Orbit 15 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  Mac faced his friend. His expression was amused. Willie frowned; he didn’t see anything to laugh about. “Jennings isn’t changing, all of a sudden,” said Mac. “That’s what I just said. He’s consistent with his plan, whatever that is. You’re playing right into his hands.”

  Willie sighed. “We have to play right into his hands,” he said.

  “Then don’t worry about it.”

  Sevenday afternoon was quieter and tenser than usual. People stood in small groups, talking in low, frightened voices. Jennings’ behavior at the lecture and at the ritual chamber had disoriented them. Willie complained of an upset stomach and a persistent jittery feeling. Mac told him to relax, or Jennings would lead Willie and the rest of the crowd into a mass breakdown.

  “So why would Jennings do that?” asked Willie. Mac could only smile and shrug.

  The two men strolled over to Sam’s dorm, about an hour before the usual time for punishment and reinforcement. Generally, everyone spent that particular time of the week alone in his cell, in the anticipation that he had been marked for punishment. This week, with Jennings’ promise of no punishment for anyone, people were out and visiting earlier. The movie for that week was .38 Caliber, with Dan Calvin as Sheeky Bordinaro. Willie didn’t want to miss any of it.

  Sam, Mac, and Willie sat in the rec room and waited. Mac went to the snack bar and got them soft drinks and potato chips. The time passed slowly, and the rec room began to fill up with people. Sam held their seats, and the two men went over to the pinball machines. Their favorite machine, a garishly colored model called Hi-Lo Express, was idle. Mac took his turn first. “Sam’s good on this machine,” he said, after the ball registered a meager five hundred points for him and then dropped out of play.

  “I don’t understand it,” said Willie, laughing. “We play this thing every chance we get. We work at it. We take our pinball playing serious. Then Sam’ll come over, hardly paying attention to which machine she’s playing, and beat the pants off both of us.”

  “Natural talent,” said Mac solemnly. He watched Willie score sixteen thousand points on his first ball. It was Mac’s turn, his second ball. He pulled out the spring plunger. The warning bell on the wall rang. Mac let go of the plunger. The silver ball shot into play, hit a few bumpers, dropped down toward the flippers, then fell out of play.

  “You really blew that one,” said Willie. “You didn’t even touch the flippers. What’s the matter? Too fast for you?” Mac had a total score of twelve hundred and forty points after two balls. Mac said nothing. “Are you okay?” asked Willie. Mac’s hands gripped the sides of the pinball machine. His knuckles were white. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a kind of animal snarl. Slowly, as Willie watched, Mac’s legs seemed to collapse. He began to sink toward the floor. Willie caught his friend and supported him. Mac screamed. It was a crazy sound. It was punishment.

  “Hey, Sam,” cried Willie. “Sam, give me a hand. Come here and help me.” Willie tried to hold Mac up while his wife hurried to them.

  “What is it?” she asked, pale.

  “Goddamned Jennings, is what is it,” said Willie. “He said no punishment, remember? What does this look like to you?”

  “What should we do?” Sam remembered her own punishments well enough to know exactly what Mac was going through. She knew he ought to be in his cell. She knew that, in his agony and his insane terror, they would never be able to get him to his dorm.

  “I don’t know,” said Willie. “Put him down here, I guess. We can watch him here. Poor sucker.” There were shrieks all around the rec room as others were consumed by their punishments. Those who had not been marked looked around helplessly. Shortly afterward the movie started. Willie looked at Sam. She had been crying. She was staring at Mac, who lay contorted on the cold tiled floor of the rec room. “Come on,” said Willie. “We can’t do a thing for him until Jennings finishes.”

  “Can we just leave Mac here?”

  “Nothing will happen to him. It’s almost as good as being in his cell. He’ll be out of it by the time the movie’s over.”

  ~ * ~

  On Oneday morning Willie woke up. The dorm was strangely quiet. After the movie the previous evening, everyone had gone straight to their dorm; Jennings’ apparent act of treachery had angered and bewildered them all. Willie was still too confused to know just how to react. What could they do? Nothing. It was very simple. They could do nothing.

  There was a knock on Willie’s door. “All right, Mr. Zepkin,” shouted Willie. “I’m up. I’m getting up.” The knock sounded again. Willie swore softly, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and went to the door. It wasn’t the uniformed trusty who had knocked. It was a woman.

  “Good God,” said Willie, realizing that he was still naked. “What are you doing in this building now?”

  “I had to see you, Mr. Bordinaro,” said the woman breathlessly. “I got your name from the D.A.’s office. You don’t know who I am. Nobody does, not in this town. I have to trust you, Mr. Bordinaro. I’m in trouble.”

  Willie stood quietly for a moment, shifting from one foot to the other. He looked out into the corridor; no one else was in sight. There were no other sounds. He stared at the young woman. It was, of course, Diane Hogarth in the role of Gussie Demoyne, from .38 Caliber. Willie recalled how he, Sam, and Mac had been drawn into Slaves of Blood some months before. A slow grin lit his face, just as it had Dan Calvin’s in the movie. “Step into my office,” he said. “Don’t mind the bed. In a little while it will seem perfectly natural to you.” He leered at her; she swept by, ignoring his remarks. She went to the window and looked out in silence. Then she turned suddenly, surprising him, and began to cry. Willie immediately regretted his words. He felt helpless. “Sit down,” he said. “Stop the tears. I can’t start helping you until you stop crying.” He tried to get dressed unobtrusively. She looked past him, into a camera that wasn’t there, and smiled weakly.

  ~ * ~

  Sam paced back and forth the length of her small cell. Gussie Demoyne sat on her cot and watched her. “Wait a minute,” murmured Sam. “Let me think. Wait a minute.”

  “I don’t have much time,” said the strange woman.

  “None of us ever do,” said Sam, reading the lines of Sheeky Bordinaro. “We all manage to forget that. Sometimes somebody remembers. He gets panicked. That’s what pays my rent.” Still, all the time she said those words, she thought other things. “What did we decide, the last time?” she wondered. “What should I do? Is Jennings really leaving it all open? Could I really walk out the gate?”

  “I don’t have the time to play wise old man with you,” said Gussie Demoyne. “If you won’t help me, I’ll get another name from the D.A.” She rose and started toward the door.

  “Hold on,” said Sam. “Yeah,” she thought, “hold on. I can’t think. I don’t have time to plan. It isn’t Oneday morning. It’s still Sevenday night. Willie’s going through this same scene, right now. Mac’s still being punished. Oh, my God.”

  The other woman stopped and turned. She looked pleadingly at Sam. “Okay, sweetheart,” said Sam. “You’ve convinced me. At least for the next hour. After that, the convincing gets harder and more expensive. I’ll have to see the color of your dough. Even those baby blues of yours won’t get you around that. Otherwise, I’ll be happy to give you another name. No sense in bothering the D.A.’s office. They’re screwed up enough over there.”

  Gussie Demoyne smiled, sniffed, then ran over and threw her arms around Sam’s neck. “Thanks, oh, thanks, Mr. Bordinaro!” she cried.

  “Call me Sheeky,” said Sam. “What am I supposed to do?” she thought. “Should I just try to leave? Should I wait for Willie to come here?”

  “All right,” said the other woman. “All right, Sheeky.”

  ~ * ~

  “It’s simple,” said Willie the next day. “It’s really simple. Jennings is just messing up. That’s all. And we got to figure out, right now, how to take advantage of it nex
t time.”

  “Sure,” said Sam.

  “No,” said Mac. “It can’t be that easy. Do you think it was a coincidence that I was punished? I had him pegged the last time. I’m sure of it. If I hadn’t been punished, I would have led the three of us out of here. Right out under his nose. He’s giving us the chance. I think he’s doing it on purpose, to make us think we can beat him.”

  “We can beat him,” said Willie. “Next time.”

  “We’ll just need some plans,” said Sam. “In case one of us is punished, the other two will know what to do. Or if two of us are punished.”

  “We can’t beat him,” said Mac insistently. “He only wants us to think we can. To make us docile. I don’t know. I don’t really know his reasons. But it can’t be that easy.”

  “Why not?” asked Willie. “Why couldn’t it be that easy?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mac. “It just never is, that’s all.”

  ~ * ~

  It was the fourth week in Sextuary; the weather was dry and pleasant, with the sky so blue and bright that beneath it people’s faces looked washed-out gray. The ground in the yard was moist and rich; the air had an exciting edge to it, not cold, like the winter, but just—exciting. Still, the high gray walls around the yard were solemn and perfect.

  book ten: taking them as they come

  About an hour before the first game of the football season, Sam sat in front of her locker, having her wrists and hands taped. Willie’s locker was next to hers, but they rarely spoke before a game. She was generally too nervous and tense, and Willie hated having to coddle her feelings. Instead, they just pretended to concentrate on their game plans; once they got out onto the field and started their warmup exercises, everything was all right. Sam’s anxiety disappeared as soon as she ran through the tunnel and saw the coffee-colored field and the vivid, frosty-white yard-lines. She kept up a chatty stream of conversation from then until the end of the game, with Willie, with Mac, with the assistant coaches on the sidelines, with the other players. She liked to taunt the people on the other team.

  A woman named Kath stopped by Sam’s locker. She was a new member of the team, a large woman, a defensive end replacing a man named Sherman who had not been seen since the middle of baseball season. “What you think?” asked Kath.

  “That depends,” said Sam, her voice hoarse and croaking. She would feel the jitteriness and sour stomach until they left the locker room. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean Jennings,” said Kath.

  “Jennings is all right,” said Sam warily. The assistant coaches were Jennings’ men, the uniformed trusties were Jennings’ men, probably most of the other people were, too. Sometimes Willie hinted that he thought Sam was spying for Jennings. Sam never bothered to reply to that. She knew that Willie was serious.

  “Sure,” said Kath, staring at her cleated shoes. “You know what I mean. I mean, well, he’s been acting so damn crazy lately. And I don’t know what he expects. In the game. If it was only like it used to be, I could understand. Mac was telling me—”

  Sam held up one hand, unwrapped yet by the clubhouse man. “You don’t have to pay strict attention to Mac. You’ll learn that, if you stay with the team. Mac will repeat everything for you anyway, sooner or later. And he gets these theories of his. You’ll see.”

  “Still, he said that Jennings was just using us,” said Kath. “The crazy act is just another way of getting what he wants out of us, and that we shouldn’t fall for it.”

  “Can you suggest something else we can do in the meantime?” asked Willie, in a sullen voice.

  “I want to finish getting taped,” said Sam. “And you better be damn sure you got your assignments straight,” she said to Kath, “because I’m in no mood to save your skin all afternoon if you get trapped to the outside.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Kath, with a forced laugh. There was silence, an uncomfortable amount of it; finally Kath shook her head and went back to her own locker. Willie had never looked at her, and he said nothing more. Sam had never looked up at Kath, either. She watched the man winding tape around her wrist and palm.

  One of the men on the punting team stood up and spoke. “Before we get on with the usual pre-game prayer and stuff,” he said, “I want to welcome the new members of the team and wish them luck. I don’t mean I wish them luck in the game. We don’t need luck. We need teamwork. I mean I wish them luck after the game if they mess up.” There were a few meager laughs. “Now I’m going to ask Danielle to lead us in our—” The man was interrupted by the rodentlike squeak of the door to the coach’s office. Everyone fell silent, looking in that direction. Jennings entered the room.

  He wore gray trousers and a maroon sport coat, a dark blue shirt, and a black tie. He had a gray snap-brim hat on his head, and he carried a clipboard. He handed this to one of his assistants who followed him from the office. “I want to say something,” said Jennings. He needed nothing to gather the attention of the team members. Jennings paused for a tiny instant. “None of you ever met a young man who used to be on this team. His name was Bo. That’s what we all called him. Bo. But you’ve heard of him, you know what a reputation he had and what he meant to this team. Some of the other people, on other teams, called him ‘the Trog.’ He was big, and he was fierce. But he was a gentle person, and that was why I and his teammates called him Bo, instead of the nickname he had earned. Still, he was proud of ’the Trog.’ One day he said to me, ‘Coach,’ he said, ‘if ever the team is in a close one, and the breaks are beating our boys, tell them to give it all they’ve got, and go out and win just one for “the Trog.” I don’t know where I’ll be then, Coach, but I’ll know, and I’ll be happy.’ Those were about the last words he ever spoke to me. That’s something I’ve never told anyone before. Well, this is the beginning of a new season. We had a damn good season last year. But this is a new season. Last year’s scores are in the record books, not on the scoreboard outside. But if you can find just a particle of the devotion, just a minute scrap of the love and determination of that kid Bo, well, all I can say is, I know he’d be happy. Well. That’s all I have to say.” Jennings’ voice had begun clear and forceful, but as he recounted his story, it changed. It grew slower and thicker, choked with emotions that he had never shown until recently. Under other circumstances, his audience might have been moved. Instead, they were seized with fear. Jennings’ words and tortured expressions left them feeling helpless, leaderless. Their great source of constancy and security faltered before their eyes. He turned, one hand raised to his eyes. His shoulders shook as though he were sobbing.

  “Goddamn it,” said Sam softly. “What the hell are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to make them eat the ball, that’s what,” said Willie. “And not because of some damn good old boy named Bo, neither. Because if we don’t, we’ll spend Sevenday evening twisting on our bunks trying to keep from swallowing our tongues.”

  “But what about Jennings?”

  “Are you all right, Coach?” asked one of the other players. Jennings didn’t answer.

  One of the assistant coaches leaned close to Jennings’ ear. Sam watched carefully, hearing some of the man’s words, lip-reading the rest. “Where we going now, sir?” he asked.

  Jennings’ reply was low but audible, his voice steady. “Gotta give the speech to the other team,” he said. Sam was sure that she was the only one of the players who heard. The others were too involved in shouting promises of dedication and valor.

  “The trouble with real life,” said Sam to herself, “is you never really have the option to punt.”

  ~ * ~

  book eleven: strategy is the shell, tactics is the rifle

  Mac sat in his seat in the lecture hall, waiting for Jennings to arrive, wondering how the man was going to act. Jennings’ performances seemed too theatrical to Mac, too transparent. Now that Mac believed that he had a secret insight into Jennings’ manipulative practices, other details that he had pre
viously taken for granted acquired new significance. The lecture hall itself was no longer unsettling; it had evidently been designed to make the audience feel vulnerable, the low, oppressive ceiling having that psychological effect. Mac leaned back in his chair and smiled. He no longer felt vulnerable. He was only amused by Jennings and his rather juvenile tricks.

  The muttering voices in the audience quieted when Jennings walked into the lecture hall. Mac studied the man, as well as he could from the distance of nearly fifty ranks. Jennings did not seem particularly distracted, as he had been on several recent occasions. He walked quickly to his podium, shuffled a few papers, then stared briefly across the vast, ordered collection of faces. His voice, when he spoke, was steady, deep, and as full of authority as ever. Mac smiled again; he was delighted that Jennings was in such control, that the intellectual puzzle which Jennings seemed determined to develop was of the most complex variety.

  “Good day, ladies and gentlemen,” said Jennings. “Good day to you all. I hope you have taken appropriate notes during the course of the last several lectures. The more observant among you will have noticed the trend I have been taking. That is, for the sake of the least observant among you, away from the cruder and more unsophisticated of weapons, through the armaments of intrinsic poetry and beauty, and finally to those implements of war which succeed through their apparent lack of menace. I have chosen this method of discourse for definite reasons. If you cannot understand these reasons, you will have some difficulty with the examination. If you find yourself unable to fathom my purpose, I highly suggest that you seek out the advice of someone among you who does understand. I do not want you to do badly on the examination, and I am sure, very, very sure, that you agree.”