Damon Knight - Orbit 17

Then I see it, hanging grotesquely on a rack of its own. A woman’s skin.

He’s gone crazy! He’s killed a woman and cut off her skin!

I approach the pale object, my heart choking on its own blood. The skin flaps out at me like an atrocious flag, something from a torture chamber. Alive, impossibly, it shudders as I draw near ... a woman’s fine white pelt, peeled off like the skin of a fruit, the actual woman discarded.

I touch it. It recoils.

I take it firmly in both hands, half in horror, half in fascination. Its silky writhing subsides and I can see that it is a total organism in itself. They must have grown it for him, in those laboratories. The edges reach out, seem to melt and join with my own skin. The epidermal fusion tingles. Its nipples swell, big as walnut halfshells. It wants me.

I leave the pelt and call out God’s name. I look around the room, but it is lined with mirrors and multiplies my own image endlessly. I pull down a rack of clothes, screaming. I forget what I have come here for. Another rack comes crashing down, and another, and there I see him.

It is God. He lies comatose on a hydrobed—armless, legless, incomplete and vulnerable, surrounded by his living prostheses. His face is claylike, final as a death mask. Arms, legs, whole sections of bodies squirm on their hooks.

I hurry to my cubicle and vomit into the sink. My legs cannot support my weight. My mind cannot deal with the enormity of the fraud I have witnessed. I try to blot it out, but I think I understand anyway.

God is our prosthesis.

“You don’t have to listen to them, the ones who come to me, the ones who still have use for people like me. They talk of the void in their lives, the futility of existence, and, yes, I understand them. No sense of personal continuity, only a vague promise of racial salvation . . . sometimes it is difficult to encourage them. . . .”

The priest has been drinking. I listen politely to his confession, although his tone has become blustery and aggressive. The events of the previous day rush into my mind, disrupt my concentration. I watch the priest through a haze, not really hearing his words. An unhealthy man in a clerical collar ... my mind focuses on random details; an angry shaving rash, spiky hair. “They own our bodies,” he says. “Do you know they even sterilize priests? Yes, it’s true . . . but you’ll never have to worry about that, will you? You’ll stay young forever and never have to deal with such things ... a good chiggie never gets old, isn’t that the way?” He takes another drink. “In the eyes of God—”

“You forget. I don’t recognize your god.” Nor mine either.

“Ah, they’ve taken care of that, too? They grow gods as well as men in those bottles?” He laughs explosively, dropping his head onto the desk before him. An angry boil glistens at the back of his neck. Die, I think. If you can’t deal with life then die and be done with it! I can do nothing for you! A truncated god, a sideshow diety, a life propped up with illusions—

My muscles tighten. How I hate this man, my existence with him, the chaste, ridiculous clothes I wear! Shall I confront him with my body, the body which other men have beaten and violated? And women! Would he be surprised at the deception? The way I have been deceived . . .

“Tell me,” he says, raising his head from the blotter. “How long have you been this way? Ten, twenty years?”

I do not answer. The priest begins muttering to himself angrily. “. . . an abomination . . . spiritual abortion . . .” He stands up. He reaches out to touch me and I can smell his liquorish breath.

“That’s not in our contract,” I caution him.

“You can’t go on like this ... they’ve corrupted us, whored us, sold our souls to the devil! But we can still save one another— there is still that possibility . . .”

“No—” Rough hands seek me out.

“Just a little longer . . .”

I push away, fumble for the holster beneath my frock. “You have violated the terms of our contract. No one would ask questions.” I aim for the heart. Armless, legless, a sitting target—

He stares at me with bleary eyes. My hand trembles—why? It has killed before. But now the situation is suddenly changed. I leave the room abruptly, a failure. I am no longer in control.

God is angry. I do not look at him, whatever form he has taken. Does he know my secret? Our secret?

“There have been complaints,” he says, “serious complaints which you can no doubt help explain. A priest has attempted suicide—luckily he was saved. But there have been others.” The air smells sweetly of some fresh cologne. Here God is clean, immaculate. But in that awful skin I smelled his sweat.

I do not answer. I stare out the window in an embarrassed silence, past the garden fence (now electrified), at an old woman on a park bench. A life-sized doll sits at her side, and she talks to it as if it were a living child. It does not have eyes.

“Well?”

I have nothing to say. I am dead. “I must warn you,” says God. “Turn back before it is too late. Return to your duties in a spirit of humility. Have we not impressed upon you the hellishness of the outside world, the torments that would await you upon leaving the fold? Here, at least, you are part of a solution—a harsh solution, but a solution nevertheless!”

I look up slowly. A dark figure, covered with a veil. He shakes his head wearily. He has been through this before. I go back to my cubicle and lie quietly on the sleeper. I stare obliviously into the hypnohood, and dream of nothing.

They’ve changed the food. I’ve begun to menstruate.

Time passes. I have taken a name, taken a lover. He brings a gift to our cramped rooms—a drug that will induce a psychological simulation of pregnancy and birth. The latest thing. I swallow it hesitantly. The taste is bitter.

“Will it hurt?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says, and leaves the room. For men there are few condolences, chemical or otherwise. I cry briefly for him, but soon the drug is in command.

The room grows dim. Silently, the phantom child takes form—a child of impossible beauty, eyes tightly closed, its face frozen in a perpetual smile of respect and adoration. Formed in my own image, stillborn, inert ... a perfect child.

I challenge my opponent to give a frank, affirmative answer: Yes or No!

—Abraham Beame

Quel Beau Sentiment!

There’s a handsome mountain called Avala near Belgrade; people go there on one-day excursions. ... It also has a small plaque to the memory of Soviet Marshal Zhokov, who died there a few years ago when his plane crashed into the mountain.

—“SF East, an SF Safari to Redland,” by Frederik Pohl, Galaxy, November 1974

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