Damon Knight - Orbit 16

His favorite time of all was when a storm came and he could watch it from the moment it was conceived, against the mountain slopes, until it was fully upon him, battering all that he owned, and scaring him out of his senses. He thought of these shows as a gift of nature.

It was his habit to lean against the doorjamb, a piece of grass between his teeth, and watch the turbulence brewing. First there was always the feeling of hot disturbance and conflict. A midday chill suddenly passed through the air. Then the hermit looked up and out, and he saw darkening streaks, like smoke, tossing and swirling out over the desert. He saw far-off bright flashes, followed by great slow rolls of mumbling thunder.

It quickly darkened then, and Jake trembled with anticipation. It wasn’t because he was a novice, but because he had gone through storms before that he became so nervous as the wind grew and the dark thickened.

Sand and debris came flying in off the desert and thunked into the sides of Phoenix House. The shack creaked and slapped like an old ship, and the hermit lit his Coleman lantern.

During the most savage parts of the storm, Jake frequently felt overcome with the sensation that his dry house was on the verge of flying apart around him. He grew certain he would be left naked, clutching his lantern and grinning, grinning insanely with terror into the raging wind and the howling dark.

Pulling the log nearer, he crouched over the crinkled pages and scribbled notes at the height of the storm, so that he could see later how frightened he had been, how full of repentance and promises, and he would be reminded of how glad he should be just to be alive. “Life,” he wrote, “is free for no man.”

When the turbulence had passed, the sky rapidly cleared and filled with stars, and the hermit, like the desert, was glad and refreshed, and they slept together.

“Convulsions,” he observed, “are natural, and renew my confidence.”

On an afternoon three months after the girl had appeared and died, the hermit stood in his doorway looking out over the plain. He saw the air at the edge of his vision fairly congeal with the weight of an impending storm.

There was something slightly wrong, a little too powerful about the way the dark rain clouds were swirling. The charcoal-colored turbulence was high and piley; the air around the shack cooled more rapidly than it had ever done, as far back as Jake could recall.

Nature brewed all her storms in pretty much the same way, step by step, so that by the time the storm was upon you, you would be ready to believe the weather had always been the way it was at present. But on this afternoon it was as though certain phases of the buildup were missing. Jake was puzzled. Out there, in the center of the growing turmoil, he could see a curious light.

The more he concentrated on that point of artificial brightness, the more he could tell about it. After a moment he saw that the light was coming toward him; then he could see that it was moving very fast before the storm, and at last, there was that huge rooster-tail of dust kicked up by fast-moving vehicles in the sand.

Whoever it was had a long way to go before he arrived at the shack. Jake wasn’t sure there was time to get here before the storm. In his excitement, he ran out into the yard and jumped up and down, waving his arms and yelling. The prospect of having company during a storm filled him with glee.

Then something happened. The purpling boiling clouds towered high behind the onrushing vehicle, and suddenly Jake could see what was happening out there as though he were standing a few yards away. He saw that the vehicle was a jeep. Then he saw there was no one behind the wheel. In the back a woman sat upright, her hair long and blowing behind her, and she was beautiful. But where her eyes should have been there were only hard orbs of electric sparkle. Greenish, now blue . . . she was a mutant.

The vision could only be coming from a telepathic contact with the mutant. “She knows I’m here,” Jake said aloud, and he began to think about a place to hide.

She was pushing at him even now. He could feel her power in her message. She was broadcasting her name, “Ta Chaunce, Ta Chaunce . . .” It seemed to Jake that his brain was beginning to burn around the edges. He fought to shut her out, but he was battered and stunned by the unearthly light, growing and spreading in conjunction with the storm, like some malignancy radiating from the woman in the driverless jeep. He felt the first traces of the nausea that comes with unacceptable telepathic contact.

The jeep had swept closer, and now Jake could hear a faint buzzing. The awful light shifted from a pastel flickering to a harder, Day-Glow orange. It flashed and sputtered like a high-voltage wire. Behind the flashing there was a random snapping of white-hot lightning, big thick electric branches appearing for seconds at a time before the crash of thunder.

The young presence in the jeep sent out waves of malevolence, and Jake fought to free his mind from hers. His hands found the Coleman lantern, and he began to pump it up.

Ta Chaunce had been drawn to Jake’s area by the feeling of age and solitude she had picked up from his shack. She felt the desert wisdom of the hermit, inert and crinkly, waiting to be ripped and probed. For probing and ripping was her way, even with herself, although she never meant to hurt anyone or anything.

Jake could feel in Ta Chaunce a mixture of pride and confidence, with undercurrents of wonder and the careless freedom of unchallenged power. The images of Ta Chaunce crowded into him; involuntarily, his hands went up to cover his ears.

“Roll,” Ta Chaunce thought. “Faster.” The driverless jeep responded, careening across the desert. The mutant perched in the back with her dark hair shining and blowing, idly perceiving the hermit’s desperation.

When she arrived, screeching and bouncing, Ta Chaunce caused the jeep to slow and cruise around the shack. Chewing gum, she sniffed the air as the jeep circled, jouncing in ruts, investigating.

“Cease,” she thought, and the jeep came to a halt behind the shack, by the graves. Ta Chaunce silently got down and stood tall beside the hermit’s cemetery. The tumultuous air whirled around the spot like a funnel.

When their eyes met, fear overwhelmed the hermit. Ta Chaunce walked purposefully toward him, and he dropped his lantern and ran.

She did not watch him go. Her immediate purpose was to examine the shack: she could study the hermit later. Once she had discovered the secret of the shack, she need never again be puzzled by such things. And later, when she had examined the hermit, she would know this type too; and from the study of one she would learn the weaknesses and strengths of many.

She paused in the entrance of Phoenix House. The air was suddenly thick and cold, and Jake stopped, quivering in the sudden, ethereal quiet. Ta Chaunce’s boots were loud on the floor. She could smell time working in the house, and she was careful where she stepped.

“What do you want?” Jake’s voice quavered.

She turned and regarded him through the doorway, but made no sound except for the hissing and fizzing of her horrible sparkling eyes. Then her thoughts began to bombard his senses. Jake squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the sides of his head with his hands, as if he could force her images from his brain.

The shack was glowing with her power. Her mind was smoking here, touching there, passing up some things for later examination. What she touched unfolded, like a flower, then dropped, burned out and dead.

Jake felt her turning to the old piece of flypaper dangling from the center of the ceiling. It was a brittle strip of yellow paper, and the hermit could feel the mutant comparing it to the tattered windowshade, and then to himself.