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Orbit 13
By Damon Knight
Proofed By MadMaxAU
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Contents
THE SCREAM
Kate Wilhelm
YOUNG LOVE
Grania Davis
AND NAME MY NAME
R. A. Lafferty
GOING WEST
Edward Bryant
MY FRIEND ZARATHUSTRA
James Sallis
THERAPY
Gary K. Wolf
GARDENING NOTES FROM ALL OVER
W. Macfarlane
IDIO
Doris Piserchia
FANTASY’S PROFESSION
Albert Teichner
SPRING CAME TO BLUE RIDGE EARLY THIS YEAR
Charles Arnold
CREATION OF A FUTURE WORLD IN THE TRACER
Steve Herbst
COILS
John Barfoot
TIME BIND
Sonya Dorman
EVERYBODY A WINNER, THE BARKER CRIED
C. L. Grant
NAKED AND AFRAID I GO
Doris Piserchia
TEETH
Grace Rooney
TROIKA
Steve Chapman
BLACK SUN
Dennis Etchison
THE MOUTH IS FOR EATING
William F. Orr
FLASH POINT
Gardner R. Dozois
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Kate Wilhelm
THE SCREAM
The sea had turned to copper; it rose and fell gently, the motion starting so deep that no ripple broke the surface of the slow swells. The sky was darkening to a deep blue-violet, with rose streaks in the west and a high cirrocumulus formation in the east that was a dazzling white mountain crowned with brilliant reds and touches of green. No wind stirred. The irregular dark strip that was Miami Beach separated the metallic sea from the fiery sky. We were at anchor eight miles offshore aboard the catamaran _Loretta_. She was a forty-foot, single-masted, inboard motorboat.
Evinson wanted to go on in, but Trainor, whose boat it was, said no. Too dangerous: sand, silt, wrecks, God knew what we might hit. We waited until morning.
We had to go in at Biscayne Bay; the Bal Harbour inlet was clogged with the remains of the bridge on old A1A. Trainor put in at the Port of Miami. All the while J.P. kept taking his water samples, not once glancing at the ruined city; Delia kept a running check for radiation, and Bernard took pictures. Corrie and I tried to keep out of the way, and Evinson didn’t. The ancient catamaran was clumsy, and Trainor was kept busy until we were tied up, then he bowed sarcastically to Evinson and went below.
Rusting ships were in the harbor, some of them on their sides half in water, half out. Some of them seemed afloat, but then we saw that without the constant dredging that had kept the port open, silt and sand had entered, and the bottom was no more than ten to fifteen feet down. The water was very clear. Some catfish lay unmoving on the bottom, and a school of big-eyed mullet circled at the surface, the first marine life we had seen. The terns were diving here, and sandpipers ran with the waves. J.P.’s eyes were shining as he watched the birds. We all had been afraid that there would be no life of any kind.
Our plan was to reconnoiter the first day, try to find transportation: bicycles, which none of us had ridden before, skates, canoes, anything. Miami and the beaches covered a lot of miles, and we had a lot of work; without transportation the work would be less valuable -- if it had any value to begin with.
Bernard and Delia went ahead to find a place to set up our base, and the rest of us started to unload the boat. In half an hour we were drenched with sweat. At first glance the city had seemed perfectly habitable, just empty of people, but as we carried the boxes to the hotel that Bernard had found, the ruins dominated the scene. Walls were down, streets vanished under sand and palmettos and sea grapes. The hotel was five stories, the first floor covered with sand and junk: shells, driftwood, an aluminum oar eaten through with corrosion. Furniture was piled against walls haphazardly, like heaps of rotting compost. The water had risen and fallen more than once, rearranging floatables. It was hellishly hot, and the hotel stank of ocean and decay and dry rot and heat. No one talked much as we all worked, all but Trainor, who had worked to get us here and who now guzzled beer with his feet up. Evinson cursed him monotonously. We carried our stuff to the hotel, then to the second floor, where we put mosquito netting at the windows of three connecting rooms that would be used jointly. We separated to select our private rooms and clear them and secure them against the mosquitoes that would appear by the millions as soon as the sun went down.
After a quick lunch of soy wafers and beer we went out singly to get the feel of the city and try to locate any transportation we could.
I started with a map in my hand, and the first thing I did was put it back inside my pack. Except for the general areas, the map was worthless. This had been a seawalled city, and the seawalls had gone: a little break here, a crack somewhere else, a trickle of water during high tide, a flood during a storm, the pressure building behind the walls, on the land side, and inevitably the surrender to the sea. The water had undermined the road system and eaten away at foundations of buildings, and hurricane winds had done the rest. Some streets were completely filled in with rubble; others were pitted and undercut until shelves of concrete had shifted and slid and now rested crazily tilted. The white sand had claimed some streets so thoroughly that growth had had a chance to naturalize, and there were strip-forests of palm trees, straggly bushes with pink and yellow flowers, and sea grapes. I saw a mangrove copse claiming the water’s edge and stopped to stare at it for a long time, with curious thoughts flitting through my brain about the land and the sea in a survival struggle in which man was no more than an incidental observer, here, then gone. The afternoon storm broke abruptly, and I took shelter in a building that seemed to have been a warehouse.
The stench of mold and decay drove me out again as soon as the storm abated. Outside, the sun had baked everything, the sun and rain sterilizing, neutralizing, keeping the mold at bay, but inside the cavernous buildings the soggy air was a culture for mold spores, and thirty years, forty, had not been long enough to deplete the rich source of nutrients. There was food available on the shelves, the shelves were food, the wood construction materials, the glues and grouts, the tiles and vinyls, the papers neatly filed, the folders that held them, pencils, everything finally was food for the mold.
I entered two more buildings, same thing, except that one of them had become a bat cave. They were the large fruit bats, not dangerous, and I knew they were not, but I left them the building without contest.
At the end of the first day we had three bicycles and a flat-bottomed rowboat with two oars. I hadn’t found anything of value. The boat was aluminum, and although badly corroded, it seemed intact enough. Trainor slouched in while J.P. was cooking dinner and the rest of us were planning our excursions for the next day.
“You folks want boats? Found a storehouse full of them.” He joined us for dinner and drew a map showing the warehouse he had found. His freehand map was more reliable than the printed ones we had brought with us. I suspected that he was salvaging what he could for his own boat. Unless he was a fool, that was what he was doing. When Evinson asked him what else he had seen that day, he simply shrugged.
“How’s chances of a swim?” I asked Delia after we ate.
“No radiation. But you’d better wait for Corrie to run some analyses. Too much that we don’t know to chance it yet.”
“No swimming, damn it!” Evinson said sharply. “For God’s sake, Sax.” He issued orders rapidly for the next day, in effect telling everyone to do what he had come to do.
Strut and puff, you little bastard, I thought at him. No one protested.
The same ruins lay everywhere in the city. After the first hour it was simply boring. My bicycle was more awkward than going on foot, since I had to carry it over rubble as much as I got to ride it. I abandoned it finally. I found the Miami River and dutifully got a sample. It was the color of tea, very clear. I followed the river a long time, stopped for my lunch, and followed it some more. Ruins, sand, junk, palm trees. Heat. Silence. Especially silence. I was not aware of when I began to listen to the silence, but I caught myself walking cautiously, trying to be as quiet as the city, not to intrude in any way. The wind in the dry fronds was the only thing I heard. It stopped, then started again, and I jerked around. I went inside a building now and then, but they were worse than the ruined streets. Rusty toys, appliances, moldering furniture, or piles of dust where the termites had been, chairs that crumbled when I touched them, and the heat and silence.
I got bored with the river and turned in to what had been a garden park. Here the vegetation was different. A banyan tree had spread unchecked and filled more than a city block. A flock of blackbirds arose from it as I approached. The suddenness of their flight startled me and I whirled around, certain that someone was behind me. Nothing. Vines and bushes had grown wild in the park and were competing with trees for space -- a minijungle. There were thousands of parakeets, emerald green, darting, making a cacophony that was worse than the silence. I retraced my steps after a few minutes. There might have been water in there, but I didn’t care. I circled the park and kept walking.
The feeling that I was being followed grew stronger, and I stopped as if to look more closely at a weed, listening for steps. Nothing. The wind in some pampas grass, the louder rustle of palm fronds, the return of the blackbirds. And in the distance the raucous cries of gulls. The feeling didn’t go away, and I walked faster and sweated harder.
I got out my kit and finished the last of the beer in the shade of a live oak with branches eighty feet long spreading out sideways in all directions. Whatever had poisoned Miami and reduced its population to zero hadn’t affected the flora. The wind started, the daily storm. I sat in the doorway of a stinking apartment building and watched sheets of water race down the street. After the storm passed I decided to go back and try to get Corrie to go to bed with me. It never occurred to me to snuggle up to Delia, who seemed totally asexual. Delia and J.P., I thought.
Corrie was alone, and she said no curtly. She was as hot as I was and as tired. But she had a working lab set up, complete with microscopes and test tubes and flasks of things over Bunsen burners. She glanced contemptuously at the collecting bottle that I handed her. They knew about me, all of them.
“What did I do wrong?”
“Label it, please. Location, depth, source, time of day. Anything else you can think of that might be helpful.”
Her tone said, and leave me alone because I have real work to do. She turned back to her microscope.
“So I’m not a hydrologist. I’m a pamphlet writer for Health, Education and Welfare.”
“I know.” She glanced at me again. “But why didn’t they send a real hydrologist?”
“Because we don’t have one.”
She stood up and walked to the window netting and looked out. Her shirt was wet under her sleeves and down her back, her hair clung to her cheeks and the nape of her neck. “Why?” she whispered. “Why? Why? Why?”
“If they knew that we wouldn’t be here.”
She walked back to her chair and sat down again, drawing the microscope toward her once more.
“Is the bay all right?”
“Yes.” She adjusted the focus and forgot about me. I left.
The warehouse where Trainor had found the boats was half a dozen blocks up the waterfront. I walked and sweated. Trainor had dragged some small boats outside, and I chose the smallest of them and took it down to the water. I rowed out into the bay, undressed, and swam for half an hour; then I started to row, going no place in particular.
The water was marvelously calm, and I felt cooler and less tense after the swim. I stopped to dive a couple of times around a sunken yacht; it had been stripped. I stopped again, this time ashore at what looked like a copy of the Parthenon. It had been a museum. The water lapped about the foundation; marble stairs and massive fountains indicated that it had been a grandiose thing. A statue had toppled and I considered it. A female form -- vaguely female, anyway. Rounded, curving, voluptuous-looking, roughly hewn out of granite, it was touching somehow. The eye-hollows were facing out to sea, waiting, watching the water, waiting. The essence of woman as childbearer, woman as nourisher, woman as man’s sexual necessity. Her flesh would be warm and yielding. She would be passive, accept his seed, and let it come to life within her. Those great round arms would hold a child, let it suckle at the massive breasts. I wished I could stand the statue upright again. When it fell one of the arms had broken; it lay apart from the bulk of the work. I tried to lift it: too heavy. I ran my hand over the rough rock and I wanted to sit on the floor by the woman and talk to her, cry a little, rest my cheek against that breast. I began to feel suffocated suddenly and I turned and ran from the museum without looking for anything else. The sun was setting, the sky crimson and blue and green, incredible colors that looked like cheap art.
It was dark when I got back to headquarters. All the others were there already, even Trainor. Delia was cooking. I watched her as she added water to the dehydrated stew and stirred it over canned heat. She was angular, with firm muscles and hardly any breasts at all. Her hips were slim, boyish, her legs all muscle and bone. I wondered again about her sexuality. I had seen her studying Trainor speculatively once, but nothing had come of it, and I had seen almost the same expression on her face a time or two when she had been looking at Corrie.
I turned my attention to Corrie -- a little better, but still not really woman, not as the statue had signified woman. Corrie was softer than Delia, her hips a bit rounder, her breasts bouncier, not much, but Delia’s never moved at all. Corrie had more of a waistline. My thoughts were confusing to me, and I tried to think of something else, but that damn statue kept intruding. I should have talked to her, I found myself thinking. And she would have looked at me with contempt. She would have looked at any of our men with contempt except, possibly, Trainor.
I watched and listened to Trainor then, speaking with Bernard. Trainor was tall and broad shouldered, his hair white, face browned by the sun, very lean and very muscular.
“Have you ever seen any wild animals as far north as the cape?” Bernard asked, sketching. His fingers were swift and sure: that characterized him all the way, actually. He was soft looking, but he moved with a sureness always. A dilettante artist, photographer, in his mid-thirties, rich enough not to work. There had been a mild affair with Corrie, but nothing serious. I didn’t know why he was here.
“Deer,” Trainor said in answer to his question. “There’s a lot of things up in the brush. Foxes, rabbits, muskrats, possum.”
“Anything big? I heard that lions were let loose, or escaped around West Palm Beach. Did they live, multiply?”
“Can’t say.”
“Heard there were panthers.”
“Can’t say.”
“How about Indians? You must know if any of them are left in the swamps.” Bernard’s pencil stopped, but he didn’t look at Trainor.
“Could be. Don’t go inland much. No way to get inland, hard going by boat, hyacinths, thick enough to walk on. Too much stuff in the water everywhere. St. John’s River used to be open, but not now.”
“How about fish then? See any porpoises?”
“They come and go. Don’t stay around long. Hear they’re thick down around South America and in the Caribbean. Might be.”
I watched Bernard for a long time. What was he after? And Trainor? I had a feeling that the seven people who had come to the city had seven different reasons, and that mine was the only si
mple one. Orders. When you work for the government and an undersecretary says go, you go. Why were the others here?
In bed later, I couldn’t sleep. The odors all came back in triple strength after dark. I could feel the mold growing around me, on me, in my bedroll. The humidity was a weight on my chest. I finally got up again, drenched with sweat, my bed soaked through, and I went back to the second floor where I interrupted Delia and Bernard in a quiet conversation. I got a beer and sat down near the window, my back to them both. After a moment Delia yawned and got up.
At the doorway she paused and said, “Why don’t you take him?”
I looked at her then. Bernard made a snorting sound and didn’t answer. I turned back to the window. The silence was coming in along with the nighttime humidity, and I realized that I had chosen my room on the wrong side of the building. The night air blew from the land to the sea. There was a faint breeze at the window. The oil lamp was feeble against the pressure of the darkness beyond the netting.
Orbit 13 - [Anthology] Page 1