The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  “Come on baby,” he whispered in her ear, “I’ve got a nice dark place for you where you can be alone.”

  He put her before the suit neck and gave her an encouraging push from behind. She sniffed the edges daintily and then peered inside.

  “Be a good girl and go on in.”

  Dignified, sedate, she stepped into the body of the suit and disappeared into the dark lower sections.

  “There, I told you it was just what you were looking for.”

  Morgan carefully set the air and temperature dials and tried the helmet on himself first. Then he switched on the suit radio good and loud, so he could hear her if she was in any trouble, and snapped the helmet in place.

  Lying on his back he squirmed into the other suit, then sat up stiffly and adjusted the helmet dials. He turned the radio up loud and put the helmet on. There was a sound, a rustling from the radio and it didn’t sound like Cat. Then there was the sigh of someone taking a big breath, someone bored. They were monitoring him. They couldn’t hear much unless he was close to the panel and the mike, but they evidently wanted to hear what they could just the same, to see if he was actually going to come out. Or, he thought bitterly, if he was dying, when that would be. Maybe they wanted to be ready so as to give him a nice funeral.

  “I hear you,” he said. “I know you’re there. What are you listening for, death rattles?”

  There was a startled, sniffing sound, but no answer.

  “Brotherhood!” Morgan said it like a curse.

  He took the hammer and pounded the lid off the water tank. Then he opened the air pressure release valves, one way valves, out only, and turned up the thermostat as if the planet, Brotherhood, was colder than space (and to Morgan it seemed that it was).

  He leaned back in the suit, resting the legs in lock position. Now was the time for that lucky, bawdy song again. Having an audience listening in would give him a special satisfaction, too.

  The ship was efficient. It took only ten minutes before the control room was full of steam. What do they think on the outside, Morgan wondered, to see all the steam coming out? He watched it flow toward the air vents and when it slowed he gave out a loud, long string of curses.

  “That’s for luck,” he told whoever it was that listened in. Then he set the thermostat down to the bottom like he was in the middle of hell. If it works, he thought, it ought to be so damn cold in here that I’ll see the air condensing as it comes in. Those wires on the plates are contracting, too. A ship built like this and weakened by the crash ought to practically cave in with even a partial vacuum and all that pull on the sides. At least there ought to be an air leak… a small one… pretty soon.

  He waited silently, imagining wisps of dancing, steamy air, but they were only almost there in corners where he wasn’t looking.

  So, it wasn’t going to work after all. By God, compliment those engineers. These ships were a lot sturdier than anybody thought.

  There was a rustle from the radio, the scrape of a chair and whispering he couldn’t hear well enough to understand. “Changing of the guard?” he asked. “Going out to lunch? It’s time.”

  Lunch! Good Lord, he was hungry! For the past few hours he’d been thinking of nothing but getting out, and before that, only of finding a place and landing.

  Why didn’t I think to eat before getting into this mess, he thought. And Cat she’ll be getting hungry, too, soon, and making a hell of a racket about it if she has to wait. A man and a cat should at least have a good meal before dying. But then does it matter?

  For the first time he let himself think about death. There was about four hours worth of air left in each suit, more for the cat, less for him. That was the measure of life.

  He was here, strong, alive, in contact with people who could help him if they would. That he would die had seemed impossible, but he began to realize that it was true, after all. There were four hours, four hungry hours now, to live, and that was all.

  No! He didn’t want it. He wasn’t ready. It was useless, silly, to die like this for nothing, caged and helpless and for no reason at all.

  He flexed his arm muscles under the suit. He expanded his chest. He was in his prime; now was his time to live.

  No! He felt the sweat then, first damp in the armpits and across his back. Even the air pumping in and out didn’t take away the strange smell it had. He stank with a sweat of fear and or rage… rage at them.

  Stop thinking, he told himself. Move!

  He took the heavy hammer and started out of the control room. Move, by God!

  It couldn’t help him escape but he had to keep from bursting inside.

  He stood in the cramped space before the weak seam and swung the hammer, letting it hit the back wall as hard as the outer skin. He could hear the ringing sound even through the suit. He could feel it vibrating up from his feet into his bones. Move! His shoulder muscles bulged against the suit. Move! Move! Move!

  “Meowrr?”

  He stopped and stood trembling and dripping wet inside the suit.

  “Meow?”

  “What’s that?” It was a whisper from the one at the radio as if the listener dared not speak at first, but then he said it again out loud. “What is that?”

  Morgan, breathless, said nothing.

  “You never said you had a cat. We didn’t realize.” But Morgan was speechless, filled with a sudden, wild hope.

  He heard them shuffling and whispering about the radio. There were more people coming. “He could be making that noise himself,” someone said, and another, “No, he was breathing hard.”

  “Animal Welfare, call the head of Animal Welfare.”

  Then a voice came out loud and close to the mike. But we’ve got to get that cat out. A man is one thing, a creature of sin, but can we let a poor dumb animal suffer and die this way for a man?”

  “No! No!”

  “Call the derricks. Raise the ship.”

  So that’s the way it would be, and all because of Cat. Shutting him up again would be killing and they wouldn’t do that. He was free.

  “Cat,” he whispered, “damn you, Cat.”

  Original Science Fiction Stories, January 1960

  But Soft What Light…

  UNIQ-O-FAX, the only machine of its kind in existence anywhere in the world today.

  U-NI-KO-FA-FX! UN-I-KOFF-AX!

  He isn’t modest or immodest. He’s neither proud nor humble nor shy, neither (what’s more) truthful nor a liar and yet both true and false. One could say a finder of the lie in truth and of the truth in lies. He, the infallible within the fallible (or the other way around) that must always be the essence of the poetic gesture. He is, in other words, all poet.

  And so I had refused to call him less than MAN or to allow anyone else to do so. (And, by the way, I was a virgin then. But I have since been transmogrified.)

  Uniq-o-fax, a sensitive machine for combining words so fast that, like an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters, he not only COULD write, by a random selection, all of Shakespeare’s plays, but almost DID at 1012 bits per second (also most of Mallarmé and Gide). Most certainly he is experienced, as anyone can see.

  I was his (sort of) vestal virgin. I was there, in other words, to try to see that he was surrounded by an atmosphere conducive to his art. I kept the fires of inspirations going by supplying him with words fraught with meanings, rich in sounds, such as: athwart, somnambulist, besprinkle, incommensurate, smirch, discreate, duodecimality, ingurgitation, furbished, crepuscular.

  He was thirty-nine typewriters and a word bank. I was seventeen.

  One cannot hope to gain more by giving less. These days we all know so well the laws of payment and of foods received. (His very first words on the very first typewriter were, I LOVE YOU. Isn’t that just like a poet!) I was there simply to give (yet with full expectations of receiving and in like proportion to that given). I was resolved to be the following: goodnatured, trusting, patient, enduring, admiring, understanding (al
l my female virtues), and helpful, apt, illogical but not too much so, malleable, and (especially) serving (woman’s privilege). (I LOVE YOU TOO I wrote back to him on that very same typewriter.)

  Where, oh where (I often wondered to myself on winter evenings), among all these wires and tubes, is the actual seat of his inner being?

  I love you (he wrote),

  “Let me count the ways:”

  One two

  Three four

  Eye neck leg Adam’s apple

  Five

  Wrinkle under arm

  Big toe. That’s seven

  But that’s not all.

  Let one who can count, count,

  And in a microsecond

  To thousands.

  Charms have never been better catalogued

  Than this

  From whorls of fingertip through pubic hair line…

  I love you.

  I remember that first time, you, in the rain in August wearing your stainless steel fedora, bright as a sink, with your other units jauntily behind you. What a gay conglomeration! What a happy-go-lucky air, hat back and something or other akimbo, sparks flying at each step. You hadn’t bothered to put up your umbrella and neither had I. Something flashed red in your—was it eye? as I went by.

  The forsythia were not in bloom then, but if they had been, what a riot of yellow all down the street!

  “I WAS a phantom of delight

  When first I gleamed upon your sight…”

  When I went into the A&P I saw you turn and follow. You bought four tangelos at 49¢ a pound and a box of band-aids and I knew they couldn’t be for you. I, on the other hand, bought Brillo, Glass Wax, Sani-Flush, and a three-way 50-75-100 watt bulb and you knew I didn’t buy them for myself.

  And later, after I had eaten all your tangelos (and after you had used up my three-way light bulb) (Oh, those were innocent days!) we went uptown in a moving van and parked on 72nd Street. You, wired for redundancy (three-in-put, two-out-put) repeated poems you had already recited, for, as William Blake says: “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough,” and also: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” (And that was so TRUE as far as you were concerned.) And sometimes that night when you had a distant look in your eyes, you said (upon my questioning you) that you were counting to the ultimate number and at THAT many bits per second I dared not even guess how far you had already gotten. And later still, I saw the sunrise reflected in your forehead and I saw the shine of the moon go down on what might have been your nose. The very next day I applied for that vestal-virgin job that happened to be open at the Office of Contemplative and Exploratory Poetry.

  Days flew by. I was happy. Winter, spring, etc., and then came the day the police arrested you for destroying public property. That night you had not only clicked chinks in the sidewalk all down Seventh Avenue, but one of the units dangling after you (220 volt, three wire cables) had inadvertently leaned against a wall on the corner of 28th Street while contemplating possible trajectories to the Mare Imbrium. However, I pointed out to the police that you were, indeed, Uniq-o-fax, and, as such, certainly public property yourself (as aren’t ALL poets?) and that night, believing me to be someone of importance from the poetry Department, they let you out in my custody. How we laughed when we finally shut the door (to my apartment) on the outside world!

  Why are you laughing so, Uniq-o? Are you convulsed by some tickling wire? Some jerky AC-DC? Is there moisture in some sensitive spot? Are the logic gates not quite closed? However, redundancy, as usual, will keep you functioning in spite of it all and I have plenty of wall outlets if needed. Is that ozone? A crackle of static? Avoid the furniture, please. Oops, there goes the Oxford Anthology and, in fact, a whole shelf-load of poets: Ginsberg, Ashbery, Verlaine, Keats (in descending order of modernity, or does Ashbery come first?). In fact, the bookcase. Lamp, too. The stuffing is coming out of the couch cushions. Snap, the little finger of my left hand, laughing, laughing. Now he has crushed my middle toes but I don’t mention it and somehow I manage not even to wince. (Why should I hurt him? Spoil this magic moment when we’re alone together at last, tentative, embarrassed, yet SURE. Why should I spoil it? How could I!) I hobble backwards, laughing, to the bedroom and put on a fur-lined gloves and a pair of old sneakers (also loosen my bra and take off my garter belt!) laughing, I return. “Oh, dear Uniq-o, ho, ho. Oh, ho, ho. Ow, ho, ho. Oh, ow, ho, ho, ho.”

  He makes the first sly insinuation

  (as always, all poet)

  And now an impertinent interpolation, then a quiet interjection

  Here and there, here and there an addendum

  (three input, two output)

  likely infiltrations, fierce interspersions,

  intrusions, infusions, inroads,

  intermittent instillations.

  I, audibly receptive, gently recipient,

  absorb, assimilate, stomach,

  become concierge of so many entryways, corridors,

  thresholds, vestibules and sills….

  I, merged until implosion!

  Then he interjaculates!

  I had no idea there were so many public possibilities.

  And who would have dreamed of such largess in the midst of an all pervasive miniaturization.

  Oh infinite series of variables…

  “Oh wild West Wind,”

  “What if my leaves ARE falling…”

  But isn’t it strange that after all this I was still, to all appearances, a virgin? (I will never agree with the personal manager at the Office of Contemplative and Exploratory Poetry, who said that I was technically unfit for my position as keeper of the fires of inspiration.) You see, I hobbled back to the poetry office as soon as I was able, only to find in my place a male psychiatrist of a fatherly type, but Uniq-o-fax, when I last heard, was suffering from closed circuits, from which I conclude (happily) that at least he never feel in love with anyone else. They say every 23rd, 24th, and 25th word he says is I and love and you, respectively and I know he still means me.

  The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1966

  Chicken Icarus

  I KEEP thinking there must be some place for me somewhere. I keep thinking of some kind of gelatin land, some puddingy spot all viscous, muculent, where the air is thick and wet as water. I wouldn’t even ask to be able to fly around in it. I’d be happy just to ooze along the bottom as long as it was nothing like floors or mattresses or pillows. But the way it is around here you can get pretty bored with gravity.

  “Down with downness,” I say.

  I keep thinking about this sticky-slippery kind of land but I think about legs, too, a lot more than I think about arms. I don’t know why. Maybe because I always hear walking sounds. Around the house I hear the floors creak and thump, accepting feet. Outside, the lady’s heels tick-tock, tick-tock, measuring out time in distance covered. Steps per minute about sixty-five, breaths twenty, heartbeats seventy-two. It takes me ten heartbeats to cross my mattress. Rolling. Well, more like five heartbeats or four. Four little bird heartbeats. (I exaggerate myself, but sometimes I feel pretty exaggerated.)

  Doorknobs, on/off switches, buttons, zippers, drawer pulls, toenail scissors, the little thumbscrews that hold my reading stand, the handles on the sides of my mattress, the armholes of my shirt, even birds… When they sit along the wires they remind me of feet, robin-red-breasted feet cut off just above the ankle; flying, they remind me of feather-fingered hands flip-flopping themselves into the sky, palms down. For them the air is thick enough.

  But I have one thing.

  When I was young I felt the world two ways, by mouth and by that one impetuous finger (I cannot say between my legs) that would rise up in curiosity at any interesting texture or temperature. Now it seems not so inquisitive. But then, it has already tested cotton, wool, wood, paper, the wall, the floor, the reading stand and so forth. It has ventured—omnivorous, can one say?—into holes in the sheet. It has examined the interior o
f a velvet purse (silk-lined). It has pushed a toy car. It has entered a shoe. All this in its younger days.

  There is, in my world, also—Well, it isn’t really my world. As I said, mine would have to be a lot slushier. Anyway, I’ve got balance, rolling, flopping and the arching of the back. Balance I have never completely mastered. I suppose I should mention other small diversions such as defecating, urinating, the blinking of eyes, the wiggling of ears and watching TV.

  And I’ve got drama, too. Down the hall at five o’clock or so comes Mrs. Number One all dressed up like a nurse. I think I must, at some time, have been bought outright, else why does she keep me on like this? She doesn’t get paid anymore. Who would pay her? And what do I give in exchange for the emptying of bedpans or a lift into the bathroom, for food so considerately cut up so I can feed myself? Why, only what I can give. She likes it with brute force. “Rape, rape,” she says, but not loud enough to attract attention outside of my little room.

  I bounce her on the point of my one and only (or she makes me believe I do). Actually I couldn’t rape an old glove. At the time I think I would not trade this one for any other protuberance, but afterward I think two legs are well worth one of these. However, the price is too high. If I had three of them it might be possible to come to some terms, but one, even as well-functioning as this… No sale!

  Rape, rape, to me was Run, run.

  That day (the day she locked the door and said, “If you ever tell…” But there wasn’t anybody to tell. I think I was forgotten the moment I was born)—that day I thought I knew what running felt like. This was skimming over the earth, rampant, halfway to the ceiling with only the sales of the feet touching bottom. This was one foot, lightly, before the other, the swing of the leg underneath, the body riding smoothly on top of it all (amazing), the counterbalancing arms, back and forth, the toes giving a last pushoff, the knee raised, bent, the foot circling upward, pivoting out, falling ahead to catch the ground, then pushing off again, and so on. Hundreds of takeoffs, and that’s what this was, too, a hundred takeoffs until I flew into the air, but I came to rest again, flat upon the mattress.