Damon Knight - Orbit 20

How’s the old Mechand holding up, they asked him. Bet it doesn’t respond the way it used to. Hm. Got a deep bruise on the Mount of Jove.

A sticky drawer, Artie explained.

A meditech in a white cap shook her head over Artie’s palm and told him there wasn’t much future in the hand.

They shook it. It rattled.

Of course, they could overhaul and realign. But would it be worthwhile in the long run, they asked.

Artie explained that he was still making payments on the Radio Feedback Package for the hand.

Do you really want to be stingy about your own hand, they asked. Our suggestion? Replace the old and move up to the latest: the Synthand. A unique achievement in software. The Synthand’s movement mechanism is a sinewy net of hydrodynamic mesh, responsive to your wrist through a chemosensitive pad applied over the tiniest of neurolectric cyber-fiber implants.

No printed circuits. No noisy motors. No recharging. Fantastic styling. The sleek line of the thumb. The manicure.

Artie flipped through the brochure. Fashionable! Women prefer .. . Sensual dermal tonus! Executive material tells . . .

There are people these days, they told him, people who beg for an amputation every time they so much as gash their knuckles.

And why? They’d like to be toting a Synthand.

Granted, the period of adjustment is delicate. The instrument is delicate! It has to attune itself to your Na/K balance, your biorhythms, your reflex arcs . . . But it’s worth it.

Artie thinking, I feel like I’m getting married.

He only wanted to know one thing: What happens to the Mec-hand?

Reconditioning. It can be sold used. It’ll sure help you finance the Synthand. Somebody’s bound to want a strong hand. Look in the classifieds. There’s a Wanted To Buy list a yard long of crippl—disabl—prosthetized persons.

It’s progress, they told him. Personal progress. What else is there in life but self-improvement?

There was definitely a finger tapping Artie’s neck. It seemed to want his attention. So he rolled onto his other elbow to have a look.

At the edge of the pallet, the abandoned Mechand stood on its stump, poised in a nest of frayed straps and rusty buckles, oil smears glinting across flesh-tone tatters in the glare of buzzing fluorescent fixtures.

Artie scrambled back onto his knees and nearly banged his head on a pipe.

Artie thinking, well, well, I didn’t expect to meet you here. The last time I saw you, they had you laid out in subsections at the workshop. I guess you’re still tuned to my frequency. What a surprise.

The Mechand’s gestures were considered and precise. It curled its index finger, beckoning Artie, then pointed straight between his eyes, and revved its drill bit.

Artie edging away, thinking, you don’t seem happy. Rough trip crosstown? Anything I can do for you? Anything at all?

Artie dropped the box of Q-14738. It rattled out of sight through a gap between the pallet’s slats.

The Mechand shaped itself into a vise and crouched over the nearest slat. Fiberboard buckled. Splinters curled. The Mechand wrenched up a length of slat and began a slow, steady pounding on the pallet.

Artie trying to think, I appreciate your loyalty, old hand, but honestly, all positions have been filled. Where would I put you? An elbow . . . My left . . . You can’t.

He pressed the Synthand to his forehead. It whinnied and trembled, covered in gooseflesh. The Mechand tossed aside the slat and clutched at it. Artie held the hand over his head, where it hissed and sputtered. Three stories below, the slat hit cement.

The Mechand snapped its fingers demandingly with a resounding clang and flying sparks.

Artie getting a firm left-handed grip on the Synthand, thinking, all right, Artie will ride the Mechand on his arm, but only for a while. You’ll have to take turns.

He worked the limp Synthand loose, against all its noisy sucking. When the last adhesive snapped, it felt good as picking an old scab.

The Mechand opened its palm to him. Artie heaved the Synthand whistling through the dusty air. The Mechand hopped up and snagged it, a perfect catch, and fell on its back. The two hands lay in a pile, knitting and reknitting their fingers. A whiff of ethyl alcohol mingled with the smell of burnt oil.

Artie thinking, go on, fight it out between you. I never cared for either one of you.

The fingers disengaged. The hands lay on their sides, joined at the wrist. The two-handed wrist stood up on its ten fingers and scuttled to the brink of the pallet.

Artie watched them flip-flop all the way down the side of the rack, holding onto the steel upright with the Mechand, then the Synthand, letting go with the Synthand, then the Mechand. He glimpsed the two of them scurrying down the aisle. They broke stride for a caper, somersaulted a zigzag and rolled on their axis. Artie closed his eyes, feeling dizzy, thinking, I don’t blame them, I don’t blame them. A lovely couple.

Artie wondered how the two became attracted. A freak complementarity of hormones and guidance telemetry? A certain scent? What did they have in common? Artie’s motor nervous profile? Or had they sensed each other from afar, even in the factory, before he came between them?

Artie imagined the heroic journey of the escaped Mechand— hiding on rooftops, hanging under bridges, clambering across phone lines. They would do very well without him. They would thumb a ride to a forest preserve and set up housekeeping in a cozy dovecote, on top of a post with an embossed plastic label to tell all the tourists their names.

He didn’t blame them. They had no use for him.

He stretched out on the pallet, scratching his back on the slats. He pulled a smoke from his shirt pocket and a matchbook from his pants. Striking a light was a challenge, one-handed, but he managed. He scratched his wrist. It hadn’t been uncovered for months. He rubbed it hard. It felt good.

Artie wondered how he was going to get down.

Perhaps Kona was a planet where knowledge had not yet “brought death into the world, and all our woe.” In that case—and you will have to draw your own conclusions about this—could the Serpent be represented by a group of squabbling, irritable little people who only wanted to get back to Earth?

Biren was worried about the shuttle’s power pack, and was preparing to dismantle it; but that was no reason for the others to be idle. Erring volunteered to help Biren, and the rest set off on foot; Alissin and Gerold to collect plant and rock samples respectively, and Jon and Hanna to contact the Konans. Kona was a very quiet planet. Though they were walking in opposite directions, Hanna could hear Gerold’s voice for a long time, as he proved conclusively to Alissin that the rule that no explorer should work alone on a Class B planet was outmoded, impractical, and unnecessary. Nevertheless, Hanna noticed, he kept beside Alissin all the time. She thought how glad she was that this was the last planetfall of the tour. The prospect of not having to put up with the idiosyncrasies of five other people in close association—not Gerold’s carping, nor Erring’s incessant and excessive helpfulness, nor even Biren’s habitual little grunt—was like daylight at the end of a steep stony tunnel. A very interesting tunnel, thought Hanna, entered of one’s own free will, and not nearly so monotonous as life on postwar Terra—but confining, nonetheless. I could be home in six weeks or so, she thought; but knew instantly that the word “home” was mockery from the subconscious. Postwar Terra, with the great rice-producing plains of Asia still wasting year by year from the effects of Enemy bombardment, and the worry over fast-dwindling food sources apparent everywhere in mean-minded husbanding of resources, was a poor cold home to go to. The castle of the victorious, crammed with brand new instruments and ships of war; but with empty larders, and surrounded by salted fields. Words floated into Hanna’s mind from a poem written by one of her Linguistic Course friends—“An alien sower came forth to sow our Earth/ With killing seed; it fell upon good ground/And yielded up a minus-thousand-fold ...”