Damon Knight: Orbit 14

Late afternoon, first day, fourth visit, seventy-fifth year . . . mentally he tallied. Brandy stood looking into the kitchen. “It’s— different.”

“I know. It’s still too new; I miss the old wood beams. They were rotting, but I miss them. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and don’t know where I am. But I was losing my canyon.”

She looked back at him, surprising him with her misery. “Oh . . . At least they won’t reach you for a long time, out here.”

“We can’t walk home anymore, though.”

“No.” She turned away again. “All—all your furniture is built in?”

“Um. It’s supposed to last as long as the house.”

“What if you get tired of it?”

He laughed. “As long as it holds me up, I don’t care what it looks like. One thing I like, though—” He pressed a plate on the wall, looking up. “The roof is polarized. Like your ship. At night you can watch the stars.”

“Oh!” She looked up and back, he watched her mind pierce the high cloud-fog, pierce the day, to find stars. “How wonderfull I’ve never seen it anywhere else.”

It had been his idea, thinking of her. He smiled.

“They must really be growing out here, to be doing things like this now.” She tried the cushions of a molded chair. “Hmm . . .”

“They’re up to two and a half already, they actually do a few things besides mining now. The Inside is catching up, if they can bring us this without a loss. I may even live to see the day when we’ll be importing raw materials, instead of filling everyone else’s mined-out guts. If there’s anything left of Oro by then . . .”

“Would you stay to see that?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at her. “It depends. Anyway, tell me about this trip?” He stretched out on the chain-hung wall seat. “You know everything that’s new with me already: one house.” And waited for far glory to rise up in her eyes.

They flickered down, stayed the color of fog. “Well—some good news, and some bad news, I guess.”

“Like how?” Feeling suddenly cold.

“Good news—” her smile warmed him—“I’ll be staying nearly a month this time. We’ll have more time to—do things, if you want to.”

“How did you manage that?” He sat up.

“That’s more good news. I have a chance to crew on a different ship, to get out of the Quadrangle and see things I’ve only dreamed of, new worlds—”

“And the bad news is how long you’ll be gone.”

“Yes.”

“How many years?”

“It’s an extended voyage, following up trade contacts; if we’re lucky, we might be back in the stellar neighborhood in thirty-five years . . . thirty-five years tau—more than two hundred, here. If we’re not so lucky, maybe we won’t be back this way at all.”

“I see.” He stared unblinking at the floor, hands knotted between his knees. “It’s—an incredible opportunity, all right . . . especially for your poetry. I envy you. But I’ll miss you.”

“I know.” He saw her teeth catch her lip. “But we can spend time together, we’ll have a lot of time before I go. And—well, I’ve brought you something, to remember me.” She crossed the room to him.

It was a star, suspended burning coldly in scrolled silver by an artist who knew fire. Inside she showed him her face, laughing, full of joy.

“I found it on Treone . . . they really are in renaissance. And I liked that holo, I thought you might—”

Leaning across silver he found the silver of her hair, kissed her once on the mouth, felt her quiver as he pulled away. He lifted the woven chain, fixed it at his throat. “I have something for you, too.”

He got up, returned with a slim book the color of red wine, put it in her hands.

“My poems!”

He nodded, his fingers feeling the star at his throat. “I managed to get hold of two copies—it wasn’t easy. Because they’re too well known now; the spacers carry them, they show them but they won’t give them up. You must be known on more worlds than you could ever see.”

“Oh, I hadn’t even heard . . .” She laughed suddenly. “My fame preceded me. But next trip—” She looked away. “No. I won’t be going that way anymore.”

“But you’ll be seeing new things, to make into new poems.” He stood, trying to loosen the tightness in his voice.

“Yes . . . Oh, yes, I know . .

“A month is a long time.”

A sudden sputter of noise made them look up. Fat dapples of rain were beginning to slide, smearing dust over the flat roof.

“Rain! not fog; the season’s started.” They stood and watched the sky fade overhead, darken, crack and shudder with electric light. The rain fell harder, the ceiling rippled and blurred; he led her to the window. Out across the smooth folded land a liquid curtain billowed, slaking the dust-dry throat of the canyons, renewing the earth and the spiny tight-leafed scrub. “I always wonder if it’s ever going to happen. It always does.” He looked at her, expecting quicksilver, and found slow tears. She wept silently, watching the rain.

For the next two weeks they shared the rain, and the chill bright air that followed. In the evenings she went out, while he stood behind the bar, because it was the last time she would have leave with the crew of the Who Got Her. But every morning he found her sleeping, and every afternoon she spent with him. Together .they traced the serpentine alleyways of the shabby, metamorphosing lower city, or roamed the docks with the windburned fisherfolk. He took her to meet Makerrah, whom he had seen as a boy mending nets by hand, as a fishnet-clad Tail courting spacers at the Tin Soldier, as a sailor and fisherman, for almost forty years. Makerrah, now growing heavy and slow as his wood-hulled boat, showed it with pride to the sailor from the sky; they discussed nets, eating fish.

“This world is getting old. . . .” Brandy had come with him to the bar as the evening started.

Maris smiled. “But the night is young.” And felt pleasure stir with envy.

“True true—” Pale hair cascaded as her head bobbed. “But, you know, when ... if I was gone another twenty-five years, I probably wouldn’t recognize this street. The Tin Soldier really is the only thing that doesn’t change.” She sat at the agate counter, face propped in her hands, musing.

He stirred drinks. “It’s good to have something constant in your life.”

“I know. We appreciate that too, more than anybody.” She glanced away, into the dark-raftered room. “They really always do come back here first, and spend more time in here . . . and knowing that they can means so much: that you’ll be here, young and real and remembering them.” A sudden hunger blurred her sight.

“It goes both ways.” He looked up.

“I know that, too. . . . You know, I always meant to ask: why did you call it the ‘Tin Soldier’? I mean, I think I see . . . but why ‘tin’?”

“Sort of a private joke, I guess. It was in a book of folk tales I read, Andersen’s Fairy Tales”— he looked embarrassed—“I’d read everything else. It was a story about a toy shop, about a tin soldier with one leg, who was left on the shelf for years. . . . He fell in love with a toy ballerina who only loved dancing, never him. In the end, she fell into the fire, and he went after her—she burned to dust, heartless; he melted into a heart-shaped lump. . . .” He laughed carefully, seeing her face. “A footnote said sometimes the story had a happy ending; I like to believe that.”

She nodded, hopeful. “Me too— Where did your stone bar come from? It’s beautiful; like the edge of the Pleiades, depths of mist.”

“Why all the questions?”

“I’m appreciating. I’ve loved it all for years, and never said anything. Sometimes you love things without knowing it, you take them for granted. It’s wrong to let that happen ... so I wanted you to know.” She smoothed the polished stone with her hand.