Orbit 9 Read online

  “Somebody will put up a statue.”

  Darrel said, “They might even put you on a stamp.”

  Mary sighed grudgingly. “Well, I suppose there are worse ways to go.”

  When all the guests had left, Anderson and Billy and Errol and everybody seemed to disappear at the same time; Anderson mumbled something about taking back the deposit bottles and vanished into the night; Billy was already asleep on the couch, and Errol curled tightly in his corner and snored heavily when Maud asked him to take out the garbage, so that she ended, as she always did, by cleaning up after the party all by herself.

  Emptying ashtrays and putting lemon wax on all the drink rings, Maud gave considerable thought to what she would wear on the trip. She supposed comfort was an important factor, but after all, this was her triumphal final appearance and she owed posterity something. She thought of herself as dead, sailing in perpetual orbit, and she knew she would have to look her best. Besides they had asked her to make a little speech from the gantry for the benefit of all those who would come down to watch the launching and all those billions who would be watching on their screens at home. She thought at first they would expect a white coverall or a lame jumpsuit with the national emblem stitched across the back, but she had never been at her best in pants. Instead she would wear what she always wore for readings and state occasions—the wine-colored velvet with the lace fichu and the matching mitts. As a concession to the patriotic character of the proceedings she would wear a red-white-and-blue ribbon on a proud diagonal across her breast.

  She collected the last of the dirty glasses and, in consideration for her sleeping deadbeats, left the vacuum in its closet and used a handbrush to get up the crumbs. The windows were showing gray daylight when she finished, and she turned off the last of the lamps and sat in the morning shadows, trying hard to think.

  There was something wrong with the arrangement, Maud knew it, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Why, for instance, had the man from NASA tactfully suggested that she might want to write at least part of her “Deathsong” before she blasted off? Why had he been so indifferent to the idea of physical examinations, or flight training, why had he turned away certain of her questions with a knowing, sympathetic smile?

  She would not be back, she already knew that, and it didn’t bother her; it was little enough to give in exchange for the chance to write about the stars. She would sing her last song and then blaze into death, grander than any queen on a pyre. She would welcome death, she had wished for it often, she was old and ready to be released from her body; she would join her husband, wherever he was.

  Still, all was not what it appeared to be. There were certain things unexplained; she was to be the poet, but she would not be alone on the trip. Who else was going, and why? The man from NASA had smiled and would not say. Wouldn’t it take the NASA people a long time to prepare her and the others, whoever they were? Shouldn’t they all be having tests and whirling around in the centrifuge? Apparently not; takeoff would be in just three days, so that she didn’t have much time to worry, or to think. Why didn’t they want her to have more time to think? Because she might chicken out.

  “I won’t chicken out,” she said firmly. Then she dropped an afghan over the sleeping Billy and went on in to bed.

  Emerson woke her at ten to say good-bye. Emerson was her eldest, the vice-president of a bank. He had his secretary get her on the line.

  “Mother,” he said, “are you out of your mind?”

  “Oh,” she said. “You’ve heard.”

  “The Poet Laureate of Outer Spaceindeed.”

  “Why Emerson, that’s rather nice. Did you make it up?”

  “Of course not, Mother. It’s in all the papers.”

  “Well, yes. I thought that was a little imaginative for you.”

  She could hear Emerson shuffling and rustling at the other end of the phone. She wondered if he had written a speech. He cleared his throat.

  “Now Mother, Sam and Andrew and I have been talking, and we want you to reconsider. You only have one life you know, and this . . . this is undignified.”

  Maud sighed. “I suppose you have something better to propose?”

  “Well, we decided maybe you weren’t getting out enough, and we want to give you a trip to the Bahamas. Three months, if you’d like, expenses paid. And after that—”

  “Yes, Emerson?”

  “Well, you could spend a month with Sam and one with Andrew and then maybe you could come to Madge and me for Christmas, and after that—”

  “Christmas.”

  “Well you know we’d love to have you for longer, but . . .”

  “I don’t think so, thank you, Emerson. Thank Sam and Andrew for me, and tell them both good-bye ...”

  “Have it your way,” he said at last, in his it’s-your-funeral voice, “but don’t expect us at the launching.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Maud said. When she hung up, she felt released.

  The morning of the launching everybody got up at four so they could go down to the space installation with her. Darrel and Errol had decorated a delivery truck with bunting and wired in a tape recorder and two loudspeakers with the Triumphal March from Aida playing full blast on a continuous loop. Everybody had on his best, which meant tails for Darrel and Errol and a formal for Mary and a poncho for Billy, Guatemalan, hand-woven, and Anderson had shaved for the first time since Maud had known him and was wearing a shiny blue gabardine suit. Someone else had on some kind of uniform, unspecified, but with plenty of gold braid and epaulets, and a couple of the girls from the neighborhood had found jumpsuits somewhere and altered them to fit like wallpaper, with intriguing cutouts over the cleavage and at the waist.

  It was an ungodly hour, but everybody was in a wonderful mood. Anderson had taken every whiskey and liqueur in Maud’s cabinet and made a punch, and Darrel and Mary had spent the whole preceding day baking a cake in the shape of a launching pad with a spun sugar rocket with the name Maud on it taking off in a cloud of cotton candy with candles placed strategically around the blastoff area.

  Maud rode in front with Anderson, who was driving, while everybody laughed and sang and popped balloons and rolled around together in the back.

  Anderson said, “I’ll take care of the plants while you’re gone. What do you want me to do with the cats?”

  “If you can’t find good homes for them, I suppose you’d better have them put away.”

  “Maud, you’re going to want them when you get back.”

  “You know I won’t be back.” When he wouldn’t look at her, she began rummaging in her beaded bag. She found a wad of papers and pressed it on him. “Look, I’ve written part of the ‘Deathsong,’ I want you to hang on to it.”

  “But you’ll be transmitting it from space.”

  “This is only the first canto,” Maud said. “I want something to live after me In Case.”

  He didn’t want to take it, but she made him. He wouldn’t voice any doubts about the trip, if he gave in to his doubts he would have to turn the truck around and take them all back home. Instead he said, “Maud, we’re all very proud of you.”

  When they got to the launching area they discovered several things all at once. There were ten other people, all about Maud’s age, along with their families, all jostling outside the portal; when they went through the portal, all their friends and relations would have to stay outside, they would have to watch the launching on a monitor. So they learned Maud would not be alone on the flight, and they learned that the project had a name: it was to be called Operation Hope. When some twenty more old people had gathered and everybody was milling in suspense, a second lieutenant came out and gave an embarrassed little speech.

  They were all welcome, they were pioneers in a new project; one of the nation’s scientists had discovered that under certain conditions, zero gravity could retard the aging process, and so this first valiant handful might stay young forever in free fall; they would pave the way for bill
ions to new and extended lives. Maud was the poet laureate and chronicler; Maud would give her valedictory at the gantry just before they loaded the ship and propelled the aging, valiant crew into their greatest adventure. It was Maud who would write their names in the stars and trail their message into the reaches of space.

  When Maud said good-bye at the portal, Darrel and Errol fell on each other’s necks and cried. Mary was trying to be brave, but she had long since retreated behind sunglasses and wouldn’t speak for fear of losing control.

  Anderson said, “Why won’t they tell us more? Why can’t we come in to watch?”

  “You’ll see me,” Maud said. “I’ll light up the sky.”

  “Oh, Maudie, I don’t think we ought to let you go.”

  “Good-bye dear,” she said, and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

  Looking over his shoulder, she wondered why nobody else seemed suspicious, why none of the valedictory relatives had asked for any more details, and she understood that nobody cared. Her shipmates were going through the gate quickly, carried along by their families. Sons and daughters and nephews and nieces and grandchildren and a few great-grands were propelling all the old men and women toward the gate, moving inexorably even as they showered farewell hugs and kisses and repeated demands to write. She saw that the old people went uncertainly, their expressions a mixture of apprehension and hope, and she detached herself from her own group quickly, kissing each in turn, and then drew a deep breath at the portal and went inside.

  An old man tottered next to her, carrying a cardboard suitcase. “We’re going to be young again,” he said. “They promised.”

  A twisted little woman no older than Maud turned to him with an expression of profound bitterness. “Don’t be so sure.”

  Somebody else said, “It doesn’t matter. Anything’s better than what we have.”

  Maud said gently, “We’re going to see the stars.”

  “Stars, hell.” Maud recognized a man whose children had pushed him forward and fled before he even reached the gate. “All I wanted was out of there.”

  Someone was crying. “Oh, oh, there are too many of us.”

  Looking ahead, Maud saw that their group was not alone. There must have been thousands of people in their seventies and eighties all coming from different portals, all converging on the ship; they came with satchels and handbags and canvas duffel bags and ancient, wheezing dogs and bird cages with scraggly parakeets, with balls of string and old clippings and pipes and syringes, all the paraphernalia of old age; they came in panama hats and antiquated lace dresses and one or two wore World War I uniforms, shuffling along with leg-bindings flapping and once-sleek coats hanging on their inadequate frames; they came out of despair and apprehension, with their eyes glazed and their lips slightly parted in hope.

  There were almost too many of them for the ship; it loomed, some ten blocks high, and if they did all fit, they would never make it off the ground. She looked at the ship and then looked about her at the field of aging folk and she faltered, because she understood.

  A strong hand closed on her elbow. “We want you to give a farewell speech from the gantry.” It was the lieutenant. “We’re very honored to have you aboard, Mrs. Constable.” He took a hasty look around. “And we’re counting on you to make this the kind of occasion it ought to be.”

  “Yes,” Maud said. “You mean I am the Judas goat.”

  “We have to get them on the ship somehow,” he said and then covered his mouth.

  She knew perfectly well what would happen; it was a disposal operation, she could tell from the naked look on the captain’s face, the cynical expressions of the crew who bustled around in white coveralls, collecting the old people like cowboys making a cattle drive. She would get to give her speech from the gantry and then they would all load; there might be a Trumpet Voluntary or a chorus of the “Stars and Stripes Forever” before blastoff and then the rocket would explode on the gantry with all hands aboard and the nation would say, How sad, and heave a sigh of relief.

  She knew what she could do: she could rise to the platform and cry out Beware, or Help; she could alert the whole nation, they would come to save her and all the others from an ignominious death. She thought of Emerson: would he come? Would they? She realized she had known, she had known from the beginning that she would never get off the ground, and so had some of the rest of them; the outside world may have known it too, perhaps they had known it all along. Considering, she looked at the others rustling about her and she became aware of all their fatigue, their infirmities, the miseries of age and all their accumulated pain, and she hesitated only a second before she looked the lieutenant in the eye and said, “Very well.”

  Standing between two major generals on a platform draped with bunting, Maud gave a beautiful little speech for Darrel and Errol and Anderson and Mary and all the others who were watching, and especially for all the old people clustered about her feet. For everybody’s sake she had to make a graceful exit: her speech would be read into the Congressional Record, and in homes all over the nation the great television audience found itself dabbing at its eyes. About her, the old people surged toward the loading platform; now their eyes were bright with hope and they would board the ship with pride.

  When Maud had finished she made a small bow: a prayer? and stepped inside.

  She could hear all the others behind her, chittering and sighing, but she had no time to speak to them; she had work to do. Instead she withdrew inside herself, sitting docilely where the crewmen put her, obediently setting her arms into the clamps so they could strap her down. She would be dead within the hour, they would all be dead, but she was after all a poet and she would give her remaining minutes to composing the second, the final canto of her never-to-be-published deathsong, a longer narrative poem which she had tentatively titled “Across the Bar.”

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  * * * *

  Vernor Vinge

  THE SCIENCE FAIR

  My offices are under the tidal-wave breaker wall. I know, that’s an unsavory and unsafe part of Newton. I was trapped there once for three tides after a really large earthquake smashed the wall and laid several tons of rubble over the walkdown to my rooms. On the other hand, having my offices there gives prospective clients the deliciously naughty feeling that they are dealing with the underworld. Then, when they see how solidly luxurious my offices are, they think that besides being a sinister figure, I am also a successful one.

  When the girl knocked on my door, I was deep asleep on the pallet behind my desk—considering how much money I spend on those rooms, I can’t afford to sleep anywhere else. I staggered up and walked to the door, swearing at myself for having let my receptionist go three tides earlier: for obvious reasons, there isn’t much market for industrial spies during the Science Fair.

  Even the city police corporation relaxes during the Fair, so I couldn’t guess who my visitor might be. I opened the door.

  Vision of visions! Large, soft eyes looked at me over a pertly turned nose and full moist lips. Her satiny skin glowed a deep, even infra, marking out firm, ripe curves. There was a lot to see, since her only clothing was a brief pair of rear leggings.

  She was young and nervous. “You are Leandru Ngiarxis bvo-Ngiarxis?”

  I smiled. “To the wide world, yes—but you may call me Ndruska.”

  She stepped inside. “Why do you keep it so dark in here?”

  I wasn’t about to tell her that she’d caught the master industrial spy asleep. So I lowered my head and ogled up at her. “The maiden glow of your skin is more than sufficient light for me.”

  She blushed bright infra from her shoulders up and tried to sound tough when she said, “See here, Ngiarxis, it’s unpleasant enough to do business with someone of your sort. Please don’t make it any worse by, by starting immoral advances.”

  “Just as you say, milady.” I turned on the lights and crossed to the other side of the desk.

  “Now, how may I . . . serve you?
”

  She lowered herself delicately onto a visitor’s pallet.

  “My name is Yelén Dragnor bvo-Science-Fair-Committee.” She produced the appropriate identification badge.

  “Hmm. Are you any relation to the chief scientist of the House of Graun?”

  She nodded. “Beoling Dragnor bvo-Graun is my father.”

  “Indeed, I am honored. I understand he is to give the popular lecture at the Fair, next-tide. You must be very proud.”

  She came to her knees, her brittle mask of sophistication cracking. “I am proud—very. But s-scared, too. We—the Science Fair Committee, that is—know the princes of Graun will m-murder father rather than let him speak at the Fair.”

  I tried not to seem incredulous. I have never heard of any polity willing to risk its own dissolution merely to eliminate one scientist. “What does your father know that could be so distressing to the House of Graun?”