Then he turned to descend.
When he reached the ground, Gai was alone. Cradled beneath her arm was the man’s severed head. The eyes had been closed. The nose was smashed flat. The hair was matted with rich red blood.
“The nose is broken, but the rest of it is fine.” She held the head in front of her, waist high. “Won’t that look grand in our living room?”
“Delightful,” Thalvin said. “What happened to Jorgan?”
“He went to bury the body,” Gai said. “To pray over it”
“Oh. Where?”
“That way.” She pointed.
Thalvin went into the woods. A few minutes later, he came back. Jorgan was with him.
* * * *
Thalvin forced them to hurry. The rational and irrational parts of his mind fought a tug-of-war. Neither part won a clear victory. The clock defeated them both. When the sun dropped below the horizon, they still had an hour’s hike facing them before they’d reach the end of the forest. Thalvin said, “We’ll have to camp.”
“Yes,” said Gai. “What a hell of a day we’ve had.”
“Yes,” Thalvin said. “A day.”
He prepared a camp for the night, burning away an open space, erecting the shield. His mind wasn’t on his work. His mind was elsewhere, remembering. It was remembering the other time here and the other trophy, the one with the open gazing blue eyes. It was remembering the old man and the old man saying I’m exhausted —let’s pause for the night. It was remembering the following day. Thalvin did not want to remember the following day, so he went over to his wife and her husband. They were sitting beside a glowing campfire, which Gai herself had built. Thalvin sat with them.
Jorgan turned to him. His eyes were like round pools of molten steel. They flickered and they flowed. He said, “I’m not going to do it. Don’t you see? I can’t do it,”
“You’ve done it,” Thalvin said. Gai was holding the trophy in her lap. The light licked at it but the shadows concealed.
Jorgan said, “Yes, but I don’t think it’s dead.”
“It’s dead,” Gai said. “Now shut up. You’re making me sick, really sick. Go say your prayers. Stand on your head for a few hours.”
“What was that noise?” Jorgan said. His head swiveled, eyes darting, looking here, looking there. “I heard something.”
“It was the wind,” Thalvin said.
“Oh, no. No, it wasn’t. I can hear it now. It’s the thing. It’s coming back for me.”
“He,” Gai said. “Not it—he. He’s a man—not a thing.”
“It’s coming. Listen.”
Thalvin listened. At first he heard nothing except the steady flow of the wind. Then he heard it. Oh, yes. They were coming. And so soon.
“I don’t hear anything,” Gai said.
“Neither do I,” Thalvin said. “Why don’t you go to bed, Jorgan? I think you’re tired.”
“But I do hear it,” Jorgan said. Then he got to his feet. “You’ll hear it too. Believe me. Just wait” Then he went into the tent
“He’ll come around,” Thalvin said, when he and Gai were alone.
“It’s religion. Can you believe it? He believes it.” She turned and looked at him and her lips parted. She was smiling. “I made a mistake.”
“Ginler is dead.”
“I know that now,” she said, smiling. “And he’s going to remain dead and I can’t create another man in his image. No, I can’t do that.”
“And me?” asked Thalvin.
“I blamed you at first.”
“And now?”
She shook her head and smiled. “No,” she said.
Thalvin put out his arms and she came against him. She was smiling and he placed his smile against her smile and then it was only one smile. Her nose was long and narrow, and her eyes were deep and expressive, and her legs were smooth and gentle. She was his for the moment—all of her now, lips and nose and eyes and legs. All was his.
He said, “We can go now.”
“Why?” she said. “Won’t morning come?”
He could hear them prowling in the forest now, testing the shield. They were waiting for morning too. And she was right. They could not move. Could not move and could not stay. But it was only the boy. When that part was done, then they’d be free to move. Thalvin put his hands on his wife’s legs and watched by the light of the campfire. He began to kiss her, and morning marched forward, drawing relentlessly near.
* * * *
Thalvin had not tried to sleep. He’d laid awake in the black void of the tent and listened, thought, remembered. He had sensed rather than witnessed the arrival of the shallow redness of dawn.
Now, softly, despising the sounds that he made, Thalvin stepped outside.
Morning was dark and dim. They were waiting beyond the shield. He counted them. There were twenty-seven evenly spaced around him, one every few yards in a neat circle. The shield was operating. The air was warm. He watched the men and they watched him.
Later Gai and Jorgan emerged from the tent together. They saw and they stopped.
Jorgan moaned and buried his face in his hands. “They’ve come for me,” he said. His words were muffled by the heaviness of his flesh. “Come to kill me.”
Gai said softly, “Shut up, Jorgan.” She asked Thalvin: “What do they want? Can’t we drive them off?”
“They want the trophy,” Thalvin said. “Give it to them.”
“Why? Why should I? Let them come and take it from me. They can’t hurt me.”
“Are you sure?” Thalvin asked.
“Those apes.” Gai turned and headed toward the tent. “I’m getting a gun,” she said. Thalvin watched her, then turned back again and faced the men.
They seemed to be staring at him, all twenty-seven of them, but Thalvin refused to lower his eyes. Instead, he looked back at them, one after another, and some were short and some were tall and some were fat and some were thin, just like people, just like men, but the fur that hid their faces—brown hair and black, two blonds and even a single redhead—their flat snoutlike noses and long wide sloping foreheads, these were not characteristics of a human being. But they are, Thalvin thought. A half-million years of human evolution had succeeded in producing men like gods, only the gods looked sub-human rather than super-human.
Beyond the men, the forest was dim, the trees waving in the wind like pillars buried beneath a deep sea. The haze had gathered at the edge of the shield and stood poised and waiting in thick dark clouds.
Gai emerged from the tent and came to his side, a heatgun clutched firmly in her hand. She trained it on the men beyond the shield and waved her arm slowly from side to side, covering as many of them as possible.
“Give the gun to Jorgan,” Thalvin said. He spoke softly, almost whispering. “Let him do it.”
“Why?”
“Give it to him!”
Gai went to Jorgan. The boy had drawn himself into a tight ball of muscles and flesh. Gai kicked him in the back. He snapped straight, flopping on his belly. Gai dropped the gun in front of his face.
“Were going to drop the shield,” she said. “If any of them move, shoot. And don’t miss.”
“He won’t do it,” Thalvin said, joining the others. “He’s gone.”
“He’ll do it. Watch.”
“All right,” said Thalvin. He went to the controls that operated the shield and quickly touched a button. The haze swept into the clearing like a moist wind. Thalvin lowered his head and gagged. It was cold now, freezing. He shivered and raised his head.
Gai was kicking Jorgan. “Get up. Damn you. Move.”
Jorgan rolled into a sitting position. He reached down and lifted the gun in his hand. He shook his head at it. He turned and looked at his wife. She smiled, then kicked him. He stood. He turned the gun on the men.
Gai got the trophy from its place beside the smoldering campfire. She stood at Jorgan’s side, holding the head in her hands.
One of the men stepped forward. He
passed the edge and entered the camp. He came toward Gai and Jorgan.
Jorgan sighted.
Thalvin tightened his hands into fists and watched.
The man came closer. Jorgan’s hands shook and trembled. He placed them together and straightened the gun.
Gai shouted: “Now!”
Jorgan fired. A distant tree, above and behind the man, shattered into broken leaves. A flame quivered and died.
Jorgan screamed. The man continued forward. Gai dropped the trophy and ran to Thalvin. Jorgan lay flat on the ground, still screaming. A part of his head flew away. He stopped screaming. His body caved in on itself and snapped abruptly in half.
The man reached the head and picked it up in his hands. He looked down at Jorgan’s body, then turned and walked away. He did not look at Thalvin or Gai. He walked into the woods and joined the others. They were gone. Gai and Thalvin stood alone with death. Above, the sun was a red orb hidden by the deep gray haze.
Gai whispered, “They killed him.”
“Yes,” said Thalvin.
“Without touching him. Did that. Crushed him. Like-like an ape. A giant ape.” Suddenly Gai laughed. She shrieked, “Crushed by a giant ape.”
“Shut up,” Thalvin said. He went into the tent and got a blanket. He brought it out and covered the boy’s body.
Gai was talking again, but she was calm. She said, “You knew all the time, didn’t you? All of this was planned. You suggested the trophy. You brought us here, knowing what I’d do. You planned it, didn’t you? Poor stupid praying Jorgan dead in the dust. Crushed, broken in half, brains splattered across the landscape. Like Ginler. Just like Ginler.”
“I didn’t kill Ginler,” Thalvin said. “I loved him.”
“But you knew how he died. You knew these men up here could kill a man without touching him.”
“I knew that,” Thalvin said. “Come on. It’s time to go. We have to take the body to the floater.”
“You don’t think I’ll tell? Why shouldn’t I?”
“Why should you?” he said. “I’m all you’ve got left.” He stood facing her and he smiled. “I learned from you, Gai, how to scheme and plot and plan. How to fight my way to the top. I wanted you and now I’ve got you. Do what you want, but I don’t think you want to give me up. I’m too well-trained now.”
“You did it for me?”
“I did it for love,” he said. Then he turned away and began to pack their gear. They had a rough walk ahead of them. It was cold and the sun was moving.
<
* * * *
* * * *
Well, you’ve heard the question before: In a society that increasingly alienates and depersonalizes people, what chance is there going to be for meaningful communication between us? Gardner Dozois suggests that no matter how hopeless things get there’ll always be men who will find a way to break through the barriers. And he shows one of those heroic, determined efforts.
THE MAN WHO WAVED HELLO
by Gardner R. Dozois
The world solidified.
He was Harry Bradley, Caucasian, thirty-seven years of age, of certifiably good character. A junior executive-grade GS 8, $10,000 a year, Readjusted Scale—who had been a junior executive since he was thirty and would be a junior executive until he died in harness or was forcibly retired to a Senior Citizens Haven (you can get in but you can’t get out). His apartment measured thirty feet by thirty feet by twelve feet, and was decorated in the pseudocolonial that was popular that year, everything made out of plastic and scaled down. He had plush red artificial fabric drapes across a picture window that looked out at nothing except acres of other picture windows looking back. The window measured exactly sixteen inches by twenty-four inches, no more or no less than any other picture window owned by any other executive of his grade and seniority. That was only fair; that was democracy. He had a solar-powered kitchenette that could cook him almost anything in five minutes, but he was very seldom hungry. He had paneled walls made out of artificial wood. He had a fireplace with a simulated fire that was actually a (safe; economical) electric coil; you could turn it on and off with a switch and plug it into the wall socket. He had a “colonial” chandelier (scaled-down) that was made of a plastic that you almostcouldn’ttellfromrealglass, and that would sway and tinkle convincingly if you turned the air-conditioner up high. He had (although he didn’t know it this precisely) the 152,673rd copy of a Cezanne print to be run off the presses that year, and the 98,435th copy of a Van Gogh—both pictures were hung magnetically so that the uniform creme luster of the walls would not have to be marred by a nail. He wasn’t allowed to mar the walls anyway, and if he did he would have to explain it in writing, in triplicate, in exasperating detail. There was also a large Rembrandt (copy number into the high millions) that he didn’t like but which was government issue and had come with the apartment, and which his contract didn’t allow him to get rid of. He had a silent electric clock with a built-in optional tick. He had a combination viewphone/color hologram (but he didn’t want to think about that now: later) that enabled him to either talk to people—other executives—or watch commercial—government—programming. He had a table shaped like an old sailing-ship wheel that you could put cocktails on and spin around. He had a simulated antique colonial lantern for a conversation piece. He had an automatic stereo with a selection of twenty-three classical symphonies and six uninterrupted hours of interpreted popular music that he never listened to. If he wanted, he could use his viewphone to talk to people on the moon via the communications satellite linkups. There was nobody on the moon he wanted to talk to. Nobody on the moon wanted to talk to him either.
He was Harry Bradley. There was no way to avoid it.
He lay perfectly still in the middle of the floor, with an erection.
He was naked.
Sweat dried on his body, and his breath came in rasps.
His stomach knotted.
Bradley struggled weakly, flopped over onto his stomach. The tile was unbelievably cold against his wet skin, and hard as rock; his flesh crawled in revulsion at the contact. He managed to raise himself up on one elbow before his head began to swim. He paused, head bowed, panting, involuntarily studying the dirt in the cracks between the tiles. For a moment there he had been two people, living two different existences in two separate environments, and that’d been rough. He was still having trouble separating realities—conflicting memories chittered at him, emotions surged in opposition, lingering afterimages merged nauseously with vision: one universe still superimposed over another like a double-exposed negative. But one universe was fading. The universe he preferred, the universe where he wasn’t doomed to be Harry Bradley, junior executive, grade GS 8, $10,000 a year. Even as he struggled to hold onto it, to something, it slipped away irrevocably. His dream universe melted and flowed back into the well behind his eyes, to be replaced by the gray, familiar scenes of reality that boiled up like landscapes in bubbles.
The rococo opulence of the other place was gone: supplanted by a plastic sterility that was worse than poverty.
He shook his head ponderously, wincing at the rasp of pain. Even memory had gone now. All he could recall of the other place was a vague impression of abstract beauty and richness, and that there he had been important, an integral part of totality. That it was a better place than here.
The electric clock in the kitchen ticked noisily, each tick a nail pinning him more tightly to the world.
A furnace started with a roar on a lower level
His throat was clogged with sandpaper.
He had taken the egomorphic drug two hours ago: ten thousand years of subjective existence.
He began to shake, trembling uncontrollably. The cold of the apartment was getting through now, piercing like knives. His teeth chattered painfully together. His lips were turning blue.
With an effort, he sat up. The floor tilted queasily, first one way and then the other, like a seesaw. He put his head between his knees for awhile. The r
oom steadied. He heard the elevator swarm by outside his walls: a snide ratcheting sound.
Don’t think. Just don’t think at all.
Slowly, he got to his knees, and then crawled to his feet. It was easier than he’d thought it would be, if he stopped at every stage to rest It only took him about five minutes.
Universe 2 - [Anthology] Page 18
