Orbit 9 Read online

  When the waiter had placed the food and poured out the beer, Iwahashi raised his glass, pronounced “kampai,” and the informal evening’s relationship formally got under way.

  “Why can’t he finish The Great Wall?”

  Iwahashi savored the tangled softness of raw jellyfish on his tongue. He might have taken this morsel as his text and said something to the effect that, while men can find satisfaction in eating raw food, they cannot abide one another in the raw, unclothed by ritual and protective custom. But he took instead the title of the film.

  “Ito-san has built his own wall, one enclosing private space around himself, and he is cured.”

  Mochizuki nodded convulsively, saying, “How true! How true!” thus indicating, without exposing, his need for explanation.

  “Ito-san’s working with you on the film was its own therapy. He was in bondage to that woman, dreaming mind to mind with her. Evidently she got some kind of telepathic feedback from reading to him, some interior visualization from his mind of what she was reading. In time they evolved a symbiotic relationship: he trapped in it, she dependent on it. A disgusting, inhuman relationship of total involvement!”

  Mochizuki shuddered. But he quickly came back to the question uppermost in his mind.

  “What about the project, perhaps?”

  Iwahashi poured his guest another glassful of Sapporo beer. “Ito-san is enjoying a vacation at home.”

  “He is not coming back?”

  “Yes.” One must always say “yes” even when the answer is “no” in order to avoid insincerity. Negation is offensively straightforward and rude. It is not sincere to hurt a personal relationship by sharp encounters with unpleasant facts. “Yes, he is not coming back.”

  “But the machine . . .”

  “You worked a miraculous cure,” replied Iwahashi with tactful but irrelevant praise.

  Mochizuki rose slightly forward on his stool and gasped in a self-deprecating drag of air through his teeth: an imploded voiceless dental spirant.

  “His secret fantasy was of normal social life, is it not so?”

  “Hai!” It was a reflexive response in deference to authoritative opinion.

  “It is so. In working with your machine, Ito-san found his chance to escape playing the insufflator to that mental succubus. Broadcasting his pictures through your machine, he robbed histsukisoi of their reception.”

  “She went off to the movies, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Now the yeses were hitting true, and Iwahashi continued with ease and under less pressure to guide and control the conversation.

  “Once Ito-san learned to externalize his fantasy into your machine, he gradually reacquired the protective habits of formal human ties. His family has him back. Is this not good?”

  “Hai!” affirmed Mochizuki, and he rose and bowed again. Iwahashi called for the check, thus signaling to Mochizuki, by doing the thing expected of the host, that he was to be held blameless for telling the truth.

  They stepped out into the chill night air.

  “The more communication, the less community,” muttered Iwahashi, offering his ultimate reflection on the matter.

  Mochizuki did not understand that. Flags of the Rising Sun blazed in a long row in the powerful floodlights atop Keio department store to the front of them across the open square. Iwahashi looked up.

  “The flags fly more these days, do they not?”

  “Hai!”

  Mochizuki understood that.

  <>

  * * * *

  Kris Neville

  DOMINANT SPECIES

  Lobthar, the all-knowing, opened his eyes to the expected universe. The blue sun was at the horizon, and there were many colors in the sky. He watched the colors.

  The air tasted of the scents the air should taste of.

  This watching and tasting, as it always did, went on for an endless time. Lobthar found the universe good.

  Then, roused by the awareness of food worms beyond the nest, Lobthar shook himself and stood up, preening his feathers. He turned his head from one horizon to the other and willed that later there would be rain from the storm clouds above. Already, in response to his will, he could feel the air change and bear the promise of moisture.

  From the nest, in the shelter of his cave, Lobthar flew down to the forest, where there were feeding birds, as he wished there to be. He waited on the ground, trying to decide where the first food worm should be found. At length he approached the spot, heard the almost inaudible sound of earth movement below. Down went the beak. The worm was there.

  At first there was moisture and subtle, spicy flavors. This combination gave way to the rich texture of the worm itself, with a sweet abiding ripeness that Lobthar could savor for an eternity. At length, Lobthar swallowed the worm.

  After the time of morning feeding, which stretched almost beyond memory of the dawn, Lobthar rose once more into his air and settled back upon his water, where he floated, paddling, rocking himself on the gentle waves. Here was the recreated time of the egg, when the universe was constricted in warm comfort and his surroundings were composed of fluid slowly moving in convection currents.

  Lobthar willed that there be a sound in the sky. There was a sound in the sky.

  Lobthar looked up, toward the sound. A spot grew, and Lobthar willed that it grow larger and assume the form of a fire there in the sky. Lobthar brought this fire to the forest for his own amusement, and in the last minute, gave it the form of a cylinder.

  Around the cylinder, invisible in the trees, there were now flames, as was only appropriate. Lobthar watched the flames, and gradually the flames went away to leave smoke. Lobthar found this good. Lobthar was continually amazed at the fertility of his own imagination. Now a new thing was introduced for his amusement into the universe. At another time, if he did not forget it, he would investigate this new thing in detail, but for now there was the comforting motion of the water beneath him and the comforting feeling of the air moving among the feathers.

  * * * *

  The following day, Lobthar, having forgotten the arrival of the cylinder, came upon it unexpectedly as he made a soaring flight over his forest. Seeing it below him, he recalled how he had willed its appearance before the rains of the previous day.

  Lobthar perched in a tree. At length, he willed an opening to appear in the cylinder and a creature to come out of the opening. There were no wings on it, but rather wingless extremities. Lobthar was at a loss to know what to cause the creature to do. Fall to the earth and dig worms? Ascend into the air?

  Lobthar approached, swirling down, causing the creature to draw away from the fearsome sight of Lobthar. Lobthar settled to the ground at the foot of the creature and looked up. It made a noise, as Lobthar willed it should. There was much unexpected color to it, and Lobthar willed that it give off a bad odor. This it did.

  Lobthar wondered what to make it do now. Make it approach cautiously and deferentially? This it did. Now what?

  An extremity extended cautiously, as was appropriate, and touched the feathers of Lobthar. Lobthar moved forward a step to facilitate further touching, which occurred. Lobthar was then lifted up. This was exactly as Lobthar had intended.

  The creature turned toward the cylinder, carrying Lobthar with it. Lobthar thought it would be very interesting indeed to know what was inside the cylinder, and in response to the wish, the creature entered it.

  Inside there was an unexpected fertility of imagination. Lobthar was placed on a vantage point along the wall. Desiring to learn more of the imagination of Lobthar, he settled himself to further conjecture.

  At last, after an endless day of unusually bright fantasies, Lobthar went to sleep.

  * * * *

  Upon awakening, Lobthar perceived yesterday’s universe unchanged. Mesmerized by it, Lobthar returned to the egg, and the warmth and comfort there: when he dwelt in great fluid silence. At length, he reexperienced the constriction of that tiny universe and the need to b
urst forth into some greater projection of the mind’s devising. To do so required exertion reexperienced. In time the restraining barriers fell away, and lo! there was revealed the world of Lobthar, bright and shiny, rare and wonderful, filled with sensations previously unknown. Indeed, such stirrings always gave him the greatest pleasure in memory, and he responded with an enthusiasm that transcends description. Let there belight! Let there be sound! Let there be air to fly in! Let there be motion to excite the imagination! And also let there be food worms stirring in the appropriate places in the soil, the taste of which came forward in anticipation of the need.

  At this point, Lobthar felt a desire for food worms, but the surface beneath him was unsuited to them. It was clearly and evidently not the time for him to will food worms, in spite of the inward desire. For there is a time for all things, and now was the time for glittering surroundings.

  At length he willed sound, and there was sound. At length he willed the return of the creature, and it was so. He imagined that there was the smell of food worms upon the creature, and this was so. Lo! There were the food worms, and the creature brought the food worms to Lobthar, and Lobthar ate the food worms. They were as before, since they need never be otherwise for full enjoyment.

  At length the creature was willed to depart and this too it did, and Lobthar was left once again with this new world. It might be, Lobthar realized, that he would find it more pleasant to remain here than outside among the trees and the water.

  The memory of the water brought doubt, as did the memory of the air, and of the smells beyond this enclosure, and of the joy one had in the colors in the sky as one dictated one’s requirements. Still, it would be well to consider carefully before a change of position.

  At length, Lobthar willed the return of the creature. The creature, as was appropriate, removed Lobthar from the cage and carried him along a corridor, exposing Lobthar to greater miracles of his imagination than even he would have thought possible.

  Lobthar surrendered himself to still another creature, and this creature carried Lobthar to a small table and held him against it. Lobthar could feel the smoothness and the coolness of the new surface, and Lobthar’s nostrils were assailed by strange and wonderful odors not previously experienced.

  This new creature drew back Lobthar’s wings to inspect them and to marvel at them, and Lobthar wished that the creature would hold him more tightly, and this it did, until the tension became almost a pain to Lobthar, and Lobthar moved to cause the tension to depart, and then realized that he did not wish it to depart; rather, he wished to relax and enjoy it.

  Now Lobthar willed that the creature cover his head with a cloth from which arose a very pungent odor, and Lobthar drifted with the odor, back into time, as he called up imagination of the world beyond the cylinder and his first creation of land and water and light and darkness, and by degrees, Lobthar became aware that he was willing himself to sleep, and that the sleep would be long and deep like the sleep of the egg, which he could remember but dimly now, and the odors around him of his own willing were sweet and soft and sleepy and sleepy and very sleepy and Lobthar was willing himself deeper and deeper to sleep, more deeply than ever before.

  The creature drew forth a dissecting knife, but Lobthar had his eyes closed and had not willed it, so the knife did not yet exist. He drifted deeper and deeper to sleep: at last indifferently aware of a strange new and penetrating device in his universe.

  <>

  * * * *

  Gene Wolfe

  THE TOY THEATER

  Eight hours before we were due to land on Sarg they dropped a pamphlet into the receiving tray of the two-by-four plastic closet that was my “stateroom” for the trip. The pamphlet said landing on Sarg would be like stepping into a new world. I threw it away.

  Landing on Sarg was like stepping into a new world. You expect a different kind of sunlight and a fresh smell to the air, and usually you don’t get them. Sarg had them. The light ran to sienna and umber and ocher, so that everything looked older than it was and made you think of waxed oak and tarnished gold. The air was clear and clean. Sarg wasn’t an industrial world, and since it was one of the lucky ones with no life of its own to preserve, it had received a flora en masse from Earth. I saw Colorado spruce, and a lot of the old, hardy, half-wild roses like Sarah Van Fleet and Amelie Gravereaux.

  Stromboli, the man I was coming to see, had sent a buggy and a driver for me (if you don’t want industry there are things you can’t have, lots of them) and I got a good view of the firs on the mountains and the roses spilling down the rocks as we rattled along. I suppose I dropped some remark about the colors, because my driver asked, “You are an artist?”

  “Oh, no. A marionettist. But I carve and paint my own dolls—that’s an art, if you like. We try to make it one.”

  “That is what I meant. It is mostly such artists who come here to see him, and the big box which I loaded for you was suggestive. That is your control you carry?”

  “Yes.” I took it out of its leather case to show him.

  He peered at the tiny dials and levers. “The signer has such a one. Not, you understand, identical; but similar. Perhaps you could...?” He glanced back to where Charity reposed in her box. “It might help to pass the time.”

  I made her throw open her lid and climb up to sit on the seat with us, where she sang to the driver in her clear voice. Charity is a head taller than I am, blond, long-legged and narrow-waisted; a subtle exaggeration, or so I like to think, of a really pretty showgirl. After I had made her kiss him, dance ahead of the horse for a while, then climb back into her home and slam the lid, the driver said, “That was very good. You are an artist indeed.”

  “I forgot to mention that I call her Charity because that’s what I have to ask of my audiences.”

  “No, sir; you are very skilled. The skipping down the road—anyone can make them to skip for a few steps, but to do so for so long, over the uneven ground and so rapidly, I know how difficult it is. It deserves applause.”

  I wanted to see how far he would go, so I asked, “As good as the signor?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Not as good as Signor Stromboli. But I have seen many, sir. Many come here and you are far better than most. Signor Stromboli will be pleased to talk to you.”

  * * * *

  The house was smaller than I had expected, of the Italian Alpine style. There was a large, informal garden, however, and a carriage house in the rear. The driver assured me that he would see to my baggage, and Madame Stromboli, who I assume had been following our progress up the road from a window, met me at the gate. She was white-haired now, but the woman she had once been, olive-skinned and beautiful with magnificent dark eyes, still showed plainly in her face. “Welcome,” she said. “We are so glad that you could come.”

  I told her that it was a great honor to be there.

  “It is a great expense for you; we know that. To travel between the suns. Once when we were much younger my husband went, to make money for us. I could not go, it cost too much. Only him, and the dolls. For years I waited, but he returned to me.”

  I said, “It must have been lonely.”

  “It was, very lonely. Now we are here where very few can come and see us. It is beautiful, no? But lonely. But my husband and I, we are lonely together. That is better. You will wish to wash, and perhaps change your clothing. Then I will take you to see him.”

  I thanked her.

  “He will be kind to you. He likes young men who follow the old art. But be content with what he shows you. Do not say: How do you do this? Or Do that! Let him show you what he wishes and he will show you a great deal.”

  * * * *

  He did. I will not pretend to condense all the interviews I had with Stromboli into a single scene, but he was generous with his time—although the mornings, all morning, every day, were reserved for his practice, alone, in a room lined with mirrors. In time I saw nearly everything of his that I had heard described, except the
famous comic butler Zanni. He showed me how to keep five figures in motion at a time, differentiating their motions so cleverly that it was easy to imagine that the dancing, shouting people around us had five different operators, provided that you could remember, even while you watched Stromboli, that they had an operator at all.

  “They were little people once, you know,” he said. “You have read the history? Never higher than your shoulder—those were the biggest—and they moved with wires. In those days the most any man could do well was four, did you know that? Now they are as big as you and me, they are free, and I can do five. Perhaps before you die you will make it six. It is not impossible. As they pile the flowers onto your casket they will be saying, He could do six.”