Orbit 15 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  I shook my head. “I’m going back to Venusport as soon as I have the money and find a nice, quiet bar in need of a nice, quiet bartender. How about you?”

  “This job’s going to last a year. I figure I’ll try to stick it out and save all the money I can. Next time I’m out of work, I want something in the bank. I’m getting tired of poverty. It’s okay when you’re young, but I’m starting to feel old.” He grinned. “Of course, I say that now. Two, three months, and I’ll probably think there’s nothing worse than working.”

  The drinks came, and we ordered serpent-fish stew, then ice cream flavored with the fruit of the nettle tree, coffee and Venusian brandy. After dinner we walked along the wharf. The waves sloshed around the pilings below us, and a boat came up the inlet, a big yacht, aglitter with light. The air smelled of seaweed and fish. There were streetlights shining here and there. I looked at Ace’s face. He was right, he was getting old. I could see lines around his mouth and eyes. Soon that magnificent red hair would start fading. Well, I was getting old too. And what did either of us have to show for all that time except wrinkles? The world is too much with us, I thought. Late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: little we see in nature that is ours; we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

  I’d forgotten the next few lines, but I remembered, looking out at the dark inlet and the lights shining on the other side, how the poem ended:

  —Great God! I’d sooner be

  A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

  So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

  Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

  Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  BITING DOWN HARD ON TRUTH

  George Alec Effinger

  The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

  ~ * ~

  It was the second week in December; the weather was actually fairly mild, bright, clear, temperature in the high fifties. The yard was brown and grassless. Where rain had made mud a few days before, there were hard, dry ridges of a lighter buff color. The high gray walls around the yard were close and cold.

  book one: healthful sport in the cool, clear air

  Mac was playing middle linebacker, as usual. He was of medium height but very thin, with an ascetic face, narrow shoulders, and small hands. On his right was Willie, as complete an opposite for Mac as one could hope to find: tall, heavy, well-muscled. On Mac’s other side was Sam, Willie’s wife. She was the shortest of the three, though she was built as solidly as her husband. They stared ahead at the other team. The opponents were coming up to the line of scrimmage; their quarterback flicked his eyes across Mac’s team, examining the defensive alignments. Mac looked past him, at the fullback who was Mac’s responsibility. Willie watched the halfback, Sam watched the tight end.

  “I will observe their fingertips,” thought Mac. He had been taught that the fingertips of the other team’s linemen could give the impending play away. If the play was a pass, an inexperienced lineman might have his weight on the balls of his feet, as he prepared to pull out of position and drop back to protect the quarterback. On the other hand, if the play was a run, and the lineman would be blocking forward, his weight might be supported by that hand and his fingernails would show white. Mac glanced at the appropriate fingertips, but he picked up no clues.

  It was fourth down and four yards to go for the opponents’ first down. There was less than a minute to play, and the other team was behind by six points. They were going for the first down.

  The center snapped the ball. The other team’s quarterback faked a hand-off to the halfback, who ran toward the sideline; Willie followed. The quarterback faded back with the football and faked a pass; meanwhile, the tight end ran a square-out to the other sideline, and Sam followed. Mac was going for the quarterback. He saw the man hand the ball to the fullback. “Watch the draw!” shouted Mac. “Draw! Draw!” The running back took the ball and ran through the vacated middle of the line. Sam recovered and came back to help on the tackle. Mac hit the runner low, knocking the man’s feet out from under him. At the same time, Sam hit the runner again, higher, and the other team was stopped short of its first down. Willie jogged over and helped Sam up, then gave a hand to Mac. The three defensive players left the field, happy and tired. For all practical purposes, the game was over.

  On the sidelines, Mac saw Jennings staring at the defensive team. Jennings said nothing, gave them not even a smile by way of congratulations. In his eyes, the defense had merely done its job. Mac looked away. One of the assistant coaches said something and laughed. Mac nodded wearily. The assistant coach slapped Mac on the back of his helmet.

  “I have always thought that invigoration was one of the worst of impositions,” thought Mac. “I have always thought that invigoration was one of the worst of impositions.” He repeated the line to himself again and again, hoping that he would remember it the next day. He took a deep breath, and his chest ached and was sore. He took another deep breath.

  ~ * ~

  book two: interesting facts about implements of war

  The room was wide and long; the low ceiling made the room seem like a slot in a desk or an empty drawer. The walls were gray, the same color as the ceiling, a little lighter than the floor, which showed the marks of years of traffic. The lights were dim, and the large windows let in little additional illumination. Willie looked around the hall, waiting for the lecture to begin. Through the windows all he could see were the immense walls. The chairs in the room were filled; Sam sat in her place sixteen ranks ahead of Willie, twenty-two files to his left. Mac was nine ranks behind Willie, and forty-one files to his right. Willie opened his notebook. The page on which he had made his notes at the previous lecture was gone. There was no writing at all in the notebook. Willie clicked his ballpoint pen and wrote Lecture at the top of the first page. Then he sat back uneasily and waited for Jennings.

  After a few minutes Jennings came in and went to his podium on the short platform at the front of the room. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” said Jennings. “Today we have some bombs to look at. I hope you take adequate notes. I do not want any failures on the examination. I’m sure that you do not want to fail, either. Take adequate notes.”

  Willie noticed for the first time that there were, indeed, three large objects on one side of Jennings’ platform. They must be bombs, Willie decided.

  “What we have here, ladies and gentlemen,” said Jennings, “is what you call your regular AN/M65A1 general-purpose bomb.” Jennings walked over to the tallest of the bombs, which was almost exactly as tall as he was, which was almost exactly six feet tall. “That is, again, your what you call your Alpha November slash Mike Six Five Alpha One. I called this beauty a general-purpose bomb. Can anyone recall from our previous discussions how this beauty is delivered? Come, come, ladies and gentlemen.” Jennings waited a moment, smiling coldly. “From aircraft, ladies and gentlemen. From your so-called aircraft. It is a thousand-pound bomb, ladies and gentlemen. Much too heavy for a man to carry on his back, I’m sure you will agree. Perhaps a few of you could imagine it buried in the ground like a mine, with only its detonator sticking up in the air. But, consider. What a job, ladies and gentlemen, to dig the hole, to lift it down into the hole. Ah, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps a jeep runs over this beauty! Like killing a mosquito with a howitzer. Make a note, my lovely intelligences. We drop these beauties from aircraft.”

  Willie wrote in his notebook, AN/M65A1 . . . general purpose . . . 1000 lb ... dropped from the skies.

  Jennings continued his lecture. Along with the first bomb was a medium-sized bomb, which Jennings identified as an Alpha November slash Mike Seven Eight five-hundred-pound nonpersistent gas bomb. The third bomb was a small Alpha November slash Mike Eight Eight two-hundred-twenty-pound fragmentation bomb. Willie noted all three, then thought about making a sketch
of each. They looked pretty much the same to him, except for their different sizes. In that case, he decided, the sketches would be relatively pointless. Thinking the lecture must be over, Willie closed his notebook. Jennings hadn’t finished, however.

  “Ah, yes, ladies and gentlemen,” said Jennings sternly, a sneer as evident in his tone of voice as in his expression, “will any of you tell me what is meant by a ‘general-purpose bomb’?”

  Not one member of the audience ventured a reply. Jennings slapped his thigh impatiently. Willie looked over toward Sam’s seat; he thought about the other men that sat between them. When the lectures ended and they all marched back to their cells, Willie had noticed that some of the men whispered to Sam in the halls. He had never seen one of the men touch her. That would be too much. He had once hurried through the crowd to catch up to one of the creeps; Willie had seen the man bend forward during a lecture and make some comment to Sam. She had not reacted, not even made a gesture of annoyance. Still, afterward, Willie had followed the man and pushed him against the gray concrete-block wall. Willie had made it seem like an accident, in case anyone was watching. In a few seconds he had doubled the man over with three quick blows, then vanished into the streaming crowd. Willie hated the kind of creeps that leered at his wife.

  “If no one can devise an adequate response,” said Jennings in a slow, quiet voice, “we may have to cancel all reinforcement rations. We may even have to schedule additional punishment.” One man, thirty-eight ranks in front of Willie and twenty-seven to his right, stood and nervously indicated that he had an answer. “Go on, Larry,” said Jennings. “Let’s hear it.”

  “An all-purpose bomb is one that, well, like you said, you drop it from a plane,” said Larry. “You’re trying to destroy or at least hurt some kind of target. You’re trying to blow the thing up. The target, I mean. As opposed to photoflash bombs or gas bombs or like that.”

  “No,” said Jennings. “Not ‘all-purpose bomb.’ The term is ‘general-purpose bomb.’ I’m sorry, Larry. Your answer was good enough to get the rest of these clowns off the hook. I’m sure you’re happy to hear that, ladies and gentlemen. But, Larry, I’m afraid it wasn’t precise enough to get you off the hook. Now, now, ladies and gentlemen, no rustles of annoyance. Let’s have no little murmurs of pique, out there.” Jennings laughed briefly. He nodded to a man uniformed in gray, who was standing near one of the exits at the front of the room. The man walked to Larry’s seat and escorted him from the room. There were no further whispers or sounds from the audience.

  Willie watched his wife’s head, now bent over her notebook in study. The man sitting behind Sam, the same man Willie had beaten on the previous occasion, slouched in his seat. Willie still didn’t like the way that guy looked.

  “All right,” said Jennings, “get the hell out of here.”

  The audience stood up and began walking toward the exits. Willie flipped his notebook open again; the notes that he had taken on Jennings’ lecture were already gone. He shrugged, closed the notebook, and tried to catch up to Sam.

  ~ * ~

  book three: the intelligent use of the mystic impulse

  The alarm bell rang, and Sam woke up. She yawned and stretched, then remembered that it was Sevenday morning. She hated Sevendays; she always wondered why Jennings couldn’t let them sleep a little later. They didn’t have any work to do, after all. She put her head back on the pillow and waited for Grigarskas to come by. Sam’s cell was still dark. It was about half an hour before sunrise; the lights on top of the gray walls around the yard were already turned off. She felt warm and sleepy.

  “All right, Sam,” shouted a woman on the other side of the cell door. “Let’s get going. You may be a Lion, all right, but the rituals won’t wait for no Lion. Get your ass moving.”

  “I’m up, Miss Grigarskas,” said Sam, unhappily throwing back the thin gray blanket and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. It was Sevenday. Time for rituals. Then reinforcement—and punishment.

  Sam dressed quickly. She brushed her hair and splashed a little water in her face from the pitcher on her bureau. Then she went to the window that occupied the entire wall opposite the door. The window was made of plastic, a single thick sheet of the stuff, mounted slablike in the gray concrete blocks of the building. It wouldn’t break; it was about eight inches thick, and when Sam put her palms against it, it was very cold. All she could see was the high wall across the yard. She couldn’t see anything beyond the wall. The yard itself was patched with blackness and lighter areas of gray, some fifty stories below her.

  Sam left her cell and joined the crowd of women in the hall. They were all walking quickly toward the elevators. The Seven-day rituals were held in the vast assembly hall in the lower part of the same building in which she attended Oneday, Threeday, and Fiveday lectures. The hall was large enough to accommodate everyone from every dorm building. The hall was so immense that a person standing in its center could see none of its walls. From that vantage point, it was like standing on a dim, featureless plain. Only the checkerboard pattern of tiles on the floor reminded one that the room was, after all, inside a still larger building.

  Sam was proud that she was a Lion. Willie, her husband, was only a Raven, and their friend Mac was a Soldier, one level below Sam. Few of the other women in Sam’s dorm had risen above Occult, the second level in the ritual.

  During the walk from her dorm to the assembly hall, Sam wondered if she would see Willie during the ritual. They would likely get together later; it seemed probable to her that they would receive reinforcement, because of their performance on the football field in the Fourday game. Sam hoped that Willie wouldn’t do anything to disrupt the ritual; his angry jealousy had caused him to start fighting right in the middle of the Sevenday services. It had happened several times, and each occasion cost him whatever progress he had made through the levels. He always had to begin over again, as a Raven. It never seemed to bother him, but it caused Sam private embarrassment.

  Sam entered the assembly hall. On the seven large doorways were repeated murals showing Mithra slaying the bull. Inside, the gigantic hall filled her with awe, as it did every Sevenday. She took her place with her fellows, the other men and women who held the rank of Lion. While she waited for everyone to arrive, she looked toward the vast congregation of Ravens, hoping to see Willie. She couldn’t find him in the crowd.

  Jennings entered after a short while, dressed in the white and gold robes of the Pater patratus. “Nama, Nama Sebesio,” he called.

  “Nama, Nama Sebesio,” answered the congregation. Jennings then ritually greeted each group, beginning with the other Patres. He gave each degree its particular and secret sign, and he was acknowledged by the chief of that degree. After the Patres, Jennings saluted the Runners of the Sun, the Persians, the Lions, the Soldiers, the Occults, and finally, the Ravens.

  The ritual itself held little interest for Sam. She had never had any enthusiasm for it, and even less faith in the meaning of it all. She thought of other things, and made her responses out of habit. After quite a long time, Jennings gave the crowd his Seven-day benediction and walked slowly from the hall, attended by seven groups of seven Patres. A bell was rung when he had left the assembly hall, the signal that the remainder of the congregation was free to depart. Sam sighed, and hurried toward the group of Ravens. Willie met her; Sam put her arms around his neck and kissed him. He frowned. “Not here, Sam,” he said.

  She laughed. “I love you, Willie,” she said.

  “I know, I know,” he said impatiently. “But can’t you wait? You know I don’t like you hanging on me all the time.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Sure, Willie.”

  ~ * ~

  book four: a pleasant interlude in the rigors of the week

  On Sevenday evenings, reinforcement or punishment was given to everyone, according to the judgment of Jennings. Punishment was a terrifying thing; it, all by itself, was enough to motivate Mac, Sam, and Willie. They played as har
d as they could during physical training, even Sam, whose appreciation of sports could be excited no other way than by the hope of avoiding punishment. The three friends studied diligently during the lectures, even Willie, whose academic interests were virtually nonexistent. And they made a great show of enthusiasm for the Sevenday ritual, even Mac, whose intellectual pride prevented his involvement on any level beyond avoiding punishment.

  Reinforcement was not, in itself, a pleasurable thing. Reinforcement was only the lack of punishment.

  Every Sevenday evening, half of the people were punished. Precisely half. And the rest waited fearfully in their cells, praying that they would be passed over for another week. The punishment was delivered in different forms: in the food, in the water, in the air, on tactile surfaces so that it might be absorbed through the skin. Jennings had more ways of administering the punishment than his charges had of avoiding it. It was no use to refuse a meal, abstain from drinking, or shun one’s cell. The white-uniformed trusties would observe whether a person listed for punishment was serving his sentence. If not, the punishment would be rescheduled for the next day, increased, and the person penalized for time missed on Oneday. That would mean automatic punishment the next Sevenday.