I dislike sounding stupid, but this seemed to be the occasion for it. "What happened?" I asked, discovering as I spoke that my voice was hoarse.
"You were wrestling with a frozen corpse," my mother said. "And screaming." I watched her face as she spoke, and saw how lean it had become; the fractional rations were costing her her health. She had been gradually becoming plump as years passed; she was losing that mass now, and, though it lent her an ethereal beauty, I knew it was not good.
Then I picked up on the other thing. That screaming I had heard—of course it had been mine! I had really strained my vocal cords, by the feel of my throat now. But why had I been doing it?
I spoke again. "How—?"
"Helse and Spirit brought you in unconscious," she explained. "They thought you had overextended yourself and had a breakdown. We got you out of the suit and wiped the blood from your mouth."
No wonder she had worried! Then I remembered another thing. "We didn't finish emptying the tanks!"
"Spirit says you did six. That's enough, for..."
My mind was not yet clear. "For what, Mother?"
"For the time we have," she finished reluctantly.
Then I remembered my father's message. "We have food," I said. "Only I don't know where."
She asked me what I meant, and I recounted my experience outside. "It was a hallucination, I know," I concluded. "But it certainly seemed real. He was so sure—but I couldn't understand."
"Not a hallucination," she corrected me. "A vision."
"But what was he showing me?" I demanded. "His hand was empty!"
"It was never your father's way to tease," she said seriously. "He always spoke his mind. You still do not understand?"
I shook my head. "It makes no sense to me. If there had been something—but there wasn't."
"Then it was a true vision. Your father did not mean you to understand directly."
"But then why should he—"
"Major Hubris spoke through you—to me. He knew I would understand."
"I don't see how that can conjure food where there is none!"
My mother only smiled sadly. "Your father has spoken. I thank you, Hope, for conveying his message." She stroked my forehead. "Now rest, my son. You have done well. There will be food." She got up and went to consult with Señora Ortega.
I slept again, for I was weak. Exertion and hunger had debilitated me more than I had supposed.
When I woke, Helse and Spirit were with me in the cell. Helse was dressed in a dark blouse and skirt, so that now her full figure showed, and her hair hung down about her shoulders. She had always kept it pegged up somehow, before, so that it looked boyishly short. She had been losing weight like the rest of us, but her youth was better able to accommodate the loss, and she was now almost as pretty as my sister Faith had been, in a different way.
The two girls had evidently been talking, but they stopped when I started hearing. I almost wished I had feigned sleep a little longer, to listen; but I rebuked myself immediately. I had no need to spy on my friends! "What's up?" I asked. "You look serious."
"We have food now," Spirit said gravely. "You can smell it."
I sniffed, and caught the odor of roasting meat. "That's great!" I said. "Why aren't you eating it instead of sitting here with me?"
Spirit looked meaningfully at Helse. "We're not sure we should use it."
My mind came fully clear. "Where is it from?"
Helse laughed somewhat abruptly. "From your vision, Hope!"
I scowled. Hunger had not improved my sanguinity. "You think I made that up?"
"No," Spirit said. "I saw our father sit up and talk to you."
"I hauled him up," I said. "He couldn't have moved or talked in the freezing vacuum of space, even if he had been alive. I must have gone crazy. I can't even say for certain it was Major Hubris; it could have been any of them."
"But I do believe you," Spirit said. "Father gave you a message, and Mother understood it. We're a family; that's the way we work together."
"He showed me an empty hand!"
"He showed you his hand," she agreed, her eyes now fixed as if she were going into a trance herself.
I turned to Helse. "What does she mean?"
Helse gazed at me with a kind of translucent horror. "Your father offered himself—for food."
Something awfully cold closed in on me then, as if I were still in space and the heating element in my suit had quit. I felt the screaming working up again, like a rising gorge. "His hand?"
"That was your vision."
"To eat his—but I never—that's cannibalism!"
"Your father expressed to you his will. He told you to feed your mother and your sister and that lovely girl of yours and yourself. Are you going to go against your father's expressed will?"
Something else jarred. "Lovely girl?" I asked. Then I realized. "Oh, no! I told my mother the whole vision! I gave away your secret!" I hung my head in chagrin. "I'm sorry, Helse! I never intended to—my word is sacred—I was so overwhelmed by the vision that I never thought—"
"I know," Helse said. "You kept my secret, Hope, and so did Spirit. It was your father who told on me. He never gave his word."
"But he didn't know! He died before he—"
"His ghost knew," she said. "You can't hide truth from a ghost."
"But—"
"Your mother asked me," Helse said. "So I changed my clothing. I would not try to make a liar of your father. He was a good man."
"That's how Charity Hubris knew it was really Major Hubris speaking," Spirit said. "He knew something the rest of us did not."
"You knew!" I said.
"But I never told. Anyway, Mother consulted with Señora Ortega, who suggested this was a test of the vision, and when they saw that Helse really was a girl, they agreed it was a true vision, and we would have to do as Father said. So now we have food, as Father intended. He probably mentioned Helse deliberately, so everyone would believe."
I thought about the way Concha Ortega, that too-knowledgeable grandmother, had remarked on my improved attitude; surely she had suspected, and she was clever enough to play her hunches competently. I thought about the way my mother had submitted to rape to preserve her children from the threat of rampaging pirates, and then pretended that rape had never happened. Now she was taking my vision at face value, though it was logically suspect. We had gone along with her before, because family pride was better than the reality. Now Helse and Spirit were going along with her again—because we needed the food. It was, after all, pointless for us all to die when there was food available. So there was sense behind my vision, and sense behind their endorsement of it. Yet it seemed to me that more than sense was operating here.
"Are you ready?" Helse asked.
"You sacrificed your secret—for this," I said to Helse.
"How could I seek to refute your vision, Hope?" she asked innocently.
"You stand by me the way my mother stands by my father."
"Women do what they must. You know that."
"And you too," I told Spirit, taking her hand.
"I saw him sit up, out there," Spirit said. "I saw him hold out his hand to you." And perhaps she had, or believed she had. Spirit was always my staunchest supporter when it counted.
"Then I must be ready," I said. How any of us were going to choke down what the brave women were serving I didn't know, but it had to be done. Too many sacrifices had already been made for it to be otherwise.
Chapter 13 — REFUGEES' WELCOME
Jupiter Rings, 3-2-'15—I choose not to dwell unduly on the following days. I did get sick, and so did Spirit, but we both came back and tried again, and again, until we were able to retain what we consumed. The meat was perfectly fresh, of course, and clean, for no spoilage occurs in space. The women served it well-cooked in very small portions, so that it was impossible to tell from what part of what animal it might have come. The women ate too, with the same affected unconcern they had evinced after the mas
s rape. I had always suspected the female sex of being weaker than the male, but I did not think so anymore. Strength is so much more than muscle!
After the first few meals, it was not so bad. I even started helping with the cooking, by foraging for fuel for the fire. First they had used the precious candles saved from the funeral service, but soon these were gone and other combustibles were required. There was wood in the bubble for furnishings, and the packaging for the original food packs was flammable. It was a very small, controlled fire, for we could not afford to overload the air-recirculation system with a lot of pollutants, so we did have enough fuel.
But it was always a grown woman who donned a suit and went outside for more meat; to that extent we children were preserved in our innocence.
Señora Ortega and the other women chose to accept my vision as they had interpreted it. Not one of them broke ranks on this, though I was sure not all of them really believed in supernatural visitations or messages. They knew what had to be done, and they did it without fuss or fanfare, exactly as they had throughout their married lives. What a fundament of strength was thus subtly revealed!
So we survived and even began to regain weight, thanks to the gift of our men. We all knew, I think, that had any of those men been alive to speak their wills, they would have told us to do exactly what we were doing. The bubble had been forged by necessity into one large family, as close as any other, united by a complex of vital compromises and secrets.
We navigated and studied and slept and played games of all sorts, for morale was as important as physical condition. Slowly we drew nigh the primary ring of Jupiter. Now that we knew we would make it, our attitudes improved.
We spent more time staring at Jupiter, swelling to giant size, its cloud bands more prominent than ever, violently coursing past each other with bubble-storms at the interfaces, the details constantly changing in an overall pattern that was unchanging. As we watched, the great red spot came on the horizon, like a monster eye trying to orient on us. Ah, Jove, the ruler of gods! Our hopes expanded in direct proportion to this image in our sky. All would be well once we achieved Jupiter, the kindly colossus of space! Jupiter, within whose bands of clouds floated so many enormous bubbles, each one a great city spinning like our little bubble for internal gravity, since they could not stay afloat if they used normal gravity. The city-bubbles did not have to worry about vacuum outside, instead they faced the phenomenal pressures of Jupiter's atmosphere. Yet they were the most highly civilized cities in the Solar System, and the life style of ordinary people within them was reputed to be fantastic. We dreamed, a little afraid, and longed for what we hoped would be.
This is not to suggest that everything was smooth now. Conditions of enduring stress and confinement tend to accentuate and at times exacerbate interpersonal relations, and we of the bubble were not exceptional in this respect. All of us shared an unspoken guilt that tended to sublimate itself in those ways that were permitted expression. I have heard sublimation spoken of as a useful alternative to unsocial behavior, but I don't believe that. When an emotion is suppressed, it tends to manifest in something very similar to the forbidden thing, and perhaps sometimes it would be best simply to accept the forbidden instead. Thus we had the smaller children saving their feces and sometimes eating them, mocking the food that could not be identified. That sort of thing. I need not explicate further.
I spent time with Helse openly now, for my father had seemingly blessed our association. No one objected overtly to our sharing a cell, though perhaps there were private qualms. But she and I did fight on occasion, if only because I wanted her to love me, and she would not let herself go that far. To her, the body was a thing to be used as expedient, but the heart was special—which was one reason I wanted her heart. I suppose I was greedy, but that is the way of love.
Spirit, especially, got difficult. She had always been close to me, and remained so, but now she came to resent the time I spent with Helse. It seemed that when Helse had masqueraded as a boy and Spirit had shared the secret, that was all right. She was part of it. But now that Helse was openly female and there was no secret, Spirit felt excluded. I should have been alert to the symptoms, but, as is so often the case, I wasn't paying attention until too late. I was caught up in my own concerns, which were more immediate but less important than the psychological welfare of my sister, until too late. I hope not to make that error again.
Spirit burst in upon us once, when Helse and I were sleeping in our cell in dishabille, though not actually making love. I had discovered that the adolescent fantasy of continuous sexual activity was exactly that: fantasy. Helse would make love any time I asked her to, and, knowing that, I found that usually it was enough just to be near her. Sex is less than love, but more than the act; often mere closeness suffices.
"There you go again!" Spirit cried as we sat up groggily. "Father's gone, Faith's gone, Mother's alone—and you're busy fooling with her!" There was a vicious freighting on the word "fooling"; it was intended as an obscenity, and in that context it became so.
There wasn't much I could say. Of course I was guilty, at other times if not this particular time, and as I just explained, the technical act was only a fraction of it and not worth arguing. I did not want to get angry, because that would proclaim my guilt, but I didn't know how else to react.
Helse handled it with better grace. Her age and experience enabled her to navigate certain difficult passages more readily than I could. "I do not take your brother from you, Spirit," she said. "I can never do that. You are of his blood and I am not. I do not love him as you do."
Spirit faced her defiantly. "That's space-crock! You love him more than I do!"
I started to chuckle at her miscue; obviously Spirit had not meant to say that. Prompted by Helse's statement, Spirit had reversed the emphasis, inadvertently arguing against her own interest, as can happen when a person's emotion overrides her tongue.
But Helse reacted as if she had been stabbed. "Oh!" she cried, and scrambled to her feet and up out of the cell, not even pausing for her clothing.
I stared after her. So did Spirit, her anger forgotten. "I vanquished her!" she exclaimed, amazed.
"But you misspoke yourself!" I protested.
Now it was Spirit who reacted oddly. "Oh, I shouldn't have said that! I blabbed her secret!"
"What secret? She doesn't love—"
I stopped, looking at her with a dawning surmise.
Spirit, flustered, reached for the exit panel. "I'd better go try to apologize. I lost my stupid head."
I caught her, preventing her from going. "You mean she does love me? She always told me she didn't, and my talent enables me to know—"
"Oh, you don't know half what you think you do!" Spirit snapped. "When your emotion is tied in, your talent cuts out!"
She had stabbed me as deeply as she had Helse. I knew immediately that she was correct. I had no basis to judge Helse's state of emotion, because my own was suspect. It was as if I was trying to move a heavy suitcase in free fall: my effort moved me back as much as it moved it forward. I had to be firmly anchored before I could be sure of the effect of my effort. I think the laws of the mind are similar in this respect to the laws of matter.
"She's older than I am," I said falteringly. "It makes sense that I am less to her than she is to me. If she felt otherwise, why should she deny it?"
"She had to deny it, dummy!" Spirit said. "She thinks men don't love women who love them back. She's always been used by men who only wanted her body, no matter what they said at the time, and when her body changed they didn't want her anymore. So she knew if she really liked someone, she shouldn't ever, ever let on, because—" She wrenched, trying to break free of my hold on her. "Let me go, Hope! I could kill myself! Helse's an awfully nice girl, and I've got to tell her—I don't know what, but I've got to!"
I let her go. I sat against the wall, meditating on what my sister had said. It explained a lot. I should have caught on to it myself, with my vaunt
ed talent for understanding people. But, ironically, this failure was a valuable lesson for me, for it revealed the glaring weakness in my talent. I had to be objective. I resolved never again to make that error.
But I realized that I couldn't patch it up with Helse by trying to reassure her of my undying love; she was constitutionally incapable of believing me. Her past experience could not be left behind. The same thing that made her so well able to please a man made her unable to trust him. Oh, I knew the power of an emotional fixation! I had been ready to swear off sex forever after the rape of Faith, and only Helse's timely and forceful action had turned me about. But I could not reassure her about her own fixation; all I had were words, and she would not believe them. The men who had used her body during her childhood had not harmed her body; they had poisoned her mind. I was way too late to reeducate her subjectivity. What, then, could I do?
I mulled it over, and finally worked it out. My mother, actually, had shown me the way. The reality of our inner belief does not have to match that of our external professions.
In due course Helse returned. She remained unclothed; probably no one in the bubble had noticed or cared, since I was the oldest male in this limited community. If anyone realized that we were having a difference, that person knew enough not to interfere. She looked resigned.
Evidently Spirit had caught up with her—it could hardly be otherwise, in such limited space—and apologized for blabbing. Spirit could be exceedingly winsome when she was contrite, and surely her apology had been accepted. But Helse believed the damage could not really be undone. She had returned bravely to confirm the disaster.
I gave her no chance. "I must apologize for what my sister did," I said before Helse could speak. "She said she loved me more than you do, and of course that's true, but it was extremely unkind."
Helse paused, taken aback. "That isn't what she—"
"Oh, maybe she garbled it," I said blithely. "But I know you don't love me, and I'm learning to live with that. I'm sorry Spirit misinterpreted—well, she is my sister, and she has a hot little temper, and—"
Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 1 - Refugee Page 19
