Orbit 12 - [Anthology] Read online

  She continued to shake her head. “I looked her up. She is very ill, David. She isn’t malingering.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Primary schizophrenia. Acute depressions. Severe anenva, low blood sugar, renal dysfunction. There was more. I forget.”

  “Why don’t they treat her? Try to cure her?”

  She was silent.

  “They know they can’t. Or it would take too long to be worthwhile. Is that it? Is that it?”

  “I don’t know. They don’t put reasons on the cards.”

  “Is there someplace we can go? Here, in the city?”

  “I don’t have any money. Do you?”

  He laughed bitterly. “Your apartment?”

  “Father, Mother, my brother Jason. He has tuberculosis, one lung collapsed. We have two rooms.”

  “I’ll get some money. I’ll get us a room somewhere.”

  * * * *

  He heard the baby wailing halfway down the hall. It was making up for the weeks of drugged silence. As he got nearer he could hear the TV also. Norma was watching it, singing, “I had a red canary, it wouldn’t fly.” She didn’t look at him.

  If it weren’t for them, he thought clearly, he could take another job. Able-bodied men could work around the clock if they wanted to. All those hours in lines waiting for her medicine, waiting for the baby’s medicine, waiting for her examination, the baby’s examinations. Shopping for them. Cleaning up after them. Cooking for them.

  He shut his eyes, his back against the door. For a long time he didn’t move. He felt a soft tug on his shirt and opened his eyes. She was there, holding out the hairbrush.

  “Would you like to do my hair?”

  He brushed her pale silky hair. “After I’m well, we’ll have a vacation, won’t we. Just the two of us. We’ll go to the seashore and find pretty shells.”

  The baby wailed. The TV played. She sat with tears on her cheeks and he brushed her pale silky hair.

  <>

  * * * *

  Mel Gilden

  WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HERBIE?

  NERT WAS a small, three-legged creature with a pair of manipulative claws and Herbie was a creature closely resembling a serving of very old raisin gelatin. They sat together in a small rustic tavern that tried to look ancient and natural by using new synthetic materials. The low-beamed ceiling was plastic and the tables and chairs were made of formulon. The flickering of the torchlight was electrical. The bartender, a glowing aquamarine ball that floated four feet above the floor, asked, “What’ll it be, boys?”

  A diaphragm centered on top of Herbie said, “Your best. We’re celebrating tonight.”

  “Oh?” The bartender floated down a little nearer.

  “This fellow,” Herbie said, pointing to Nert with a pseudopod, “saved my life. Isn’t that right, Nert?”

  “Well—” He blushed blue, and Herbie went on. “He’s modest I was trapped in one of those damned Ardonian cul-de-sacs by a gramut-fowl. I tell you, I was whispering my last thoughts to Frooth when I felt something grab me by the merkin”—he touched a spot on his back—”and I was out of there so fast it singed the bird’s feathers.”

  The bartender’s light pulsed, and he said, “I am honored you chose my establishment to celebrate in. And I would like to hear the story in greater detail, but my other customers grow impatient.” Nert saw a ton-and-a-half flomox in a booth in the back beginning to steam. “Order and let him go, Herbie.”

  Herbie’s wildly gesticulating pseudopodia wilted back into his body. “All right,” he said. “Antarian glovo, third level.”

  The bartender said, “A very good choice, sir,” and jetted toward the flomox, leaving a faint smell of helium in the air.

  Herbie burbled happily. “That flomox will be after him for at least half an hour taking germ counts and checking health permits.”

  “Why?”

  “You’d think anything that size, with a hide you couldn’t bust through with a dynamic-M desynthesizer, would be able to eat anything. But those fellows have stomachs so delicate, Terrans use them to test their food But I don’t trust ‘em. Too big. Too powerful.”

  “It’s a good thing I decided to sign on when I did instead of waiting till I finished my degree in gerbis farming like everybody wanted me to,” Nert said. “If I hadn’t met you I might be spending my first evening in port at a co-op.”

  “Lucky for me, you mean. I’d have been somebody’s dinner.”

  They watched their waiter lead the flomox into the back room, probably to check his legal papers, while another floater came toward them dangling their order beneath him in a tangle of grassy tentacles. It left the drinking equipment and a bottle full of cool blue liquid. Nert poured a little of the liquid into their glasses. He picked up his long tubelike glass of glovo and stuck his tongue in it, while Herbie dangled a delicate finger of protoplasm into his own glass,a shallow trough. When they’d finished the first round, Herbie said, “You know, the Terrans have a ritual when friends drink together. They call it a ‘taste.’“

  “What’s that?” Nert’s voice did not sound right to him. He looked into his glass to see if he could find the reason.

  “A ‘taste’ is when the friends all taste together what they’re drinking, and say a few words over it.”

  “What kind of words?”

  “Oh, something like ‘hot jets’ or ‘happy landings.’ Something like that.”

  Nert started to refill the glasses. He said, “Reminds me of the timea human visited my brindle’s farm whenI was just a klara.

  Forever trying to grab everybody’s claws and pump them up and down whenever he met them.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. We just let him do it.”

  “Eccentric, that’s what they are. You wonder how they were smart enough to get off their own planet.”

  They looked at their drinks for a moment. Then Herbie said, “What should we say over our drinks?”

  “‘Happy landings’ sounds nice.”

  “No. It’s got to be something original.” He thought for a few minutes. Nert could tell he was giving it all his concentration because his food vacuoles were moving quickly from place to place like the flits on his brindle’s farm. “Something like, ‘Soak it up.’”

  Nert wanted to get back to his drinking, so he said, “Not bad.” He lifted his glass to his tongue and said, “Soak it up.”

  “Soak it up.”

  Herbie could drink and talk at the same time, and he kept up a running commentary on the beings around him. He talked about odd creatures and stranger habits, digressing often into lectures on galactography and his opinions on everything. “Soak it up,” he said. Nert became more placid as he drank. After a while Herbie’s voice was a soft buzz overlying the other noise in the bar—

  And suddenly Nert was wide awake. The olfactory nerves on his shoulders bristled as he tried to find what had disturbed him. It was an odor he’d smelled before, and it was coming from the flomox who’d just returned from the back room. But a flomox shouldn’t smell that way. And the floater who had been with him shouldn’t either. Nert had almost decided it was the influence of the glovo when he suddenly identified it. Mittlebran—stuff, snort, Antrop white.

  “Smell that?” Nert said.

  “What?” Herbie had stopped lecturing and was content to let a flaccid pseudopod lie in his trough soaking up his glovo.

  “Mittlebran. Don’t you smell it?”

  Small bumps raised themselves all over Herbie’s body. They soon subsided, and he said, “You’re crazy. Stuffs illegal.”

  “Since when did being illegal stop people from doing something?” Nert pushed his glass away. He’d tried mittlebran once and he didn’t like it He couldn’t sleep. And now it turned out it made him cold sober. “Herbie, can we leave?”

  “Leave?” Herbie said, as if it were a new word.

  Nert gently lifted the pseudopod out of the trough. “Come on. We have to f
ind somewhere to spend the night anyway. We can celebrate some more later.”

  “Don’t want to leave.”

  Nert tried to push Herbie out of the depression in his chair, but the protoplasm just flowed around his claws until he was engulfed up to his joints. “Come on, Herbie. Cooperate.”

  “Celebrate some more later.”

  Nert found that the best way to deal with Herbie was to plunge both claws into him and carry him to the floor draped over his arms like taffy. One of the blue globes approached them and said, “Trouble, sir?”

  “Just trying to get my friend home.” Nert didn’t like mittlebran, but he didn’t want to cause any trouble. If people wanted to sprinkle the stuff, that was their business, but Nert didn’t like to be around when they did it. Because of his race’s finely developed sense of smell, he knew when someone across the room had done it hours ago, and he was uncomfortable even then. When someone in such a small, stuffy place had done it only moments before, it was almost intolerable.

  “Would you like a shot of denebriant?”

  “That would be helpful, but I don’t know what kind.” Nert put Herbie carefully on the floor, where he tried to divide himself in two against a table leg.

  “Do you know where he’s from?”

  “Let me think.” Nert snapped his claws like castanets. “I think he said he was from Tramitode—uh, Arkis IV.”

  “Very good, sir. I’ll be right back.”

  While the waiter was gone, Nert tried to ignore the smell of the mittlebran. It made his olfactory nerves raw, as if they had been immersed in hydrochloric acid all day. As time went on he began to notice a kaleidoscope of smells coming from the creatures around him. He could close his bulging eyes and still get a picture of the room. The flomox was stinking in the corner and the floaters came and went like wisps of peppermint A musky ornt had just come in the door. The odors swirled around making him almost as giddy as the glovo had.

  The floater returned with a small vial of dark amber fluid. He said, “According to my tables, this should work for all beings from Arkis IV.” He wrapped his tentacles around a small part of Herbie and squeezed until he’d madea small armlike projection. He then plunged the appendage into the vial and waited until all the liquid had been absorbed. “There. That should do it. In a few moments he should be as sober as ever.”

  “Thanks very much. How much extra do I owe you?”

  “Nothing. Just for the drinks. We find small special services pay off in the long run.” He took Nert’s money, about twice what he’d expected to pay for even third-level glovo, and floated back to the bar, where the ornt was complaining about the shape of the glass in which his drink had been served.

  Herbie congealed little by little, and in a few minutes he said, “What’s the problem?”

  Nert said, “I can’t stand the mittlebran. We’ve got to leave.”

  “What mittlebran?”

  Nert was on the verge of screaming. He was already an aquamarine very nearly the shade of the floaters. Carefully, with great control, he said, “I’ll explain outside. Come on. Please!”

  “Sure, Nert. Sure. Let’s go.” He began to move toward the door, the lower part of his body undulating in peristaltic waves. Nert caught up and beat him to the door.

  * * * *

  The hotel was one Nert would never have had the nerve to choose. It was called the Hotel Galactica, and it was equipped to accommodate visiting dignitaries from a thousand worlds who came to Spangle for a good time. It rose more than a hundred stories, and was built around a central court where a realistic artificial park lay under a sunny sky, no matter what the weather was like outside.

  The porter dropped their bags in the room and stood waiting at the door. “Yes?” Herbie said.

  “I hope you enjoy your stay at the Galactica,” the machine said. Its voice was programmed to drip with a sincerity that might have convinced the superrich who were used to flattery, but which Nert found artificial.

  “I’m sure we will,” Herbie said. “Thank you.”

  “Shall I dilate your windows for you?” the machine said, not moving.

  Nert whispered, “What does he want?”

  “A tip. Extra money.” Herbie started to move toward his pool. “Pay him, will you? There’s some money behind the flap in my case.” He sighed with relief as he settled into the pool of muddy water that served as his bed.

  “How much?” Nert asked as he picked through the change.

  “I figure two credits ought to do it.”

  “Two credits!”

  “Would you like me to adjust the climate of your room for you? It can be changed to anything from a rain forest to Q-type ice flow. Choice of atmospheres include methane, ammonia, oxy-nitrogen—“

  Nert dropped the money in the tray on top of the porter. It gurgled and stopped in midsentence. Then it swiveled one hundred eighty degrees, and as it rolled from the room it said, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you . . .” until the door finally slid shut behind it.

  “We could have had a live porter, but it costs an extra two hundred credits a day,” Herbie said. He did not sound well. His voice had been growing weaker ever since they’d left the bar. Nert had asked him about it, but Herbie told him not to worry, that everything was under control. Nert was unconvinced, but he respected Herbie’s privacy.

  Nert said, “Speaking of money, after three days here, well have to start drawing from our gerbis fund.”

  Herbie had begun to thaw and soften as he had in the bar when he was drunk. He slowly spread to the circumference of his pool.

  “Herbie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I said we’re not going to have any money left.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Herbie. Herbie, listen to me. Are you sure you’re supposed to have that big bulge on your side? You told me not to worry, but I don’t know.”

  “Everything’s fine. . . .” His voice trailed off into an airy whisper that Nert couldn’t hear. Then suddenly his voice was back again with nearly its usual strength. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right. I’ll be better if you just go out and have a good time.”

  “But I can’t leave you like this—”

  “You not only can, you must. It’s important that I be alone. I’ll have a surprise for you when you get back.”

  “But the bulge-”

  “That’s part of the surprise. Now please go.”

  Nert stood silently for a few minutes, trying to make up his mind whether he should go, or if Herbie was just being noble and really needed him. “Herbie?”

  Herbie didn’t answer. Nert prodded him gently once with a claw and his entire gelatinous bulk shivered. He was relieved to see that Herbie had stopped melting, and after a while he went out

  The Galactica had both elevators and drop-shafts, to give it an atmosphere of anachronistic charm. The leisurely ride down in the elevator from the one hundred fifty-third floor gave Nert time to think. He shared the cubicle with a transparent pressure-sealed tank that held what looked like a sloppy knot of wildly writhing hemp rope, and an overweight Terran female who looked as if she were going to faint. At floor one hundred five, a large purple dracoid got on, crushing everyone else into corners. It rode with them to the ground floor.

  Nert left the elevator and walked across the chrome-and-blue-fluff lobby and out into the synthetic parkland. If he hadn’t read the brochure left on the nightstand he would have thought it was real. Colors and smells from all across the galaxy surprised him with their variety at every turn. Overhead, the stars were beginning to peek out near one wall, and on the other, the sky was fading slowly from blue to deepest purple, to black. He walked, crunching along the wandering gravel pathways, and thought about what had just happened in the room upstairs.

  Herbie had told Nert to have a good time, but for Nert that would be difficult, if not impossible. The main thing that bothered him was that hump, but he was also disturbed by Herbie’s attitude about their gerbis fund.
The first night after Nert had saved his life, they’d gotten to talking about what they wanted to do when they got too old to space. Nert had told Herbie about how he’d studied gerbis farming on the home world and how he planned to have a farm of his own some day. Herbie thought that was a fine idea, and they’d put their money together so they could invest it later as equal partners. Maybe Herbie seemed unconcerned about the money because the swelling on his side made him feel sick and distant. It had been smaller back on the ship, but even then it had looked unhealthy to Nert. “Don’t worry about it,” Herbie had said, and had gone on to talk about something else. It was possible that having a bulge like that was natural for a Tramitodean, but maybe Herbie didn’t realize that it might be malignant. After all, diseases were natural too. Was it possible that Herbie was dying?