Дэймон Найт - Orbit 8

The next morning she found that the house had a new wing of three bedrooms. They were smaller than those in the rest of the house and more cheaply furnished.

She never knew exactly when the servants moved in. She saw the first one, the cook, when she walked into the kitchen one morning. The woman, middle-aged and heavy, wearing a black uniform with white apron, was taking eggs from the refrigerator.

“How would you like them, madam?”

Before she could reply, the doorbell rang. A butler appeared.

“No, don’t answer it!” He continued to walk. “Please—“

“I beg your pardon, madam. I am partially deaf. Would you repeat your statement?”

She screamed: “Do not answer the door.”

“Scrambled, fried, poached?” said the cook.

“It may be the postman,” said the butler.

“Would madam like to see today’s menu? Does madam plan to have guests this evening?” The housekeeper was dark and wiry. She hardly moved her lips but her words were clear.

“Some nice cinnamon toast, I think,” the cook said, and she placed two slices of bread in the toaster.

“If you’re having twelve to dinner, madam, I would suggest the lace cloth,” said the housekeeper.

The doorbell was still ringing. It wouldn’t stop. She ran to the stairs, toward the safety of her room.

“Madam?” said the cook, the housekeeper, the butler.

That night they came at sunset. She climbed into bed and drew the covers up around her, but still she could hear their laughter, rising and falling. The water made splashing sounds. She pulled the covers over her head and burrowed beneath them.

A new sound reached her and she threw off the covers, straining to hear. They were downstairs, in the dining room. She could make out the clink of silverware against dishes, the kind of laughter and talking that came up at her from the water. The house was alive with a chattering and clattering she could not endure. She would confront them, explain that this was her house; they would have to leave. Then the servants.

She went down the stairs slowly, rehearsing the exact words she would use. When she reached the ballroom floor she stopped for a second, then crossed it to the open doors of the dining room. She flattened herself against the wall and looked inside.

There were twelve of them, as the housekeeper had suggested—and she knew every one.

Her husband, bald, bold, and precise. “I told her, ‘Go ahead and jump; you’re not scaring me.’ And she jumped. The only brave thing she ever did.”

Her mother, dry as a twig, with dead eyes: “I told her it was a sin—but she never listened to me, never.”

A friend: “She didn’t seem to feel anything. When other people laughed she always looked serious, as if she was mulling it over to find the joke.”

“She used to laugh when she was very small. Then she stopped.”

“She was a bore.”

“She was a sparrow.”

“She was a failure. Everyone knew. When she found out for herself, she jumped.”

“Was it from a bridge? I was always curious about that.”

“Yes. They found her floating on the surface, staring into the sun like some would-be Ophelia.” Her husband smiled and wiped his lips with a napkin. “I don’t think I’ll recommend this place. I’ve got a stomachache.”

The others agreed. They all had stomachaches.

The guests returned, night after night, but each night it was a different group. Always she knew them and always she watched as they ate. When the last party left, joking about the food being poisoned, she was alone. She didn’t have to dismiss the servants; they were gone the next day. The yellow-gray mist surrounded her windows again, and for the first time she could remember, she laughed.

It was Mayson, my bunkmate at the Ministry, who insisted on the guns, I must make that clear. But I anticipate,

I was dozing on my bunk when he came in, hot, flushed and untidy, and carrying a long, thin cylinder. I recognized the material as paper.

“A close shave,” he remarked. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it.” They had been tightening up the travel regulations, and a confiscated walking permit was a serious matter.

“What is it this time?” I stretched and climbed down to his bunk.

“An old map.”

I looked pointedly at the regulation plastic map of the World Union which hogged most of the wall space. Not that I ever complained. We were better off than most of the couples with apartment rooms Outside; the tap and the heating worked, and we were spared the trouble of applying for Workers’ Travel Disks.

“This is different. It’s an antique,” said Mayson, unrolling it. “Mid-twentieth century.”

With the single men’s shopping ration recently reduced to one hour weekly, most of us had time only to fight our way to the queue outside the nearest store, if we bothered at all. But Mayson had a theory about “first things first” and usually returned with something useless, offbeat and space-wasting.

I had to admit that the tattered old map was esthetically pleasing. It showed, in various colors, the political divisions which existed in the twentieth century, with mountain ranges in brown and the landmasses offset by pale-blue sea.

“Well, keep it rolled up, or stick it on the ceiling,” I said acidly. “You’ve got half my storage space already.” But I couldn’t resist a few comparisons with the modern map. The Department of London, then called “England,” was still quite sparsely populated in the west and north. The Department of Khartoum was colored yellow and marked “Sahara Desert,” showing that in those days there was still some land actually left barren.

“There’s something I want to check.” Mayson’s finger moved from the old to the new and back again. “Yes, by God! I thought so. Tell me what you see here.” He pointed to a place which is now part of the border between the departments of Karachi and Delhi.

I looked. “Two lines of hills, parallel, but converging at both ends. An offshoot of the Himalayas, apparently.”

“Good. And the space between?”

“A long, narrow valley, green with black spots.” I consulted the index at the foot of the map. “Forest land.”

“Right. Now find the place on the standard map.”

“It isn’t— Yes. Here. But there’s only one line of hills. Well, I suppose, with their primitive instruments—”

“No!” I had never seen Mayson so excited. “Cartography was dead accurate by the nineteenth century. Don’t you see what this means?”

“You’re the historian. I’m only a biologist.”

“I’m a sociologist. But never mind that. Suppose it’s the modern map that’s wrong. There may be lebensraum there—the first to be found in over a century. We’re going to see the Boss. If we handle him right, we’ll get an Orange Disk for this.”

For an Orange Disk, anything was worth trying. I followed Mayson along the crowded corridor.

Phillips was a harassed man. His title, Chief Surveyor, was a concession to tradition, and he was really a glorified house matron, pessimistically grappling with the problems of housing five thousand people in a fifty-year-old building designed for two thousand. He was placating the telephone as we entered. “Sorry, Stevens, not a square inch at the moment. Yes, of course, at once, if anything turns up.”

He compared the map carefully with the one on his wall.

“Too good to be true,” he said. “But I suppose it is just possible that Karachi and Delhi both thought they had stopped developing on opposite sides of the same range of hills. The place is well off the air routes, and the valley, if it’s there, is narrow and completely enclosed. Would you two like to go and find out?”