Damon Knight - Orbit 15

“I don’t understand it,” said Willie, laughing. “We play this thing every chance we get. We work at it. We take our pinball playing serious. Then Sam’ll come over, hardly paying attention to which machine she’s playing, and beat the pants off both of us.”

“Natural talent,” said Mac solemnly. He watched Willie score sixteen thousand points on his first ball. It was Mac’s turn, his second ball. He pulled out the spring plunger. The warning bell on the wall rang. Mac let go of the plunger. The silver ball shot into play, hit a few bumpers, dropped down toward the flippers, then fell out of play.

“You really blew that one,” said Willie. “You didn’t even touch the flippers. What’s the matter? Too fast for you?” Mac had a total score of twelve hundred and forty points after two balls. Mac said nothing. “Are you okay?” asked Willie. Mac’s hands gripped the sides of the pinball machine. His knuckles were white. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a kind of animal snarl. Slowly, as Willie watched, Mac’s legs seemed to collapse. He began to sink toward the floor. Willie caught his friend and supported him. Mac screamed. It was a crazy sound. It was punishment.

“Hey, Sam,” cried Willie. “Sam, give me a hand. Come here and help me.” Willie tried to hold Mac up while his wife hurried to them.

“What is it?” she asked, pale.

“Goddamned Jennings, is what is it,” said Willie. “He said no punishment, remember? What does this look like to you?”

“What should we do?” Sam remembered her own punishments well enough to know exactly what Mac was going through. She knew he ought to be in his cell. She knew that, in his agony and his insane terror, they would never be able to get him to his dorm.

“I don’t know,” said Willie. “Put him down here, I guess. We can watch him here. Poor sucker.” There were shrieks all around the rec room as others were consumed by their punishments. Those who had not been marked looked around helplessly. Shortly afterward the movie started. Willie looked at Sam. She had been crying. She was staring at Mac, who lay contorted on the cold tiled floor of the rec room. “Come on,” said Willie. “We can’t do a thing for him until Jennings finishes.”

“Can we just leave Mac here?”

“Nothing will happen to him. It’s almost as good as being in his cell. He’ll be out of it by the time the movie’s over.”

On Oneday morning Willie woke up. The dorm was strangely quiet. After the movie the previous evening, everyone had gone straight to their dorm; Jennings’ apparent act of treachery had angered and bewildered them all. Willie was still too confused to know just how to react. What could they do? Nothing. It was very simple. They could do nothing.

There was a knock on Willie’s door. “All right, Mr. Zepkin,” shouted Willie. “I’m up. I’m getting up.” The knock sounded again. Willie swore softly, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and went to the door. It wasn’t the uniformed trusty who had knocked. It was a woman.

“Good God,” said Willie, realizing that he was still naked. “What are you doing in this building now?”

“I had to see you, Mr. Bordinaro,” said the woman breathlessly. “I got your name from the D.A.’s office. You don’t know who I am. Nobody does, not in this town. I have to trust you, Mr. Bordinaro. I’m in trouble.”

Willie stood quietly for a moment, shifting from one foot to the other. He looked out into the corridor; no one else was in sight. There were no other sounds. He stared at the young woman. It was, of course, Diane Hogarth in the role of Gussie Demoyne, from .38 Caliber. Willie recalled how he, Sam, and Mac had been drawn into Slaves of Blood some months before. A slow grin lit his face, just as it had Dan Calvin’s in the movie. “Step into my office,” he said. “Don’t mind the bed. In a little while it will seem perfectly natural to you.” He leered at her; she swept by, ignoring his remarks. She went to the window and looked out in silence. Then she turned suddenly, surprising him, and began to cry. Willie immediately regretted his words. He felt helpless. “Sit down,” he said. “Stop the tears. I can’t start helping you until you stop crying.” He tried to get dressed unobtrusively. She looked past him, into a camera that wasn’t there, and smiled weakly.

Sam paced back and forth the length of her small cell. Gussie Demoyne sat on her cot and watched her. “Wait a minute,” murmured Sam. “Let me think. Wait a minute.”

“I don’t have much time,” said the strange woman.

“None of us ever do,” said Sam, reading the lines of Sheeky Bordinaro. “We all manage to forget that. Sometimes somebody remembers. He gets panicked. That’s what pays my rent.” Still, all the time she said those words, she thought other things. “What did we decide, the last time?” she wondered. “What should I do? Is Jennings really leaving it all open? Could I really walk out the gate?”

“I don’t have the time to play wise old man with you,” said Gussie Demoyne. “If you won’t help me, I’ll get another name from the D.A.” She rose and started toward the door.

“Hold on,” said Sam. “Yeah,” she thought, “hold on. I can’t think. I don’t have time to plan. It isn’t Oneday morning. It’s still Sevenday night. Willie’s going through this same scene, right now. Mac’s still being punished. Oh, my God.”

The other woman stopped and turned. She looked pleadingly at Sam. “Okay, sweetheart,” said Sam. “You’ve convinced me. At least for the next hour. After that, the convincing gets harder and more expensive. I’ll have to see the color of your dough. Even those baby blues of yours won’t get you around that. Otherwise, I’ll be happy to give you another name. No sense in bothering the D.A.’s office. They’re screwed up enough over there.”

Gussie Demoyne smiled, sniffed, then ran over and threw her arms around Sam’s neck. “Thanks, oh, thanks, Mr. Bordinaro!” she cried.

“Call me Sheeky,” said Sam. “What am I supposed to do?” she thought. “Should I just try to leave? Should I wait for Willie to come here?”

“All right,” said the other woman. “All right, Sheeky.”

“It’s simple,” said Willie the next day. “It’s really simple. Jennings is just messing up. That’s all. And we got to figure out, right now, how to take advantage of it next time.”

“Sure,” said Sam.

“No,” said Mac. “It can’t be that easy. Do you think it was a coincidence that I was punished? I had him pegged the last time. I’m sure of it. If I hadn’t been punished, I would have led the three of us out of here. Right out under his nose. He’s giving us the chance. I think he’s doing it on purpose, to make us think we can beat him.”

“We can beat him,” said Willie. “Next time.”

“We’ll just need some plans,” said Sam. “In case one of us is punished, the other two will know what to do. Or if two of us are punished.”

“We can’t beat him,” said Mac insistently. “He only wants us to think we can. To make us docile. I don’t know. I don’t really know his reasons. But it can’t be that easy.”

“Why not?” asked Willie. “Why couldn’t it be that easy?”

“I don’t know,” said Mac. “It just never is, that’s all.”

It was the fourth week in Sextuary; the weather was dry and pleasant, with the sky so blue and bright that beneath it people’s faces looked washed-out gray. The ground in the yard was moist and rich; the air had an exciting edge to it, not cold, like the winter, but just—exciting. Still, the high gray walls around the yard were solemn and perfect.