Yet how little Sheila needed such assistance, after all. Hers is not so smooth and practiced a beauty as Aspera's. Her body is thinner and her face more angular than a bland taste might desire. Her graces are idio-rhythmic. But all that is of no matter, for she is a goddess. She is the full, and Aspera the crescent, moon. I find her eyes especially appealing: narrow and blue, they are positively wicked in their liveliness—quick, glistening, and—paradoxically—depthless. They are two mirror-bright shields held up before her, a sign at once of her shyness and of warning. Her hair is dyed a metallic blue-gray that sets off those cold eyes with a severe grace. She reminds me of Veronica—the way Veronica used to be, before she turned brittle. Yes, I find her most attractive. And young, so very young!
I wish I could admire her conversation in equal measure. A sample:
"Aspera tells me, Mr. Regan, that you know everything about mice."
"I spent some forty-odd years looking at bits of them through a microscope. It's been more than a passing fancy."
"Oh, I think that's disgusting," she said, with a disingenuous shudder. "Mice are so horrible. Little squirmy crawly things—ish!"
"I'm afraid my sensibilities have become rather blunted."
"Do you have some here—on the ship?"
"We keep some in cages in the laboratory, and there is a large supply of ova in the outer freezing vaults."
"Where mine are too?" she asked, wide-eyed.
"Yes. But I'm sure there's no chance of their becoming confused, if that's worrying you."
As on Earth, all the ova of the women are kept on ice here. No one has yet been able to think of a better remedy for the problem resulting from immortal women with a finite number of ova, and without this rather crude expedient the menopause would be inescapable.
"But just think—if they were! And if I had a baby, and it were a little mouse! Or would it be half-mouse and half-baby, like the Minotaur? Then I could run him through a maze. It all has to do with chromosomes, doesn't it? And genes. Aspera says you know every gene a mouse has. You must be very brave. But what is there left for you to do, now that you know everything?"
"Now that I know everything, I shall try to make an immortal mouse."
"Oh, I wouldn't do that until they've learned about birth control. You know what a problem we had until the Freezers opened, even with free pills for everyone."
"It's not a present danger. Unfortunately, we're a long way from realizing our aims."
"Unfortunately? Do you really identify with them so much then?"
"I say unfortunately because if we knew how to make a mouse immortal we would be much nearer an understanding of the cause of our own mutation. And then we would be able to make the mortals on Earth immortal too. Though, Lord knows, if I came up with anything, I don't see what good it will do, so far from Earth."
"And that's why you worked forty years with mice, and why you're working with them now?"
"Yes. Except that, strictly speaking, I'm not working now. I'm on vacation, as it were."
"Oh, you shouldn't do that! If you have a talent you should use it, not hide it away. I'm only a dancer, of course, but I shall always use my talent." I could not tell if this were more disingenuousness, or if she really were so very young as to believe what she said.
"Can I come to your laboratory and see one of the mice some time?"
"Any time you like."
"And touch one?"
"Yes. At your own risk."
She clapped her hands. "Oh, Little Mother, Little Mother, do say you'll let me go and touch Mr. Regan's mouse!"
Aspera was visibly annoyed with this display of childishness, which seemed almost to parody her own relationship with Sheila. But Little Mother could not, though she seemed to grow pale, withhold her consent.
Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2084
Aspera came around today with my mask. It is magnificent, and I overflowed with gratitude.
Afterwards, we discussed Sheila. I criticized the girl's faerie manner with more severity than I really felt or Sheila deserves. Aspera agreed, all too earnestly agreed, but insisted that she had redeeming virtues, though they might not be evident to me. I said that seemed doubtful.
"Oh, I can assure you," Aspera protested.
"You know her very well, then?"
"We have been rather close, in the course of analysis. Transference is a ticklish business between two women."
"I can imagine." I did not go so far as to inquire what diagnostic tools she was employing in this ticklish business. It was understood.
"You will leave her alone, won't you, Oliver?"
I promised. She kissed me on the cheek. "You're a darling, and I love you very much." And despite the smile with which she sought to temper this statement, I think it may be true. More's the pity.
Monday, Dec. 25, 2084
And all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
Two months! More. And what has the Star-Mouse been up to? Spying on the microcosm, making my fellow-mice immortal. Without, as yet, signal success.
It is good, better, best to be at work again, to feel the familiar bite of that bug curiosity again. Sheila visits the lab regularly to exclaim over the freak mice that my experiments have produced, but so far I have been faithful to my promise to Aspera. My talk with Sheila has been limited to lectures in the field of my speciality. She is shockingly ignorant of the elements of science, but an apt—even an earnest—pupil.
Hatoum has been present during some of these lessons and has fallen under the same enchantment. Sheila either has not seen this or refuses to recognize it. Her sights are fixed on me, and I take a spiteful pleasure in tormenting Hatoum with the spectacle of my pretended indifference. Where are your gibes now?
New Year's Day, 2085
We have reached our terminal velocity, and now we just coast until we have to brake for our first stop, Tau Ceti, some dozen years off. There are nearer stars, of course, and even nearer stars with planets, but our itinerary has been planned with a view to spacing our stops as evenly as possible. Unless we find something better than our own barren solar system has had to offer us, we shall be passing by a total of twenty-six planeted suns in the next century and a half. With such a prospect, one does not greet the New Year with wild carousal.
Friday, Jan. 6, 2085
Against all expectation, there has been a casualty—Gene Shaw, one of our navigators and the concertmaster of our orchestra. Her helmet was insecurely fitted during lifeboat drill. Death was instant. After hearing the news, I went round to see Slade, knowing he'd once been in love with her. He showed no signs of emotion, though his very willingness for us to speak of something other than his dreams or my reading might be the equivalent, for him, of hysterics.
He was puzzled by his own lack of response, and I told him of other people I'd known who had received the news of a friend's death with the same coolness. I ventured the theory that the classic expressions of grief are only possible among those who have lived long and intimately with the notion of death and its dominion. If it becomes too rare an event, its meaning is unassimilable.
Slade, I discover, is an historian, another odd speciality to bring aboard the Extrovert. Seldom has any society been so completely divorced from its antecedents as we. Slade claims that it is just this, the fact that we exist, as it were, without history, without any past but our own, that interests him. He thinks that it will become, as the voyage goes on, the most conspicuous feature of our lives.
Monday, Jan. 9, 2085
Despite all that homeostasis can do, changes occur, and sometimes they are unalterable.
Poor Aspera. When the blow falls, it never falls gently, does it?
This is what happened:
I entered her cabin without knocking, knowing that the deliberate and unaccustomed rudeness would pleasure her. She had unrolled a mirror and was standing before it, in her silver mask and a ceremonial robe, preening herself. She started when I opened the door, seeming for
a moment not to know who I was. I was masked, but surely she recognized this mask.
"Aspera, my very own," I said, without removing the mask. "Have I startled you?"
She hung her head, refusing to meet my gaze, and I knew then with certainty—I had suspected as much from the first slight movement of her body—that it was not Aspera's face behind the mask.
"Forgive me for returning to this again, my dear, but you must give her up, you really must. If not for my sake, for your own; if not for your own sake, then for the child's. Truly, she is lovely. I can understand your passion. I might even say that in a distant way, in silence, I share it. But you must relinquish her. I will say nothing of the scandal, for that's of small account here. Though there may be some, the most fusty of us, who would consider less than professional in you, an abuse of the child's confidence. They might whisper—unjustly, of course—that perhaps it was no coincidence that your fame was won in dealing with children . . .Of course, Sheila is only relatively a child, relative to ourselves. But let's not talk of scandal. I speak for the girl's sake. You forget when you surrender to your maternal feelings—"
The mask lifted far enough to betray a fleeting glimpse of blue eyes. I continued my charade unheedingly.
"—when you allow yourself to play Pygmalion like this, you forget how young she is, how malleable. It is evident, Aspera, that she will never leave you voluntarily—even if she might have the desire, she would never be able to find the strength—and therefore I want you to promise me, Aspera . . .Aspera, look in my eyes."
Once more the mask lifted, and the two glistening shields confronted me boldly, behind those bland silver features.
"You must promise me that you'll see no more of her."
"Must I?"
She knew of course that Aspera would have felt nothing but indignation at such a pigslop of blackmail and innuendo. She recognized my deceit, relished it, and joined me in these amateur theatricals.
"Then I do," she said, and put her hands about my neck, drawing me closer until our silver lips were pressed together in a passionate kiss.
We consummated our double betrayal, suitably, in Aspera's bed. Once the initial impetus of the deed had been exhausted, Sheila became her usual kittenish self. "Tell me some more about genetics," she begged. "Tell me about my chromosomes and things like that."
"I've told you everything I know," I complained lazily.
"Tell me why your eyes are blue."
"Because my mother's eyes were blue."
"And why did you make one little mousey with whiskers instead of eyes?"
"It was an accident. So much of what I do is only trial and error. We know what each gene controls, we know their arrangement. But we know too little about what's inside them. Despite the work of the molecular biologist, we're still in the pre-atomic stage, so to speak. We can eliminate genes, or shuffle them around, but we have yet to study the morphology of the living gene to any significant degree."
"Poor Mousey! And was the Plague just another accident? Is it only an accident that I'm immortal? That would be sad."
"My dear, we're all accidents. Of the Plague, who can say? It appeared, infected mankind, and vanished before the agent could be isolated and identified. It must have died out through having exhausted its supply of hosts. Most of the literature seems to favor the theory that it was an accident—a mutated virus. In the long run, it wouldn't have been a viable mutation, since in rendering its hosts' progeny immortal (and, presumably, immune) it shut off its own supplies."
"But there are still mortals, after all. What of Ireland, Madagascar, Taiwan? I was in love with an Irish fellow when I was sixteen. He was thirty and just starting to age. I couldn't imagine anything more handsome at the time. Why didn't the little bug get him?"
"The mortals living now are all descended from infants who were in utero at the time of the Plague. Their mothers were infected, but survived to give them birth, without, however, passing on the genetic alteration. By the time such infants were born the Plague had passed on. It was over in less than two months, you know. Surely, you do know that much?"
"Oh yes, I think science is just fascinating. I'm going to do a dance about genetics and the Plague. The wonderful thing about science is that it's so logical. You don't have a mole anywhere on your body, do you?"
"No."
She sighed. "Aspera had a mole on her left cheek. It always made me feel decadent to kiss it."
Had she used the past tense deliberately? That is the entrancing thing about Sheila—that I shall never be able to answer such questions with any finality.
When she had returned to her cabin, Aspera immediately noticed the damage that had been done to the two masks.
"My dear Sheila," she said with acidy sweetness, "let me make a present of this mask."
"Thank you, Little Mother. As you know, I've always admired it. I might even confess to have envied you."
"Oliver admires it too. For Oliver it's a symbol not only of his mother, but of death. Oliver loves mothers and death."
"Ah, but Aspera," I reminded her pleasantly, "—death itself is only a symbol."
"Yes," she said, smiling (for once again I had walked into one of her traps). "Of our lives here."
Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2085
I have begun to work on the novel. Aspera suggested the title, and we are all in it.
Afterword
A year ago, in response to Harlan's request for an afterword, I wrote something called "Why I've Stopped Writing Science-Fiction," or some such. It was so awful that even then I could see it was pretty bad, so I sent Harlan only a letter explaining that I had written him an afterword, but that etc. Another afterword was forthcoming, I promised.
Not only was the first afterword awful, but it turned out to be untrue. I have since then written some science-fiction, a little. However, the gist of it hasn't changed—I can't earn a living writing s-f at the standard rates for stories and novels that the field offers. I write too slowly these days.
That was only half the truth, and that's why it made such a poor afterword. The whole truth is that the standard story and novel that standard rates are paid for is a commodity I no longer have the stomach for. I think my most persuasive and candid argument in this respect would simply be the list of titles of all the s-f or fantasy stories I have no intention of writing. The list is about three years old, and even then I could see some of the things on the list were never going to be written, though any of them, I'm convinced, could have been published in one or another of the magazines in the field.
The list:
The Alien Anthology
Among the Rednecks: a Report from the Field
Approximately Joe
The Ball
The Compassionator
Cosmo in the Engines of Love
The Cowboys
The Day the Curve Broke
Diet of Worms
The Exorcist in Spite of Himself
The General Theory of Electro-magnetic Tidal Waves and Volcanoes
Ghost Story
Glad Hand
The Goldwater Experiment
The Good Losers
The Governor's Temptations
Grabenstein
The Hamadryad
Horror and Lester McCune
An Investigation into the Activities of My Body
Joseph and the Empress
The Little Family
The Magic Square
Mind Donor
The Original June Bly
The Orphan's Birthday Party
The Other Door to Dutch Street
The People Eater
The Reluctant Eavesdropper
The Satyr
The Servant Problem (or, The Fatal Passion of Lancelot Kramer)
Strip Poker
The Tarantists
Three Square Parables
The Three-Masted Spaceship
300 Pound Weakling
The Time of the Assassin
Again, Dangerous Visions Page 93