Дэймон Найт - Orbit 5

I’m someplace surrounded by sand, sitting in a baby’s crib and bouncing a diapered kangaroo on my knee. It gurgles up at me and calls me grandpa and I don’t know what I should do. I don’t want to hurt its feelings, but if I’m a grandpa to a kangaroo, I want no part of it; I only want it should go away. I pull out a dime from my pocket and put it into its pouch. The pouch is full of tiny insects which bite my fingers. I wake up in a sweat.

“Sadie! Are you reading, or rearranging the sentences? Bring it in here and I’ll see what she wants. If it’s a divorce, I know a lawyer.”

Sadie comes into the room with her I-told-you-so waddle and gives me a small wet kiss on the cheek—a gold star for acting like a mensch. So I start to read it, in a loud monotone so she shouldn’t get the impression I give a damn:

“Dear Daddy, I’m sorry for not writing sooner. I suppose I wanted to give you a chance to simmer down first.” (Ingrate! Does the sun simmer down?) “I know it would have been inconvenient for you to come to the wedding, but Mor and I hoped you would maybe send us a letter just to let us know you’re okay and still love me, in spite of everything.”

Right at this point I feel a hot sigh followed by a short but wrenching moan.

“Sadie, get away from my neck. I’m warning you . . .”

Her eyes are going flick-a-fleck over my shoulder, from the piece of paper I’m holding to my face, back to the page, flick-a-fleck, flick-a-fleck.

“All right, already,” she shoo-shoos me. “I read it, I know what’s in it. Now it’s your turn to see what kind of a lousy father you turned out to be.” And she waddles back into the bedroom, shutting the door extra careful, like she’s handling a piece of snow-white velvet.

When I’m certain she’s gone, I sit myself down on the slab of woven dental floss my wife calls a couch and press a button on the arm that reads SEMI-CL.: FELDMAN TO FRIML. The music starts to slither out from the speaker under my left armpit. The right speaker is dead and buried and the long narrow one at the base years ago got drowned from the dog, who to this day hasn’t learned to control himself when he hears “Desert Song.”

This time I’m lucky; it’s a piece by Feldman that comes on. I continue to read, calmed by the music.

“I might as well get to the point, Papa, because for all I know you’re so mad you tore up this letter without even reading it. The point is that Mor and I are going to have a baby. Please, please don’t throw this into the disintegrator. It’s due in July, which gives you over three months to plan the trip up here. We have a lovely house, with a guest room that you and Mama can stay in for as long as you want.”

I have to stop here to interject a couple of questions, since my daughter never had a head for logic and it’s my strong point.

First of all, if she were in front of me in person right now I would ask right off what means “Mor and I are going to have a baby.” Which? Or both? The second thing is, when she refers to it as “it” is she being literal or just uncertain? And just one more thing and then I’m through for good: Just how lovely can a guest room be that has all the air piped in and you can’t even see the sky or take a walk on the grass because there is no grass, only simulated this and substituted that?

All the above notwithstanding, I continue to read:

“By the way, Papa, there’s something I’m not sure you understand. Mor, you may or may not know, is as human as you and me, in all the important ways—and frankly a bit more intelligent.”

I put down the letter for a minute just to give the goosebumps a chance to fly out of my stomach ulcers before I go on with her love and best and kisses and hopes for seeing us soon, Lorinda.

I don’t know how she manages it, but the second I’m finished, Sadie is out of the bedroom and breathing hard.

“Well, do I start packing or do I start packing? And when I start packing, do I pack for us or do I pack for me?”

“Never. I should die three thousand deaths, each one with a worse prognosis.”

It’s a shame a company like Interplanetary Aviation can’t afford, with the fares they charge, to give you a comfortable seat. Don’t ask how I ever got there in the first place. Ask my wife—she’s the one with the mouth. First of all, they only allow you three pounds of luggage, which if you’re only bringing clothes is plenty, but we had a few gifts with us. We were only planning to stay a few days and to sublet the house was Sadie’s idea, not mine.

The whole trip was supposed to take a month, each way. This is one reason Sadie thought it was impractical to stay for the weekend and then go home, which was the condition on which I’d agreed to go.

But now that we’re on our way, I decide I might as well relax. I close my eyes and try to think of what the first meeting will be like.

“How.” I put up my right hand in a gesture of friendship and trust. I reach into my pocket and offer him beads.

But even in my mind he looks at me blank, his naked pink antennas waving in the breeze like a worm’s underwear. Then I realize there isn’t any breeze where we’re going. So they stop waving and wilt.

I look around in my mind. We’re alone, the two of us, in the middle of a vast plain, me in my business suit and him in his green skin. The scene looks familiar, like something I had experienced, or read about. . . . “We’ll meet at Philippi,” I think, and stab him with my sword.

Only then am I able to catch a few winks.

The month goes by. When I begin to think I’ll never remember how to use a fork, the loudspeaker is turned on and I hear this very smooth, modulated voice, the tranquilized tones of a psychiatrist sucking glycerine, telling us it’s just about over, and we should expect a slight jolt upon landing.

That slight jolt starts my life going by so fast I’m missing all the good parts. But finally the ship is still and all you can hear are the wheezes and sighs of the engines— the sounds remind me of Sadie when she’s winding down from a good argument. I look around. Everybody is very white. Sadie’s five fingers are around my upper arm like a tourniquet.

“We’re here,” I tell her. “Do I get a hacksaw or can you manage it yourself?”

“Oh, my goodness.” She loosens her grip. She really looks a mess—completely pale, not blinking, not even nagging.

I take her by the arm and steer her into customs. All the time I feel that she’s a big piece of unwilling luggage I’m smuggling in. There’s no cooperation at all in her feet and her eyes are going every which way.

“Sadie, shape up!”

“If you had a little more curiosity about the world you’d be a better person,” she says tolerantly.

While we’re waiting to be processed by a creature in a suit like ours who surprises me by talking English, I sneak a quick look around.

It’s funny. If I didn’t know where we are I’d think we’re in the back yard. The ground stretches out pure green, and it’s only from the leaflet they give you in the ship to keep your mind off the panic that I know it’s 100% Acrispan we’re looking at, not grass. The air we’re getting smells good, too, like fresh-cut flowers, but not too sweet.

By the time I’ve had a good look and a breathe, what’s-its-name is handing us back our passports with a button that says to keep Mars beautiful don’t litter.

I won’t tell you about the troubles we had getting to the house, or the misunderstanding about the tip, because to be honest I wasn’t paying attention. But we do manage to make it to the right door, and considering that the visit was a surprise, I didn’t really expect they would meet us at the airport. My daughter must have been peeking, though, because she’s in front of us even before we have a chance to knock.