Дэймон Найт - Orbit 7

“It itself is what it means,” she said, helplessly almost. “I tried to explain what it means, but if I could say it, I wouldn’t have had to do it. Inward. Yes. A particular way of looking, of experiencing the world, my life in it. When it doesn’t apply any longer, it should be gone. Others will reinterpret the world, their lives. Always new interpretations, new ways of seeing. Letting new sensations pass into the unconscious, into the larger thing that uses these impressions and also learns.” She drained her glass. “I’ll see you in a week at the latest, Doctor. I promise. You personally will deliver my baby.”

Why? Why? Why? Martie paced and watched the fire burn itself out and paced some more in the darkened, cooling room. Snow was falling softly, lazily, turning the back yard into an alien world. Why did she promise to go to them? Why to Wymann? What had he felt out there in the barn? Martie flung himself down in an easy chair, and eventually, toward dawn, fell asleep.

The hospital. The same dream, over and over, the same dream. He tried to wake up from it, but while he was aware of himself dreaming, he couldn’t alter anything, could only wander through corridors, searching for her. Calling her. Endless corridors, strange rooms, an eternity of rooms to search …

“Julia is in good condition. Dilating already. Three or four days probably, but she could go into labor any time. I recommend that she stay here, Sayre. She is leaving it up to you.”

Martie nodded. “I want to see her before we decide.” He pulled a folded section of newspaper from his pocket and tossed it down on Wymann’s desk. “Now you tell me something. Why did Dr. Fischer jump out of his window?”

“I don’t know. There wasn’t a note.”

“Fischer was the doctor who, quote, examined me, unquote, wasn’t he? The one who added that charming little note to my personal data record, that I’m schizophrenic? A psychiatrist.”

“Yes. You met him here.”

“I remember, Wymann. And you can’t tell me why he jumped. Maybe I can tell you. He dried up, didn’t he? A psychiatrist without intuition, without dreams, without an unconscious working for and with him. When he reached in, he closed on emptiness, didn’t he? Don’t all of you!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Conant has scheduled you for testing starting tomorrow morning. If positive …”

“Go to hell, Wymann. You, Conant, the rest of you. Go to hell!”

“All right. Maybe that’s rushing it. We’ll wait until Julia has delivered. You’ll want to be with your child. We’ll wait. Julia’s in room four-nineteen. You can go up whenever you want.”

He tapped lightly on the door. Julia pulled it open, laughing, with tears on her cheeks. “I know. I know. You’re going to be all right,” she cried.

“Me? I came to tell you that you’d be all right.”

“I’ve known that for a long time now. Martie, are you sure? Of course you are. You’ve seen. He, Wymann, doesn’t realize yet. I don’t think many of them do… .”

“Honey, stop. You’re six jumps ahead of me. What are you talking about?”

“You’ll catch up. It, the thing, the collective unconscious, whatever it is, has withdrawn from them. They’re pariahs to it. Empty. They think that it’s a reaction to the RNA, but it isn’t. They want babies desperately, but already the reason for wanting the babies is getting dimmer… .” She stopped suddenly and pressed her hand against her stomach. A startled look crossed her face. “You’d better see if he’s still in the building.”

“She’ll be all right. A few hours more.” Dr. Wymann sat down in the waiting room with Martie. “Tell me something, Sayre. Why did she make that stone thing? Why do any of them make the things they do, write poetry, plays, paint? Why?”

Martie laughed.

“Funny,” Wymann said, rubbing his eyes, “I feel that I should know. Maybe that I did know, once. Well, I should look in on her now and then.” He stood up. “By the way, I found a memo on my desk, telling me to remind you of your appointment with Dr. Conant in the morning. Are you sick or something?”

“I’m fine, Doctor. Just fine.”

“Good. Good. See you in a little while.”

He walked down the hallways, glancing into rooms here and there, all equally strange. “Martie, down here. I’m down here.” He turned toward the sound of her voice and followed it. “It’s a boy, darling. Big, husky boy.” He bowed his head and felt tears warm on his cheeks. When Wymann came out to tell him about his son, he found Martie sound asleep, smiling.

He stood over him for a minute, frowning. There was something else that he had to do. Something else. He couldn’t remember what it was. Perfect delivery. No complications. Good baby. Good mother. No trouble at all. He shrugged and tiptoed from the room and went home, leaving Martie sleeping. The nurse would wake him as soon as Julia was ready to see him.

“Darling, you’re beautiful. Very, very beautiful. I brought you a Christmas present after all.” He held it out for her to take. A stuffed dog, one eye closed in a wink, a ridiculous grin on its face. “You knew how it would be just like I knew about our son, didn’t you?”

“I just knew. It was threatened. Any other way of countering the threat would have endangered it even more. We have all those terrible things that we would have used on each other. No one would have survived the war that would have come. It left them. That awful vacuum in Wymann, in Conant, all of them. They do what they are trained to do, no more. They do it very well.” She patted her newly flat stomach.

“You did it. You, others like you. The ones who could open to it, accept, and be possessed wholly. A two-way communication must take place during such times. That cultural explosion, all over the world. You at the one end of the spectrum, Wymann, them, at the other, from total possession to total absence.”

“It will take some time to search the records, find our babies… .”

“They’ll help us now. They need guidance. They’ll have to be protected… .”

“Forever and ever.”

I am lying, I say again, in the dark; in the dark in the hut Mark has built of frozen earth and pounded snow. My pack transformer ratio .06 and I am dying. My identity, I say again, is 887332 and my friends call me Eyebem.

Inside me, I know, my words are going around and around in slow circles as they have all my life; I never thought it would matter—when you are young you think you will live forever. I remember very clearly old Ceedeesy describing this interior looped tape all of us contain. (I think setting my pack transformer ratio so low has called all these memories forth, though why it should I can’t comprehend; memory chips burning bright as the spark dies.) A tape going around and around, Ceedeesy said, recording the last half hour of our talk, and then when end meets beginning writing over it so that only the last half hour remains. It was an idea, he told us, more than a hundred years old, having been originally used to record the last transmissions of those picturesque air-burning rockets called jets.

Ceedeesy was my group’s principal instructor at the crèche and I looked up to him. Now I want to talk about him, and though since it doesn’t pertain to the cause of my death you won’t like it, what can you do about it? I will be beyond the reach of your vindictive reprogramming, voltage gone, mind and memory zeroed.

To tell the truth I have said a great many things you would not like during the past eighteen or twenty hours as I lay here talking to myself in the dark. Yes, talking, even though the voltage in my speaker is so low that Mark, lying a few feet away, cannot hear me. He cannot hear me, but I know he is awake, lying there eating and thinking. I cannot see his eyes, but how they burn in the dark!