Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

There is a tremendous sound of hammering and before he even has time to roll off I’m poured back through the years to stand beside the console, hearing the noise in the corridor outside the vault door. It was just that damned guard, drumming out a new dance step, which echoed highly magnified through the alloy archways.

After I caught my breath, which took a while, I checked the time, I checked the dials. There was no explanation for what happened, for the timing to be so badly off. There hadn’t even been time for any conversation. I mean, I never found out how he really was, whether he was working up a new paper. Obviously there was a lot about this business I still had to learn. Back to the library. Back to the lightfoot entry to all those offices upstairs in the Time Complex Building.

The next trip would have to go better. At least we should chat about the weather, and how his cactus collection was coming along, whether the Old Man (Cephalocereus senilis) had blossomed yet, that kind of thing, like two real people with a relationship, which we’d never had.

I thought it would take me a week to check out each step and find out where I’d gone wrong. It took me more like three weeks, during which I accumulated a lot of tension and several splitting headaches, but didn’t dare take any pills because they’d slow down my thinking. I’d just have to manage until the job was done; I was determined to work it out.

Convinced finally that I had it figured, I went back wearing my no-skid, best-grip sandals to prevent slippage, just in case that was part of it.

We are cantering side by side, he on a bay gelding and me on a small chestnut mare. My shining black hair streams out behind me. He is wearing a hard derby. Up the languorous slope in slow motion, green hill against fiery blue sky. There at the top, the white fence bars to be jumped. Side by side we’ll sail over. I collect the mare between my knees, and glance over at him. He smiles. His eyes are grey and beautiful. He raises his riding crop to the brim of his hat with a nice little salute to me as I take the mare up on the snaffle.

Up she goes, like a bird, over the fence with her hind legs tucked up neat and nice. Only we keep going, straight out into the blue, sailing away on a perfect level.

Desperate, I crane my neck: behind me there is the fence on top of the hill, there are hedges and trees; there, far below me in a lovely meadow, he canters away on the bay horse.

What has happened this time? I want to know. I yank on the reins but she sails on out like a rocket through the purest of blue skies, the air is hitting my nose and making me dizzy, we’re so high up I can see the curve of the earth; hey, this is dangerous! I’m about to yell, when that mare puts her head down and bucks me off.

I sat up on the steel slats, sweating with rage and fright. No sound of the guard. How much time did I spend in that fruitless effort? My watch had stopped; that figured. Back to the library stacks.

As I passed the green plastex console, I resisted an impulse to kick in its panels. I couldn’t do that, because I intended to get some good out of it yet.

“You look thin, are you losing weight?” several people asked me during my next course of study. Well, what did that mean, that I was too fat, or that the weight loss emphasized certain boninesses, or that they saw a faraway look in my eyes? A long-ago look, perhaps? I was going to get that machine to take me back and just once it was going to go right, all the dialogues I’d prepared, what I say, what he says, what we say and do together.

The next time I encounter him his eyes are hazel and his hair just going white above the ears. We’re in the office of a highly esteemed scientific journal where he has brought in his manuscript. It’s abstruse as hell and full of symbols which are not on my typewriter, which means, since I have said, “I’d be delighted to type it for you,” I’ll have to put in the symbols by hand. It will take me a long time but I have only a short time and none at all to spare.

“After dinner?” I suggest.

“Why not?” he agrees.

We concur. We comply. We are sitting in a pinkly shaded booth over snail salad and sake martinis. We are eating rare steak garnished with mushrooms. We are holding hands and murmuring into each other’s echoing ears just as I always knew we would; palm to sweating palm down the avenue with everyone giving us envious glances, when the enormous facade of the hotel toward which we aim lights up from top to bottom in blazing green neon:

SHE HAS HER PERIOD

and I was lying crossways on the steel slats, tears in my eyes, biting my knuckles to stifle the sound of my sobs, for fear the guard would hear me. The guard had given up dance steps this week, or perhaps it was a different person this time; he was practicing a split whistle. I imagined that his whistles were boring little holes into the metal halls and naves of the building. It was no longer: what happened? It was not: where am I? anymore. It was beginning to be: why am I in such a fix? After the amount of work I had put in on this private project, I would see it through.

This time as I passed the console on the way out, I reached over and slapped one of its panels, though that didn’t provide me with much satisfaction. I felt these mishaps couldn’t go on much longer. All I wanted was one simple little episode which never happened but might have; it was not going to affect anything in the world, and I was taking full responsibility for my own part. Just once. Before I got too damned old to even care and as it was, I kept forgetting what color his eyes were.

His eyes are a light brown with amber flecks, beneath arched brows which are still dark though his hair, parted sharply to show pink scalp, is pure white. We are at table with his learned friends and my smile is cool as I murmur, “En brochette, of course,” which is my witty reply to a question I didn’t quite catch.

They all laugh heartily, give me approving glances. I can see him flush with pride in our friendship and I am so happy, he is so happy. There is a small hangnail on my right pinky which annoys the hell out of me but I pick at it under the table where no one can see.

The dinner is over, the brandies finished; flushed with pride and delight in each other, witty, beautiful, and best of all, together, we say good night to the gathered company and go off toward the grand staircase.

Above the first step there is a fantastic chandelier, white milk glass with baroque pink flowers and mint-green leaves; the light shines through milkily, dim, opalescent; an extraordinarily romantic chandelier and appropriate for the occasion. His hand presses mine reassuringly as we begin to mount the stairs. They are covered with a wine-colored carpet which has a curious kind of black and gold braid along the edges and each riser is edged with gold tacks which have curiously wrought heads.

The staircase is very wide, and we mount it side by side, hand in hand, flushed with exertion and anticipation, the eighth stair, the tenth stair, the seventeenth stair. There is another chandelier over the landing, this one pale blue and lavender, bits of crystal hang down in drops and fringes all around, flashing light into our eyes. I feel his hand press encouragingly on the small of my back, one thumb tentatively strokes my hip, yes, we are climbing the magnificent stairway to our bed of love above but why is the staircase so long and neverending? There are far too many landings; there are little sideways stairways, like the tributaries of a river.

There are lights flashing on and off the console. In one motion, ungainly though it may have been, I leaped off the closed steel slats and smashed my fists against that console in despair. Still keeping my wits about me, though, and not raising my voice; just cursing in a whisper until the thing should have fused into slag. The lights on the console went out and it stood cool and silent.