Orbit 4 - Anthology

by Edited by Damon Night

  And so he learned to speak again from Erna, who had once so diffidently played cards with him in his old person. He watched her lips form the syllables, and from the syllables his attention was drawn to the lips that formed them. How was it possible he had associated with her for a year and never seen her at all, save as someone to be sent or summoned? Why, she was lovely, brimming with whimsical grace, warm and attentive.

  Beware, whispered old experience, drawing him back into the boat. The sea is the sea. Today the sun shines on it, but remember the darkness.

  Oh, but life is so sweet again! All these senses—surely they should be tried for their own sakes. This body has so many potentials besides just carrying around an ego and a calculator.

  Hormones, came the ironic reply. The subtle secretions of a new set of endocrines. Did I endure that year for a pretty hillbilly?

  How marvelous she is! These textures, these fragrances, this animation!

  Even Paul seemed to consider her a more appropriate companion for him (youth to youth, perhaps), for days went by when Andrew did not see him at all except for the daily blood-count. He did not care. He was too charmed with the small pleasures of each succeeding day, the exercises he could do in bed, shaving, eating (real food again, meat and fruit and vegetables), looking at Erna.

  “Oh, but I want to get my feet on the ground,” he said moving his legs restlessly. “I want to walk out in the meadow.”

  Erna had been sitting in the open window, obviously longing to go outside almost as much as she wanted to stay with him. Now she turned with a grin. “Let’s ask Paul,” she said, slipping from the window.

  The next morning Paul gave him a pill and prepared him for the final operation. He awoke at noon to find himself free at last, with a small bandage on his navel, and the still sinister form of his past gone forever.

  During the following week he learned to walk again, first simply getting in and out of bed, or standing up, then wobbling around the room holding fast to things. His strength increased rapidly and in five days he was able to walk up and down the corridor. A week later he was ready to try the meadow and, leaning on Erna’s round arm, he went slowly out through the daisies and beebalm and wild chicory.

  “Not too far the first time,” said Erna.

  “Just to the pines,” he begged, so they went down and into the shade of the pines where she helped him to sit down to rest on the brown needles. He was no sooner securely on the ground than he tightened his arm around her shoulders and dragged her down to him and kissed her on the mouth. After one start of surprise, she threw her arms around him and very happily kissed him back.

  He laughed. “I knew it would be good to kiss you!”

  “How could you know!”

  “Because I’ve watched your mouth for weeks. It’s so sweet and fresh.” He let her sit up beside him. “And so am I! No old dental plumbing! No tobacco stains! No jaded tissues!” And he touched her cheek with his fingertips, relishing the texture of silky skin.

  He remembered the first sight he’d had of her. Wild and shy as a deer. And like a deer, confidence made her playful. What did it matter if she was a mountain girl? What did education matter? She spoke well enough. Paul’s influence, perhaps. But she was young and pretty and healthy and bright. What more could a man want? Besides, she was guileless. Nothing haughty there, nothing combative. With a girl like this you could be two against the world instead of each other. Marriage was one thing he’d never tried.

  “Erna,” he said, “I realize I’m too old for you. I’m sixty-eight, after all. But I want to marry you anyway.”

  Her bright eyes looked into his, a little abashed. Then she grinned. She had such a fetching open-hearted smile. “You’ve got it backwards! I’m ancient compared to you. You’ll only be two months tomorrow!”

  They laughed and hugged each other and then she leaned contentedly on his chest and tucked her head underneath his chin. “I’d love to marry you, Andrew. Only do you suppose we could live here in the woods?”

  “I’ll buy you two thousand acres of your very own and you can fence out the hunters and tame all the varmints.”

  “I’d like that!” She lifted her head and looked into his face. “How did you know?”

  Andrew, holding her in his arms, smiled dreamily out at the meadow. “I seem to know a lot of things all of a sudden. Maybe I never had time before.”

  And without a backward glance, there under the pine trees, he left the dinghy and slipped into the welcoming sea.

  That evening after dinner, Paul came in, listened to his heart and said he was doing very well,

  “Sit down,” said Andrew.

  Erna was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him. Paul sat down in the chair. “It’s time,” he said cryptically.

  “Well,” said Andrew, “I feel it’s time, anyway.” He glanced gratefully at Erna. “I doublecrossed you, Paul.”

  “That was too long ago to think about,” said Paul.

  “No. I mean, I did it again. I said I’d give you half of everything I had. Why didn’t you ask about it? Why didn’t you insist on seeing it legalized before you went through with this?”

  Paul looked at him in silence.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway,” Andrew went on. “I’ve been thinking about a great many things. I regret so much. Half of what I have is more than you’d ever need. But I want to reestablish what we had, what I wrecked thirty-five years ago. I know I can trust you, but I want you to know you can trust me, now. I thought we could work out some way for you to be joint owner with me of everything. It belongs to you probably more than it does to me, anyway.”

  “It won’t work,” said Paul.

  “Yes, it will,” said Andrew. “I’ve been going over it in my mind and I’ve a good idea how to go about it. I’m going to bring my lawyers up here and we’ll put the whole thing on paper once and for all. I know you aren’t interested in money, but don’t tell me you’d turn down unlimited funds for your laboratory.”

  Paul smiled his habitual thin smile. “It would be very nice, but it won’t work.” He glanced at Andrew wearily, with a touch of his old irony. “You see, Andrew, your personality has changed. Oh, I’m almost certain you’re the same entity, but there are dozens of significant little differences that make you a human being instead of a monster.”

  “I suppose I should be grateful . . .”

  “But there are ramifications,” Paul continued. “I mean, you haven’t asked how you can prove your identity. Can you make your lawyers believe you’re a sixty-eight-year-old man? Will they believe you?”

  Andrew blinked at him. “We’ll do it by mail,” he said.

  Paul took his notepad and pencil from his breast pocket. He laid them carefully on the table beside Andrew. “Sign your name.”

  Still gazing at him in bewilderment, Andrew picked up the pad, curled his fingers around the pencil. Then he bent his head and concentrated on the absurdly difficult task of writing his name. A childish scrawl met his eyes. He looked up at Paul, startled. “But I’ll learn to write again! A little practice . . .”

  “Certainly.” Paul nodded. “But the difference between your present personality and your—’late’—personality, would make any graphologist testify against your claim.” He paused, then added softly. “And then, doubtless many of your associates are quick men to grasp an opportunity. Can you trust them not to find it to their interest to deny your identity?”

  Slowly, Andrew leaned back on his pillow. It was true enough. The high ridges of industrial finance had their quota of predators. Even as he digested his predicament, he felt the slow stirring of his own old instinct, rousing to prowl again. And with it came the old cunning: you bare your fangs when you have power, but while you’re jockeying for it, you go quietly, head down. “Well,” he said. He glanced at Erna who was watching him with wide-eyed concern. So sweet, so desirable. But that would have to wait awhile. “What’ll I do?” He lifted his hands and looked at them. “No fingerpri
nts that are any use. But they’re good again, Paul. Can you give me a job here for a while?”

  Paul smiled suddenly, with relief, it seemed. “That’s an idea. Then it really would be like old times.” He rose. “Well, we have to get up to the barn. I’m delighted with the way you’ve come along, Andrew. And very happy with the way you’ve taken this turn of events.”

  “You did what you said you would,” said Andrew. “I’m the luckiest man in history. And if I hadn’t tried to cheat you, I wouldn’t have cheated myself, would I?”

  Paul sighed. “I admit it. It was my breaking point. The idea of letting you cut yourself off without a penny was irresistible. But now I’m genuinely sorry, Andrew.”

  “Forget it.”

  Erna slipped off the bed and followed Paul out, touching Andrew’s hand as she passed. He listened to their footsteps going down the corridor, then the soft closing of the door as they left the building to go up to the barn. After that, he lay still, thinking and thinking, while contempt and rage slowly accumulated force. At last he snaked quietly out of bed and stood barefoot on the floor, his entire being poised, cold, feral.

  Work for you again! Work for you! Why, you stupid vindictive old ass! To annihilate the fruits of a lifetime for a moment’s spite! You dried-up academician! You might be satisfied to spend sixty years with your eyes plastered to a microscope but I have other fish to fry. And this time I won’t waste fifteen years getting started.

  He knew they would be at the barn for an hour at least. He slipped down the corridor, past the operating room, into the laboratory. It was dark, save for one small light above Paul’s desk. In a moment his eyes adjusted as he went softly and slowly down the long aisle, examining Paul’s equipment as he went, touching things here and there, recognizing, remembering as the knowledge seeped back with his other reviving powers. Halfway down the long continuous bench, he stopped. There, in a glass cabinet, in front of several rows of similar little vials, was the one with the darning needle stuck through the cork. He looked at it impassively.

  “Will he be all right?”

  Erna’s voice. He froze.

  “Are you in love with him?”

  At the sound of Paul’s voice, Andrew realized he was listening to an open intercom between the laboratory and the barn. He looked about for it, then spotted it a little to his left where he had passed it in the dark.

  “Guess I am”

  Now he could hear, faintly in the background, the nicker of a horse and the intermittent whining of a dog. He relaxed and turned back to the cabinet, his eyes fixing on the vial.

  A chuckle from Paul. “He’s going to make it.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  It was worth millions, that vial. Untold millions. Every fortune in the world would come tumbling into his lap. The idle rich, politicians, athletes, movie stars . . .

  “The rats, Erna”

  Stealthily, Andrew slid open the door of the cabinet. His hands closed over the vial. Then he paused, assessing the other little bottles ranked on the shelves. Did they all contain the same fluid?

  “Which ones? The first two died,”

  “Ah, but they served their purpose! If they hadn’t remembered the maze after processing, we never would have suspected we had preserved the same entity”

  Andrew turned the vial in his fingers. Well, then. Perhaps I shall work for you awhile, after all. Long enough to observe, to learn. I can go whenever I’m ready.

  “But the next four rats forgot the maze and had to learn it all over again. It’s been so in every case, Erna. The ones that remember the maze are the ones whose blood production fails after a few weeks. It’s as if the entity had to make a massive realignment to survive. I’m happy to say Andrew’s a changed man”

  Andrew, hearing Paul’s dry reassuring chuckle, felt the vial grow heavy in his hand.

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  * * * *

  Carol Emshwiller studied art at the University of Michigan, met Ed Emshwiller and married him, went to France on a Fulbright, and did not even think of writing until she was almost thirty. Her stories have an enigmatic simplicity. Like walnut shells with landscapes inside, they achieve a curious, and habit-forming, inversion of perspective. Her stories have appeared recently in Cavalier, City Sampler, Transatlantic Review, and in Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions.

  * * * *

  ANIMAL

  By Carol Emshwiller

  The first day of the animal the sun came up yellow over fog. A woman from the Century Arms Apartments walked her three dogs early but hurried back within ten minutes. Her breath was visible. Later on a man, carrying a cane and wearing a tan overcoat, paused at the corner of the small park where the woman had walked the dogs and buttoned up his collar. The sun of the first day of the animal had, by now, turned orange and the man’s breath was not visible. The animal, as might be expected on his first morning, slept late. At eleven he was given a bowl of shredded wheat, a glass of milk and two slices of buttered toast but he refused to eat any of it. This was expected, too. He did, however, drink 16 ounces of water from a pail left in the corner for him and this was considered a very good sign.

  He was found, of course, in the deepest part of the forest.

  The second day of the animal all the windows frosted over. People woke up early and even the night watchmen went home whistling. Something in the air. The barometer was rising. The man of the tan overcoat took ten deep breaths, blowing out alternately from the right and left nostril. The woman who loves dogs enjoyed the cold on this, the second morning. She has never been married and she has a history of dating unsuitable men in spite of the dignity and self-assurance of her manner.

  The animal still does not eat. He has watched out the window for a long time. What is he dreaming? his keepers wonder. That confinement is a question of degree? measured less by bars than by the perspectives behind them? so the question may not be, after all: Are the doors locked? but where would they lead to once they are opened, if such a time might come? And are the answers, whatever they may be, all the freedoms he can hope for?

  It was said, on the second day, that he did not look too unhappy. At lunchtime a keeper of a particular sensitivity brought him both a grilled cheese sandwich and a hamburger so that it might be seen what his preferences were, but still he ate nothing.

  Some intelligence seems to shine in his eyes. The keepers all feel he may be conscious of some meaning in their words, no doubt interpreting them in his own way. The keepers say he may dimly understand the significance of his position in their midst. Perhaps he wishes for more elements from which to draw conclusions. One keeper feels that if he had a drum and a flute he might make some kind of music and these are supplied but he only taps his fingers on his chin.

  There’s much to do: wash him, cut his nails, clip his mane (all those curls and underneath his head is found to be the same size as everyone’s). Also his skin, under the dirt, seems like theirs except for a ruddiness probably due to constant exposure.

  There are no marks of the capture on the animal except where the ropes had rubbed into his wrists and ankles. It was said he had suffered no more than a nosebleed at the time and yet he had killed two of the hunters with his bare hands.

  They had dropped him as they entered the city early that morning. He was tied, hands and feet, to a pole and supported by four of them and they had come into the city singing rounds and swinging him jauntily. This was after the last bus had gone back to the center and after the last bus driver had gone to bed and not a taxi in sight. They had stumbled as they came down the embankment and he hit the sidewalk with the back of his head and grunted. His nose began to bleed again; however, many of the hunters had had worse than that from him so not one of them thought to apologize.

  On the third day the animal ate . . . scrambled eggs and bacon, toast, orange juice, and it was considered that the most important hurdles were over and, since the weather continued fair, it was felt by most of them that no one would object if th
e animal was allowed some fresh air in some small, nearby park, provided some pants could be put on him and kept on. Still, it was argued by a minority that this was not necessary for an animal. Others said that it wasn’t at all a philosophical question as to when and when not animals might need to wear trousers or even what might constitute animalness, but more a question of simple physiology and that anyone with eyes could answer it and, what’s more, would answer it undoubtedly in favor of pants.

  Since the keepers all dress alike in gray coveralls, it was decided that one of these would be the simplest to keep on him and, with a small suitcase combination lock at the top of the zipper, there could be no danger that the animal might remove it himself at some inappropriate time.

  The woman walks her dogs four times a day. She is tall and always wears black or white with a red hat. Father figures tempt her, hunters and keepers, men she can count on to give her advice and encouragement though one wouldn’t suspect this from her expressed attitudes.