The mutant focused on an empty bean can on the table. Together she and the hermit saw rust working as a retarded fire, the shack holding the flaking, reddening can on the altar of the table, fresh, good-smelling wood going dryer than paper. The hermit became aware of his bones.
There were shelves falling and shades slowly tearing, time passing rhythmically, until the day Jake himself slowly walked in from the outer desert with a pack on his back.
“Time,” the mutant whirred and clicked. She walked out of the shack, her closed lids diffusing the solar luster of her eyes to a cold blue glow.
Jake didn’t have to look to know she was coming out. He felt her desire to leave a marker, something time could not affect. It came to him that she was about to burn the shack.
A small tongue of flame appeared, dancing and pale in the cloudy gray light. Then there were others, and Jake could feel the mutant carefully watching.
Filled with sudden rage, the hermit lowered his head and ran at the mutant. He caught her around the waist, knocked her back through the open doorway so that she tripped and stumbled backward over the step just as the little house erupted, belching dry crackling heat.
Ta Chaunce lay on her back a moment. She pulled herself up to a sitting position, slowly, as if stunned.
There was a vacuous sensation, and Jake knew she was bottling her rage, preparing to release it in one terrible bolt. He started to run, but stopped, feeling suddenly free. There was no sense of danger, no feeling of impending disaster.
He turned cautiously. The shack was filled with fire. Cinders and thick crumbly ashes were dancing in the shimmering air above the inferno. At the center of the fire Jake could see the dark silhouette of the mutant. She was standing erect now, trapped in the center of the blaze. Jake approached as close as he dared. He saw the mutant turning toward him. He saw, or sensed, her eyelids opening, and suddenly it was as though he had entered the fire. The heat was so intense it was like the burn of liquid gas. It seared his skin and he knew he was blistering. His face seemed to be hardening, and when he tried to touch it, his arms were stiff and his skin cracked, dry and crisping.
Then it was over. Jake was standing alone again in relative coolness, watching a fellow creature burn. He recalled the girl who had died in his arms, and he knew what he had to do. He turned, ran to the well, began to pull up the bucket.
* * * *
Jake’s notebooks had been lost in the fire. He had started a new one, but between repairing the house and nursing the badly burned mutant, he had had very little time to make entries in it. The mutant seemed to be gaining strength, but she was dehydrated. Jake spent hours dabbing a wet cloth to her lips.
He knew she was improving because she lay very still. Through her closed eyes there was a tiny glimmer of light, and that light grew stronger day by day.
He had a large supply of white gas for his Coleman lantern. When he poured a few gallons into the jeep, to his delight it started. The trek to Easterly had taken him more than a day on foot. In the mutant’s jeep, it took less than an hour. He had never wanted a vehicle before, but now, with two people to care for, he needed it to haul extra supplies.
* * * *
In the remains of Phoenix House, Ta Chaunce was coming out of hibernation. Her breathing remained shallow, her features changed not at all, yet she was fully recovered. She perceived the hermit, away in Easterly, and saw that he was open and defenseless. She saw him on the road, felt his presence nearing, and she strode out into the yard.
Jake hopped from the jeep and walked quickly to her side. Ta Chaunce was facing the mountains. When she felt him beside her, she turned to confront him.
Jake recoiled. Her eyes were not eyes, but bright points of shining energy. She was in his brain again, marveling at his constant amazement. He wondered briefly how they could stay together if he could never look her in the face.
Immediately there was a picture in his mind of the two of them, together at night, and the light radiating from her eyes was strong and bright enough to read by. Jake shook his head to clear it, but the image lingered, and Ta Chaunce turned away from him again, looking out at the horizon.
She seemed to be telling him he would just have to get used to it.
“I can’t see your eyes,” Jake sputtered.
The mutant was aware that Jake didn’t understand. But she was also aware that he had made a beginning. How to tell him she had no sight? How to tell him the power of speech was not hers?
She knew there was plenty of time. Life was suddenly full of promise. When the hermit became adjusted, there were many things she could teach him, and she would learn compassion, and for the children . . . nesting.
<
* * * *
JACK AND BETTY
Robert Thurston
What would the reciprocal of this story be like— that is, what if the author had put in what he left out, and vice versa?
The room was all Jack knew. He had been other places but he could no longer remember them. He stood still, concentrating on his peripheral vision. To his left the room seemed to have blurred, then faded. He turned quickly. For a split second the other side of the room was not there. Then it reappeared, mud-colored and barren.
Betty was long in coming this time.
He paced the mud-colored floor. Floorboards sank beneath his feet like the springs of a hard, lumpy mattress. He sat on the mud-colored divan.
Whatever Betty did when she was away, this time she was a long time doing it.
He played breathing games. Long inhale, long exhale. Short inhale, short exhale. Long inhale, short exhale. Short inhale, long exhale. Rhythmic breathing where the breaths imitate the drum accompaniment to a song played by full orchestra in the mind. He concentrated on the orchestra itself, placing the bass fiddle section right by his left ear. Second bass fiddle was an orange-haired girl with a freckled face. She leaned over the instrument as if she were having an argument with it.
A long time this time, Betty.
As soon as she materialized, Betty realized that Jack always broke into a grin when she returned. What’s he got to grin about? I must be ten pounds heavier this time. Stupid. I feel shitty. 1 feel shitty and witty and wise. Dumb fat-girl dress, daisies all over it. Why would I ever buy such an atrocity? At least it’s colorful, something better than the faded-lace color of this room.
“You remember, this time?” Jack said, as Betty sat down beside him.
“Not a goddamned thing. One second I’m sitting here, deciding to let your hand sneak into my cheerleader’s sweater, the next I’m standing over there in a party dress. But I’ve been someplace. I can almost remember where. It’s like waking up from a dream, it’s gone now.”
“Like that for me, too.”
Jack’s face was heavier, a suggestion of jowls. His eyes looked as if they’d been smeared with coal dust.
“What do I look like?” she asked.
“Cotton candy.”
“Is that complimentary?”
“I doubt it.”
Jack held up his right leg and pointed to his trousers. Betty saw droppings of what might be dried paint—bits of purple, black, and brown.
“You think maybe you’re a painter?”
“Yeah.”
Jack put his leg down. Delicately, so as not to dislodge the drops of paint.
“House or canvas?”
“Looks like oils to me.”
“You should be happy then. A clue to your identity and all. Why aren’t you happy?”
“What if I’m not good at it? How do I get any satisfaction out of knowing I’m an artist if I can’t see the fruits of my labor?”
“In an automated society the majority do not see the fruits of their labor. Many people don’t know what their labors are.”
“I’ve got to know.”
“Well, then, you may possess some talent, a dabbler’s maybe, an alien corn’s. But yours is not the artistic temperament.”
“Pompous bitch
.”
“Yes, isn’t it worthwhile?”
Betty disliked the way her skirt slid farther upward each time she shifted position on the divan. Each movement revealed a little more of her meaty thighs. She stood up, knowing that the perspective suited her figure better. De-emphasized were the big stomach, the upper-arm fleshiness, and the awesome thighs. She felt her muscles strain holding so much of her in place.
Jack disappeared, which was something of a relief.
Betty spent the next few hours relaxing, letting her flesh fall where it might. She wondered if Jack was worth all the trouble. Putting up with his curtness, listening to his egomaniacal self-pity, trying to keep her witty remarks down to his level, watching his baldness run from his temples upward in a pair of flying wedges—all because he was the only game in town.
Jack returned. He was dressed quite conservatively, like a stockbroker or banker, and now had a slight paunch and a mustache. Betty laughed at the mustache. Touching it, feeling its strangeness, he said, “Does it look good at all?”
“Want an honest answer?”
“If the honest answer is yes, I want it. If it’s no, I don’t want it and I want you to tell me yes anyway.”
“Okay. Yes. It looks just marvelous.”
“Really?”
“Honest or dishonest answer?”
“Forget it.”
He sat beside Betty and held her. She looked quite sexy in the daisy-flowered dress. Staring at the low scoop of its neckline, he felt desire for her. Betty kept touching his mustache and giggling. He kissed her, which initiated a giggling lit. Later, when the kissing became more intense, she appeared to enjoy the mustache. At the moment of her disappearance, he was beginning an affectionate hug. One hand slammed against his chest as his arms crossed where she had been.
Jack discovered some marijuana in his suit-coat pocket, along with a packet of Zig-Zags. He rolled and smoked the first joint, then looked slowly around the room. There was nothing for heightened perception to fix on. The mud-colored room just became more mud-colored. No kick in that. Betty better make it back quicker this time. Betty better. The second joint worked.
Betty came back pregnant. She almost fell flat on her face because of the sudden abdominal weight. She looked to Jack for help. Through the smokescreen that surrounded him.
“My God, what a time for you to be stoned! You always know, don’t you? What do you have, advance information?”
“Bug off. Any time you want to is a good time to be stoned.”
“But not now, stupid.”
“Why not now?”
Betty stood sideways. “I’m pregnant, God damn it! Knocked up. Enceinte. In the family way. Preggers. Unexpectedly with child.”
“I gave at the office.”
“Help me or something!”
“Here, you should sit down. Sit down here. Mustn’t exert yourself. That’s what all new fathers-to-be say.”
“I strongly doubt that you’re the new father-to-be, my friend.”
“Well, sit down anyway! What the hell do I care whose kid the bastard is?”
Betty sat at the end of the couch. With some difficulty, because her pregnancy prevented graceful movement and because the battered slope of the couch made it tricky to sit as far away from Jack as she wanted.
“What I hate most,” Jack mumbled, “is people who continually give you stage directions for the roles you play.”
The pot smoke dissipated slowly. Jack stared straight ahead, his lips working steadily on unheard mutterings. Bored, Betty fell asleep. Bored Betty. Baby-kicks awoke her twice. The second time Jack was gone.
She wondered what to do if the kid decided to get born here, here, before Jack came back. She wondered what use he’d be anyway.
Jack’s return coincided with a labor pain. He was put on edge both by her scream and the rage in her eyes.
“What can I do?”
“Pray.”
In between pains her whole body went slack. Her arms hung over the edge of the divan. Her lace looked puffy.
“God, you’re bald!”
He felt his head. It was true, his hairline had receded further. Only a few strands crossed the forelock area. Still a lot of hair above the timber line, though. A cold breeze blew across the barren slopes and made him tremble.
Without dignity Betty endured another labor pain. Afterward she said, “Have you read A Farewell to Arms?”
“No.”
“I think I have, God damn it!”
Jack felt he must do something, concoct a heroic act, make a civilized gesture, accomplish something worthwhile before he lost all his hair. What could he do? Talk to her, offer her encouragement? “Go to it, Beth old girl . . . Another heave and it’ll be all over . . . Open wide, it won’t hurt.”
Her pains came with more frequency. He held her, first for affection, then to pin her down.
“Boy, if I ever come across the guy that did this, my impregnator, I’m going to—Jesus!—it’s coming now. I can feel it. It’s coming, God damn it! Help me, please. I can feel it. It’s coming. Jack, do something, do something, do something!”
He could not move. Betty’s words dissolved into a long-drawn-out shriek, the sound of which ended sharply as she disappeared, leaving a broad, deep gully in the divan, which slowly inflated to its regular shape.
Inspecting himself with a hand, Jack stroked his baldness, detected a new graininess around his eyes, a bit more weight in his chin and waist, and an operation scar. There was added congestion in the nasal passages.
What accusations would Betty throw at him upon her return? Too many. That’s what you get when you make your mistakes out in the open. He was furious with her, anyway. Somehow she was no longer his, the stupid bitch. She belonged to somebody outside the mud-colored room. He would never know his rival, or even know if there was a rival. Maybe, when they disappeared, they went to another room like this one. And there they met each other again. No, they could not meet each other, they never disappeared together. Maybe they met antitheses of themselves. When Betty went, she rendezvoused with anti-Jack, a guy just the opposite in manner, abilities, and ideas. Gregarious, optimistic, loving, possessed of brilliant moral strength. Anti-Jack would be everything that Jack was not. With him she would get what she wanted, which was why she often returned so happy. But, then, how in hell could he put up with her, if he was so goddamned perfect? She’d drive him out of his head.
Betty came back short of breath, fatter. She seemed to have gained weight everywhere. The loose faded-print dress she now wore didn’t help either, it seemed to touch her body only where it could not avoid it. She felt her hair, which was now dry and brittle. I must look like hell.
“You look like hell,” Jack said.
“You go to hell,” she said, and began to cry.
Jack just stared ahead. Brushing away tears with the back of her hand, she felt a leathery coarseness in her cheeks. I should kill the smug bastard, tie it up in a sloppy little knot. But what if I killed him and still kept coming back here?
“Do you think we can save our relationship?” she said.
“Save it for what?”
“For five and a half percent interest! You ... you would destroy everything that’s beautiful between us.”
“What’s so beautiful between us?”
“Between us, nothing. I only want you should pretend, to take up the time.”
Jack sighed.
“Please don’t do that.”
Jack sighed again.
Betty sighed as long as she could, with some shrillness in her voice.
Jack sighed in sincere despair.
Betty sighed The Carousel Waltz. Look at him, pouting like a kid when somebody’s taken away his toys. I’ll take away his toys. I’ll take away his balls.
“Want to make out?” she asked.
“Bug off.”
“I’ll bestow upon you the ultimate gift.”
“You couldn’t give that away if you took out a want ad u
nder merchandise, used.”
“Prude!”
She tried to control her temper. “What do I look like? In metaphor.”
“Betty, I don’t know. Leave me alone.”
“Tell me.”
“Beauty seen through a shard of Coke bottle that’s been beaten by the sea and aged by the sun.”
Orbit 16 - [Anthology] Page 16
