Дэймон Найт: Orbit 4

He didn’t like the phrase, “tried to commit suicide,” but it was how they all talked about it. He remembered his mother and her suicide that followed the execution of his father. He remembered the pictures of the mangled children that had arrived in the mail, and the letters, and phone calls, and his mother’s anguish and final surrender. He would not have got through that period without Paula and Gregory. His hand froze in the process of lifting his cigarette to his lips.

Paula! He hadn’t thought about Paula for twenty years. Not since he had gone to hear her speak and read her poetry. Ethel had been so bored by .it. They hadn’t stayed for all the program, but later he had gone back and met Paula at the reception that followed. She never appeared surprised to find him, he had thought then when her face lighted with pleasure at his approach. Never surprise, only pleasure to see him again. He almost asked her if she loved him then, but he didn’t. Again she seemed different, wiser, but not only that. In touch with something that he couldn’t grasp, perhaps. Tuned in, the students said of her, adoring her and what she wrote for them.

He inhaled deeply, coughed hard and held onto a tree until he had his breath back. Coughing made him dizzy, made his head swell and throb. He thought fleetingly of himself dying, dead, and Paula coming to the funeral, weeping over his lifeless body, pleading for another chance with him. A bitter smile twisted his face and he pulled hard on the cigarette, finishing it, not caring if he coughed or not. Another paroxysm, and he knew that he did care. He waited for it to pass and then returned to his room and the programs that had to be corrected.

Toward dawn he threw himself down on his bed and fell asleep instantly.

We pull ourselves up the steep rocks of the cliff and when we get to the top we have no breath left for talking. Paula is sweating, and she rubs the back of her hand over her face carelessly, leaving a smudge of dirt there from her forehead to her chin. I lie back with my eyes closed, trying not to cry yet. Hoping never to cry over my mother. Paula says, “Mom and Dad say you can live with us until you go to school in the fall. Okay?”

It isn’t really a question. I can go with them or I can go with my aunt and uncle who came from Ohio for the funeral. The state won’t let me stay alone yet because I am only seventeen. My aunt told me that much. She is angry because my mother, her sister, killed herself. It was irreligious of her. It was selfish of her. I despise my aunt.

I feel Paula’s toe digging my side and I squirm, wanting not to cry. She giggles and the bare toe prods again, digs and wiggles against my side. I look at her and I know that I won’t cry now. I jump up and grab her, meaning to shake her, but I just hold her, and she stops giggling. We don’t move for a long time until Gregory interrupts us. He hasn’t noticed anything so maybe it wasn’t so long, but that moment goes on and on.

When we go back to my house my aunt is angry with me. She says I am selfish for leaving now when people have been coming by to pay respects. She is going to lecture me, but Paula goes to her and puts her dirty hand on my aunts smooth, clean sleeve, and Paula says something I can’t hear. Then she says, “It’s going to be all right. We’ll take care of him.” My aunt bursts into tears and falls down in a chair crying like that, shaking, ugly with crying, and Paula, Gregory and I leave her there.

Thornton woke up, remembering the dream in detail. He made notes of it for Feldman’s benefit. He rolled over again and went back to sleep.

The work went slowly, and badly. They had plateaued and apparently could go no further. But all of them could see the next step so clearly, and all of them knew that without the next step the project was a failure. The Secretary returned and huddled with the Director and several other top men, and following this meeting there was something not so open, something uglier about the Project. No leaks came from the meeting, and there was a dearth of rumors for once. A new brain was installed, and hope rose as it continued to function after twenty-four hours, then thirty-six hours. A field test was scheduled, but before it could be held, the brain went mad.

Gloom settled heavier over the men, and mistakes were made that would have been unthinkable four months in the past. They analyzed the results of the last psycho-modular unit and its stresses and the final breaking point, and it was then that Thornton learned that this brain had been especially selected. He knew vaguely who Lester Ferris had been, but he didn’t know how he had died, or when, or how his brain had come into the possession of the Institute. Ferris had been a child prodigy, a brilliant mathematical physicist who had shaken up the world of physics at the age of fifteen. Crippled in body, with a mind that sang, he had drawn the attention of the entire world with theories that might be proven in some distant future, or might never be proven, but were unmistakably original and brilliant. He had settled down at the Institute for Advanced Study at the age of twenty-five, and as far as Thornton knew no more had been heard from him.

Thornton began reading the daily papers that were brought to the Institute, and every time they had a brain that was more successful than the previous ones, he searched the obituaries, but he didn’t ask anyone any questions. No one was asking questions.

He and Feldman went over the incident of his mother’s suicide several times, and slowly he found that he was remembering things about Paula that he had forgotten completely. Feldman knew her work and was impressed that Thornton had been her lover. Thornton found that he could talk of it freely, as if it had happened to someone else.

Sometimes Thornton went for walks in the woods, now dark green and summery, harboring snakes behind rocks and logs, alive with rabbits, birds, insects that sang and whirred and buzzed. He didn’t do it as often as he would have liked because there was no time. His year was running out. The second test was due within weeks, and although the idea of a battle test had been abandoned, the field test was still on the schedule. They were learning what kinds of brains were best suited for the symbiotic relationship with the computer that was called Phalanx, but they were unable to find just the right one. The brains continued to go mad.

They had a Delphi session, with each man answering questions about the sort of mind, the kind of mentality that would work with the Phalanx. Thornton bit his pencil and slowly filled in the answers to the printed questions. Afterward they read them aloud and talked about them. The papers were gathered by the Director.

“What do you think now of Paula Whitfield?” Feldman asked.

“Oh, she’s a promiscuous bitch. Exciting, probably very beautiful still. She was, you know, but in a wild, unpremeditated way. Not the cover-girl look of studied loveliness.”

Feldman nodded. “Your wife is very lovely,” he said after a moment. He was making idle talk now that the hour was almost over and Thornton had been wrung out.

“Ethel is beautiful,” Thornton said. It surprised him. She really was. He had a letter from her in his pocket then. She would meet him and they would drive to Florida and go from there to Nassau. She was excited about the trip. She was lonesome for him.

“Is Paula Whitfield really promiscuous?” Feldman asked curiously. “There’s no hint of that in her work.”

“She sleeps around,” Thornton said, hearing the contempt in his voice. “She’s got a couple of illegitimate kids, you know.” He shrugged and got up. “I guess that’s unfair. I don’t really know what she’s like now. It’s been twenty years since I saw her. A genius with the morals of an alley cat. That’s what she was then.”