“Well,” Kevin said after a while, “you’ve got your trophy now. I hope you like venison.” He picked up Seabury’s rifle and came over to retrieve his own. “It’s too late to walk back. I’ll call the shuttle. But we’re going to have to drag her to a clearing with us.”
“Drag what?”
“The deer. Your deer.” He broke out a communicator. “You better sit down and rest for a few minutes.”
He didn’t want to rest now. “No. Let’s just”—he gestured with his hands—”move her.”
“As soon as I call.” Kevin started off toward the top of the ridge, pulling out the radio’s antenna as he walked.
The sun was down behind the hills by the time the shuttle arrived. They had dragged the carcass to a clearing and waited as Kevin talked the shuttle to a landing. They lashed the deer to the rear rack, winding it with Kevin’s finger-thick rope. “Hate to lose her, wouldn’t you,” the boy said.
“Yes,” Seabury replied, “I’d definitely hate to lose her.”
They climbed inside the shuttle. Kevin took it into the air on manual control, then set the autopilot to bring them back to the lodge.
* * * *
They didn’t speak on the trip back, sitting side by side in the shuttle cabin. It was well after sunset when the lodge crept into view. Kevin reacquired control and set the shuttle easily on the roof. Both men sat still inside the craft as the whine of the engines died.
Seabury looked out toward the darkening trees, and at the ribbons of powder drifting across the landing pad. Throughout the entire trip back he had been aware that he wanted to say something to Kevin, or that Kevin wanted to say something to him—but what? He was about to speak when the pad was flooded with light. Kevin’s father, well-bundled, appeared at Seabury’s door. “God, you got one.”
Seabury nodded.
“A nice one, too. You can be proud of yourself. This isn’t the season, not at all.” He turned to his son. “Kevin, ain’t this something?”
But Kevin was walking away. “What the hell?” Russell looked pleadingly at Seabury. It only lasted a second; the man began untying the deer, as if nothing had happened, then gave up. “It’s cold,” he said.
* * * *
Kevin was standing out at the edge of the pad, in darkness. Seabury came up behind him. The boy didn’t turn around, but only stared at the eastern sky, where a bright Venus hung above the hills.
“Kevin.” Seabury cleared his throat. He was just beginning to realize how utterly cold and tired he was. “I just wanted to . . . thank you. I never did anything quite like this before.”
“You’re very welcome, sir.” Kevin’s voice was overly polite. His back remained toward Seabury.
“Maybe we could go out again sometime. Tomorrow—”
Suddenly Kevin faced him and Seabury saw the boy’s face was wet with tears. “No, I don’t think we’ll go out again, Mr. Seabury. I don’t think I’ll go out there again. This whole thing is wrong for me. It’s immoral, for me. Maybe it’s all right for you—you face the same sentence that deer faced. But I don’t. Lots of us don’t, now, and it isn’t fair.”
He looked at Kevin and had a feeling he’d thought as lost to him as sexual innocence, a feeling of having all time left to him—more years left to go than he had gone. He wanted to start work, to make ridiculously ambitious plans and believe that they might come true.
“Mr. Seabury!” Russell was calling from the door. “There’s a phone call for you. If you—”
The spell was broken. “Excuse me,” he said to Kevin, and went inside.
* * * *
He reached the front desk and realized that he was actually sick with exhaustion and fear. He didn’t want to talk to Sara now, he didn’t want the reality of that . . . world back there intruding on this. Besides, he had always distrusted telephones. It seemed they always brought bad news.
“David! Hello, love. How’s the north country?” She wore a white robe and looked sunburned and sleepy.
“Colder than your favorite metaphor. And I’m paying for years of indolence.”
She laughed. “You can afford to. Are you relaxing, though? That’s what you deserted us for—”
“Deserted?” He was too tired to appreciate her bantering. “I don’t recall even wanting to take a vacation alone.”
“David!” She seemed surprised and hurt. “Don’t, please. I just called to see how you were. Don’t you think I care any more?”
He sighed. “How’s Tom?”
“Fine. A little under it today. He’s been so busy.”
“He started taking the treatments.”
She tossed her head, brushing long red hair away from her face. “Bitter, David?”
“Bitter?” Shouldn’t I be, he thought? And what about you, Sara my one true love—just a bit too old for treatments to do you any good, though you’ll take them, God knows it’s the fashionable thing to do. “Sometimes, I guess.” Aren’t you? Or don’t you think about it. “It’s not like I’ve got one foot in the grave, you know. I’ll be around for a few more years.”
“When do you think you’ll be back? Tom does miss you. And it’s been so lovely here.” She tilted the pickup so he could see out toward the patio, toward the ocean.
He didn’t want to go back. He shrugged.
“Having that much fun?” she asked.
“I’ll give you and Tom a little time to yourselves.”
“Oh, David, we’ve been through this—”
“I’m fine, hon. Thanks for calling.”
She hesitated, then flashed a relaxed smile. Poor Sara, he thought, Tom will never get older, but you will. I can afford to wait for you. “Enjoy yourself,” she said. “And stay in touch.”
He hung up the phone and rubbed his eyes. Russell appeared with a drink and handed it to him. “Traditional,” the man said. “After a kill. We can have the head mounted for you in a couple of days, and the meat dressed, if that’s what you want. Were you planning to stick around?”
“No,” he answered, surprising himself. “Ah—I’ll give you my home address; you can ship it.”
“No problem,” Russell said. “You’ll be leaving when?”
“Tomorrow. Could you book me on a flight to, oh, Zurich?” He laughed. “I always wanted to try mountain climbing.”
Russell nodded and walked away.
* * * *
Seabury paused on his way upstairs. He could see Kevin, in the living room, sitting before a low fire, seeming lost in thought. He started to say something, but didn’t. Time is my ally too, boy.
<
* * * *
Short-short stories are exceptionally difficult to write in science fiction. It’s necessary to evoke a new world in every story, and once the background is explained there isn’t much space left for plot, characterization, and the other requirements of fiction. But if background, plot, and character are so closely interconnected that writing about one tells us about the rest, a great deal can be said in few words.
Greg Benford has written impressively in all lengths—his most recent novel is In the Ocean of Night—but he says he’s intrigued by the challenges of short fiction. “Nooncoming” could serve as a textbook example of how to meet those challenges.
* * * *
NOONCOMING
Gregory Benford
Saturday night, and they straggled into the cramped bar on Eucalyptus Boulevard. They nudged through the crowd and found friends, these aging people, ordered drinks, watched the crystal clouds at the ceiling form lurid, fleshy stories. But the best tales were the ones they told each other: Janek’s got a newsy flapping needs a big cast, senso and all, the works, I—so I go back and there are people living in my goddamn office for Christ’s sakes hanging out washing and the desks gone, just gone, the file cases made into a bureau—programmers? who needs programmers? this guy says to the crowd and Jeff, he throws a—could still maneuver one of those three-piecer rigs, ten gears an’ all, if some bastards hadn’t bro
ken ‘em all down into little skimpy ratass haulers with—asked why an’ I guess I just wanna stay close to the old centers, hopin’ some big Brazilian money will come in like in ‘72 an’ a good derrick man can get on—queen she was from hunger and not gonna bust her head for any factory that traded her off—
Only one woman in the bar was eating alone and she was tucked back in a shadowed corner, far from the oily light. She was big-boned and deeply tanned, her denim pants and shirt cut in a manner that meant she had deliberately chosen them that way; they seemed to bracket her body rather than enfolding it. She wore only eyeshadow and her widely spaced eyes seemed to make her face broader than it was, more open, just as the backward sweep of her hair bared her face more than necessary. The long strands of it were held back by a clip and had occasional flecks of blond, enough to hint that with a little treatment she could have been a striking beauty. She ate steadily, no becoming hesitations, winding up neat cylinders of artichoke spaghetti and rolling them through the red sauce before taking precise bites out of them. Somehow the strands of green didn’t break free and hang down as she did this. She ignored the buzz of talk around her and drank regularly from a tumbler of dark red wine. Every few moments she would look up, not at the swirling lattice above that featured tangled bodies, nor at the Saturday night crowd in their flossy clothing, but toward the doorway.
The man she was waiting for appeared there, shouldering his way by a giggling clump of aging heavy drinkers, just after 1800 hours, thirty minutes late. He wore a frayed synthetic jacket, antique, like several others she had seen in the bar.
“Joanna, frange it, sorry I’m late.”
“I started without you,” she said simply, still chewing.
“Yes. A good house wine, isn’t it? Petite Sirah.”
“Right.”
He sat down and hunched forward, elbows on the burnished pine table. “I’ve already had something.”
“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. He seemed fidgety and pale to her, but maybe that was because she was so used to seeing tanned people; everybody in town today had looked rather sickly, now that she thought about it.
“Yes. I, ah, I was celebrating. With some friends.”
“Celebrating returning to High Hopes?” She smiled. “That doesn’t sound like the Brian I—”
“No. I’m going back.”
“What?”
“Back ... on vacation.”
“Getting vacated, you mean. Renting space.”
She grimaced and put down her fork.
“However you want to describe it,” he said precisely.
“You tappers have your little words,” she murmured scornfully. “Going on vacation. Sounds like a free ride somewhere.”
“It is.”
“Stealing your life is—”
“Joanna.” He paused. “We’ve had this discussion before.”
“Look. You know High Hopes doesn’t like you selling yourself off this way—”
“They agreed to let me do it.”
“On an occasional basis.”
“Okay, it’s just getting less occasional. Let’s put it that way.”
“Skrag that.”
“I don’t owe you—”
“The hell you don’t. High Hopes has put up with your renting your lobes for—what?—three years, off and on. We let you run off to San Francisco and tap in, and then take off and squander the bills on—”
“High living,” he said sarcastically. His face wrinkled up into a thin smile.
“Right. Your fatcat amusements.”
“Travel. Good food. Too rich for your tastes, I know, but good nonetheless. But the rest of it—Joanna, it’s the work. I’m doing some damned interesting physics these days.”
“Useless,” she said decisively.
“Probably. Nonlinear dynamics—not much use in digging potatoes.”
“You never did that. You were a pod cutter.”
“Grunt labor is all the same.”
Her eyes flashed. “Group work is never—”
“I know, I know.” Brian waved a hand listlessly and looked around. “Think I’ll have some of that red ink.”
He got up and squeezed through the packed room, toward the wine barrel and glasses. There were no waiters here, to keep costs down. Joanna watched him move and suddenly it struck her that Brian was getting older, at least forty-five now. He had a certain heavy way of moving she wasn’t used to seeing at High Hopes.
“Good stuff,” he said, sitting back down. He sipped at the glass and studied the layered air around them. There was a musty, sour scent.
“Did we have to meet here?” Joanna said, resuming eating.
“Why not?”
“All these old—well, some of them look pretty seamy.”
“They are seamy. We’re getting that way.”
“If they’d pitch in, get some exercise—”
“Ha! Look, my sturdy girl of the soil, these people are artists, engineers, scientists, administrators, men and women with education. They like living in town, even if it’s this little dimple of a burg, two hundred klicks down from the city they all want to live in, San Francisco.”
“A bunch of rattle-headed sophies,” she said, chewing.
“Sophies?”
“Sophisticates, isn’t that what you call yourselves?”
“Oh, you’ve got a name for us.”
“Why not? You’re the biggest trouble back at High Hopes. Always wanting what you can’t have any more.”
He licked his lips. “We want the old days. Good jobs. To own something worth a damn.”
“Possessions,” she said wryly. “Only they possess you—that’s what you people forgot.”
“We still remember the dignity of it.”
She snorted and took a long drink. “Ego feeding.”
“No!” he said earnestly. “There were people, ideas, things happening.”
“We’re making things happen, if that’s what you want,” she said. She finished the last green strand and dropped her fork into the plate with a rattle. The thick crockery was filmed with grease.
“Surviving, that’s all,” he murmured.
“There are good problems. We’re not just a bunch of simple-minded farmers, you know. You seem to’ve forgotten—”
“No, I haven’t. Tapping doesn’t blur the memory.”
“Well, it must. Otherwise you’d come back to the one group of people who care about you.”
“Really? Or do you want me to patch up the chem and bio systems?”
“There’s that,” she said grudgingly.
“And sit around evenings, pinned to the communal 3D, or bored to death.”
“We do more than that,” Joanna said mildly.
“I know. And you have wondrous thighs, Joanna, but they can’t encompass all my troubles.”
She smiled and brushed at her severely tied-back hair. “You’re still possessive about the sex thing, too, aren’t you?”
“Terribly old style of me, I know.”
“Ummm,” she said. Brian tipped his glass at her in mock salute and went to refill it. Joanna leaned back in her chair, reflecting moodily. She remembered the old English woman who had died last year, working with a kind of resigned energy right up until her last day. The woman had said to Joanna, as she went inside the dormitory to lie down for what proved to be the last time, “You know, my dear, you’re wrong that suffering ennobles people.” She’d stopped to massage her hip, wincing. “It simply makes one cross.” So was that it—Brian and the rest of the older ones looked on the honest labor in the pod rows as petty, degrading?
Joanna watched Brian standing patiently in line by the wine barrel. She remembered that Brian had talked to the English woman a lot, while most of High Hopes was watching the 3D in the evenings. They’d talked of what they’d once had, and Brian even spoke of it when he and Joanna lay together occasionally. The dry dead past, gaudy and stupid. She remembered Brian frowning in displeasure as the sounds of the next co
uple came through the thin walls. He had disapproved of them strongly, and it was all Joanna could do to stop him leaping out of bed and going next door to stop Dominic—it was usually Julie and Dominic—beating her. He had the idea that things people did together for sex were public somehow, that there were rules High Hopes should maintain. Standards, he called them. And even when they were at it themselves, pumping with a steady rhythm as though propelling each other over the same steepening slope of a familiar hill, when the sound came of Julie’s high, wavering cry—which then slid into something almost like a laugh, a chuckle at some recognizable delight that lay ahead and would come upon her—then Brian would freeze against her loins and seethe, his mood broken. And she, mystified at first, would try to rock him gently back into reality and out of his dusty obsessions. She would wrap herself around him and draw him back down; once, she misunderstood and offered to do those things for him, perform whatever he liked, and the look on his face told her more about Brian than all the conversations.
Universe 8 - [Anthology] Page 20
