Stars: The Anthology

by Janis Ian

  He let his gaze fall to the tabletop once more, dwelling as if he’d never seen it before on the utensil-scuffed grain of the wood, the sticky dried-out coffee spills blotched on it here and there, the scatter of sugar crystals from the cylindrical pressed-glass dispenser that always gave you half a teaspoon less sugar per pour than you wanted, the crumpled paper napkin that was always a shade too small for whatever you wanted to do with it, the napkin dispenser that was always on the verge of going empty. The profound insufficiency of this place, this situation, struck him once again as to his left, out of the corner of his eye, he could see her red hair swing slightly while she talked enthusiastically to the counter about horsehair sofas that you could save a lot of money on, second-hand. Whoever was running this place had made sure that there wasn’t a single extra thing here, nothing superfluous, nothing beyond the bare bright necessities, scrubbed clean of the unconscious miscellany of a less ordered, more generous world.

  He sighed and looked out toward the street again, wishing for anything to be out there—a late pedestrian, even just the glare of headlights. But this time, the Other’s gaze lanced out of the immobile face of the hunched man and seized on his, glaring out at him with a terrible, excoriating intensity. Unprepared this time for the alien regard, he was struck rigid, but trembling, like a man in an electric chair: he wondered why smoke wasn’t pouring out from under his hat, why his fat wasn’t frying under his skin as the Other looked through it, past it, trying to find not soul, but the lack of it. Locked there in that awful rigor, his eyes trapped in the depths of the chill despair of the Other’s gaze, he wanted to scream: Why are you doing this to us? Why have you put us in this hell? What have we ever done to you?

  The Other couldn’t hear, though. It knew only Its vision of the world, the one it was imposing on them in this small corner of damnation for Its own satisfaction, the fulfillment of Its own needs. He sat there and suffered for what felt like forever, as It enforced ever more rigorously on him Its idea of what he should look like, and worse, what he should feel like. Alienation ran in his veins like meltwater; it was as if electrocution was a thing not of fire, but ice. He felt the pallor setting into his skin, a physical chill; his eyes were going steadily more shadowed with some old dull buried rage of the Other’s, until only they burned. Helplessness, hopelessness burned in his bones, rooted him to the counter stool, froze him there in an unendurable and inescapable rigor of isolation.

  Its powers of concentration were awful. How long it held him there, he couldn’t tell; under Its chilly regard, after a while, thought stopped, the way the scientists said even atoms stopped vibrating when it got cold enough. And It had enough cold in its lonely brain for any ten universes. But at last that concentration broke, leaving him free to think again.

  For how long…?

  He would have slumped down on the counter if there’d been that much flexibility in his body right now. The rigor took a long time to wear off, after one of these bouts: it was taking longer every time. He was terrified that one day a session would come after which Its rendition of him would be complete, and he would never be able to move on his own again, never have a thought that wasn’t a reflection of Its awful view of the world…if any thought would be left to him at all. But finally, after a long while, enough flexibility reasserted itself that he could at least sag.

  I was something else once, he thought. I have to do my best to remember that. I was a person. I had a name. I walked free. There was sun, not just electric lights. I went down the street whenever I wanted to. I put my hat on or took it off whenever I liked.

  But that was before that man saw me in the park, and took the camera out, and took the photo of me. And now that’s starting to be all I am: a photo he took, an image he stole, a thing he started to paint.

  Pretty soon it will be all I am. That thing out there, that man, if it’s the same one—if It’s really a man at all: It’s making me over in Its image. Pretty soon all I’ll be is what It wants me to be. It’s already done it with her.

  He could have sobbed: but his eyes were infallibly dry, his tear ducts long since painted out. Even that slight release was denied him.

  It’s not fair! he thought, desperate, wishing he could open his mouth even to whisper, or find enough breath somewhere for a last good shout. Isn’t there a God somewhere that takes pity on people like me? Isn’t there mercy anywhere for someone who doesn’t deserve to go to Hell, and gets thrown into it anyway?

  Next to him, the red-haired woman was still reciting her litany of household furnishings. He wondered what she’d been like before It had seen her, walking down some street, and had taken her image and her soul to imprison it here in the chill shine of the diner. Who knew how long she’d sat here now in the cold fluorescent light, while the Other peeled away her liveliness and humanity until she was just a shell flattened under the shellac, three-dimensional only in seeming. It was too late for her now. There might be others, of course; one day, one of those smoke-in-light shapes might start to solidify, down the length of the counter, becoming real enough, trapped enough, to persist in company with the shiny walls and the slick, unreflecting counter. He gazed down the length of the counter again, for the moment unable even to really care. More company in Hell—

  He blinked, then. There was someone down there, in one of the booths; nothing gradual about her, no smoke-tangle. A slim shape, dark-eyed, dark-haired, looking straight at him.

  He shivered, and doing so, discovered that he could move. That scared him, too, though just a few moments before he would have done anything to be able to move. There the woman sat, her gaze resting on him, both lazy and challenging. She was leaning forward on her elbows a little, doing something with her hands: he couldn’t quite make out what.

  He bent his attention steadily on her, finding it astonishingly hard to believe in her. He expected her to vanish like a shadow at high noon, swallowed away by the pitiless light, the way the smoke and the shadows always did. But she sat there, concrete, and actually raised an eyebrow at him.

  He swallowed, staring at her. She was as unlike the woman sitting by him as could be imagined. Her clothes were loose and strange. Her hair was dark and curly, and the hat slouching partway down over one eye was in an unfamiliar style. Her eyes were soft, but her face had a sharp look, the mouth looking like it might be pursed a lot of the time, in assessment if not in disapproval. The expression said: Well? I’m waiting.

  He breathed hard and deep for a couple of moments, preparing for the exertion to come, and then, in a rush, tried to stand up. Did stand up, to his shock and amazement; it had been a long time now since he’d been able to do it in one try. He slid off the stool and staggered slightly as his feet hit the floor. He had to steady himself against the counter, and beside him, the red-haired girl didn’t even notice, just kept on talking.

  "Refill?" the counter guy said, glancing up from his polishing.

  He shook his head and stumbled away, around the curve of the counter, using one stool after another to brace himself as he slowly made his way down the length of the counter toward the booths. Here came the most terrible challenge, the one he had never dared before; to get past the hunched man without him turning, staring at you, enforcing you with that stare back into the place where the It behind him felt you belonged. Prayer wasn’t anything he had had access to for a long time: there was never any sense of anything listening, and he’d long since given up. Yet still the back of his mind moaned Please, please don’t look, please—

  He passed by, and the hunched figure didn’t turn, didn’t look. Maybe that last awful gaze was all the It-thing out in the darkness had in It for the moment. Sometimes It seemed to get distracted for long periods. God knew what It was dealing with then, what other chilly creation It was enforcing Its will on. Not my problem. The booth—

  As always, the counter seemed to stretch away to infinity when you tried to walk it: but she was sitting there, watching him approach. He struggled against the foreverness o
f the moment and kept on walking, keeping his gaze fixed on her like a lifeline. After a moment she turned her attention to whatever it was she was doing on the table, but still he kept on coming, afraid to lose the impetus and wind up stalled and frozen again before he found out why she was here—

  The booth where she sat suddenly loomed very close in front of him. He staggered to it, put his hands down on the table and levered himself into the seat across from her: nearly fell into the seat, exhausted by the effort it had taken him to get here. She didn’t look up from what she was doing, just let him sit there and get his breath back.

  She was shuffling cards. A few of them still lay out of the deck on the table. He blinked, for he could see the grain of the cherrywood counter through them. Glass cards?

  "Ah-ah," she said. "Don’t dwell on those too much, not right this minute. You’ll spoil the result." Her voice was sharp to match her face, but a little rough and soft underneath; the heavy steel that backed up the single sharp edge of the sword, giving it weight.

  The thought was so odd that he couldn’t imagine where it had come from. "An older sister," she said. "Stepsister, actually. She has a blindfold, too, but she doesn’t wear it at home. Now pay attention," she said then, "because we have only a few moments before he notices."

  "He." The sheer lightning-strike novelty of hearing someone say something he’d never heard them say before now left him momentarily speechless himself. When he recovered, he said, "You know about him—"

  "He’s one of mine," she said.

  "One of your what?"

  She thought about that for a moment. "Devotees," she said. "Maybe even worshippers."

  The word was bizarre. Maybe she caught his thought about that in his look, if his face still worked enough to generate its own expressions. "I know," she said. "Not one of the more congenial ones. But it’s not my business to judge. The line between art and artifice is thin at the best of times, and it’s always moving around."

  She kept shuffling, then picked up those last few cards and tucked them back into the pack here and there. Finally she put the pack down on the table, pushed it toward him. "Shuffle," she said.

  "Why?"

  She glanced up at him under her dark brows, a look both thoughtful and provocative…but there was an edge of impatience on it. "In another little while," she said, "you might not have anything left to ask that question with. I wouldn’t dawdle, if I were you."

  He reached out and touched the deck, hesitant, expecting it to be cold, like everything else here but the coffee. But the cards were warm, warm as skin, and they stayed that way. The sensation was so novel, after all this time, that he didn’t want to let them go. He picked them up and shuffled.

  "Tell me about the problem," the dark lady said.

  Her voice was so calm that for some reason it made him want to shout; but he controlled himself. "I’ve been sitting in this damn diner forever, now, with that woman and the counter guy," he said, under his breath, half afraid that he might be overheard by something that would punish him for it. "The Other-thing, the thing outside, It stuck me here down at the end of that counter, with nothing to do for eternity but listen to her inane jabber, and nothing to see but a bare counter, a bare diner, an empty dark street outside. And that other guy." He shivered. "The sun never comes up, everything’s just dark and bleak and—"

  He ran down, shaking his head, feeling helpless again. "And pretty soon I won’t even know that there’s anything else, that there could be anything else," he said. "Pretty soon now he’ll have finished work on me. He’ll have me the way he wants me. And nothing else will ever change again."

  The dark lady nodded slowly, a couple of times, not looking into his face—just watching him shuffle the cards. "Okay," she said. "That’s enough. Cut."

  He put the cards down on the table with some difficulty, not wanting to let go of that warmth, the only moderate thing he’d felt here in ever so long. He cut once, rightwards.

  She shook her head. "Once more," she said.

  He cut the second pack once more, toward the right. She reached out, took the outside stacks of cards away and left him with the middle one. She tapped the top card. "Turn it up," she said. "Put it here." She tapped a spot on the table.

  Shaking, he didn’t know why, he reached out and turned up the first card. A rush of that alienating cold went through him again, but differently. It was as if, for a change, he was doing the looking, rather than the Other that was looking through him. In the glass of the card, images rushed and tumbled as he held it in his hand, staring at the face side. Light bloomed and faded and bloomed again in the card, cold even when it was warm. Yellow light, sunlight that was still somehow wintry, and a man sitting alone on a curb of an empty street lined with empty storefronts; a dusty street, the man’s feet in the dust, his head bowed, his gaze lying flaccid in the middle distance.

  "Yes," the dark lady said, looking at the card with some resignation as he put it down and the image fixed itself. "That’d be about right. Turn the next one up. Put it on top of that one."

  He was shivering harder now at this other creature’s awful, lonely fixity. He was finished in every sense of the word, caught in the yellow light forever, all hope gone. Desperate to be different from that in any possible way, he plucked the next card from the top of the cut deck, turned it.

  In the glass, chilly light and image roiled and tumbled again, settled toward darkness, shivering with one blade of light standing up in it: a naked woman, her face quiet but not entirely empty, looking out into a stream of light from a window to one side, her shadow long and black behind her. Any moment now she might move, leave the room—

  "The basis of the problem," the dark lady said. "Now what crosses it. Go on."

  Shivering harder, he turned over the next card, held it up. It was the image of the diner, seen from outside—the place where it was impossible to get to. The hunched man’s back was to the glass of the window, and this was in some terrible way even worse than being faced by him. That turned back refused the possibility of anything ever being any other way; it was final rejection, ruthlessly enforced. Past the hunched man he sat, and the red-headed woman, neither of them meeting the other’s eyes, or anyone else’s. Positioned between them and any possible outside, the Hunched Man blocked the way.

  He let out a long breath and reached for the next card—then stopped, looked at the dark lady. "What difference can this make?" he said. "Who are you?"

  Her gaze was on the cards at the moment. "Every difference," she said. "You asked for help. It’s the first time you’ve been able to manage it. You’ve been further under than you thought….so don’t waste the chance. Turn the cards, lay them down where you’re told. There’s always a message, if you take your time and trust yourself to read it."

  It seemed too much to dare, to believe that she knew the way. He was terrified by the thought of how it would be for him if he trusted her and then discovered she was wrong. One more betrayal, one more anguish, worse because he had chosen it freely…

  "Where does it go?" he said.

  "On top. The best result to be achieved if things go well," she said.

  He gulped, and turned the next card up. Light seethed and boiled in it again, then settled through blue dusk smoke-curls to a scorching sunset, reds and yellows fading up to blues and near-unreal greens, silhouetting a railside switching tower, black against the smoke-streaked, splendid light; no humans to be seen anywhere. Loneliness seethed in that fading light, but also a strange relief.

  "There’s no one there," he breathed. "As if even It’s not there…"

  The dark lady looked down at the image. "It’s a possible reading," she said, tilting her head a little from side to side as she considered. "The problem is, he’s so reticent…such a minimalist. A more specific painter would leave you much less room for analysis…"

  He let out a breath and pulled the next card off the top of the deck. "Here," she said. "The foundation of the problem…"

&nb
sp; This card’s image swirled for a long time, resisting defining itself. Finally it settled to a cool light from above, a porch light, white clapboards, a blue door; against the porch railing, a tall man, a woman in a short red two-piece sunsuit, her long legs very bare, the color of her fair hair indistinct in the shadowy light from above. He looked at her. She looked at the pale porch floor, and no eyes met.

  "Yes," the dark lady said, nodding and looking slightly rueful. "They couldn’t do without each other, but it never ran smoothly for them…"

  He looked at her doubtfully. It had never occurred to him that the cruel It-thing out in the darkness might ever have known longing for anyone, much less love. He reached out to the deck, turned over the next card. "Where?" he said.

  "To the left of the center one. The past…"

  The image under the glass of the card in his hand swirled and burned, actually stinging his hand: he could feel the frustration, the rage, as the image settled. An office, pitiless electric light, a man hunched over a desk doing work that he hated—a woman watching him, incurious, unsympathetic. "Work," he said slowly, "but no joy…"