Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

—Cherry, I feel sick.

—Go away,

he said, and when she did not move,

—GO AWAY,

he roared.

The sound of his voice traveled out and out to the distant walls of the huge room and bounced and reverberated back. The air was vibrating and the great space was webbed with sound.

—AYAYAYAYAY,

came the sound of the room.

Cherry was looking into the gleaming toilet bowl and muttering to himself. The workmen were looking on uninterestedly.

She ran away from them, skimming over the radiant floor, birdlike, cloudy folds of white robe floating around her. She drove her legs hard against the floor, resilient, ran and ran, until the hazy walls took on definition and she saw a door. The door was so huge that the handle was out of her reach. She pressed hard against the smooth surface and it opened, silently. She looked back. Far away, at the other end of the enormous room the little group stood, almost hidden in the glimmer of light. Cherry was talking to the workmen and the distorted words of their conversation babbled from the walls.

She pushed the door with all her might and it swung slowly back into its housing.

—THOOOOMMM,

it sounded, dull surf-thunder.

A bell began to ring. If Cherry came after her . . .

She leaned over and switched off the alarm clock. Feet tangled in sheets and nightdress damp with sweat. If Cherry came after her . . .

Already, the unpredictable coils of dream were giving way to the ordered lines of existence. She closed her eyes against the day and tried to go back into her dream. But the lines were driven too deep for escape; her mind was already trundling along well-worn tracks, meeting no resistance, no retardation of steady, constant speed. She stumbled groaning out of bed.

She walked into the living room.

She cooked breakfast.

She ate breakfast.

She washed her face, neck, ears, arms up to the elbow.

She dressed.

She combed and arranged her hair.

She put on her coat.

She went to work.

At work, Mrs. Cox said to her,

—You’re looking a bit haggard, dear. Bags under your eyes. Not getting enough sleep, I expect. My Ronnie’s the same—out till all hours doing God knows what. I tell him the same as you—you need more sleep, my lad, instead of gallivanting God knows where in the middle of the night. But does he listen? Talk to the wall.

Mrs. Cox went on like this all the time. Her conversation was like a continuous tape-recording, endlessly repeating itself, forever beginning again. You could dip in at any point and follow it quite easily. Mrs. Cox was a small, neat woman. On her right cheek was a large wart with hairs growing out of it. She gave off a stale musty odor, like potatoes too long in the earth.

She sometimes liked to listen to Mrs. Cox so that she could smell the odor. It was not pleasant but she liked to smell it while Mrs. Cox talked to her, in the way that she used to prod a painful tooth with her tongue when she was a child.

A pile of invoices stood before her and she began to work on them. After a short while she simply sat with a pen in her hand, held over the paper, dreaming of nothing she could put into words. Her eyes were glassy.

Mrs. Cox tapped her on the shoulder and said,

—Mr. Cherry wants to see you, dear. Shouldn’t worry—it can’t be anything serious. Gor, you do look tired.

Mr. Cherry said,

—Sit down, do, Miss Taylor. No, over here if you don’t mind. Where I can see you. Don’t get much chance to see a pretty face stuck behind this desk. Well, just a general chat, dear. Just to see how you’re getting on in the office, so to speak. How’re you doing then, eh? Any complaints?

—No,

she murmured.

—Nothing.

—Good, good. I like everyone to be happy. I’ve observed that—

his face became serious,

—people work much better if they’re happy. Don’t you agree? Mmmm? I’m happy—wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. And I like my staff to be happy. Don’t like them moaning around with long faces all the time.

There was an underlying sense to his words, an unstated implication which she answered with an unintelligible sound. —We had a girl here once, about the same age as you in fact, moped about all day with a face as long as a fiddle. It depressed you just to look at her. Last in in the morning, first out at night type, no interest in her work, you know the kind I mean. Well, I let things go like, and pretty soon she was doing hardly any work at all, sat dreaming with her eyes out of the window all day. Mrs. Cox got sick, having to do most of her work for her, and I got sick, listening to Mrs. Cox’s complaints—outcome of it was I had to sack her, told her she was no use to the firm, getting a decent wage for nothing.

He paused and gave her a straight, honest, Northcountryman’s look, full in the face.

—I’ve never had to do that again, so far—learned my lesson, so to speak. I realized that besides doing the firm a bad service I was doing that girl a bad service as well, just letting her go on like, the way I did. She wanted someone to put her right, tell her she was doing wrong. Now if I see a young girl shaping up that way I always have her in for a little chat, just an informal talk, you understand, and I try and put her on the right path. Suggest a few little pointers, you know. It’s never failed yet.

Silence. Then he laughed heartily.

—Anyway, enough of that. If you’re happy that’s all right. Get out and enjoy yourself, have fun. I wish I had your life in front of me, yes I do. Okay then, Miss Taylor, that’s all I wanted. Just an informal talk, just to get to know staff better, you know. Feel free to pop in anytime you’ve got something on your mind, I’ll do my best to help you.

—Thank you, Mr. Cherry,

she said,

Beans on toast and a yoghurt for tea. Read for half an hour. Stare at the wall for half an hour, hugging her legs against the heat from the electric fire. Records, magazines, and a bedtime cocoa.

—The lecture tonight,

said Mrs. Cox,

—is entitled “Time and Humanity.” Dr. Cherry will speak for approx. half an hour and there will be a short period for questions afterwards. Dr. Cherry.

There was a spattering of light applause, in which she joined automatically.

—Thank you, thank you,

said Dr. Cherry, waiting modestly until the clapping died down.

—The subject of my lecture tonight is one which might easily daunt any man. Time in one form or another has been studied or conjectured upon since the—ahem, I was going to say since the beginning of time—

He paused for polite laughter.

—But of course we cannot imagine any beginning to Time, or to Space, for the two are sides of the same coin, so to speak. An infinity of Time and Space, an endless pool in which we, finite, short-lived, rude creatures of decay, dwell. Or perhaps a more apt metaphor would be that of a rushing river carrying us irresistibly onward for eternity.

The pedantic words walked jerkily on stilts above her. She gazed at Cherry’s face, at the blue jowls, the thick pudgy ears, the folds of neck hanging over the white collar of his shirt.

Something tickled her hand. She looked down and saw a mouse on her knee, nuzzling her folded hands. She gently disengaged one hand and stroked the little furry nose of the mouse. It narrowed its eyes with pleasure and sat perfectly still.

—But it has not been proved that there is something eternal in man, something to correspond with the endlessness of the cosmos, something that is not tumbled and rushed downstream by the river of Time, but sails calmly on its surface, completely at home.

She took a pin and drove it firmly into the little humped back of the mouse. The skin dimpled at first, and then the point penetrated and the pin sank easily into the flesh. The mouse wiggled his tail quietly with pleasure. She stuck another pin into him, gently, pressing the head flush to the surface of his body with her fingertip.