Damon Knight: Orbit 21

I moved over and joined her, sitting on the railing. We were both silent for a couple of minutes. “Katie?”

“Hm?”

“Marry me.”

She smiled again. “You’re sweet, Jehan.”

“No, I mean it.”

She studied my face. “I know you do. Tell me why you think I should marry you. You know we wouldn’t be able to have any children.”

“I know that.”

“Then why should I marry you?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. That’s not reason enough.”

“We would always be together.”

“We’re together now.”

“I could protect you. Take care of you.”

She stared at the palms of her hands, her lips compressed in a thin bitter line. “Jehan, I’m old. I’m older than Elsinore.”

“Look, I wasn’t born yesterday either, you know.”

“No. You weren’t.” She sighed. “But I’m weary. I can’t tell you how weary. I’m so tired of watching the years glide by. I’m sick of all the children. I’ve had it with learning new names, new faces. Even Elsinore has changed too much for me to be happy here.” She stroked the rubber treads on her wheelchair. “I’ve seen the land change, Jehan. The mountains. The oceans. It’s not the same planet. And when that happens—” She looked at me again. “You—you can face the prospect of the centuries ahead, the living, the waiting, the changes, the little births and deaths that happen every day. I can’t. I’m not going to be around much longer, Jehan. Face up to it. Death is going to come after me, one of these days. Soon, I hope.”

Now it was my turn to stare bleakly at Pand Lagoon, watching the dim reflections of the starblaze overhead, counting the million shadows that danced around every tree, every bush, every flower and blade of grass. “He was here this morning.”

“What!”

“He came for you today. I defeated him.”

“I don’t understand.”

I recounted the morning’s battle. The silence lasted a long time after I finished.

“I didn’t think anybody could do that,” she said, heading back into the house. “But I’ve never had a better gift. Ever.”

I started after her. “Then you’ll marry me?”

“No.” She stopped. Turning, she confronted me. “You really don’t understand, do you?”

“No! I—”

“Death was right, Jehan. Accept it.”

“Accept what? I don’t—”

“You defeated him once. Fine. But you can’t stop him.”

“But—”

“You’ve given me time, Jehan. Not life. Just time. That’s your real gift. I’ll be ready when he finally does get here.”

I watched her disappear into the house, unsure whether or not I should follow. Better to wait until morning and try talking again,

I retreated to the porch, only to find I was not alone. That bastard.

“Hello, Jehan.”

“How did you get out?”

“I didn’t.”

I studied his swirling robes, considering the possibility. Katie’s picture was gone. “You’re lying.”

“I’m sorry, Jehan. I’m not. I wish I didn’t have to be here, but I do. I have no choice. Please don’t try to stop me a second time.”

I snarled. Moving, striding, I grabbed handfuls of starfire overhead, shaping them with my anger. Whitehot. Sizzling. Driven bars of a cage, through the porch, tying the knot on top with my furious hands. They circled him, calling out his name, cursing, made of pain.

He seated himself on the floor in a full lotus position. Eyes closed and burning.

I kept vigil, watching the night spin by, contemplating love, death, time, and Katie.

He stirred, somewhere near morning, opening his eyes. “Jehan?”

I didn’t want to answer. I thought back to the night watches in Rutland, when the demons called out our names in the dark, over and over, burning anyone who answered. We lost three men that way. I remembered their names: Art, the windmaster; Benjamin, his ‘prentice; and Karim, the shape-changer.

We buried Art and Karim on the spot. Benjamin came from Rutland, though. We took what was left of his body to his family for burial. I could see their faces, the way they glared at Death, mounted on his black stallion. He wept bitterly at the funeral, however. I had been unable to. Benjamin was eighteen.

I gave in. “What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“I wish there was another way.”

“Yeah.”

Silence for a space. The sky was pinking over from the east, and I wished I could watch the sunrise. It looked spectacular.

“I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Alarms started going off inside, sucking at my stomach, dumping gallons of adrenaline in my blood. “What do you mean?”

“There really wasn’t any other way.” He was crying, huge hot tears dripping down his cheeks.

I tore through the house, wailing, destroying everything in my way. Katie’s bedroom opened to the east, and she watched the sun rise every morning.

I stopped in her doorway, my hands gripping the frame on either side. The room was filled with violent golds, violet and rusty reds pooling in the shadows. There he was again, free, helping her walk through the window like it was a set of stairs, and it was Katie, and it wasn’t, and the house shook to its foundations when I screamed out her name.

She turned.

I’ll never forget her face.

Her one eye was the sun, her other fading off into the distance, beyond the horizon where I couldn’t see it. Her hair spilled over the sky, electric blue, baby fine, brushing back the horizon like a fluttering wing, driving out the dark, scattering perfume in billows of jasmine. She smiled, all lilyteeth and roselips, and I felt the earth tremble, shape and bud beneath my feet, across the meadows and mountains, under the seas, summerblossoms burning in the lazy yellow heat.

She was gone.

I looked Death in the face and understood, finally.

We buried her poor, broken body in Reese Park. All of Elsinore attended the funeral.

We wept sweet tears of joy, Death and I.

Time slipped through her fingers like ash in the wind. Two weeks ago—three?—she had been aboard one of her father’s ships, touring the asteroid belt. Now she lay on a grass cot on a planet light-years from Earth, and her father and everything she had known were two hundred years in the past.

Dea lifted her head from her arm as a banging thundered through the flimsy trade hut. She stood reluctantly, brushing off the clothes that never wrinkled. Aliens waited outside, impatient for her to join them—

She was Andeana Lucita Maria de Carvalho da Fonesca, daughter to one of the wealthiest granfinos in Brazil, heir to all his lands and estates. She would do what had to be done to get home again.

One of the aliens towered outside the door, leaning on a two-meter spear. Its tail flicked irritably and its orange eyes narrowed at her. “Will you come, human?”

“I come,” she said steadily, tilting her head back to look it in the eye.

Tail twitching, the alien snorted and stalked away. She followed.

Leathery purple skin; teeth and ears like a horse and pouched to round it off—she did not like her first alien species. But then she did not care much for the human beings of this time either.

Dea paused for a moment, ignoring her guide as it ignored her. Worn bones of mountains shimmered in the heat haze. Trees dumped casually into brushland; behind that was a distant line of green. The jungle.

Dea shivered, staring intently toward that shadowy wall. She hated jungles.

Her guide left her without ceremony in the middle of the primitive village, knocking its spear against the entrance pole as it went, as if to shake it free of contamination. Mud and wattle huts, untidy as termite nests, surrounded her in an uneven circle. The smell was worse than any Brazilian favela. Small alien forms ran at random, screaming at her or at nothing. The sun beat down on her.