. I wasn’t happy about it, I really wanted to get laid, but what could I do? “Okay,” I said, with resignation, “forget it.”
He kicked himself onto his side and quickly got up. “What do you want to do?” he asked.
“Not much we can do, is there?” I was more than a little sarcastic. He sat down again, at my feet, insolently humble.
I leaned against the melted stub of a lamppost, and thought about girls. It was painful. “We can always go to a show,” I said. Blood looked around the street, at the pools of shadow lying in the weed-overgrown craters, and didn’t say anything. The whelp was waiting for me to say okay, let’s go. He liked movies as much as I did.
“Okay, let’s go.”
He got up and followed me, his tongue hanging, panting with happiness. Go ahead and laugh, you eggsucker. No popcorn for you!
Our Gang was a roverpak that had never been able to cut it simply foraging, so they’d opted for comfort and gone a smart way to getting it. They were movie-orientated kids, and they’d taken over the turf where the Metropole Theatre was located. No one tried to bust their turf, because we all needed the movies, and as long as Our Gang had access to films, and did a better job of keeping the films going, they provided a service, even for solos like me and Blood. Especially for solos like us.
They made me check my .45 and the Browning .22 long at the door. There was a little alcove right beside the ticket booth. I bought my tickets first; it cost me a can of Oscar Meyer Philadelphia Scrapple for me, and a tin of sardines for Blood. Then the Our Gang guards with the bren guns motioned me over to the alcove and I checked my heat. I saw water leaking from a broken pipe in the ceiling and I told the checker, a kid with big leathery warts all over his face and lips, to move my weapons where it was dry. He ignored me. “Hey, you! Motherfuckin’ toad, move my stuff over the other side . . . it goes to rust fast . . . an’ it picks up any spots, man. I’ll break your bones!”
He started to give me jaw about it, looked at the guards with the brens, knew if they tossed me out I’d lose my price of admission whether I went in or not, but they weren’t looking for any action, probably understrength, and gave him the nod to let it pass, to do what I said. So the toad moved my Browning to the other end of the gun rack, and pegged my .45 under it.
Blood and me went into the theater.
“I want popcorn.”
“Forget it.”
“Come on, Albert. Buy me popcorn.”
“You’re just being a shit.” I shrugged; sue me.
We went in. The place was jammed. I was glad the guards hadn’t tried to take anything but guns. My spike and knife felt reassuring, lying-up in their oiled sheaths at the back of my neck. Blood found two together, and we moved into the row, stepping on feet. Someone cursed and I ignored him. A Doberman growled. Blood’s fur stirred, but he let it pass. There was always some hardcase on the muscle, even in neutral ground like the Metropole.
(I heard once about a get-it-on they’d had at the old Loew’s Granada, on the South Side. Wound up with ten or twelve rovers and their mutts dead, the theater burned down and a couple of good Cagney films lost in the fire. After that was when the roverpaks had got up the agreement that movie houses were sanctuaries. It was better now, but there was always somebody too messed in the mind to come soft.)
It was a triple feature. “Raw Deal” with Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor, Raymond Burr and Marsha Hunt was the oldest of the three. It’d been made in 1948, seventy-six years ago, god only knows how the damn thing’d hung together all that time; it slipped sprockets and they had to stop the movie all the time to re-thread it. But it was a good movie. About this solo who’d been japped by his roverpak and was out to get revenge. Gangsters, mobs, a lot of punching and fighting. Real good.
The middle flick was a thing made during the Third War, in ’07, two years before I was even born, thing called “Smell of a Chink”. It was mostly gut-spilling and some nice hand-to-hand. Beautiful scene of skirmisher greyhounds equipped with napalm throwers, jellyburning a Chink town. Blood dug it, even though we’d seen this flick before. He had some kind of phony shuck going that these were ancestors of his, and he knew I knew he was makin
g it up.
“Wanna burn a baby, hero?” I whispered to him. He got the barb and just shifted in his scat, didn’t say a thing, kept looking pleased as the dogs worked their way through the town. I was bored stiff.
I was waiting for the main feature.
Finally it came on. It was a beauty, a beaver flick made in the late 1970s. It was called “Big Black Leather Splits”. Started right out very good. These two blondes in black leather corsets and boots laced all the way up to their crotches, with whips and masks, got this skinny guy down and one of the chicks sat on his face while the other went down on him. It got really hairy after that.
All around me there were solos playing with themselves. I was about to jog it a little myself when Blood leaned across and said, real soft, the way he does when he’s onto something unusually smelly, “There’s a chick in here.”
“You’re nuts,” I said.
“I tell you I smell her. She’s in here, man.”
Without being conspicuous, I looked around. Almost every seal in the theater was taken with solos or their dogs. If a chick had slipped in there’d have been a riot. She’d have been ripped to pieces before any single guy could have gotten into her. “Where?” I asked, softly. All around me. the solos were beating-off, moaning as the blondes took off their masks and one of them worked the skinny guy with a big wooden ram strapped around her hips.
“Give me a minute,” Blood said. He was really concentrating. His body was tense as a wire. His eyes were closed, his muzzle quivering. I let him work.
It was possible. Just maybe possible. I knew that they made really dumb flicks in the downunders, the kind of crap they’d made back in the 1930s and ’40s, real clean stuff with even married people sleeping in twin beds. Myrna Loy and George Brent kind of flicks. And I knew that once in a while a chick from one of the really strict middle-class downunders would cumup, to see what a hairy flick was like. I’d heard about it, but it’d never happened in any Theater I’d ever been in.