Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

“I’m sorry, Lin, but I’m not crazy, you know. There are a million marinas around here, and somewhere there must be one boat that will work. If I can get those stupid generators to work, I can sure as hell start a dumb boat.”

“But where would we go?” There was a recklessness in her voice now, half-believing, half-hysterical. Not caring. “Where can we go?”

“Coney Island.”

“Oh Jan, Jan! We’d never make it. I can barely...”

“Nuts! All we do is stock some food I’ve got, run up the coast and hunt around until we find the stupid thing. It’s a pretty big place, you know. It can’t stay hidden forever.”

She sighed and stood up. slowly. Jan tried to follow but she put a hand on his shoulder, holding him down while she watched the waves.

“Jan,” she said, after a long, gray silence. “Do you find me . . . that is, do you think I’m pretty?”

Jan dug a sand trough with one finger, then pulled off his cap to twist in his hands. “I ... I suppose so.”

“Then why haven’t you . . . ? I know what you said before, but still . . .”

He squirmed but couldn’t shake off her hand.

“Morals?”

He tried to laugh, knowing she was mocking him, and he coughed violently instead. Then, the spasm past, she helped him to his feet and pulled off the ring.

“I kissed you on the wheel, you know.”

“Yes.” She smiled and shoved the ring into his hand, tugging at his arm until they were headed south again. The sun’s fading glare blinded them, made them weave a stumbling dance, tempted by the warm blackness beneath the boardwalk. The sea became loud, the almost colorless sky disturbingly near.

“I want to go,” she said suddenly. “Let’s hurry, Jan, please hurry.” And she began to run, leaving him to stare after her. Then he chased her, running slowly, panting.

“Hey, Linda!” he called, waving one hand over his head. “Hey, Linda, your ring!”

“You won, I lost, remember?” she shouted back over her shoulder.

“But . . .” He tried to increase his speed and nearly tripped over a broken shell. “But Linda, the thing was rigged. The damn game was crooked!”

“I know,” she laughed, and fell . . . and the wheel rolled colorfully through the dome, blinking red yellow blue and all the people were smiling; and when Jan picked her up and carried her, they could smell the cotton candy.

LAST NIGHT I dreamed I took a grain of dirt and examined it with a super microscope. I could see a cell in the dirt. The chromosomes lay in a pattern that tapered to two familiar designs—XX. The earth was female. I screamed, I screamed, I screamed.

She looked miserable, so I didn’t laugh, merely told her she was in a fine state of health and that the pregnancy should be a breeze. Her name was Rose Willis and she wasn’t one of my regular patients. She was attractive and young and probably worked as hard as any of us when she wasn’t marching up and down Main Street with the man-haters. I showed her no reaction when she sat up on the examination table and called me a chauvinist pig stud.

Mean, mad and terrified, that’s what she was, and if it hadn’t been for the last part I would have matched her with the other two. As it was, I didn’t want her to leave while she felt so low. She was no infant, about twenty-one or two, but right then she looked as if she had been hit with a battle-ax.

Broke and hungry and afraid, she stayed to talk, rested on the table and told me things I didn’t believe. She said I was the fifth doctor she had seen, that none of the others would X-ray her to locate the tumor. They had told her the same thing I did—she had a growth, but it wasn’t the kind that would kill her. Would I X-ray her? Somebody had to do it, she said, and no matter what it turned out to be she would feel better just knowing.

I had the idea that without more evidence she would go on refusing to acknowledge her condition. Not that it would have mattered in the long run; she wouldn’t be able to lie to herself after she started to show. She seemed to be a decent person, a bit secretive yet somehow disarming, and she was very confused. It would be no strain on my time to give her the added proof of an X-ray, since two of my afternoon appointments had canceled. Besides, I was curious. Afflicted with humanity’s most common malady, she behaved as if she had been created immune. Still, she was a stranger and could be mentally unbalanced. Girls became pregnant every day, and this one had no business bullying me into doing something so unnecessary. Well, not exactly bullying. Converting was a better word. She just wouldn’t quit, and before she finally ran out of breath I was halfway convinced that she was eaten up by tumors.

So I took the picture and it turned out to be what I’d said in the first place. The presence of the fetus made argument redundant. She was, in her own words, “knocked up,” and I was a slightly disappointed medic.

More confused and tense than ever, Rose Willis wouldn’t go away. She warmed the examination table and bent my ear for another hour. What I heard was a not too unfamiliar story. She hated men, but it was a superficial hatred. The group got their hooks in her when she was fifteen, and since she had nothing else to do, she went along with them. Not all that she did was phony. Plenty of things made her indignant, but this wouldn’t stop her from getting married eventually and she said as much to a friend. The friend squealed and the group put her in isolation for a month.

“Nothing like that really works on us,” she told me. “We think what we want to think. If I make up my mind to be reasonable I can figure out almost anything. I could be a nymph or a fag or an iceberg but it would never touch the real me. I’m way inside looking out, and someday I’ll see what I want. When I do see it I’ll go after it. Duty is a pain in the ass. Once I make up my mind that it’s worth it, fine, then I’m a dandy lackey, but it really depends on how much static is threatening. I bide my time when it looks like it’ll be too much to handle. You pig studs think we’re soft, or you think we’re like you. You just don’t know.”

She had a lot more than that to say, but when I remained patiently noncommittal she finally gave up, finally stopped trying to convince me. Slumping back on the table in exhaustion, she gave me a bitter scrutiny. I didn’t believe the main point in her argument and she was too tired to say any more. From the instant she walked into my office she had insisted that I explain to her how she could be pregnant and a virgin. Someone else would have to help her there. Emotional problems were out of my domain.

What I did for her was pull some strings and get her admitted free of charge to a good nursing home. The last time I saw her she thanked me and gave me a wry smile and called me a chauvinist pig stud. Rose Willis. She had conquered the enemy and the spoils were hers.

In a few days I forgot her.

There were only four doctors in our clinic and we were thick as thieves, had been friends since med school. Tad Fraser was a genius who bullied the rest of us, told us which days we’d donate ourselves to the poor, told us when we’d have vacations, even told us how to handle our wives. We let him get away with it because he usually knew what he was talking about. Jim Thorne was a crewcut man; everything worthwhile could be had only by conforming. I don’t know if he really believed this, but he said he did. Wally Cohen and I worked our cans off and were grateful for anything good that came our way.

Fraser was upset because his wife was pregnant. She had been a real slob, weighed nearly two hundred before he made her spend six months at a reducing farm. Three weeks ago she had come home in good humor and looking unrecognizably svelte, and then she dropped the bomb by mentioning that her factory must be out of kilter because she had missed two periods.