Damon Knight - Orbit 21

When he was done, he raised himself on one elbow, and cold air dried the sweat he had left on her breasts. He lit a cigarette. She lay very still, listening for noises from the window. After a while he went to sleep. The light from the screen allowed shadows in the corners of the room.

“Witch ... or woman?” TV-at-the-door asked. She straightened her coat, composed her features.

(the woman behind the wall spoke, “what’s the difference?” she asked.)

“Woman,” Harris said, and gave her number. The door clicked open.

Nearing her room she heard hammering and men’s voices. Sawdust was tracked into the hall. The manager came out of the room.

“Come here. Look at this,” he said.

She could not move.

“Come on.” He stepped out and pulled her by the shoulder through the door. The wall that closed off the bay window was being removed. The workmen stepped on her belongings as they moved from place to place, carrying hammers and two-by-fours.

(the woman stood with her back pressed against the glass, the cat leaped into her arms.)

The manager grinned at Harris.

“I’m moving in.”

She nodded numbly.

A workman dropped a two-by-four. It crashed against the glass.

(the woman leaped out of the window, the cat in her arms . . . falling . . . falling . . . )

The manager grinned at her again. There was no room for her with the workmen in the room. She brushed a little sawdust off the bed, then went out into the hall.

(shadows chasing colors, the darkness welling up to break the surface, the shadows, the darkness, the dreams breaking out . . . )

She rushed downstairs and out into the cold. She stood in the street looking up at the broken window. The evening darkened around her. The window was like an empty eye gazing out over the city. The window was like a mouth pouring shadows out over the world.

There was a motion at her feet. A dark shape moved away from her, forming an indistinct shadow as it passed through the glow from TV-at-the-door. A cat? It moved toward the darkness, crying plaintively. It merged with the shadows. Harris followed it.

Tom Halfshell was taking his major in Trumpet, his minor in Nostalgic Folklore, and his outreaching corollary in Monster-Morph.

“That isn’t a perfect balance, Tom, my son,” his father had said. “The selection is too soft. It’s a soft art, a soft science, and a soft speculative syncrisis. My son, you had better introduce a harder and more manly element into your studies.”

So Tom took up Hard Geography for his sustaining corollary. This gave him four fields of study beyond the basics, a heavy schedule for even an intelligent young man. And this got Tom where it hurt, because he was not very intelligent. He was intuitive, he was rhythmic, he was effervescent, he was enthusiastic; and he was a young man of tone and taste. But he just wasn’t very intelligent.

Still, he got good acceptance by both his elders and his contemporaries. And the hard hand of friendship will help one through almost any course.

Tom and three of his friends, Cob Goliath, Duke Charles, Lion Brightfoot, manly boys all, talked about his deficiencies and advantages, and the varying joys of the world, as they hunted fierce hogs with spears from muleback one spring morning.

“You are an unmatched half, Tom,” Cob Goliath shouted as he doubled back on his coursing mule after a very tricky and tanglefooted hog, “and ours is a world full of matched wholes. Complete yourself, Tom, complete yourself!”

Anything to do with man’s best friend the swine is a worthy occupation, and lance-killing is a particular joy. The swine is meat and leather. He is also ferocity and fun and friendship. Spilling hogs’ blood is almost as tall a thing as spilling one’s own.

“Complete myself, that’s what I’m trying to do!” Tom howled as he killed the boar with an absolutely perfect lance thrust, from a bad angle, and already past the beast. And the other young men gasped in admiration.

Tom Halfshell wasn’t as big or as strong as these other young men. He hadn’t their tough intelligence, or their dedicated hardness, or their steadiness of hand. And yet he made more spectacular kills than any of them, with a real virtuosity of lance and mule-handling and boar-butchering. He was the least of the four in every element that should count high in boar-spearing, but he made the most kills, and he made them more dazzlingly than the others.

One of the things he had was trickiness, a quality not much understood.

“Unmatched Halfshell Tom,” Duke Charles sang as he led the charge after more of the fierce and bristling porkers. The four young men had killed nine hogs, and they had three more to go this morning. “Halfshell Tom, it always seems that there should be another half to you somewhere. When they spun the naming wheel, it stopped just right for your name. You do so many things well, and still you are not complete. Why not? There’s an ohafa element in incomplete things. The rest of us are complete. Watch that porker!”

The porker, a solid tusked boar, cut back into the feet of Tom’s mule and knocked the beast down. It cut back a second time on a shorter radius and charged Tom, who had barely found his feet after being thrown. It was in too close for Tom to use the lance blade, and he used the lance butt and spun the charge of the boar twice. And then the boar had him—

—but Lion Brightfoot had the boar then, with a slicing, almost backhand thrust of his blade, as Lion’s mule, a clattering hack who enjoyed his work, brought him in exactly to “top kill” position on a long sweep.

Ten porkers killed. Two to go. And the shaken but talented Tom Halfshell was on muleback again and leading a new charge.

There was great friendship among these four boys, and they risked their lives and limbs for each other again and again. Their coursing area was only the hog-run behind a small slaughterhouse, and there were surely easier and safer ways to slaughter the hogs. But hogs should be slaughtered splendidly. All things concerning hogs, those totem animals, should be done as splendidly as possible.

Now there was a furious and fleet-footed sow among the porkers left, and she was super-dangerous. There were elements of hate and intuition among sows. Swine were man’s best friend, but that didn’t apply to the disappearing sows of the species. The sows felt somehow (for they could not really know, since the thing was never mentioned in their presence) that even the remnant of them would soon be replaced by clone-boars.

This fast sow was all the more deadly for being short-tusked and close-coupled. She was murder, challenging and charging murder.

“Thank all things that there is no analogy among men to these fierce carryover animals,” Goliath called. “We’d all be better dead than have such savage things within our own species. Watch it, Lion! Watch it, Tom!”

The boys would rather find their eleventh and twelfth kills among the uncomplicated porkers, but this shrilling and squealing sow forced the kill upon them. She threw the mules of Cob Goliath and Duke Charles with charges so swift that those canny-footed animals could not cope with them at all.

But then it was the bloodied Tom on his own lamed mule who killed her with luck and trickery and curious desire. The other three of them did not like to be involved with the remnant sows at all; but Tom Halfshell liked it particularly. He had her in an exciting and bristly kill. His lance had a large gout of flesh on it when he was finished, and Tom for a moment had the notion of having a pet pig from it.

And then the ridiculousness of that idea struck him. It was only from bits of boars’ flesh that pigs were ever cloned. Besides, Tom already had one little pet pig. He would wait till it was too big to be a pet before he requisitioned another one.