by Damon Knight
He left Donelly sitting beside the ashes, and walked off alone into the woods.
They had a tight-knit group: three handlers, a forester, thirteen corpses. Each day they drove the forest back, with Trager in the lead. Against the Vendalian wilderness, against the blackbriars and the hard gray ironspike trees and the bulbous rubbery snap-limbs, against the tangled hostile forest, he threw his six-crew and their buzztrucks. Smaller than the automills he’d run on Skrakky, fast and airborne, complex and demanding, those were buzz-trucks. Trager ran six of them with corpse hands, a seventh with his own. Before his screaming blades and laser knives, the wall of wilderness fell each day. Donelly came behind him, pushing three of the mountain-sized rolling mills, to turn the fallen trees into lumber for Gidyon and other cities of Vendalia. Then Stevens, the third handler, with a flame-cannon to burn down stumps and melt rocks, and the soilpumps that would ready the cleared land for farming. The forester was their foreman. The procedure was a science.
Clean, hard, demanding work; Trager thrived on it by day. He grew lean, athletic; the lines of his face tightened and tanned, he grew steadily browner under Vendalia’s hot bright sun. His corpses were almost part of him, so easily did he move them, fly their buzztrucks. As an ordinary man might move a hand, a foot. Sometimes his control grew so firm, the echoes so clear and strong, that Trager felt he was not a handler working a crew at all, but rather a man with seven bodies. Seven strong bodies that rode the sultry forest winds. He exulted in their sweat.
And the evenings, after work ceased, they were good too. Trager found a sort of peace there, a sense of belonging he had never known on Skrakky. The Vendalian foresters, rotated back and forth from Gidyon, were decent enough, and friendly. Stevens was a hearty slab of a man who seldom stopped joking long enough to talk about anything serious. And Donelly, the self-conscious youth, the quiet logical voice, he became a friend. He was a good listener, empathetic, compassionate, and the new open Trager was a good talker. Something close to envy shone in Donelly’s eyes when Trager spoke of Josie. And Trager knew, or thought he knew, that Donelly was himself, the old Trager, the one before Josie who could not find the words.
In time, though, after days and weeks of talking, Donelly found his words. Then Trager listened, and shared another’s pain. And he felt good about it. He was helping; he was lending strength; he was needed.
Each night beside the ashes, the two men traded dreams. And wove a hopeful tapestry of promises and lies.
If Josie had given Trager much, she had taken something too; she had taken the curious deadness he had once had, the trick of not-thinking, the pain-blotter of his mind. On Skrakky, he had walked the corridors infrequently; the forest knew him far more often.
After the talking had stopped, after Donelly had gone to bed, that was when it would happen, when Josie would come to him in the loneliness of his tent. A thousand nights he lay there with his hands hooked behind his head, staring at the plastic tent film while he relived the night he’d told her.
He would think of it, and fight it, and lose. Then he would rise and go outside. He would walk across the clear area, into the silent looming forest, brushing aside low branches and tripping on the underbrush; he would walk until he found water. Then he would sit down, by a scum-choked lake or a gurgling stream that ran swift and oily in the moonlight. He would fling rocks into the water, hurl them hard and flat into the night to hear them when they splashed.
He would sit for hours, throwing rocks and thinking, till finally he could convince himself the sun would rise.
Gidyon: the city, heart of Vendalia, and through it of Slagg and Skrakky and New Pittsburgh and all the other corpseworlds, the harsh ugly places where men would not work and corpses had to. Great towers of black and silver metal, floating aerial sculpture that flashed in the sunlight and shone softly at night, the vast bustling spaceport where freighters rose and fell on invisible fire-wands, malls where the pavement was polished ironspike wood that gleamed a gentle grey; Gidyon.
The city with the rot. The corpse city. The meatmart.
For the freighters carried cargoes of men, criminals and derelicts and troublemakers from a dozen worlds bought with hard Vendalian cash (and there were darker rumors, of liners that had vanished mysteriously on routine tourist hops). And the soaring towers were hospitals and corpseyards, where men and women died and deadmen were born to walk anew. And all along the ironspike boardwalks were corpse-sellers’ shops and meat-houses.
The meathouses of Vendalia were far-famed. The corpses were guaranteed beautiful.
Trager sat across the avenue from one, under the umbrella of an outdoor cafe. He sipped a bittersweet wine, thought about how his leave had evaporated too quickly, and tried to keep his eyes from wandering across the street. The wine was warm on his tongue, and his eyes were restless.
Up and down the avenue, between him and the meathouse, strangers moved. Dark-faced corpse handlers from Vendalia, Skrakky, Slagg, pudgy merchants, gawking tourists from the Clean Worlds like Old Earth and Zephyr and dozens of question marks whose names and occupations and errands Trager would never know. Sitting there, drinking his wine and watching, Trager felt utterly isolated. He could not touch these people, could not reach them; he didn’t know how, it wasn’t possible. He could rise and walk out into the street and grab one, and still they would not touch. The stranger would only pull free and run. All his leave like that, all of it; he’d run through all the bars of Gidyon, forced a thousand contacts, and nothing had worked.
His wine was gone. Trager looked at the glass dully, turning it in his hands, blinking. Then he stood up and paid his bill. His hands trembled.
It had been so many years, he thought as he started across the street. Josie, he thought, forgive me.
Trager returned to the wilderness camp, and his corpses flew their buzztrucks like men gone wild. But he was strangely silent at the campfire, and he did not talk to Donelly at night. Until finally, hurt and puzzled, Donelly followed him into the forest. And found him by a languid death-dark stream, sitting on the bank with a pile of throwing stones at his feet.
T.: . . . went in .. . after all I said, all I promised. . . still I went in
D.: . . . nothing to worry. . . remember what you told me.. . keep on believing. ..
T.: . . . did believe, did … no difference . . . Josie . ..
D.:… you say I shouldn’t give up, you better not. .. repeat everything you told me, everything Josie told you . . . everybody finds someone … if they keep looking. . . give up, dead… all you need. . . openness . . . courage to look… stop feeling sorry for yourself… told me that a hundred times . ..
T.: . . . fucking lot easier to tell you than do it myself. ..
D.: . . . Greg. . . not a meathouse man … a dreamer. . . better than they are . ..
T. (sighing): . . . yeah . . . hard, though . . . why do I do this to myself?. . .
D: ... Martin rather be like you were?… not hurting, not living?. . . like . . .me!. ..
T.: … no … no .. . you're right. ..
4. THE PILGRIM, UP AND DOWN
Her name was Laurel. She was nothing like Josie, save in one thing alone. Trager loved her.
Pretty? Trager didn’t think so, not at first. She was too tall, a half foot taller than he was, and she was a bit on the heavy side, and more than a bit on the awkward side. Her hair was her best feature, her hair that was red-brown in winter and glowing blond in summer, that fell long and straight past her shoulders and did wild beautiful things in the wind. But she was not beautiful, not the way Josie had been beautiful. Although, oddly, she grew more beautiful with time, and maybe that was because she was losing weight, and maybe that was because Trager was falling in love with her and seeing her through kinder eyes, and maybe that was because he told her she was pretty and the very telling made it so. Just as Laurel told him he was wise, and her belief gave him wisdom. Whatever the reason, Laurel was very beautiful indeed after he had known her for a time.
She was five years younger than he, dean-scrubbed and innocent, shy where Josie had been assertive. She was intelligent, romantic, a dreamer; she was wondrously fresh and eager; she was painfully insecure and full of a hungry need.
She was new to Gidyon, fresh from the Vendalian outback, a student forester. Trager, on leave again, was visiting the forestry college to say hello to a teacher who’d once worked with his crew. They met in the teacher’s office. Trager had two weeks free in a city of strangers and meathouses; Laurel was alone. He showed her the glittering decadence of Gidyon, feeling smooth and sophisticated, and she was impressed.
Two weeks went quickly. They came to the last night. Trager, suddenly afraid, took her to the park by the river that ran through Gidyon and they sat together on the low stone wall by the water’s edge. Close, not touching.
“Time runs too fast,” he said. He had a stone in his hand. He flicked it out over the water, flat and hard. Thoughtfully, he watched it splash and sink. Then he looked at her. “I’m nervous,” he said, laughing. “I—Laurel. I don’t want to leave.”
Her face was unreadable. Wary? “The city is nice,” she agreed.
Trager shook his head violently. “No. No! Not the city. You. Laurel, I think I . . . well . . .”
Laurel smiled for him. Her eyes were bright, very happy. “I know,” she said.
Trager could hardly believe. He reached out, touched her cheek. She turned her head and kissed his hand. They smiled at each other.
He flew back to the forest camp to quit. “Don, Don, you’ve got to meet her,” he shouted. “See, you can do it, ’ did it, just keep believing, keep trying. I feel so goddamn good it’s obscene.”
Donelly, stiff and logical, did not know how to respond to such a flood of happiness. “What will you do?” he asked, a little awkwardly. “The arena?”
Trager laughed. “Hardly—you know how I feel. But something like that. There’s a theater near the spaceport, puts on pantomime with corpse actors. I’ve got a job there. The pay is rotten, but I’ll be near Laurel. That’s all that matters.”
They hardly slept at night. Instead they talked and cuddled and made love. The lovemaking was a joy, a game, a glorious discovery; never as good technically as the meathouse, but Trager hardly cared. He taught her to be open. He told her every secret he had, and wished he had more secrets.
“Poor Josie,” Laurel would often say at night, her body warm against his. “She doesn’t know what she missed. I’m lucky. There couldn’t be anyone else like you.”
“No,” said Trager, “I'm lucky.”
They would argue about it, laughing.
Donelly came to Gidyon and joined the theater. Without Trager the forest work had been no fun, he said. The three of them spent a lot of time together, and Trager glowed. He wanted to share his friends with Laurel, and he’d already mentioned Donelly a lot. And he wanted Donelly to see how happy he’d become, to see what belief could accomplish.
“I like her,” Donelly said, the first night after Laurel had left.
“Good,” Trager replied.
“No,” said Donelly. “Greg, I really like her.”
They spent a lot of time together.
“Greg,” Laurel said one night in bed. “I think that Don is . . . well, after me. You know.”
Trager rolled over and propped his head up on his elbow. “God,” he said.
“I don’t know how to handle it.”
“Carefully,” Trager said. “He’s very vulnerable. You’re probably the first woman he’s ever been interested in. Don’t be too hard on him. He shouldn’t have to go through the stuff I went through, you know?”
The sex was never as good as a meathouse. And after a while Laurel began to close up. More and more nights now she went to sleep after they made love; the days when they had talked till dawn were gone. Perhaps they had nothing left to say. Trager had noticed that she had a tendency to finish his stories for him. It was nearly impossible to come up with one he hadn’t already told her.
“He said that?” Trager got up out of bed, turned on a light, and sat down frowning. Laurel pulled the covers up to her chin.
“Well, what did you say?”
She hesitated. “I can’t tell you. It’s between Don and me. He said it wasn’t fair, the way I turn around and tell you everything that goes on between us, and he’s right.”
"Right! But I tell you everything. Don’t you remember what we—”
“I know, but—”
Trager shook his head. His voice lost some of its anger. “What’s going on, Laurel, huh? I’m scared, all of a sudden. I love you, remember? How can everything change so fast?”
Her face softened. She sat up and held out her arms, and the covers fell back from her full, soft breasts. “Oh, Greg,” she said. “Don’t worry. I love you, I always will, but it’s just that I love him too, I guess. You know?”
Trager, mollified, came into her arms and kissed her with fervor. Then he broke off. “Hey,” he said, with mock sternness to hide the trembling in his voice, “who do you love more?”
“You, of course, always you.”
Smiling, he returned to the kiss.
“I know you know,” Donelly said. “I guess we have to talk about it.”
Trager nodded. They were backstage in the theater. Three of his corpses walked up behind him and stood, arms crossed, like guards. “All right.” He looked straight at Donelly, and his face was suddenly stem. “Laurel asked me to pretend I didn’t know anything. She said you felt guilty. But pretending was quite a strain, Don. I guess it’s time we got everything out into the open.”
Donelly’s pale blue eyes shifted, and he stuck his hands into his pockets. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“Then don’t.”
“But I’m not going to pretend I’m dead, either. I’m not. I love her too.”
“You’re supposed to be my friend, Don. Love someone else. You’re just going to get yourself hurt this way.”
“I have more in common with her than you do.”
Trager stared.
Donelly looked up at him. “I don’t know. Oh, Greg. She loves you more anyway, she said so. I never should have expected anything else. I feel like I’ve stabbed you in the back. I—”
Trager watched him. Finally he laughed softly. “Oh, shit, I can’t take this. Look, Don, you haven’t stabbed me, c’mon, don’t talk like that. I guess, if you love her, this is the way it’s got to be, you know. I just hope everything comes out all right.”
Later that night, in bed with Laurel: “I’m worried about him,” he said.
His face, once tanned, now ashen. “Laurel?” he said. Not believing.
“I don’t love you anymore. I’m sorry. I don’t. It seemed real at the time, but now it’s almost like a dream. I don’t even know if I ever loved you, really.”
“Don,” he said woodenly.
Laurel flushed. “Don’t say anything bad about Don. I’m tired of hearing you run him down. He never says anything except good about you.”
“Oh, Laurel. Don’t you remember? The things we said, the way we felt? I’m the same person you said those words to.”
“But I’ve grown,” Laurel said, hard and tearless, tossing her red-gold hair. “I remember perfectly well, but I just don’t feel that way anymore.”
“Don’t,” he said. He reached for her.
She stepped back. “Keep your hands off me. I told you, Greg, it’s over. You have to leave now. Don is coming by.”
It was worse than Josie. A thousand times worse.
5. WANDERINGS
He tried to keep on at the theater; he enjoyed the work, he had friends there. But Donelly was there every day, smiling and being friendly, and sometimes Laurel came to meet him after the show and they went off together arm in arm. Trager would stand and watch, try not to notice. While the twisted thing inside him shrieked and clawed.
He quit. He would not see them again. He would keep his pride.
&n
bsp; The sky was bright with the lights of Gidyon and full of laughter, but it was dark and quiet in the park.
Trager stood stiff against a tree, his eyes on the river, his hands folded tightly against his chest. He was a statue. He hardly breathed. Not even his eyes moved.
Kneeling near the low wall, the corpse pounded until the stone was slick with blood and its hands were mangled clots of torn meat. The sounds of the blows were dull and wet, but for the infrequent scraping of bone against rock.
They made him pay first before he could even enter the booth. Then he sat there for an hour while they found her and punched through. Finally, though, finally: “Josie.”
“Greg,” she said, with her distinctive grin. “I should have known. Who else would call all the way from Vendalia? How are you?”
He told her.
Her grin vanished. “Oh, Greg,” she said. “I’m sorry. But don’t let it get to you. Keep going. The next one will work out better. They always do.”
Her words didn’t satisfy him. “Josie,” he said, “how are things back there? You miss me?”
“Oh, sure. Things are pretty good. It’s still Skrakky, though. Stay where you are, you’re better off.” She looked off screen, then back. “I should go, before your bill gets enormous. Glad you called, love.”
“Josie,” Trager began. But the screen was already dark.
Sometimes, at night, he couldn’t help himself. He would move to his home screen and ring Laurel. Her eyes would narrow when she saw who it was. Then she would hang up.