Picnic On Nearside

by John Varley

  But the figures were unimpeachable. The volume of Ring Beta was seventy billion cubic kilometers, and any one of them could hide a thousand children.

  They hung around the crèche for a few weeks, questioning Engineers, trying to find an angle that would enable them to defeat the statistics. Without a known destination for their children, there was no way out; they could be anywhere, and that was so vast it didn't bear thinking about.

  In the end they left, and didn't know where they were bound.

  Three days later they encountered another Conser, a male, and mated with him. He was sympathetic to their plight, but agreed with them that there was no chance of finding their children. Solstice carefully saw to it that Parameter was not fertilized. They had had enough of pregnancy for the next century or so.

  And after they left the Conser, they found themselves falling asleep. Only they knew it wasn't sleep.

  Before she even opened her eyes, Parameter reached frantically for the top of her head.

  "Solstice..."

  "I'm here. Don't make any sudden moves. We've been captured. I don't know by whom, but he's armed."

  She opened her eyes. She was in a conjugation sphere and the tendril from Solstice was still firmly planted in her head. There was another person with her, a small person. He waved his gun at her and she nodded.

  "Don't be alarmed," he said. "If you can answer a few questions you'll probably come out of this alive."

  "You can set your mind at ease. I won't cause any trouble."

  She realized he was a child, about eleven years old. But he seemed to know about stunners.

  "We've been watching you for about a week," he said. "You talked to Engineers, so we naturally assumed you were one. But just now you spoke to a Conser, and on the Conser frequency. I want an explanation."

  "I was originally a Conser. Recently I killed an Engineer and stole her transmitter organ." She knew she couldn't think of a convincing lie quickly enough to be safe from his stunner. She wasn't sure there was a convincing lie to cover her situation.

  "Which side do you identify with now?"

  "Neither side. I want to be independent if anyone will allow that."

  He looked thoughtful. "That may be easier than you know. Why did you kill the Engineer?"

  "I had to do it so I could move in Engineer society, so I could hunt for my children and the Symb who was taken from me several years ago. I have been—"

  "What's your name?"

  "Parameter, and Solstice."

  "Right. I've got a message for you, Parameter. It's from your children. They're all right, and looking for you around here. We should be able to find them in a few days' search."

  The children recognized the awkwardness of the situation. As they joined the group conjugation, emerging from the walls of the slowly enlarging sphere, they limited themselves to a brief kiss, then withdrew into a tangle of small bodies.

  Parameter and Solstice were so jittery they could hardly think. The five children they could get to know, but Equinox? What about her?

  They got the distinct feeling that the children recognized Parameter, then realized it was possible. Equinox had been talking to them while still in the womb, urging their minds to develop with pictures and sounds. Some of the pictures would have been of Parameter.

  Ring children are not like other human children. They are born already knowing most of what they need to survive in the Rings. Then they are able to join with an infant Symb and help guide its development into an adult in a few weeks. From there, the Symb takes over for three years, teaching them and leading them to the places they need to go to grow up strong and healthy. For all practical purposes they are mature at three years. They must be; they cannot count on being with their mother more than the few weeks it takes them to acquire an adult Symb. From that time, they are on their own. Infant physical shortcomings are made up by the guidance and control of the Symb.

  Parameter looked at these strange children, these youngsters whose backyard was billions of cubic kilometers wide and whose toys were stars and comets. What did she know of them? They might as well be another species. But that shouldn't matter; so was Solstice.

  Solstice was almost hysterical. She was gripped in fear that in some way she couldn't understand she was going to lose Parameter. She was in danger of losing her mind. One part of her loved Equinox as hopelessly as Parameter did; another part knew there was room for only one Symb for any one human. What if it came to a choice? How would they face it?

  "Equinox?"

  There was a soundless scream from Solstice. "Equinox?"

  ?????

  "Is that you, Equinox?"

  The answer was very faint, very far away. They could not hear it.

  "It's me. Parameter."

  "And Solstice. You don't know me—"

  I know you. You are me. I used to be you. I remember both of you. Interesting.

  But the voice didn't sound interested. It was cool.

  "I don't understand." No one was sure who said it.

  But you do. I am gone. There is a new me. There is a new you. It is over.

  "We love you."

  Yes. Of course you do. But there is no me left to love.

  "We're confused."

  You will get over it.

  The children floated together: quietly, respectfully; waiting for their mother to come to grips with her new reality. At last she stirred.

  "Maybe we'll understand it some day," Parameter said.

  One of the girls spoke.

  "Equinox is no more, Mother," she said. "And yet she's still with us. She made a choice when she knew we were going to be captured. She reabsorbed her children and fissioned into five parts. None of us got all of her, but we all got enough."

  Parameter shook her head and tried to make sense out of it. The child who had brought her here had not been willing to tell her anything, preferring to wait until her children could be with her.

  "I don't understand how you came to find me."

  "All it took was patience. We never reached the crèche; we were liberated on the way here by Alphans. They killed all the Engineers who were guarding us and adopted us themselves."

  "What's an Alphan?"

  "Alphans are the Ringers who live in Ring Alpha, who are neither Conser nor Engineer. They are renegades from both sides who have opted out of the conflict. They took care of us, and helped us when we said we wanted to find you. We knew where we had been going, and knew it was only a matter of time until you showed up here, if you were still alive. So we waited. And you got here in only nine years. You're very resourceful."

  "Perhaps." She was looking at her children's legs. They were oddly deformed. And what were those blunt instruments at the ends of them? How odd.

  "Feet, Mother," the child said. "There are surgeons in Alpha, but we could never afford to go there until we had found you. Now we'll go. We hope you'll go with us."

  "Huh? Ah, I guess I should. That's across the Cassini Division, isn't it? And there's no war there? No killing?"

  "That's right. We don't care if they paint Ring Beta with stripes and polka dots. They're freaks: Conser and Engineers. We are the true Ringers."

  "Solstice?"

  "Why not?"

  "We'll go with you. Say, what are your names?"

  "Army," said one of the girls.

  "Navy," said another.

  "Marine."

  "Airforce."

  "And Elephant," said the boy.

  Manikins

  "YOU'RE SURE SHE'S NOT dangerous?"

  "Not at all. Not to you, anyway."

  Evelyn closed the sliding window in the door and made an effort to control the misgivings that tugged at her. It was a little late to discover in herself a queasiness about crazy people.

  She looked around and discovered with relief that it wasn't the patients she feared. It was the fortress atmosphere of the Bedford Institution. The place was a nightmare of barred windows, padded rooms, canvas sheets and straight
jackets and hypodermics and burly attendants. It was a prison. With all the precautions it was only natural that she should feel nervous about the people it was built to contain.

  She peeked into the room again. The woman inside was so small, so quiet and composed to be the cause of all this fuss.

  Doctor Burroughs closed the thick file he had been scanning. Barbara Endicott. Age: 28. Height: 5' 3". Weight: 101. Diagnosis: Paranoid Schizophrenic. Remarks: Subject is to be considered dangerous. Remanded for observation from criminal court, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, murder. Intense hostility to men. There was more, much more. Evelyn had read some of it.

  "She's got a massively defended psychosis. As usual, granting the illogical assumptions, the delusional system is carefully worked out and internally consistent."

  "I know," Evelyn said.

  "Do you? Yes, I suppose you do, from books and films." He closed the file and handed it to her. "You'll find it's a little different actually talking to one of them. They're sure of the things they say in a way that no sane person is ever likely to be. We all live with our little doubts, you know. They don't. They've seen the truth, and nothing will convince them otherwise. It takes a strong grip on reality to deal with them. You're likely to be a bit shaken when you're through with her."

  Evelyn wished he'd finish and open the door. She had no worries about her sense of reality. Did he really worry that the woman would unsettle her with the kind of rubbish that was down in that file?

  "We've had her on electroshock treatments for the last week," he said. He shrugged, helplessly. "I know what your teachers have said about that. It wasn't my decision. There's just no way to reach these people. When we run out of reason and persuasion, we try the shocks. It's not doing her any good. Her psychosis is as defended as it ever was." He rocked back on his heels, frowning.

  "I guess you might as well go on in. You're perfectly safe. Her hostility is directed only at men." He gestured to the white-suited attendant, who looked like an NFL lineman, and the man turned a key in the lock. He opened the door, standing back to let her pass.

  Barbara Endicott sat in a chair by the window. The sunlight streamed through and the bars made a cross-hatched pattern over her face. She turned, but did not get up.

  "Hello, I'm... I'm Evelyn Winters." The woman had turned away as soon as she started talking. Evelyn's confidence, feeble enough in this forbidding place, threatened to leave her entirely.

  "I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind. I'm not a doctor, Barbara."

  The woman turned back and looked at her.

  "Then what are you doing in that white coat?"

  Evelyn looked down at the lab smock. She felt silly in the damn thing.

  "They told me I had to wear it."

  "Who is 'they?' " Barbara asked, with the hint of a chuckle. "You sound paranoid, my dear."

  Evelyn relaxed a little. "Now that should have been my question. 'They' are the staff of this... place." Damn it, relax! The woman seemed friendly enough now that she saw Evelyn wasn't a doctor. "I guess they want to know if I'm a patient."

  "Right. They'd give you one of these blue outfits if you were."

  "I'm a student. They said I could interview you."

  "Shoot." Then she smiled, and it was such a friendly, sane smile that Evelyn smiled back and extended her hand. But Barbara was shaking her head.

  "That's a man thing," she said, indicating the hand. " 'See? I have no weapons. I'm not going to kill you.' We don't need that, Evelyn. We're women."

  "Oh, of course." She awkwardly stuffed the hand into the pocket of the lab coat, clenched. "May I sit down?"

  "Sure. There's just the bed, but it's hard enough to sit on."

  Evelyn sat on the edge of the bed, the file and notebook in her lap. She poised there, and found that her weight was still on the balls of her feet, ready to leap away. The bleakness of the room assaulted her. She saw flaking gray paint, yellow window glass set in a well behind a mesh screen, gun-metal bolts securing it to the wall. The floor was concrete, damp and unfriendly. The room echoed faintly. The only furniture was the chair and the bed with gray sheets and blanket.

  Barbara Endicott was small, dark-haired, with the smooth perfection of features that reminded Evelyn of an oriental. She looked pale, probably from two months in the cell. Under it, she had robust health. She sat in a checkerboard of sunlight, soaking up what rays passed through the glass. She wore a blue bathrobe with nothing underneath, belted at the waist, and cloth slippers.

  "So I'm your assignment for the day. Did you pick me, or someone else?"

  "They told me you'd only speak to women."

  "That's true, but you didn't answer my question, did you? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you nervous, really. I won't be like that again. I'm acting like a crazy woman."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Being bold, aggressive. Saying whatever I want to. That's how all the crazy people around here act. I'm not crazy, of course." Her eyes were twinkling.

  "I can't tell if you're putting me on," Evelyn admitted, and suddenly felt much closer to the woman. It was an easy trap to fall into, thinking of deranged people as mentally defective, lacking in reasoning powers. There was nothing wrong with Barbara Endicott in that direction. She could be subtle.

  "Of course I'm crazy," she said. "Would they have me locked up here if I wasn't?" She grinned, and Evelyn relaxed. Her back loosened up; the bedspring creaked as she settled on them.

  "All right. Do you want to talk about it?"

  "I'm not sure if you want to hear. You know I killed a man, don't you?"

  "Did you? I know the hearing thought you did, but they found you incapable of standing trial."

  "I killed him, all right. I had to find out."

  "Find out what?"

  "If he could still walk with his head cut off."

  And there it was; she was an alien again. Evelyn suppressed a shudder. The woman had said it in such a reasonable tone of voice, without any obvious try for shock value. And indeed, it had not affected her as strongly as it might have a few minutes ago. She was revolted, but not scared.

  "And what made you think he might be able to?"

  "That's not the important question," she chided. "Maybe it's not important to you, but it is to me. I wouldn't have done a thing like that unless it was important to know."

  "To know... oh. Well, did he?"

  "He sure did. For two or three minutes, he blundered around that room. I saw it, and I knew I was right."

  "Will you tell me what led you to think he could?"

  Barbara looked her over.

  "And why should I? Look at you. You're a woman, but you've swallowed all the lies. You're working for them."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've painted yourself up. You've scraped the hair off your legs and covered them with nylon, and you're walking inefficiently with a skirt to hobble your legs and heels designed to make you stumble if you run from them when they try to rape you. You're here doing their work for them. Why should I tell you? You wouldn't believe me."

  Evelyn was not alarmed by this turn in the conversation. There was no hostility in what Barbara was saying. If anything, there was pity. Barbara would not harm her, simply because she was a woman. Now that she understood that, she could go on with more assurance.

  "That may be true. But don't you owe it to me, as a woman, to tell me about this threat if it's really so important?"

  Barbara slapped her knees in delight.

  "You got me, doc. You're right. But that was sure tricky, turning my own delusions against me."

  Evelyn wrote in her notebook: Can be glib when discussing her delusional-complex. She is assured enough of her rightness to make jokes about it.

  "What are you writing?"

  "Huh? Oh..." Be honest, she'll know if you lie. Be straight with her and match her irreverence. "...just notes on your condition. I have to make a diagnosis to my instructor. He wants to know what kind of crazy you are."


  "That's easy. I'm paranoid schizophrenic. You don't need a degree to see that."

  "No, I guess not. All right, tell me about it."

  "Basically, what I believe is that the Earth was invaded by some kind of parasite at some point back in pre-history. Probably in cave-dwelling days. It's hard to tell for sure, since history is such a pack of lies. They rewrite it all the time, you know."

  Again, Evelyn didn't know if she was being played with, and the thought amused her. This was a complex, tricky woman. She'd have to stay on her toes. That speech had been such an obvious paranoid construction, and Barbara was well aware of it.

  "I'll play your game. Who is 'they?' "

  " 'They' is the all-purpose paranoid pronoun. Any group that is involved in a conspiracy, conscious or not, to 'get' you. I know that's crazy, but there are such groups."

  "Are there?"

  "Sure. I didn't say they had to be holding meetings to plot ways to bedevil you. They don't. You can admit the existence of groups whose interests are not your own, can't you?"

  "Certainly."

  "The more important thing is it doesn't matter if they're really an explicit conspiracy, or just have the same effect because that's the way they function. It doesn't have to be personal, either. Each year, the IRS conspires to rob you of money that you earned, don't they? They're in a plot with the President and Congress to steal your money and give it to other people, but they don't know you by name. They steal from everybody. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about."

  Justifies her fear of external, inimical forces by pointing to real antagonistic groups.

  "Yes, I can see that. But we all know the IRS is out there. You're talking about a secret that only you see. Why should I believe you?"

  Her face got more serious. Perhaps she was realizing the strengths of her opponent. Her opponent always had the stronger arguments, it was the nature of things. Why are you right and everyone else wrong?

  "That's the tough part. You can offer me reams of 'proof' that I'm wrong, and I can't show you anything. If you'd been there when I'd killed that fellow, you'd know. But I can't do it again." She drew a deep breath, and seemed to settle in for a long debate.