Orbit 15 - [Anthology]
Page 14
Anyway, Bill was waiting to be taken back to his room when they wheeled in a small boy. He looked very sick, he had been crying and was obviously scared to death.
They stopped the boy’s cart next to Bill’s, and Bill could see how thin and frail the little boy looked. He could see the tag on the boy’s wrist. It said “Bobby Winston.” Bill was just beginning to wonder if Ernie could help this little boy when he heard a gruff voice from the wall behind him.
“Say, Bobby,” the voice said, “didn’t I tell you this wouldn’t hurt? Don’t you believe old Andy? Andy will be right here with you while they do the test—and he won’t let anyone hurt you. Trust old Andy, won’t you, Bobby?”
Bill could see Bobby’s face light up when he heard the voice, and Bobby rolled over so he could see the wall behind Bill. Bobby was still sniffling, but he was trying to dry his tears.
“I didn’t know they’d let you come down here, Andy,” said the little boy. “Will they really let you stay?”
“Sure they will, Bobby,” said the gruff voice. “Who’s going to stop me, hey?”
Bill wanted to see Andy, so he rolled over on his cart.
There on the wall screen was an enormous, smiling, black and white panda. It went on talking to Bobby in that gruff voice.
~ * ~
When he got back to his room, Bill asked Ernie about the boy and the panda. Ernie told Bill about the little Winston boy. He was very sick and everybody in the hospital had been upset when it was discovered that Bobby wouldn’t talk to any of the staff.
“But we found out he would talk to the panda,” concluded Ernie.
Bill lay in his bed looking at Ernie for a while. Then he said, “But bears can’t talk, can they, Ernie?”
“No, bears can’t talk—even pandas,” said Ernie.
Bill said, “Ernie, could you come up to my room today? Just for a minute? Just drop in for a minute—I mean, we haven’t seen each other—we . . .” His voice trailed off. “Could you, Ernie?”
“Bill, I’ve got all these other guys to watch. I can’t come,” said Ernie, smiling. Maybe a bit wistfully. Maybe just smiling calmly.
“Ernie? Are you—are you—like the panda? Is that why you can’t come up to my room?”
Ernie didn’t say anything for a moment. Bill waited.
“You mean, Bill, that the panda isn’t real, don’t you?”
Bill nodded. His eyes stung. He closed them.
“But the panda is real to Bobby, Bill. The panda is Bobby’s friend. So far it’s the only friend we’ve found for Bobby in the whole hospital.” Ernie sighed. “Bobby trusts the panda in the same way you trust me, because Bobby’s found out that the panda is on his side, that the big bear won’t let anybody hurt Bobby, that the bear is always there when Bobby needs him. Andy is a good friend. Do you see how it is, Bill?”
But Bill turned his face to the wall and would not answer.
~ * ~
Dr. Lambert knocked on Bill’s door and went in. Bill was sitting up in bed, looking out the window.
“I’m Dr. Lambert, Bill. I’m your doctor while you’re here.”
Bill did not turn, seemed not to hear.
“I came because I hear there’s been some trouble between you and Ernie. Is that right?”
“Ernie?” said Bill. “Who’s he? I never met him. What’s this Ernie got to do with me?”
Dr. Lambert waited. Bill said, “You got a cigarette, Doctor?”
Before Lambert could answer, the table slid noiselessly over to Bill’s bed and a drawer opened. There were cigarettes in the drawer.
“Forget it,” said Bill quickly. “I changed my mind.”
The drawer of the table slid shut.
Bill looked at the drawer awhile. He said, “He’s here, isn’t he? Even when I can’t see him.”
“You mean Ernie. Yes, Bill, he’s always here, making sure you’re all right.”
“Ernie’s the panda, too, isn’t he. The little boy’s panda.”
“In a way, yes, he is.”
Bill turned to look at the doctor. He looked old and sick and alone.
“Why didn’t he tell me that he wasn’t a real person—that he was some kind of damned machine? Why didn’t you tell me, Doc? Why’d you fool me like this? I can’t hurt anybody. I’m just a sick old man—and I’m going to—” He stopped.
Lambert sat on the bed and took out a cigarette. He started to light it and then put it back in his pocket. He studied his hands for a while and thought about a practice in the country.
“Bill,” he said, “You knew Ernie wasn’t a man, didn’t you? You knew after that first day, I think. Most of the patients do. I think Bobby probably knows, somewhere inside, that Andy isn’t real, that he couldn’t be real. We all know, because we know that Ernie and Andy are too good to be true. Nobody has time to follow us around everywhere, and talk to us whenever we want to talk, and not talk when we don’t want to. Nobody cares as much about us as Andy and Ernie. They can’t. Nobody has time. They have to worry about themselves a lot of the time.”
Lambert stopped talking. He looked at Bill. Bill was looking back at him, into his eyes.
“I’m your doctor. Your doctor. Your life is in my hands, but I can’t be with you all the time. I can’t always be thinking about what you need. I’ve got other patients.”
Lambert looked down at his hands again. “I’ve got other patients, and a wife, and money problems, and I’ve got to eat and get some sleep sometimes. And I worry about myself sometimes, too. You see? Do you see, Bill? About Ernie? About Andy?”
Bill said nothing.
The two men sat together awhile, and then Lambert said goodbye and went away.
~ * ~
It was silent in the room for some time. It was clean, and odorless, and very sunny. And silent.
“Ernie?” said Bill. “I’ll take that cigarette now.”
“Sure, Bill,” said Ernie as the screen lit up. “Or maybe you’d like to try one of my cigars?”
<
~ * ~
The Memory Machine
It strikes me as funny, don’t you?
—Dorothy Kilgallen
Toward, a More Kreative Speling
“Why’s the dog named Bisk?”
“Short for b,i,s,q,u,i,t. You want to see something whorish and altogether delightful? Call her by name, then ask if she wants one of those things I spelled.”
Blake leaned close to the dog, now sitting as on a throne, smiling as at a circus, and said, “Good girl, Bisk, want a bisquit?”
—”Monitored Dreams and Strategic
Cremations: 1: The Bisquit Position,”
by Bernard Wolfe, in Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by
Harlan Ellison (Doubleday, 1972), p. 287f.
Lady Lean had bent to whisper something in her ear Blake had heard, “Girl, sweet thing, want a bisquit?”
—Ibid., p. 293
“. . . You come here and give me all the best bisquits. I’ve been long without.”
—Ibid., p. 295 127
“... Report to your brain what’s craving all over your eyes from all over your bed. Be my lavish bisquit man.”
—Ibid., p. 296
Now she did the only thing she knew to do, when the ultimately wanted was not forthcoming, flopped over on her back in the bisquit position.
—Ibid., p. 301
The magnificently blue eye quivered, began to take the dim view, then dimmer, then closed altogether, and Bisk was cool again, as finally, Blake thought, with luck, we’ll all, the invaded and the sucked, all bisquit wanters, be free from burning.
—Ibid., p. 303
Quis Judicet?
In the six years since the initiation of the “Obit” series, its stories have won four of the yearly Nebula awards. In one year, seven of the eight nominees for “Best short story of the Year” were Obit selections. Obit 12 maintains the past regorous standards for inventiveness, excitement, intelligence and style . . . Of course, O
bit 12 is a Science Fiction Book Club selection.
—Review signed “LKF” in the
Lewiston (Maine) Daily Sun
and Lewiston Evening Journal
Although this book doesn’t mark Heinlein’s first incursion into an area previously the province of Traveller’s Companion and Grove Press, et. al., it does signal the farest out he’s reached. In the ebullient Glory Road, Hero had hankey-pankey only with the Princess.... [This book] teaches you the heart-wrenching sorrow of having to part, after a normal lifetime, with someone you have loved ... an ephemeral, who’s span is only a pitifully short 50 or 70 years. . . . It’s the thundering thrill of the great Diasphora . . .
—Review by Richard Ashby of Time Enough for Love,
by Robert A. Heinlein (Vertex, October 1973)
Pay Attention, Dammit!
The young man lying rigid on the platform, without moving a muscle, began to ascend horizontally. He arose slowly, almost imperceptively at first, but soon with a steady and unmistakable acceleration.
—”Levitation,” by Joseph Payne Brennan,
in Stories Not for the Nervous, edited
by Alfred Hitchcock (Random House, 1965)
Watch Out for Those Snakes—They’re Made of
Meconium, the Miracle Metal
Deep in thought, she had arrived at the great computer building and had crossed the magnificent inner hall without gawking at the famous sculpture depicting man overpowering the Lae-conia of science.
—”Dull Drums,” by Anne McCaffrey,
in Future Quest, edited by
Roger Elwood (Avon, 1973)
Scalpel. Retractor . . .
She would mildly bawl out Caesar for biting by the slack of the neck and trying to rape his mother Cleopatra—he really should have been called Caesarean—with Mark Antony interestedly looking on.
—”Cat Three,” by Fritz Leiber
(F&SF, October 1973)
<
~ * ~
LIVE? OUR COMPUTERS WILL DO THAT FOR US
Brian W. Aldiss
“There is no art,” says Shakespeare, foolish man,
“To read the mind’s construction in the face.”
The physiognomists his portrait scan,
And say: “How little wisdom here we trace!
He knew his face disclosed his mind and heart,
So, in his own defence, denied our art.”
~ * ~
Colding Marchmain held out his hand to Gloria Blake, but she elevated and turned away, shielding her sympathetic nervous system from his learned scrutiny.
“I don’t want you to leave for Earth just now,” she said. “I keep getting glimpses of other rooms. Bare rooms, with people weeping.”
“You’ve experienced it all before,” he said reasonably. “You’ve had it explained to you. You’re a Sensitive of the Unrealised Multi-Schizophrenic Type B. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, you have it all memorised.” She turned back to him, so that he could see fully that clear luminous face of hers, with the long nose, well-chiseled lips, and lucid blue eyes, framed in coils of her gretchen-green hair. He gauged the degree of contraction of her pupils. “You have lived with me on Turpitude for five years, yet how much do you understand about responding to me?” she said.
“This is an au revoir, Gloria, not a first-class row!”
“There are times when I don’t want you, times when I do. I want you now, and you insist on going back to Earth, not caring at all if you shatter the composure of my mood.”
Studying her kinesics, he saw she was not as concerned as she pretended.
“Haven’t we had this conversation before? I know how you modulate your sensory input, Gloria, my love, and I remain fascinated because there’s not another woman like you, not anywhere on the Zodiacal Planets. You can use heat and thirst, social isolation, and dance, to induce your deliriums. By your breathing and your fasting and your sleeplessness, you alter your body chemistry. Your very gestures and words are so rhythmic that one conversation puts you in a trance. That’s why you are too subliminally aware for your own good. And for mine.”
She moved towards him in a serpentine way and positioned her mouth some fifty centimetres from his, as she breathed, “I didn’t say you didn’t understand me; I said you didn’t understand how to respond to me. To go to Earth is such a crude thing.”
“My father is dying.”
“Fuck him, let him die! And I suppose you will see your ex-wife while you’re there?”
He laid his fingers across her left palm, measuring her psychogalvanic response. “I want you to miss me, but you aren’t going to miss me greatly—your whole body image says as much. Gloria, you always escape me; this whole big act we play out on Turpitude consists of your being elusive. Now I have to go and see my father, and elude you for a change. So you feel obliged to be angry.”
“All right.” She draped her arms loosely round his neck. “I elude you, Colding, and you regard that—if not as deliberate on my part—at least as a piece of my character composition. Suppose you are wrong? Have you ever in your life enjoyed a satisfactory relationship with anyone, man or woman, in which you weren’t feeling they eluded you?”
At considerable expense, Colding had had their egg-shaped eight-room transferred to a point high up the cliff of the outer urbstak of Turpitude 1, to a socket in the sunward face. His firm, Gondwana Inc., had financed the move, anxious to keep so talented a predestinographologist happy. Unable to bear Gloria’s probing—she was sweet as pie until threatened by any kind of parting, however temporary—Colding retreated to his rec room.
For a moment he stood looking out the noctures at the view, consoled by the immense concave chip of a world in which he made his way, and by the view of many other Zeepees, glinting out in space like malformed sequins, all basking in the giveaway energies of the sun. It was a fine sight, although Colding knew that less successful men, with apts embedded deep in the urbstak, had falsies which showed scenes even more striking than this, with whole mantillas of Zodiacals riding round Earth. Well, his view was real and theirs wasn’t, whichever looked better. As befitted the brains behind the new destimeter.
One of the prototypes of the Gondwana destimeter stood in a corner of the rec room. Colding went over to it, sat down, removed his socks, and placed his bare feet on the lower screens. His hands he placed, flat-palmed, on the middle screens, juxtaposing his face against the lines etched on the upper screen. A pressure with the right elbow, and the machine was working. His astrological and biophysical data were already recorded. Now the machine was merely updating dermatoglyphic, chirological, physiognomical, and secretional readings against previous data, and formulating them out against Colding’s projected Earth trip.
It had long been recognised that the hand—and the foot to a lesser degree—mirrored the internal condition, physical and mental, of its owner. The destimeter was a sophisticated way of tallying all information groups and producing an extrapolative graph. Eventually, Colding knew, later models of his machine would come to rule the everyday life of men and women; they should prove more trustworthy than oneself.
Gloria entered as he sat there. She was slightly in awe of the destimeter.
“Sorry I was bitchy, darling. I do realise that you must see your lather.”
“And that I shall go nowhere near my ex-wife?”
She hesitated. “You’ll go and see your daughter?”
“Of course I’ll flaming well go and see Rosey—what do you think I am? Don’t I neglect her enough as it is, poor kid? But that doesn’t mean to say I have to see her mother—Rosey lives alone, as well you know. Christ knows where Phyllis is.”
“I’m sorry. Relax!”
He couldn’t. The destimeter computer had switched to Readout, and was giving him the likely action (86-87.5 percent probability) on his Earth trip. He clutched at it, reading sickly. As usual these readouts, or Pre-Destinations as they were called by the media, seemed to
be talking nonsense; and as usual their veiled terms produced queasiness in Colding.
Space-passage Discomfort-rating 3. No incidents. Blonde smiling No overtures intended. Item misplaced. Ramp stumble. Disorientation, First Aid station relief. Injection. Random images. Gravity Traffic High-rise increase.
Hospitalization surprise with parent vocal. Noncommunication. Days in Santos. Time confusion Senile incest obsession causes pain. Memory of other parent weeping in Santos boudoir Nausea of Regret. Argumentation Avoid. Promises Keep now later. Visionary horse.