Orbit 8 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  Sonya had never formed the habit of protesting the decisions of fate, although once when she was much, much younger she had assisted a male friend to distribute mimeographed handbills complaining of the indignity of death and the excretory functions—a short girl with blond braids and chino pants, you saw her—but that had been only a favor. Whatever the handbills said, she accepted those things. She accepted losing Crane Wessleman too, but at night when she was trying to go to sleep, she would sometimes think of Crane Wessleman among The Things That Might Have Been. She did not know that the partner’s wife was dead or that the partner had moved to Bermuda. Nor did she know how they had first gotten her name. She thought that she was not called again because of something—a perfectly innocent thing which everyone had forgotten in five minutes—she had said to the partner’s wife. She regretted it, and tried to devise ways, in the event that she was ever asked again, of making up for it.

  It was not merely that Crane Wessleman was rich and widowed, although it was a great deal that. She liked him, knowing happily and secretly as she did that he was hard to like; and, deeper, there was the thought of something else: of opening a new chapter, a wedding, flowers, a new last name, a not dying as she was. And then four months after the last game Crane Wessleman himself called her.

  He asked her to have dinner with him, at his home; but he asked in a way that made it clear he assumed she possessed means of transportation of her own. It was to be in a week.

  She borrowed, reluctantly and with difficulty, certain small items of wearing apparel from distant friends, and when the evening came she took a bus. You and I would have called it a helicopter, you understand, but Sonya called it a bus, and the company that operated it called it a bus, and most important, the driver called it a bus and had the bus driver mentality, which is not a helicopter pilot mentality at all. It was the ascendant heir of those cheap wagons Boswell patronized in Germany. Sonya rode for half because she had a Golden Age card, and the driver resented that.

  When she got off the bus she walked a considerable distance to get to the house. She had never been there before, having always met Crane Wessleman at the former partner’s, and so she did not know exactly where it was although she had looked it up on a map. She checked the map from time to time as she went along, stopping under the infrequent streetlights and waving to the television cameras mounted on them so that if the policeman happened to be looking at the time and saw her he would know that she was all right.

  Crane Wessleman’s house was large, on a lot big enough to be called an estate without anyone’s smiling; the house set a hundred yards back from the street. A Tudor house, as Sonya remarked with some pleasure—but there was too much shrubbery, and it had been allowed to grow too large. Sonya thought roses would be nicer, and as she came up the long front walk she put pillar roses on the gas lantern posts Crane Wessleman’s dead wife had caused to be set along it. A brass plate on the front door said:

  C. WESSLEMAN

  AND

  KITTEE

  and when Sonya saw that she knew.

  If it had not been for the long walk she would have turned around right there and gone back down the path past the gas lamps; but she was tired and her legs hurt, and perhaps she would not really have gone back anyway. People like Sonya are often quite tough underneath.

  She rang the bell and Kittee opened the door. Sonya knew, of course, that it was Kittee, but perhaps you or I might not. We would have said that the door was opened by a tall, naked girl who looked a good deal like Julie Newmar; a deep-chested, broad-shouldered girl with high cheekbones and an unexpressive face. Sonya had forgotten about Julie Newmar; she knew that this was Kittee, and she disliked the thing, and the name Crane Wessleman had given it with the whining double e at the end. She said in a level, friendly voice, “Good evening, Kittee. My name is Sonya. Would you like to smell my fingers?” After a moment Kittee did smell her fingers, and when Sonya stepped through the door Kittee moved out of the way to let her in. Sonya closed the door herself and said, “Take me to Master, Kittee,” loudly enough, she hoped, for Crane Wessleman to hear. Kittee walked away and Sonya followed her, noticing that Kittee was not really completely naked. She wore a garment like a short apron put on backward.

  The house was large and dirty, although the air filtration units would not allow it to be dusty. There was an odor Sonya attributed to Kittee, and the remains of some of Crane Wessleman’s meals, plates with dried smears still on them, put aside and forgotten.

  Crane Wessleman had not dressed, but he had shaved and wore a clean new robe and stockings as well as slippers. He and Sonya chatted, and Sonya helped him unpack the meal he had ordered for her and put it in the microwave oven. Kittee helped her set the table, and Crane Wessleman said proudly, “She’s wonderful, isn’t she.” And Sonya answered, “Oh yes, and very beautiful. May I stroke her?” and ran her fingers through Kittee’s soft yellow hair.

  Then Crane Wessleman got out a copy of a monthly magazine called Friends, put out for people who owned them or were interested in buying, and sat beside Sonya as they ate and turned the pages for her, pointing out the ads of the best producers and reading some of the poetry put at the ends of the columns. “You don’t know, really, what they were anymore,” Crane Wessleman said. “Even the originators hardly know.” Sonya looked at the naked girl and Crane Wessleman said, “I call hear Kittee, but the germ plasm may have come from a gibbon or a dog. Look here.”

  Sonya looked, and he showed her a picture of what seemed to be a very handsome young man with high cheekbones and an unexpressive face. “Look at that smile,” Crane Wessleman said, and Sonya did and noticed that the young man’s lips were indeed drawn back slightly, “Kittee does that sometimes too,” Crane Wessleman said. Sonya was looking at him instead of at Kittee, noticing how the fine lines had spread across his face and the way his hands shook.

  After that Sonya came about once a week for a year. She learned the way perfectly, and the bus driver grew accustomed to her, and she invented a pet of her own, an ordinary imaginary chow dog, so that she could take a certain amount of leftover meat home.

  The next to last time, Crane Wessleman pointed out another very handsome young man in Friends, a young man who cost a great deal more than Sonya’s income for a year, and said, “After I die I am going to see to it that my executor buys one like this for Kittee. I want her to be happy.” Then, Sonya felt, he looked at her in a most significant way; but the last time she went he seemed to have forgotten all about it and only showed Sonya a photograph he had taken of himself with Kittee sitting beside him very primly, and the remote control camera he had used, and told her how he had ordered it by mail.

  The next week Crane Wessleman did not call at all, and when it was two days past the usual time Sonya tried to call him, but no one answered. Sonya got her purse, and boarded the bus, and searched the area around Crane Wessleman’s front door until she found a key hidden under a stone beneath some of the shrubbery,,

  Crane Wessleman was dead, sitting in his favorite chair. He had been dead, Sonya decided, for several days, and Kittee had eaten a portion of his left leg. Sonya said aloud, “You must have been very hungry, weren’t you, Kittee, locked in here with no one to feed you.”

  In the kitchen she found a package of frozen mouton Sainte-Menebould, and when it was warm she unwrapped it and set it on the dining-room table, calling, “Kittee! Kittee! Kittee!” and wondering all the time whether Crane Wessleman might not have left her a small legacy after all.

  <>

  * * * *

  LIZ HUFFORD

  TABLETS OF STONE

  After months in flight, the crew of the merchant ship was happy to land almost anywhere: Galen was an exception. When they learned that a repair stop on the planet was unavoidable, morale dropped. “Solitary confinement” was the captain’s wry comment to Lorn Newent, the other unmarried crewman. Lorn, the ship’s communications man, contacted the stationmaster just as he had three years befo
re. He focused the image on the screen.

  “Hello...”

  This time the station operator was female. She looked very young, and pretty enough for Lorn to term fragile. He usually described her race as scrawny nondescripts.

  “Communicator Newent. Have received your request: permission granted. We sympathize with your mechanical difficulties. Three weeks is an extended tour; however, regulations must be maintained. Please order the crew to remain within the restricted area. We apologize for the limited facilities, but unfortunately no more space is available. Any requests may be registered with me. We will, of course, expect reimbursement for the extra two-week occupancy.”

  “Yes,” he said, struggling with the language, “we are prepared to unload three times the usual amount of nutrient.”

  The tip of her small tongue appeared for a moment at corner of her mouth. She wouldn’t be half bad if you fattened her up a little.

  “I have a request,” Lorn said as he leaned across the desk.

  The girl’s shoulders tightened as she refused to acknowledge him.

  “I said I have a request.”

  She turned, unsure in her response and angry because of it.

  “Mr. Newent, you always have a request. My position requires that I serve the crew. I am not personally responsible for your individual happiness.”

  “Would you like to be?” he asked with his most earnest expression.

  “Would I like to be what?” she replied. “Mr. Newent, for a communications expert you are quite inept. I have no idea what the literal content of this conversation is!”

  “That’s all right,” he muttered apologetically, “I don’t think it has any. It’s all subjective: I like to talk to you.”

  She blushed. “It’s just that I have other work to do. I’m planning the use of this field until it is again needed for a landing.”

  “That pushed for room?” he asked. “I thought the population was being controlled.”

  “For the moment,” she said, “but only for the moment.”

  “About my request,” he continued, “would you like to use the recreational facilities with me?”

  She frowned.

  “Okay, okay, you’re very busy. I just thought sometime ...” He paused, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and looked toward the climbing white housing modules and narrow, teeming streets of Galen. “I don’t suppose you could give me an ashore?”

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Well, maybe sometime we could walk down to the fence and talk to the guards or do sit-ups together in the exercise room.” He turned to leave. She watched him, glanced at the papers on her desk, and rose.

  “Mr. Newent. .

  * * * *

  Lorn reached for her hand and again she was angry.

  “That’s immoral, Lorn,” she said.

  “Immoral,” he chuckled. He was beginning to develop his own theory of relativity.

  “Yes,” she replied firmly, “it would be the beginning of evil. If you touch my hand, you will want to touch more of me. If you touch more of me, I would probably want you to touch more of me. Do not think that I am foolishly ignorant of these things, but it would be evil I would deserve death.”

  “Death!” Lorn was suddenly alert.

  “How do you stop evil on your planet?” she asked.

  * * * *

  Lorn watched as the planet Galen dotted, specked, and finally winked its way into oblivion. He wondered how much hell he’d catch. At least there would be no fine. He had told Tessca he would not see her until she had been discovered. He would deny knowledge of her act: she would claim it was her own idea. No one could prove him accomplice. The crew was composed of three couples, the captain, and himself. Surely sympathy would lie with the “star-crossed lovers.”

  “Lorn!”

  He whirled around. “Captain?”

  “Tessca’s on board.”

  Lorn screwed up his face and tilted it quizzically. “Sir?”

  “Come off it, Lorn,” the captain said, “you know damn well she’s here.”

  “Sir, you know I wasn’t anxious to leave, but surely you don’t think...”

  “Like hell I don’t. You know we carry extra supplies, although not many, I assure you. Authorized Personnel Only,” The captain drummed his fingers on the regulations book. “I have a professional crew and you bring in a pretty little bitch from a crowded, worthless planet we know next to nothing about. Now I could understand if it were one of those broads from...”

  He paused to reflect on some enjoyable leave spent on a still-unnamed planet. “Still, she was a charming little thing. I should have said something, but no, I thought, the kid needs a bit of fun. Didn’t think you’d do a fool thing like this. I can’t throw her off. We’re not turning back. By God...”

  The captain bit the side of his mouth. A moment passed before he spoke.

  “I suppose you’ll want me to do the honors.”

  Lorn looked at the darkness where Galen had been.

  “Well, if you would, sir.”

  “Your ways are very strange, Lorn,” she said. “He says those words and it’s all right. I will not be evil.”

  “That’s right,” Lorn smiled.

  “We never tried that,” she said.

  “You would have been a frustrated old maid if it weren’t for me.”

  Lorn placed his hands on her shoulders and steered her to the bunk.

  * * * *

  Tessca was pregnant. The captain shuddered at the thought of explaining two stowaways, but the imminence of life renewed everyone’s spirits. Everyone but Tessca. Pregnancy did not agree with her. Her face was haggard. She moved slowly and complained of being tired.

  “I am going to be evil, aren’t I, Lorn?” she whimpered.

  “Evil,” he said, “no, you’re just the most wretched moralist I’ve ever seen. I’ve explained to you our custom. We are married. That means it won’t be evil. You should be happy to have a child.”

  “A child,” she said, thoughtfully pulling her hair. “But I still look and feel to myself very evil.”

  He pulled her on his lap.

  “I love you, Tessca.”

  When Tessca gave birth, two of the wives assisted. When she saw it was evil, Tessca let herself die. The women shrieked their way from the birthplace.

  LOGBOOK ENTRY: “There were about fifty of the tiny infants. From what we deduced about Tessca’s aging process, their approximate growth rate was calculated. The oxygen will not hold out. By the time we realized what must be done some of them could crawl. The women could not bring themselves to help us. We have not finished the task. Some of them have found their way into the nutrient chambers.

  “Lorn has hung himself.”

  <>

  * * * *

  ROBERT F. YOUNG

  STARSCAPE WITH FRIEZE OF DREAMS

  The orbital shipyards of Altair IV are both a source of beauty and a source of prosperity to the planet’s inhabitants., The beauty derives from the reflective quality of the orbiting spacewhales that are being converted into spaceships; the prosperity, from the employment afforded by the conversion process and from its perennial need of supplies.

  Although the number of these huge, asteroidlike creatures varies, there are seldom fewer than twelve of them in orbit at any given time, for generally as soon as one of them becomes a full-fledged ship and is deorbited, another arrives to take its place. The night skies of Altair IV are the richer for their presence. Like bright Venuses they rise at uneven intervals in the east, climb rapidly to zenith, then slide down the dark slope of the heavens and set in the west. The interested observer can watch the passage of these lovely moonstars the whole night through, and speculate, if he is so inclined, on how far back into the past they have traveled; for the present as every schoolboy knows, is only the surface of the space-time sea, and a living spacewhale can dive beneath this surface and sojourn in times past, can return, if it so desires, to the primordial moment when th
e cosmos was born.

  The shipyards are sometimes referred to as the Spacewhale Graveyard, but in the connotative sense of the term this is a misnomer. Spacewhales do not come here of their own free will or because they wish to die. They are brought here by the whalers who have pursued them and by the Jonahs who have deganglioned them. They are dead upon arrival—

  Or at least they are presumed to be.

  * * * *

  The curtain rises upon a man who once upon a time was a Jonah himself. Name: John Starfinder. Race: Naturalized Terraltairan. Occupation: Drive Tissueman.