Dark Benediction

by Walter Michael Miller

  Mendelhaus’ thin lips tightened. “You shot—”

  “Didn’t kill him,” Paul explained hastily. “Broke his arm. One of the brothers is bringing him over. I’m sorry, Father, but he jumped me.”

  The priest glanced aside silently, apparently wrestling against anger. “I’m glad you told me,” he said quietly. “I suppose you couldn’t help it. But why did you leave the hospital? You’re safe here. The yacht will be provisioned for you. I suggest you remain in your room until it’s ready. I won’t vouch for your safety any farther than the building.” There was a tone of command in his voice, and Paul nodded slowly. He started away.

  “The young lady’s been asking for you,” the priest called after him.

  Paul stopped. “How is she?”

  “Over the crisis, I think. Infection’s down. Nervous condition not so good. Deep depression. Sometimes she goes a little hysterical.” He paused, then lowered his voice. “You’re at the focus of it, young man. Sometimes she gets the idea that she touched you, and then sometimes she raves about how she wouldn’t do it.”

  Paul whirled angrily, forming a protest, but the priest continued: “Seevers talked to her, and then a psychologist—one of our sisters. It seemed to help some. She’s asleep now. I don’t know how much of Seevers’ talk she understood, however. She’s dazed—combined effects of pain, shock, infection, guilt feelings, fright, hysteria—and some other things, Morphine doesn’t make her mind any clearer. Neither does the fact that she thinks you’re avoiding her.”

  “It’s the plague I’m avoiding!” Paul snapped. “Not her.”

  Mendelhaus chuckled mirthlessly. “You’re talking to me, aren’t you?” He turned and entered the chapel through a swinging door. As the door fanned back and forth, Paul caught a glimpse of a candlelit altar and a stark wooden crucifix, and a sea of monk-robes flawing over the pews, waiting for the celebrant priest to enter the sanctuary and begin the Sacrifice of the Mass. He realized vaguely that it was Sunday.

  Paul wandered back to the main corridor and found himself drifting toward Willie’s room. The door was ajar, and he stopped short lest she see him. But after a moment he inched forward until he caught a glimpse of her dark mass of hair unfurled across the pillow. One of the sisters had combed it for her, and it spread in dark waves, gleaming in the candlelight. She was still asleep. The candle startled him for an instant—suggesting a deathbed and the sacrament of the dying. But a dog-eared magazine lay beneath it; someone had been reading to her.

  He stood in the doorway, watching the slow rise of her breathing. Fresh, young, shapely—even in the crude cotton gown they had given her, even beneath the blue-white pallor of her skin—soon to become gray as a cloudy sky in a wintery twilight. Her lips moved slightly, and he backed a step away. They paused, parted moistly, showing thin white teeth. Her delicately carved face was thrown back slightly on the pillow. There was a sudden tightening of her jaw.

  A weirdly pitched voice floated unexpectedly from down the hall, echoing the semisinging of Gregorian chant: “Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor…” The priest was beginning Mass.

  As the sound came, the girl’s hands clenched into rigid fists beneath the sheet. Her eyes flared open to stare wildly at the ceiling. Clutching the bedclothes, she pressed the fists up against her face and cried out: “No! NOOOO! God, I won’t!”

  Paul backed out of sight and pressed himself against the wall. A knot of desolation tightened in his stomach. He looked around nervously. A nun, hearing the outcry, came scurrying down the hall, murmuring anxiously to herself. A plump mother hen in a dozen yards of starched white cloth. She gave him a quick challenging glance and waddled inside.

  “Child, my child, what’s wrong! Nightmares again?”

  He heard Willie breathe a nervous moan of relief. Then her voice, weakly— “They… they made me… touch… Ooo, God! I want to cut off my hands!”

  Paul fled, leaving the nun’s sympathetic reassurance to fade into a murmur behind him.

  He spent the rest of the day and the night in his room. On the following day, Mendelhaus came with word that the boat was not yet ready. They needed to finish caulking and stock it with provisions. But the priest assured him that it should be afloat within twenty-four hours. Paul could not bring himself to ask about the girl.

  A monk brought his food—unopened cans, still steaming from the sterilizer, and on a covered tray. The monk wore gloves and mask, and he had oiled his own skin. There were moments when Paul felt as if he were the diseased and contagious patient from whom the others protected themselves. Like Omar, he thought, wondering—“which is the Potter, pray, and which the Pot?”

  Was Man, as Seevers implied, a terrorized ape-tribe fleeing illogically from the gray hands that only wanted to offer a blessing? How narrow was the line dividing blessing from curse, god from demon! The parasites came in a devil’s mask, the mask of disease. “Diseases have often killed me,” said Man. “All disease is therefore evil.” But was that necessarily true? Fire had often killed Man’s club-bearing ancestors, but later came to serve him. Even diseases had been used to good advantage—artificially induced typhoid and malaria to fight venereal infections.

  But the gray skin… taste buds in the fingertips… alien microorganisms tampering with the nerves and the brain. Such concepts caused his scalp to bristle. Man—made over to suit the tastes of a bunch of supposedly beneficent parasites—was he still Man, or something else? Little bacteriological farmers imbedded in the skin, raising a crop of nerve cells—eat one, plant two, sow an old actor in a new field, reshuffle the feeder-fibers to the brain.

  Monday brought a cold rain and stiff wind from the Gulf. He watched the water swirling through littered gutters in the street. Sitting in the window, he watched the gloom and waited, praying that the storm would not delay his departure. Mendelhaus smiled politely, through his doorway once. “Willie’s ankle seems healing nicely,” he said. “Swelling’s gone down so much we had to change casts. If only she would—”

  “Thanks for the free report, Padre,” Paul growled irritably.

  The priest shrugged and went away.

  It was still raining when the sky darkened with evening. The monastic dock-crew had certainly been unable to finish. Tomorrow… perhaps.

  After nightfall, he lit a candle and lay awake watching its unflickering yellow tongue until drowsiness lolled his head aside. He snuffed it out and went to bed.

  Dreams assailed him, tormented him, stroked him with dark hands while he lay back, submitting freely. Small hands, soft, cool, tender—touching his forehead and his cheeks, while a voice whispered caresses.

  He awoke suddenly to blackness. The feel of the dream-hands was still on his face. What had aroused him? A sound in the hall, a creaking hinge? The darkness was impenetrable. The rain had stopped—perhaps its cessation had disturbed him. He felt curiously tense as he lay listening to the humid, musty corridors. A… faint… rustle… and…

  Breathing! The sound of soft breathing was in the room with him!

  He let out a hoarse shriek that shattered the unearthly silence. A high-pitched scream of fright answered him! From a few feet away in the room. He groped toward it and fumbled against a bare wall. He roared curses, and tried to find first matches, then the shotgun. At last he found the gun, aimed at nothing across the room, and jerked the trigger. The explosion deafened him. The window shattered, and a sift of plaster rustled to the floor.

  The brief flash had illuminated the room. It was empty. He stood frozen. Had he imagined it all? But no, the visitor’s startled scream had been real enough.

  A cool draft fanned his face. The door was open. Had he forgotten to lock it again? A tumult of sound was beginning to arise from the lower floors. His shot had aroused the sleepers. But there was a closer sound—sobbing in the corridor, and an irregular creaking noise.

  At last he found a match and rushed to the door. But the tiny flame revealed nothing within its limited aura. He heard a doorknob rattl
e in the distance; his visitor was escaping via the outside stairway. He thought of pursuit and vengeance. But instead, he rushed to the washbasin and began scrubbing himself thoroughly with harsh brown soap. Had his visitor touched him—or had the hands been only dream-stuff? He was frightened and sickened.

  Voices were filling the corridor. The light of several candles was advancing toward his doorway. He turned to see monks’ faces peering anxiously inside. Father Mendelhaus shouldered his way through the others, glanced at the window, the wall, then at Paul.

  “What—”

  “Safety, eh?” Paul hissed. “Well, I had a prowler! A woman! I think I’ve been touched.”

  The priest turned and spoke to a monk. “Go to the stairway and call for the Mother Superior. Ask her to make an immediate inspection of the sisters’ quarters. If any nuns have been out of their rooms—”

  A shrill voice called from down the hallway: “Father, Father! The girl with the injured ankle! She’s not in her bed! She’s gone!”

  “Willie!” Paul gasped.

  A small nun with a candle scurried up and panted to recover her breath for a moment. “She’s gone, Father. I was on night duty. I heard the shot, and I went to see if it disturbed her. She wasn’t there!”

  The priest grumbled incredulously. “How could she get out? She can’t walk with that cast.”

  “Crutches, Father. We told her she could get up in a few days. While she was still irrational, she kept saying they were going to amputate her leg. We brought the crutches in to prove she’d be up soon. It’s my fault, Father. I should have—”

  “Never mind! Search the building for her.”

  Paul dried his wet skin and faced the priest angrily. “What can I do to disinfect myself?” he demanded.

  Mendelhaus called out into the hallway where a crowd had gathered. “Someone please get Doctor Seevers.”

  “I’m here, preacher,” grunted the scientist. The monastics parted ranks to make way for his short chubby body. He grinned amusedly at Paul. “So, you decided to make your home here after all, eh?”

  Paul croaked an insult at him. “Have you got any effective—”

  “Disinfectants? Afraid not. Nitric acid will do the trick on one or two local spots. Where were you touched?”

  “I don’t know. I was asleep.”

  Seevers’ grin widened. “Well, you can’t take a bath in nitric acid. We’ll try something else, but I doubt if it’ll work for a direct touch.”

  “That oil—”

  “Uh-uh! That’ll do for exposure-weakened parasites you might pick up by handling an object that’s been touched. But with skin to skin contact, the bugs’re pretty stout little rascals. Come on downstairs, though, we’ll make a pass at it.”

  Paul followed him quickly down the corridor. Behind him, a soft voice was murmuring: “I just can’t understand why nonhypers are so…” Mendelhaus said something to Seevers, blotting out the voice. Paul chafed at the thought that they might consider him cowardly.

  But with the herds fleeing northward, cowardice was the social norm. And after a year’s flight, Paul had accepted the norm as the only possible way to fight.

  Seevers was emptying chemicals into a tub of water in the basement when a monk hurried in to tug at Mendelhaus’ sleeve. “Father, the sisters report that the girl’s not in the building.”

  “What? Well, she can’t be far! Search the grounds. If she’s not there, try the adjoining blocks.”

  Paul stopped unbuttoning his shirt. Willie had said some mournful things about what she would rather do than submit to the craving. And her startled scream when he had cried out in the darkness—the scream of someone suddenly awakening to reality—from a dream-world.

  The monk left the room. Seevers sloshed more chemicals into the tub. Paul could hear the wind whipping about the basement windows and the growl of an angry surf not so far away. Paul rebuttoned his shirt.

  “Which way’s the ocean?” he asked suddenly. He backed toward the door.

  “No, you fool!” roared Seevers. “You’re not going to—get him, preacher!”

  Paul sidestepped as the priest grabbed for him. He darted outside and began running for the stairs. Mendelhaus bellowed for him to stop.

  “Not me!” Paul called back angrily. “Willie!”

  Moments later, he was racing across the sodden lawn and into the street. He stopped on the corner to get his bearings. The wind brought the sound of the surf with it.

  He began running east and calling her name into the night.

  The rain had ceased, but the pavement was wet and water gurgled in the gutters. Occasionally the moon peered through the thinning veil of clouds, but its light failed to furnish a view of the street ahead. After a minute’s running, he found himself standing on the seawall. The breakers thundered a stone’s throw across the sand. For a moment they became visible under the coy moon, then vanished again in blackness. He had not seen her.

  “Willie!”

  Only the breakers’ growl responded. And a glimmer of phosphorescence from the waves.

  “Willie!” he slipped down from the seawall and began feeling along the jagged rocks that lay beneath it. She could not have gotten down without falling. Then he remembered a rickety flight of steps just to the north, and he trotted quickly toward it.

  The moon came out suddenly. He saw her, and stopped. She was sitting motionless on the bottom step, holding her face in her hands. The crutches were stacked neatly against the handrail. Ten yards across the sand slope lay the hungry, devouring surf. Paul approached her slowly. The moon went out again. His feet sucked at the rain-soaked sand.

  He stopped by the handrail, peering at her motionless shadow. “Willie?”

  A low moan, then a long silence. “I did it, Paul,” she muttered miserably. “It was like a dream at first, but then… you shouted… and…”

  He crouched in front of her, sitting on his heels. Then he took her wrists firmly and tugged her hands from her face.

  “Don’t—”

  He pulled her close and kissed her. Her mouth was frightened. Then he lifted her—being cautious of the now-sodden cast. He climbed the steps and started back to the hospital. Willie, dazed and weary and still uncomprehending, fell asleep in his arms. Her hair blew about his face in the wind. It smelled warm and alive. He wondered what sensation it would produce to the finger-pore receptors. “Wait and see,” he said to himself.

  The priest met him with a growing grin when he brought her into the candlelit corridor. “Shall we forget the boat, son?”

  Paul paused. “No… I’d like to borrow it anyway.” Mendelhaus looked puzzled.

  Seevers snorted at him: “Preacher, don’t you know any reasons for traveling besides running away?”

  Paul carried her back to her room. He meant to have a long talk when she awoke. About an island—until the world sobered up.

  1951

  THE LINEMAN

  It was August on Earth, and the newscast reported a heat wave in the Midwest: the worst since 2065. A letter from Mike Tremini’s sister in Abilene said the chickens were dying and there wasn’t enough water for the stock. It was the only letter that came for any of Novotny’s men during that fifty-shift hitch on the Copernicus Trolley Project. Everybody read it and luxuriated in sympathy for Kansas and sick chickens.

  It was August on Luna too. The Perseids rained down with merciless impartiality; and, from his perch atop the hundred-foot steel skeleton, the lineman stopped cranking the jack and leaned out against his safety belt to watch two demolition men carrying a corpse out toward Fissure Seven. The corpse wore a deflated pressure suit. Torn fabric dragged the ground. The man in the rear carried the corpse’s feet like a pair of wheelbarrow handles, and he continually tripped over the loose fabric; his head waggled inside his helmet as if he cursed softly and continuously to himself. The corpse’s helmet was translucent with an interior coating of pink ice, making it look like a comic figure in a strawberry ice cream ad, a chocolate ragamuf
fin with a scoop for a head.

  The lineman stared after the funeral party for a time until the team-pusher, who had been watching the slack span of 800 MGM aluminum conductors that snaked half a mile back toward the preceding tower, glanced up at the hesitant worker and began bellowing into his microphone. The lineman answered briefly, inspected the pressure gauge of his suit, and began cranking the jack again. With every dozen turns of the crank, the long snaking cable crept tighter across the lunar plain, straightening and lifting almost imperceptibly until at last the center-point cleared the ground and the cable swooped in a long graceful catenary between the towers. It trembled with fitful glistenings in the harsh sunglare. The lineman ignored the cable as he turned the crank. He squinted across the plains at the meteor display.

  The display was not spectacular. It could be detected only as a slight turbulence in the layer of lunar dust that covered the ground, and an occasional dust geyser where a pea sized bit of sky debris exploded into the crust at thirty miles per second. Sometimes the explosion was bright and lingering, but more often there was only a momentary incandescence quickly obscured by dust. The lineman watched it with nervous eyes. There was small chance of being hit by a stone of consequential size, but the eternal pelting by meteoric dust, though too fine to effect a puncture, could weaken the fabric of a suit and lead to leaks and blowouts.

  The team-pusher keyed his mic switch again and called to the lineman on the tower. “Keep your eyes on that damn jack, Relke! That clamp looks like she’s slipping from here.”

  The lineman paused to inspect the mechanism. “Looks OK to me,” he answered. “How tight do I drag this one up?”

  The pusher glanced at the sagging span of steel-reinforced aluminum cable. “It’s a short stretch. Not too critical. What’s the tension now?”

  The lineman consulted a dial on the jack. “Going on forty-two hundred pounds, Joe.”