Дэймон Найт - Orbit 7

“But—but he only died two hours ago: I just received word—”

“Two hours, two years; he’s just as dead.”

“But—I’ll lose my Place! If I hadn’t mentioned it to you—”

“Then I wouldn’t have known about it. But you did mention it, quite right, too.”

“Couldn’t you just pretend I didn’t say anything? That the messenger never reached me?”

“Are you suggesting I commit fraud?”

“No … no … ” One Up turned and tottered away, his invalidated Papers clutched in his hand. Hestler swallowed hard.

“Next,” Black Moustache said.

It was almost dawn six hours later when the clerk stamped the last Paper, licked the last stamp, thrust the stack of processed documents into a slot and looked past Hestler at the next man in Line.

Hestler hesitated, holding the empty lockbox in nerveless fingers. It felt abnormally light, like a cast husk.

“That’s all,” the clerk said. “Next.”

One Down jostled Hestler getting to the Window. He was a small, bandy-legged Standee with large, loose lips and long ears. Hestler had never really looked at him before. He felt an urge to tell him all about how it had been, give him a few friendly tips, as an old Window veteran to a newcomer. But the man didn’t give him a chance.

Moving off, Hestler noticed the queuebana. It looked abandoned, functionless. He thought of all the hours, the days, the years he had spent in it, crouched in the sling …

“You can have it,” he said on impulse to Two Down, who, he noted with surprise, was a woman, dumpy, slack-jowled. He gestured toward the queuebana. She made a snorting sound and ignored him. He wandered off down the Line, staring curiously at the people in it, at the varied faces and figures, tall, wide, narrow, old, young—not so many of those—dressed in used clothing, with hair combed or uncombed, some with facial hair, some with paint on their lips, all unattractive in their own individual ways.

He encountered Galpert whizzing toward him on the power wheel. Galpert slowed, gaping, came to a halt. Hestler noticed that his cousin had thin, bony ankles in maroon socks, one of which suffered from perished elastic so that the sock drooped, exposing clay-white skin.

“Farn—what … ?”

“All done.” Hestler held up the empty lockbox.

“All done … ?” Galpert looked across toward the distant Window in a bewildered way.

“All done. Not much to it, really.”

“Then … I … I guess I don’t need to … ” Galpert’s voice died away.

“No, no need, never again, Galpert.”

“Yes, but what … ?” Galpert looked at Hestler, looked at the Line, back at Hestler. “You coming, Farn?”

“I … I think I’ll just take a walk for a while. Savor it, you know.”

“Well,” Galpert said. He started up the wheel and rode slowly off across the ramp.

Suddenly, Hestler was thinking about time—all that time stretching ahead, like an abyss. What would he do with it … ? He almost called after Galpert, but instead turned and continued his walk along the Line. Faces stared past him, over him, through him.

Noon came and went. Hestler obtained a dry hot dog and a paper cup of warm milk from a vendor on a three-wheeler with a big umbrella and a pet chicken perched on the back. He walked on, searching the faces. They were all so ugly. He pitied them, so far from the Window. He looked back; it was barely visible, a tiny dark point toward which the Line dwindled. What did they think about, standing in Line? How they must envy him!

But no one seemed to notice him. Toward sunset he began to feel lonely. He wanted to talk to someone; but none of the faces he passed seemed sympathetic.

It was almost dark when he reached the End of the Line. Beyond, the empty plain stretched toward the dark horizon. It looked cold out there, lonely.

“It looks cold out there,” he heard himself say to the oatmeal-faced lad who huddled at the tail of the Line, hands in pockets. “And lonely.”

“You in Line, or what?” the boy asked.

Hestler looked again at the bleak horizon. He came over and stood behind the youth.

“Certainly,” he said.

It wasn’t easy to get up the long, shallow flight of steps to the big hospital complex, with my belly so big and heavy, but I made it by going very slowly. Went through the mesh helix of the entrance, down a broad corridor to the rear, and entered the Department of Checks and Balances.

I spent several minutes hunting for the Admitting Office, and then was waved to a chair by the lady at the desk. So I sat, waiting; the daily hospital activities went on around me as if I weren’t there. They brought in a leg. A yellow ticket was attached with the donor’s name and a code number on it. As if in response, the baby gave me a kick, and my knees jerked sympathetically.

A half hour had gone by, and I was bored, in spite of the exhibits. The main one, of course, was the heart in its wired box; pump-pump, fluids ran through from walltubes. A printed card explained that it was the only heart ever rejected by thirty-seven recipients in a row. In the center of the dark, pulsing mass, Mother was tattooed in a semicircle.

“Miss?” I said to the lady at the desk, but she shook her head brusquely at me. I had to wait some more, which didn’t seem right. Not even the holographs could attract my attention anymore. I’d already looked round and round the room staring at the sequence: the Marrow Fungus spores taking hold, little roots probing into the porous bone, extending, being nourished, the pale shelf extruding from a tibia.

The final holograph in the series showed the man, alive and well, with various bulges at brow, elbow, and knee, all of him well-kept with daily injections.

After the leg’s number was filed by the lady behind the desk, who had continued to ignore me in spite of the fact that she knew I was in labor, an attendant came and removed the leg with speed and delicacy.

They brought in a pair of crossed fingers, ticketed. Entered, filed, catalogued, and removed.

“Be with you in a moment,” the lady said, flicking me a glance. Her contacts must be old ones, for her lids were pink and her eyes bloodshot. Wouldn’t you think she’d take better care of herself? With such excellent care available.

“Name? Address?” she asked me, running a new card into the machine which put it on a spindle and creased the pattern in. We went on through my references and code number. Tick tick, the machine made its record. The baby gave a final heave before another contraction squeezed it into temporary submission. A moment later I spread my knees a little and the child gave its unborn cry.

“Oh, shut him up,” the lady said, pulling levers and punching buttons. “How can I be expected to work in such a racket? I don’t know what they want; they could at least give me an office aide.”

While she was carrying on like this, and I increasingly dilated, and the baby continuing to squall and gulp, unceremoniously helping himself to oxygen, two men came in carrying a head. It had no ticket, but the donor’s name had been stamped in government purple across the forehead. The lids were shut, but the lips fluttered, and now and then it sounded as if a croak came out of them. At the first of these, the lady glanced suspiciously at me.

I said, “I never did that.”

The head was catalogued, and removed.

“Listen,” I said to the lady. “I really think I’m going to have the baby almost immediately, right here.”

“Well of course you are, why else would you have come?” she replied crossly, triple-indexing my code number, not to mention my blood count, though they hadn’t taken a blood sample.