“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 going 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 admire you. 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.
From Fomalhaut, where the Plasma drifted, he received back a positive response. The team which handled traffic for the Plasma was agreeing to sell him fifteen minutes of the Plasma’s time.
At the rate at which he was being metered, he was motivated to feed the Plasma his data very skillfully and very rapidly. He told the Plasma who Rybus was—which gave the AI System access to her complete files, including her psychological profile—and he told it that his dome was the closest dome to her, and he told it of her fierce determination to live and her refusal to accept a medical discharge or even transfer from her station. He cupped his head into the shell for psychotronic output so that the Plasma at Fomalhaut could draw directly from his thoughts, thus making available to it all his unconscious, marginal impressions, realizations, doubts, ideas, anxieties, needs.
“There will be a five-day delay in response,” the team signaled him. “Because of the distance involved. Your payment has been received and recorded. Over.”
“Over,” he said, feeling glum. He had spent everything he had. A vacuum had consumed his worth. But the Plasma was the court of last appeal in matters of problem-solving. WHAT SHOULD I DO? he had asked the Plasma. In five days he would have the answer.
During the next five days, Rybus became considerably weaker. She still fixed her own meals, however, although she seemed to eat the same thing over and over again: a dish of high-protein macaroni with grated cheese sprinkled over it. One day he found her wearing dark glasses. She did not want him to see her eyes.
“My bad eye has gone berserk,” she said dispassionately. “Rolled up in my head like a window shade.” Spilled capsules and tablets lay everywhere around her on her bed. He picked up one of the half-empty bottles and saw that she was taking one of the most powerful analgesics available.
“M.E.D. is prescribing this for you?” he said, wondering, Is she in that
much pain?
“I know somebody,” Rybus said. “At a dome on IV. The food man brought it over to me.”
“This stuff is addictive.”
“I’m lucky to get it. I shouldn’t really have it.”
“I know you shouldn’t.”
“That goddam M.E.D.” The vindictiveness of her tone was surprising. “It’s like dealing with a lower life-form. By the time they get around to prescribing, and then getting the medication to you, Christ, you’re an urn of ashes. I see no point in them prescribing for an urn of ashes.” She put her hand up to her skull. “I’m sorry; I should keep my wig on when you’re here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Could you bring me some Coke? Coke settles my stomach.”
From her refrigerator he took a liter bottle of cola and poured her a glass. He had to wash the glass first; there wasn’t a clean one in the dome.
Propped up before her at the foot of her bed, she had her standard-issue TV set going. It gabbled away mindlessly, but no one was listening or watching. He realized that every time he came over she had it on, even in the middle of the night.
When he returned to his own dome, he felt a tremendous sense of relief, of an odious burden being lifted from him. Just to put physical distance between himself and her—that was a joy which raised his spirits. It’s as if, he thought, when I’m with her I have what she has. We share the illness.
He did not feel like playing any Fox recordings so instead he put on the Mahler Second Symphony, The Resurrection. The only symphony scored for many pieces of rattan, he mused. A Ruthe, which looks like a small broom; they use it to play the bass drum. Too bad Mahler never saw a Morley wah-wah pedal, he thought, or he would have scored it into one of his longer symphonies.
Just as the chorus came in, his in-dome audio system shut down; an extrinsic override had silenced it.
“Transmission from Fomalhaut.”
“Standing by.”
“Use video, please. Ten seconds till start.”
“Thank you,” he said.
A readout appeared on his larger screen. It was the AI System, the plasma, replying a day early.
Subject: Rybus Rommey
Analysis: Thanatous
Program Advice: Total avoidance on your part
Ethical Factor: Obviated
**Thank You**
Blinking, McVane said reflexively, “Thank you.” He had dealt with the Plasma only once before and he had forgotten how terse its responses were. The screen cleared; the transmission had ended.
He was not sure what “thanatous” meant, but he felt certain that it had something to do with death. It means she is dying, he pondered as he punched into the planet’s reference bank and asked for a definition. It means that she is dying or may die or is close to death, all of which I know.
However, he was wrong. It meant producing death.
Producing, he thought. There is a great difference between death and producing death. No wonder the AI System had notified him that the ethical factor was obviated on his part.
She is a killer thing, he realized. Well, this is why is costs so much to consult the Plasma. You get—not a phony answer based on speculation—but an absolute response.
While he was thinking about it and trying to calm himself down, his telephone rang. Before he picked it up he knew who it was.
“Hi,” Rybus said in a trembling voice.
“Hi,” he said.
“Do you by any chance have any Celestial Seasonings Morning Thunder tea bags?”
“What?” he said.
“When I was over at your dome that time I fixed beef stroganoff for us, I thought I saw a canister of Celestial Seasonings—”
“No,” he said. “I don’t. I used them up.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m just tired,” he said, and he thought, She said “us.” She and I are an “us.” When did that happen? he asked himself. I guess that’s what the Plasma meant; it understood.
“Do you have any kind of tea?”
“No,” he said. His in-dome audio system suddenly came back on, released from its pause mode now that the Fomalhaut transmission had ended. The choir was singing.
On the phone, Rybus giggled. “Fox is doing sound on sound? A whole chorus of a thousand—”
“This is Mahler,” he said roughly.
“Do you think you could come over and keep me company?” Rybus asked. “I’m sort of at loose ends.”
After a moment, he said, “Okay. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“I was reading this article in—”
“When I get there,” he broke in, “we can talk. I’ll see you in half an hour.” He hung up the phone.
When he reached her dome, he found her propped up in bed, wearing her dark glasses and watching a soap opera on her TV. Nothing had changed since he had last visited her, except that the decaying food in the dishes and the fluids in the cups and glasses had become more dismaying.
“You should watch this,” Rybus said, not looking up. “Okay; I’ll fill you in. Becky is pregnant, but her boyfriend doesn’t—”
“I brought you some tea.” He set down four tea bags.
“Could you get me some crackers? There’s a box on the shelf over the stove. I need to take a pill. It’s easier for me to take medication with food than with water because when I was about three years old… you’re not going to believe this. My father was teaching me to swim. We had a lot of money in those days; my father was a—well, he still is, although I don’t hear from him very often. He hurt his back opening one of those sliding security gates at a condo cluster where…” Her voice trailed off; she had again become engrossed in her TV.
McVane cleared off a chair and seated himself.
“I was very depressed last night,” Rybus said. “I almost called you. I was thinking about this friend of mine who’s now—well, she’s my age, but she’s got a class 4-C rating in time-motion studies involving prism fluctuation rate or some damn thing. I hate her. At my age! Can you feature that?” She laughed.
“Have you weighed yourself lately?” he asked.
“What? Oh no. But my weight’s okay. I can tell. You take a pinch of skin between your fingers, up near your shoulder, and I did that. I still have a fat layer.”
“You look thin,” he said. He put his hand on her forehead.
“Am I running a fever?”
“No,” he said. He continued to hold his hand there, against her smooth damp skin, above her dark glasses. Above, he thought, the myelin sheath of nerve fibers which had developed the sclerotic patches which were killing her.
You will be better off, he said to himself, when she is dead.
Sympathetically, Rybus said, “Don’t feel bad. I’ll be okay. M.E.D. has cut my dosage of Vasculine. I only take it t.i.d. now—three times a day instead of four.”
“You know all the medical terms,” he said.
“I have to. They issued me a PDR. Want to look at it? It’s around here somewhere. Look under those papers over there. I was writing letters to several old friends because while I was looking for something else I came across their addresses. I’ve been throwing things away. See?” She pointed and he saw sacks, paper sacks, of crumpled papers. “I wrote for five hours yesterday and then I started in today. That’s why I wanted the tea; maybe you could fix me a cup. Put a whole lot of sugar in it and just a little milk.”
As he fixed her the tea, fragments of a Linda Fox adaptation of a Dowland song moved through his mind.
“Thou mighty God
That rightest every wrong…
Listen to Patience
In a dying song.”
“This program is really good,” Rybus said, when a series of commercials interrupted her TV soap opera. “Can I tell you about it?”
Rather than answering, he asked, “Does the reduced dosage of Vasculine indicate that you’re improving?”
“I’m probably going into
another period of remission.”
“How long can you expect it to last?”
“Probably quite a while.”
“I admire your courage,” he said. “I’m bailing out. This is the last time I’m coming over here.”
“My courage?” she said. “Thank you.”
“I’m not coming back.”
“Not coming back when? You mean today?”
“You are a death-dealing organism,” he said. “A pathogen.”
“If we’re going to talk seriously,” she said, “I want to put my wig on. Could you bring me my blonde wig? It’s around somewhere, maybe under those clothes in the corner there. Where that red top is, the one with the white buttons. I have to sew a button back on it, if I can find the button.”
He found her her wig.
“Hold the hand mirror for me,” she said as she placed the wig on her skull. “Do you think I’m contagious? Because M.E.D. says that at this stage the virus is inactive. I talked to M.E.D. for over an hour yesterday; they gave me a special line.”
“Who’s maintaining your gear?” he asked.
“Gear?” She gazed at him from behind dark glasses.
“Your job. Monitoring incoming traffic. Storing it and then transferring it. The reason you’re here.”
“It’s on auto.”
“You have seven warning lights on right now, all red and all blinking,” he said. “You should have an audio analog so you can hear it and not ignore it. You’re receiving but not recording and they’re trying to tell you.”
“Well, they’re out of luck,” she responded in a low voice.
“They have to take into account the fact that you’re sick,” he said.
“Yes, they do. Of course they do. They can bypass me; don’t you receive roughly what I receive? Aren’t I essentially a backup station to your own?”
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