Damon Knight - Orbit 21

Robert, poor Robert. A week, eight days. He won’t survive longer than that without it, I thought. And how many more doses can his body tolerate, for all his stubbornness? He’s going to need four more after this one to meet the deadline. (Deadline—what an awful word.)

Arrl—and her child. Fraser’s child, not biologically, but socially. The tenderness he feels as he watches her fondle it. Male, isn’t it? And would its name be Frrzrr?

Arrl hadn’t said that he could go, but she hadn’t tried to cover her tracks through the tangled brush. The chill night smelled of evergreen. Fraser wondered why she didn’t fly, or walk around instead of through the rough terrain.

He understood, finally. Their mating ground had originally been an eyrie, but upheavals through the centuries had all but buried the mountain. The pattern of walking to reproduce had evolved the upright posture needed for the development of larger brains.

He was aware of others approaching, and stayed out of sight. They gathered in a rock-strewn clearing. Arrl was treated like the others. Thrashing wings whipped strong currents past him. Moonlight unleashed kaleidoscopic patterns changing with sets of partners.

Arrl fondles the egg. She has no one to help her nurture the embryo. Fraser does as much as he can, but even though he knows about their sensory communication, he can’t transmit to the embryo. What he can do, and does, is to give love to Arrl, in as many ways as he can, and hope that she can love the offspring enough for both of them. And she does, extraordinary creature that she is.

Fraser, who would be stygmatized by his own people if they knew the extent of his involvement. Fraser, living a dream that not another man could have had. Fraser, coming back to his people to share what he had learned, so that we would learn, too.

—and Fraser, dying a little with each milligram, who won’t live to see us learn.

I can’t take it anymore. Never feeling that I belong anyplace except among other species. I’m a field worker. I don’t want to sit behind a desk. I want to be somewhere where the sun shines on unspoiled primitives frolicking in the clean grass.

Aw, malt always makes me cry like a baby for my crib, I thought. Snap out of it, girl. You’re going to take those four more doses, and then get untangled, somehow.

I had to work harder now, but I could still hide my symptoms, and my freeze lasted only a couple of hours. Fraser’s freeze lasted four and a half days. One day he isn’t going to come out of it, I thought. That’s how he’s going to die, because he’s too stubborn to give up his life when he’s conscious.

Fraser wakened at last. I was beginning to think that this time he’d had it.

“Sheila,” he said in a raspy voice.

I went to his side quickly. “Are you all right?”

He closed his eyes, then opened them. “Yes.” He took my hand and smiled. “If I don’t get another chance to say it”—his voice cleared a little—”thank you.”

I tried to think of a joke, a throwaway. I wiped the back of my hand nonchalantly across my eyes.

“What will happen to you?”

“Not to worry,” I said with my all-weather smile. “I told you in the beginning that I beat malt before.”

“How old were you?” He was still holding my hand. “If you were very young, the damage to your system might have been minimal.”

“Sixteen, what’s the difference. Maybe my system is immune.”

“No.”

“Do you feel like working? Shall I get the tapes ready?”

“Mmm.” He carefully untwined himself from the life-support system and got out of bed. He started walking slowly toward the bathroom.

“Do you need any help?” I asked as casually as I could.

He turned to me and smiled. “Thank you, but I think I’m still capable of washing myself.”

When he came out of the bathroom, I put some makeup on him. He sat at his desk. His hands were resting neatly, the right on top to steady the left. He delivered parts of the lectures he had been preparing.

It’s just not possible, I thought. A whole course, forty lectures, he’ll never be able to finish. I watched his face as he spoke. The material means so much to him, and the field of nonverbal literature will never develop without it. He can’t finish the series, but maybe I can. Matching background, cut, splice. If he plans the structure, if I have enough tape of him speaking about the material, enough words.

We worked all that day, and most of the night, until Fraser was too exhausted to speak. Then I taped him, looking tired, muttering that he didn’t feel well, and would work at home today.

Fraser managed to appear at the office for a few hours each day for the next ten days. Sometimes we stayed late at the office to use the reference materials there.

Ed Jacobs looked through some of the notes and watched as Fraser did the presentation.

“What is this stuff?” demanded Jacobs. “Animated drawings, disconnected sentences, staccato bursts of color, atonal music?”

“Those are my translations of the literature of Deneb Three,” explained Fraser.

“But which is the translation—the color, the pictures, the words, the electronic pulses, which?”

“Any, and all. They are all equivalent. What I am attempting is a total experience. A special area will be constructed, in which the observer can see, feel, hear and smell materials which I have prepared. The total effect will be an approximation of what this literature is to the people who share it.”

I don’t know why he wastes his energy trying to explain to Jacobs, I thought. The man is too ethnocentric, and even egocentric, to appreciate any of this. And anyway, he thinks translation means word-for-word equivalence, with no regard for the meaning of an entire piece.

“I see,” said Jacobs. “And what is the point of wasting all this time and effort?”

Patiently, Fraser continued. “The development of language was the last important evolutionary step on the road to homo sapiens. Using equipment that he already had, nose, tongue and lips, man began to speak, and natural selection favored larger brains that in turn could better deal with language, which in turn led to selection for larger brains, and so forth.”

“I know that, and also that the development of language increased the ability of men to work together, and transmit knowledge. But what does that have to do with this incoherent junk?”

I winced. Fraser continued, “By studying preverbal and nonverbal material of other cultures, we get a better understanding of our own history and nature. I thought that much would be obvious to anyone who had learned grade-school xenology.”

“Fine,” said Jacobs. “But you did more than understand. You were inside their heads. There is only one way that could have been possible.” He made an ugly face, looking straight at Fraser. “Certain drugs.”

I made myself busy with my papers. Fraser looked at Jacobs levelly. “Possibly. However, since that method was not available to me, I used an implant.” He explained how he had built and operated it.

Inside their heads . . .Jacobs’ words called up a memory from my undergraduate days. A psychology professor, who had invented what he called a transfer cap. It had worked fine when he switched the minds of a cat and a mouse, but when he had tried to throw his own mind into that of a rhesus monkey, he had had to be carried away in a straitjacket.

Jacobs was still harassing Fraser. “School’s out now,” I said. “Could we get back to work, please?”

“And you, too.” Jacobs whirled to confront me. “Who made you his nurse?” As he said those words, his face whitened and his mouth stayed open. He looked again at Fraser.