Дэймон Найт: Orbit 13

“Wait until tomorrow, Davidson. Please. I’ll ovulate tomorrow. Maybe you and I...” I saw the desperation then, and the fear―worse, terror. I saw the void in her eyes, pupils the size of pinpricks in the brilliant light, the irises the color of the endless water beyond us. I pushed her away and stood up.

Don’t bring me your fear, I wanted to say. All my life I had been avoiding the fear and now she would thrust it upon me. I left her lying on the beach.

Evinson was sick that night. He vomited repeatedly, and toward dawn he became delirious.

J.P. and I took turns sitting with him, because the women weren’t strong enough to restrain him when he began to thrash about. He flung Corrie against the wall before we realized his strength and his dementia.

“He’s dying, isn’t he?” J.P. said, looking at him coolly. He was making a study of death, I thought.

“I don’t know.”

“He’s dying. It might take a while, but this is the start of it.” He looked at me fixedly for a long time. “None of us is going back, Sax. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going back. You’re all a bunch of creepies, crazy as bedbugs, all of you. But I’m going back!”

“Don’t yell.” His voice remained mild, neutral, an androgynous voice without overtones of anything human at all.

I stamped from the room to get a beer, and when I got back, J.P. was writing in his notebook. He didn’t look up again. Evinson got much worse, louder, more violent, then his strength began to ebb and he subsided, moaning fitfully now and then, murmuring unintelligibly. Corrie checked him from time to time. She changed the dressing on his hand; it was swollen to twice its normal size, the swelling extending to his shoulder. She looked at him as dispassionately as J.P. did.

“A few more hours,” she said. “Do you want me to stay up with you?”

“What for?” I asked coldly. “I must say you’re taking this well.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. What good would it do if I put on an act and wept for him?”

“You might care because he’s a man who didn’t deserve to die in this stinking city.”

She shrugged. “I’ll go on to bed. Call me if there’s any change.” At the doorway she turned and said, “I’ll weep for myself, maybe even for you, Sax, but not for him. He knew what this would be like. We all did, except possibly you.”

“You won’t have to waste any tears for me. Go on to bed.” She left and I said to J.P., “You all hate him, don’t you? Why?”

J.P. picked up his pen again, but he hesitated. “I hadn’t thought of it as hating him,” he said thoughtfully. “I just never wanted to be near him. He’s been trying to climb onto the glory train for years. Special adviser to presidents about urban affairs, that sort of thing. Absolutely no good at it, but very good at politics. He made them all think there was still hope. He lied and knew he lied. They used to say those that can do; those that can’t teach. Now the saying goes, those that can’t become sociologists.” He put his pen down again and began to worry at a hangnail. His hands were very long and narrow, brown, bony with prominent knuckles. “A real scientist despises the pseudoscientist who passes. Something unclean about him, the fact that he could get permission for this when his part of it was certain to be negligible from the start.”

“And yours was important from the start, I suppose?”

“For fifteen years I’ve wanted to get back into field research. Every year the funds dwindled more. People like me were put into classrooms, or let go. It really isn’t fair to the students, you understand. I’m a rotten teacher. I hate them all without exception. I crammed and worked around the clock to get as good a background as I could, and when I was ready, I forced myself on Albert Lanier.” He looked at me expectantly and I shook my head. Only later did I recall the name. Lanier had written many of the books on marine biology that were in the libraries. J.P.’s look became contemptuous. “He was a great man and a greater scientist. During his last years when he was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, I was his eyes, his legs, his hands. When he died all field research died with him. Until now.”

“So you’re qualified for this work.”

“Yes, I’m qualified. More than that fool.” He glanced at Evinson, who was breathing very shallowly. “More than anyone here. If only my work is made known, this farce will be worth ten of him, of all of you. If. Would any one of my own students know what I’m doing? My own students!” He bit the hangnail and a spot of blood appeared on his thumb. He started to scribble again.

At daybreak Evinson’s fever started to climb, and it rose steadily until noon. We kept him in wet sheets, we fanned him, Corrie gave him cool enemas. Nothing helped. He died at one-thirty. I was alone with him. Corrie and Delia were both asleep.

J. P. knew when he looked at my face. He nodded. I saw his pack then. “Where the hell are you going?”

“Down the coast. Maybe down the Keys, as far as I can get. I’d like to see if the coral is coming back again.”

“We leave here Saturday morning at dawn. I don’t give a damn who’s here and who isn’t. At dawn.”

He smiled mockingly and shook his head. He didn’t say good-bye to anyone, just heaved his pack onto his back and walked away.

I rummaged on the Loretta and found a long-handled, small-bladed shovel, and I buried Evinson on the beach, above the high-water mark.

When I got back Corrie was up, eating a yellow fruit with a thick rind. I knocked it out of her hand reflexively. “Are you out of your mind! You know the local fruits might kill us.” She had juice on her chin.

“I don’t know anything anymore. That’s a mango, and it’s delicious. I’ve been eating the fruits for three days. A touch of diarrhea the first day, that’s all.” She spoke lightly, and didn’t look at me. She began to cut another one.

“Evinson died. I buried him. J.P. left.” She didn’t comment. The aromatic odor from the fruit seemed to fill the room. She handed me a slice and I threw it back at her.

Delia came down then looking better than she had in days. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes livelier than I had seen them. She looked at Corrie, and while she didn’t smile, or do anything at all, I knew.

“Bitch,” I said to Corrie bitterly. “Wait until tomorrow. Right. Bitch!”

“Take a walk, Sax,” Delia said sharply.

“Let’s not fight,” Corrie said. “He’s dead and J.P.’s gone.” Delia shrugged and sat down at the table. Corrie handed her a piece of the mango. “Sax, you knew about me, about us. Whether or not you wanted to know, you did. Sometimes I tried to pretend that maybe I could conceive, but I won’t. So forget it. What are you going to do?”

“Get the hell out of here. Go home.”

“For what?” Delia asked. She tasted the slice of mango, then bit into it. She frowned critically. “I like the oranges better.”

“These grow on you,” Corrie said. “I’ve developed an absolute craving for them in the past three days. You’ll see.”

“I don’t know about you,” I said furiously, “but I’m leaving Saturday. I have things to do that I like doing. I like to read. To see a show now and then. I have friends.”

“Are you married? Do you live with a woman? Or a man?” Delia asked.

I looked at Corrie. “We’re in trouble. It’ll take the three of us to manage the boat to get back. We have to make plans.”

“We aren’t going back,” Corrie said softly. “We’re going to the Seminoles.”

“Corrie, listen to me. I’ve been out farther than either of you. There’s nothing. Ruins. Rot. Decay. No roads. Nothing. Even if they existed, you’d never find them.”