Дэймон Найт - Orbit 12

As she waited, she sometimes wished she were still a lower primate, small and stupid enough to accept the warm salty liquid as the universe. Even then, as she kicked and paddled with clumsy hands and feet, missing the strong propulsion of her diminishing tail, she was changing. That was when she first thought that the spectrum of her senses might lack a vital part. Her environment was more alien now than it had been when she was a lithe amphibian, barely conscious, long-tailed and free in an immense world. Earlier than that, her memories were kinetic impressions, of gills pumping, heart fluttering, the low, periodic vibration that never changed

—the silver-speckled black fish settled in a shadow at Lais’ feet, motionless but seeming to ripple beneath the mist and the disturbed surface of the water. Lais hunched down in her thick coat. The layered branches of a gnarled tree protected her from the sleet, but not from the wind. She shivered. Overhead, the vapor rising from the pool condensed in huge drops on the undersides of dark-green needles, and fell again. The tree smelled cool and tart. Beyond her shelter, the shapes of sculpture and small gardens rose and flowed between low buildings and sleet-cratered puddles that reflected intermittent lights. Except for Lais and the fishes, the flagstone mall was deserted. People had left their marks, bits of paper not yet picked up, sodden; placards and posters the haranguers had abandoned in the rain, leaning against each other like dead trees. Lais let her gaze pass quickly over them, trying not to see the words; in the dim light, she could almost pretend she couldn’t read them.

If she left this place she could walk downtown for perhaps half an hour in the warmed, well-lit night, before an agent saw her smoothing people and chased her out, or had her held and checked. That she could not afford. She stayed where she was. She pulled her coat over her knees and put her head down. Staying outside was her own choice. The dump nearby would give her one of the transients’ beds, but out here the cold numbed her, a free anesthetic that otherwise she might be driven to buy in more destructive form.

A scuffing through slush on the flagstones roused her. Lais crawled stiffly from beneath the tree. Pain clamped on her spine before she could straighten. She leaned against the garden’s retaining wall, breathing the thin air in shallow cut-off gasps. The man was almost opposite her when she moved into the mall. “Hey, you got any spare change?”

Startled, a little scared, he peered down at her through the rain. His face was smooth, without character, the set and seemingly plasticized face of a thousand betrayers, a face she would not live to share. He had nothing to be frightened of but mercifully rapid senility and a painless death that could be over a century away. His life-span would be ten times hers.

“You’re dressed well to want money.”

She moved closer to him, so close that she had to conceal her own uneasiness. She needed, if anything, more distance around her than other people, but she understood the need and controlled it. The man succumbed to it and moved away from her until gradually, as they talked, she backed him against the wall. He was odorless, a complete olfactory blank, firmly scrubbed and deodorized at mouth and armpits and feet and groin, as clean as his genes. Even his clothes had no smell. Lais hadn’t bathed in days, and her clothes were filthy; her damp coat smelled familiarly of wool, and she herself smelled like a warm wet female animal with fur. The remembered instincts of her short time as a carnivore built an image of herself preying on others. It amused her, because they had been preying on her all her life.

“Some people are more generous,” she said, as if someone had given her the coat. Wisps of hair clung in damp streaks across her forehead and at her neck.

“Why don’t you sign up for Aid?”

She laughed once, sharply, and didn’t answer, turned her back on him and guessed two steps before he called her. It was one. “Do you need a place to sleep?”

She made her expression one of disdain. “I don’t do that, man.”

Cold rain beading on his face did not prevent his flush: embarrassment mixed with indignation. “Come now, I didn’t mean—”

She knew he didn’t mean—

“Look, if you don’t want to give me anything forget it” She stressed “give” just enough.

He blew out his breath and dug in his pockets. He held out a crumpled bill that she looked at with contempt, but she took it first. “Gods, a whole guilder. Thanks a lot.” The insolence of her mock gratitude upset him more than derision. She walked away, thinking that she had the advantage, that she was leaving him speechless and confused

“Do you like hurting people?”

She faced him. He had no expression, only that smooth, unlived-in look. She watched his eyes for a moment. They, at least, were still alive.

“How old are you?”

He frowned abruptly. “Fifty.”

“Then you can’t understand.”

“And how old are you? Eighteen? It isn’t that much difference.”

No, she thought, the difference is the hundred years that you’ve got left, and the self-righteous hate you’d give me if you knew what I was. She almost answered him honestly, but she couldn’t get the words out. “It is to me,” she said, with bitterness. Only fifty. He was the right age to have had his life disrupted by the revolt, and if he did not hate her land, he would still fear them. Deep feelings were no longer so easily erased by the passage of time.

He seemed about to speak again, but he was too close; she had misjudged him and he had already stepped outside her estimation of him. Her mistakes disturbed her; there was no excuse for them, not this soon. She turned and fled, slipped to her hands and knees in the slush. She struggled to her feet and ran again.

Around a corner she had to stop. Even a month earlier she would not have noticed minor exertion; now it exhausted her. The Institute could at least have chosen a clean way to murder its fellows. Except that clean deaths would be quick, and too frequently embarrassing.

The wind at Lais’ back was rising. On a radial street leading toward the central landing pad, it seemed much colder. Sleet melted on her face and slid under her collar. Going to the terminal, she risked being recognized, but she didn’t think the Institute could have traced her here yet. At the terminal she would be able to smooth a few more people, and maybe they would give her enough for her to buy a ticket off this mountain and off this world. If she could hide herself well enough, take herself far enough, the Institute would never be sure she was dead.

Halfway between the mall and the landing terminal, she had to stop and rest. The cafe she entered was physically warm but spiritually cold, utilitarian and mechanical. Its emotional sterility was familiar. Recently she had come to recognize it, but she saw no chance of replacing the void in herself with anything of greater meaning. She had changed a great deal during the last few months, but she had very little time left for changes.

The faint scents of half a dozen lands of smoke lingered among the odors of automatic, packaged food. Lais slid into an empty booth. Across the room three people sat together, obviously taking pleasure in each other’s company. For a moment she considered going to their table and insinuating herself into the group, acting pleasant at first but then increasingly irrational.

She was disgusted by her fantasies. Briefly, she thought she might be able to believe she was insane. Even the possibility would be comforting. If she could believe what she had been taught, that Institute geniuses were prone to instability, she could believe all the other lies. If she could believe the lies, the Institute could remain a philanthropic organization. If she could believe in the Institute, if she was mad, then she was not dying.