by Roger Elwood
“For a while I was afraid the fiftieth century had you.”
“Oh no, Andrei! They couldn’t spoil it. Not this earth. Good little earth.”
“Good little star.”
THE RESCUED GIRLS OF REFUGEE
by
Anne McCaffrey
The girls of Refugee are timid and obedient. The one leads to the other, and the other leads to the one. The old ones set them on this path in infancy and take good care to keep them there. This they have done ever since the Refugee World began.
The girl Bannay had been a slow time coming to the cave of the wisest Wise Woman, and once she was there, she knelt silent for many minutes.
Finally she said, “I am troubled.”
“You, too, my child? In what way?”
“By a dream.”
“Another dream?”
Bannay raised her clear eyes for an instant. “I have not been troubled by a dream before. But—” she dropped her gaze again “—Yes, dear and Wise Woman, by a dream. It came the night of the great thunders. A dream as clear as sunlight and I cannot shake it from my mind. Dreams are supposed to fade at dawn, aren’t they?”
“Of course. Now, tell me of your dream. Leave nothing from the telling.”
“You are so stem, dear Woman. Are you angry with me?”
“Child, child, the dream.”
“It was very—vivid.”
“Then easier remembered and quicker told.”
Bannay still hesitated.
“If you are troubled by this dream, and I see you are, I can give you neither solace nor counsel until I know its particulars.”
“There are parts that might offend you. . . .”
“The dream, child!” The Wise Woman pulled her robe tighter around her.
Bannay began suddenly to speak: “It was full sun, the air fresh and warm and clear as if a drenching storm had cleansed the world of all impurities, rinsing field and foliage of all dust. I felt the flesh stretched thin upon my bones, and my bones were so light within me that I thought I could step on clouds and never fall. I walked along a path down a narrow valley, like those high upon the Great Plateau. But there were buildings on the steep slopes, obscured by bushes, the rooftops visible. And I knew they were real, though I have never seen a real building except in pictures. I had never been in that valley, either, yet it was uncommonly familiar to me. A sense of pleasurable excitement quickened my breath and I felt a tinge of chilly, dread expectancy. The two emotions, reluctance and delight, were sharply interwoven, like vine to tree; yet I do not know which supported the other. I was acutely aware of the phenomenon. I’ve never felt so . . . elated . . . before, even when I attained Womanhood and was given my name. . . . Suddenly the tall grasses on one side of the road parted and a person stepped forward, smiling.”
Bannay covered her face with her hands and peeped through her fingers. “Wise Woman, it was—a—man!”
“A man!” the Wise Woman growled. “How could you identify a man?”
“The dream. The dream told me it was a man.”
“Continue, if you please!”
“You are angry with me!”
“Continue!”
Bannay plaited her fingers in her skirt. “I was startled, and naturally I thought to run. But, confronted by a man, I was stunned. Before I could move, he fired a dart at me. I opened my mouth thinking to call for help, to warn the others, but my throat was filled with a coolness that stilled any sound. My limbs were frozen. Not cold, just immovable. I stared at him for an endless time; I was forced to look at his face. It was as if the details of his countenance were intended to be impressed indelibly on my mind.”
The Wise Woman’s face was almost invisible inside her hood. She said nothing.
“Believe me, Wise Woman, I am not trying to be offensive, but you don’t often see dream faces so clearly.”
“Continue!”
“He was taller than I; not shorter, as men are supposed to be. He was very tanned and his upper body bared so that I could see that he did indeed take care of himself—not shaggy and dirty, as we are told. He was well muscled and strong-looking and clean. His hair, high on his forehead, was white. His features, very bold; his eyes were blue and deeply set.”
“Blue? Hah! Men have brown eyes and black hair, so it is written.”
“I know that. And that is why his blue eyes were so noticeable,” Bannay returned stubbornly. “His nose was aquiline, his Ups full and wide, his chin strong and his jaw much bigger than mine. A forceful, intelligent face, but not menacing. And there was no threat in his manner. His attitude was thoughtful as he gazed at me. And then he smiled again, as if he wished me not to fear him. I saw him so clearly! Then I saw him not at all. When I became aware again it seemed as if only a moment had passed, but I was no longer in the valley; I was in a white room. And it was very abrupt. One moment, blackness! The next, I was in the white room.”
Bannay stared into the dimness of the cave, remembering. “It seemed to be a very high-ceilinged room, or I was very small, for the top was very far away from me. I was aware that there was nothing harmful in this room, but something I must study and understand. That I was in this room to learn—and that was the sole reason for my being there. I was lifted up by gentle hands and then passed to other hands, as gentle but different. Firmer, stronger. I learned not to resist such hands but to cling to them for support and strength, for I was small. Then I was in another room, a pink room; for each of the many rooms I visited in that dream were painted different colors; as subtly different as the size, shape, and content of each room. Here I played with other children, some of whom were like me and some of whom were curiously unlike me. We played with toys, although I don’t remember much about die toys themselves, only that I had entertaining hours playing with them. And then one of the unlike children began to struggle with me for the possession of that toy. I resisted and the other insisted. I don’t know who won. Suddenly I was in the next chamber. It was green. And I knew myself to be older. In that room was one other person, an unlike person. We read together, although what we read I do not remember. The words were constructed differently. But the total experience was pleasant. The following experience was not pleasant, and I do not know what happened to me there. The room was red. A very deep red. An insistent red as if this uncongenial room was necessary before I could go on to something that would be better.” Bannay fell silent for a moment, but took up the thread again before the Wise Woman could urge her on.
“The room whose color is most vivid in my mind is the most obscure as to its contents. The room was painted in a wondrous clear greeny-yellow or a yellowy-green, sparkling and fresh, lucid and . . . brilliant. Like the down of newly unfurling leaves as full sun approaches. This room was the most mysterious and enthralling. Whatever I learned there I longed for.”
“What, then?”
“Wise Woman, I do not know! I would like to remember. But I cannot. Reluctantly I passed from it and on to visit other places, absorbing new tenets obediently, for all resistance to my lessons had dispersed. I fear, though, I must have been inattentive, for what the lessons taught is vague now. Vague; or perhaps not yet necessary for me to remember. Yes, that’s the explanation. When the time comes, I’ll remember.”
The hooded figure made a sound that might have been a snort.
“The dream says when the time comes, I will remember,” Bannay repeated mildly. “Then, instead of another room, I entered a long hallway, dark but not foreboding. I perceived I had finished my series of instructions. That I was ready to proceed. I knew I was to enter this door. I was to sit at the table with the old lady knitting and she would give me my final instruction. I opened the door and stood for a moment, stunned. The long narrow room was so full of people, all sitting at tables, all talking and eating. Among them were many full-grown men. There by the door was the table with the old lady. I discovered what knitting meant as I watched her working with needles and a bright thread. Yes, that was knitting! I
hastily closed the door and slid into a chair beside her so that the males would not notice me. She looked up at me, her face lined and delicately blue-white. Now, Wise Woman, her eyes were brown!” Bannay paused triumphantly. The Wise Woman, however, said nothing.
“They were full of life and good humor. She seemed no one to fear, but someone to trust explicitly. She was, except for the brown eyes and a sense of being involved with life, much like Wise Women. Only older. She smiled and patted my hand, telling me what a good girl I had been and how well I had learned my lessons. Now I must take the next step. It would be the hardest one for me, but I must try. For if I could, I would have unknown riches and rewards of which I had been till now ignorant . . . that I had had to be reeducated to desire.
“Sitting in this room, she said, at one of the tables, was someone whose face I had been taught to recognize. One face only. I was to indicate to her which person I had been . . . yes, the word was conditioned . . . to recognize. From this recognition, she said, all else would follow.
“I was overcome with the terror of failure. And within me surged the overpowering longing to succeed. But how would I pick out one person . . . a special one . . . in all that crowd? What if I hadn’t learned an essential lesson well enough? What was the penalty for failure?
“She smiled at me encouragingly.
“Timidly I raised my eyes to scan the room. It took all my courage to do so. It seemed to me that everyone would stop talking and turn to stare at me for my temerity. I glanced sweepingly at the lefthand comer of that long crowded room.
“One face immediately swam into focus. But—it was a man’s face! Horrified, I looked quickly away, casting my eyes up and down the room. Faces there were, all kinds, all colors, all compositions. Yet no girl or woman struck me as requiring my attention. And no face stood out with such clarity to my eyes as that first one: a man with green eyes and wavy, red-brown hair.
“Confused and atremble, I turned anxiously to my mentor. She patted my hand, smiling her approval, and said, ‘I can see that you have recognized someone. Look back at him.’ It was all I could do to turn my head, but her gentle insistence encouraged me past my cowardice.
“I looked and he caught my glance this time. He smiled with a glad expression lightening his pensive face. To my terror he rose. He was like—and yet unlike anyone. Yet I knew his calm face, the plane of his cheek, the angle of his jaw, the curve of his gentle mouth, which I had never seen before. I looked away. He was instantly beside me and I knew that I must rise. He said no word to me, but his presence, now that he was close to me, was strangely reassuring. He bowed with great respect to the old lady and, with a firm hand on my elbow, indicated the way out.
“We left by a different door and emerged into a corridor. I remember he was talking, his voice a deeply pleasing rumble. He was taller than I; I remember thinking that, if I leaned back against him, my head would come to his chin. Of all his words, for he was quietly explaining something to me, I recall clearly only his name—Verden!—and his saying that I had been conditioned to recognize him and him alone. I had had to be taught to accept him. The fact that I had immediately identified him out of so many proved that I had been properly reoriented. It was important to him that I understand what had been done to me.
“We suddenly entered a room, a huge one, which had been partitioned into many other, smaller ones. Male people were busily dismantling the smaller sections. To my surprise, I recognized the partitions of the first room in which I had found myself . . . the curiously high, white room. Though he watched my reactions carefully, nervously, I could only smile. So an illusion had created the semblance of distance or height.
“The pink room came apart in the hands of the workmen as my escort reminded me of the lesson learned therein. I was still untroubled. That they had invaded my mind, regressed me to infancy, and impressed me like a chick—that was high-handed, true. But nothing less forceful would have served to overcome the unrelenting conditioning I had received since birth, he said. ‘Fight fire with fire. We fought hypnopaedia with hypnopaedia.’ Do you know what that means, Wise Woman? I don’t, but it seemed so right when he said it.”
Bannay chuckled, remembering the strange word. The Wise Woman’s face could not be seen, and she said nothing. One clawed hand motioned for Bannay to continue.
“On the threshold of the yellow-green room, we paused. In the dream, I did not need his words to tell me what instructions I had received there. The knowledge was inherent in his presence, charged with the electricity of his nearness. Gratefully and with tremulous delight, I leaned against his strong length, to be upheld, as my knees refused to support me. His arms—so gentle, so fierce—were around my waist, his cheek against my forehead, his lips on mine. And I knew . . . I knew . . . what the dream had to teach me, and that now I must wake, and wait.
“But, dear and Wise Woman, I did not wish to wake! I wanted what the dream promised me from that room.”
“It was a nightmare!”
“It was a dream, Wise Woman, but it did not seem a bad dream. Only a dream . . . how could it be otherwise? There are no men. There are no men among us here!” Her voice broke, and she looked at the Wise Woman, deeply troubled.
“Yes. Praise be, we are all daughters of women here!”
“That is all the consolation you have for me?”
“It is a stupid dream, Bannay, a completely unrealistic dream.”
“Then . . . then it is permitted to dream it again?”
“What do you mean, child?”
“I want to dream it again. It was so real. So clear. So thrilling to a part of me that is always hungry.”
“Enough! It was . . . the unsettled night . . . yes, that’s the explanation. The thunder and storm caused the dreaming for all of you, child.”
“The same dream for all of us?”
“Not all—a few,” the Wise Woman said reluctantly. “Why was it only a dream?”
“I have told you. We do not allow—we have never allowed—men on Refugee. We are safe here! There are no rooms, no brown-eyed women, no green-eyed men! I never heard of such a thing! What is that noise?”
“Wise Woman, what is wrong? Your face is so white. Here, let me help you to your couch.”
“Run, girl, warn the others. Don’t stand there, paralyzed. Run to the safety of the caves. Let the invaders know that their dream-conditioning failed. Hide yourself!”
“Why?” The girl was torn between the conditioning of a lifetime and the triggered knowledge flooding her conscious mind. “Verden!” cried Bannay, just as the Wise Woman answered her.
“WHY? There are men in that ship up there!”
“Thank you, Wise Woman, for the strength to disobey. Men . . . Verden . . .” said Bannay. She smiled like a woman and went to the mouth of the cave.
Left alone, the Wise Woman pulled her hood completely over her head and whimpered like a child.
Liberated girls came boldly streaming out of the caves, leaving those who had failed to dream—the fearful and the aged—behind them.
Bannay led them over the hill.
MATTHEW
by
Pamela Sargent
I was so busy that I almost forgot about it being close to Matthew’s birthday. I was running around like a madman getting ready for the Enomoto birth, and then I realized it was April and I hadn’t even gotten the kid a present and I was stuck with having to fight it out with Laura again.
I’ve got to admit Laura didn’t get too upset about my visiting the little guy once a month since I would usually be gone only a couple of days; but every time his birthday came up, she’d raise hell because she knew it meant at least a week, and this time it was going to be even worse for two reasons.
One was, of course, the Enomoto birth.
The other was that I would be gone during Laura’s fertile period, and she was going to kick up a storm over that. Laura is impressive when she’s mad. She doesn’t start by screaming; she just sort of stands and gl
ares down at me, and then she starts talking very slowly and very precisely until I get to wishing I was in my hovercraft out over the Atlantic, and then she starts throwing anything lethal at me that she can get her hands on.
I could hear it all already.
She would start out by telling me how important it was that I be ready to broadcast the Enomoto birth. I knew how important it was, besides which the Enomotos were our very best friends and would be hurt if I didn’t make it sound like the delivery of the century. And I would have to admit she was right. Hideo and Inger Enomoto were the only other couple living in Miami Beach, and we had been friends ever since Laura and I had gotten married and the Enomotos had come here from San Francisco. Hideo’s about five-two with squinty little eyes and a big grin, and you wouldn’t want him opposite you in a wrestling match. Inger’s a huge blond girl who has the disconcerting habit of walking into walls, doors, and table edges, leaving a trail of broken glasses behind her.
Matthew’s birthday was coming up, and Inger was seven months along, and God help me if she had a premature birth, because Laura would never let me forget it if I was lighting birthday candles instead of broadcasting the blessed event. She and Hideo weren’t taking any chances. They were keeping old Inger in a wheelchair for the duration to make sure she didn’t walk off the side of a ten-story building.
The other thing was that Laura was convinced I would not be able to resist Athena for a week-long period of time. “That bitch has got a kid already,” she would say, “and you give her another one, I will wrap something around your cheating neck,” at which point Laura would display a knife, stocking, a broken bottle, whichever seemed most appropriate.
I can’t blame Laura. She’s the most temperamental, fiery, jealous woman in the world, and she knows I love her for it. It keeps fife interesting. We would have our dainty little spat, and after we’d clawed each other to pieces, we’d just fall into that oversized bed and have a hell of a good time apologizing. She’d leave me once a month and come back once a month, and I thought then that if I could only give her a kid, everything would be perfect, just fine . . . no.