Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

Afterwards there were more invoices and a tea break. Then there was lunch—two salad sandwiches and a Coke jammed into an hour—and then there were more invoices, and then another tea break and then it was getting near time to go home.

A bell began to ring. Finishing bell?

She leaned over and switched off the alarm clock. The floor of the temple was cold and hard and early sun was striking into her eyes. She washed herself and then donned her white robe, so light that it clung to her like haze. She walked to work, watching the one-winged birds spinning crazily in the sky, trying to fly from tree to tree.

At work Mrs. Cox said,

—You shouldn’t try to attend all of Dr. Cherry’s lectures, you know. You’re not getting enough sleep. Bags under your eyes. In fact, Dr. Cherry’s noticed it himself. Said he wanted to see you as soon as you came in. You’d better go now.

She walked along the corridor to Cherry’s office. The floor and the ceiling and the walls of the corridor were white. It was hard to see, in the dazzling radiance, where floor ended and walls began, or whether there actually was a ceiling or simply a continuation of the walls. The corridor curved very slightly, so little that it was hardly noticeable except as a change in the quality of the sourceless light. She looked back. Only white. Nothing behind her but white.

There was complete silence. A vacuum of silence. Only the rustle of her white robe and her breathing made any sound. The sounds were sucked dry by the silent vacuum.

She walked on. Cherry’s office could not be much farther.

She stopped. There was a faint susurration behind her. A soft, deep-drawn hissing. She listened closely and made out the sounds of breathing and rustling clothing. She turned but there was nothing behind her. She walked faster and again stopped. Holding her breath, she heard the soft sounds still behind her, the breathing sounding more labored.

She began to run, her body almost formless in the dazzling light, the corridor curving gently away ahead of her. She ran and ran, driving her legs hard against the floor, panting painfully. The corridor turned before her on its unseen axis.

At last she could run no more and stopped to listen. The sound was still there, but it did not seem to be coming from behind. She looked before her. A figure in a filmy robe walked slowly along the corridor, almost formless in the sourceless radiance.

The breathing and rustling behind her began again as the pursuer caught up. She ran forward, not wishing to be caught, not wishing to catch up with the white figure ahead.

The corridor curved and suddenly came to an end. She saw an exit through which the white-robed figure was disappearing. She ran forward and reached the exit. The breathing behind her grew louder and louder. She looked out of the end of the corridor into an enormous room. Not far from where she stood was a white toilet and Cherry and two workmen stood near it. Something bulky lay under a sheet and the white figure stood looking at it.

Cherry ordered the carcase of the Negro woman to be lowered into the white toilet. The carcase was a shapeless lump of lardy white, ridged with gristle. The block and tackle creaked as the two workmen hauled at it, hand by hand, and Cherry made little sounds with his mouth as he directed the lowering.

The mouth of the white figure opened.

The breathing behind her came closer and closer, the mouth opened, opened, the tongue stirring for speech. She looked behind and saw a figure in a white robe and as the coils tightened around her, she said,

—Cherry, why are you doing this to her?

AT SCHOOL they had called me Lightfoot, which saved me from being called Brain, or Filmworm, or something like that. Still, no one will ever know what sweat the combining of my talents caused me during my efforts, finally successful, to get into the Time Complex Building. I did it night after night (time after time, if you like) lightfooted, my kindled brain already at work as the microfilm passed before me on one of the office screens.

I was a quick study. My mother used to scold me for the speed with which I tore through homework, sometimes while braiding my hair, or filing my nails, any little chore done by the physical half of me while my demented and forceful twin, the head, galloped off with essay prizes, runner-up in physics contests, Science Fair winner, and all that.

There was still the problem of getting into the central vault of Time Complex, which necessitated further studies but easier ones, since the material was actually available at the library, if you knew where to look for it. Nobody paid me any attention when I tramped through, I’d been in and out of there for so many years; yesterday and today and, they could be sure, tomorrow too, with the squint line getting deeper between my eyes and my once fair skin fading.

Lightfoot I still was, all the same, having taken pleasure in staying in decent shape, even while the brain went on sloughing off its neurons. If I had drunk less sake would my short-term memory have lasted longer? Ah, that’s one of those questions . . .

I’ve reached an age where details bore me, so I won’t go into them, about how I did learn the secrets of the vault door. They weren’t really secrets, hardly anything physical is; you just have to gather up the pieces of information, like the ingredients for a recipe, and blend them.

There remained for me one scary part: my first trip. Head and body out of sync, I’d be done for. All of me in sync but time warped, like an old doorway, and I’d be done for. Of course, that was the risk I knew I’d have to face.

No glass booth. No dais with leather strappings on the chair. A green plastex console and at the right of it, set into the vault floor, some metal slats, tightly closed like a fist. Oh, just open up and let me dive through. I thought, listening to the solemn tread of the guard. I smiled in my conspiracy with the console. What would the guard think if he came in, seeing a middleaged woman with grey in her hair, setting the console dials and muttering hope? Muttering dialogues which had never been but might be? Taking both parts, her and him, me and you?

There was absolutely no sensation at all, but almost instantaneously I was in a big lecture hall, lightfoot, in acrylic pants which slid like fingers over my taut haunches. Wearing my double strand of ambers and a nose-clock. The lecture is just over and he stands with a group of his peers near the podium. With all my nights of rehearsal behind me I speed toward him, hand outstretched, smiling.

“Oh, how very nice to see you!” he says, and I plunge into their midst, reeking of anticipation, well aware of the impression I make and afraid that I’ll lose my not very good balance at this game.

“I enjoyed your paper very much,” I say, “in fact, I thought it was superb, and full of surprises.”

His smile is always shy. Of course he hasn’t got twenty years of rehearsal behind him as I have. “How nice of you to say so,” he says. His eyes are blue. I always knew they were. “You’re looking well,” he says, holding my hand.

“You’re looking simply marvelous,” I say, closing his hand up warmly between my palms and holding on more than is necessary.

“Why don’t we—?”

“Yes, couldn’t we—?”

Here some inadvertence occurs, possibly I slipped on the slats or something, and the lecture hall vanishes, it’s pitch-dark in some place comfy, I’m laid out on my back and he’s just climbing on.

“Darling,” he says, kissing my breasts alternately.

“Oh that feels so good,” I say, helping him while at the same time wondering, frantically, where we left his friends and how we got here and what the hell happened in the interval? I expected a lot of that machine but hardly that it would book hotel reservations, so where am I?