Orbit 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  One night when he was not too tired to notice this he spoke of it, and the widow said, Oh, they’re all gone now, I think.

  All? —A pause. —Where did they go?

  She shrugged. She raised her dark eyes to his across the table and gazed through lamplit silence at him for a time. Where? she said. Where does your sea-road lead, Lif?

  He stayed still awhile. To the Islands, he answered at last, and then laughed and met her look.

  She did not laugh. She only said, Are they there? Is it true, then, there are Islands? —Then she looked over at her sleeping baby, and out the open doorway into the darkness of late spring that lay warm in the streets where no one walked and the rooms where no one lived. At last she looked back at Lif, and said to him, Lif, you know, there aren’t many bricks left. A few hundred. You’ll have to make some more. —Then she began to cry softly.

  By God! said Lif, thinking of his underwater road across the sea that went for a hundred and twenty feet, and the sea that went on ten thousand miles from the end of it—I’ll swim there! Now then, don’t cry, dear heart. Would I leave you and the little rat here by yourselves? After all the bricks you’ve nearly hit my head with, and all the queer weeds and shellfish you’ve found us to eat lately, after your table and fireside and your bed and your laughter would I leave you when you cry? Now be still, don’t cry. Let me think of a way we can get to the Islands, all of us together.

  But. he knew there was no way. Not for a brickmaker. He had done what he could do. What he could do went one hundred and twenty feet from shore.

  Do you think, he asked after a long time, during which she had cleared the table and rinsed the plates in wellwater that was coming clear again now that the Ragers had been gone many days— Do you think that maybe . . . this . . . He found it hard to say but she stood quiet, waiting, and he had to say it: That this is the end?

  Stillness. In the one lamplit room and all the dark rooms and streets and the burnt fields and wasted lands, stillness. In the black Hall above them on the hill’s height, stillness. A silent air, a silent sky, silence in all places unbroken, unreplying. Except for the far sound of the sea, and very soft though nearer, the breathing of a sleeping child.

  No, the woman said. She sat down across from him and put her hands upon the table, fine hands as dark as earth, the palms like ivory. No, she said, the end will be the end. This is still just the waiting for it.

  Then why are we still here—just us?

  Oh well, she said, you had your things—your bricks—and I had the baby. . . .

  Tomorrow we must go, he said after a time. She nodded.

  Before sunrise they were up. There was nothing at all left to eat, and so when she had put a few clothes for the baby in a bag and had on her warm leather mantle, and he had stuck his knife and trowel in his belt and put on a warm cloak that had been her husband’s, they left the little house, going out into the cold wan light in the deserted streets.

  They went downhill, he leading, she following with the sleepy child in a fold of her cloak. He turned neither to the road that led north up the coast nor to the southern road, but went on past the marketplace and out on the cliff and down the rocky path to the beach. All the way she followed and neither of them spoke. At the edge of the sea he turned.

  I’ll keep you up in the water as long as we can manage, he said.

  She nodded, and said softly, Well, use the road you built, as far as it goes.

  He took her free hand and led her into the water. It was cold. It was bitter cold, and the cold light from the east behind them shone on the foam-lines hissing on the sand. When they stepped on the beginning of the causeway the bricks were firm under their feet, and the child had gone back to sleep on her shoulder in a fold of her cloak.

  As they went on, the buffeting of the waves got stronger. The tide was coming in. The outer breakers wet their clothes, chilled their flesh, drenched their hair and faces. They reached the end of his long work. There lay the beach a little way behind them, the sand dark silver under the cliff over which stood the silent, paling sky. Around them was wild water and foam. Ahead of them was the unresting water, the gulf, the great abyss, the gap.

  A breaker hit them on its way in to shore and they staggered; the baby waked by the sea’s hard slap cried, a little wail in the long, cold, hissing mutter of the sea always saying the same thing.

  Oh I can’t! cried the mother, but the man took her hand more firmly and said aloud, Come on!

  Lifting his head to take the last step from what he had done toward no shore, he saw the shape riding the western water, the leaping light, the white flicker like a swallow’s breast catching the break of day. It seemed as if voices rang over the sea’s voice. What is it? he said, but her head was bowed to her baby, trying to soothe the little wail that was all she heard in the vast babbling of the sea. He stood still and saw the whiteness of the sail, the little dancing light above the waves, dancing on toward them and toward the greater light that grew behind them.

  Wait, the call came from the form that rode the gray waves and danced on the foam, Wait!— The voices rang very sweet, and as the sail leaned white above him he saw the faces and the reaching arms, and heard them say to him, Come, come on the ship, come with us to the Islands.

  Hold on, he said softly to the woman, and took the last step.

  <>

  * * * *

  A Cold Dark Night with Snow

  by Kate Wilhelm

  She knew when the car passed her that she had seen it and the four men in it before, had seen it and paid no attention, for now, trying hard, thinking hard, she couldn’t remember when it had passed, only that it had. The car passed her and slowed down, and in the back window two faces turned, toward each other at first, choreographed precisely, nose to nose, then nose to window, eyes on her. She slowed to fifty, forty. One of the men looking at her said something, the other laughed. The car ahead had passed her doing sixty-five, and now it was keeping two cars’ lengths in front of her. She could outdistance it. She was sure. If they let her get around them. Hers was a new Buick, less than a year old, and the other one, she didn’t know what it was, only that it looked older, and was dirty, very used-looking. She should write down the license number. Groping in her purse she saw a third car appear in her rear-view mirror. It was coming fast. Witnesses. She pushed the accelerator hard and whipped out into the other lane to pass; the car with the four men in it picked up speed also. Seventy, seventy-five, a truck was coming, a dazzling red speck in the brilliant sunlight. She jammed the gas pedal to the floor and pulled ahead of the older car, swung back in, and began to pull away from it. The driver gave up and the car began to diminish in her rear-view mirror, then was passed by the new one that was drawing up to her steadily. She didn’t want to have to drive so fast but she wanted the new car between her and the other one until she got to the next town or city, or telephone, in a pinch. She held seventy cautiously, slowing on curves and where the road vanished in a dip ahead of her, and presently the driver behind her became impatient and touched his horn, then pulled . . .

  Maiya walks across the living room and sinks gracefully onto the couch. Her movements are fluid, her appearance almost boneless, a curve of lines without angles . . . No.

  Maiya sits upright, tense, ready, anxious to help in any way. She is aware of the importance of the interview, and she is impatient with them when they query her about her fatigue . . . No.

  Maiya walked into the kitchen and checked the coffee and finger sandwiches, wrapped in plastic cooling in the refrigerator. She looked at the tray and wondered: Should I offer them gin and tonic instead?

  Should she offer anything? She bit her lip, then had to go to the bathroom to inspect her face and apply more of the pale, pale pink lipstick. She lowered her eyelids and tilted her head and put a trace of a smile on her lips only, her eyes remaining sad and knowing.

  Maiya lets them talk around her, cool, distant, remote even, and when she answers one of the many
questions, it is in a low voice that is tightly controlled. She gives no hint of the tumult she is feeling . . . No.

  She remembered that she hadn’t decided about the gin and tonic, and she took the bottle from the shelf and considered it. It was a hot day, but of course the apartment was pleasantly air-conditioned. They might be hot when they arrived. In air-conditioned cars? From air-conditioned offices? She paced the apartment. Kitchen. Hall. Living room. Bedroom. Bath. Closet. Kitchen. Full circle. She put the gin away and counted the cups on the tray. Eight. All of her good cups. Too many. Four of them and her, possibly five of them. Probably five, but one at least would refuse coffee, gin too, if she decided on impulse to offer it. She might; she should be ready for the possibility that she would do just that, but that would mean having a second tray ready, and that would look gauche.

  “It is gauche not to have wine with dinner, that’s why the rose,” she said furiously to Hank.

  “Honey, who’re you trying to kid? Jack and Susan will have beer before we eat, maybe they’ll want beer with dinner.”

  She should have bought some beer. Even executives liked beer in hot weather. She yanked the plug from the coffeepot. She wouldn’t offer them anything.

  Maiya admits them to the small, well-kept apartment and murmurs her appreciation. . . .

  She should have told them not to come, that they couldn’t come now or ever. She hadn’t dared. She looked out the window at the street seven stories below, white concrete glaring in the sunlight, green plants in pink planters, neat palm trees throwing shadows on neat lawns. The shadows were like whirligigs. Child on tricycle, in and out of the stick shadows, in and out, dark, light, dark, light, in and out. Her dress was white, a glare when she came from the shadow into the sun, an eye-hurting flash of white. She throbbed against Maiya’s eyes, in and out, in and out.

  Although she drove with fierce concentration, now and then the other car began to grow in her mirror and she would realize with a feeling of terror that she had let up on the gas, that she had slowed down to her customary sixty-five, and she would again do seventy or more and sigh when the other car began to fade out of sight. It swelled, then shrank, filled the mirror with its image, dwindled to a dot . . . The roads were so straight, so untraveled. Desert, plains, sunlight, white concrete ribbon, an occasional car or truck from the other direction. And the car behind her that threatened constantly to catch up, to pass her, only to slow down so that the faces could turn to regard her through the rear window. But what could they do? It was daylight, on a public road that had no turnoffs anywhere, that just went on and on to vanish into the sky white with sun straight ahead.

  The very small dab of a girl had got to the corner and turned carefully and was now pedaling back down the sidewalk, in and out of the shadows. Maiya pulled the drapes shut and immediately the room was softened, looked more spacious and felt cooler. Living room: couch, two Danish modern chairs, television-stereo console, two wooden chairs, ash-colored cocktail table, end tables, bare floor except for the conversation rug, crescent shaped, flame colored (she had made it from a rug kit), two table lamps, white china bases, white shades, orange drapes, ivory walls, black throws on the couch and chairs. Spotless, shining. Wax and furniture polish fragrant. Kitchen: gleaming black and white floor, chrome table legs, white cover, polished coffeepot, toaster, mixer, orange and black crockery. She poured a cup of the cooling coffee and returned to the living room with it. She didn’t have to let them in. She sat down on the black couch and sipped cooling coffee and wished she had been able to say no.

  Maiya leans back wearily, her slender white neck barely able to support her head, her hands thin, but quiet on her lap, patience and suffering evident on her pale face, etched in violet under her eyes.

  “My dear,” Dr. Whitman says gently, “we know you’ve been through a lot. We’ll try to be brief. Can you tell us what happened now?”

  “I don’t know,” she says in a low voice, shutting her eyes against the nightmare that is out there. “An accident. Hank was working so hard, studying . . .”

  Books. She hurried to the bedroom and dragged the carton of books from the closet where she had put it and took the top six books without noticing what they were. She put them on tables in the living room, picked one up and put it on the couch, opened, face down. The room looked cluttered suddenly. She picked up the three magazines that were on the cocktail table and took them to the bedroom and left them on top of the carton. The House Beautiful opened when she put it down and she stared at the double spread: a pool seen through a window wall, a fire in a fireplace that filled a second wall, low couches, plants that reached the high ceiling, lots of brass . . . “Goddammit, will you get it through your head. We can’t afford a bigger apartment now. We can’t afford this apartment. I am a file clerk! Not a junior executive! How much room do we need?”

  “You’ve been going to school for years now, learning engineering. You aren’t going to be a file clerk all your life. It makes a difference where you live, how people think about you. If we invite Mr. and Mrs. Morrison . . .”

  “We aren’t going to invite Mr. and Mrs. Morrison. They wouldn’t come if we did. Look, doll, don’t push too hard. Okay?”

  “But you will go back to school when the term starts, won’t you?”

  “I don’t think so, honey. I want time out. I want to think and rest and think some more.”

  “You see,” Maiya says softly, looking into Dr. Whitman’s face, “he was very ambitious, and very brilliant.” She looks beyond him to Mr. Morrison and Mr. Jeffries, the security man. “He could understand everything,” she says, and closes her eyes again. But not before she sees the quick glance that the two men exchange.

  No! No! NO!

  Fool, she whispered fiercely. Stop it. You don’t know anything!

  Maiya took her cup back to the kitchen, washed and dried it and hung it on the turntable rack for eight cups and saucers. She stared at the cups and gave the rack a turn, sending them out and around. Black and orange, black and orange.

  The other car was gaining very slowly. Why couldn’t she lose it? A foolish thought. Where could she lose it? Straight road, white concrete ribbon with false water slicks and heat swirls rising, plains and desert, everything aglare and painful against her eyes, no turnoffs for twenty-five miles or more. She forgot how far it was to the next town. She wished she could study the road map. Say twenty-five miles, less than half an hour away. The car could pull around then and slow down and they could ogle her if they chose, it wouldn’t matter. But if it was fifty miles, she would have to stop for gas first. There would be a solitary station along the road; a wide-board shack with two pumps outside, ancient cans of oil behind sand-pitted windows, sign to Ladies Room, Gents Room, and the sun burning down on it all. She would stop for gas and they would go by, and presently she would leave the crummy station, not rushing because they were ahead of her now. One-room station, with Ladies and Gents and nothing else, not even a snack bar, nothing. She could tell the man there:

  “They’re following me, pulling around and slowing down when they can, and ...” And what? They were probably physicists going back to White Sands after a fishing trip. Or a group of doctors homeward bound from an A.M.A. meeting. Even doctors could look sinister through a back car window, smiling at their own jokes about broken legs, or deliveries, or kidney removals.

  “Hank, what’s this?” She held out a plastic tube of pink capsules.

  “Oh, that. The superintendent sent me over to see Doc Whitman today. He gave me those, help me sleep temporarily.”

  “Sleeping pills? You didn’t tell me you were still having trouble.”

  “Nothing serious. They’re mild. He kidded me about them, said it’s what they give to children who’re due for tonsillectomies, that mild.”

  “Ever since the transfer. Since you started in Dr. Ullster’s department. Don’t you like it there?”

  “Honey, knock it off, huh? Come on, let’s go swimming.”

 
“You used to tell me about the work, what was going on there, what you were doing. You never say any more.”

  “I told you, it’s classified. I took the oath.”

  “But me?”

  “You too, honey. Now let’s go.”

  Ullster was a mathematician, a theoretical mathematical physicist, to be precise. The newspaper said so when his move into the company was announced. Hermann Ullster. No more was said. There was a big shakeup; men were transferred to work in his department from other sections. Computer time was rearranged drastically. Ullster had seven programmers under him.

  Coming home from the pool, Hank said, “They might insist that we move inside the complex soon.”