Orbit 14

by Damon Knight

  This floor once housed the furniture department and a plush restaurant. One side is open to the last rays of the still bright western sky, and the sunlight slants through a forest scene, not yet finished, but already thick with greenery. It even smells like a living forest, and the old man realizes what Boy’s missions for Monica have been during the past weeks: there are dozens of six- to eight-foot evergreens in planters in the foreground, and a small hill of pine cones. Monica is creating a green spot to see her through the coming winter.

  Now the old man sees Monica. She is tying red balls on one of the plastic trees. She must have scoured the city for the greenery, there is so much of it. Palm trees, vines, garlands of leaves. Monica glances his way and her face sets in hard lines; she is furious with him for ruining her surprise, for intruding before opening day. She ignores him, passes behind the tree she is decorating, and continues to tie on the red balls.

  The old man walks over a carpet of plastic earth and grass (but the rocks scattered on the path are real) and approaches her. Across the room are lanterns already lighted; often Monica works on into the night.

  “Boy saw children in the city today, Monica.”

  She turns her back on him and studies the tree, her eyes narrowed in thought.

  “Boy saw children!” he shouts at her.

  Her hands shake now when she reaches for the tree, and she jerks them back behind her.

  “There are children in the city, Monica! You should not show any lights tonight, until we decide what to do. Do you understand?”

  Monica is pouting. She looks away from him and he is afraid she is going to weep because he has spoiled her surprise. The old man begins to turn off the lanterns. Monica doesn’t look at him. She is a silhouette against the pale sky, slender still, elegant-looking with her hair carefully done up, wearing a long dress that, in this dim light, no longer shows the slits where brittle age has touched it. She is looking at the city when he leaves.

  Now the stars are out, and the streets are too dark to see more than a hundred yards in any direction. The old man hesitates outside the church, then resolutely goes inside and climbs to the belfry. The bell has always been their signal to gather. And if the children hear? He shakes his head and pulls the rope; the bell sounds alarmingly loud. The children already know there is someone in the city, and perhaps they are still too far from this area to hear the bell. He catches the clapper before it can strike a second time.

  He waits in the church for the others to assemble, and he tries to remember when the last night session was called. He has only one candle burning, its light far from the massive doors. As the others arrive, the one light is a message, and they become subdued and fearful as they enter and silently go to the front of the church. They are as quiet as ghosts, they look like ghosts in their floor-length robes and capes. Sixteen of the surviving twenty-two residents attend the meeting. The old man waits until it seems likely that no one else will come, and then he tells them about the children. For an hour they talk. There is Sam Whitten, the senior member, who is senile and can’t cope with the idea of children at all. There is Sandra Littleton, who wants an expedition sent out immediately to find the children, bring them in to the warmth of her fires, who wants to feed them, school them, care for them. There is Jake Pulaski, who thinks they should be caught and killed. Someone else wants them run out of town again. Another thinks everyone should hide and let the children roam until they get tired and leave. And so on, for an hour. Nothing is decided.

  Boy is still hiding when the old man returns to his apartment. He may hide for days or weeks. The old man prepares his dinner and eats it in an inner room where the lights won’t show, and then he stands at the window looking at the dark city for a long time. The old man and Boy are the only ones who live in rooms this high; everyone else has found a first- or second-floor apartment, or a house, and sometimes they complain about the old man’s stairs. Sometimes they have to stand in the street and shout for him when they need his help. Recently the old man’s legs have been bothering him a bit, not much, not often, but it is an indication that before long he will have to descend a floor or two. He will do it reluctantly. He likes to be able to look out over the city, to be above the trees.

  It is very cold when he finally goes to bed, chilled. He has decided not to have a fire. No fire, no smoke, no lights. Not yet. Sometime in the night Monica slips into his bed.

  “Lew, are there really children?”

  “Boy says so.”

  She is silent, warmer than he is, sharing her warmth with him.

  “And we have grown so used to thinking that we were the last,” she says after a long time. “Everything will change now, won’t it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’ll just vanish again.”

  Neither of them believes this. After a time they sleep, and when the old man awakens, at the first vague light of dawn, Monica is gone. He lies in the warm bed and thinks about the many nights they shared, not for warmth, and he has no regrets, only a mild curiosity that it could have died as it did, leaving memories without bitterness.

  The children play in the rubble of the burned-out block of apartments visible from the old man’s building, between the park and the river warehouse district. The old man is standing at an eighth-floor window watching one of them, a small girl, through a telescope that brings her so close he feels he can reach out and touch her golden hair. There are seven of them, the oldest probably no more than thirteen, the youngest, the blond girl, about five or six.

  “Let me have a turn, Lew,” Myra Olney says. Her eyes are red. She has been weeping ever since she first saw the children. She is waiting for her son Timmy to come home. Timmy has been dead for fifty-five years. The old man moves aside, and Myra swings the telescope too far and loses the children. Walter Gilson adjusts it for her and rejoins the others.

  “We can’t just ignore them, pretend they don’t exist,” Walter says. He hoists his robe to sit down, and it drapes between his knees. Only three of the men still wear trousers. Their robes are made of wool, old blankets, cut-apart overcoats sewn together in a more practical style. The wool holds up better than any other material. The synthetics have split and cracked as they aged.

  “Just exactly what did Boy say?” Sid Elliston asks for the third time.

  “I told you. He said they tried to catch him. He could have been frightened and imagined it. You know he’s terrified of anything out of the ordinary.”

  They all know about Boy. He is cleverer than most of them about practical things: he found the tanks they all use to collect water on the roofs, and the pipes to provide running water. He found nuts and a grinder, so they have flour of a sort. He found the hospital supplies deep in a hidden vault. They know that without Boy their lives would be much harder, perhaps impossible. Also, they know that Boy is strange.

  Sid has taken Myra’s place at the telescope, and she sits by the old man and clutches his arm and pleads with him. They all seem to regard the children as his problem, perhaps because Boy found them, and they know Boy is his problem.

  “You have to go out there and bring them in,” Myra says, weeping. “It’s getting colder and colder. They’ll freeze.”

  “They’ve managed to stay alive this long,” Harry Gould says. “Let them go back to where they came from. It could be a trap. They draw us out and then others grab our houses, our food.”

  “You know we could feed a hundred times that many,” Walter says. “They ain’t carrying nothing. What do you suppose they’ve been eating?”

  “Small game,” someone suggests. “Boy says there are rabbits right here in the city, and birds. I saw some birds last week. Robins.” The old man shakes his head. Not robins. They come in the spring, not in the fall.

  He goes back to the window, and Sid doesn’t question his right to the telescope but moves aside at his approach. The old man locates the children and searches for the little blond girl. They are throwing sticks and stones at something, he can’t make out
what it is. A can? There are no cans; they have all rusted away. A rat? He wonders if there are rats again. Monica has told him that before he arrived in the city there were millions of rats, but their numbers have dwindled, and he has seen none at all for five years or more.

  “We will bring them in,” he says suddenly, and leaves the window. “We can’t let them starve or freeze.”

  “It’s our God-given duty,” Myra says tearfully, “to care for them. It’s the start of everything again. I knew it couldn’t all just end like that. I knew it!”

  “We’ll have to educate them! Teach them math and literature!”

  “Maybe they’ll be able to make the lights work again!”

  “And they will plant crops. Com. Wheat. String beans.”

  “And keep cattle. I can teach them how to milk. My father had fifty head of cattle on his farm. I know how to milk.”

  “We shall teach them to live by ethics. No more religion. No sects. No discrimination. A pure system of ethics.”

  “What do you mean? How can you teach them ethics without religion? A contradiction in terms, isn’t it?” Walter glares at Sid, who turns away scowling.

  “We’ll teach them all religions, in a historical sense, so they’ll grasp the allusions in the books they’ll read.”

  “And democracy . . . "

  “What do you know about democracy? What we have, what’s worked for us is pure anarchy, nothing more or less.”

  At the telescope Mary Halloran suddenly screams softly and backs away from the eyepiece, her hands over her mouth. “Lew! Look at them!”

  He looks and sees that they have built a fire, and they are roasting rats. He can see the rats clearly; they are not yet dead, but writhe and squirm, and he imagines he can hear their shrill cries. The children are squatting in a circle about the fire, watching intently. The blond girl’s face is still, and a spot appears at the corner of her mouth and catches the light, glistens in the light. She is drooling.

  “Savages!” Mary whispers in horror. “They’re savages! Let them go back to the wilderness where they belong.”

  “They’re survivors!” Sid yells at her, suddenly furious. “Look at us! Tons of freeze-dried food, enough to feed thousands of people. Warm buildings. Water. Plenty of clothes. Books. And they’ve got nothing except courage. I’m going down there!”

  Harry stops him at the door. “You’re right. We have to try, but maybe we shouldn’t bring them here. You know? Why let them know exactly where we are, where our stuff is until we’re sure about them? There could be others still hiding.”

  And so it is agreed. Sid and Harry and two of the women will meet the children and take them to the far end of the park, to the hospital, over a mile from the nearest home. The old man will join them later in the afternoon. He will examine the children. The old man is the nearest thing they have to a doctor. He was in his first year of medical school when the end came. He knows his limitations, but he also knows he can do little harm with what is available to him; sometimes he can do a little good. No one expects miracles. He is very good at tooth extractions. The people’s teeth are all very bad. Those who had dentures before are the lucky ones.

  Myra pleads to be allowed to go with Harry and Sid, but they won’t let her; they know she cannot walk that far. Mary and Eunice are chosen, and they decide to take a gift of food with them. They ask the old man for some of Boy’s wild honey, but he refuses. Let Boy offer it if he wants, he tells them, and they have to be content with that. Boy has never told anyone where he finds the honey; he can barter it for clothes and music. He will listen to Myra play her violin for as long as she is willing to play. He gives honey freely to the old man, asking nothing in return.

  The old man stays with the telescope until the children vanish among the buildings, and then he returns to his apartment on the fourth floor. Monica is there with Ruth and Dore Shurman. Ruth is seventy and Dore a little older. It is the first time in ten years that he has entertained them in his home. He is very pleased to have 'them here. Monica has already given them food, flat cakes baked on a grill. The cakes are nutty, crisp, very good.

  “We want to go north,” Ruth says. “Remember? Where the cottages are still standing? They won’t come there. Too much rubble between the city and the suburbs.”

  “But why?”

  “I think Boy was telling the truth when he said they tried to catch him. I think they’re dangerous.”

  The old man pities Ruth; he knows she will never be able to travel even to the edge of her own district, much less the ten miles or more to the suburb she is talking about. He looks at Dore and knows he also understands.

  “You have nothing to fear,” he says finally. “Even if they are wild, they wouldn’t bother any of us. Why should they? There’s enough food for all of us. Enough shelter. God knows, we won’t go out of our way to harm them.”

  “You never know what will threaten someone else,” Ruth says firmly.

  Thirty-two years ago, when the old man first came to the city, Ruth was lovely, with abundant chestnut-colored hair, mature figure, and no trace of the fear that turned her husband into an invalid. Ruth had had three children, and she was still fertile, she told Lew. Perhaps they could produce yet another child or two, she and Lew. For three years he lived with them, cared for Dore and made love to Dore’s wife, until suddenly Ruth stopped menstruating. There was no menopause; she simply stopped, and she went back to her husband. Slowly Dore regained his sanity, but he has no memory of the bad years. The old man has always thought Dore understands much more than he has ever indicated by word or action. A firm friendship has grown up between the two. When Ruth turned away from Lew, she changed. Terror seized her with the realization that there would be no more children, and gradually Dore has come to be her support, as she had been his while there was still hope. Time has healed her fears, and resignation is the scar. But now she is terrified again.

  “Lew, come with us. Don’t go to the children, today or ever. Let them live or die as God wills, don’t help them.”

  The old man doesn’t look at her. He can’t tell her that she will never make it out of the city; her heart is bad, she has grown too fat, her blood pressure is too high.

  “There are only seven of them, for heaven’s sake,” Monica says reasonably. “Even if they breed like guppies, we’ll all be dead long before they could be a threat to us.”

  “Lew, please come with us,” Ruth pleads. “I’m afraid to go without you. What if Dore has an attack, or I do?”

  “Look, Ruth, go home and stay inside for the next few days. All right? No one will tell them where any of us live, I promise you. This was a city of over a million people. And there are only seven of them, and three of them are very little.” He visualizes again the small girl’s intent face as she waited for the rat to stop jerking on the stick. “Very little,” he repeats. “They could never find us in such a big city.”

  They finally leave him and Monica in his apartment. “Are you so sure they aren’t dangerous?” Monica asks. She is elegant in a long gown that she made out of a heavy blue brocade. She sews beautifully, always has new clothes. She does her hair up in intricate swirls; it is so white it looks false.

  “They’re too few and too young,” he says impatiently. “Unless they’re full of disease germs, something like that. They could be.”

  She clutches her throat. For many years no one in the city has had a cold, flu, sore throat. Nothing but age, he thinks. Boy is the youngest resident of the city, or was before today.

  “I have to get back,” she says hastily. “I have to water my trees.”

  The old man sits at his work table for a long time after Monica leaves him. He wonders for the first time why he is working on a concise edition of the Bible. For whose benefit? And isn’t it blasphemy? Supposing, of course, that one believed in God. He is puzzled by the repetitions in the Bible, the same story told over and over in different versions. With proper editing, he has reasoned, the Bible will be an eighth
of its present length.

  Boy has not come out of hiding by the time the old man leaves for the hospital. He knows it would be futile to try to find him. He walks under the golden sycamores with his usual long, unhurried stride. He tries not to think of the children yet. He thinks instead of the fear shown by Mary, by Monica, Ruth and Dore. The others will come to feel it also, he knows, just as he is feeling it.

  The hospital is a rambling two-story building, ultramodern when built, with outside windows for every room, wide vinyl-floored corridors, flowered wall coverings, spacious, airy waiting rooms and lounges. It was designed as an emergency center for this section of the country, with room after room of subbasements stocked with freeze-dried food, blankets, clothing, medical supplies. No one has ever raided it. No one has distributed the food, the oil, the clothing, blankets. Years ago Boy discovered the cache, and the citizens of the city, one hundred twenty people or more then, took what they needed—most of them would never have to return for anything else—and they left the remaining stores undisturbed.

  In those early years in the city, the old man used to play doctor. He dressed in a surgical gown, tied on a mask, and stalked the corridors in search of a patient. He read all the medical books, some of them many times, and handled the equipment until he was familiar with it. More recently, only five or six years ago, he found himself one night sitting at the side of a bed, garbed in white, with a stethoscope and a thermometer, talking earnestly to a nonexistent patient. Frightened, he left the hospital, and he hasn’t been back since. He finds that he is walking somewhat slower than before, and deliberately he lengthens his stride.

  Eunice is waiting on the top step; she comes forward to meet him. She is stout and robust-looking, with a florid complexion and iron-grey hair in long braids down her back. Now she is pale and frightened. “Lew, they were awful! They really are savages. We caught one of them, but the others all ran away, and they threw stones at us. Sid is hurt.”