by Kate Wilhelm
“The desert has not called you, little Olahuene.”
She dropped the things she was holding and took a step forward.
“You must not go to the desert unless you have been called.”
“But it did,” she said, not looking back, taking another step forward. “I heard it. I came thousands of miles because I heard it.” She took another step.
“No. You heard your grandfather’s voice calling you home. He told me you would return. I asked for help and he told me you would come, you would help. That’s the voice you heard.”
She stopped, shaking her head. “No,” she whispered. “You are lying to me. Don’t stop me now. Not now.”
“Turn around, Olahuene. Look at me. You know I’m not lying to you. Your family and mine have been linked for many years, for four generations. We’re linked today. I’ve come to take you home now.”
She bowed her head and watched her feet. She tried to take another step; her foot did not move. So close, she wanted to cry, so close!
Now his voice was somehow touching her. She felt it as a warm air on her skin, soothing her flesh, acknowledging her pain and still denying it. “When the desert truly calls, little sister, you will go to her and feel her embrace. But the time has not yet come.”
She felt a light weight settle on her shoulders, and then she was being wrapped in a blanket and lifted as if she were a small child.
He held her in one arm and rode easily, letting his horse walk home in the long, timeless twilight.
CHAPTER
9
LINA DAVIES’S father had turned up at Ramona Cluny’s house two days before the wedding. Mr. Davies was five feet six inches tall and weighed nearly two hundred pounds, his hair was brown and soft like Lina’s, and his eyes the same shade of green. He looked like a dwarf next to her.
“Want to talk to you,” he had said brusquely, standing in Ramona’s living room, showing no awareness of anything or anyone except Cluny.
“Yes,” Cluny said. “Please, sit down.”
“Let’s take a walk.”
Cluny glanced at Lina, who shrugged helplessly; he went to the door with her father and followed him out into the yard, then to the sidewalk.
“She has an allowance,” her father said without preliminary. “And I don’t aim to increase it. But I don’t guess I’ll stop it either. What she does with it is her business. Just want to let you know now, before everything’s set, how it is with her and me.”
“Yes, sir,” Cluny said, still waiting for the reason for this walk.
Mr. Davies stopped and looked up at him. “I’m a rich man, but don’t count on spending it, son. Don’t count on it for a hell of a long time. She’s all I’ve got, and someday it’ll be hers, but I’m fifty-two, and I aim to hang on for a good long time.”
Cluny nodded. “That’s fine, sir. I hope so.”
Mr. Davies scowled, but as he studied Cluny’s face, his own features relaxed. “You care for her, don’t you, son?”
Cluny could only nod again.
“You know anything about me? Where I’m from? Anything?”
“No, sir. She started to tell me a couple of times, but she gets off the subject easily. I should have pressed it, I suppose. I’m sorry.”
Mr. Davies laughed, and still chuckling, began to walk slowly. “It doesn’t matter, not a damn bit. She’s not like other women, Cluny. You know that by now. She’s not dumb, she knows everything she needs to know, but it went in scrambled sort of, and it comes out cockeyed. Don’t be misled by that. She won’t live by the same rules that others do, either. Don’t expect her to. Never did, never will. I don’t know what kind of a wife she’ll make. She’s been a hell of a daughter. I’ve wanted to kill her at times, but when she comes back home to visit, I forget. I always forget it all when she’s around. She can do that to you.”
They walked around the block, Mr. Davies talking about Lina, Cluny bobbing his head like a great long-legged bird. When they got back to the gate outside Ramona’s house, Mr. Davies stopped and asked, “What is this project of yours?”
“We’re trying to revive interest in Alpha, the space station.”
Mr. Davies chewed his lip for a moment, then said, “Tell me about it after supper.”
“And did you order my poor baby to be good to me and love me always and never be cross and make me scrub his back? Is that what this little walk was for?” Lina advanced across the porch to meet them. “If you’ve scared him off, Daddy, I’ll never speak to you as long as I live. I swear it. Cluny, don’t you pay any attention to him. I never do, and he doesn’t even notice. Have you ever wondered how it is that some people never seem to know when they’re being reprimanded? They just seem so used to being right all the time, they can’t consider that once in a while they could be wrong. . . .”
Cluny caught her father’s look and tried to stiffen his face, but it was hopeless. He knew he melted down like butter in the sun when he was with her; he accepted it now and hardly ever gave it a thought. He was surprised when Mr. Davies suddenly put one arm around him, the other around Lina, and hugged them both. Mr. Davies was crying, he thought in wonder.
Lee Cavanaugh Davies had made a fortune squeezing sugar out of grapefruits, one of the magazines had once written of him. He had used his wealth shrewdly to raise himself to a position of strategic importance in the corporate world of economics. Without his financial and political support the project would have died stillborn. It would not have been enough to write to people, remind them of the glories of space; visits had been demanded, speeches had been demanded, hearings had been demanded. And they had done them all.
Surprisingly the various intelligence agencies had proved to be their most eloquent spokesmen. To forestall the Soviet test of will and strength that was inevitable as the United States wrestled with depression, discontent, a demoralized populace, they argued, it was necessary to initiate a project that would display the still potent power of the country, belittle its present, and temporary, troubles. Cluny and Murray sometimes discussed the strange fellows they traveled with those days—militarists, ultraconservatives, reactionaries. Cluny had long denied politics in his world view, but even an apolitical scientist had to wonder about the reason for the support they were getting. Sid refused to be drawn into the speculation. “They think they’re using us for something or other,” he said coldly. “In fact, we’re using them. I’d welcome the support of the devil himself. Your father-in-law will do until he shows up.”
Cluny never did get familiar enough with Mr. Davies to pretend to understand him and his motives. Very early Mr. Davies had talked politics with him, and afterward had dismissed the subject entirely, in much the way a parent rejects trying to discuss philosophy or economic theory with a not too bright child. Cluny was relieved and never initiated any conversation that could easily be turned into a political discussion. He knew Lina’s father was far right, probably a militarist, although he never said to Cluny that he believed the Army should take over for the duration of the crisis.
During those early years, Cluny, Murray, and Sid had been together most of the time for interviews, panels, discussions, conferences. After the business was over Cluny always had Lina to return to, while the other two men planned the next weeks and months. He left all the planning to them.
Once Murray said to him, “Your problem, kiddo, is that you believe love and devotion, even passion, can come only from the gonads. Wrong.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re playing a game and we’re not. Sid and I are dead serious about Alpha. That wheel’s gotta roll! One guy gets between me and it, I’d knife him. I’d drop a bomb in a mob if they got in the way. I’d put a bullet in the President himself if I had to.” He was grinning but Cluny knew he was telling no more or less than the exact truth. He also knew Murray had carried a gun from high school age on, still carried it.
“I still don’t know why you think I’m not as committed as you are. What ha
ven’t I done that I should have done?”
Murray looked across the room to where Sid was talking to Morgan Whaite, who would interview them on TV in five minutes. “When I look at him,” Murray said, “I see a guy with a green monkey on his back, whip in hand, spurs dug in. I’ve got one just like it, know exactly how it feels. But you sidestepped it back there in the beginning. All we can think of right now is how to get as much across as we can in the few minutes they’ll give us. And you, all you can think of is how long is this going to take and when can you get back to Lina? Right?”
He was a shrewd son of a bitch, Cluny thought. He was a grace-sniffer; he knew instinctively who had faith and who did not. But no one could fault his, Cluny’s, performance, not then, not anytime. Even Murray had admitted it would have been impossible without him; it still might not take off, but doors were opening, people were seeing them, and they had Cluny to thank for that much. They all knew it. Cluny and his father-in-law.
The interview went well; by the time the program ended Morgan Whaite had stepped into their camp, had become a supporter. They made a hell of a team, Cluny thought, comparing Sid and Murray. Equally determined, dedicated, even fanatical, both were driven by forces they could only yield to. Outwardly they were so different that few people would ever suspect they shared the same devil. Murray reacted visibly; he emanated daemonic energy; it almost glowed around him like a crackling aura. Here, one might say, was a man clearly possessed. He was like an irregular pulsating star whose unpredictable surges and flares could either annihilate or mutate those too close to him. Sid was a black hole. He was cool, remote, unknowable, deceptively calm, so selfpossessed that nothing escaped for analysis. Those who distrusted Murray’s ebullience turned to Sid, unaware, until captured, that his sphere of power was so far-flung, or so strong. Those he caught seldom realized they had crossed a threshold and could no longer turn back. Quietly, gently, inexorably he drew them in and held them fast. He had a secret, he seemed to say, and his opposition leaned closer to hear it, to see it through his eyes, and later, converted, now his proponents, they seemed to feel they shared his secret although none of them could have given it voice.
Perfectly complemented, Cluny thought, the ultimate ideal couple. And his place in their scheme? A doorman. He was their goddamn doorman. He knew this and accepted it without real rancor because he had no intention of losing himself in the maze of their inner sanctum.
Sid had been right, Cluny acknowledged often. Everyone had been so desperate that they had been willing to try anything. Maybe the scientists would find some answers up there, was the general comment, and there were few protests when the President announced that after the long moratorium on building and manning the space station, scientists from four countries were to resume their work there in a joint effort at solving the many and varied problems besetting most of the world. This announcement came five years after the three young scientists had started their drive.
“For you, of all people, to argue for free will is ludicrous,” Alex Bagration was saying heatedly. Although he was fifteen or twenty years older than Cluny, they had become good friends. He was in charge of the astronomy section of Alpha.
They were in the common room, where every day the hydroponics people brought in a few plants in containers and set them around here and there to try to make the place less alien. They did not succeed. It was alien: all plastic furniture, plastic floor coverings, plastic wall coverings, done in soft greens, rich golden yellows, with splashes of red here and there; but it was alien. Few walls on earth came together in angles that were either oblique or acute, as they did here. And nowhere on earth did round windows look out on true space without a surrounding atmosphere to soften it, to add a bit of color to the blackness. Nowhere else could people look out on the multitudes of stars, or see the moon’s face in such stark relief, and then the Earth misty under cloud covers, blue Earth, green Earth, like a highly colored floor of malachite, almost within reach.
Cluny seldom really saw it any longer, unless it hit him like a jolt of an electric shock, and at those times he felt he should pinch himself, or hit his head against a solid wall, or find someone else to help him from his dream. That night, he and Alex had worked together for hours, and then had come to the common room to have a beer before going to bed. There were others in the large room relaxing after duty, or before their shifts started. The hum of conversation was pleasantly low and behind it was Stravinsky’s Firebird.
Cluny knew that Alex, probably most of the other people on Alpha, gave him too much credit for reactivating the station. Alex should have known better, he thought. His government had been as anxious as the United States to reopen the station, start collecting some of the overdue benefits. They had put no obstacles in the way. He looked at his friend in amusement now; Alex would rather argue philosophy than drink beer or sleep.
“And for you to argue that decisions were not made, each step of the way, is equally ludicrous. At every point one is free to say yes or no.”
“Twiddle-twaddle. Free to feel free to choose is all. Illusory freedom. Mankind has never been free; it is not in his genes to be free. Only the illusion of freedom is real.”
Cluny laughed. “Next we’ll argue souls. Or astral states.” Alex smiled also. “You are very like your father in some ways,” he said. “He also would not continue an argument he knew he could neither win nor have won by another.”
“I didn’t realize you knew him.”
“Not well. I was very young, very insignificant when he came to Russia. I sat in the back of the room and watched him with the Chairman and our cosmonauts, and I envied him more than I could say. Later, on another trip, I was aide to Dr. Klyuchevsky, and I was in the same room with them when they talked, just them, interpreters, and several aides. We were all so proud. How we strutted at being in on such weighty matters.”
“What happened, Alex? We’ve had very little trouble this time. Why was it such a disaster then?”
Alex shrugged. “You know the story of Babel? Men from the four corners of the earth came together to build a tower. They wanted to talk to God, I think. Imagine if they had come together after God talked to them. Each babbling in a different tongue, trying to fit stones, trying to supply food and drink . . . The men from post-Babel tried to build this tower to heaven, and it could not work.”
“Building a tower uses no language of its own,” Cluny said. “Science does. Is it really that simple after all?”
“Many times you speak such riddles I cannot comprehend your meaning,” Alex said. “And I have studied English for all my life. Still I find many things unclear. But when we are in the observatory, or the lab, I know exactly what you mean at all times. The language of science is very clear.”
“Well, I’m going to hit the old hay and grab forty,” Cluny said, grinning at the frown that crossed his friend’s face.
“You did that on purpose,” Alex called after him as he left the common room.
Cluny walked easily now in the slightly low gravity, although it had not been so at first. All of them had found themselves reeling into walls or each other unpredictably as they overcompensated time after time. The original plan had called for paint on all interior walls, soft colors, nonreflective flat surfaces, to minimize the feeling of alienness. Only in the common room had this been done. The other walls were all steel and plastic, all gleaming, reflecting eerily, distorting bodies, door shapes, everything visual. A few of the first people had not been able to adapt to the visual distortion, and had been relieved of duty. Their symptoms had been nausea, dizziness, inability to sleep, deep psychological stress. . . . Cluny could understand how the station could do that, and he tried not to see his reflections, egg shaped, sometimes minus a head, as grotesque as any monster ever to appear in nightmares.
One fifth of the station was finished enough for use. In two months they would increase the spin that would create earth gravity. Us and God, Cluny thought; toss off a little gravity here, a new li
fe form there. He passed the genetic research section. There were the long curving corridors, the laboratories on the outside of the curve, the sleeping rooms, dining rooms, rec rooms on the inner curve. One spoke connected the section to the center, which contained the docking facilities, the power plant, and the master computer. Outside, the construction workers were tethered to the wheel, or to scaffolding. Beams, wall sections, steel sheets were tethered, silently towed along in the slow spin. Shuttles made their runs, back and forth, back and forth, bringing supplies, replacements, taking home construction workers, each as rich as Croesus, taking the scientists back for R and R.
The sleeping room side was on four levels, with stainless steel stairs at intervals in the corridors; there were poles to slide down, a slow-motion descent that was so dreamlike that all of them at times went to the top level simply to slide down, over and over again, like small children playing on an escalator.
He was directly below his own sleeping quarters on the top level, but he was not yet sleepy, simply restless. He looked in on the observatory, and for a long time stood gazing outward. Peter Bellingham and Anna Kersh were on duty; they ignored him, as everyone on duty ignored the others who often came in just to look. Sometimes one of them would stand unmoving so long that someone else finally would gently bump into the entranced one, murmur an apology, and move on. Nowhere else in the station was there such a wide-open view of space. Thirty feet of wall had been finished with glass that could be shielded with metal, but seldom was.
It had not been necessary to have so much unobstructed viewing area, but the original planners in the astronomical section had wanted it and no one else had questioned it; they had not known enough to question it. Everyone who worked that unit now was grateful. For the first time they could truly see their work; always before it had been as if an astronomer were a doctor trying to diagnose a patient who was concealed behind a screen that permitted vague outlines to show and little else. And the patient was mute.