Damon Knight - Orbit 21

One morning after a hot and restless night, I woke to hear my aunt groaning. I rushed to her side. “Auntie, what’s wrong!” I was terrified that she might be dying.

She heaved herself up to a sitting position and rolled her head from side to side.

“Auntie, tell me what to do!”

Her eyes focused slowly on me. She said feebly, “Honey, what day is this?”

I had to stop and think. “Forty-five years, one hundred eighty-nine days.”

“Mark this on your calendar tree, honey. I had a vision.”

“A vision? Like in the Bible?”

“Yes, ma’am. A vision of things to come.” She struggled to her feet and smiled down at me, “Honey, we’re going to be rescued.”

I said nothing.

“Did you hear me? We’re going to be rescued. On our fiftieth golden anniversary. God Himself is going to send us a ship. Then you know where we’re going?”

“Earth.”

“Nope.”

“No?” I had grown up reciting every day that I wanted to go to Earth.

“No. Earth is good, but this is even better. I remember Earth and I know it has some problems your parents never told you about. Problems that made us colonists in the first place. Where we’re going is perfect.”

I was thoroughly frightened. “Maybe it was just a dream you had.”

“How unspiritual can you be? It was a vision. This planet we’re going to has fruit trees. There are no animals that can hurt you, no poisonous food. We’ll have cars and electricity. In only five years, Hope!”

I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know why. I grabbed a basket and ran outside to forage by myself so I could think.

When I returned at noon, Gregory met me by the river. He shouted angrily, “Do you know what your aunt is telling everybody now?”

“It’s not my fault!” I shouted back.

He breathed deeply a few times. “I’m sorry. We’re having a meeting at our hut. See if you can get your aunt there.”

After he left, I began to wonder who was having a meeting. I found my aunt in the rottenwood grove gouging at another limb. Her hands stank with curls of the yellow stuff under the fingernails.

We entered Gregory’s hut and in the dim light I saw Gregory, his mother, Accie, and Mr. Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein wasn’t a Christian either, but he was the kindest man in our group and I liked him.

Gregory’s mother never was the type to waste time. “Kiloma, this nonsense has got to stop.”

My aunt drew herself up. “Accident, I don’t have to listen to you. I listen to God.”

I was embarrassed. Accident was born the year after the crash, and her name was supposed to signify a lot of things. Nobody dared call her anything but Accie or Mrs. Colewell.

Her nostrils flared. “You have got to stop fomenting trouble.”

Mr. Goldstein interrupted. “Please, Kiloma, consider how we will feel if we believe something will happen on a certain date, and it does not happen. We shall probably be rescued, but we cannot set a specific date.”

I tugged at her hand. “Please. He’s right.”

She pulled her hand away. “Are you taking a seat among the scornful?”

“You must deal with reality, not fantasy,” said Accie.

“This is very real. But you, poor child, can’t be expected to understand the deep things of the spirit.”

Accie snorted, “Myxedema madness!”

“Your goiter’s as big as mine, dear. How can you say I’m mad and you’re not?”

A terrible look came over Accie’s face. “Maybe you’re the first. Maybe we’ll all become like you.” She glanced at her dwarfed son and ran sobbing from the hut.

We found her body by an anemone-thorn. This time I arranged the funeral. That left thirty living, and three hundred fifty-six mounds in the cemetery.

After that, nothing was ever said again by either side to persuade or dissuade. Gregory went about his chores, but it was plain the heart was out of him. A few more became believers. I clung to the beliefs my parents had taught, but I had always been held as of no account, so no one cared. Surprisingly, things did get better. We learned how to bait the pit and caught many grunts. Mr. Goldstein experimented one last time, and found that the root of the common lacy-leaf was edible. And that, out of the dozens of plants we had tried, was cultivable. No more people died. One year, then two and three passed.

On the forty-eighth year, twelfth day after the crash, I was weaving an overblouse. The sun was setting, and we were all hurrying to finish what we could before it got too dark. I looked up to ease a crick in my neck. Sparks flared in a line across the purpling, star-sprinkled sky. A meteorite shower? I started to calculate their trajectory before I remembered again that Father was not here to check my answer.

“Did you see that?” called out Mr. Goldstein, leaning on his broom. “I remember watching those on Earth.” We looked to see if there would be any more. There weren’t, and we went to bed.

The next morning I saw a white line grow across the sky.

“Auntie, what is that?”

She stared up for a long time, puzzled. Suddenly her face brightened. “It’s a vapor . . . it’s a contrail! Glory to God and concentration, it’s a ship!” She shouted and waved. “Look at the reward for our faithfulness! Our ship’s come early! Look!”

Everyone stared up and shouted, “We’re going to be rescued! We’re going to be rescued!” Suzannie threw rocks, leaves, anything, into the air.

I stared at the growing white line. All the history, alphabets, science, culture, and science fiction we had been taught as children seemed to coalesce into one glowing point: a ship was coming to rescue us.

“Hurry, honey. After forty-eight years, you don’t want to be late.”

It hadn’t been forty-eight years for me, but I didn’t want to be late. I looked around the hut one more time, trying to decide what to take with me. I didn’t want the moldy blankets or the flat pillow, and I had so little else. Finally I grabbed my other over-blouse and the straw doll my father had made.

My aunt carefully wrapped a rottenwood ship in a square of cloth. “Well, dearest, do you still call this rocket an idol?”

“No.” I had had time to think it over as I watched the rituals develop for three years. “The carved ships are not idols. Your concentration is.”

“Oh, you poor child. But you can’t help it.” She crushed me with the magnanimous hug of a winner. “You’re going to love where we’re going, honey. After I’m gone, they’ll take good care of you.” She rose and went outside to lead our little band to the crash-site plateau.

If a ship were looking for survivors, it would come to the plateau. Great chunks of metal had gouged dark furrows in the thin yellow soil. Radioactive residue formed another beacon. Once a year we trekked up to the plateau and polished all the skyward metal surfaces to make another glittering signal.

We moved slowly. Aunt Kiloma, Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Kim, and Mrs. Lutti, the original survivors, were very old, and no eagerness could make them young. Marylee was shivering from another illness. Glad had lost the use of one leg.

We skirted grand-daddy ground-joint for the last time and jeered at it. Suzannie grabbed a rock and swung back to throw it at the ground-joint.

“No, don’t!” I said, and held her arm.

“How come you’re always afraid of everything?” said Gregory. He bent down to look for a rock.

Mr. Goldstein enfolded Suzannie’s hand and mine with his. He said softly, “Grand-daddy’s old, and I’m old. Let’s respect the aged, eh?”

Gregory dropped his stone and shrugged.

We walked past the pit, pausing when Mr. Goldstein carefully laid a packet of spoiled meat on the edge.