by Lisa Yaszek
“Not murder,” the old her said, and it produced the instruction book. Patiently, it guided Marnie’s eyes over the well-thumbed pages to a paragraph marked in chocolate. “Suicide.”
Desperate, she gave it a thousand dollars and a ticket to California.
And for a few days, the gay life went on as it had before. The Merriams were entertained or entertaining day and night now, and Howard hardly had time to notice that the quiet old Martha was missing. Marnie’s new autochef made her dinner parties the talk of the city’s smarter social set, and she found herself the center of an inexhaustible crowd of attentive, handsome young men in tuxedoes. While Howard had abandoned the old her at parties, she saw little more of him now, because the good-looking young men adored her too much to leave her alone. She was welcome in the very best places and there wasn’t a woman in town who dared exclude her from her invitation list. Marnie went everywhere.
If she was dissatisfied, it was only because Howard seemed lumpier and less attractive than usual, and the bumps and wrinkles in his evening clothes made him seem something less than the perfect accessory. She slipped away from him early in the evening each time they went out together, and she looked for him again only in the small hours, when it was time to collect him and go home.
But for all that, she still loved him, and it came as something of a blow when she discovered that it was no longer she who avoided him at parties—he was avoiding her. She first noticed it after an evening of dinner and dancing. She had been having a fascinating conversation with someone in consolidated metals, and it seemed to her the right touch—the final fillip—for the evening would be for the gentleman in question to see her standing next to Howard in the soft light, serene, beautiful, the doting wife.
“You must meet my husband,” she murmured, stroking the metal magnate’s lapel.
“Have you seen Howard?” she asked a friend nearby, and something in the way the friend shook his head and turned away from her made her a little uneasy.
Several minutes later, the metal magnate had taken his leave and Marnie was still looking for Howard. She found him at last, on a balcony, and she could have sworn that she saw him wave to a dark figure, which touched its hands to its lips and disappeared into the bushes just as she closed the balcony door.
“It’s not very flattering, you know,” she said, coiling around his arm.
“Mmmmm?” He hardly looked at her.
“Having to track you down like this,” she said, fitting against him.
“Mmmm?”
She started to go on, but led him through the apartment and down to the front door. Even in the cab, she couldn’t shake his reverie. She tucked his coattails into the cab with a solicitous little frown. And she brooded. There had been something disturbingly familiar about that figure on the balcony.
The next morning Marnie was up at an unaccustomed hour, dressing with exquisite care. She had been summoned to morning coffee with Edna Hotchkiss-Baines. For the first time, she had been invited to help with the Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund Bazaar. (“I’ve found somebody wonderful to help with the planning,” the chichi Edna had confided. “You’ll never guess who.”)
Superb in an outfit that could stand even Edna’s scrutiny, Marnie presented herself at the Hotchkiss-Baines door and followed the butler into the Hotchkiss-Baines breakfast room.
Edna Hotchkiss-Baines barely greeted her. She was engrossed in conversation with a squat, unassuming figure that slumped across the table from her, shoes slit to accommodate feet that were spreading now, violet-sprigged dress growing a little tight.
Face afire, Marnie fell back. She took a chair without speaking and leveled a look of hatred at the woman who held the town’s most fashionable social leader enthralled—the dowdy, frumpy, lumpy old her.
It was only the beginning. Apparently the creature had cashed in the California ticket and used the fare and the thousand dollars to rent a small flat and buy a modest wardrobe. Now, to Marnie’s helpless fury, it seemed to be going everywhere. It appeared at cocktail parties in a series of matronly crepe dresses ranging in color from taupe to dove grey. It sat on the most important committees and appeared at the most elegant dinners. No matter how exclusive the guest list or how gay the company, no matter how high Marnie’s hopes that it had not been included, somebody had always invited it. It appeared behind her in clothing store mirrors when she was trying on new frocks and looked over her shoulder in restaurants when she dined with one of her devastating young men. It haunted her steps, looking just enough like her to make everyone uncomfortable, enough like everything Marnie hated, to embarrass her.
Then one night she found Howard kissing it at a party.
At home a few hours later, he confronted her.
“Marnie, I want a divorce.”
“Howard.” She made clutching motions. “Is there . . .”
He sounded grave. “My dear, there’s someone else. Well, it isn’t exactly someone else.”
“You don’t mean—Howard, you can’t be serious.”
“I’m in love with the girl I married,” he said. “A quiet girl, a grey-and-brown girl.”
“That—” Her fashionable body was trembling. Her gemlike eyes were aflame. “That frumpy . . .”
“A home girl . . .” He was getting rhapsodic now. “Like the girl I married so many years ago.”
“After all that money—the transformation—the new body—” Marnie’s voice rose with every word. “The CHANGE?”
“I never asked you to change, Marnie.” He smiled mistily. “You were so . . .”
“You’d drop me for that piece of suet?” She was getting shrill. “How could I face my friends?”
“You deserve somebody better looking,” he said with a little sigh. “Somebody tall and slim. I’ll just pack and go . . .”
“All right, Howard.” She managed a noble tone. “But not just yet.” She was thinking fast. “There has to be a Decent Waiting Period . . .”
A period would give her time to handle this.
“If you wish, my dear.” He had changed into his favorite flannel bathrobe. In times past, the old Martha had sat next to him on the couch in front of the television, she in her quilted house coat, he in his faithful robe. He stroked its lapels. “I just want you to realize that my mind is made up—we’ll all be happier . . .”
“Of course,” she said, and a hundred plans went through her mind. “Of course.”
She sat alone for the rest of the night, drumming opalescent nails on her dressing table, tapping one slender foot.
And by morning, she had it. Something Howard had said had set her mind churning. “You deserve somebody better looking.”
“He’s right,” she said aloud. “I do.” And by the time it had begun to get light she had conceived of a way to get rid of the persistent embarrassment of the old her and the homier elements of Howard at one stroke. As soon as Howard left for the office she began a series of long distance inquiries, and once she had satisfied her curiosity she called a number of friends and floated several discreet loans in the course of drinks before lunch.
There was a crate in the living room just two weeks later. “Howard,” Marnie said, beckoning, “I have a surprise for you . . .”
He was just coming in, with the old Martha, from a date. They liked to sit in the kitchen over cocoa and talk. At a look from Marnie, the creature settled in a chair. It couldn’t take its eyes off the coffin-shaped box. Howard stepped forward, brows wrinkling furrily. “What’s this?” he asked, and then without waiting for her to answer, he murmured, “Didn’t we have one of these around a few months ago?” and pulled the cord attached to the corner of the crate. It fell open—perhaps a little too easily—and the lid of the smooth ebony box sprang up under his fingers almost before he had touched the rosebud catch. The tissue paper was green this time, and if there had been an instruction book
nestled on top, it was gone now.
Both the new Marnie and the old her watched raptly as Howard, oblivious of both of them, broke through the layers of tissue paper and with a spontaneous sound of pleasure grasped the figure in the box.
Both the new and the old woman watched as the papers began to swirl and rise, and they sat transfixed until there was a thud and the papers settled again.
When it was over, Marnie turned to the old her with a malicious grin. “Satisfied?” she asked. And then, eyes gleaming, she waited for the new Howard to rise from the box.
He came forth like a new Adam, ignoring both of them, and went to his own room for clothes.
While he was gone, the old Howard, a little frayed at the corners, almost buried under a fall of tissue, stirred and tried to rise.
“That’s yours,” Marnie said, giving the old her a dig in the ribs. “Better go help it up.” And then she presented her face to the doorway, waiting with arms spread for the new Howard to reappear. After a few moments he came, godlike in one of Howard’s pin-striped business suits.
“Darling,” Marnie murmured, mentally cancelling dinner at the Hotchkiss-Bainses’ and a Westport party with a new man.
“Darling,” the new Howard said. And he swept past her to the old Martha, still scrabbling around in the tissue paper on the floor. Gently, with the air of a prince who has discovered the new Cinderella, he helped her to her feet. “Shall we go?” he asked.
Marnie watched, openmouthed.
They did.
On the floor, the old Howard had gotten turned on its stomach somehow, and was floundering like a displaced fish. Marnie watched, taut with rage, too stricken to speak. The old Howard flapped a few more times, made it to its knees and then slipped on the tissue paper again. Hardly looking at it, Marnie smoothed the coif she had prepared for the Hotchkiss-Baines dinner that night. There was always the dinner—and the party in Westport. Dispassionately, she moved forward and kicked a piece of tissue out of the way. She drew herself up, supple, beautiful, and she seemed to find new strength. The old Howard flapped again.
“Oh get up,” she said, and poked it with her toe. She was completely composed now. “Get up—darling,” she spat.
1962
JOHN JAY WELLS & MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
Another Rib
“REMEMBER, you requested it,” Fanu murmured. The little alien’s pronunciation was as toneless, as flat as ever, and yet, somehow, it carried sympathy and distress. “I am sorry, John.”
John Everett slumped before the film viewer. At last, reluctantly, he leaned forward and underlined his shock with a second view. “When—when did you take this?” he asked.
“A—I do not know your words for it—a revolution ago. Do you wish for a current view, my friend?”
“No. God, no! This is bad enough. You’re—sure of your identification?”
Fanu’s three-fingered hand riffled expertly for a sheet of co-ordinates. Shaking, forcing his eyes and mind to activity, Everett checked the data, glancing back now and then at the viewer to verify. There was no doubt. That was Sol—that had been the Sun—that vast incandescent swirl covering . . . oh God, covering a range well beyond Pluto!
He became aware that he had been sitting quite still for many long minutes, stiff muscles and sluggish circulation forcing themselves, at last, even through the numbness of his brain. Fanu was waiting.
Fanu was always waiting. The alien had waited aeons. Not Fanu himself, of course, but his kind. Waiting; always waiting for other life forms, other intelligences, new civilizations—new enthusiasms. They had waited too long. There weren’t many left.
“Looks like we’ve joined you,” Everett muttered, bitterly, at last.
“I do not quite understand—?”
“You said—” he paused, groping for a kind word, “that your people were becoming extinct. Looks like mine are—already.”
“Survivors—”
He got to his feet so quickly he knocked over the chair, and spent fumbling minutes setting it right. “But there are no survivors. We were the first probe. Out to the stars. All the way to Proxima Centauri. For what? An Earth-type planet. Fine, we found one—but for what? For whom? Oh, God, for whom!”
“John,” softly, a three-fingered hand falling on his shoulder. “You are not alone, not as I am. You have your friends, your—your crew.”
Everett walked over to the window, and stared out at the valley, dotted with the tiny huts of the expedition. “For now, yes. Sixteen men—a good crew. But we’re mortal, Fanu. Human life is pitifully short, compared with yours. We’re mortal—and we’re all male. By your standards, we’re—here today and gone tomorrow.”
“Are you quite sure that need be, John?”
Everett turned to look into the alien’s large green eyes, cursing the inevitable semantic differences, the inability to get a point across in a hurry. Suddenly the shock, the numbness broke into stark horror. He couldn’t stand here painstakingly explaining the differences in the word men and the word male to a friendly alien, when he’d just found out . . . found out . . . his voice strangled. “Just take my word for it, Fanu,” he said thickly, “in fifty years, homo sapiens will be a lot more extinct than your people. Now I’ve got to go and—and tell them—”
He stumbled blindly away and fumbled for the door, conscious of the big green eyes still fixed compassionately on his back.
*
He had managed to calm himself and speak quietly, but the men were as shocked as he had been, first numb in silent horror, then moving close together as if to draw comfort from their group, their solidity.
“There’s—no mistake, Cap’n?” Chord asked timidly. He always spoke timidly; incongruous for such a giant.
“I’ve seen the plates myself, and the co-ordinates, Chord. And I have no reason to doubt Fanu’s—the alien’s—data. From what I’ve been able to gather, it must have happened about six months after we left. His equipment’s superior to ours, but pretty soon we’ll be able to see it for ourselves.”
Somewhere in the back row of the group of men, there was a muffled sob. He could see the anguish on the other faces, men struggling with the idea of a future that was no future at all. Young Latimer from the drive room—the one they all called Tip—had bent over and buried his face in his hands. It was Tsen, the young navigator, who finally managed the question on all their minds.
“Then it’s—just us, sir?”
“Just us.” Everett waited a moment, then turned away, dismissing them with his back. It wasn’t a thing you could make speeches about. One way or another, they’d have to come to terms with it, every man for himself.
He heard the rustle of Fanu’s garments, and turned to smile a greeting. The two stood side by side on the hilltop, looking down at the men working in the little valley. “What is it to be?” Fanu finally inquired.
“It’s—” Everett could not suppress an amused smile, “a hospital for you—and Garrett, the pharmacist’s mate.”
“Oh?” Fanu’s features could not duplicate a smile, but his eyes blinked rapidly with pleasure. “That is most kind. Most kind.”
“Hardly. It just takes care of one problem. The two of you can keep us in good health, I’m sure.”
“Your race is so strong!” Fanu’s toneless voice gave, nevertheless, an impression of amazement and awe. “My own people, under such a sentence as yours, gave themselves over to despair.”
“You think we didn’t?” Everett’s jaw tightened, remembering the first few weeks; the dazed men, Garrett stopped in the very act of slashing his wrists. Then he straightened his back. “We’ve found that hard work is a remedy for despair, or at least—a good defense against it.”
“I see,” remarked the alien. “Or at least—I understand that it might be so. But how long can you work? Will you fill the valley with your superbly constructed buildi
ngs? For sixteen of your race?”
Everett shook his head, bitterly. “We’ll all be dead before we can fill the valley. But at least we’ll make ourselves comfortable, before we—go.”
“There is no need to die.”
He swung around to face the alien. “You’ve been hinting that and hinting that for the last two months! If there’s one thing worse than despair it’s false hope! Even if your people were immortal, and they’re not—”
“I did not mean to anger you, John.” The strange little paw uplifted in apology.
“Then quit hinting and say something.”
“Mammals—” Fanu began, then halted, obviously groping for the proper terminology.
“Yes, we’re mammals, technically,” Everett snorted, “the mammalian characteristic perished with our solar system, though.”
“That is not true—or it need not be true.”
Everett stared at the alien, wishing for the thousandth time that he could read that dark expression. Fanu went on, “I have observed your race in undress, compared the information from your study reels—from your ship—the material you brought to me so graciously—I cannot thank you—”
“Yes, yes!” he broke in. Fanu was so damned polite. He liked the alien, but the only one of the Earthmen who really got along with him perfectly was Tsen, who was used to all this overdone courtesy.
“Forgive me, what I mean is, your . . . two sexual groups are so close together . . .”
Everett’s eyes widened. Then he laughed, embarrassed. “You just lost me. I mean, I don’t understand your statement, Fanu.”
“Your two sexual types are so exceptionally similar—”
“Oh, lord, vive la difference!” Everett laughed aloud, and some of the men in the valley glanced up, curious, pleased to see their captain laughing with the omnipotent, knowing alien. “If you mean our—females had two arms, two legs, and a head, yes, we were very similar, but—”