Orbit 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  ‘I knew I was right,’ I would say.

  ‘You are always right,’ she would say, ‘and you know the rest of it too. You know what murderers we are and how terribly we live. We are waiting for the big bang when everything falls over and even the Morlocks will be destroyed; meanwhile I stay here waiting for the signal and I leave messages clipped to the frame of your mother’s amateur oil painting of Main Street because it will be in a museum some day and my friends can find it; meanwhile I read The Time Machine.’

  Then I would say, ‘Can I come with you?’ leaning against the door.

  ‘Without you,’ she would say gravely, ‘all is lost,’ and taking out from the wardrobe a black dress glittering with stars and a pair of silver sandals with high heels, she would say, ‘These are yours. They were my great-grandmother’s, who founded the Order. In the name of Trans-Temporal Military Authority.’ And I would put them on.

  It was almost a pity she was not really there.

  * * * *

  Every year in the middle of August the Country Club gave a dance, not just for the rich families who were members but also for the ‘nice’ people who lived in frame houses in town and even for some of the smart, economical young couples who lived in apartments, just as if they had been in the city. There was one new, red-brick apartment building downtown, four storeys high, with a courtyard. We were supposed to go, because I was old enough that year, but the day before the dance my father became ill with pains in his left side and my mother had to stay home to take care of him. He was propped up on pillows on the living room daybed, which we had pulled out into the room so he could watch what my mother was doing with the garden out back and call to her once in a while through the windows. He could also see the walk leading up to the front door. He kept insisting that she was doing things all wrong. I did not even ask if I could go to the dance alone. My father said:

  ‘Why don’t you go out and help your mother?’

  ‘She doesn’t want me to,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to stay here,’ and then he shouted angrily, ‘Bess! Bess!’ and began to give her instructions through the window. I saw another pair of hands appear in the window next to my mother’s and then our guest - squatting back on her heels and smoking a cigarette - pulling up weeds. She was working quickly and efficiently, the cigarette between her teeth. ‘No, not that way!’ shouted my father, pulling on the blanket that my mother had put over him. ‘Don’t you know what you’re doing! Bess, you’re ruining everything! Stop it! Do it right!’ My mother looked bewildered and upset; she passed out of the window and our visitor took her place; she waved to my father and he subsided, pulling the blanket up around his neck. ‘I don’t like women who smoke,’ he muttered irritably. I slipped out through the kitchen.

  My father’s toolshed and working space took up the farther half of the back yard; the garden was spread over the nearer half, part kitchen garden, part flowers, and then extended down either side of the house where we had fifteen feet or so of space before a white slat fence and the next people’s side yard. It was an on-and-offish garden, and the house was beginning to need paint. My mother was working in the kitchen garden, kneeling. Our guest was standing, pruning the lilac trees, still smoking. I said:

  ‘Mother, can’t I go, can’t I go!’ in a low voice.

  My mother passed her hand over her forehead and called ‘Yes, Ben!’ to my father.

  ‘Why can’t I go!’ I whispered. ‘Ruth’s mother and Betty’s mother will be there. Why couldn’t you call Ruth’s mother and Betty’s mother?’

  ‘Not that way!’ came a blast from the living room window. My mother sighed briefly and then smiled a cheerful smile. ‘Yes, Ben!’ she called brightly. ‘I’m listening.’ My father began to give some more instructions.

  ‘Mother,’ I said desperately, ‘why couldn’t you —’

  ‘Your father wouldn’t approve,’ she said, and again she produced a bright smile and called encouragingly to my father. I wandered over to the lilac trees where our visitor, in her usual nondescript black dress, was piling the dead wood under the tree. She took a last puff on her cigarette, holding it between thumb and forefinger, then ground it out in the grass and picked up in both arms the entire lot of dead wood. She carried it over to the fence and dumped it.

  ‘My father says you shouldn’t prune trees in August,’ I blurted suddenly.

  ‘Oh?’ she said.

  ‘It hurts them,’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She had on gardening gloves, though much too small; she picked up the pruning shears and began snipping again through inch-thick trunks and dead branches that snapped explosively when they broke and whipped out at your face. She was efficient and very quick.

  I said nothing at all, only watched her face.

  She shook her head decisively.

  ‘But Ruth’s mother and Betty’s mother —’ I began, faltering.

  ‘I never go out,’ she said.

  ‘You needn’t stay,’ I said, placating.

  ‘Never,’ she said. ‘Never at all,’ and snapping free a particularly large, dead, silvery branch from the lilac tree, she put it in my arms. She stood there looking at me and her look was suddenly very severe, very unpleasant, something foreign, like the look of somebody who had seen people go off to battle to die, the ‘movies’ look but hard, hard as nails. I knew I wouldn’t get to go anywhere. I thought she might have seen battles in the Great War, maybe even been in some of it. I said, although I could barely speak:

  ‘Were you in the Great War?’

  ‘Which great war?’ said our visitor. Then she said, ‘No, I never go out,’ and returned to scissoring the trees.

  * * * *

  On the night of the dance my mother told me to get dressed, and I did. There was a mirror on the back of my door, but the window was better; it softened everything; it hung me out in the middle of a black space and made my eyes into mysterious shadows. I was wearing pink organdy and a bunch of daisies from the garden, not the wild kind. I came downstairs and found our visitor waiting for me at the bottom: tall, bare-armed, almost beautiful, for she’d done something to her impossible hair and the rusty reddish black curled slickly like the best photographs. Then she moved and I thought she was altogether beautiful, all black and rippling silver like a Paris dress or better still, a New York dress, with a silver band around her forehead like an Indian princess’s and silver shoes with the chunky heels and the one strap over the instep.

  She said, ‘Ah! don’t you look nice,’ and then in a whisper, taking my arm and looking down at me with curious gentleness, ‘I’m going to be a bad chaperon. I’m going to disappear.’

  ‘Well!’ said I, inwardly shaking, ‘I hope I can take care of myself, I should think.’ But I hoped she wouldn’t leave me alone and I hoped that no one would laugh at her. She was really incredibly tall.

  ‘Your father’s going to sleep at ten,’ said my mother. ‘Be back by eleven. Be happy.’ And she kissed me.

  But Ruth’s father, who drove Ruth and I and Ruth’s mother and our guest to the Country Club, did not laugh. And neither did anyone else. Our visitor seemed to have put on a strange gracefulness with her dress, and a strange sort of kindliness, too, so that Ruth, who had never seen her but had only heard rumours about her, cried out, ‘Your friend’s lovely!’ and Ruth’s father, who taught mathematics at high school, said (clearing his throat), ‘It must be lonely staying in,’ and our visitor said only, ‘Yes. Oh yes. It is,’ resting one immensely long, thin, elegant hand on his shoulder like some kind of unwinking spider, while his words and hers went echoing out into the night, back and forth, back and forth, losing themselves in the trees that rushed past the headlights and massed blackly to each side.

  ‘Ruth wants to join a circus!’ cried Ruth’s mother, laughing.

  ‘I do not! said Ruth.

  ‘You will not,’ said her father.

  ‘I’ll do exactly as I please,’ said Ruth with her nose in the air, and she took a chocolate cream out
of her handbag and put in her mouth.

  ‘You will not! said Ruth’s father, scandalized.

  ‘Daddy, you know I will too,’ said Ruth, serenely though somewhat muffled, and under cover of the dark she wormed over to me in the back seat and passed, from her hot hand to mine, another chocolate cream. I ate it; it was unpleasantly and piercingly sweet.

  ‘Isn’t it glorious! said Ruth.

  The Country Club was much more bare than I had expected, really only a big frame building with a veranda three-quarters of the way around it and not much lawn, but there was a path down front to two stone pillars that made a kind of gate and somebody had strung the gate and the whole path with coloured Chinese lanterns. That part was lovely. Inside, the whole first storey was one room, with a varnished floor like the high school gym, and a punch table at one end and ribbons and Chinese lanterns hung all over the ceiling. It did not look quite like the movies but everything was beautifully painted. I had noticed that there were wicker armchairs scattered on the veranda. I decided it was ‘nice’. Behind the punch table was a flight of stairs that led to a gallery full of tables where the grown-ups could go and drink (Ruth insisted they would be bringing real liquor for ‘mixes’, although of course the Country Club had to pretend not to know about that) and on both sides of the big room french windows that opened on to the veranda and the Chinese lanterns, swinging a little in the breeze. Ruth was wearing a better dress than mine. We went over to the punch table and drank punch while she asked me about our visitor and I made up a lot of lies. ‘You don’t know anything,’ said Ruth. She waved across the room to some friends of hers; then I could see her start dancing with a boy in front of the band, which was at the other end of the room. Older people were dancing and people’s parent’s, some older boys and girls. I stayed by the punch table. People who knew my parents came over and talked to me; they asked me how I was and I said I was fine; then they asked me how my father was and I said he was fine. Someone offered to introduce me to someone but I said I knew him. I hoped somebody would come over. I thought I would skirt around the dance floor and try to talk to some of the girls I knew, but then I thought I wouldn’t; I imagined myself going up the stairs with Iris March’s lover from The Green Hat to sit at a table and smoke a cigarette or drink something. I stepped behind the punch table and went out through the french windows. Our guest was a few chairs away with her feet stretched out, resting on the lowest rug of the veranda. She was reading a magazine with the aid of a small flashlight. The flowers planted around the veranda showed up a little in the light from the Chinese lanterns: shadowy clumps and masses of petunias, a few of the white ones springing into life as she turned the page of her book and the beam of the flashlight moved in her hand. I decided I would have my cigarette in a long holder. The moon was coming up over the woods past the Country Club lawns, but it was a cloudy night and all I could see was a vague lightening of the sky that direction. It was rather warm. I remembered something about an ivory cigarette holder flaunting at the moon. Our visitor turned another page. I thought that she must have been aware of me. I thought again of Iris March’s lover, coming out to get me on the ‘terrace’ when somebody tapped me on the shoulder; it was Ruth’s father. He took me by the wrist and led me to our visitor, who looked up and smiled vaguely, dreamily, in the dark under the coloured lanterns. Then Ruth’s father said:

  ‘What do you know? There’s a relative of yours inside!’ She continued to smile but her face stopped moving; she smiled gently and with tenderness at the space next to his head for the barely perceptible part of a moment. Then she completed the swing of her head and looked at him, still smiling, but everything had gone out of it.

  ‘How lovely,’ she said. Then she said, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ruth’s father, ‘but he’s tall, looks just like you - beg pardon. He says he’s your cousin.’

  ‘Por nada,’ said our guest absently, and getting up, she shook hands with Ruth’s father. The three of us went back inside. She left the magazine and flashlight on the chair; they seemed to belong to the Club. Inside, Ruth’s father took us up the steps to the gallery and there, at the end of it, sitting at one of the tables, was a man even taller than our visitor, tall even sitting down. He was in evening dress while half the men at the dance were in business suits. He did not really look like her in the face; he was a little darker and a little flatter of feature; but as we approached him, he stood up. He almost reached the ceiling. He was a giant. He and our visitor did not shake hands. The both of them looked at Ruth’s father, smiling formally, and Ruth’s father left us; then the stranger looked quizzically at me but our guest had already sunk into a nearby seat, all willowiness, all grace. They made a handsome couple. The stranger brought a silver-inlaid flask out of his hip pocket; he took the pitcher of water that stood on the table and poured some into a clean glass. Then he added whisky from the flask, but our visitor did not take it. She only turned it aside, amused, with one finger, and said to me, ‘Sit down, child,’ which I did. Then she said:

  ‘Cousin, how did you find me?’

  ‘Par chance, cousin,’ said the stranger. ‘By luck.’ He screwed the top back on the flask very deliberately and put the whole thing back in his pocket. He began to stir the drink he had made with a wooden muddler provided by the Country Club.

  ‘I have endured much annoyance,’ he said, ‘from that man to whom you spoke. There is not a single specialized here; they are all half-brained; scattered and stupid.’

  ‘He is a kind and clever man,’ said she. ‘He teaches mathematics.’

  ‘The more fool he,’ said the stranger, ‘for the mathematics he thinks he teaches!’ and he drank his own drink. Then he said, ‘I think we will go home now.’

  ‘Eh! This person?’ said my friend, drawing up the ends of her lips half scornfully, half amused. ‘Not this person!’

  ‘Why not this person, who knows me?’ said the strange man.

  ‘Because,’ said our visitor, and turning deliberately away from me, she put her face next to his and began to whisper mischievously in his ear. She was watching the dancers on the floor below, half the men in business suits, half the couples middle-aged. Ruth and Betty and some of their friends, and some vacationing college boys. The band was playing the foxtrot. The strange man’s face altered just a little; it darkened; he finished his drink, put it down, and then swung massively in his seat to face me.

  ‘Does she go out?’ he said sharply.

  ‘Well?’ said our visitor idly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, she goes out. Every day.’

  ‘By car or on foot?’ I looked at her but she was doing nothing. Her thumb and finger formed a circle on the table.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Does she go on foot?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I blurted suddenly, ‘no, by car. Always by car!’ He sat back in his seat.

  ‘You would do anything,’ he said conversationally. ‘The lot of you.’

  ‘I?’ she said. ‘I’m not dedicated. I can be reasoned with.’

  After a moment of silence he said, ‘We’ll talk.’

  She shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘This girl’s home,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave fifteen minutes after you. Give me your hand.’

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘You know where I live. I am not going to hide in the woods like an animal.’

  ‘Give me your hand,’ he repeated. ‘For old time’s sake.’ She reached across the table. They clasped hands and she winced momentarily. Then they both rose. She smiled dazzlingly. She took me by the wrist and led me down the stairs while the strange man called after us, as if the phrase pleased him, ‘For old time’s sake!’ and then ‘Good health, cousin! Long life!’ while the band struck up a march in ragtime. She stopped to talk to five or six people, including Ruth’s father who taught mathematics in the high school, and the band leader, and Betty, who was drinking punch with a boy from our class. Betty said to me under her breath, ‘You
r daisies are coming loose. They’re gonna fall off.’ We walked through the parked cars until we reached one that she seemed to like; they were all open and some owners left the keys in them; she got in behind the wheel and started up.

  ‘But this isn’t your car!’ Isaid. ‘You can’t just —’

  ‘Get in!’ I slid in next to her.

  ‘It’s after ten o’clock,’ I said. ‘You’ll wake up my father. Who—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  I did. She drove very fast and very badly. Halfway home she began to slow down. Then suddenly she laughed out loud and said very confidentially, not to me but as if to somebody else:

  ‘I told him I had planted a Nielsen loop around here that would put half of Greene County out of phase. A dead man’s control. I had to go out and stop it every week.’