Дэймон Найт: Orbit 4

“Cass?”

Breathing.

Again: “Cass?” Louder.

Breathing.

“Cass, is that you?”

Silence.

“Who is this? Please. Cass?”

A small, quiet voice. “I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”

A click and buzzing . . .

After a while, he reached up and flipped out the change tray. As the lid slid away, a tarnished gray eye showed there: someone had left a dime behind.

Nine rings. Cass’ voice in the lifted phone. Sleepy; low and smooth; pâté, ready for spreading.

“Cass?”

“Is that you, Bob? Where are you?”

“Doug’s place. Be right home.” The space of a breath. “Honey. . .”

“Yes?”

“Get your bags packed, we’re leaving tonight.”

“Leaving?” She was coming awake. “Where—”

“I don’t know. South maybe, climate’s better. But maybe that’s what everyone will think—anyway, we’ll decide. Just get your things ready, just what you absolutely have to have. We can always pick up things we need in towns. There’S a big box in the bottom of the utility closet, some of my stuff, some tools and so on I got together awhile back. Put that with the rest—there’s some room, left in it you can use. I’ll be right home. Everything else we’ll need is already in the car.”

“Bob. .

“Just do it Cass. Please. I’ll be right back, to help.”

“Bob, are you sure—”

“Yes.”

She paused. “I’ll be ready.”

He hung up and walked into the kitchen, came out again with a ten-pound sack of coffee under one arm. He started over the tiles toward the door, then turned back and picked up the cigarettes lying on the counter. He stood by the door, looking back down the dim alley: stood at the mouth of the cave, looking into distances (he’d seen a stereopticon once; it was much the same effect).

The tiny neons skipped and blinked dumbly in their boxes; the kitchen light glared against the window, fell softly along the mirror. Shadows came in to fill the cafe; sat at tables, slumped in booths, stood awry on the floor; watching, waiting. At the end of the counter, the blank tan cup silently surrendered.

He turned and switched the knob. Went through the door. Shut it behind him. The click of the lock ran. away into the still air and died; he was locked into silence . . .

Cautiously he assaulted the street’s independence, heels ticking parameters for the darkness, the motive, the town. The sky hung low above his head.

(I walk alone. Alone. Men don’t run in packs, but they run . . . Death at the wheel expects his spin. Dark seeps in around the edges, winds rise in the caves of our Aeolian skulls, five fingers reach to take winter into our hearts, the winter of all our hearts)

And they came now in the darkness, they loomed and squatted about him, all the furnished tombs: this dim garden of rock and wood.

(Bars of silence. Score: four bars of silence, end on the seventh. See how they show on my white shirt among the roses. Bars and barristers of silence)

The quick blue spurt of a struck match. A cigarette flames, then glows, moving down the street into darkness.

(There is no sign for isolation but a broken spring, no image for time but a ticking heart, nothing for death but stillness . . . and the wall, the wedge, is splitting deeper but we’ll hold, for a while we’ll hold on, you and I)

He stood still in the stillness that flowed around him and listened to the hum of insects calling through the black flannel. As if in answer, clouds came lower.

(At the mouth of caves, turning. We can’t see out far, in deep, but the time has come for going away the time has come for becoming ... At the mouth of caves, turning, and time now to enter the calm, the old orders. At the mouth of caves. Turning)

He walked on and his heels talked and tine night came in to hush him.

He hollered out into the dark, screamed once out into silence—and it entered his heart.

He passed a pearl-gray streetlight, passed a graveyard lawn.

(“Sudden and swift and light as that the ties gave, and we learned of finalities besides the grave.” Is this how it feels, the instant of desertion—a vague epiphany of epochal stillness, primal quiet?)

Around him, scarcely sounding his echo, stood the shells of houses, like trees awaiting the return of dryads who had lost their way. '

(The instant of desertion, the instance of silence)

The cigarette arced into the street and fell there, glowing blankly.

He bent his head and began to hurry.

And with a nourish, the snows began.