Damon Knight - Orbit 17

She ran straight to the telephone and rang the company. Yes, they had her advance application on file, yes, they believed they could make it tomorrow, would two thirty be all right? Yes, oh yes, two thirty would be fine. Through to the operator now for the telegram to the children. She had thought about it so much that she was able to dictate it straight off: Dearest children, we have decided to go to rest. House is yours to care for now. Be kind and considerate, we will be watching over you. Your loving mother and father. She had not mentioned it to John, as he would certainly think it too sentimental, but she liked it, thought it a fine message for the children to receive.

And then, after all, there wasn’t much to do. In fact, nothing at all. But she managed to keep moving and busy until bedtime, occasionally popping into the living room to check that John was all right, once affectionately kissing his forehead when she found him sprawled asleep, his mouth wide open and his brow furrowed. He slept an awful lot now, dozing through the autumn of his life, his breath dry and murmuring like the withered leaves of a dying tree in the wind. It was about time he made the decision, everything would be downhill from now on if he stayed in the tired old sack of his body. Roof, ah yes, Roof. House hummed happily.

In bed that night it was many hours before she could sleep, and even John had difficulty in dropping off. The windows glimmered in the darkness, and she smiled to herself. She had decided on Window long ago, in fact as soon as she’d finished reading the letter from the company. It had rolled out of the letter slot one morning with the rest of the advertising mail as if it were no different from the usual stuff on sphincter doors (copied from the greatest of machines—the Human Body!) or rainbow ceilings (you’ll spend the rest of your life on your back). It was a good thing that she always read the advertising mail, some people just pressed the disposal button as a matter of course without bothering. But she read it all, it had helped her many times to add to House’s beauty. And when she read the letter and was offered personally by the managing director of the company a chance to enter into a permanent relationship with House, it was as if the weight of increasing age had been lifted from her all at once. It was the thought of leaving her House that she couldn’t bear, of dust being allowed to settle on the shining surfaces, of House performing its tasks without the constant and unspoken thanks of its true inhabitant. But the company offered the perfect answer. And more: the very fact that a company had been set up to operate the process meant that there must be a demand for it. That had made her so happy, the vision of Houses all over the country, filled with washing machines and cleaning machines and teacups and knives and forks and chairs and beds and paintings and knickknacks and linen curtains and electric ashtrays and adhesive soap trays and orchestrated door chimes and matching toilet-seat covers and bathmats and occasional tables and mirrors and cunningly concealed panels of switches connecting all the rooms with their wires like a blood system; and other things she could have no conception of, small personal things as dear to the hearts of the house-owners as, for instance, her stainless-steel heated double towel ring was to her; and everything, the Houses and all they contained and the special atmospheres that had grown up around them over the years—all loved most deeply and truly by people who must be very much like her. It was very pleasurable to think of millions of people patiently building up their little mounds of possessions over the years of work, carefully selecting and placing and guarding with righteous jealousy, enclosing them lovingly in the protective shells of Houses, where, in delicious and perfect privacy and .security, they could be tended and polished and serviced with the special love born of great satisfaction and content. Yes, life was good, and the company was offering an opportunity to make death even better. The windows were the eyes of House, letting in the beauty of sunshine but excluding all else; shimmering, half-living things set strongly into the heavy fabric of House’s body; telltales from Outside, but stern barriers for peering eyes. It had not taken her long to choose Window, not long at all, for as Window she could watch forever the thing that she most loved. She turned slightly to see the moonlight on the bedroom window and felt John stir and mutter beside her. Under the covers she gripped his hand tightly, feeling his fingers answer the pressure. They lay close together, staring at the ceiling, like two youngsters on their first night in a new home.

Next morning they both got up early and dressed carefully in such sober and conservative clothes as befitted the occasion. John immediately went to the living room and resumed his seat before the window, looking, she was glad to note, calm and peaceful. Of course, she couldn’t keep still, she went from top to bottom of House at least half a dozen times, cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning once again. She was so excited, like a child. In the garden, she fed the fish, feeling sorry for him as she watched him gobbling his food. Fishes had to die, sooner or later, go down into nothingness. Ah, well. Roses beautiful, daffodils beautiful, so happy today, so happy, so happy.

There was plenty of time to spare when she joined John in the living room, and she was pleasantly surprised to find that once she sat down she could relax, sit calmly looking out of the window. They talked a little, about old times, but the conversation soon dried up, for there was nothing they had to say to each other, nothing which hadn’t been said countless times already in their life together. So there was silence as they rocked together before the window. All her life appeared to her as vividly as if it had been lived that morning. She could remember everything that had happened inside the four walls of House. Why, only yesterday morning she had been thinking about the man who had persuaded them to buy the Dustmaid, and yet that had happened over twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years ... so much time had accumulated in House; no dust, but mounds, great drifts of time, years falling like scales in the spotless rooms. And House was hardly different now from when they had first moved in, and not different at all if one was talking of atmospheres and moods. She realized that that was what she loved so much: the unchanging reality of House, the consistency that had maintained itself over years and years. Outside changed constantly, was never the same from one day to the next, but House under its roof (oh, what a good choice John had made) and strong timbers, House never changed. It was a universe, quite separate and distinct from Outside, with its own laws and standards and characteristics. A place of beauty, to be shielded and to act as a shield. Without feeling guilty of disloyalty, she knew with quiet calm that House came first in her affections, before John or anyone else. House had provided the solid base from which she could grow and develop with absolute confidence; without it she was lost. She loved House with an absolute love, fulfilled herself in the day-to-day routine she carried out in service of that love.

The door signal sounded. John made as if to get up, but she put her arm out to restrain him. “It’s all right, dear,” she said, “I’ll bring him up here. Don’t bother to move.”

She stood behind the front door as she opened it so that she wouldn’t have to see Outside. The doctor stepped in, carrying a globe-shaped plastic case. He was a young man, but quiet and deferential. She liked him, and even conceived a deeper affection for him when he was kind enough to compliment her on House as she showed him up the stairs and into the living room. John stood to shake hands with him, rumbling confusedly, for this was the first new person they had met in some years. The doctor insisted that they both sit down. “If you wouldn’t mind reading and signing these forms?” he said in his charming way. “They simply ask you to certify that you are of sound mind—” (“Never sounder,” said John, booming somewhat, afraid that the doctor might think he wasn’t sure about something he was spending so much money on.) “—and that you make the decision to undergo the process of your own free will—” (“Well,” said John in his men’s-smoking-room voice, “my wife certainly bullied me over it, but I don’t suppose that counts.”) “—and the tear-offs, which require both your signatures, are debit vouchers for the company’s fees.” When they had read and signed, he said, “What was it you, er . . . ?”