by Bob Shaw
“I do the Ozymandias thing on purpose,” he said. “It’s something I’m trying out. Excuse me a moment.” He went across to Athene. “Come into the kitchen and let’s get ourselves straightened out before anybody else arrives.”
“Will,” she assured him, “there just isn’t that much time in this or any other evening. Now stay out of my way.” She walked away quickly before Carewe could speak. He stood -alone in the kitchen while a slow, glacial resentment engulfed his soul and he could hear the rush of blood circulating in his own body. Athene had to be punished for the easy ruthlessness with which she turned their relationship into a weapon to cut him down any time it pleased her. For doing that she had to be hurt—but how? An idea was stirring far back in his mind when he heard other guests arriving in the main living area. He forced himself to relax and strolled out to greet them, smiling with lips which still throbbed from Athene’s blow.
Six people had arrived in a group which included May Rattray and a lumbering blond boy of about fourteen, who was introduced to Carewe as Vert. The women receded in a chattering swarm, making communal adjustments to their radiances, colors and perfumes, leaving Carewe temporarily alone with Vert. The boy surveyed Carewe with a noticeable lack of interest.
“That’s an unusual name you’ve got,” Carewe said. “French for green, isn’t it? Are your parents … ?”
“It’s Trev turned backwards,” the boy interrupted. His fuzz-covered face was fleetingly truculent. “I was named Trev, but why should your mother be allowed to pick your name for you? A man should be allowed to pick out any name he wants.”
“I agree—but instead of choosing any name you took the one your mother gave you and turned …” Carewe paused, realizing he was heading into deep psychological waters. “How about a drink, Vert?”
“I don’t need liquor,” Vert said. “Why don’t you just go ahead and have one yourself.”
“Thanks,” Carewe said feelingly. He went to the bar and under the pretext of tidying it up stayed behind the counter, taking long swigs from a self-chiller full of Scotch. The prospect of an evening of Excerpts interspersed with conversations with Vert was one he could not face unaided. By the time the women returned he was halfway down his second tall glass of neat spirit, and was beginning to feel equal to the occasion. Equal to Athene too, for that matter—he had decided how to make her pay, and pay dearly. Four more guests arrived and he kept himself busy setting up drinks. Two of the new arrivals were male cools he knew to be not much older than himself—Bart Barton and Vic Navarro—and Carewe courted them assiduously, trying to create an anti-Excerpts faction. He had just got a reasonably healthy discussion going on the subject of bullet design when Athene took the center of the floor.
“I see we all have our projectors,” she said in an incongruous master-of-cereonies voice, “so let’s get on with the game. There’s a mystery prize for the best flash of the evening, but remember we want strictly informal, happening-type Excerpts—anybody found quoting published sources will have to pay a forfeit.” There was a low cheer and the dhome swirled with fragmented colors as the guests began adjusting their projectors. Glowing, apparently solid letters and words swarmed in the air. Carewe groaned and sat down behind the bar as Athene leveled her own projector.
“I’ll go first,” she announced, “just to get things moving.” She activated the little instrument and brilliant green lettering appeared, hovering a few paces in front
of her. WHAT’S THE POINT IN SPEAKING FRENCH IF EVERYBODY KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE SAYING? Carewe stared suspiciously at the guests, most of whom were giving appreciative laughs, then examined the words again. Their significance still escaped him. Athene had more than once explained that Excerpts was the art of taking a phrase or sentence out of mundane context of conversation or correspondence, presenting it as a literary entity in its own right, and thereby creating a fantastic counter-context in the mind of the reader. Verbal holography, she had called it, completing his bafflement. Since the game had become fashionable a year earlier he had done his best to avoid it.
“Very good, Athene,” a woman’s voice said in the dimness, “but how about this?” New words appeared in the air, hovering near the roof of the dhome: ALL I KNOW IS WHAT I READ IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIAS.
Two more signs flashed up almost immediately, one in red, the other in topaz: WASN’T THAT TOUGH ABOUT ROMEO AND JULIET? and WE KEEP THAT ROOM BRICKED UP SPECIALLY FOR YOU.
Carewe regarded them stoically over the rim of his glass, then decided to fight back. He took a full bottle of liquor in each hand and moved around the guests filling glasses to the brim and urging people to drink up. Within a few minutes the quantity of neat spirit he had taken combined with his tiredness, hunger and the flashing images of words to project him into a world of spatial incoherence. RADIUS IS THE ONLY WORD THAT MEANS RADIUS, a shimmering sign told him as he sat down amid a vaguely seen group on the floor. OFF-HAND, another one asked him, WOULD YOU SAY I HAVE ANY RESEMBLANCE TO AN OTTER? He took another long drink and tried to tune in on a low conversation close by.
“… most of my wives want me to quit work and live at home on the dowries. They say my working all day makes them tired.”
“Sounds like a sort of couvade in reverse, with them pretending to have labor pains.”
“Yeah, but I’m waiting till they break out in psychosomatic paychecks.”
Carewe blocked the conversation out again and looked around to see what Athene was doing. AIN’T IT HELL? an electric blue sign demanded, HERE IT IS CHRISTMAS AND US OUT HERE CHASING A STAR. He saw Athene sitting alone, silhouetted in the light from the kitchen area. She was laughing delightedly at an Excerpt, apparently undisturbed by the scene they had had earlier. m> All right, he thought, if that’s the way … A sign got in the way, scrambling his mind. PEOPLE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO VISIT PEOPLE AT CHRISTMAS-PEOPLE SHOULD VISIT THEM. He closed his eyes but jerked them open at an extra-loud shout of laughter. THINK HOW MUCH SOONER THE WEST WOULD HAVE BEEN WON IF WAGON WHEELS HAD GONE ROUND THE RIGHT WAY.
“Hold on,” Carewe said irritably to someone near him. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a reference to the movies we see at the Historical … Oh, you aren’t in that, are you?” Vic Navarro said.
“No.”
“Well, in old-style movies the action of the camera shutter often caused a strobe effect so that the spokes of wagon wheels seemed to be turning the wrong way.”
“And that’s what everybody’s laughing at?”
“Will, old son!” Navarro clapped him on the shoulder. “Have another drink.”
Carewe did as he was told and beyond the private, friendly universe in his glass the colored signs shivered and swam and swooped until they ran together in his consciousness … FILL ME IN ON GOD … WELL, HERE I GO FOR MY RATION OF BOOT POLISH … ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE A NONENTITY OUT OF ME? … THAT’S THE ONE I SHOT THE SPIDER WITH . . I DON’T MIND BEING POLITE IF iT SAVES ME MONEY … “As far as I’m concerned,” somebody was saying, “immortality came too late because we have no pioneers like the Wrights who can be preserved beyond their natural spans to appreciate what they started …” IN A SYRUP-WADING SEQUENCE AT THE MOMENT … HE PROBABLY DIED IN SELF-DEFENSE DEATH IS NATURE’S WAY OF TELLING US TO SLOW DOWN…
“Just a minute!” Carewe snorted painfully into his drink. “That last one is funny. Doesn’t that disqualify it or something?”
“Good old Will,” Navarro whispered.
“If you’re allowed to put up funny ones, I’m going to play too.” Carewe said recklessly, looking around for a projector. May Rattray and Vert were grappling determinedly behind him, obviously having lost interest in the game. Carewe took May’s projector, studied the keyboard for a moment and began composing an Excerpt. He floated the words across the smoky air of the dhome: DEATH STOPS BAD BREATH INSTANTLY.
“That’s too much like the last one,” Hermione Snedden said, looming redly on his left. “Besides, you just made it up.”
“I di
dn’t!” Carewe was triumphant. “I heard it on a tridi show.”
“That rules it out then.”
“Don’t waste your breath, Hermione,” Athene called. “Will d7;t enjoy a game unless he is breaking the rules.”
“Thank you, my darling,” Carewe said with an exaggerated salaam in her direction. You and I play another game, he thought savagely, and I’m going to break the rules in that too.
In the morning, with the defeated ghost of a hangover tremoring along his nerves, he felt ashamed of his performance at Athene’s party—but his determination to hurt her had not lessened.
III
The two hypodermic guns were in a black case, nested in traditional purple velvet, and one of them had red adhesive tape wrapped around the barrel. Hyron Barenboim tapped the marked cylinder with a finely manicured finger.
“This is yours, Willy,” he said soberly. “We put the shot in an absolutely standard gun so there’d be no hint of anything unusual for anyone to pick up afterwards. Take the tape off when you’ve used it.”
Carewe nodded. “I see.” He closed the case with a snap and slipped it into his pouch.
“Well, that’s that. Now, you’re going to be away in the mountains for three days on your … ah … second honeymoon, and I’ve arranged things so that when you get back there’ll be a request from the chief of the biopoiesis lab for you to check some procedures at Randal’s Creek in person. I’d say we have everything neatly tied up, wouldn’t your Barenboim leaned back in the big chair and his stomach rounded upwards through the pleats of his blouse. His hairless face, behind two centuries of composure, was smooth and inscrutable as that of a ceramic Buddha.
“It all looks good to me, Hy.”
“It ought to—you’re a very lucky boy, Willy. What did your wife think when you told her?”
“She just couldn’t believe it.” Carewe laughed, making it sound as natural as possible. It was four days since he had tried breaking the news to Athene and from that moment they had both been trapped in a fast-hardening amber of bitterness, unable to move closer to each other, unable to communicate…. His own attitude was childish, Carewe knew, but he wanted to punish Athene for having bared his soul, to make her pay for the crime of knowing him better than he knew himself. And, by the inexorable illogic of marital in-fighting, the only way he should do it was by proving her wrong—even though she was right. He was not going to tell Athene about the development of E.80, knowing he could later justify his action to her on grounds of the need for utter secrecy.
“All right, Willy. I’m leaving everything to you now—you’d better go over to your office and not communicate with me again for the time being. Either Manny or I will talk to you when you get back.”
Carewe stood up. “I haven’t thanked you …”
“There’s no need, Willy, no need at all. Have a good trip.” Barenboim was still smiling when the door of the suite slid across to shut him from view. Carewe went back to his office and locked the door. He sat down at his desk, took the black case from his pouch, set it in front of him and began inspecting the hinges. They were designed to allow the lid to spring open a full right angle from the base, but by carefully bending the alloy around them with a screwdriver he succeeded in altering their geometry so that the lid opened through a smaller angle. Satisfied with his work, he stripped the red tape from the gun containing the E.80 and placed it in the outermost niche.
The blue waters of Lake Orkney vapored gently in the afternoon sunshine. Stepping down from the vertijet, Carewe breathed deeply as he surveyed the snowy slopes, the toy-like pines and the bright pastel curvatures of the Orkney Regal hotel in the distance. Because of the cold front affecting most of the western states, the jet’s address system had announced proudly, the resort manager had gone to the expense of calling in the Weather Control Bureau to set up a lenticular field over the lake. Looking upwards into the empty blueness—which, in spite of the absence of spatial referents, gave the impression of curious distortion—Carewe felt as though he were inside an antique glass snowstorm ornament.
He turned to Athene as they walked into the airport building among a group of passengers. “What do they call those old glass balls with miniature snowflakes in them?”
“I don’t know if they have a special name. Olga Hickey has several in her collection and she calls them snow motiles, but I think motile is an adjective.” Athene, too, was looking around the valley with interest and her tones were the most relaxed he had heard her use since the night they had quarreled. Her color was high and she was wearing a new cerise coat which, he suddenly realized, was similar to the one she had worn on their honeymoon ten years earlier. Was this a signal?
“I managed to get the same room,” he said impulsively, discarding his intention to let it come as a later surprise.
Her eyebrows arched slightly. “But how did you remember? Oh, I suppose the hotel was able to look up the room number for you.”
“No. I remembered it myself.”
“Really?”
“The way I remember everything about those two weeks.” He caught Athene’s arm and turned her to face him. Several women brushed past them impatiently.
“Oh, Will,” she breathed. “I’m sorry. Those things I said …”
Her words were food and drink to him. “Forget it,” he replied, gorging himself. “Everything you said was true, anyway.”
“But I had no right.”
“You had. We’re really married, you and I—remember?”
She came to him with open mouth and he sealed it with his own, breathing her breath, while other passengers swept past them. Athene was the first to break free, but she held his arm as they moved into the building amid watchful, appraising faces. There was not as-other funkie in sight, he discovered. The scattering of people in the arrivals area were either cools, who watched with practiced disinterest, or women with tautly amused eyes.
“What’s happened to me?” he whispered. “I’m behaving like a teen-age ram.”
“It’s all right, darling.”
“Yeah, but what an exhibition! Let’s get to the hotel.” During the ride down to the lake shore on the old-style cable car Carewe wondered if it was possible for a man of his age to be overcome with sheer contentment. This was why one-to-one marriages had survived and still had meaning, even at the end of the 22nd Century. The simple fact, often heard but now fully understood for the first time, was that a relationship could yield only as much as one put into it. He sucked sunlight into his lungs, and allowed his hand to trace the rectangular outline of the small flat case in his pouch as he tried to come to terms with the realities of immortality. One shot each and—with care—Athene and he need not die. He searched within himself for some trace of the exultation which ought to accompany the thought, but there was a strange blackness. It was all a question of relativity. Born into the starving India of two centuries earlier he would have accepted a life expectancy of twenty-seven years, and been overjoyed if some benign power had unexpectedly guaranteed him seventy. Born into the complacent bitch society of the 22nd Century he regarded indefinitely prolonged life as a birthright, a social benefit different only in degree from something like industrial injury payments. It was said that the race’s creative genius had stultified —certainly no intellectual giants had been nurtured on lavish allotments of time—but perhaps there had also been an attenuation of the emotions, the colors of life running thin in the ichors of eternity.
He glanced sideways at Athene and renewed his reasons for wanting to live forever. At thirty-six she was on a peak of superb good health, a peak which the biostats would convert to an endless plateau. Sitting gazing through the cable car’s windows with rapt attention, she absorbed all his senses until there seemed to be an entire universe called Athene. Once, when she smiled at some secret memory, a chance attitude of her head showed him the inner surfaces of her teeth, and they were translucent in the sunlight. He noted, catalogued and filed the discovery, like an observer of the
outer universe recording the appearance of a nova. It came to him that Athene looked her age, looked thirty-six, yet she also seemed exactly as she had been when they were married ten years earlier—which was impossible. What then were the precise physical changes? Striving to be clinical, he noted a slight thinning of the cheeks, the beginnings of a fatty deposit on the inside of the upper eyelid which in time would develop a yellowish tinge. Abruptly Carewe reached a decision. His plan had been that they would take the shots on the last evening of their stay at Lake Orkney, but the delay suddnly seemed intolerable. He could not permit Athene to age by even one more hour.
#8220;Stop it, Will,” she said.
“Stop what?”
“Staring at me like that in public.” Her cheeks reddened slightly.
“I don’t mind if people see me.”
“Neither do I, but it does something to me—so stop it.”
“You’re the boss,” he said in pretended huffiness. She took his hand and held it during the rest of the swaying, jolting ride down to the lakeside. He was briefly tempted to sacrifice his own self-gratification and the perfection of the moment by making a fresh attempt to convince her of the reality of E.80 and all it meant, but the feeling passed. This vacation was going to be the best of their lives, and he was still hungry for the Athene who would exist, albeit ever so briefly, when she believed he had proved his faith in the non-physical aspect of their love. The game would have to go on until they were on the point of returning to Three Springs.
The boisterous air from the lake invaded Carewe’s lungs as he stepped down from the car and helped Athene to alight. They elected to walk the short distance to the hotel, sending their baggage ahead on the guest pick-up. Athene talked easily and happily during the walk, but Carewe’s mind was wholly occupied, filled with a sense of imminence, now that the crucial event was so close. Supposing E.80 was not all that Barenboim claimed it to be? Supposing he really was about to tie off? He went through the formalities of checking in without being aware of what he was doing, and made two mistakes in following the direction arrows which, activated by the nearness of his key, illuminated the way to their suite. Ten minutes later, in the still familiar bedroom with its view of diamond-sewn waters, he took the hypodermic case out of his pouch and opened it. Athene was hanging her clothes in a closet, but she heard the faint sound and turned to face him. Shadows of a million tomorrows played across her face.