Дэймон Найт - Orbit 5

Probably the hearing had taken more out of him than he’d realized. And so damned unnecessary. Legislative hearings! After all, what did the legislature have to do with it? The very state constitution granted the Highways Department all the authority it needed. It could condemn property and pay what it knew to be right and reasonable. It could say where the roads would go and where they wouldn’t go. What shape they’d take. How to design and how to build. The roads, the roads were engineered beautifully. It was the stupid bastard people who were engineered wrong. Tiring him out and confusing him with their hearings and demonstrations. No wonder he’d missed the Hadley turnoff. That is, well, yeah, sure, he must have missed it. This cloverleaf was after the Hadley turnoff. Well, nothing to do but turn around and go back. The afternoon had yeah, you bet, upset him. But what in hell did the rest of the people have to be upset about? All that crap about highways dehumanizing, for Christ’s sake. —Take this next turn.

No!

Well, had no choice, stupid jerk back there zooming along and forcing him— All that crap about highways exhausting, hypnotizing, confusing ... All that crap. Look at this lovely cloverleaf. And this neat tunnel, here. No, but it wasn’t the highway, for God’s sake, it was just that stupid—

Okay, then, he just couldn’t remember this tunnel. So what? All the highways in the state— Okay, that was that, out of the tunnel! Nothing hard about that! And back on the cloverleaf again.

Cloverleaf? There wasn’t supposed to be— And hadn’t he had a clear glimpse, in the shadows and the blinking lights (make mental note: report defective lights) of another tunnel branching off back— Hadley turnoff. Great. Just tired out after that damned hearing, crowd, mob, reporters, motorcycle gangs, what the hell. What the hell! Cloverleaf! Tunnel! Tunnel branching off, no he didn’t want it, well for God’s sake\ Here he was. Lights bad, lights very bad, lights worse. No lights. No traffic, either, for that matter. Must be, yes, certainly: was: a discontinued branch tunnel. Vague recollection. Bad drainage. Turned out not to fit in with new, unforeseen traffic pattern subsequently developed. Bad air. Bad smell. Car gone dead! Flip on the radio, signal for the Department’s very own high-speed tow-car and ever-ready private Departmental emergency limousine. Radio dead. Of course. Tunnel. Okay. Okay. Okay. Get out, walk.

Seemed, it seemed to Craig that it was, must, had to be shorter going ahead than going back. A car. Stopped. He waited for the head to be stuck out of the window, the smashed and dusty window. Motorcycle on its side. Station wagon almost a third of the way up the ramp. What crazy— Of course. Word had gotten around, sure. And those in the know had taken their old hulks and abandoned them here. Oh boy. Thought they’d save money, avoid tickets, ah. Another think coming. Look at them all! And what a stink, what—

Definitely, someone, something, was moving up ahead there. Half in the shadows cast by strange, dim light. A man, sure enough. Black leather jacket, filthy jeans, obscene feet, and—

Craig Bums turned and fled, his screams echoing, echoing.

Behind him, unhurried, assured, horns jutting from the helmet on his head, the newest minotaur followed upon his newest victim.

To tell you the truth, in the old days we would have sat shivah for the whole week. My so-called daughter gets married, my own flesh and blood, and not only he doesn’t look Jewish, he’s not even human.

“Papa,” she says to me, two seconds after I refuse to speak to her again in my entire life, “if you know him you’ll love him, I promise.” So what can I answer—the truth, like I always tell her: “If I know him I’ll vomit, that’s how he affects me. I can help it? He makes me want to throw up on him.”

With silk gloves you have to handle the girl, just like her mother. I tell her what I feel, from the heart, and right away her face collapses into a hundred cracks and water from the Atlantic Ocean makes a soggy mess out of her paper sheath. And that’s how I remember her after six months—standing in front of me, sopping wet from the tears and making me feel like a monster—me—when all the time it’s her you-should-excuse-the-expression husband who’s the monster.

After she’s gone to live with him (New Horizon Village, Crag City, Mars), I try to tell myself it’s not me who has to—how can I put it?—deal with him intimately; if she can stand it, why should I complain? It’s not like I need somebody to carry on the business; my business is to enjoy myself in my retirement. But who can enjoy? Sadie doesn’t leave me alone for a minute. She calls me a criminal, a worthless no-good with gallstones for a heart.

“Hector, where’s your brains?” she says, having finally given up on my emotions. I can’t answer her. I just lost my daughter, I should worry about my brains too? I’m silent as the grave. I can’t eat a thing. I’m empty— drained. It’s as though I’m waiting for something to happen but I don’t know what. I sit in a chair that folds me up like a bee in a flower and rocks me to sleep with electronic rhythms when I feel like sleeping, but who can sleep? I look at my wife and I see Lady Macbeth. Once I caught her whistling as she pushed the button for her bath. I fixed her with a look like an icicle tipped with arsenic.

“What are you so happy about? Thinking of your grandchildren with the twelve toes?”

She doesn’t flinch. An iron woman.

When I close my eyes, which is rarely, I see our daughter when she was fourteen years old, with skin just beginning to go pimply and no expression yet on her face. I see her walking up to Sadie and asking her what she should do with her life now she’s filling out, and my darling Sadie, my life’s mate, telling her why not marry a freak; you got to be a beauty to find a man here, but on Mars you shouldn’t know from so many fish. “I knew I could count on you. Mama,” she says, and goes ahead and marries a plant with legs.

Things go on like this—impossible—for months. I lose twenty pounds, my nerves, three teeth and I’m on the verge of losing Sadie, when one day the mailchute goes ding-dong and it’s a letter from my late daughter. I take it by the tips of two fingers and bring it in to where my wife is punching ingredients for the gravy I won’t eat tonight.

“It’s a communication from one of your relatives.”

“Oh-oh-oh.” My wife makes a grab for it, meanwhile punching CREAM-TOMATO-SAUCE-BEEF DRIPPINGS. No wonder I have no appetite.

“I’ll give it to you on one condition only,” I tell her, holding it out of her trembling reach. “Take it into the bedroom and read it to yourself. Don’t even move your lips for once; I don’t want to know. If she’s God forbid dead, I’ll send him a sympathy card.”

Sadie has a variety of expressions but the one thing they have in common is they all wish me misfortune in my present and future life.

While she’s reading the letter I find suddenly I have nothing to do. The magazines I read already. Breakfast I ate (like a bird). I’m all dressed to go out if I felt like, but there’s nothing outside I don’t have inside. Frankly, I don’t feel like myself—I’m nervous. I say a lot of things I don’t really intend and now maybe this letter comes to tell me I’ve got to pay for my meanness. Maybe she got sick up there; God knows what they eat, the kind of water they drink, the creatures they run around with. Not wanting to think about it too much, I go over to my chair and turn it on to brisk massage. It doesn’t take long till I’m dreaming (fitfully).