Damon Knight - Orbit 21

I maintained a casual pose with some difficulty.

“That’s enough,” said the woman. “Dr. Fraser is a sick man who is trying to carry out his responsibilities to this group. His personal life is his own business.”

I realized that they could not possibly have known about my personal life. I wondered what they meant about Fraser. I knew that he had been married, and then separated soon afterward, more than forty years ago. From what I understood, the experience had left an unpleasant taste with him, and he had never again been interested in women.

“Neurological disease” explained his condition, I felt, and I didn’t consider any other possibilities. Even his bulging, red-lined eyes didn’t alert me. Not until I saw him drinking coffee with four spoons of sugar did comprehension hit me. There are some things that the mind finds difficult to accept. Like the fact that the universally known and respected Dr. Robert Fraser, the xenologist who stood virtually alone in the field on nonverbal literature, was a cravie.

Soon now, I thought. Does he have someone, or is he going to try to solo? I didn’t think he was strong enough.

I knew that he had waited as long as he could. I followed him home to his apartment and raised my hand to knock on the door. What if he has someone, I thought. I might be walking in on them. I almost went away. Then I thought: But what if he doesn’t? I knocked.

“Who is it?” The voice was weak and slurred.

“Sheila Carson. Could I see you a minute?”

“Perhaps some other time. I’m not well.” I could hardly hear him through the door.

“It’s very important. Please.”

I heard him take a deep breath. “All right.” He opened the door. His eyes were wet; left shoulder jerking, both hands trembling. “Yes?” he asked.

“I know,” I said gently, touching him on the shoulder.

He looked at the hand, then at my face. “What do you know?”

“I know . . . about the malt.”

His face did not change. “What exactly is your problem?”

“You need help,” I said. “You need someone. I don’t think you’re strong enough to solo.”

“It has been done.” Telling me that he’d already tried.

“Anyone who has soloed knows the risks.” I looked at the man, in pain, at the limit of his endurance, and yet holding his eyes steady on me. “I can fly with you. Let me. I’ve done it before.”

“But you are not now addicted, although how that is possible, I do not know.”

“It is possible, and what I have done, I can do again.” Who do I think I’m fooling, I thought. Myself? Luck, and accident. I could not expect to come through again,

“Ms. Carson, if you cannot withdraw from the drug, you will die. I am an old man, and will die soon, in any event.”

I looked at the trembling hands and shoulder. “Then you really do have a neurological disease.”

“Block’s Syndrome. I will not live more than a few months. The risk of your life would be for nothing.” I wondered if he had taken to melsedrine to relieve the pain. But why melsedrine? There were plenty of legal and nonlethal drugs that would have been preferable. He must have had some other reason for taking malt.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Now, if you will leave, I can get on with the offensive necessities.” He started to shut the door,

“Listen. I can sort of fake it, or if I have to, take a tiny dose and make it work like full measure. Let me try.” My face and my tone of voice told him that this wasn’t the first time.

“You will not be in danger?”

“No.” I shook my head and smiled cheerfully.

He saw that I wouldn’t back down, and knew that he did need help, not just for tonight, but for the distance. “Very well,” he said, “and may God have mercy on your soul.”

If ever I had a soul, surely it would have left me the first time.

Twelve years ago, during my first year at U.U.E., I met an exchange student, Cor, who was so nearly human that he could pass. He wanted to teach me his language. I was a xeno major, I couldn’t refuse. There was a way, he said, to really learn the language. Learn it from the inside.

Cor didn’t have much imagination. He had hoped that Fraser’s study of his home world, Myth, Language and Culture on Kesta, would inspire him. When it didn’t, he had thrown the book at me with a sneer. “How can a human presume to tell us about ourselves?”

Fraser had written in their own language, analyzing their myths structurally, in the old Levi-Strauss technique. Studying their mythology had provided Fraser, and through his book, me, with a “window into the mind,” that is, an understanding of the personality mechanisms, categories to think with. The categories are the same for myth, language and fantasy. I doubt that the clues I found were evident to the Kestans. No one ever sees himself. Perhaps the message was meaningful to me only because it was transmitted from one human thinking in Kestan to another. The material in Fraser’s book often made it possible for me to run fantasy with Cor without sparking. By limiting the amount of malt I took, that book may have saved my sanity, even my life. Fraser gave me understanding, insight, hope, and not only a tool, but pleasure as well. If only for that book and no other reason, I owed Fraser anything in my power.

I saw Fraser shudder as he swallowed the capsules. I had raised my hand to my mouth. He couldn’t know whether or not I had taken anything. Before he shut his eyes I heard him whisper, “I wish there was some other way.”

I cued with what I knew about Deneb 3, knowing that Fraser’s thoughts would carry him back to his experiences there. The natives are a beautiful, seemingly gentle people. Avian, bilaterally symmetrical, standing upright on graceful, slender legs that tuck under when they fly. Their bodies are ovoid. Strong musculature sweeps back and away from the breastbone. The wings are brilliant, like a butterfly’s. Iridescent patterns ripple as the sunlight plays on rich colors: silver, peacock, ultramarine, emerald. Small but functional arms extend from under the wings. They have three-fingered hands and feet.

Fraser was not the first anthropologist to go native. The temptation can be strong.

And Arrl. Gentle, lovely Arrl.

Arrl, dainty in spite of her size; glittering, teal blue. Pale, nearly human face, with oversized warm indigo eyes. Long eyelashes. A flexible, almost human mouth close to the bottom of the softly pointed face. Where the human nose would be, she had a pale blue brush of olfactory and auditory tendrils.

Arrl, who had answered his questions when none of the others would. Who had told him about the literature, and finally shared it with him.

Arrl, cast out by her people for the shame of intimacy—the shared literature—came to live with him in his little shelter. He learned what his asking had meant, and what she had had to do, to be his informant. His carefully built defenses came tumbling down. At the age of sixty-three, unlooked for, almost unrecognized, love had come to Robert Fraser.

Then it’s down, down, down. Fraser’s remarkable discipline over his body helped conceal the effects of the drug. He forced himself to compensate, by moving at what was, to his perception, high speed. His movements, though still slower than normal, were accepted as a symptom of the neurological disintegration associated with Block’s Syndrome.

Fraser looked up from his notes. “Will you be able to finish this section? The notes are complete, but I won’t have time to integrate them.” He was tired, used up, like a crumpled tissue. He had taken nearly a minute and a half to say those two sentences. He would fall into freeze tonight.