Orbit 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  Somewhat later that day I asked him out to lunch and I wish I could describe his expression eating his first grilled cheese and bacon, sipping his first clam chowder . . .

  Ralph, I tell you, this really happened and just as if we haven’t all crash-landed here in some sort of unknown alfalfa field. As if we weren’t all penniless or about to be, waiting for you to ask us out to lunch. Three of our friends are dead and already there are several misunderstandings. You may even be in love with me for all I know, though that may have been before I had gotten to be your boss in the Annual Fall Festival.

  That afternoon I gave Al a job, Ralph, cleaning up candy wrappers and crumpled programs with a nail on a stick and I in­vited him to our after-performance party for the audience. Paid him five dollars in advance. That’s how much in love I was, so there’s no sense in you coming over anymore. Besides, I’m tired of people who play instruments by blowing.

  I found the natives to be a grave race, sometimes inatten­tive, but friendly and smiling, even though more or less con­tinuously concerned about the war. The younger ones frequently live communally with a charming innocence, by threes or fours or even up to sixes or eights in quite com­fortable apartments, sometimes forming their own family groups from a few chosen friends, and, in their art, having a strange return to the very old or the primitive along with their logical and very right interest in the new, though some liked Beethoven.

  We had invited the audience to our party after the perform­ance. The audience was surprised and pleased. It felt privileged. It watched us now with an entirely different point of view and it wondered at its own transformation while I wondered I hadn’t thought of doing this before and said so to Al as the audience gasped, grinned, clapped, fidgeted and tried to see into the wings.

  We had, during that same performance, asked the audience to come forward, even to dance if it was so inclined. We had dis­cussed this thoroughly beforehand in our staff meetings. It wasn’t as though it were not a completely planned thing, and we had thought some Vivaldi would be a good way to start them off. Al had said, “Certainly something new must happen every day.” Afterward I said to the audience, “Let me introduce Al, who has just arrived by an unfortunate plane crash from a far-off land, a leading force among the new objectivists, but penniless at the mo­ment, sleeping out under our bleachers . . .” However, that very night I heard that Miss Haertzler and Al went for a walk after our party up to the gazebo on the hill or either they went rowing on the lake, and Tom Disch said, though not necessarily referring to them, “Those are two, thin, young people in the woods and they’re quite conscious that they don’t have clothes on and that they’re very free spirits.” And he said, “She has a rather interesting brassiere,” though that was at a different time, and also, “I won­der if he’s a faggot because of the two fingers coming down so elegantly.”

  I found it hard to adjust to some of the customs of this hardy and lively people. This beautiful, slim young girl in­vited me to her guest room on my second night there and then entered as I lay in bed, dropping her simple, brightly colored shift at her feet. Underneath she wore only the tiniest bit of pink lace, and while I was wondering was she, perhaps, the king’s daughter or the chief’s mistress? what dangers would 1 be opening myself up to? and thinking besides that this was my first night in a really comfortable bed after a very enervating two days, also my first night with a full stomach and would I be able to? then she moved, not toward me, but to the harpsichord. . .

  I had much to learn.

  Mornings, sometimes as early as nine thirty, Al could be found painting in purples, browns, grays and blacks in the vestibule area at the front of our tent. The afternoons many of us, Al in­cluded, frequently spent lounging on the grass outside the tent (on those days it didn’t rain), candidly confessing the ages of, and the natures of our very first sexual experiences and discussing other indiscretions, with the sounds of the various rehearsals as our background music. (Miss Haertzler’s first sexual experience, from what I’ve been told, may have actually taken place fairly recently and in our own little red ticket booth.) During the evening concerts I can still see Al, as though it were yesterday, in his little corner backstage scribbling on his manifesto of the new art: “Why should painting remain shackled by outmoded laws? Let us proclaim, here and at once, a new world for art where each work is judged by its own internal structures, by the manifestations of its own being, by its self-established decrees, by its self- generated commands.

  “Let us proclaim the universal properties of the thing itself without the intermediary of fashion.

  “Let us proclaim the fragment, the syllable, the single note (or sound) as the supreme elements out of which everything else flows . . .” And so forth.

  (Let us also proclaim what Tom Disch has said: “I don’t under­stand people who have a feeling of comfortableness about art. There’s a kind of art that they feel comfortable seeing and will go and see that kind of thing again and again. I get very bored with known sensations. . . .”)

  But, even as he worked, seemingly so contented, and even as he welcomed color TV, the discovery of DNA and the synthesiz­ing of an enzyme, Al had his doubts and fears just like anyone else.

  Those mountains that caught the rays of the setting sun and burned so red in the evenings! That breath-taking view! How many hours have I spent gazing at them when I should have been writing on my manifesto, aching with their beauty and yet wondering whether I would ever succeed in crossing them? How many times did my conversation at that time contain hidden references to bearers and guides? Once I learned of a trail that I might follow by myself if I could get someone to furnish me with a map. It was said only to be negotiable through the summer to the middle of October and to be too steep for mule or motorcycle. Later on I became acquainted with a middle-aged, homosexual flute player named Ralph A. who was willing to answer all my questions quite candidly. We became good friends and, as I got to know him better, I was astounded at the sophistication of his views on the nature of the universe. He was a gentle, harmless person, tall and tanned from a sun lamp. Perhaps I should mention that he never made any sexual advances to me, that I was aware of at any rate.

  “After the meeting between Ralph A. and Al W.,” the critics write, “Ralph A.’s work underwent an astonishing change. Ob­viously he was impressed by the similarities between art and music and he attempted to interpret in musical terms those portions of Al W.’s manifesto that would lend themselves to this transposition. His ‘Three Short Pieces for Flute, Oboe and Prepared Piano’ is, perhaps, the finest example of his work of this period.”

  By then Al had lent his name to our town’s most prestigious art gallery. We had quoted him often in our programs. I had dis­cussed with him the use of public or private funds for art. I had also discussed, needless to say, the problem of legalized abortion and whether the state should give aid to parochial schools. Also the new high-yield rice. I mentioned our peace groups including our Women’s March for Peace. I also tried to tell him Miss Haertzler’s real age and I said that, in spite of her looks, it would be very unlikely that she could ever have any children, whereas I, though not particularly young anymore, could at least do that, I’m (fairly) sure.

  And then, all too soon, came the day of the dismantling of the Annual Fall Festival tent and the painting over of our bill­board, which Al did (in grays, browns, purples and blacks), mak­ing it into an ad for the most prestigious art gallery, and I, I was no longer a director of anything at all. The audience, which had grown fat and satiated on our sounds, now walked in town as separate entities . . . factions . . . fragments . . . will-o’-the- wisps . . . meaningless individuals with their separate reactions. Al walked with them, wearing his same old oddly cut clothes as unselfconsciously as ever, and, as ever, with them, but not of them. He had worked for us until the very last moment, but now I had no more jobs to give. Tom Disch had had a job as a copy­writer for a while and made quite a bit of money, but he gave it all up for
the sake of literature and I expected Al to give up these little jobs for the sake of his art as soon as he had some money. The trouble was, he couldn’t find another little job to tide him over and while the critics and many others, too, liked his paint­ings, no one wanted to buy them. They were fairly expensive and the colors were too somber. I helped him look into getting a grant, but in the end it went to a younger man (which I should have anticipated). I gave him, at about that time, all my cans of corned-beef hash even though I knew he still spent some time in Miss Haertzler’s guest room, though, by then, a commune (consisting of six young people of both sexes in a three-room apartment) had accepted him as one of them. (I wonder some­times that he never asked Miss Haertzler to marry him, but he may have been unfamiliar with marriage as we know it. We never discussed it that I remember and not too many people in his circle of friends were actually married to each other.)

  Ralph had established himself as the local college musical figure, musician in residence, really, and began to walk with a stoop and a slight limp and to have a funny way of clearing his throat every third or fourth word. I asked him to look into a similar job for Al, but they already had an artist in residence, a man in his sixties said to have a fairly original eye and to be profoundly con­cerned with the disaffection of the young, so they couldn’t do a thing for Al for at least a year, they said, aside from having him give a lecture or two, but even that wouldn’t be possible until the second semester.

  Those days I frequently saw Al riding around on a borrowed motor scooter (sometimes not even waving), Miss Haertzler on the back with her skirts pulled up. He still painted. The critics have referred to this time in his life as one of hardship and self- denial while trying to get established.

  Meanwhile it grew colder.

  Miss Haertzler bought him a shearling lamb jacket. Also one for herself. I should have suspected something then, but I knew it was the wrong time of year for a climb. There was already a little bit of snow on the top of the highest of our mountains and the weatherman had forecast a storm front on the way that was or was not to be there by that night or the next afternoon. We all thought it was too early for a blizzard.

  I was to find Miss (Vivienne) Haertzler an excellent trav­eling companion. Actually a better climber than I was myself in many ways and yet, for all that vigor, preserving an es­sential femininity. Like many others of her race, she had small hands and feet and a fair-skinned look of transpar­ency and yet an endurance that matched my own. But I did notice about her that day an extraordinary anxiety that wasn’t in keeping with her nature at all (nor of the natives in general). I didn’t give a second thought, however, to any of the unlikely rumors I had heard, but 1 assumed it was due to the impending storm that we hoped would hide all traces of our ascent.

  A half a day later a good-sized group of our more creative people were going after one of the most exciting minds in the arts with bloodhounds. A good thing for Miss Haertzler, too, since the two of them never even got halfway. I saw them back in town a few days afterward still looking frostbitten and it wasn’t long after that that I had a very pleasant discussion with Al. I had asked him out to our town’s finest Continental restaurant. We talked, among other things, about alienation in our society, popu­lation control, impending world famine and other things of inter­national concern including the anxiety prevalent among our people of impending atomic doom. In passing I mentioned a psychologist I had once gone to for certain anxieties of my own of a more private nature. Soon after that I heard that Al was in therapy himself and had nearly conquered his perennial urge to cross the mountains and, as the psychologist put it, leave our happy valley in his efforts to escape from something in himself. It would be a significant moment in both modern painting and modern music (and perhaps in literature, too, Tom Disch might say) when Al would finally be content to remain in his new-found artistic milieu. I can’t help but feel that the real beginning of Al’s partici­pation (sponsored) within our culture as a whole was right here on my couch in front of the fireplace with a cup of hot coffee and a promise of financial assistance from two of our better-known art patrons. It was right here that he began living out some sort of universal human drama of life and death in keeping with his special talents.

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  * * * *

  Alexei Panshin

  NOW I’M WATCHING ROGER

  NOW I’M watching Roger. Roger is hanging face-down in his ropes overhead and looking at me. He isn’t saying anything and I’m not speaking.

  I wish I had the time to spare in relaxation that he does, but I’m kept constantly busy. There are a million things here to do. If I had Roger’s free time, I’d know how to put it to good use. I wouldn’t idle.

  I wonder about Roger’s experiments. The only time he ever seems to work on them is during our regular telecast to Earth. I asked him about his experiments once, but he didn’t take notice. He jumped up into his ropes. He’s very well practiced at it now. If I had more time perhaps I could make flying leaps to the top of the dome, too.

  Roger is too silent. He never speaks up when Jack does some­thing to annoy me, and this encourages Jack to take more ad­vantage. Roger will never settle anything, and I’ve saved him from Jack I don’t know how many times. But how do you ask a man to back you? He either sees the need or he doesn’t. It isn’t proper to ask, so I don’t.

  On the other hand, if he’s going to play the silent game, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t play it, too. The only time I’ll speak is when I stir from my silent work to drag Jack off his back. But I don’t expect he will notice.

  * * * *

  To taunt me, Jack takes off his black hat during our telecasts. He’s charming and plausible. If you believe him, we would be happy to stay another eight months on the moon. I’m not sure I could juggle things that long, though I’ll grant that Jack might.

  When it is my turn, I nod and wave to Earth. I tell them we’re keeping busy. Roger works away at his experiments in the back­ground. He waves to the camera but he doesn’t say anything.

  When the telecast is over, Jack puts his black hat back on again. He spent an entire evening making it out of paper and coloring it black with ink. I didn’t watch because I was busy working. Jack knows the black hat annoys me, but I’m not saying anything or taking any notice.

  He may be plausible in public, but Roger and I know him better. He only eats the good parts of things and leaves the rest— I imagine he was indulged. And he’s a glutton. I pointed it out when he left only the rind from the Christmas fruitcake and his antics lasted for a month. He started by leaving crusts and bits of cracker on my plate and grew even more blatant when I re­fused to take any notice. At the end, he was gobbling with both hands and flinging food about.

  I do have an audio of several episodes but it isn’t easy to tell what is happening.

  I have a number of recordings of Jack. None of Roger except for background.

  In one recording, I say, “Jack, you haven’t been sterilizing.” It is a point I am particular about.

  “It’s true, Clarence ‘Clancy’ Ballou, I haven’t been. I’ve de­cided to give it up. I’ll take my chances with the moon. Let the moon take its chances with me. I wouldn’t mind giving it a dose of something.”

  “That’s against policy,” I say.

  “Screw policy, Clarence. Maybe you’re too nice for this work. There’s the universe, as regular as a clock. Then there’s us, life, an out-of-place accident. We’re anarchy, disorder. No matter how tough the universe makes the rules, life will survive and spread. The moon is only the first step. Someday we’ll spread to the stars and take over everything. We’ll rip the guts out of the universe. We’ll strip-mine the stars. Life will prevail. It’s our destiny to crap up the works.”

  “You make us sound evil. That’s what the regulations are for, to ensure that we don’t contaminate other worlds.”

  “You don’t understand, Clarence. We are evil. And it’s up to us to make the most of it.”


  “But I’m good. I’ve always been good.”

  “Learn better.”

  It was after that that he made his black paper hat. It’s supposed to be a reminder to me, but it isn’t really necessary. I know which of us is which.

  * * * *

  Jack is outside. I’ve been counting our sacks of garbage. I believe that two are missing. I fear the worst.

  Was it sterilized? Not if he didn’t sterilize it.

  I fear the worst.

  * * * *

  Just before the telecast, I say to Jack, “What about the garbage?”

  “What garbage?”

  “I know about the garbage. Unless you stop burying it outside, I’m going to have to tell them back home.”

  He takes off his black hat. He combs his hair and practices his smile.

  “I’ve been counting,” I say.

  On the telecast, I’m cautious. I say that some garbage is missing. They ask Jack about it. Jack is in charge of accounting for the garbage. He says that it is all there.