Orbit 6 - [Anthology] Read online

  “Listen—”

  “Solomon, we were in the park, and at first it was so hot, then we sat under a tree and it was so cool—”

  “Listen . . .”

  “... I think I must have fallen asleep . . . Solomon, you’re so quiet . . . Now you’re home, I can give the Heshy his bath. Look at him, Solomon! Look, look!”

  Already things were beginning to get better. “And the High Priest shall pray for the peace of himself and his house. Tanya Rabbanan:— and his house. This means, his wife. He who has no wife, has no home.” Small sighs, stifled sobs, little breaks of breath, Faroly moved forward into the apartment. Windows and mirrors were still, dark, quiet. The goslin day was almost over. She had the baby ready for the bath. Faroly moved his eyes, squinting against the last sunlight, to look at the flesh of his first-born, unique son, his Kaddish. What child was this, sallow, squinting back, scrannel, preternaturally sly—? Faroly heard his own voice screaming screaming changeling! changeling!

  —Goslin!

  <>

  * * * *

  Maybe Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine

  de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck,

  Was a Little Bit Right

  by Robin Scott

  The end of the world has come with a bang; there has been little time for whimpering. Three survivors, two men and a woman, stand on a low knoll beside their newly returned Moon ship and survey fields and forests and the sea, a scene which is, except for them, almost totally devoid of land-based chordate life. The gas has dissipated; the residual radiation has dropped to a safe level; already the grasses and coniferae have begun to recover. There are fresh green shoots everywhere, and it is only two months since Earth had blazed up in the lunar night. The survivors know they will not starve even if they stay clear of the blackened stumps of the cities, where canned foods must still exist relatively undamaged.

  Because she sunburns easily, Celia Bingham sits on the ground in the ship’s shadow. It is shortly after noon, and the April sun paints a Dali landscape. Celia is happy to be free of the confinement of the ship and its oil-taste air. She does not share the dazed despair of her companions, principally because she has nearly all her life found her center and her focus in a concentration on the memory of her stern father. He had died of prostate cancer when she was twelve—after four or five years of obsessive attention to her—and her mother had thereafter increased both the frequency and the variety of her lovers. He had been a dentist in Skokie, Illinois.

  Celia, a plump, pink sausage of a woman, had been generally considered one of the three or four best astrophysicists in the world. Now, at thirty-two, she is unquestionably the best.

  Because she is in love with a memory, she feels no great sense of loss in the destruction of the world. She is confident that her companions will see to her survival and it does not occur to her that she may have some role to play in the world they will fashion. She is satisfied that she is still alive. Without conscious awareness, she describes the harsh landscape, only slightly softened by a pointillist’s viridian, to her father, a topical continuation of the internal monologue she has maintained for twenty years.

  Corder, the biophysicist, is first to perceive the problem. “It is the genetic pool,” he says, addressing the sky and the water and the faintly green fields. He is a tall, shy man in his early forties, and he is still numbed at the loss of wife and children, whom he had come to think of as the sole source of his happiness and stability. Because he had always sought solace in the certitudes of his discipline before his marriage, he is now eager to begin on the problem. He is eager to seek a solution, because a solution involves for him futurity, and the past, for him, involves horror. “We must maximize the genetic diversity we possess and keep very careful records for second and third generation mating.” He is a little embarrassed and carefully avoids looking at the other two, who in any case are not looking at him.

  As a professional biologist, Corder has always been something of a Lamarckian heretic. He has never been able to ignore certain evidence which seems to suggest that environment may produce qualitative changes in speciation. A series of rejected articles has made him sensitively aware of his heresy, and he has hidden an even deeper heresy which stemmed from his early preoccupation with biopsychology and the genetic basis of personality. Now he worries that, under the circumstances, environmental effects may change genetic patterns in some unforeseeable way. He resolves to attempt such environmental controls as he can. He peers at the blasted forests and fields and wonders if preservation of the human species as it has been is a good idea. But he is full of Shavian life-force and he is full of sentiment, and he rejects the notion as the greatest heresy of all.

  Sturgis, the Moon-ship pilot, is an Air Force officer in his early thirties. He does not understand what Corder is talking about. He is too numbed by what has happened, and on the Moon, during the waiting period, he was reluctant to accept the fact that only the three of them had survived. Shocked as he had been, his training and discipline have enabled him to bring the ship back to a good landing. The meticulous performance of prescribed duty is his last anchor to reality; it is his obeisance to the only gods he has known, the icons of stars and eagles and oak-leaves. Now he is carefully surveying the surrounding landscape to pick the best spot to erect a survival shelter, although the undamaged interior of the ship is more than adequate to house the group. He nods without comprehension at Corder’s words, his wrinkled, too-old eyes squinting against the bright horizon. He is busy recalling details from an Air Force survival course of a decade before; he wants everything to go in accordance with sound doctrine, the formulators of which he cannot yet believe are dead.

  Corder continues: “If we estimate a thirteen-year maturation cycle and employ cross-generation breeding, we should be able to maximize our joint genetic resources in minimum time.” He kneels and scratches some digits in the dust. He ponders them for a moment and stands. “Yes, that is the best we can do.”

  Celia comes to the end of her description and allows the image of her father to dim as much as it ever does. She looks up brightly at Corder. “I’m sorry, Dr. Corder, what were you saying?” He explains and she looks away, her face still calm and round, her fine sandy hair lively in the breeze. Inside, she cries Father!

  * * * *

  The first baby is a girl and Corder is relieved. She is Sturgis’ daughter, but she will be Corder’s mate. She is now six weeks old and it is time for him to reciprocate. He has not yet had intercourse with Celia, although after she became pregnant, there was no genetic reason not to do so. It has been important that Sturgis, being younger, father the first female so that he, Corder, with a somewhat lower life-expectancy, might have a better chance of genetic insertion into the second generation. He watches the baby playing with its toes in a spot of early-spring sunlight at the entrance to Sturgis’ elaborate palisade shelter. He thinks he will make her a rattle of clam shells; they are easy to find now that there are no gulls to harvest them. The baby’s innocence and beauty have cheered him, but he resolves to limit his playtime with Marianne so that he may condition himself to think of her as his mate. He thinks of his wife, dead now for nearly a year and a half. Of late he has begun to speak to her in his thoughts. He feels better after he has explained things to her. Most often, however, he simply apologizes: I’m sorry, dear.

  Later, when it has grown dark, he goes with Celia into the ship and lies with her. There are insects again, and while he savors their evening music, he worries about ecological imbalance and the crops he is about to plant from wild seed salvaged in the fall. In the dark, in the wordless dark, he tries to imagine Celia is his dead wife, and then he rejects the notion as the ultimate infidelity. Lust born of long continence helps him to a blind, primordial consummation, and he awakens in the morning feeling shame, and impatience with himself for feeling shame. He wonders only very briefly why Celia said “O Father!” in the spasm of orgasm, and although she repeats the phrase on succeeding nights, he
takes no further note of it.

  Sturgis is jealous. He feels no particular affection for Celia, but she had been virgin and he is a possessive and oddly puritanical man, a little unsure of his manhood. He had felt vaguely uneasy about her defloration and his subsequent pleasures until he recalled that he was technically still captain of the Moon ship and thus—perhaps—authorized to perform marriages. He had not, of course, mentioned his feelings to either Celia or Corder, nor has it occurred to him actually to solemnize the relationship. Still, he is upset by Corder’s quiet words on genetic necessities; Corder’s notions offend him. Now only the shelter is wholly and exclusively his creation, and he thinks of Corder with growing hatred. Just let the son of a bitch lay a hand on the shelter and I’ll break his fucking back. . . . He begins to compose a mental memorandum of complaint and justification to the S&P Division of the Air Force, with a drop copy to NASA. FROM: Sturgis, John L., Mai. USAF, 2337644/2201. TO: C.O., S&P Div. Pent. B-3389...

  Celia lies passively, uncomfortable under the weight of Corder. It is not like it has been with Sturgis. Then, the initial pain had brought the bearded image of her father immediately to her, and Sturgis’ clumsy brutality had kept the image there during subsequent encounters. Corder is too gentle, his experience confined to sex confused by love, enhanced by love. Here there is no love, and Corder is awkward, offensively diffident. With an effort of will, Celia concentrates on her memories, and although she tries hard to remain faithful, two images merge and shift in her mind. She tries to drive the newer image away, and at the moment of orgasm she nearly succeeds. O Father! she says, and it is an apology.

  * * * *

  Celia has grown immensely fat. Corder, at fifty-five, is bent from long hours in the fields, long hours mending the nets. Marianne is lithe and slim with new breasts that get in her way during the baseball games Corder organizes. Looking at her, Corder feels desire for the first time in fourteen years. But Marianne has not yet menstruated, and Corder cannot justify lying with her until there is a reasonable prospect of procreation, of fulfillment of the genetic plan.

  Corder is deeply disturbed by the desire he recognizes in Sturgis’ eyes and he contemplates fleeing with Marianne and the two boys, leaving behind only his own eleven-year-old daughter, Beth. It would make genetic and practical sense, but he hesitates, fearful for the younger girl.

  Sturgis has grown more brutal with age. He is easily angered and he seems to take pleasure in beating the children. Celia’s fat, white body is laced with little cuts and bruises after their lovemaking, although she does not complain.

  Corder is sure Marianne would leave with him. She has no love for her biological father, and Corder has been careful to explain to her what she must do to preserve the race. When he finally makes the decision to leave, he justifies it by dwelling on the genetic ruin that would result if Sturgis and not he were to father a child on Marianne. Trapped by this logic, he leaves Beth behind, although he weeps at what she must suffer and hopes he has been successful in instilling in all the children the emotional independence he has himself never possessed.

  He finds himself explaining and apologizing to Marianne as they unearth the crude cart he has loaded with supplies and hidden in the verge of the field he has so long tilled. He no longer speaks to his dead wife.

  Sturgis has also put on weight. Now he is beefy and jowled. He is putting the finishing touches on the “new wing.” There has been a new wing every year, and the shelter sprawls in an ungainly half-circle around the rusting steel of the ship. Sturgis is very proud of his work. He has taken to composing mental memoranda of commendation to be forwarded to higher authority. He is modest but positive; he is careful to frame his self-praise in the passive voice: It is believed that the new structure will constitute a major contribution to the survival potential of . . . Over the years, he has in his mental memoranda promoted himself until he signs them Sturgis, John L./Maj. Gen. USAF.

  A rough-cut pine beam slips and pins his hand momentarily but painfully against the adobe wall. He curses: “You bitch! You bitch! You bitch!” The pain makes him think briefly of Celia and he feels a faint arousal. Then he spots Marianne feeding his infant son, Celia’s last baby, in the shade of the ship. Marianne is all brown limbs and taut skin and she croons to the infant in a high, piping voice. Sturgis climbs down his smooth ladder to talk to her. But as usual Corder intervenes and waves Marianne away. Sturgis feels a sudden renascence of anger that grows to a sunburn of rage and he resolves to kill Corder then and there.

  Celia is ill. The fourth baby, Sturgis’ son, had caused damage. She is badly overweight. S-shaped varicosities seam her broad legs. She can no longer enjoy a clear image of her father, and Sturgis is beginning to visit her less frequently, although more violently, at night. She feels despair and she worries about Sturgis and Marianne and she wishes she could tell her father about it. A child comes to her for help with an arithmetic problem Corder had assigned. She heaves herself from her hammock to comply. There is sudden shouting, the shocking sound of men beyond control, and she waddles to the hatchway to see Corder and Sturgis rolling in the dust, the everpresent land crabs scuttling to safety. Sturgis bears the older man down and strikes at him with a knife. There is blood on Corder’s upthrust arm. Marianne strikes Sturgis with a fist-sized rock and he rolls away and staggers to his feet, dazed and vomiting. The blood frightens Celia. The melon sound of rock on skull frightens her. Corder and Marianne shout for the older boy and run from the compound with the baby. Beth weeps. Celia feels sharp fright, almost panic, when she thinks of Sturgis’ visit that night.

  * * * *

  When his son returns from one of the regular, monthly scouting trips with the news that Beth is pregnant, Corder, without a word to Marianne, leaves that night to walk twenty miles back to the ship. It is morning when he arrives, but since Sturgis is still asleep, Corder has no difficulty approaching the shelter undetected. There are no dogs to bark and the land crabs scuttle noiselessly. Nor is it physically difficult for him to drive his pocketknife deep into Sturgis’ throat, but Sturgis does not die immediately, and the shelter, big as it is, is splattered with his blood before he collapses, a questioning look on his face.

  There is some noise, and Celia pulls herself up from the hammock in the ship and walks to the shelter to investigate. At first she is horrified, and then, when she looks at the dead Sturgis’ face, she suddenly realizes the images in her mind have become separate, and she goes back to her hammock and her endless monologue, now with two discrete auditors.

  Beth examines her dead mate with dry eyes, gathers her few belongings, and follows her father out of the shelter. She must adjust to this new image of her father. He is no longer the one who abandoned her; now he is also the savior. She falls in love with him a little bit and together they return to Marianne and the other children.

  Corder thinks: The ship will take care of Celia as long as necessary. I will sometimes visit the ship.

  Corder thinks about genetics and controlled environment and Sturgis alive and Sturgis dead and Sturgis the father. Corder worries about all his heresies and he cannot prevent a sidelong look at the swollen abdomen of the girl walking beside him. Corder does not know whether or not he should hope that Lamarck was maybe a little bit right.

  <>

  * * * *

  The Chosen

  by Kate Wilhelm

  “Lorin, where are you?” He heard Jan’s call and wished she hadn’t come out. She called again, closer. Reluctantly he left the tree trunk he had been leaning against and answered.

  “I’m here, Jan. I’m coming.”

  He knew she couldn’t see him in the dark under the mammoth trees, but she was plainly visible in the clearing at the edge of the woods: a slender, spectral figure with loose white-blond hair blowing in the wind, gleaming under the full moon. She had a long wrap about her, and it too was luminous in the silvery light. He hurried a bit; probably she was cold, and he sensed her fear. It had been in her voice; it was
in her stance, her refusal to enter the woods to find him. She saw him then and took a step toward him, but again stopped and waited. When he reached her she threw her arms about him and clung for a moment.

  “I was so worried,” she said. “You were gone for hours.”

  “Honey, I’m sorry. I thought you were asleep.” He turned so that he could see the forest over her head. The smooth trees at the edge of the woods reflected the pale moonlight, and behind them there was a solid black wall. No wind stirred under the trees; no sound was there. High above, hundreds of feet over them, the tops of the trees made whisper-soft rustlings. He remembered how it had been walking under the black canopy, and he yearned to return to it, with Jan at his side sharing his awe. She was pulling him back toward the ship, and he put his arm about her waist and turned his gaze from the forest.

  She was saying, “I was asleep, but when I woke up and found you gone, I couldn’t go back to sleep. It was too quiet. I waited over an hour before I came out... I didn’t tell any of the others.”

  He tensed with a flash of anger. It died rapidly. He was acting erratically; she was loyal and wouldn’t report him. Simple as that. And she had shown courage in waiting alone, going out alone. He said nothing and they walked toward the dome-shaped tents at the side of the ship. The tents were all dark and silent. He paused once more and glanced back at the still woods, then they went inside their tent.