Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  "Put your helmet on!" the food man ordered angrily.

  The alarm bell ceased complaining; the pressure had restabilized. At that, the food man grimaced.

  He popped his helmet and then began to unload cartons from his comtrix.

  "We are a hardy race," McVane said, helping him.

  "You have amped up everything," the food man observed; like all the rovers who serviced domes, he was sturdily built and he moved rapidly. It was not a safe job operating a comtrix shuttle between mother ships and the domes of CY30II. He knew it, and McVane knew it. Anybody could sit in a dome; few people could function outside.

  "Stick around for a while," McVane said after he and the food man had unloaded and the food man was marking the invoice.

  "If you have coffee."

  They sat facing each other across the table, drinking coffee. Outside the dome the methane messed around, but here neither man felt it. The food man perspired; he apparently found McVane's temperature level too high.

  "You know the woman in the next dome?" the food man asked.

  "Somewhat," McVane said. "My rig transfers data to her input circuitry every three or four weeks. She stores it, boosts it, and transmits it. I suppose. Or for all I know --"

  "She's sick," the food man said.

  McVane said, "She looked all right the last time I talked to her. We used video. She did say something about having trouble reading her terminal's displays."

  "She's dying," the food man said, and sipped his coffee.

  In his mind, McVane tried to picture the woman. Small and dark, and what was her name? He punched a couple of keys on the board beside him, her name came up on its display, retrieved by the code they used. Rybus Rommey. "Dying of what?" he said.

  "Multiple sclerosis."

  "How far advanced is it?"

  "Not far at all," the food man said. "A couple of months ago, she told me that when she was in her late teens she suffered an -- what is it called? Aneurysm. In her left eye, which wiped out her central vision in that eye. They suspected at the time that it might be the onset of multiple sclerosis. And then today when I talked to her she said she's been experiencing optic neuritis, which --"

  McVane said, "Both symptoms were fed to M.E.D.?"

  "A correlation of an aneurysm and then a period of remission and then double vision, blurring. . . you ought to call her up and talk to her. When I was delivering to her, she was crying."

  Turning to his keyboard, McVane punched out and punched out and then read the display. "There's a thirty to forty percent cure rate for multiple sclerosis."

  "Not out here. M.E.D. can't get to her out here."

  "Shit," McVane said.

  "I told her to demand a transfer back home. That's what I'd do. She won't do it."

  "She's crazy," McVane said.

  "You're right. She's crazy. Everybody out here is crazy. You want proof of it? She's proof of it. Would you go back home if you knew you were very sick?"

  "We're never supposed to surrender our domes."

  "What you monitor is so important." The food man set down his cup. "I have to go." As he got to his feet, he said, "Call her and talk to her. She needs someone to talk to and you're the closest dome. I'm surprised she didn't tell you."

  McVane thought, I didn't ask.

  After the food man had departed, McVane got the code for Rybus Rommey's dome, and started to run it into his transmitter, and then hesitated. His wall clock showed 1830 hours. At this point in his forty-two-hour cycle, he was supposed to accept a sequence of high-speed entertainment audio- and videotaped signals emanating from a slave satellite at CY30 III; upon storing them, he was to run them back at normal and select the material suitable for the overall dome system on his own planet.

  He took a look at the log. Fox was doing a concert that ran two hours. Linda Fox, he thought. You and your synthesis of old-time rock and modern-day streng. Jesus, he thought. If I don't transcribe the relay of your live concert, every domer on the planet will come storming in here and kill me. Outside of emergencies -- which don't occur -- this is what I'm paid to handle: information traffic between planets, information that connects us with home and keeps us human. The tape drums have got to turn.

  He started the tape transport at its high-speed mode, set the module's controls for receive, locked it in at the satellite's operating frequency, checked the wave-form on the visual scope to be sure that the carrier was coming in undistorted, and then patched into an audio transduction of what he was getting.

  The voice of Linda Fox emerged from the strip of drivers mounted above him. As the scope showed, there was no distortion. No noise. No clipping. All channels, in fact, were balanced; his meters indicated that.

  Sometimes I could cry myself when I hear her, he thought. Speaking of crying.

  "Wandering all across this land, My band. In the worlds that pass above, I love. Play for me, you spirits who are weightless. I believe in drinking to your greatness. My band."

  And behind Linda Fox's vocal, the syntholutes which were her trademark. Until Fox, no one had ever thought of bringing back that sixteenth-century instrument for which Dowland had written so beautifully and so effectively.

  "Shall I sue? shall I seek for grace?

  Shall I pray? shall I prove? Shall I strive to a heavenly joy With an earthly love? Are there worlds? are there moons Where the lost shall endure? Shall I find for a heart that is pure?"

  What Linda Fox had done was take the lute books of John Dowland, written at the end of the sixteenth century, and remastered both the melodies and the lyrics into something of today. Some new thing, he thought, for scattered people as flung as if they had been dropped in haste: here and there, disarranged, in domes, on the backs of miserable worlds and in satellites -- victimized by the power of migration, and with no end in sight.

  "Silly wretch, let me rail At a trip that is blind. Holy hopes do require"

  He could not remember the rest. Well, he had it taped, of course.

  ". . .no human may find."

  Or something like that. The beauty of the universe lay not in the stars figured into it but in the music generated by human minds, human voices, human hands. Syntholutes mixed on an intricate board by experts, and the voice of Fox. He thought, I know what I must have to keep on going. My job is delight: I transcribe this and I broadcast it and they pay me.

  "This is the Fox," Linda Fox said.

  McVane switched the video to holo, and a cube formed in which Linda Fox smiled at him. Meanwhile, the drums spun at furious speed, getting hour upon hour into his permanent possession.

  "You are with the Fox," she said, "and the Fox is withyou." She pinned him with her gaze, the hard, bright eyes. The diamond face, feral and wise, feral and true; this is the Fox speaking to you. He smiled back.

  "Hi, Fox," he said.

  Sometime later he called the sick girl in the next dome. It took her an amazingly long time to respond to his signal, and as he sat noting the signal register on his own board he thought, Is she finished? Or did they come and forcibly evacuate her?

  His microscreen showed vague colors. Visual static, nothing more. And then there she was.

  "Did I wake you up?" he asked. She seemed so slowed down, so torpid. Perhaps, he thought, she's sedated.

  "No. I was shooting myself in the ass."

  "What?" he said, startled.

  "Chemotherapy," Rybus said. "I'm not doing too well."

  "I just now taped a terrific Linda Fox concert; I'll be broadcasting it in the next few days. It'll cheer you up."

  "It's too bad we're stuck in these domes. I wish we could visit one another. The food man was just here. In fact, he brought me my medication. It's effective, but it makes me throw up."

  McVane thought, I wish I hadn't called.

  "Is there any way you could visit me?" Rybus asked.

  "I have no portable air, none at all."

  "I have," Rybus said.

  In panic, he said, "But if you're sick --"


  "I can make it over to your dome."

  "What about your station? What if data come in that --"

  "I've got a beeper I can bring with me."

  Presently he said, "Okay."

  "It would mean a lot to me, someone to sit with for a little while. The food man stays like half an hour, but that's as long as he can. You know what he told me? There's been an outbreak of a form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on CY30 VI. It must be a virus. This whole condition is a virus. Christ, I'd hate to have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This is like the Mariana form."

  "Is it contagious?"

  She did not directly answer. Instead she said, "What I have can be cured." Obviously she wanted to reassure him. "If the virus is around. . . I won't come over; it's okay." She nodded and reached to shut off her transmitter. "I'm going to lie down," she said, "and get more sleep. With this you're supposed to sleep as much as you can. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Goodbye."

  "Come over," he said.

  Brightening, she said, "Thank you."

  "But be sure you bring your beeper. I have a hunch a lot of telemetric confirms are going to --"

  "Oh, fuck the telemetric confirms!" Rybus said, with venom. "I'm so sick of being stuck in this goddam dome! Aren't you going buggy sitting around watching tape drums turn and little meters and gauges and shit?"

  "I think you should go back home," he said.

  "No," she said, more calmly. "I'm going to follow exactly the M.E.D. instructions for my chemotherapy and beat this fucking M.S. I'm not going home. I'll come over and fix your dinner. I'm a good cook. My mother was Italian and my father is Chicano so I spice everything I fix, except you can't get spices out here. But I figured out how to beat that with different synthetics. I've been experimenting."

  "In this concert I'm going to be broadcasting," McVane said, "the Fox does a version of Dowland's 'Shall I Sue.' "

  "A song about litigation?"

  "No. 'Sue' in the sense of to pay court to or woo. In matters of love." And then he realized that she was putting him on.

  "Do you want to know what I think of the Fox?" Rybus asked. "Recycled sentimentality, which is the worst kind of sentimentality; it isn't even original. And she looks like her face is on upside down. She has a mean mouth."

  "I like her," he said stiffly; he felt himself becoming mad, really mad. I'm supposed to help you? he asked himself. Run the risk of catching what you have so you can insult the Fox?

  "I'll fix you beef stroganoff with parsley noodles," Rybus said.

  "I'm doing fine," he said.

  Hesitating, she said in a low, faltering voice, "Then you don't want me to come over?"

  "I --" he said.

  "I'm very frightened, Mr. McVane," Rybus said. "Fifteen minutes from now, I'm going to be throwing up from the IV Neurotoxite. But I don't want to be alone. I don't want to give up my dome and I don't want to be by myself. I'm sorry if I offended you. It's just that to me the Fox is a joke. I won't say anything more; I promise."

  "Do you have the --" He amended what he intended to say. "Are you sure it won't be too much for you, fixing dinner?"

  "I'm stronger now than I will be," she said. "I'll be getting weaker for a long time."

  "How long?"

  "There's no way to tell."

  He thought, You are going to die. He knew it and she knew it. They did not have to talk about it. The complicity of silence was there, the agreement. A dying girl wants to cook me a dinner, he thought. A dinner I don't want to eat.I've got to say no to her. I've got to keep her out of my dome. The insistence of the weak, he thought. Their dreadful power. It is so much easier to throw a body block against the strong!

  "Thank you," he said. "I'd like it very much if we had dinner together. But make sure you keep radio contact with me on your way over here -- so I'll know you're okay. Promise?"

  "Well, sure," she said. "Otherwise" -- she smiled -- "they'd find me a century from now, frozen with pots, pans, and food, as well as synthetic spices. You do have portable air, don't you?

  "No, I really don't," he said.

  And knew that his lie was palpable to her.

  The meal smelled good and tasted good, but halfway through Rybus excused herself and made her way unsteadily from the matrix of the dome -- his dome -- into the bathroom. He tried not to listen; he arranged it with his percept system not to hear and with his cognition not to know. In the bathroom the girl, violently sick, cried out and he gritted his teeth and pushed his plate away and then all at once he got up and set in motion his in-dome audio system; he played an early album of the Fox.

  "Come again!

  Sweet love doth now invite Thy graces, that refrain To do me due delight. . ."

  "Do you by any chance have some milk?" Rybus asked, standing at the bathroom door, her face pale.

  Silently, he got her a glass of milk, or what passed for milk on their planet.

  "I have antiemetics," Rybus said as she held the glass of milk, "but I didn't remember to bring any with me. They're back at my dome."

  "I could get them for you," he said.

  "You know what M.E.D. told me?" Her voice was heavy with indignation. "They said that this chemotherapy won't make my hair fall out, but already it's coming out in --"

  "Okay," he interrupted.

  "Okay?"

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  "This is upsetting you," Rybus said. "The meal is spoiled and you're -- I don't know what. If I'd remembered to bring my antiemetics, I'd be able to keep from --" She became silent. "Next time I'll bring them. I promise. This is one of the few albums of Fox that I like. She was really good then, don't you think?"

  "Yes," he said tightly.

  "Linda Box," Rybus said.

  "What?" he said.

  "Linda the box. That's what my sister and I used to call her." She tried to smile.

  "Please go back to your dome."

  "Oh," she said. "Well --" She smoothed her hair, her hand shaking. "Will you come with me? I don't think I can make it by myself right now. I'm really weak. I really am sick."

  He thought, You are taking me with you. That's what this is. That is what is happening. You will not go alone; you will take my spirit with you. And you know. You know it as well as you know the name of the medication you are taking, and you hate me as you hate the medication, as you hate M.E.D. and your illness; it is all hate, for each and every thing under these two suns. I know you. I understand you. I see what is coming. In fact, it has begun.

  And, he thought, I don't blame you. But I will hang onto the Fox; the Fox will outlast you. And so will I. You are not going to shoot down the luminiferous aether which animates our souls. I will hang onto the Fox and the Fox will hold me in her arms and hang onto me. The two of us -- we can't be pried apart. I have dozens of hours of the Fox on audio- and videotape, and the tapes are not just for me but for everybody. You think you can kill that? he said to himself. It's been tried before. The power of the weak, he thought, is an imperfect power; it loses in the end. Hence its name. We call it weak for a reason.

  "Sentimentality," Rybus said.

  "Right," he said sardonically.

  "Recycled at that."

  "And mixed metaphors."

  "Her lyrics?"

  "What I'm thinking. When I get really angry, I mix --"

  "Let me tell you something. One thing. If I am going to survive, I can't be sentimental. I have to be very harsh. If I've made you angry, I'm sorry, but that is how it is. It is my life. Someday you may be in the spot I am in and then you'll know. Wait for that and then judge me. If it ever happens. Meanwhile this stuff you're playing on your in-dome audio system is crap. It has to be crap, for me. Do you see? You can forget about me; you can send me back to my dome, where I probably really belong, but if you have anything to do with me --"

  "Okay," he said, "I understand."

  "Thank you. May I have some more milk? Turn down the audio and we'll finish eating. Okay?"

  Amazed, he said, "You're goin
g to keep on trying to --"

  "All those creatures -- and species -- who gave up trying to eat aren't with us anymore." She seated herself unsteadily, holding onto the table.

  "I admire you."

  "No," she said. "I admireyou. It's harder on you. I know."

  "Death --" he began.

  "This isn't death. You know what this is? In contrast to what's coming out of your audio system? This is life. The milk, please; I really need it."

  As he got her more milk, he said, "I guess you can't shoot down aether. Luminiferous or otherwise."

  "No," she agreed, "since it doesn't exist."

  Commodity Central provided Rybus with two wigs, since, due to the chemo, her hair had been systematically killed. He preferred the light-colored one.

  When she wore her wig, she did not look too bad, but she had become weakened and a certain querulousness had crept into her discourse. Because she was not physically strong any longer -- due more, he suspected, to the chemotherapy than to her illness -- she could no longer manage to maintain her dome adequately. Making his way over there one day, he was shocked at what he found. Dishes, pots and pans and even glasses of spoiled food, dirty clothes strewn everywhere, litter and debris. . . troubled, he cleaned up for her and, to his vast dismay, realized that there was an odor pervading her dome, a sweet mixture of the smell of illness, of complex medications, the soiled clothing, and, worst of all, the rotting food itself.

  Until he cleaned an area, there was not even a place for him to sit. Rybus lay in bed, wearing a plastic robe open at the back. Apparently, however, she still managed to operate her electronic equipment; he noted that the meters indicated full activity. But she used the remote programmer normally reserved for emergency conditions; she lay propped up in bed with the programmer beside her, along with a magazine and a bowl of cereal and several bottles of medication.

  As before, he discussed the possibility of getting her transferred. She refused to be taken off her job; she had not budged.

  "I'm not going into a hospital," she told him, and that, for her, ended the conversation.

  Later, back at his own dome, gratefully back, he put a plan into operation. The large AI System -- Artificial Intelligence Plasma -- which handled the major problem-solving for star systems in their area of the galaxy had some available time which could be bought for private use. Accordingly, he punched in an application and posted the total sum of financial credits he had saved up during the last few months.