Damon Knight: Orbit 14

He hesitated. “You sure you want to—?”

“Sure. Come on, lazy.” She gestured him up.

And he wondered again why she had come home early.

So on the last afternoon he took her out through the stone-paved winding streets, where small whitewashed houses pressed for footholds. They climbed narrow steps, panting, tasted the sea wind, bought fruit from a leathery smiling woman with a basket.

“Mmm—” Brandy licked juice from the crimson pith. “Who was that woman? She called you ‘Sojer,’ but I couldn’t understand the rest ... I couldn’t even understand you! Is the dialect that slurred?”

He wiped his chin. “It’s getting worse all the time, with all the newcomers. But you get used to everything in the lower city. . . . An old acquaintance, I met her during the epidemic, she was sick.”

“Epidemic? What epidemic?”

“Oro Mines was importing workers—they started before your last visit, because of the bigger raw material demands. One of the new workers had some disease we didn’t; it killed about a third of New Piraeus.”

“Oh, my God—”

“That was about fifteen years ago . . . Oro’s labs synthesized a vaccine, eventually, and they repopulated the city. But they still don’t know what the disease was.”

“It’s like a trap, to live on a single world.”

“Most of us have to ... it has its compensations.”

She finished her fruit, and changed the subject. “You helped take care of them, during the epidemic?”

He nodded. “I seemed to be immune, so—”

She patted his arm. “You are very good.”

He laughed; glanced away. “Very plastic would be more like it.”

“Don’t you ever get sick?”

“Almost never. I can’t even get very drunk. Someday I’ll probably wake up entirely plastic.”

“You’d still be very good.” They began to walk again. “What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Ah, Soldier, you’ve got a lady friend.’ She seemed pleased.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘That’s right.’ ” Smiling, he didn’t put his arm around her; his fingers kneaded emptiness.

“Well, I’m glad she was pleased ... I don’t think most people have been.”

“Don’t look at them. Look out there.” He showed her the sea, muted greens and blues below the ivory jumble of the flat-roofed town. To the north and south mountains like rumpled cloth reached down to the shore.

“Oh, the sea—I’ve always loved the sea; at home we were surrounded by it, on an island. Space is like the sea, boundless, constant, constantly changing . . .”

“—spacer!” Two giggling girls made a wide circle past them in the street, dark skirts brushing their calves.

Brandy blushed, frowned, sought the sea again. “I—think I’m getting tired. I guess I’ve seen enough.”

“Not much on up there but the new, anyway.” He took her hand and they started back down. “It’s just that we’re a rarity up this far.” A heavy man in a heavy caftan pushed past them; in his cold eyes Maris saw an alien wanton and her overaged Tail.

“They either leer, or they censure.” He felt her nails mark his flesh. “What’s their problem?”

“Jealousy . . . mortality. You threaten them, you spacers. Don’t you ever think about it? Free and beautiful immortals—”

“They know we aren’t immortal; we hardly live longer than anybody else.”

“They also know you come here from a voyage of twenty-five years looking hardly older than when you left. Maybe they don’t recognize you, but they know. And they’re twenty-five years older. . . . Why do you think they go around in sacks?”

“To look ugly. They must be dreadfully repressed.” She tossed her head sullenly.

“They are; but that’s not why. It’s because they want to hide the changes. And in their way to mimic you, who always look the same. They’ve done it since I can remember; you’re all they have to envy.”

She sighed. “I’ve heard on Elder they paint patterns on their skin, to hide the change. Ntaka called them ‘youth-fixing,’ didn’t he?” Anger faded, her eyes grew cool like the sea, gray-green. “Yes, I think about it . . . especially when we’re laughing at the lubbers, and their narrow lives. And all the poor panting awestruck Tails, sometimes they think they’re using us, but we’re always using them. . . . Sometimes I think we’re very cruel.”

“Very like a god—Silver Lady of the Moon.”

“You haven’t called me that since—that night ... all night.” Her hand tightened painfully; he said nothing. “I guess they envy a cyborg for the same things. . . .”

“At least it’s easier to rationalize—and harder to imitate.” He shrugged. “We leave each other alone, for the most part.”

“And so we must wait for each other, we immortals. It’s still a beautiful town; I don’t care what they think.”

He sat, fingers catching in the twisted metal of his thick bracelet, listening to her voice weave patterns through the hiss of running water. Washing away the dirty looks—Absently he reread the third paragraph on the page for the eighth time; and the singing stopped.

“Maris, do you have any—”

He looked up at her thin, shining body, naked in the doorway. “Brandy, God damn it! You’re not between planets—you want to show it all to the whole damn street?”

“But I always—” Made awkward by sudden awareness, she fled.

He sat and stared at the sun-hazed windows, entirely aware that there was no one to see in. Slowly the fire died, his breathing eased.

She returned shyly, closing herself into quilted blue-silver, and sank onto the edge of a chair. “I just never think about it.” Her voice was very small.

“It’s all right.” Ashamed, he looked past her. “Sorry I yelled at you . . . What did you want to ask me?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She pulled violently at her snarled hair. “Ow! Damn it!” Feeling him look at her, she forced a smile. “Uh, you know, I’m glad we picked up Mima on Treone; I’m not the little sister anymore. I was really getting pretty tired of being the greenie for so long. She’s—”

“Brandy—”

“Hm?”

“Why don’t they allow cyborgs on crews?”

Surprise caught her. “It’s a regulation.”

He shook his head. “Don’t tell me ‘It’s a regulation,’ tell me why.”

“Well . . .” She smoothed wet hair-strands with her fingers. “. . . They tried it, and it didn’t work out. Like with men—they couldn’t endure space, they broke down, their hormonal balance was wrong. With cyborgs, stresses between the real and the artificial in the body were too severe, they broke down too. ... At the beginning they tried cyborganics, as a way to let men keep space, like they tried altering the hormone balance. Neither worked. Physically or psychologically, there was too much strain. So finally they just made it a regulation, no men on space crews.”

“But that was over a thousand years ago—cyborganics has improved. I’m healthier and live longer than any normal person. And stronger—” He leaned forward, tight with agitation.

“And slower. We don’t need strength, we have artificial means. And anyway, a man would still have to face more stress, it would be dangerous.”

“Are there any female cyborgs on crews?”

“No.”

“Have they ever even tried it again?”

' “No—”

“You see? The League has a lock on space, they keep it with archaic laws. They don’t want anyone else out there!” Sudden resentment shook his voice.

“Maybe ... we don’t.” Her fingers closed, opened, closed over the soft heavy arms of the chair; her eyes were the color of twisting smoke. “Do you really blame us? Spacing is our life, it’s our strength. We have to close the others out, everything changes and changes around us, there’s no continuity—we only have each other. That’s why we have our regulations, that’s why we dress alike, look alike, act alike; there’s nothing else we can do, and stay sane. We have to live apart, always.” She pulled her hair forward, tying nervous knots. “And—that’s why we never take the same lover twice, too. We have needs we have to satisfy; but we can’t afford to . . . form relationships, get involved, tied. It’s a danger, it’s an instability. . . . You do understand that, don’t you, Maris; that it’s why I don’t—” She broke off, eyes burning him with sorrow and, below it, fear.