Damon Knight - Orbit 21

Oh, I thought. Mr. Jacobs has finally realized, but how much has he realized? His “certain drugs” remark was probably a wild guess. Fraser has tremors, watery eyes, but he’s been like that for months now. A malt pair is such a bizarre concept that I don’t think even Jacobs could guess the truth. He probably figured out our sleeping arrangements, that’s all. I hope that’s all.

As Fraser’s melsedrine-starved system kicked him around, he became too weak to work at the office. I had to run some of the tapes we had made of him. There was still almost two months until the end of Fraser’s term. I didn’t think his body could stand more than one more dose of melsedrine, if that.

I watched him suffer, night after night, thrashing around on the bed, trying to convince his body that it didn’t really want what it was clamoring for. I watched him, eyes and nose running, face soaked with perspiration, knees to his chest, looking as if he’d shatter with each convulsion.

Enough. I brought the capsules. Forty milligrams would kill him, I knew, and his body probably wouldn’t respond to less. I measured out thirty for him, ten for me.

The rippling wind of hundreds of wings fans against me. The sky glitters ultramarine as the Sons of the Mountain burst forth . . .

Even with the powerful stimulation of melsedrine, Robert’s body was too weak to respond. I knew that the agonizing need for physical experience would strain his nerves to a point where the pain might kill him.

I wipe out the Sacred Mountain and take him instead to the Sheik’s Garden. Velvet grass for a couch. Exotic string sounds of the zither and the oud. Rhythmic beating of the clay derbeke; a husky voice with thick consonants and throaty vowels extols the virtues of Bint Ilgiron , the girl next door. The tinkling of swaying fringe, as dancers slowly swirl their hips in a figure eight, bending backward toward the ground. They sway faster and faster. On old Earth, the girls had worn fringed breastplates and gauze skirts, banded with metallic fringe below the navel, but this is paradise, so they wear only the fringe.

Wine rains down in soft, warm droplets. The air is heavy with the sweet woody aroma of hashish. A thousand tiny fingers, and hundreds of lips and tongues augment what I am doing to Robert’s body, but to no avail.

I take him instead to the little grass hut where Krishna and Radha share love eternal that flees and pursues through all the centuries. Bedecked with flowers, their love, like a flood, transcends heaven and earth.

Robert had always liked these verses intellectually. He is able to use them now to pull himself into the experience. As compassion and tenderness explode inside me, incredibly, a response catapults from him.

Time, time. I hated time, and I hated the laws that men had made. The absurd archaic laws that had given Fraser’s wife everything, forcing him to start all over. I hated Arrl’s people, too, for their stubborn rigidity, casting her and her son out. The proposed field situation on Deneb 3 was the only way that Fraser could ensure Arrl’s future. He had hoped that she could work with the Earthmen as an emissary, and perhaps regain status among her own people. She was able to trade minerals that Fraser sent to her to her people for the other things that she needed. And now, if he didn’t live to finish his term, there would be no field situation, no more minerals for Arrl, and everything until now would have been for nothing.

It’s not fair, I kept thinking. One tired and sick old man against the galaxy.

Time sped by, or crawled, I couldn’t tell which, and one night I dreamed of snow. Dali’s clocks were chasing me through a storm. I was shivering, both from terror and cold, as ice crystals cut my feet and my thin shift beat against me in the cutting wind. I ran until I couldn’t breathe. The clocks stopped, melting into the dirty, punishing snow.

I woke up knowing. I ran over to the life-support system. Fraser had been in freeze for nineteen days, but now there was a difference. I checked the instruments and found that the slight pulse and respiration were gone. There’s a mistake, I thought, check again. I checked again, and again, but the dials wouldn’t move.

Thank God, I thought then. His suffering is over. I just stood there looking at him until tears came.

After a while I washed my face. I knew that I should be using this little time when I was relatively clear-headed to plan my actions. In a few days, in addition to covering for Fraser, I would have to cover for myself. I kept thinking about Robert Fraser, the way he had been, the way he was at the end, and the things I wanted to remember. I wanted to remember every detail. There wasn’t anything else.

It’s been nearly three weeks since anyone saw Fraser in person, I thought, and there are three more weeks until the end of his term. Could I possibly carry off the deception? What if someone demanded to see him? And is this life-support system really going to keep the body preserved until I can safely pronounce him dead? Robert, I thought, we’ve been through so much, just a little more. Those weren’t malt tears that I had to keep washing off my face.

I had another problem, too. Crave nagged at me. I pushed it out of my mind and left the apartment.

In the office, I concentrated on the work in front of me, wishing I could integrate myself into the printed page, and detach from the awful screaming of my body. I am in control, I told myself. The body is my servant.

The day was endless, endless. I drank my tenth cup of coffee, adding more sugar, and looked at the clock. My eyes watered, my nose was runny; well, the dust from the old books was irritating. The most difficult thing I had to do was converse with “Dr. Fraser” on the viewer. He looked so real, so alive. I could see the muscle in his left hand twitch just at the edge of the picture. We hadn’t wanted that to show, and yet the tremor, nearly under control, was what made the image real.

The day ended at last and I went back to the apartment. Crave was screaming at me. I looked at the small figure in the net of the life-support system. I walked over to the controls and checked the readings. I lowered the temperature a little. Nothing to do but wait and see.

I forced myself to work on Fraser’s project, then on the department work. I had to do as much as I could now, before . .. Before what? Before I died from need? Or from overdose? Don’t think about it. I got coffee and poured half a cup of sugar into it. I did deep-breathing exercises. I worked a page, fought for control, and worked again.

The next days were worse. I couldn’t stay at the office. I knew I was going to need at least a little melsedrine to pull through. But not now, not yet. I was a crazed, caged animal, trapped in that room. Once in a while I managed to look at the life-support system and check what the computer was sending to the office from me. I couldn’t have reset it if I had wanted to.

Hell with it, anyway. I reached behind the drawer. I looked at it while my blood raced. I watched my hand raise it to my mouth. I closed my eyes and counted, ten minutes till it hits.

I tried to lift, but it wouldn’t come, and I couldn’t even create my own fantasy, as I had done when I hadn’t taken the drug. I needed a partner, a flesh-and-blood one.

I lay there for hours, burning, aching for release. I thought of Cor, the bastard who taught me this, and I wanted to shrink away into a corner as I felt his eyes on me.

Cor wouldn’t go away for a long time. The smell of him, the slight tinge of ammonia that indicated annoyance, then the hot smell of man, and then the heat would bring out the acids that body catalysts make from malt. The acid odor in his perspiration, and faintly on the breath that started even trace amounts of melsedrine in the blood of another humming in resonance, until crave became a tidal wave sweeping me under. I’d spark then, and he’d laugh, leave me beached, solo; and bastard that he was, he’d watch.