Damon Knight - Orbit 21

In the kitchen. “Are you trying to get yourself suspected?” Underwood asked J. P., trying to keep his voice below screaming.

“You’re too young to know what’s going on; this is a witch hunt, Max. And during witch hunts, people look behind their backs; and they burn people, Max. Soon enough they won’t be able to tell the plague bearers from neurotics.”

“Look, the demented element will undermine the new civilization, if you let them in.”

“Believe in man and you’re done for; to hell with them, Max.”

“You’re not going to blow it by casting aspersions on us! Trashman is third-highest-paying position in the new civilization, and you ain’t going to blow all I’ve busted my ass for. You’ll be fine, J. P. If you don’t have the plague, then what danger are you in?”

“I see. You’re selling me out, huh, Max?”

Underwood’s mouth was connected to nothing; he had run out of words.

They went outside and the men escorted J. P. to a black four-door automobile. Underwood watched it drive off down the quiet, cobblestoned, tree-lined avenue.

Underwood idly watched Kane’s hair stir in the wind blowing in her open window. It had been a week since they took J. P. What the hell were they doing? He had called and a woman told him J. P. was being kept under observation at the center.

Underwood answered the door and found Carter on the doorstep. She was wearing a trenchcoat.

“Come in.”

“I thought instead of them sending you the notice through post-shuttle, I’d bring it to you, for what it’s worth,” she said quietly.

Underwood took the brown envelope, dug into it, read on a green sheet of paper:

TO MAXWELL UNDERWOOD:

YOUR FATHER, JULIOUS POWELL UNDERWOOD, HAS BEEN FOUND TO HAVE EXTREME MENTAL DISTRESS, RESULTING IN SUBVERSIVE TENDENCIES. HE WILL BE REMOVED TOMORROW AFTERNOON. WE OFFER YOU CONDOLENCE AND ENCOURAGE YOU TO CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE NEW CIVILIZATION AND OUR NATIONAL RECOVERY.

HD

DIRECTOR

“It hurt me too when my brother and mother had to be removed, but when you realize that it’s necessary for the national recovery—it’s almost encouraging,” Carter said, idly fingering a coffee cup.

“Yeah, but it’s hard when it happens to you, you know,” Underwood mumbled. “I told him what he was doing. You can tell someone what he’s doing wrong, but you can’t live his life for him, you know. It’s his fault.”

Carter stood up, moved around behind him, began to stroke his head. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but he was becoming irrational and must have been suffering great pain. And one person mustn’t be allowed to stand in the way of our recovery. But why don’t we get our minds off the uglier aspects of progress?” she said, hugging Underwood around the neck.

Underwood idly watched how Kane’s hair stirred in the wind blowing in her open window. The car was silent save for the radio, turned down low. A small bubbling was happening in the pit of his stomach. After today J. P. would be dead, taken to the special center in the ruins of the Eighth District where the demented found in the new towns were gassed.

If he couldn’t keep up with progress, he had to go.

Underwood stood in line to punch the clock. His eyes ran over the same posters on the same bulletin board. There was an announcement tacked up, about the interdistrict trashman softball games.

The filthy bodies slid down into the hatch, tumbling and landing with thuds. The scream of the machines filled his head, pushing out all other thoughts but work.

Underwood pushed down his glove, looked at his watch. It was one o’clock. Removals took place at two and seven, weekdays. If he concentrated on his work, he would never know the time had passed.

He wasn’t going to worry about it any further.

It was a good spot on the roof of what had been a pharmacy, fifty yards from the entrance of the removal center. When the man in white coveralls brought J. P. out of the green van, Underwood took aim.

The shot took the top of the man’s head off, and he fell in the street, leaving J. P. standing there in a straitjacket, looking stupid. When the driver got out of the van with a rifle, the next shot knocked him up against the front, tearing a ragged hole in his chest.

Underwood dabbed at the sweat on his brow, then climbed down the fire escape to the street. J. P. was still standing there.

“What took you so long, Max? You think this is comfortable?”

“Oh, stop noodjing me, I got here as fast as I could.”

Max untied J. P., and they walked off down the wrecked street in the other direction.

“You know what it cost for me to come here, don’t you? The job, the house, decent living?”

“It ain’t all that bad, we’ll manage,” J. P. said.

“You really are crazy, like they said.”

“Watch your mouth. You killed a lot of innocent people, son, and I’ll see you do some penance for it. But you’ll be okay.”

“Terrific. I can hardly wait.”

Aunt Kiloma was brushing my hair with a wooden comb. I was still numb and didn’t really notice the patches of hair she pulled out.

“But why did she die, Auntie? She was getting better.”

Kiloma stopped pulling at my hair. When she spoke there was a catch in her voice. “I don’t know, honey. I guess she gave up. I guess it’s hard to keep fighting when you don’t believe you’ll be rescued anymore.” Then she attacked my hair savagely. “But we will be rescued. God will see to it Earth gets our message!”

That was forty-five years after the crash. Forty-five years and sixteen days, the day my mother died of some virus that further yellowed her skin, eight days after my thirteenth birthday. My father had died forty-three years and three hundred eighty-nine days after the crash, when a dread-for-all caught him as he foraged. I grew up with death (as a way of life, so to speak). Of course, most of the people died in the first five years. They died of night-bites, diseases, food poisoning, and missteps around ground-joints and anemone-thorns. After my mother died, there were thirty-one of us left on this yellow, dusty world.

Gregory stepped inside the doorway. “Are you ready? Would you like me to read the Scriptures for you?”

I didn’t look at him as I answered. “You’re not a believer. You never were and you never will be. I will read them.”

“I thought I could help you out, Hope.” Gregory’s scarred face furrowed with concern. He was only two years older than I, an old and beaten fifteen, but he took charge of most things, like funerals.

“I’m sorry. I . . . Let’s go.”

We went outside and walked past the circle of huts to the cemetery. Aunt Kiloma held my shoulders and said, “Just remember, honey, it won’t be like this forever. It won’t be like this forever.”

A few months later a night-grunt suddenly squealed in terror. I lifted the door flap and stared into the night even though nothing could be seen by the murky light of the planet’s rings.

“I think we caught one, Auntie.”

“Shh . I know, honey. Close the door before a night-bite gets you.”

Knowing that we would eat well tomorrow made it hard to go back to sleep. I lay on one side, then the other. After turning, I don’t know, maybe ten or twenty times, I gave up, got up, and trimmed a candle. Fumbling about in the wavering light, I found a writing stick. I pulled a box of dirt close to the light and began to diagram an antique analog multiplexor. It was simple and I enjoyed the symmetry.