Damon Knight: Orbit 19

“It would be easy to see you as crazy. You discovered something in Lollipop’s library that led you to know you must kill Zoe. This knowledge was too much for you. In defense, you invented me to trick you into doing what you had to do. Look in the mirror and tell me if you think your story will be believed. Look closely, and be honest with yourself.”

She heard the voice laugh for the first time, from down in the bottom of its hole, like a voice from a well. It was an extremely unpleasant sound.

Maybe Zoe had died a month ago, strangled or poisoned or slashed with a knife. Xanthia had been sitting in her lifeboat, catatonic, all that time, and had constructed this episode to justify the murder. It had been self-defense, which was certainly a good excuse, and a very convenient one.

But she knew. She was sure, as sure as she had ever been of anything, that the hole was out there, that everything had happened as she had seen it happen. She saw the flash again in her mind, the awful flash that had turned Zoe into radiation. But she also knew that the other explanation would haunt her for the rest of her life.

“I advise you to forget it. Go to Pluto, tell everyone that your ship blew up and you escaped and you are Zoe. Take her place in the world, and never, never speak of talking black holes.”

The voice faded from her radio. It did not speak again.

After days of numb despair and more tears and recriminations than she cared to remember, Xanthia did as the hole had predicted. But life on Pluto did not agree with her. There were too many people, and none of them looked very much like her. She stayed long enough to withdraw Zoe’s money from the bank and buy a ship, which she named Shirley Temple. It was massive, with power to blast to the stars if necessary. She had left something out there, and she meant to search for it until she found it again.

Perhaps all over the world Brazil nuts

are hatching wee brown Brazilians . . .

THE THINGS IN THE TREE were destroying my marriage. I think they were driving my husband crazy, but that is less easily demonstrated. I started a diary when I first saw them; after three entries I burned it. He would find it, I knew, and he would go out with nets and poles and catch them and sell them to a circus, or to a think tank for vivisection. He would find a way to profit.

This is all I know about them: they are small; their faces are as large as my fist; they are nut brown; they excrete their toxic wastes, if they have any, directly into the air. (Perhaps they are nuts that hatched the ultimate product. Perhaps all over the world walnuts are hatching walnut people; hazel nuts are hatching hazels; Brazil nuts are hatching wee brown Brazilians.) I don’t think they ever come out of the tree. I stayed awake twenty-seven hours watching and none ever descended. I spread flour under the tree, pretending to Howard it was lime to sweeten the soil, and it was undisturbed for three days, until it rained. I wouldn’t have used lime for fear of harming them if they did creep out during the darkest part of the night when my eyes were too heavy to stay open every single moment. The previous time, when I really did stay awake for twenty-seven hours, I never closed my eyes more than the normal time for blinking, and I drank nine cups of coffee during the last six hours. (I sneaked into the bushes when I had to, but I didn’t close my eyes or go inside.)

Howard didn’t want me to stay home and collect my unemployment. He was afraid his job as an airplane mechanic would vanish. He wants everyone to start flying again, to anywhere. Use credit if you don’t have money. He thought the circles under my eyes were caused by financial worries, but I always leave worrying about money to him, because he’s so good at it, and I often forget for days at a time.

He also thought that if I did stay home I should start having children. It was as good a time as any, he said, and even if he did get laid off, too, by the time the kid was born things would be back to normal again. What he really wished was that I would stay home and have his dinner ready every day and darn socks and spin and weave and churn butter and draw down an income too.

In the beginning I realized that he would make money with them, if he didn’t decide they were parasites. He is more afraid of parasites than he is of other garden pests. He might have sprayed them with a biodegradable, not-harmful-to-warm-blooded-animals spray. The kind that has all sorts of precautions on the side in small print.

I began to worry about water for them and bought a birdbath. It cost twenty dollars and we fought about it. More marriages break up because of financial disputes than any other one thing, even sexual incompatibility. But people often lie to data gatherers, and this may not be true.

I got a birdbath without any paint in the bowl, and I had to shop all day for it, and used most of the gas in the tank. ($0.58 per gallon. He noticed, of course.) I scrubbed it thoroughly, even used steel wool, just in case there was something harmful in the finish. I have to scrub it every morning, because the birds enjoy it also, but I can’t believe birds drink that much water in a day. It holds two gallons.

One day for a treat I’ll put ginger ale in it, or juice. They might like orange juice.

I began to worry about what they were finding to eat. There are green acorns on the tree, but they are very bitter. I tried one. That’s when I got the bird feeder, and during the day I kept birdseed in it, but every night after dark I slipped out and put raisins and apples and carrot sticks on it for them. Sometimes they were gone the next day and sometimes they dried up, or the squirrels got them. Howard became suspicious of the feeder and he explained to me that birds don’t feed at night. I caught him watching me later when I took out the supply of food. He was solicitous for several days. Then he made a joke of it, but soon after that he was watching me again, and, I fear, watching the tree.

The tree is in the center of our back yard, mature, dense, the perfect home for them, as long as no one suspects their presence. Our house is forty years old, with as much charm as a wet dishrag, but it was cheap, and the tree was there. An oak tree inspires confidence. I wonder if they watched the builders of our house, fearful that one day one of them would bring an ax. I think they are very brave to have stayed.

I worried about other things, too. What if a young one got scraped? I left out a box of Band-Aids. What if the squirrels were too aggressive? I bought a dart game and left the darts on the feeder. What if they really wanted to communicate and didn’t have any way? I bought a tiny pad, the kind that has a three-inch pen attached by a chain.

When we had a barbecue, I tried to fan the smoke away from the tree.

They know I am their friend.

Howard brought home a dog, a great monster of a dog, with a foot-long, dripping tongue. The dog adores me, tolerates Howard, and from day one he stared at the tree for long periods of time, not barking, not threatening, but aware. Howard knew something, but he couldn’t believe what he knew.

“All right,” Howard said, finally, holding my shoulder too hard. “What’s in the tree?”

The dog growled, and Howard released me and stood with his hands on his hips. Howard’s hips are too broad for a man. I told him he should ride a bicycle to work to trim off a couple of inches. He reached for me again and the monster dog ambled over.

“Acorns. Squirrels. Leaves. A nest of cardinals.”

“You know damn well what I mean!”

Perhaps they are aliens, come to save the world. They are biding their time waiting for the eve of the final cataclysm before they act. Jung says most people who believe in flying saucers believe the aliens will save us.