Damon Knight - Orbit 17

“Roof,” said John, barking a little in an attempt to sound forceful.

“Window,” said Ann, smiling at him and taking his hand.

“A fine choice,” murmured the doctor, unzipping his plastic bag and taking out a black plastic globe, festooned with switches and dials. “If you’ll excuse me?” he said, leaving the room and pulling behind him several power leads which slid smoothly out from holes on the globe’s surface. While he was gone they sat and enjoyed the beauty of the garden; like a pair of upraised cupped hands receiving the sunlight. They did not speak.

“Excuse me,” said the doctor, as he dragged the last cable past their rocking chairs and attached its suckerlike end to the window. “Nearly ready now,” he said, smiling at them as he began to press buttons and set dials on the globe.

“What is the, er... the, er, principle behind this gadget?” said John, nervously twiddling his fingers. Ann sighed: he always tried to get technical with work-people, as if to show that not even their mean lives were without interest to him, or as if to prove that he could do their jobs without any trouble if he had to. But the doctor was a nice young man, he was already answering as he adjusted his machine. “Well, sir,” he was saying, “the process itself is what they call a ‘spinoff from SpaceTech. It was originally used, and still is, to set up the sentient ships they send out to the stars, but then they found it could be applied commercially, and the company obtained the license.”

“Interesting,” said John, staring vacantly out the window and pulling at the loose skin under his jaw.

“Briefly,” continued the doctor, adjusting what looked like a pair of headbands attached to the globe, “if you imagine that your body, everything that’s you, is made up of millions of tiny particles, only a very few, maybe one thousandth percent, of those particles constitute the real, essential you, the you that has some permanency apart from your flesh and blood. What this little machine does is to take that one thousandth percent before it’s dragged down by the flesh and blood, and, er, sort of embed it, set it into the matrix of something else that might last a little longer than the human body.”

“Uh-huh,” said John, still vacant.

The doctor pressed a button on the globe and it began to hum. “If you’ll allow me?” he said, smiling at them, and placed the metal bands around their heads. “Not long now,” he said.

Ann was doing an inventory of House, starting at the top. Bedroom with those beautiful heavy curtains and the fitted wardrobes and wonderfully soft bed, not to mention the thick carpet so gentle on the feet and the dressing table so delicate in its elegance. Bathroom, with its warm smooth tiles and big yellow bath, and the wall mirror and—

“Ready?” said the doctor, his index fingers poised over two buttons.

She missed out the rest of House and started on kitchen straight away. Kitchen had always been her favorite room: glass-fronted crockery display cabinet, with rows of beautiful plates and cups, softly humming Dustmaid, smooth and squat—

There was a fading warmth crawling slowly across her body, thin rosy fingers trailing over her. It was not that she opened her eyes, for she had none, but suddenly the blackness was gone and she was looking at the giant orange sun slowly disappearing below the world, the last long beams of ruby light touching her with their dying heat before they sank out of sight. Between her and the sun there were roofs and roofs and roofs, their bristling aerials silhouetted against the orange globe. She was Window, many-faceted and bright. She could see in any direction she wanted to, all at once. From her attic facet she could see far out over the town, so far that she was sure she could make out the wide smile of the sea. From her ground-floor landing facet her view was of a section of the garden wall, wonderfully realistic synthetic brick, leaves casting long distorted shadows over its surface. From her bedroom facet she saw the monorails swishing like bullets along their concrete rails, faces framed in their lighted windows. There was so much to take in.

There was a stirring above her and she could sense John awakening, being born into his new existence as the strong and impervious protector of her and House from the elements, the air, the Outside. Her and House: she realized with a thrill that there was no longer any distinction, any difference between her and House. She was House, she was part of the known and loved fabric. Her fulfillment was now absolute and eternal, she had permanent union with the loved one.

She soon tired of the views from her facets. There was nothing of real interest to see. The stars were coming out, but she did not like them, had never liked them: they were so cold and far away, they had nothing whatsoever to do with her, with House. There were neon signs now, but she had always found them vulgar, and from her new viewpoint they even seemed pathetic, silly little flickers against the darkness. Airplanes passed low overhead with their navigation lights burning, but what had airplanes to do with her? There was, really, when you thought about it, nothing to see Outside.

With a sense of homecoming after delicious anticipation, she reversed herself in a blink of reflected moonlight, looked not outside, but inside, observed all night without blinking the beauty of her interior, all the rooms of House with their furniture and appliances and gadgets. By morning, when the silent rooms were just beginning to receive the first light, she had decided where all the others would go. June, of course, would be Door, busily opening and closing, knowing all commerce between rooms; Alfred, her weak and bitter husband, would be Floor, willingly receiving the blows and footfalls of all who entered; ceiling, walls, timber and stone, she had the whole fabric of House allocated. Without doubt the foundations would go to her grandson, Adam, he would surely turn out the strongest and most dependable of the whole family. Yes, definitely Foundation for Adam.

The front door opened and in came June and Alfred and Adam. “Oh, what a mess!” cried June, immediately taking off her coat and switching on the Dustmaid. “Seems all right to me,” muttered Alfred, following his wife closely until she thought fit to tell him that he was free for the time being. Adam said nothing, but stood for a moment in the kitchen, looking out at the garden, and then began to explore House from top to bottom.

House hummed happily.

House.

Men are pigs to begin with, so why not—?

“Jump,” said the lab assistant, a medical student named Meeford.

Heller Olay, naked on a twenty-foot tower, looked down and shivered but did not jump. Smith the gorilla, in his regular place along the far wall, grabbed with both hands the sliding grid on the front of his cage and bellowed feelingly.

Meeford penned a goose egg for “negative” in the column labeled “response” on his clipboard and said, in a burst of unintentional poetry, “Okay for today, Olay.”

Heller remained immobile, causing Meeford to extend his rhyme scheme. “Hey!”

Slowly the figure on the tower got into motion, began to descend the tall steel ladder. Dr. Morgane Swoos, the project director, rested her prodigiously wrought and marvelously cloven bust on a high counter across the lab from the tower and watched the descent with an expression of troubled interest on her sharp but not really forbidding features.

Heller was a professional guinea pig. At twenty-six he was bald as a waxed floor from some previous experiment which had produced an unexpected alopeciac side effect. His skin was parchment, his blood was soup. The insides of his forearms and the cheeks of his posterior were covered with the maculae of old needle marks. He had the ropy muscles and marsupial paunch of a man two and a half times his age; the chalky flesh of his limbs was lashed to the deteriorating bone by crawling threads of bulging violet veins.