Orbit 13 - [Anthology] Read online

  The hills spread about me now as I write, looking down on the tops of trees. A light fog resides forever inside them. The dampness of it enters the open window of my bedroom each morning, a clean, fresh smell appropriate to new beginnings. The sunrise is splendid, breaking in rainbows through the mist and drifting, light dew; most nights the Northern Lights fan out and fill the sky, as though beautiful cities were burning far away. There is no life anywhere in these trees. Where birds once sang and young deer broke the crust of new-fallen snow.

  My work—what can I say of it? I fear I am now past all ambition; that volition, like hope, has died within me and nothing will issue again from that still center. (There would be such comfort in despair.) Times were, a single image, a phrase, would imbue page upon page with life; stories would spring fullblown from the chance word of a friend, the pattern of light through leaves at the window, the eager edge of a razor. Now lifeless pages of notes and scattered scenes accumulate on my table like slices of cheese on a platter: these weak attempts to retrieve my life. This might, I suppose, be expected, a function of the events outside, an equivalent decay.

  —Tonight J wants to play for us the piano. He sits on the bench beside her, his face in his hands, weeping. B’s fingers form broad X’s in the moisture on the tabletop. It is Chopin, she says. The keyboard is roughly sketched out with a carpenter’s pencil at one end of the table; there are no halftones. And so we wait.

  —This morning we found him in the tub, the drain closed, his own blood all around him; in aspic. His eyes stared up and forward at the tiles on which J has painted a cluster of grapes, and on them, a roach. One of the girls is pregnant. Bits and shreds of half-digested food cling to the sink’s sides each morning.

  —Force of circumstances driving the protagonists to the commission of a dreadful act . . .

  (He is standing at the window. It is open, and he speaks words to it. They scatter on the darkness, random as facts, unforgiving. He has done this before. He will do this again. He is free.)

  I remember the last night. We had just made love and she stood at the window, her stomach bulging slightly now and her breasts full, the old stretch-marks lost. The motel sign was red on the glass; darkness entered through the window. And she said, Jim. Jim . . . we’re leaving. When she turned to me, light from the hall glinted on tears in her eyes that, now, would never fall. I’m sorry. After a moment I stood and nodded, then came up here and began to write down everything I remembered about her. At dawn I found I could write no more, and I realised she was gone.

  (He is tall, large, with deep blue eyes and heavy ridges above them, like shelves for dark things that might fall out of the sky. He listens to his own voice ringing in the corridors of night. He smiles. It is almost over now.)

  It is 3 A.M. now, a cool night wrapped in clouds, and again unable to sleep, I take down a book. It is a foreign edition and with a small silver knife I must cut the pages free as I read:

  We are to recognise how all that comes into being must be ready for a sorrowful end; we are forced to look into the terrors of the individual existence—yet we are not to become rigid with fear: a metaphysical comfort tears us momentarily from the bustle of the changing figures. We are really for a brief moment—

  But wait. There are sounds outside now. Voices milling about, feet. Voices. Together.

  I go to the window. There are fires. The villagers have come at last.

  <>

  * * * *

  Gary K. Wolf

  THERAPY

  “FOR THIS I came all the way downtown? Hell, Emma, it’s a machine! You didn’t tell me it would be a machine. At these prices, I refuse to talk to a machine. I demand something better.”

  “You refuse. You demand. That’s right. Just keep it up, Harold. The machine is listening. Hear that, machine? Are you listening? Mister Big Shot refuses. MisterEgg-sec-u-tiff demands. Wait. Next he’ll start bossing you around. The same way he does me.”

  “Must you distort everything, Emma? See here, machine, I think you can appreciate my position. I’m a sensitive man. Forced to come up the hard way. Groveling and clawing and shoving for everything I’ve got. When I get home at night, all I ask from her is a little understanding. Do I get it? No. What do I get instead? Nagging. Complaining. ‘The servants did this. The children did that.’ I can’t take much more of it, machine. Already I’ve developed a very nervous stomach.”

  “Good morning.” From the machine’s tuba-shaped loudspeaker-mouth. “Please be seated.” A pleasant voice. Persuasively calming. They sat down. “According to my schedule, you two should be Mr. and Mrs. Harold Hokey. Is that correct?”

  Harold answered. “Substantially, yes, but lately we’ve taken to pronouncing it ho-kay, though. The rhymester at my ad agency suggested it. To go along with their creative strategy. See, I advertise a lot. I’m mister big in aphrodisiacs, you know. You’ve probably heard my ad a million times. Too pooped to play? Make it ho-kay. On TV? Every night?”

  “Sorry, no. I have you down as a compatibility problem. What seems to be the trouble?”

  Emma quickly fielded that one. “The trouble is that Harold High Hat there thinks he’s God Almighty. Lord of the manner. Don’t you let him fool you with that ‘I’m so sensitive’ crap. Ask him why all that sensitivity didn’t bother him the time he automated elk antler production and laid off those sweet old shepherds. How that man did gloat. All I heard about for weeks. Go ahead, ask him. You’ll see. He’s the one who needs help, not me.”

  “Now one minute, Emma.” Harold stood up. The books advised it in situations like this. Put you at a better advantage. Gave you the psychological edge. People were all conditioned. Height equals authority. “I think we’re taking a few things out of context, here, aren’t we?”

  “Please sit down, Mr. Ho-kay,” from the machine.

  “No, I will not.” Harold scowled down at the machine. “Not until I get her to admit she’s sick. And she is. It takes a genuinely sick mind to keep hammering away at me this way. Ruining my health. By distorting the facts. With sniveling half-truths.” Harold turned. Ready. Thinking on his feet. Humiliate. Degrade. Discredit. Get that bitch.

  “MR. HO-KAY.” Stereophonic sound. At least two hundred watts. Fifteen-inch woofer. Thirty or forty mid-ranges. God-only-knows how many tweeters. Full blast. From at least thirty feet off the floor. “PLEASE SIT DOWN.”

  He sat down.

  The machine’s voice took on a cheery lilt. “Let’s probe around at random, for a while. See if we can define the parameters of your problem. For instance, what are your hobbies? Harold?”

  Harold brightened considerably. “I collect ad art. Not that crummy stuff you buy in those cheapie galleries down on Forty-second Street. Stuff that’s already been thumbed over by a million people. No. I collect good stuff. First drafts. Signed by copywriter and art director. In fact, hanging in our living room, I have the original storyboard for the Bubbly-Seltzer ‘Grandma’s Coming to Dinner’ commercial. You know the one. Opens with a long shot of everybody rushing around. Straightening up the house. Cooking. Fantastic thing of three or four years ago. On the tube five, maybe six times a day. Anyway, I have it. Authentic as hell. Some of the most prominent experts in the country certified it before I bought. Had to pay a fancy price for it, too. Art like that doesn’t come along often. And I have more. Print stuff. The very first two-page spread for Whoops-A-Daisy. That one didn’t come cheap, either.”

  “I don’t imagine so. Now, you, Emma. What’s your hobby?” the machine asked with soothing, pear-shaped tones.

  Emma forsook candor for retaliation. “My hobby? Whining. According to Harold. He thinks I’ve got it so easy. Staying home alone. Raising the children by myself. While he’s off somewhere gallivanting round the world looking for more ways to make people hot.”

  “Emma”—Harold whirled in his chair to face her—”you shut your filthy mouth.”

  She leaned forward. “Well, I get hot, too, Harold, and you aren’t much
help cooling me off, anymore, you know.” A direct hit, and she knew it.

  “Stop it, do you hear me,” Harold screamed. “My sex life is of no concern to a damned machine.”

  “Quite to the contrary, Mr. Ho-kay,” the machine responded with low wattage, jacked-up bass, muted treble. “All facets of your life together are my concern. Emma”—no treble, high filter, less than one db—”please tell me more.”

  Emma had taken a bright green handkerchief from her transparent lucite handbag. She blew her nose with a resonant honk and returned the handkerchief to her bag. Carefully. To avoid smearing up the inside and ruining the bag’s transparency. She didn’t succeed. She stared with disgust, first at her purse, then at Harold.

  “Harold isn’t home much, you see. I get lonely. For a man’s company. I’m hardly what you’d call oversexed or anything like that, but I do have normal cravings. Like any other woman. I’m not saying what I did was right. Or even proper. But Harold’s gone so much. I simply couldn’t do without.”

  “Umm-uh.” The machine. Sensing antennae forward and back. Forward and back. “So, you felt you simply couldn’t do without.”

  “No, of course not. Could you?”

  “I really don’t know, Emma,” with compassion, understanding, tolerance. “Suppose you tell me about it.”

  “Well, I . . .” Emma glanced sideways at Harold. Harold glared back. Emma looked at the machine, and blurted it out “I had an affair.” She turned toward Harold. “How does that grab you big shot. Knowing that somebody else got in your personal property.”

  Harold was on his feet. “Who? Tell me. Who was it? I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”

  “MR. HO—”

  Harold sat down. “Who was it? I demand you tell me.”

  Emma stared at him coldly, hesitated for a moment, and let him have it. “It was Mark.”

  “Mark?”

  “Mark Four.”

  “Emma, are you telling me you did it with a mechanical servant? That’s repulsive. Worse. It’s absurd.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. I did it with a mechanical servant. And it was better than it ever was with you. Even though his dusting attachment kept poking me in the ribs. Even though we had to tape a pillow over his accessory tray. Even though he had to use his pneumatic rinsing tube. Even though a hundred ings, it was still far, far better than it ever was with you.”

  “You degenerate biddy.” Harold leaped out of his chair and moved toward Emma with clenched fists.

  Emma was ready, though. On her feet. Crouched low. Position two. Right arm out. Three fingers stiff. Left arm in close. Fingers together. Ready to rip out Harold’s balls. Like she learned at night school.

  “Always try to sublimate open hostility,” the machine advised.

  Harold came in on Emma, low and underneath, using the old red dog technique he’d put to good service in many a football game, Merriwell High, ought-six.

  “Violence is usually the manifestation of a threatened ego,” explained the machine in an authoritative basso profundo.

  Emma lunged forward with all the expertise she’d acquired in one and a half classes—she never could stand sweat—and missed Harold by a good two feet.

  The machine tweaked its amplifiers to capacity. Its voice shot up at least an octave. “I can assign meaning to these aggressive feelings.”

  His forward motion impaired by the lateral shift of his truss, Harold gave up on his block. Instead, he crawled up to Emma on hands and knees, grabbed her about the legs and shook her back and forth.

  “I have complete and total understanding of all the delicate interrelationships comprising the human psyche, you know.”

  Emma felt up under Harold’s coat, grabbed his suspenders, pulled them back as far as she could, and let them go with a snapping thwack.

  “I was programmed in Vienna.”

  Harold clutched the hem of Emma’s dress that came from the Young Matron’s Shop at Saks. With a downward swipe, he ripped it off her.

  “In my professional opinion . . .”

  “You degenerate animal,” screeched Emma, clothed only in her luster-pink acetate slip. She scooped up a handful of Harold’s double-knit Brooks Brothers sport coat, and twisted it into a ball, stretching it all out of shape. . . the solution to your problem . . .”

  Harold’s upper plate fell out. He gnawed at Emma’s ankle with his gums.

  “... lies in the realignment of your subconscious drives and motivations.” The machine cleared its throat sequentially through its six channels. “Let’s see how we might use such a realignment to correct your faults, Mr. Ho-kay.”

  Harold dropped his hold on Emma and shook his head dumbly. “Ma falls?” He slipped his plate back in. “Correct my faults? Hell, don’t worry about me. Straighten her out. She’s the one that needs it. Her and her perverted sex life. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  The machine assumed a scholarly air. “We all have our little human foibles, Mr. Ho-kay. You, for instance. If you were to be a trifle less pompous and a bit more considerate of fragile sensibilities and cravings . . .”

  “After what she did to me? Fat chance.” Harold banged his hand down on the machine to emphasize his point. Two little green lights winked and a knob fell off.

  “And you, Mrs. Ho-kay”—the machine’s voice wobbled a little—”have to overcome the fact that you’re sexually fixated-on an electric broom.”

  “Don’t you talk about him like that.” Emma clutched her dress to her with one hand, and swung her purse at the machine with the other.

  Her swat shook loose three chrome panels and six feet of plastic tubing. The machine shimmied once, stopped and said with a lisp, ‘Two P.M., Mithter and Mithuth Ho-kay. I’m afraid thath all for today. Thee you nektht week?”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Harold groused.

  Carefully, to avoid touching each other, he and Emma tramped out of the office and into the elevator. Harold punched the ground floor button.

  “Wise-ass machine,” muttered Harold under his breath.

  “Worthless piece of junk,” complained Emma.

  “He’s really a nice, considerate boy, only so cerebral,” said the elevator.

  “What?” said Emma.

  “What the hell!” said Harold.

  “It’s not like I don’t tell him,” the elevator went on. “Over and over, I tell him. ‘Nobody likes a know-it-all. Keep up like that, you’ll never get ahead.’ Believe me, of these lovers’ spats I know plenty. Better he should forget the hoity-toity. Try instead a little time, a little tete-a-tete. Look, I show you.” The elevator slowed to a halt between floors. “I don’t let you out till you kiss and make up.”

  Emma and Harold gaped at each other.

  “Open these doors,” Harold bellowed.

  “Elevators can’t go around telling people what to do,” observed Emma.

  “Kiss and make up,” repeated the elevator firmly.

  * * * *

  “What did I tell you?” it asked twelve hours and thirty-two minutes later.

  “Just fine,” cooed Harold, with eyes only for Emma.

  “Just fine,” Emma echoed lovingly.

  The doors popped open.

  Arm in arm, Emma and Harold walked out into the early morning sunshine.

  “Remember,” the elevator called after them, “all your friends send to him with their problems. For myself, I want only to give him a push in the business.”

  The door shut.

  With a bustling, motherly whirr, the elevator headed upstairs to make sure the machine had started off the day with a good, hot breakfast.

  <>

  * * * *

  W. Macfarlane

  GARDENING NOTES FROM ALL OVER

  THE HERO HAS always been us. The villain has always been us, the right-thinking people. The wrong-thinkers are never wrong, right? What churns my guts is that straight decisions honorably pursued turn into a five-tier cloverleaf interchange. How could I do honestly what I’ve done, and
end so mixed up with problems personal, cultural and for godsake, interplanetary?

  I had been a gardener for three years when we found the beetles by the swimming pool. Before that I was employed by the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine at the Agricultural Research Center at Beltsville, Maryland. Unless you have subjected yourself to it, you cannot imagine the East Coast. My wife, Marian, was agreeable, though she is the daughter of a clergyman in Princeton, New Jersey. I bought a three-quarter-ton truck to carry her books and our personal gear, and we drove to California to live with my mother in her Point Loma home while I went job hunting.