Damon Knight - Orbit 21

Need crave, worse than malt crave, intensified by malt crave, crave that wanted contact, any kind at any price. Endless repetition, of bodies and limbs and knotting ugliness, and all the while my sensuality, betraying me mindlessly, loved it. But it wasn’t enough, couldn’t be enough. I arched and contorted as my body shook with spasm after spasm of meaninglessness.

Cor, laughing. Damn you, Cor, you’re dead. Cor, laughing, reaching. Me, using fantasy to hold him from lifting, making him think he hadn’t sparked, so he took more, and more.

I looked at the calendar. Eight more days of Fraser’s term. I had to stay alive, stay functioning that long.

I managed through the next week, even getting to the office once in a while. The malt I had taken was enough to give me something to fight with. The knowledge that the end was so close did the rest.

Then, on the last day, a man came to the office looking for Dr. Fraser.

“He’s not well, could I take a message?” The familiar words came out easily.

The man seemed upset. “I’m from the committee. We’re to establish a grant for his research program. We need his thumbprint on the document.”

“I see,” I managed. My thoughts raced. Nothing. “Well, perhaps I could call you later, if he’s feeling better.” I smiled weakly.

The man gave me his number.

One more day. One more idea. If only I could think of something, anything.

I excused myself from the office. All for nothing, I thought, as I walked back to the apartment. The planning, the phony tapes, his life, mine, and now we’ve lost it all.

I looked at the frail little body. The machine had preserved him, but what was the good, with nobody inside? They wouldn’t fall for a thumbprint from a dead man. Fight, argue? Appeal? To whom? The computers, bureaucracy? He hadn’t finished his term, and that was all they would understand.

There must be something, anything. One more crazy idea. If I could get inside his head . . .

The crazy psychology professor. The transfer cap. I tried to remember. When they carried him away, did they get the cap?

I held the cap in both hands. The notes had been clear enough. This is suicide, I thought, death or insanity. But I’m dead, anyway. Nothing to lose.

I called the man, told him that Fraser was very weak. Fraser would see him, but only for a few minutes.

I disconnected everything, and slid the life-support equipment out from under and around him. I carried everything to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I arranged myself comfortably on the floor. I fingered the timer that the professor had used, the one that was supposed to break the circuit and bring him back.

Nothing to lose, I told myself. My throat started beating, choking me. Fear held me rigid, a cold fear, older than the history of man.

There was a knock.

“Come in, it’s open,” said the tape slowly, in Fraser’s voice.

I pressed the switch.

Darkness, and cold. Pain, pain, worse than I had thought. I heard a sound. He must be talking to me, better answer.

“Hhhh.” I forced eyes open. Shadow moving toward me. “Hh.” I realized that I had to draw breath. “Hello.”

I heard more mumbling. The shadow moved closer. I raised a hand. I felt pressure.

“...admire . . . work.”

“Th—thank you.” I exhaled deeply. The body shook. Inhaled. I tried to smile reassuringly.

The shadow backed away a little. I felt pressure again, cold this time against my hand. The document, I hoped.

“Not well,” I said.

The shadow retreated “. . . pardon . . . cooperation . . . thank you. . .”

Pain, dulled by six weeks on life-support, but not dull at all, pulled me, pulled. I saw a well with no bottom, a howling cavern; felt cold, cold. Must be time to switch back. Darkness, whirling. I had forgotten to breathe. Forced the lungs, nothing. Opened mouth, gulped empty. Blacker, roaring, oh God, not like this. Cold, cold.

Cold smooth, sound of water inside, cold shivering against my skin, light against eyelids. Squeeze tight, open slow, white tile.

Tile! I ran my hands along the bathroom floor, closed my eyes, exhaled. I started to laugh. I took a deep breath and checked my body. I hadn’t dared hope.

Tears ran down my face. Robert, Robert. I used you. I climbed over your dead body, and now I’m free.

I’ll repay you.

I already know the spoken language, and I know about the literature.

Arrl, and the child, too, as informants, but . . .

Jacobs was right. Objective understanding isn’t enough. You have to be inside their heads.

There’s the implant. There’s the transfer cap. And if all else fails . . .

There’s always malt.

Chrystan watched the long staggering lines of soldiers against the snow as thermal charges flared behind and below them, illuminating the ice caverns. The soldiers cut their way toward the surface, their yellow snow-gear giving them the appearance of ichor-stained entrails thrusting from the wound that gave them birth. She felt sick, and repressed the feeling. The retreat was painfully slow. She knew her husband would be expecting a report from her so that he could coordinate shuttle liftoffs, but she did not wish to talk to him just now. Weeks ago when she left for the front they had said all she wished to hear. The military would fill in the gap she left. Someone else would be giving him the reports. Yet, as she watched the lines, she wondered who was going to fill the gap in her, the ache of watching everyone else go home.

She gathered a closer mindshield on her twenty-kilometer front, feeling the exhaustion of her troops as they climbed out of the planet’s winter-locked interior. In her mind she saw them as flames banked in a deliberate fire. It was her job to keep the spark of each soldier shielded from the icy breath of the enemy Bharan. When the men and women were gone, there would be a fresh set of troops, and then another, and another.

A soldier wavered and fell in the line straggling across the foot of her knoll. His companions, numbed by frost, fear and hunger, bunched around him as Chrystan plunged through the crust. They pulled back when they saw her. He lay on his back, his cheeks whitened by the summer snow. She felt his flickering essence when she took his hand.

“Don’t leave me!”

“No, no,” she told him. “We won’t leave you.” She put cold fingers on his forehead, fingertips slipping on the clammy sweat of his fear. She fed back into him the sensations he was pushing out violently. She talked soothingly as she did so, impressing images of green grass and light blue spring water. His pulse steadied.

“You’re going home. You can’t quit now,” said Chrystan.

He took a deep breath. “It’s a rout back there—we’re the first coming in from the nests. I don’t think the others will make it.”

She removed her hand. “Just as long as you do. A little further, and you’ll see the shuttlecraft. Come on now, stand up and get moving.”

Ignoring his protests, Chrystan shouldered him to his feet. She lifted her shield on the rest of the battalion long enough to feed the individual spark within him until it flamed. He took his weight off her and straightened his weapon pack.

“Just keep your eyes on the back of the man in front of you, soldier,” she said as he moved away. The binding intimacy of that last contact forced her away abruptly. She never could say goodbye.

She was struggling in the snow pack to regain her vantage point when a large hand clasped her forearm.

“Here—let me break a path for you,” the officer said as he passed in front of her, not waiting for an answer. His big ungainly frame forced its way upward, the hard crust cracking aside. He waited for her on the boulders. Chrystan recognized his face then, and an unexpected flush warmed her cheeks. This was one of the men in the Seventh with whom she had slept in order to force acceptance of her shielding powers. It happened occasionally, but it was not a practice she enjoyed: to force her brain patterns through a gateway created by the most intimate of moments. Usually the man broke down and cried, and she would cradle his face to her bare chest as the shards of his facade flooded away.