Orbit 2 - Anthology

by Edited by Damon Knight

  “Poor little night baby,” the girl addressed it, “you’ll watch over me, won’t you?”

  She rose abruptly, said good night and went into the hut. Kinross looked at Garcia.

  “We’re responsible for her being here,” he said. “We’ve got to get her back to her people.”

  “Kruger’s responsible,” Garcia said.

  “Us too. If Kruger doesn’t come talk to me tonight I’m going in the cave in the morning. Will you come along?”

  “Sure,” said the Mexican, yawning. “Pleasant dreams.”

  * * * *

  Red dawn above the great slope up-valley woke Kinross from a dreamless sleep. He blew an ember into flame and built up the fire. Charred breadfruit rinds littered the ground and he reflected wryly that this world no longer policed itself. He put the rinds into the fire.

  Somewhere on the hillside across the stream, Kerbeck shouted and brush crackled. Garcia got up and the woman peeped out of her hut as Kinross stood irresolute. Then Kerbeck came in view. He carried a stalk of yellow bananas over his left shoulder and with his right hand clutched a small man by the neck. He half pushed, half kicked the little man down the slope.

  The huge Norseman hummed excitedly as he approached across the level. Suddenly Kinross, still half asleep, heard words in the humming, as he had sometimes heard wind-voices in the singing of telegraph wires when he was a boy on the high plains of Nebraska.

  “I catch me a devil,” Kerbeck was saying.

  The devil was a swarthy, broad-faced little man dressed in baggy gray woolen garments. His eyes were closed, his face screwed up in fear, and he was gabbling under his breath. Garcia listened, suddenly alert, and then spoke sharply to the man in Spanish. He got a torrent of words in reply.

  “He’s a Peruvian,” Garcia interpreted. “He comes from the mountains above Tacna. He’s been wandering lost for days. He thinks he’s dead and that Kerbeck is the boss devil.”

  “Seems to be mutual,” Kinross said. “Tell him he’ll be all right now. I wonder how many more. . .”

  Kerbeck went away, humming and buzzing. The little Peruvian, still badly frightened, crouched beyond the fire and ate bananas with them. Then Kinross, explaining his purpose to the woman, proposed to Garcia that they visit the cave.

  “Not empty-handed,” the Mexican reminded him. “Remember, we got a duty.”

  Along the way they gathered guavas and papayas into Kinross’ shirt, pushed through the grove and laid the fruits on the stone platform. Silva sat beside it, rocking and wailing almost inaudibly. Kinross patted his shoulder.

  “Cheer up, Silva, old man,” he said. “We’re going in to see Kruger now. May have some good news for you.”

  “Unholy,” the old man moaned. “Full of devils. You’re a devil.”

  The two men walked to the cave mouth and stopped. They looked at each other.

  “What are we waiting for?” Garcia asked.

  “I don’t know. I expected Fay or Bo Bo to be on guard, I guess,” Kinross said. “Hell with it. In we go.”

  The cave pinched sharply in to become a nearly round tunnel about fifteen feet high. The stream splashed along the bottom, forcing them to wade. The water shone with a soft light and moisture oozing through cracks in the black rock made luminous patches here and there on the walls. The rock had the blocky, amorphous look of basalt. The air was cool and utterly still except for the murmur of the stream.

  The two men waded in silence for a good way before they heard a clear noise of turbulent water somewhere ahead. Then they came into an indefinitely large chamber with the luminous water cascading broadly down its back wall from a blackness above. Fay and Bo Bo were asleep on rough terraces beside the stream.

  “What have you come to tell me, Kinross?” Kruger’s voice asked out of the dimness. It seemed to shape the noise of the cascading water into its words.

  * * * *

  “We found a woman,” Kinross said.

  “I know. There are many others, both men and women, still making their way here. I have been greatly strengthened. Have you noticed how the world has firmed up and become extended in time?”

  “Yes. But how do these people get here? Is there more than one gate?”

  “No. It must have shifted.”

  “To where, then? One is from Australia, one from Peru.”

  “So?” Surprise rang in the silvery, liquid voice. “Perhaps it moves then.”

  “But Tibesti—”

  “They didn’t know a rotating earth. The sun of Tibesti goes around a stationary earth. But when we—I— set up a succession of days here I must have put a spin into this world. Perhaps it is slightly out of phase with our old world. The gate would wander . . .”

  “You sound pleased,” Kinross said.

  “I am. It takes many people to hold a world in place, Kinross. In a few centuries there may be enough here so that I can really rest. They will breed of course, and they will be long-lived here.”

  “How big do you think the gate is?”

  “About the size of the boat, I expect. Perhaps an ellipse thirty feet on the major axis.”

  “How do people come through, not knowing—?”

  “Several ways are possible. Perhaps it sweeps over them at a moment of intense world-loathing, those moments a man can’t support beyond a second or two. It snatches them up. Or perhaps daydreamers, with their sense of reality unfocused and their mooring lines to their real world slacked or cast loose. They want only to drift a little way out, but the gate comes by and snatches them. I don’t really know, Kinross. Maybe this world is going to be populated by poets and self-haters.”

  “But the gate? Can we get through it the other way?”

  “Yes. Some of the soldiers of Tibesti came back—or fled back or were driven back—the old tales are conflicting. But anyone passing back through this gate would risk dropping into an ocean. I suspect the gate sweeps the eighteenth parallel, or near it.”

  “Kruger, the woman wants to go back. We have to find a way.”

  “No. No one may go back. Especially not women.”

  “Kruger, we have no right—”

  “We do have right and beyond that a duty. She would not be here if she had not voluntarily, at least for a moment, relinquished or rejected her own world. She belongs to us now, and we need her.”

  “Kruger, I may not obey that. I—”

  “You must obey. You cannot pass the reentry barrier without my aid.”

  “Let it go, then, for now,” Kinross conceded. “I have other questions. What are the black dwarfs and pearly-gray women?”

  “Nature spirits, I suppose you could call them. I stripped them from Fay and Bo Bo, husked them off by the millions until only a bare core of nothingness was left. What those two are now I couldn’t describe to you. But the world is partially self-operating and my load is eased.”

  Garcia spoke for the first time. “Tough on Fay, for all I hated the little rat.”

  “Was that what you wanted to do with me?” Kinross asked, shuddering.

  “No,” the clear, liquid voice said solemnly, “you are a different kind of man, Kinross. You could have helped me to bear the load, and perhaps together we could have endured it until the help came that is coming now. Do not wash your hands of Fay and Bo Bo, Kinross.”

  “Kruger,” Garcia said hesitantly, “do you mean that all those devils are really Fay and Bo Bo?”

  “Most of them are,” the silvery voice confirmed, “but many of them are Kerbeck. He is disintegrating without my interference. And some are you, too, Garcia; some are Kinross, the woman, all of you. You are built into this world more than you know.”

  “I don’t like it,” Garcia said. “Kruger, I won’t give up my devils.”

  “You can’t help it, Garcia. But you have millions to spare, and besides you don’t really lose them, you know. You just spread yourself through the world, in a way. Every time you put a compulsion on this world by expecting something, it costs you a devil or tw
o. Do you understand?”

  “No!” the Mexican growled.

  “I think you do. If you don’t, talk to Kinross later. But it’s not so bad, Garcia. When you become a loose cloud of devils, instead of a shiny black stone, you will be a poet or a sylvan god.”

  “Kruger,” Kinross broke in, “do you hold it against me, that I denied you my help that time?”

  “Do you hold it against me that I initiated all this by blowing up the Ixion?”

  “I don’t know ... I just don’t know. . .”

  “Nor do I know, Kinross. Perhaps we’re even. And I still have need of you.”

  “Where is your body, Kruger? Can you animate it yet?”

  “It is above the waterfall. I can see dimly now how I will animate it in the distant future and come into this world in a kind of glory. But not yet, not yet. . .”

  “Your thirst, Kruger. Are you still thirsty?”

  “Yes, Kinross. It still tears at me. I don’t know how much longer I will have to endure it.”

  “Doesn’t rapport with Fay—?”

  “No one but you, Kinross. And now not even you. You disobeyed me once.”

  “Kruger, I’m sorry. I wish it didn’t have to be. May we go now?”

  “Yes. Go and serve our world. Try to be content.”

  “Let’s go, Garcia,” Kinross said, turning. The Mexican set off briskly, leading Kinross. When they were passing through the dark grove Kinross halted.

  “Let’s sit here and talk about devils for a while, Garcia,” he proposed. “I’m not ready to face Mary Chadwick just yet.”

  * * * *

  When the two men returned to the fire, more than a dozen people were standing around it. Several were women. A tall, slender man wearing a leather jacket and gray trousers tucked into heavy boots came out of the group to meet them. He had reddish-blond hair.

  “Mr. Kinross?” he asked. “Allow me to introduce myself and to apologize for making free of your fire. My name is Friedrich von Lankenau.”

  They shook hands. The newcomer had a sinewy grip in his long fingers. His face was gaunt and bony, frozen, with thin lips and a high, narrow beak of a nose. Kinross stared at him quizzically and deep-set gray eyes looked back at him steadily from under shaggy brows. The thin lips smiled slightly.

  “Miss Chadwick tells me that you are Mr. Kruger’s lieutenant, so to speak,” the man said. “We are a group gathered together in chance meetings along the way here. We are anxious to learn a rational, physical explanation of what we are experiencing.”

  A babble of voices broke from the group. “Silence!” snapped the tall man. “If Mr. Kinross will explain, you may all listen, you who know English. I will then to the others explain.” The babble stilled.

  Kinross told the story of the soldiers of Tibesti and of the sailors of the Ixion. He watched Lankenau closely as he spoke. The man never lost the rigid composure of his features, but his eyes blazed and he continually nodded his comprehension. When he finished Kinross checked the renewed babble by setting Garcia to telling the story in Spanish. Then he drew Lankenau to one side.

  “Mind telling me where you were when you came through?” he asked.

  “I was nearly to the top of Sajama in Bolivia, climbing alone.”

  “How about the others?”

  “From all over. Brazil, the New Hebrides, Mozambique, Australia, Rhodesia. . .”

  “I guess Kruger’s right and the gate does sweep the eighteenth parallel,” Kinross mused.

  “We can establish it quite exactly with a little questioning, I have no doubt,” Lankenau said confidently. “But sooner or later, Mr. Kinross, I would like to talk directly to the Herr Kruger if it can be arranged. I am much intrigued—”

  “You just go see him, Mr. Lankenau. I’m not his secretary. But I can tell you now, he will permit no one to return to the old world.”

  “I would not for anything return to the old world!” Lankenau spoke with feeling that broke through his composure.

  “From boyhood I knew the story of the soldiers of Tibesti,” he continued. “As a very young man I sought the gate through all of the Tibesti, and perhaps found the spot, but it did not reveal itself to me as it did for the Herr Kruger. So I sought a gate of my own, on mountain-tops in winter, such peaks as Sajama. I am not at all sure that I came through your gate, Mr. Kinross, but I am sure that I came to stay.”

  “Mary—Miss Chadwick—has somewhat the same notion,” Kinross said. “I never knew so many people—” His voice trailed off.

  “Forgive my outburst,” Lankenau said, composure regained. “For me this is a lost hope suddenly realized, and I am a bit overcome. If you will excuse me, I will visit the Herr Kruger now.”

  He bowed and strode away springily. Kinross became aware of the Australian woman at his elbow.

  “Mary,” he said, “did you hear him? But let me tell you, we can get back to your world, although it will be dangerous. I’ll work on it and let you know.”

  She seemed hardly to listen, staring after the retreating figure. “Bonzer!” she said. “There walks a man.”

  * * * *

  Kinross walked away, slightly irritated. Garcia was talking to a group of Latins including the three women. Kinross sought out the Rhodesian, a stocky, florid man wearing plaid shorts. His name was Peter White.

  “What do you think of all this?” he asked.

  “You have quite a good thing here,” the man replied. “Like being a child again, isn’t it rather?”

  Kinross grunted and asked him what he thought of Lankenau. White said he admired von Lankenau, that he had felt rather forlorn and drifting until he had joined von Lankenau’s group. Kinross fidgeted over commonplaces for a few minutes and finally said, “You know, White, we can go back through that gate if we work it right.”

  “I wouldn’t want to, just yet,” White said soberly. “This is rather a lark.”

  “But in time—when you get tired—”

  “Tired? That’s as may be. You know, Kinross, the last I remember of the old world was being almost dead of fever in the low veldt. Dreams . . . visions . . . I’m not ready to wake back. . .”

  “Then you think this is a dream?”

  “Yes. A different and a better one.”

  Kinross excused himself and walked away shaking his head. Garcia was still yapping in Spanish. He walked aimlessly for a while, then lay under a breadfruit tree near the fire and tried to sleep. He felt bored and angry. He saw two newcomers, both women, come down the hillside and left it to Garcia to welcome them.

  * * * *

  Hours later von Lankenau strode back from the grove with an exalted look on his lean face. He called his group together and instructed them in their several languages as to their duties. Each must gather a token handful of fruit or berries every morning and place it on the cairn before the cave entrance. Then he spoke of huts and sanitary arrangements. White had a belt axe. One of the Mozambique Negroes had a bush knife and the other a grubbing hoe. When the work was going forward to his satisfaction he joined Kinross under the breadfruit tree. Garcia came with him.

  “I talked to the Herr Kruger a long time,” von Lankenau said, sitting down and clasping his long arms around his knees. “He told me much, and much of it about you, Mr. Kinross.”

  “What about me?” Kinross asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “The special relation between you. Something about the reciprocal way you and he came into this world. He does not understand it himself. But he knows that you should be his lieutenant among the people.”

  Kinross said nothing. Von Lankenau regarded him gravely for a moment and continued, “I will cheerfully defer to your authority, Mr. Kinross, and help in any way I can.”

  “I don’t want authority or responsibility,” Kinross said. “You go right on taking charge of things, Mr. Lankenau, only leave me out of it.”

  “If I must, by your default, then I will. But I hope that I can consult with you.”

  “Oh, by all means,” Kinr
oss said. “I’m good at talking.”

  “Let us talk then. Do you know, Mr. Kinross, this situation is absolutely fascinating. Cannot you feel it set fire to your thoughts?”

  “I know what you mean, I suppose. We’re tampering with some of the ultimate mysteries. I won’t deny I haven’t thought about them in my time and read strange books, too. But now I wonder. . .”

  “No moral qualms now, please, Mr. Kinross. You will only torment yourself uselessly like that unfortunate Portuguese. We have a world to build and it need not be a copy of the old one. We may be able to simplify the chemistry, systematize the mineralogy . . . does not the thought intrigue you, Mr. Kinross?”