Damon Knight - Orbit 21

For something to do I went down to the post office and checked my mail. And there, in my March 2608 issue of Shards, was my own article . I hadn’t expected it to appear for months yet. I whooped once and disturbed people in the booths next to mine. I read quickly through the introduction, working hard to comprehend that the words were still mine:

Vasyutin and Icehenge:

A Reexamination by Edmond Doya

There are many reasons for supposing that Icehenge was constructed within the last two centuries, by an unknown group.

1) 2402, when the Ferrando-class spaceships were introduced, is the earliest year that ships capable of making the round trip from the outermost human colony to Pluto were available.

2) The Vasyutin theory, which is the only theory that pushes back this necessary time limit, provides an explanation that is possible, but apparently is not true. Though Mars Development Committee records show that an asteroid miner commanded by an Ivan Vasyutin did disappear, the sole evidence supporting the rest of his story is the journal of Emma Weil, discovered by Hjalmar Nederland in 2547. New evidence indicates that this journal is a hoax. The “grandson” who gave Nederland the number of the bank file that the journal was found in can no longer be located; nor can any trace of his existence now be found. Additionally, Jorge Balder, the famous historian of the Martian Revolution, made a thorough check of those very bank files while doing research in 2392; yet he made no mention of Weil’s journal. It is certain that he would have found and reported it had it been there, and therefore we must assume that the journal did not then exist.

Thus the journal, and the Vasyutin explanation that depends on it, are apparently evidence manufactured by an agent who is presumably responsible for the construction of Icehenge as well.

And the article went on, recounting in meticulous detail my sources and methods . . . making further points that I could not prove for certain (like the total lack of evidence for the existence of the Mars Starship Association). ... It was, I knew, a body blow to the Vasyutin explanation—it threw the whole issue into question again! And Shards was one of the major journals, it was read system-wide. Nederland himself would read the article, was reading it, perhaps, even as I did. It was a disturbing notion. The battle, I thought, was on.

Quitting time, graveyard shift at the restaurant. I went over to see Fist Mathews, one of the cooks. “Fist, can you lend me ten till payday?”

“Why do you want money, Edmond? The way you eat here you ain’t hungry.”

“No, I need to pay off the post office before they’ll let me see my mail.”

“What’s a dishwasher like you doing with mail? Never mess with it myself. Keep your friends where you can see ‘em, that’s what I say.”

“Yeah, I know. Listen, I’ll pay you back payday, that’s the day after tomorrow.”

“You can’t wait till then? Okay, what’s your number . . .”

He went to the restaurant’s register and made the exchange. “Okay, you got it. Remember payday.”

“I will, thanks, Fist.”

I threw a few more dishes on the washer belt—grabbed a piece of lobster tail the size of my finger, tossed it in my mouth, fuel for the fire, waste not, want not—until my replacement arrived, looking sleepy.

The streets of Waystation were as empty as they ever get. In the green square of the park, up above me on the other side of the cylinder, a group was playing cricket. I hurried past one of my sidewalk sleeping spots, stepping over prone figures. As I neared the post office I skipped. I hadn’t been able to afford to see my mail for several days—it happened like that at the end of every month. Post office has mail-freaks over a barrel, and they know it.

When I got there it was crowded, and I had to hunt for a console. More and more people were going to general delivery, it seemed, especially on Waystation where almost everyone was transient.

I sat down before one of the grey screens and began typing, paying off the post office and identifying myself, calling up my correspondence from the depths of the computer. ... I sat back to read.

Nothing! “Damn it!” I shouted, startling a young man in the booth next to me. Junk mail, nothing but junk. Why had no one written? “No one writes to Edmond,” I muttered, in the singsong the phrase had taken on over the years. There was an issue of Archeological Review , and a notice that my subscription to Marscience had run out, for which I thanked God; and an inquiry from a local politician asking if this was my current mail number.

I blanked the screen and left. Keep your friends where you can see them. There were more people in the streets, on the peoplemovers; going to work, getting off work. I didn’t know any of them. I didn’t know anyone on Waystation, I thought, except the people at the restaurant, and I only knew them there. Yet it was 2612, I had lived on Waystation ten years!

I got on the peoplemover going to the front of the cylinder, and slumped down in a seat. At the front I got off and took the short subway through the wall of the asteroid to the surface. Once through, I got off and walked down to the big room fronting on Emerald Lake. We were somewhere outside Uranus, so the lake was there. The room, however, was nearly empty. I went to the ticket window, and they took more of Fist’s ten. The suit attendant helping me looked sleepy, so I checked my helmet seam in the mirror. The black, aquatic creature—like a cross between a frog and a seal—stared back at me out of its facemask, and I smiled. In the reflection the humorless fish-grin appeared. The slug-broad head, webbed and finned handscoops, long finny feet, torso fins, and the cyclops-like facemask, transformed me (appropriately, I thought) into an alien monster. I walked slowly into the lock, lifting my knees high to swing my feet forward.

The outer lock door opened, I felt the tiny rush of air, and I was outside, on my own. It felt the same, but I breathed quicker for a time, as always. A ramp extended out into the lake, and I waddled to the end of it.

Around the lake, flat blue-grey plains rose up to the close horizon of an ancient, worn-down crater wall. It looked like the surface of any asteroid. Waystation’s existence—the hollowed interior, the buildings and people, the complicated spaceport, the huge propulsion station on the other end—the rock’s extraordinary speed itself—all could seem the work of an excited fancy, here by this lake of liquid methane, trapped in an old crater.

Below me the stars were reflected, green as—yes, emeralds— in the glassy surface of the methane. I could see the bottom, three or four meters below. A series of ripples washed by, making the green stars dance for a moment.

Out on the lake the wave machine was a black wall, hard to distinguish in the pale sunlight. Its sudden shift toward me (which looked like a mistake in vision made while blinking) marked the creation of another tall green swell. The swells could hardly be seen until they crossed the submerged crater wall near the center of the lake; then they rose up, pitched out and fell, breaking in both directions around the submerged crater, throwing sheets of methane like mercury drops into space, where they floated slowly down.

I dove in. Under the surface I was effectively weightless, and swimming took little effort. Over the sound of my breath was the steady krkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkr of waves breaking, and every ten or fifteen seconds I heard the emphatic kaTHUNKuh of the wave machine. Ahead of me the green of the methane became murky, because of the turbulence over the submerged crater. I stuck my head above the surface to see, and all sound except that of my breathing instantly ceased.