Sci Fiction Classics Volume 3

by Vol 3 (v1. 2) (epub)

  "In a way, what you say is very true. A whole area of experience that's very important—that's true, Max."

  He looked at Paula and couldn't speak.

  Paula said, "Have another mint, Max," and sat chewing quietly.

  Max sat looking at the quiet, efficient, self-respecting, unhappy face with growing sympathy. Poor girl! He hadn't been fair to Paula. When he'd learned that Luana had once been just another girl like Paula, and Paula's friend, he'd learned only half. Paula had once been like Luana, too, and Luana's friend.

  That was a hard thought, too.

  Paula must have dreamed of womanhood then, the same as Luana. But some girls—most girls—didn't have what it took.

  It was really terrifying. What must it be like to be a schoolgirl? Always wishing your complexion would clear up, wishing your breasts would grow rounder, waiting to feel that uncontrollable desire that would tell you you were a woman. He hadn't thought about such things since he was in school, and of course he hadn't been old enough then to understand.

  What must it be like to be a grown career girl!

  "I guess career girls must feel sort of"—he hesitated a little—"envious of dancers."

  "That is the usual attitude, I believe," Paula stated tonelessly.

  There was a lot he hadn't understood, all right, Max conceded. How could he have considered himself Paula's friend before? Now he felt so much closer to it.

  "It"—even the pronoun was a continual reminder of Paula's failure. In every sentence he spoke about career girls he was pointing out that they were the ones who didn't make it. He could imagine how Paula must feel about that. Used to it, maybe, but surely not happy about it.

  Max made a resolution. Maybe he was a little peculiar, but he didn't think so. After all, the elderly women who had been his school teachers had always been "her." Paula was his friend. Max resolved always to refer to any career girl as "her" from now on.

  At least when he was alone with Paula.

  He resolved even to think of Paula as "her." It wouldn't come naturally to use that pronoun for a modified man's name like "Paula," when he was used to using "her" only for real women's names like "Luana" or "Clarissa." He'd do it, just the same. The way he'd been talking up to now sounded cruel.

  He smiled happily and started to tell Paula his resolution. The words wouldn't come. He didn't know how to say it without sounding ridiculous.

  Why? Because his resolution was a bad idea? No, not a bad idea; just pitifully inadequate. How much difference would a pronoun make to—her? If he talked as if it was saving her life, he'd sound very, very silly, and just as cruel as if he'd done nothing.

  If only there was some way to tell Paula that (at last) he sympathized.

  Paula glanced at the clock. 23:49. The first shift would start showing up about now.

  Paula stood up without looking at him. It—she—yawned and stretched. Max felt let down: apparently she didn't have anything more to say to him and was going to leave him ten minutes early, and he hadn't communicated to her yet.

  Instead, she said, "Tired?"

  "No."

  "Why don't you come in with me? The super won't be around this shift, or any of the office staff. Don't even bother clocking in."

  Paula went straight to the lab, but Max loafed on the Supers' Walk.

  It was the Spinning Department in a different hour from the Spinning Department he saw daily, yet it might as well have been in a different year, or country. The rows of vats were the same, exactly the same, but strolling around the Supers' Walk gave a new and godlike perspective; they had changed. The row where he worked in the midday shift was superficially the same; he could recognize it without looking at the numbers, by the drooling discoloration on Number 74, the same as in the day; but instead of looking up at Mr. Kees he was looking down at somebody or other. To find out whether it was Max or not he'd have to check the personnel records. Who was he? He had changed.

  He had an anything-could-happen feeling that he hadn't had since he was a kid, except maybe at Luana's.

  Luana—she seemed distant now. Time heals sorrows, and to Max there was a lot of time between an hour ago and now. He was still a Luana follower, certainly; his memory did not show the conspicuous event which stopping loving Luana would have made. He didn't worry quite as much about love, though. Love and curiosity didn't mix. Tonight Max was curious.

  Which adventure should he choose?

  This afternoon if he'd had an invitation to drop into the lab any time, with nobody to object, he'd have run all the way. Tonight it was hard to choose. Paula had changed everything: Luana, the Spinning Department, Paula herself. Max was itching to understand them all.

  He chose the lab, though, partly because Paula would be there. For any adventure Paula should be there. Paula and curiosity went together.

  Max pushed open the door to the wide, whitely lighted room.

  It wasn't quite as wide as he'd thought, and part of it wasn't lighted. That was the row of four desks along the left that were more likely computers. Accounting didn't work the night shifts. The rest of the room was a dazzling array of valves and tubes. Max threw his mind open to see what they could tell him. He let his eye wander over the maze, guided by hunches drawn from his apprenticeship outside there. Apprenticeship— that's what this was. Everything was new tonight. Tonight should have come after his first day at work, or his first week perhaps. But if it had, he wouldn't have had a friend, Paula, who could show him around the lab.

  He didn't see Paula. There was only one person in the lab, working in the far right corner, ignoring him. He recognized the person. "Harriet!"

  "Hi, Max."

  "I didn't know you knew this job."

  "I've qualified for assistant, not for analyst."

  "You taking somebody else's shift, just for tonight?"

  "That's right. How about you?"

  "Paula just asked me if I wanted to stick around. Where is Paula, anyway?"

  "Out on one of the vats; Number 58, I think."

  "She'll be right back, won't she? I was hoping—"

  Uh-oh.

  Harriet smiled at his faux pas; but not too jeeringly, if at all. Max felt his face getting entirely red—all over—maximum. He hadn't blushed since he was in school.

  Harriet said, "Paula should be back pretty soon. Would you like to sit down in the office? I'm pretty busy here."

  "The office?"

  "The Superintendent's Office, in there." The door on the dark side of the room. "The guys always use it on this shift. There usually isn't anybody around to check, and I'll be able to tip you off in time if there is."

  Max pushed open the door and went through.

  He wouldn't have been surprised to see a tropic garden.

  It was dark. He ricocheted off a hard desk into a soft chair. Keeping one hand on the chair for a base, he groped across the desk till he found a switch.

  It only turned on a desk lamp. The little light fell concentrated on the desk top and scattered vaguely about the room. Desks, chairs, and cabinets were irresponsibly acute-angled. Max could have turned on more lights and reduced them to normality, but he preferred not to. He relaxed, acclimating to novelty.

  In the direction he was facing, he couldn't see to the end of the office. Maybe the office extended farther than he'd assumed. He sat staring into the darkness there.

  For a while he saw only darkness. Then a new, dim light went on and something moved. Max sat staring.

  If what he saw might just as well have been a dream, why should he complain?

  He thought he saw Luana.

  Luana couldn't be in this office, but then neither could Max, and nevertheless here was Max, all alone, and, all for Max, here was Luana! Dancing! Why should he ask questions?

  Luana danced for him.

  Her hands clasped behind her head, that snake-hips walk. The same as this evening.

  But the evening had ended wrong, so Max didn't let himself compare now to the evening. Everything
was new this midnight. No music, she didn't need any! No crowded house, all the better!

  He tried the experiment of watching the dance as if he had never seen it before. That wriggling walk was new. He could feel the burning passion that drove those hips. Then she stopped—stretched, lithely turning her body to right and left—and yawned. What a body!

  Max almost groaned aloud. Why didn't she come closer? How was he supposed to stand it this long? Still he was the audience, he didn't get out of his chair.

  Gradually she came closer, and each step she took toward him was an act of surrender. Max couldn't stand it. He jumped from his chair. This was the love of his life!

  She began to sing, a husky wordless croon that made him shiver and want to cry. This was the love of his life! And all for him!

  But it wasn't Luana. He had never heard the voice before. He had to admit to himself now that it wasn't Luana.

  He didn't care! Everything was new tonight. He could see and hear, couldn't he? Couldn't he tell that this was love? How could he think of Luana after this? This was true love! That husky voice said, "Dance with me," and the unbearably beautiful face turned up toward him. The light rested on her soft cheek, and Max adored her. He put his arm around her and his hand touched her back. "Oh, my darling!"

  The beautiful face frowned, and said, "Now do you see, Max?" The voice was Paula's voice.

  Max didn't move.

  Warmth still throbbing through him like echoes after thunder …

  What had happened? Eventually he had to know. It had not been a dream. His hand was still touching her back—Paula's back. He removed it; then he stood absolutely still again, trying to think.

  The face was still close to his, Paula's pitiful, pleading face. He had to remember that even with the mouth painted over scarlet, even wearing the grotesque jeweled wig, even obscenely dressed in woman's clothes, this was his friend, Paula.

  He whispered, "Don't worry, Paula, I won't tell anybody."

  She gasped.

  Her frown dissolved.

  Her face went soft again; for a moment he thought she had fainted. But she had sprung back away from him three or four steps, as graceful as a dancer. She said, in the husky voice, "You can see and hear, can't you? Can't you tell I'm a woman?" She danced again, and crooned.

  Sure, he could see and hear. He could see and hear his friend Paula bouncing around in a preposterous costume, with a faked voice, and it embarrassed him. He was cramped and sobbing with embarrassment.

  "Max, please." The faked voice was begging now.

  On a whim he relented and let himself pretend, conjuring up another emotional kick for the sake of the kick. Pretend it's a woman! The body was gorgeous, the voice made him shiver, the face unbearably beautiful. Exactly the same as before. He felt his passion rising again—

  Instantly wrung off in icy fear and guilt. Too late, too late; now he knew. The love of his life made him gag.

  "Paula, stop it!" he shouted. "Paula!"

  Her white shoulders drooped, her husky voice broke. She stopped. Paula fell across the desk, crying.

  Max couldn't help her and he couldn't ignore her. He listened inertly while she wept, "I just don't get it. I just don't get it. Oh, Max, I'm not going to blame you for anything. What was I trying to do, anyway? I'm as messed up as you are… I just don't get it, that's all. The wig?" She dropped it on the floor and her hair was Paula's short hair. "If I were a dancer I'd wear one. Luana wears one. I could go out and open a house tomorrow and you wouldn't see anything wrong with me. I just don't--"

  She waited for her sobbing to calm, then spoke wearily. "Oh sure, as if it mattered. I tried out at Clarissa's house the same time Luana did. I went over, too. Better than Luana, as if it mattered. I could find a promoter tomorrow and open a house."

  He wished she could! "Why don't you?" He dreaded the answer.

  She sat up on the desk, looking around him at the floor. She ignored his question. "My fifth night at Clarissa's I got unusually strong audience reaction, from practically everybody, even Clarissa's front row. There was no pride or tenderness in her voice, or anything else. "When I went offstage Clarissa came on and said, 'We'll have to put that juicy morsel in a package all her own,' meaning I should have my own house. The applause was tremendous. But I knew that if I did it I'd have to sign a five-year contract, because I had no money of my own. I peeked through the curtain at all those popeyed, yelling faces, and I thought, 'Five years.'"

  What an unwomanly reaction! He was coldly certain of the answer as he began, "What's wrong with five years of—"

  "Of life like Luana's? I tried to talk Luana out of doing it too, and she may regret it."

  Coldly, "But why does it disgust you?"

  "Oh, I know what you mean—am I anesthetic? No. Plenty of girls are, your myth is right that far, but I'm not."

  It was evidently true. Paula was tired and discouraged enough at that point to tell the worst of the truth, much too weary to lie. But then—

  "Then why can't you—"

  "I couldn't stand five years of that kind of contempt. 'Juicy morsel!' Everything those guys wanted from me they could have gotten from a hypodermic needle." Paula's unprotected shoulders trembled. "I'm not going to blame anybody!"

  Max was too weak to respond, too weak to stand. He sat down on the desk beside Paula, drawing his shoulder in so there would be no risk of touching her. He looked at her for one more shivering glance.

  His friend Paula…alias the love of his life.

  Love! Paula wanted him to love her—it, a career— and then said that love was contempt.

  Max was lost. What did he have?

  His work? But that meant Paula.

  Jim? He could not imagine himself telling Jim any part of what happened.

  Luana? Luana? He sought in his soul for his first love, which he had denied tonight for a mirage. He sought prayerfully and found an image of Luana. The image removed its wig, peeked through the curtain of yelling faces, and wondered if it could stand five years as a dancer.

  It wasn't true. Luana had made the other choice. Luana was a woman! But this was the image Max saw. Jim had Luana; Max knew he would never have her now.

  Paula stirred and got to her feet, straight and brave, under streaked makeup the familiar face of Paula. "Max, Harriet can't double for me in the lab all night. I'll get my obscene man's clothes on, and we'll have a cup of coffee before I get back to work, okay?"

  Paula had left him alone in the world with her… it… her. He had no choice. "Okay," he said with no emotion of any kind. "I'll wait for you in the lab."

  "You're a nice guy, Max, and eventually we'll understand each other."

  The End

  Note from the author:

  "The text given here was taken from my original manuscript. When the story appeared in Star SF (its only previous publication), it had been substantially changed without my knowledge. I am amenable to editing, but in this case I am stubbornly loyal to my original concept."

  —Chan Davis

  © 1958 by Chan Davis. First publication in Star Science Fiction, Vol. 1, No. 1, Jan. 1958.

  Caught in the Organ Draft

  Robert Silverberg

  Look there, Kate, down by the promenade. Two splendid seniors, walking side by side near the water's edge. They radiate power, authority, wealth, assurance. He's a judge, a senator, a corporation president, no doubt, and she's—what?—a professor emeritus of international law, let's say. There they go toward the plaza, moving serenely, smiling, nodding graciously to passersby. How the sunlight gleams in their white hair! I can barely stand the brilliance of that reflected aura: it blinds me, it stings my eyes. What are they, eighty, ninety, a hundred years old? At this distance they seem much younger—they hold themselves upright, their backs are straight, they might pass for being only fifty or sixty. But I can tell. Their confidence, their poise, mark them for what they are. And when they were nearer I could see their withered cheeks, their sunken eyes. No cosmetics can hid
e that. These two are old enough to be our great-grandparents. They were well past sixty before we were even born, Kate. How superbly their bodies function! But why not? We can guess at their medical histories. She's had at least three hearts, he's working on his fourth set of lungs, they apply for new kidneys every five years, their brittle bones are reinforced with hundreds of skeletal snips from the arms and legs of hapless younger folk, their dimming sensory apparatus is aided by countless nerve-grafts obtained the same way, their ancient arteries are freshly sheathed with sleek teflon. Ambulatory assemblages of secondhand human parts, spliced here and there with synthetic or mechanical organ substitutes, that's all they are. And what am I, then, or you? Nineteen years old and vulnerable. In their eyes I'm nothing but a ready stockpile of healthy organs, waiting to serve their needs. Come here, son. What a fine strapping young man you are! Can you spare a kidney for me? A lung? A choice little segment of intestine? Ten centimeters of your ulnar nerve? I need a few pieces of you, lad. You won't deny a distinguished elder like me what I ask, will you? Will you?

  Today my draft notice, a small crisp document, very official-looking, came shooting out of the data slot when I punched for my morning mail. I've been expecting it all spring; no surprise, no shock, actually rather an anticlimax now that it's finally here. In six weeks I am to report to Transplant House for my final physical exam—only a formality; they wouldn't have drafted me if I didn't already rate top marks as organ-reservoir potential—and then I go on call. The average call time is about two months. By autumn they'll be carving me up. Eat, drink, and be merry, for soon comes the surgeon to my door.

  A straggly band of senior citizens is picketing the central headquarters of the League for Bodily Sanctity. It's a counterdemonstration, an anti-anti-transplant protest, the worst kind of political statement, feeding on the ugliest of negative emotions. The demonstrators carry glowing signs that say:

  BODILY SANCTITY—OR BODILY SELFISHNESS?

  And:

  YOU OWE YOUR LEADERS YOUR VERY LIVES