Damon Knight - Orbit 19

Goddam, I wish you wouldn’t do that, Cy thought, and he had another fantasy of ramming through the force-field veil, and booming along over green mountains, canyons, moors, well-scrubbed little towns with steeples and gabled houses, lakes, marshes—

“Cy, Cy, Cy,” the voice came through, “I’m not sure I can guarantee your safety anymore. You’ve got enough caveman tropisms to parcel out to a dozen men. You don’t need them, man. They are evolutionary maladaptive. Am I really going to have to treat you like an animal? Can’t we be like a teacher and a favored student? Can’t you accept the wisdom programmed into me?” But Cy felt a deep thoracic germination of something like role-identity, and it included the absolute right, the fiercely held right to do anything he wanted as long as he didn’t hurt anybody else. He looked up at the console’s physiog-plate. “I may throw up,” he said. “If I had a T.S. card, I’d pop it in your chute.”

“What’s a T.S. card?” the console asked.

“The letters stand for tough shit—I thought you knew that. If I could have some printed up, they might say something like: ‘Yours is the saddest story I have ever heard. It has really touched my heart deeply. Please accept this card as an expression of my sincere sympathy.’ “

“Cy, Cy, Cyrus,” the console said, sounding weary.

“Robot piss,” Cy said, feeling a leaden sedation coming on. He was flicked into unconsciousness again.

Three days later he awoke, greatly refreshed, feeling exploratory and predatory. He ate a huge meal, building from gentle things like squab eggs through crepes to pork slices, asparagus, ale, and pastries. He swallowed a supply of nutrient pills, which could be activated by taking another type of pill later on. He talked chattily with the consolbot, seemed repentant and anxious to please, and even patted the service crawler’s knobby crown as he left for the auto races. The console’s tone was suspicious: “Are you up to something, Cy?”

“Now, now.” He sounded vaguely smug. “Don’t be negative. I feel extra good today, they’re doing the nineteen sixty-three Sebring over at Boiling Meadow, and I get to ride in the Cobra with Gurney. I can do without a provobot. But, big daddy, if you are worried about me, zap in a trivid pak, and you can tune in on me anytime.” A long silence followed, during which Cy felt the console was shuffling its feet.

“Well, have fun. Be cool. Don’t do anything dumb. And take a force-field isomorph with you.”

“Do I have to brush my toothies?” Cy said, playfully patting the console’s credenza and walking toward the eletube. He took a silver B-1 reprod from the flitter loft, the craft lifting silently from its pod and into the air traffic pattern toward the ancient Boiling Airfield. He wanted to fly close to the shimmering film of curtain that hung over the Potomac Trench, but found that he could not override the coded flight plan. He landed the craft at about thirty mph and walked to the pits, where the holographic rerun of the ancient sports car race was ready. He bent into the tiny cockpit of the silver Cobra and clapped Gurney on the back. The car left twin tracks of smoking rubber as it roared off down the straightaway.

“Red-lined at ninety-five hundred?” Cy shouted at Gurney, looking at the needle sweeping across the tach face. The car seemed to soar from a busy thick clacking to a deep scream that rattled Cy’s ribcage.

“The absolute end!” Cy shouted, as the car swept through the esses. “Nirvana, Apocalypse, and Revelation!” He pushed the multi-locator switch on his energy pak, and alternated between a seat high in the stands and the tiny seat beside Gurney. He rode a lap with Surtees in a prototype Ferrari, superimposing himself over the driver’s holographic form. He sat on the grass, drank a quart of ale, and lit an eight-inch pencil-thin Reina Isabel. He flicked the energy pak to trivid, dialed his billet, and monitored the strength of the signal. It was weak. “I can’t hear you very well,” he said softly to his consolbot.

“You’re on the very edge of my monitoring range,” the voice came through. “Your life-support systems are wavering at minus two point-one standard deviations. I’d advise you to move as little as five hundred yards closer to me.”

Cy glanced around quickly. One consolbot was in the pit area, and a few provobots hovered over the crowd. He looked out over the weed-filled meadow to the force-veil, about one thousand yards away. The veil hung like a waterfall of the purest mist. He had seldom been this close to it. He walked toward the veil some fifty yards, watching the strength of the home signal weaken on his pak.

“Two-twenty-seven s.d.’s on life-support,” the voice said weakly. “You are nearing the perimeter of the quad, Cy. Listen to me, don’t do anything foolish, you can’t survive across the river trench. I can show you trivid tapes of what is over there. You wouldn’t want to go. Shall I hook in to the consolbot there?”

Cy moved closer to the edge of the meadow, nearer the veil. He strained his eyes to look across the fetid sludge of the Potomac Trench. Hey, he said to himself, I can see through the veil. He looked, fascinated, and saw the Masonic Tower in Alexandria. It was mottled with lichens, and bull-bats big as condors were streaming from the high niches.

“Cyrus? Cy!” The home voice sounded urgent. “You’re in danger, boy—my son, your signal is fading fast—move back into my range. Are you all right? Two-seventy-three on life support. Can you hear me? I AM DISPATCHING THE PROVOBOTS TO SAVE YOU—”

“The hell you are,” Cy said, breaking contact. He stepped to the edge of the trench. With his levitator registering strong anti-grav reserves, he lifted off, eased into prone flying position, and thrust off across the dappled mud flats toward the curtain of beautiful mist. A provobot swished down the runway as Cy rammed the force-field at ground level, fought through what felt like plastifoam netting, and rolled through onto a dirty white sandbar. The provobot caught up with him easily, but did not cross the force-field. The bot hung there, like a silver chalice, flashing a red pilot-tube light on its cowl. Cy sprinted along the sandbar and into some fleshy green brush.

“Alarm! Alarm!” the provobot sang out. “You are in imminent danger—identify yourself—” Cy flicked on the pak long enough to say, “Go to hell,” and began to trot down the sandbar toward a crumbling jetty. He felt a thick bubble in his throat, and stopped jogging. He was breathing hard. He reached for a handkerchief, and saw a dime-sized, grayish-green patch of mold on his hand. He blew his nose lustily; fatty gray particulates blackened the cloth. He wiped at the mold, and saw another erupt on his thumb. Quickly he palmed on his own force-field isomorph, but noticed that the energy level was already lower than expectancy. The molds faded; the air inside the iso felt clean and refrigerated. He climbed up the jetty, and began to walk toward the shoreline. Already the surface of the isomorphic body-suit was graying with particles. He walked down the center of a street. A snail as big as a sea lion was rasping the soft paint off the front of an old beauty shop. Cy drew his fusion torch and notched it to stun. A crystalline cluster began to form on his shoulder. He felt a burning sensation, brushed the growth off, but saw that it had actually permeated the iso. Oh shit, he thought, talk about hostile environments. I’ve got to find a down-under. No bunch of tin-box robots is going to tell me what to do. A hairy bush moved from an alleyway. Cy’s heart beat wildly against his ribs as he saw that the bush had segmented legs. It was a tarantula as large as a VW, backing slowly into the street. It reared on its back legs, awesome fangs raised, and Cy saw that another tarantula was the cause of the attack-ready posture. The second tarantula approached warily, leglike palpi glistening with sperm. The reared female started a lunge, but before she could strike, the spurred forelegs of the male shot up, catching the fangs. Thus protected, the spider forced its mate upward, exposing an abdominal furrow, and depositing the sperm.