Orbit 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  Cargill leaves the hand there awhile. Perhaps he is conscious that Limbert will have that ghostly guiding helping hand on his shoulder for a very long time to come. The publicizing of his friendship with Major Ralph Cargill will certainly stand him in good stead. It will bring him into contact with something exciting and alive; it will connect him in the public’s mind with something large and important.

  So much for that. Cargill goes out now to face the world; that is, the television cameras. He is very popular. He would be called a hero except that the word has been so emptied of meaning that the newspapers, to give adequate expression to the general admiration, are forced to call him “a hero’s hero.” He is no ordinary astronaut, crewcut, gum chewing, taped and strapped into a capsule, wires trailing from his scalp—the “human factor” in a complicated mechanical-administrative process. Rather, he is himself the pilot, the navigator and the scientist, and that on a flight largely of his own initiating and partly of his own planning. He has fought for it against public ridicule and scientific dissent, and has won. This has made him into a dramatic figure and he is further dignified by the importance of the flight, the scientific value of which is now beyond dispute. It is to provide, among other things, the first extended trial of the newly discovered means of reducing to human scale the experienced-time of such long-distance travel. Further still—and this too casts upon him its flattering light—the purity of the venture is in no way compromised by politics nor, despite his title, by military advantage. It is undertaken only for the achievement, for the love of knowledge and of glory.

  He speaks. It is his farewell to the world, simple and moving. Three hundred million persons watch.

  * * * *

  2

  Cargill made an ominous discovery the second week out. He was lonely. But he put it aside, as a busy man does a dull ache which is not importuning enough to be attended to at the moment. Besides which, he had expected to be lonely. “His lonely vigil,” “the vast and drear watches of the night,” “the odyssey of a solitary spirit”—such were the newspaper and magazine phrases, implying a quiet and resolute endurance, that had stuck in his memory. But as the weeks and months passed, the ache grew until it throbbed through his whole consciousness, grew until he found that he never lost it for more than a few minutes at a time.

  Loneliness and boredom. The two were one. He had never realized before how social a person he was. Though perfectly amiable and possessing (he couldn’t help but know) an enviable public presence and social command, he had thought of himself as being as independent and self-sufficient as a person reasonably free from conceit could be. The one fault which had been found with him in the midst of the recent adulation was that, with all his good humor, there was a muted but unmistakable reserve —it had been noted, for instance, that he had never been known to laugh in public—and a cool touch of dignity. But these, it was usually added, were admirable qualities in a man undertaking “an odyssey of the solitary spirit” who was to stand “the vast and drear watches of the night.”

  The loneliness was torture. He finally had to admit that very phrase to his consciousness, although it was several weeks more before he could bring himself to put it down in his journal. But he couldn’t turn back. The humiliation would be unendurable. Especially to him, who had tasted the sweets of fame and whose future fame, if he persevered, was certain.

  He had his work, of course: his scientific observations and studies (his training, still continuing, was in mathematics and astro-physics) and his journals (the raw materials of more than one future book). And he did his work with a kind of desperate scrupulousness.

  And he had entertainment. There were books and magazines on microfilm; music, plays and movies on tapes. But never before—he often exclaimed to himself: sometimes aloud, a habit he was falling into—never before had he realized the banality of most popular entertainment. Even of such superior entertainment as this, which had, after all, been carefully selected by a committee to conform to his tastes.

  More and more, that vacuity on the other side of the curved steel came to seem expressive of his own life.

  The one-quarter mark. Twenty-five years had passed on Earth. Two and a half years of his life had “flashed by.” His boredom and loneliness reached a kind of crisis. If he should turn back now ... He loitered at the controls for days, hovering over them; but he couldn’t bring himself to touch them.

  He listened to the sound of his footsteps walking up and down, up and down the narrow corridor.

  He lay on his bunk, remembering the faces and bodies of girls. That deprivation was torturous too. I will still be young, I will still be young. The thought ran through his mind like a tag of a song. I will still be young / When I get back. He would be only in his late thirties and would have before him years of the enjoyment of women. And he would have them too, he knew that, because of that most potent of aphrodisiacs, Fame.

  The halfway mark. He swung past and around the great Alpha Centauri cluster. In the excitement and activity of those weeks, he forgot his sufferings. He filled half a large journal with notes. He discovered two dark planets near Proxima Centauri and gave them names, names which they would bear always—Michelson and Morley—and a third one, which he named Bessel, in the vicinity of the double suns. These discoveries alone would have gained for him a lasting distinction. But he made other observations too, acquisitions worth adding to the coffers of science, such as his discovery of those inexplicable traveling “blips,” apparently faster than his ship, but also, apparently and fortunately for him, harmless. And at last he was on the downward slope toward home. His sufferings changed pitch. Now that it no longer lay in his power to shorten the flight, he no longer lived in an agony of indecision. Rather, he lived a fretting agony of impatience, lapsing at times into exhausted resignation.

  A feature of his loneliness, which had nagged at him for some time, increased during this period. He would catch a glimpse of a figure from the corner of his eye and start, violently. Or he would awaken in the darkness to find that he was listening, and had been listening for some minutes. He began to have a fearful sympathetic understanding of the madness of solitary prisoners and castaways. Careful, he told himself. Careful, or he would people the ship.

  But one thought kept him sane: his future fame. He clung to it. It was his stay, his only prop, in the insupportable night: the sure foreknowledge of his fame when he returned. There was an old joke, “Why should I do anything for posterity? What has posterity done for me?” Well, he was one benefactor who was going to see what posterity could do for him. He was going in person to collect the debt. All he would ask of posterity would be universal respect and recognition—which would surely bring in their train position, money and women. In short, all he would ask was that it should “heap up his moments with life, triple his pulses with fame.”

  These were some of his thoughts as he dropped toward Earth and listened to the sound of his footsteps going up and down, up and down the narrow corridor.

  * * * *

  3

  And now the ground is under his feet. His descent has been dizzying, but he staggers out at last upon the solid ground, to find himself greeted in the morning sunlight by a delegation representing (or so he gathers, along with his scattered wits) the Public and Culture. The Public is disappointingly scanty. It consists of a half-dozen rather ordinary-looking men in highly stylized suits; but Culture, though even less numerous, is embodied more beautifully. He wonders at her beauty, staring a little. Perhaps there is no art—no make-up is visible—but merely heightened feeling. Mary Godwin, she says her name is, and she shows the expected excited interest in him. Of course, they all are most kind, most cordial and most attentive to him. He had expected that, but after his long isolation, his starved longing for human society in his cramped cell, he is thrilled by it, pierced, and his volubility gushes forth. They speak to him and no doubt ask him questions and try to answer some of his, but he finds it quite impossible to stint the flow of hi
s own words and can hardly take in what they say. They have no trouble taking in what he says, though. Their intelligence, their receptivity, is so great that it swallows up everything, every description, observation and report of discovery, without effort and without amazement. But he understands, as they conduct him across the field, Miss Godwin at his side, that they are inviting him to address the public (ah!there is his public: things are to be done ceremoniously) from the stage of the Academy. The Academy? Of Arts and Sciences (with a bow to Miss Godwin). Of course. He had wondered why Science wasn’t among his greeters. It would seem that the two cultures are now one.

  They show him to a car, in which they glide into the city. He is calmer now and more alert, composing mental notes. His first, on looking out upon the wide prospect, is that the world has become not older, but newer. And his second, looking around with a wistful pang at his fresh-faced companions, is that the people have become not older, but younger. They take him to a luxurious suite to rest and refresh himself before meeting the general public.

  His showering and shaving, his changing his clothes for those of the present fashion, are like adventures, they are so fraught with novelty. The representatives of the Public depart as he performs these private rites, but leaving Mary behind, as she is to escort him to the Academy, with which she seems to have some intimate connection. “Some intimate connection?” Was that a throb of jealousy? Drying his face with a towel, he pleasantly contemplates this dark-eyed, dark-haired beauty. She is accessible; this is certainly the appropriate time and place; and yet he abstains. His refraining from any hasty physical grappling is not only a sign to himself and to her of his easy confidence but preserves a little longer that fragile and somewhat tentative charm that plays about the moment and their conversation together.

  She makes several laughing remarks to the effect that she is well familiar with Cargill, that she is acquainted with Cargill’s dark and stormy moods, that Cargill would be much improved by lots of fresh air and purer sunlight —before he quite makes out that she is talking about a place. What place? One of the two planets of Proxima Centauri. Why, yes—hadn’t he understood? There have been some other such flights, several hundred to the Alpha Centauri cluster alone, because of advances in space travel. Almost everyday affairs, you know.

  The ground opens silently at his feet. There is a black void one step before him—a piece of that same dark emptiness into which he has dropped so many years of his life. His accomplishment, then, is nothing, just one of a number of routine transactions, gone stale and familiar. Or worse than nothing: for his heroic effort is now qualified by irony and pity. They will feel pity for him! They will be kind to him! The cordial and attentive faces of this morning flash before him suddenly as images of sly mockery. But, no—he desperately grasps at something: there is no mistaking the expression on the girl’s face. He knows that look. There can be no counterfeiting that. She has turned toward him that spontaneous, steady, observant gaze of admiration, that look, as unironic as an appetite, which a woman directs toward a man who connects her somehow with a larger life, a life of spirit and imagination. Before the magnificent fact of her countenance his inward tremor pales into a delusion. Somehow he is still what he wanted to be. His heroism is undivided and unqualified. The awful hole at his feet closes as silently and invisibly as it had opened.

  She never knew it had been there; and he, his conversation becoming lighter and more effortlessly charming by the moment, doesn’t tell her. They go on to the Presentation together. They enter what appears to be a large auditorium from the rear and pass into what he recognizes as the wings of a stage. And then he hears it. The audience. Breathing, stirring, talking . . . but not, it takes him a puzzled moment to realize, coughing. A man has moved forward to greet them, a pleasant and powerful man whom Mary introduces as Browning, and who is to introduce him to his public. As Browning and he shake hands, Cargill glances out onto the stage—and smiles. For sitting on the stage are the old familiar wooden chairs, two of them, facing the audience with their old familiar patient expectant air.

  His introducer, smiling, touches him on the shoulder and leads the way onto the stage. As Cargill comes out from the wings there is a sudden storm of thunderous applause. The audience rises at him. He is stunned by the size and splendor of the gathering. It is not so much a crowd as a great concourse, a galaxy, of distinguished and distinguishable individuals, brilliantly dressed, gaily alive. He feels a curious movement in his scalp, as if the top of his head were coming off. He walks to the chairs, bows and seats himself on one of them as the beaming Browning steps to the podium. The applause is warm and prolonged—twice or thrice Browning tries to speak, without success—and it dies reluctantly.

  “We are gathered here,” Browning begins—the acoustics are perfect; Cargill might have heard a whisper in the gallery—”we are gathered here to speak with a man who comes to us from the past, a man who was born almost one hundred and forty years ago. But he is more than a survivor. He is our vinculum with the past. We honor the bravery and dedication which have made it possible for him to appear before us as a personal representative and a witness. Many of us have eagerly awaited his return for decades, because we are sure that he has much to tell us. We are sure that he can tell us much that would otherwise have been lost.” There is the slightest stirring in the gathering, to which the speaker responds. “Yes, the broad outlines of the man we so much admire we already know. The genius, the daring, the shaping spirit exploring and appropriating the world—these large things, I say, we already know. But where our hearts are, every fact, no matter how small, is of importance; every fact speaks to us. And Major Ralph Cargill—for who knows the facts better than he?—is here to tell us of them.”

  Cargill, comfortably at home in his prominent position, listens to this flattering rhetoric without missing a nuance of the audience.

  “There are spirits,” continues the orator, “which have enlarged the boundaries of the physical world by their aggressive daring. Our guest is one of those. And there are others, those few and precious others, who have enlarged the world by enlarging our lives, who have claimed for the imaginative life what had previously seemed inaccessible to it, or not worthy of its attention, as not offering the suitable objects and occasions for feeling—the everyday, the routine, the necessary.

  Cargill glances at the speaker, as if he has not quite followed the line of thought here.

  “And Ralph Cargill means so much to us today because of his past connection with such a spirit. For he, as we all know, was the closest personal friend of the greatest novelist of the late twentieth century. Yes, he has seen Limbert plain.”

  The speaker, on saying this, indicates the guest with a gracious and genial gesture; but glancing reflexively in the same direction, freezes—with his arm still outstretched. For the honored guest’s face is contorted and from his open mouth there come uncouth sounds, seemingly torn from him and at first unrecognizable.

  The audience subsides into silence. There is an utter cessation of noise. More than three thousand persons watch as on the stage Major Ralph Cargill, the hero of space, the pioneer of Alpha Centauri, his body taut and rigid, his head thrown back, astonishes their ears with a loud and roaring laughter.

  <>

  * * * *

  Debut

  by Carol Emshwiller

  There are always the helping hands of my sisters and everywhere the rustle of soft silk and the tinkle of iced drinks, so being blind is no hardship. All is dark and calm and cool with the flutter of fans. Hands touch me, guide me. My sisters talk in soft voices and sometimes they sing. Their hands are thin and dry. Their long fingernails seldom scratch, only now and then when they can’t help it.

  Sometimes I say, “I wish I could see,” yet never really wanting to, for I have all I could wish for now. I don’t need to see with their hands always about me and their fans fanning me. “Better not to see,” they answer. “The world is a black place. The days are sharp with
thorns. Better not to see the world,” and they sing me a slow song.

  Mara says the world is blacker even than anything I see now, but I don’t believe it. Also I don’t see black always, but red sometimes and sometimes purple stripes, sometimes white pricks of light.

  Mara and Netta take me to the banks of the stream to listen to the water. “It’s nice to hear water over stones,” they say, and, “sound is better than sight.” Mara combs my hair and Netta washes my feet. I lie on my side with my knees drawn up and play with my blunted daggers, thick as fingers on the string of my belt. I put my hands down sometimes to rub my knees or across to feel how my breasts have grown. I think: There’s a change coming. I’m nervous. I’m not sure, today, if I like my hair combed or not or my feet washed. Perhaps I do. Perhaps I don’t. (One of these days the daggers won’t be so blunt. I wonder if, under their thick shells, there might not be needle points, with poison perhaps, to kill or put asleep. I hope so, but what a strange hope and what a strange thought that comes from nowhere unless from the sound of the pines which also have needles.) This time I won’t tell Mara my thoughts, but shall I tell her to stop combing? I don’t believe I can ask it gently. I don’t feel gentle. I turn onto my other side. By mistake I kick Netta.