“My God,” he said, “it’s summer! I have to be at Tanga now.”
“What?” said Jannina.
“One loses track,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry, love, but I have unavoidable business at home. Tax labor.”
“But why summer, why did its being summer –”
“Train of thought! Too complicated” (and already they were out of key, already the mild affair was over, there having come between them the one obligation that can’t be put off to the time you like, or the place you like; off he’d go to plug himself into a road-mender or a doctor, though it’s of some advantage to mend all the roads of a continent at one time).
She sat cross-legged on the station platform, watching him enter the booth and set the dial. He stuck his head out the glass door.
“Come with me to Africa, lovely lady!”
She thumbed her nose at him. “You’re only a passing fancy, Charley U!” He blew a kiss, enclosed himself in the booth, and disappeared. (The transmatter field is larger than the booth, for obvious reasons; the booth flicks on and off several million times a second and so does not get transported itself, but it protects the machinery from the weather and it keeps people from losing elbows or knees or slicing the ends off a package or a child. The booths at the cryogenics center at the North Pole have exchanged air so often with those of warmer regions that each has its own micro-climate; leaves and seeds, plants and earth, are piled about them. Don’t Step on the Grass! – say the notes pinned to the door, Wish to Trade Pawlownia Sapling for Sub-arctic Canadian Moss; Watch Your Goddamn Bare Six-Toed Feet!; Wish Amateur Cellist for Quartet, Six Months’ Rehearsal Late Uhl with Reciter; I Lost a Squirrel Here Yesterday, Can You Find It Before It Dies? Eight Children Will Be Heartbroken – Cecilia Ching, Buenos Aires.)
Jannina sighed and slipped on her glass woolly; nasty to get back into clothes, but home was cold. You never knew where you might go, so you carried them. Years ago (she thought) I came here with someone in the dead of winter, either an unmatched man or someone’s starting spouse – only two of us, at any rate – and we waded through the freezing water and danced as hard as we could and then proved we could sing and drink beer in a swamp at the same time, good Lord! And then went to the public resort on the Ile de la Cité to watch professional plays, opera, games – you have to be good to get in there – and got into some clothes because it was chilly after sundown in September – no, wait, it was Venezuela – and watched the lights come out and smoked like mad at a café table and tickled the robot waiter and pretended we were old, really old, perhaps a hundred and fifty.… Years ago!
But was it the same place? she thought, and dismissing the incident forever, she stepped into the booth, shut the door, and dialed home: the Himalayas. The trunk line was clear. The branch stop was clear. The family’s transceiver (located in the anteroom behind two doors, to keep the task of heating the house within reasonable limits) had damn well better be clear, or somebody would be blown right into the vestibule. Momentum- and heat-compensators kept Jannina from arriving home at seventy degrees Fahrenheit internal temperature (seven degrees lost for every mile you teleport upward) or too many feet above herself (rise to the east, drop going west, to the north or south you are apt to be thrown right through the wall of the booth). Someday, thought Jannina, everybody will decide to let everybody live in decent climates. But not yet. Not this everybody.
She arrived home singing, “The World’s My Back Yard, Yes, The World Is My Oyster,” a song that had been popular in her first youth, some seventy years before.
* * *
The Komarovs’ house was hardened foam with an automatic inside line to the school near Naples. It was good to be brought up on your own feet. Jannina passed through; the seven-year-olds lay with their heads together and their bodies radiating in a six-personed asterisk. In this position (which was supposed to promote mystical thought) they played Barufaldi, guessing the identity of famous dead personages through anagrammatic sentences, the first letters of the words of which (unscrambled into aphorisms or proverbs) simultaneously spelled out a moral and a series of Goedel numbers (in a previously agreed-upon code) which –
“Oh, my darling, how felicitous is the advent of your appearance!” cried a boy (hard to take, the polysyllabic stage). “Embrace me, dearest maternal parent! Unite your valuable upper limbs about my eager person!”
“Vulgar!” said Jannina, laughing.
“Non sum filius tuus?” said the child.
“No, you’re not my body-child; you’re my godchild. Your mother bequeathed me to you when she died. What are you learning?”
“The eternal parental question,” he said, frowning. “How to run a helicopter. How to prepare food from its actual, revolting, raw constituents. Can I go now?”
“Can you?” she said. “Nasty imp!”
“Good,” he said, “I’ve made you feel guilty. Don’t do that,” and as she tried to embrace him, he ticklishly slid away. “The robin walks quietly up the branch of the tree,” he said breathlessly, flopping back on the floor.
“That’s not an aphorism.” (Another Barufaldi player.)
“It is.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is.”
“It –”
The school vanished; the antechamber appeared. In the kitchen Chi Komarov was rubbing the naked back of his sixteen-year-old son. Parents always kissed each other; children always kissed each other. She touched foreheads with the two men and hung her woolly on the hook by the ham radio rig. Someone was always around. Jannina flipped the cover off her wrist chronometer: standard regional time, date, latitude-longitude, family computer hookup clear. “At my age I ought to remember these things,” she said. She pressed the computer hookup: Ann at tax labor in the schools, bit-a-month plan, regular Ann; Lee with three months to go, five years off, heroic Lee; Phuong in Paris, still rehearsing; C.E. gone, won’t say where, spontaneous C.E.; Ilse making some repairs in the basement, not a true basement, really, but the room farthest down the hillside. Jannina went up the stairs and then came down and put her head round at the living-and-swimming room. Through the glass wall one could see the mountains. Old Al, who had joined them late in life, did a bit of gardening in the brief summers, and generally stuck around the place. Jannina beamed. “Hullo, Old Al!” Big and shaggy, a rare delight, his white body hair. She sat on his lap. “Has she come?”
“The new one? No,” he said.
“Shall we go swimming?”
He made an expressive face. “No, dear,” he said. “I’d rather go to Naples and watch the children fly helicopters. I’d rather go to Nevada and fly them myself. I’ve been in the water all day, watching a very dull person restructure coral reefs and experiment with polyploid polyps.”
“You mean you were doing it.”
“One gets into the habit of working.”
“But you didn’t have to!”
“It was a private project. Most interesting things are.”
She whispered in his ear.
With happily flushed faces, they went into Old Al’s inner garden and locked the door.
* * *
Jannina, temporary family representative, threw the computer helmet over her head and, thus plugged in, she cleaned house, checked food supplies, did a little of the legal business entailed by a family of eighteen adults (two triplet marriages, a quad, and a group of eight). She felt very smug. She put herself through by radio to Himalayan HQ (above two thousand meters) and hooking computer to computer – a very odd feeling, like an urge to sneeze that never comes off – extended a formal invitation to one Leslie Smith (“Come stay, why don’t you?”), notifying every free Komarov to hop it back and fast. Six hikers might come for the night – back-packers. More food. First thunderstorm of the year in Albany, New York (North America). Need an extra two rooms by Thursday. Hear the Palnatoki are moving. Can’t use a room. Can’t use a kitten. Need the gera
niums back, Mrs Adam, Chile. The best maker of hand-blown glass in the world has killed in a duel the second-best maker of hand-blown glass for joining the movement toward ceramics. A bitter struggle is foreseen in the global economy. Need a lighting designer. Need fifteen singers and electric pansensicon. Standby tax labor xxxxxpj through xxxyq to Cambaluc, great tectogenic –
With the guilty feeling that one always gets gossiping with a computer, for it’s really not reciprocal, Jannina flipped off the helmet. She went to get Ilse. Climbing back through the white foam room, the purple foam room, the green foam room, everything littered with plots and projects of the clever Komarovs or the even cleverer Komarov children, stopping at the baby room for Ilse to nurse her baby. Jannina danced staidly around studious Ilse. They turned on the nursery robot and the television screen. Ilse drank beer in the swimming room, for her milk. She worried her way through the day’s record of events – faults in the foundation, some people who came from Chichester and couldn’t find C.E. so one of them burst into tears, a new experiment in genetics coming round the gossip circuit, an execrable set of equations from some imposter in Bucharest.
“A duel!” said Jannina.
They both agreed it was shocking. And what fun. A new fashion. You had to be a little mad to do it. Awful.
The light went on over the door to the tunnel that linked the house to the antechamber, and very quickly, one after another, as if the branch line had just come free, eight Komarovs came into the room. The light flashed again; one could see three people debouch one after the other, persons in boots, with coats, packs, and face masks over their woollies. They were covered with snow, either from the mountain terraces above the house or from some other place, Jannina didn’t know. They stamped the snow off in the antechamber and hung their clothes outside; “Good heavens, you’re not circumcised!” cried someone. There was as much handshaking and embracing all around as at a wedding party. Velet Komarov (the short, dark one) recognized Fung Pao-yu and swung her off her feet. People began to joke, tentatively striking one another’s arms. “Did you have a good hike? Are you a good hiker, Pao-yu?” said Velet. The light over the antichamber went on again, though nobody could see a thing since the glass was steamed over from the collision of hot with cold air. Old Al stopped, halfway into the kitchen. The baggage receipt chimed, recognized only by family ears – upstairs a bundle of somebody’s things, ornaments, probably, for the missing Komarovs were still young and the young are interested in clothing, were appearing in the baggage receptacle. “Ann or Phuong?” said Jannina; “five to three, anybody? Match me!” but someone strange opened the door of the booth and peered out. Oh, a dizzying sensation. She was painted in a few places, which was awfully odd because really it was old-fashioned; and why do it for a family evening? It was a stocky young woman. It was an awful mistake, thought Jannina. Then the visitor made her second mistake. She said:
“I’m Leslie Smith.” But it was more through clumsiness than being rude. Chi Komarov (the tall, blond one) saw this instantly, and snatching off his old-fashioned spectacles, he ran to her side and patted her, saying teasingly:
“Now, haven’t we met? Now, aren’t you married to someone I know?”
“No, no,” said Leslie Smith, flushing with pleasure.
He touched her neck. “Ah, you’re a tightrope dancer!”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Leslie Smith.
“I’m a tightrope dancer,” said Chi. “Would you believe it?”
“But you’re too – too spiritual,” said Leslie Smith hesitantly.
“Spiritual, how do you like that, family, spiritual?” he cried, delighted (a little more delighted, thought Jannina, than the situation really called for) and he began to stroke her neck.
“What a lovely neck you have,” he said.
This steadied Leslie Smith. She said, “I like tall men,” and allowed herself to look at the rest of the family. “Who are these people?” she said, though one was afraid she might really mean it.
Fung Pao-yu to the rescue: “Who are these people? Who are they, indeed! I doubt if they are anybody. One might say, ‘I have met these people,’ but has one? What existential meaning would such a statement convey? I myself, now, I have met them. I have been introduced to them. But they are like the Sahara; it is all wrapped in mystery; I doubt if they even have names,” etc. etc. Then lanky Chi Komarov disputed possession of Leslie Smith with Fung Pao-yu, and Fung Pao-yu grabbed one arm and Chi the other; and she jumped up and down fiercely; so that by the time the lights dimmed and the food came, people were feeling better – or so Jannina judged. So embarrassing and delightful to be eating fifteen to a room! “We Komarovs are famous for eating whatever we can get whenever we can get it,” said Velet proudly. Various Komarovs in various places, with the three hikers on cushions and Ilse at full length on the rug. Jannina pushed a button with her toe and the fairy lights came on all over the ceiling. “The children did that,” said Old Al. He had somehow settled at Leslie Smith’s side and was feeding her so-chi from his own bowl. She smiled up at him. “We once,” said a hiking companion of Fung Pao-yu’s, “arranged a dinner in an amphitheater where half of us played servants to the other half, with forfeits for those who didn’t show. It was the result of a bet. Like the bad old days. Did you know there were once five billion people in this world?”
“The gulls,” said Ilse, “are mating on the Isle of Skye.” There were murmurs of appreciative interest. Chi began to develop an erection and everyone laughed. Old Al wanted music and Velet didn’t; what might have been a quarrel was ended by Ilse’s furiously boxing their ears. She stalked off to the nursery.
“Leslie Smith and I are both old-fashioned,” said Old Al, “because neither of us believes in gabbing. Chi – your theater?”
“We’re turning people away.” He leaned forward, earnestly, tapping his fingers on his crossed knees. “I swear, some of them are threatening to commit suicide.”
“It’s a choice,” said Velet reasonably.
Leslie Smith had dropped her bowl. They retrieved it for her.
“Aiy, I remember –” said Pao-yu. “What I remember! We’ve been eating dried mush for three days, tax-issue. Did you know one of my dads killed himself?”
“No!” said Velet, surprised.
“Years ago,” said Pao-yu. “He said he refused to live to see the time when chairs were reintroduced. He also wanted further genetic engineering, I believe, for even more intelligence. He did it out of spite, I’m sure. I think he wrestled a shark. Jannina, is this tax-issue food? Is it this year’s style tax-issue sauce?”
“No, next year’s,” said Jannina snappishly. Really, some people! She slipped into Finnish, to show up Pao-yu’s pronunciation. “Isn’t that so?” she asked Leslie Smith.
Leslie Smith stared at her.
More charitably Jannina informed them all, in Finnish, that the Komarovs had withdrawn their membership in a food group, except for Ann, who had taken out an individual, because what the dickens, who had the time? And tax-issue won’t kill you. As they finished, they dropped their dishes into the garbage field and Velet stripped a layer off the rug. In that went, too. Indulgently Old Al began a round:
“Red.”
“Sun,” said Pao-yu.
“The Red Sun Is,” said one of the triplet Komarovs.
“The Red Sun Is – High,” said Chi.
“The Red Sun Is High, The,” Velet said.
“The Red Sun Is High, The Blue –” Jannina finished. They had come to Leslie Smith, who could either complete it or keep it going. She chose to declare for complete, not shyly (as before) but simply by pointing to Old Al.
“The Red Sun Is High, The Blue,” he said. “Subtle! Another: Ching.”
“Nü.”
“Ching nü ch’i.”
“Chin nü ch’i ch’u.”
“Ssu.”
“Wo.”
“Ssu wo yü.” It had got back to Leslie Smith again. She said, “I can’t do that.” Jannina got u
p and began to dance – I’m nice in my nasty way, she thought. The others wandered toward the pool and Ilse reappeared on the nursery monitor screen, saying, “I’m coming down.” Somebody said, “What time is it in the Argentine?”
“Five a.m.”
“I think I want to go.”
“Go then.”
“I go.”
“Go well.”
The red light over the antechamber door flashed and went out.
“Say, why’d you leave your other family?” said Ilse, settling near Old Al where the wall curved out. Ann, for whom it was evening, would be home soon; Chi, who had just got up a few hours back in western America, would stay somewhat longer; nobody ever knew Old Al’s schedule and Jannina herself had lost track of the time. She would stay up until she felt sleepy. She followed a rough twenty-eight-hour day, Phuong (what a nuisance that must be at rehearsals!) a twenty-two-hour one, Ilse six hours up, six hours dozing. Jannina nodded, heard the question, and shook herself awake.
“I didn’t leave them. They left me.”
There was a murmur of sympathy around the pool.
“They left me because I was stupid,” said Leslie Smith. Her hands were clasped passively in her lap. She looked very genteel in her blue body paint, a stocky young woman with small breasts. One of the triplet Komarovs, flirting in the pool with the other two, choked. The non-aquatic members of the family crowded around Leslie Smith, touching her with little, soft touches; they kissed her and exposed to her all their unguarded surfaces, their bellies, their soft skins. Old Al kissed her hands. She sat there, oddly unmoved. “But I am stupid,” she said. “You’ll find out.” Jannina put her hands over her ears: “A masochist!” Leslie Smith looked at Jannina with a curious, stolid look. Then she looked down and absently began to rub one blue-painted knee. “Luggage!” shouted Chi, clapping his hands together, and the triplets dashed for the stairs. “No, I’m going to bed,” said Leslie Smith; “I’m tired,” and quite simply, she got up and let Old Al lead her through the pink room, the blue room, the turtle-and-pet room (temporarily empty), the trash room, and all the other rooms, to the guest room with the view that looked out over the cold hillside to the terraced plantings below.
Modern Classics of Science Fiction Page 46
