Дэймон Найт - Orbit 10

“We still live.”

“Gretchen? We once had a daughter named Gretchen, but last spring we lost her.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Did she ever regain consciousness?”

“Oh, no. You misunderstand. We have no idea if she is still alive. You see, as time passed we saw less and less of her. She did not produce in us such a great amount of interest. We dusted her features often, and changed the flowers in the vase monthly, but otherwise we rarely thought of her. Then, one day, she was gone.”

“But after so long a confinement to her bed, and in her starved condition, surely she couldn’t have gone off by herself?”

“We think so, too. Perhaps we merely mislaid her. I remember one time, when we had taken her outside for the fresher air, we couldn’t for the life of us recall where we had put her. We have recently written to the Gastwirt at the inn at St. Blasien, to see if we inadvertently left her in our rooms. But, personally, I don’t think we even took her along.”

“I can’t remember who I am.

“Sometimes, like last night, I think I’m still Gretchen Kämmer. Sometimes I’m Gretchen Weinraub. Right now, I don’t have any name at all.

“I can’t remember where I’m from, or where I am now.

“I remember getting here, or there, in a brown Volkswagen. It was the car we rented in Hamburg. I don’t remember who the others who make up the ‘we’ are.

“For some reason I feel absolutely no desire to know, I feel no horror at being totally lost. It’s rather warm and soft, like anesthesia. The only reasonable thing now, I guess, is to start again somewhere. I don’t know which way to head, and I suppose I’ll make mistakes I’ve made before. I forget. . .

“And I cannot yet forgive, but I forget.”

The Problem: Straited Ecology (not enough to eat).

Projected Answer: Turnip and Tetrapod.

Projected Method: Find them, find them.

Methodologist: A Crash-Oriented Chief of Remedial Ecol­ogy.

Spin-Offs: An Amalgamated Youth, a Trilobal Psychol­ogist, a Mad Cartoonist.

Recycled Method: “On your feet, Dordogne, do it one more time.”

“IT BEATS me how you will find the answer to world hunger in a mad cartoonist and a half-mad psychologist,” the pleasantly ponderous Annalouise Krug railed angrily. (Annalouise was a member of Amalgamated Youth.) “This is the sort of unimagina­tive drivel we have always had from the aged,” she ran on. (When­ever three or more persons were gathered together anywhere in the world to discuss actions, a member of Amalgamated Youth must be present; this was the law.) “What we need is fresh in­sights, youthful impetus: not the woeful stutterings of aged minds,” she stated.

“You are the oldest person present, Annalouise,” Adrian Durchbruch the crash-oriented Chief of Remedial Ecology bounded back at her.

“The oldest only in years, and then only if you unjuggle the rec­ord,” Annalouise maintained. “I have had my age officially set back eleven years. In Amalgamated Youth we have that privilege. Besides, you have no idea how difficult it is to recruit chronological youths into Amalgamated Youth. Further besides, Adrian, you are a crook-tailed boor to mention my age, considering all the years I have given to Youth.”

“And you are a slashing female shrew, Annalouise, to refer to Dordogne and Riddle as respectively mad and half-mad while they are present,” Adrian D. volleyed the words back off Annalouise.

James Riddle had fixed Annalouise with a pleasant scowl when she called him half-mad. J. P. Dordogne had sketched on a square of paper, then balled it up and thrown it to her. She smoothed it out and looked at it.

“They are no less mad for being present,” she said with some reason. “Let’s start it again, old men. How are you going to solve the problem of world hunger with a mad cartoonist and a half-mad psychologist? Neither one of them knows anything about ecology. Neither one knows anything about anything. And as to food, why I could eat them both up within a week myself and be hungry again.”

Annalouise Krug, though she was both the largest and oldest person present, was also the prettiest. And she was not really so old: she was not yet thirty. None of the four persons present was of really advanced years or stiffened mind. This Annalouise was of the swift and powerful loveliness and full figure that is some­times called Junoesque, but we will not call her so. She was sud­denly in the fashion, though. There is something interesting about full-bodied women in times when the edge is on the hunger just a bit. Besides which she held her age better than did most members of Amalgamated Youth.

The mad cartoonist was J. P. (Jasper Pendragon) Dordogne. He used to sign his strips “Dorg,” and some of his friends called him Mad Dorg. He was a small, sandy young fellow, all bland and grinning except for his mad black eyes which he said he had inked in himself. While Annalouise was tongue-lashing them, Dordogne had sat silently drawing lampoons of her, balling them up, and throwing them to her, and she caught them and smoothed them out with beautiful anger.

“The dorg has actually been seen, Annalouise,” Adrian Durch­bruch lobbed the words in as he bounced around. “It has been seen by at least a dozen persons.” Adrian was not referring to the cartoonist “Dorg” Dordogne, but to the fabled animal named dorg that sometimes appeared in Dordogne’s comic strip. And now there had been a whole spate of clownish reports that the bur­lesque animal had actually been seen out in the boondocks, alive and ill.

Adrian bounced around constantly as though he had springs in the balls of his feet. He expedited, he organized, he said things like “Let’s have a brain-crash” when he meant “Let’s discuss this for a moment.” He was the crash-oriented Chief of Remedial Ecol­ogy. He had held the job for only a week, and he wouldn’t last another week if he didn’t come up with something good. There was a rapid turnover of chiefs in the Department of Remedial Ecology. That showed constant effort and reassessment, even if there were no results in the department.

“I don’t believe it,” Annalouise chimed and resonated. A skinny girl simply will not have that full resonance. “If ever I see it I’ll go get my eyes fixed. I will not believe it, not when the witless Dordogne invented it in his comic strip; not when the half-witless Jimmy Riddle declared that it was a creative act and that the ani­mal was bound to appear soon afterward. There cannot be such an animal.”

“It’s that or the turnips,” the psychologist said, “and they’ve already got whole shoals of psychologists studying the creative act in neo-turnips.” James Riddle was the trilobal psychologist. He really had a third lobe or cerebral hemisphere to his brain, this on the actual testimony of proper doctors, but it didn’t seem to do much for him. He was boyish and dreamy and horn-rimmed. His theories were astonishing, but he wasn’t.

“Since this is our study and our problem, we may as well go and see if we can catch a glimpse of the dorg,” Riddle chattered.

“What worries me,” Adrian Durchbruch said, “is that there seems to be only one dorg, a male.”

“But that part is almost too good to be true,” Riddle exulted. “It’s in total concord with my theory. You knew it would be that way, didn’t you, Dordogne?”

“Yes, but I’ve been afraid to finish drawing it that way,” the mad cartoonist mumbled.

“Where has the dorg been sighted, Adrian?” Riddle asked him.

“Down in the Winding Stair Mountains of—ah—Oklahoma,” Durchbruch chirped, and bounced around in eagerness to be at it.