Damon Knight - Orbit 21

“Yes, don’t worry,” I answered. “I’ll finish the translation. Try to get some rest.” His blue eyes continued to look at me. I thought I knew what he wanted to say. “In the morning, I’ll activate the tape you prepared. The office will get a sick call from you. I’ll ask the right questions for the answers you’ve recorded.”

He slowly raised his head, as if its weight were unbearable, and let it fall. The equivalent of a “Yes, that’s all.” I watched him get into bed. His thin arms and skinny legs, with bumpy, gnarled knees, hung out of his nightshirt like a pipe-cleaner doll’s. Neat, sparse white hair, and that scruffy mustache. Clean face, with deep parenthetical lines around the mouth, and pits below the cheekbones. There was strength in that face, even now. As the approach of sleep relaxed his control, his eyes showed incredible weariness, as if to say, “. . .Just let it end.”

My heart went out to him. I would do anything for him not to have to suffer, but I knew that his own strength would have to carry him.

The phase after freeze is the easiest part of the cycle. That is, until the need for more melsedrine becomes unbearable. Fraser’s eyes regained a sharp, steel blue. Color returned to his face. He stood straight, and carried himself firmly, in spite of the pain.

For the next two weeks, he taught, and I learned, cross-cultural analysis, structural components, and fundamentals of nonverbal literature. I was fascinated with the material he was developing. I suggested that he withdraw from the cultural exchange project and devote his full attention to the literature of Deneb 3. For the ghost of an instant, I saw a softness in his eyes, and then his mouth tightened and he said, “I must finish my term. I have an arrangement with U.U.E. On the completion of my three years with this program, a grant will be provided to establish an ongoing field situation on Deneb Three. Students in xenology, linguistics, exobiology, and so forth, will train there. Perhaps someone will be able to continue my work.” He shook his head. “That grant is very important to me.”

I thought of Deneb 3 and Arrl, and remembered that her people had excommunicated her. I knew some of Fraser’s most private thoughts, and I didn’t want to pry any further. I hesitated, then asked, “Would it be possible for you to use some of your own money?”

“I don’t have any.”

I must have looked puzzled. He had written, taught. Royalties, retirement funds. I knew he didn’t spend much.

“My wife. The divorce.”

My God, I thought. I lowered my head and walked over to the wall to pick up some papers.

“Would you please bring me the green folder?”

I brought him the notes for a lecture he was to give at the main auditorium of the university.

He looked through the folder, then began dictating. “The literature of Deneb Three will probably become the paradigm for the concept of separation of sacred and secular language. Such separation is seen almost universally, as stylized or archaic usages reserved for sacred literature. There are cases, and even in Earth history, where an entirely different language was used for secular speech, as, for example, the European Jews of the nineteenth century. They used Hebrew for sacred speech and literature, and Yiddish for everyday matters. However, Deneb Three is the only known culture where the individuals have separate organs of speech for sacred and secular matters.” He stopped and closed his eyes.

He was due for his medicine.

Gentle breezes wrap around him. Arrl comes close, reaching out with her tiny, three-fingered hand to touch his mustache, thinking that his facial hairs serve the same functions that hers do —among them, communication. Waves of oscillation pour over him, but he doesn’t understand. She draws him closer; the vibrations become stronger. Then she speaks, and explains that this is the literature, and this is how it is shared by the people. In this society intimate contact is religious, rather than sexual. (Or is it both? A human could never know, could never be completely objective about intimate experience.)

On Deneb 3, the individuals share their literature intimately, and it is passed on from generation to generation, by direct experience, through the organs of sensation. And these waves of perception have been translated into words by the only man in the galaxy who could have done it. He designed and built an implant, by converting one of his translation devices into a highly sensitive receiver, that could amplify the energy waves that radiated from Arrl, and translate them into something that his mind would read as sensory perception. Fraser had had extensive biofeedback training, in order to prepare himself for the hazards of living away from medical help. This sense of what was happening in his body, and the control over his nervous system that he had learned, helped him conduct the impulses that were the Denebian literature to his brain. He showed Arrl how to implant the device into the ganglion between his shoulders. He taught her to use that as a receiver for her loving communication. Then he translated by successive approximations—first with the implant, from impulse to sensory perception; then from color into sight images. By drawing on their close relationship, Fraser had some intuitive sense of what the transmissions meant to her people. Finally, he was able to set some of the material into written literature.

Work at U.U.E. doesn’t stop for people with cyclic disorders. You make yourself fit, and you go to it. The period following peak is depression, but if you’re disciplined enough, you handle it. Fraser would need malt again, though, within three weeks. I hoped that I could skip that dose, shade, and hold out until he was ready for the next one. There wasn’t much malt in my body, yet. I’d managed before, but that was twelve years ago, when my nervous system still had recuperative ability.

Fraser had three months and eleven days left of his term as director of the cultural exchange program. I didn’t think he would make it. Either Block’s Syndrome or malt would get him before that.

He worked every minute he could on his Denebian material. I had taken over most of his share of the department work. As the days went by, Fraser grew weaker and slower, past the point where he could compensate, and he had to stay at home. The pain of his deterioration seemed to grow unbearable as he approached freeze. At times he was too weak even to cry out. For the thousandth time, I asked myself, “How much longer?”

I hated to leave him to go to the office, afraid that he would fall into freeze and injure himself as he lost consciousness. I wanted to strap him into the life-support system, but he insisted on working until the last minute. There would be times in the weeks to come when neither of us would be capable of work at all.

I walked into the office and stacked Fraser’s finished work on his desk. I riffled through the new folders and tapes.

“If he can’t do the work, why doesn’t he step down?”

I turned. The remark had come from Ed Jacobs, He was supposed to be Fraser’s assistant. “He’s done his work,” I said, “and he’ll do these, too.” I put them in my briefcase.

I did my own work as quickly as possible and prepared some of what Fraser was supposed to do later. I hated the close green walls and the same dozen or so tunes someone kept replaying.

By now, Fraser was probably in freeze. At least he won’t be suffering, I thought. Then I realized. Freeze. That was why Fraser was taking the malt. Not to soothe the pain, or alleviate the suffering; not for the thrills or the fantasy, but to gain time. During the plunge phase, when body functions slowed down, the deterioration of his nerves would also be slowed down, and virtually halt in the freeze phase. His nervous system was being destroyed, but he would be able to function for a little while longer as the effect of the drug compensated for that of the disease. Melsedrine destroys nerve cells by increasing sensitivity, killing by overload. Block’s Syndrome weakens the fibers until they eventually dissolve. Fraser’s solution, using malt to prolong his life, was clever in a bizarre sort of way.