Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

I looked at Corrie and she nodded. “I haven’t seen a transplant in my life. No one is doing them now. I read about dialysis, but no one knows how to do it. In my books there are techniques and procedures that are as alien as acupuncture. Evinson is furious with us, and with himself. He can’t come up with anything that he couldn’t have presented as theory without ever leaving the city. It’s a failure, and he’s afraid he’ll be blamed personally.”

We sat in silence for several minutes until J.P. entered. He looked completely normal. His bald head was very red; the rest of his skin had tanned to a deep brown. He looked like he was wearing a gaudy skullcap.

“You’re back.” Not a word about Bernard, or to ask what we had done, what we had seen. “Delia, you coming with me again today? I’d like to get started soon.”

Delia laughed and stood up. “Sure, J.P. All the way.” They left together.

“is he getting anything done?”

“Who knows? He works sixteen hours a day doing something. I don’t know what.” Corrie drummed her fingers on the table, watching them. Then she said, “Was that a panther the other night, Davidson? Did you see a panther, or anything else?”

“Nothing. And I don’t know what it was. I never heard a panther.”

“I don’t think it was. I think it was a human being.”

“A woman?”

“Yes. In childbirth.” I stared at her until she met my gaze. She nodded. “I’ve heard it before. I am a doctor, you know. I specialized in obstetrics until the field became obsolete.”

I found that I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “You’re as crazy as Bernard.”

“No. That’s what I came for, Davidson. There has to be life out there in the Everglades. The Indians. They can stick it out, back in the swamps where they always lived. Probably nothing much has changed for them. Except that there’s more game now. That has to be it.”

“Have you talked to Evinson about this?”

“Yes, of course. He thinks it was Trainor who screamed. He thinks Trainor was killed by a snake, or something. After he got bitten himself, he became convinced of it.”

“J.P.? Delia?”

“J.P. thinks it’s a mystery. Since it has nothing to do with marine biology, he has no opinion, no interest. Delia thought Bernard was right, an animal, maybe a panther, maybe something else. She is afraid it’s a mutated animal. She began to collect strange plants, and insects, things like that after you left. She even has a couple of fruit bats that she says are mutations.”

I took a deep breath. “Corrie, why are we here? Why did the government send this expedition here?”

She shrugged. “What you told Evinson makes as much sense as anything else. The government didn’t mount this expedition, you know. They simply permitted it. And sent an observer. It was Bernard’s scheme from the start. He convinced Evinson that he could become famous through the proofs for his schoolboy theory. Bernard’s money, Evinson’s pull with those in power. And now we know why Bernard wanted to come. He’s impotent.” She looked thoughtful, then smiled faintly at me. “A lot of impotent men feel the need to go out and shoot things. And many, perhaps most men are impotent now. Don’t look like that. At least you’re all right.”

I backed away from that. “What about Evinson? Does he believe a leak or an explosion brought all this about?”

“Bernard planted that in his mind,” she said. “He doesn’t really believe it now. But it leaves him with no alternative theory to fall back on. You can’t tell anything by looking at these rotten buildings.”

I shook my head. “I know that was the popular explanation, but they did investigate, you know. Didn’t he get to any of the old reports? Why did he buy that particular theory?”

“All those reports are absolutely meaningless. Each new administration doctors them to fit its current platforms and promises.” She shrugged again. “That’s propaganda from another source, right? So what did happen, according to the official reports?”

“Plague, brought in by Haitian smugglers. And the water was going bad; salt intrusion destroyed the whole system. Four years of drought had aggravated everything. Then the biggest hurricane of the century hit and that was just too bloody much. Thirty thousand deaths. They never recovered.”

She was shaking her head now. “You have the chronology all mixed up. First the drop in population, the exodus, then the plague. It was like that everywhere. First the population began to sag, and in industrialized nations that spelled disaster. Then flu strains that no one had ever seen before, and plague. There weren’t enough doctors; plants had closed down because of a labor shortage. There was no defense. In the ten years before the epidemics, the population had dropped by twenty percent.”

I didn’t believe her, and she must have known it from my expression. She stood up. “I don’t know what’s in the water, Sax. It’s crawling with things that I can’t identify, but we pretend that they belong and that they’re benign. And God help us, we’re the ones teaching the new generation. Let’s swim.”

Lying on my back under the broiling sun, I tried again to replay the scene with my boss. Nothing came of it. He hadn’t told me why he was sending me to Miami. Report back. On what? Everything you see and hear, everything they all do. For the record. Period.

Miami hadn’t been the first city to be evacuated. It had been the largest up to that time. Throughout the Midwest, the far west, one town, one city after another had been left to the winds and rains and the transients. No one had thought it strange enough to investigate. The people were going to the big cities where they could find work. The young refused to work the land. Or agribusiness had bought them out. No mystery. Then larger cities had been emptied. But that was because of epidemics: plague, flu, hepatitis. Or because of government policies: busing or open housing; or the loss of government contracts for defense work. Always a logical explanation. Then Miami. And the revelation that population zero had been reached and passed. But that had to be because of the plagues. Nothing else made any sense at all. I looked at Corrie resentfully. She was dozing after our swim. Her body was gold-brown now, with highlights of red on her shoulders, her nose, her thighs. It was too easy to reject the official reasons, especially if you weren’t responsible for coming up with alternative explanations.

“I think they sent you because they thought you would come back,” Corrie said, without opening her eyes. “I think that’s it.” She rolled on her side and looked at me.

“You know with Trainor gone, maybe none of us will get back,” I said.

“If we hug the shore we should make it, except that we have no gas.”

I looked blank, I suppose. She laughed. “No one told you? He took the gas when he left. Or the snake that killed him drank it. I think he found a boat that would get him to the Bahamas, and he went. I suppose that’s why he came, to get enough gas to cruise the islands. That’s why he insisted on getting down by sail, to save what gas Evinson had requisitioned for this trip. There’s no one left on the islands, of course.”

I had said it lightly, that we might not get back, but with no gas, it became a statement of fact. None of us could operate the sail, and the boat was too unwieldy to paddle. The first storm would capsize us, or we would run aground. “Didn’t Trainor say anything about coming back?”

“He didn’t even say anything about leaving.” She closed her eyes and repeated, “There’s no one there at all.”

“Maybe,” I said. But I didn’t believe there was, either. Suddenly, looking at Corrie, I wanted her, and I reached for her arm. She drew away, startled. They said that sun-spot activity had caused a decrease in sexual activity. Sporadically, with some of us. I grabbed Corrie’s arm hard and pulled her toward me. She didn’t fight, but her face became strained, almost haggard.