Universe 8 - [Anthology] Read online

  “That the bes’ one he manage in a long time,” Parthena said.

  Since the applause continued, Zoe, feeling foolish, joined in too. And while they all clapped (did sermons always end like this, the congregation joining in a spontaneous ovation?), Luther carried Paul over to the biomonitor cabinet, laid him out, and administered oxygen from the metal bottle he had earlier taken out of the closet. After which the wraithlike cowboy lifted his head a bit and acknowledged their applause with a wan grin. Then Luther put him to bed.

  “You have to let him hear you,” Toodles said. “Otherwise the old bastard thinks you didn’t like it.”

  But he wasn’t much good for three days after the sermon. He stayed in the common room, sleeping or staring at the ceiling. Zoe sat with him on the first night and let him sip soup through a flexible straw. In a few minutes he waved the bowl away, and Zoe, thinking he wanted to sleep, got up to leave. Paul reached out for her wrist and missed. She saw it, though, and turned back to him. His hand patted the bed: Sit down. So she lowered herself into the easy chair there and took his liver-spotted hand in her own. For an hour she sat there and held it. Then the long, raw lips opened and he said, “I’m afraid, Zoe.”

  “Sometimes,” she said carefully, “I am, too.” Now and again she was, she had to admit it.

  The mouth remained open, the Weimaraner eyes glazed. Then Paul ran his tongue around his long lips. “Well,” he said, “you can get in bed with me if you want to.”

  And closed his eyes. And went to sleep.

  * * * *

  12 somewhere over the broomstick

  It had never been in doubt. Maybe a little, just a little, in jeopardy the first night when the menfolk insulted Toodles. Or maybe a bit uncertain with Paul, until after his rocking-horse oration and subsequent collapse. But never really perilously in doubt.

  So when Luther came up to the rooftop on that evening at the end of Winter and said, “You’re in, Zoe, you’re in,” her joy was contained, genuine but contained. You don’t shout Hooray! until the wedding’s over or the spacemen have got home safely. Zoe embraced Luther. Downstairs, she embraced the others.

  * * * *

  On the morning after the group’s decision, they had the covenant ceremony in the hostel quadrangle. Leland Tanner presided. Day 1 of Spring, 2040, New Calendar designation.

  “All right,” Mr. Leland said. “Each septigamoklan has its own covenant procedure, Zoe, since any way that it chooses to ratify its bond is legal in the eyes of the Human Development Commission. The Phoenix ceremony owes its origin to an idea of Parthena’s.” He looked at the group. They were all standing on a section of the artificial lawn surrounded by tubbed ginkgo trees. A table with refreshments was visible in the nearest arbor. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “That right,” Parthena said.

  And then, of all crazy things, Mr. Leland brought a broom out from behind his back. He laid it on the wiry turf at his feet and backed up a few steps. “OK,” he said. “What you all do now is join hands and step over the broomstick together.” He reconsidered. “Maybe we better do it in two groups of three, Zoe, you making the fourth each time. Any objections?”

  “No,” Parthena said. “So long as she cross it in the same direction both times, so none of it get undone.”

  OK. That’s the way they did it. Zoe went first with Helen, Toodles, and Luther, then a second go-round with Parthena, Paul, and Jerry. Jerry had to drive his wheel chair over one end of the broom handle.

  “I pronounce you,” Mr. Leland said, “all seven of you, married in the Phoenix. Six of you for a second time, one of you for the first.” He took them all over to the arbor and passed out drinks. “Viva the Phoenix.”

  Zoe drank. They all drank. Toasts went around the group several times. It was all very fitting that when you were sold down the river, into freedom, you got married by jumping over a broomstick. How else should you do it? No other way at all. No other way at all.

  * * * *

  Paul and Toodles, the oldest and the second youngest in the family, died in 2042. A year later Luther died. In 2047, two days short of her eightieth birthday, Helen died. In this same year Dr. Leland Tanner resigned his position at the Human Development Tower; he protested uninformed interference in a study that was then twelve years old. Upon his departure from the Geriatrics Hostel his programs were discontinued, the remaining members of the ten septigamoklans separated. In 2048 Jeremy Zitelman died in the hostel’s nursing ward. Parthena and Zoe, by the time of his death, had been returned to their “surviving families,” Parthena to a surfaceside Bondville tenement, Zoe to the Level 1 cubicle of Sanders and Melanie Noble. Oddly enough, these two last members of the Phoenix died within twelve hours of each other on a Summer day in 2050, after brief illnesses. Until a month or two before their deaths, they met each other once a week in a small restaurant on West Peachtree, where they divided a single vegetable dinner between them and exchanged stories about their grandchildren. Parthena, in fact, was twice a great-grandmother.

  * * * *

  After the broomstick-jumping ceremony in the garden court Mr. Leland took Zoe aside and said that someone wanted to talk to her in the room that he had once called an “air-lock.” His horsy face had a tic in one taut cheek, and his hands kept rubbing themselves against each other in front of his bright blue tunic. “I told him to wait until we were finished out here, Zoe. And he agreed.”

  Why this mystery? Her mind was other places. “Who is it?”

  “Your son-in-law.”

  She went into the air-lock, the decompression chamber, whatever you wanted to call it, and found Sanders ensconced in one corner of the sofa playing with the lint on his socks. When he saw her he got up, clumsily, with a funereal expression on his face. He looked like somebody had been stuffing his mouth with the same sort of lint he’d been picking off his socks: bloated jowls, vaguely fuzzy lips. She just stared at him until he had worked his mouth around so that it could speak.

  “Lannie lost the baby,” he said.

  So, after Lannie got out of the hospital, she spent a week in their Level 3 cubicle helping out until her daughter could do for herself. When that week was over, she returned to her new family in the Geriatrics Hostel. But before she left she pulled Sanders aside and said, “I’ve got some advice for you, something for you to tell Lannie too. Will you do it?”

  Sanders looked at his feet. “OK, Zoe.”

  “Tell her,” Zoe said, “to try again.”

  <>

  * * * *

  Telepathy is a theme that’s fascinated science fiction writers and readers alike, for wouldn’t it be wonderful to share our thoughts with others without the fetters of spoken language, and to perceive our friends’ emotions directly?

  Yet there could be dangers. Consider sharing a telepathic link with a friend who’s dying, who can “speak” to no one but you . . . and who might be able to take over your mind. How strong can a friendship be?

  Cynthia Felice, who wrote this suspenseful story about the implications of mind-sharing, spends most of her time managing a motel with her husband in Colorado; between check-ins, she pursues a beginning career as an author. Unless the business becomes too hectic, you’ll see her by-line frequently, and prominently, in the future.

  * * * *

  DAVID AND LINDY

  Cynthia Felice

  The Nightwine is faster than light, but, from the moment we received the report of Captain Linden’s injuries, the damn ship moved like a horse in a tar pit. Lindy wasn’t dead but he was dying. His ship had blown an unstable cargo and half the crew as well. While I worried only about Lindy, death notices were blinking throughout the universe. No guilt; I couldn’t do anything for them but it was possible I could do something for Lindy: he’s a telepath and so am I.

  Finally, the Nightwine was falling in a tight elliptical orbit around a giant planet in Barnard’s Star System, matching velocity with the Dandelion. Before the lights signaled “go” for trans
fer, I was in an eva-pod, the new ship’s doctor waiting in another. Through relay cameras, I could see a dozen eva-pods on silver-coated lines, hauling plates from the Dandelion’s cargo hatch to replace damaged ones on the hull. Waldoes were being used to repair damaged sensors and telemetry. They’d tried to jettison the cargo before it blew up but had only half-succeeded, so now the tedious work of jury-rigging spare parts, billions of AU’s from a supply depot, was underway. At least the burial pods were gone. They’d been shoved into a lower orbit and in a few years would wink out like meteorites as they passed through the planet’s atmosphere.

  Then it was “go.” I latched Doc Varner’s eva-pod with a waldoe and gave a long thrust with the cold-jet. Hauling the other pod’s mass required several mid-course corrections, or maybe it was because I was aware of Lindy’s thoughts by then—incomprehensible mumbo jumbo as if he were desperately trying to concentrate amid frantic interruptions. The pattern indicated fear and I couldn’t get the word-thoughts. I could have broken through then and there, but the eva-pods are not to be trifled with, and I was catching subliminal alarms from the Dandelion’s crew about my deceleration. I stayed with the job at hand.

  Once inside the Dandelion’s axis, the iris spiraled shut behind us and in a few minutes the safe-atmosphere light went on. I traced a comma on the labyrinth control, popping my pod’s hatch, then floated in freefall, waiting for Doc Varner. He came out, too fast, arms flailing and face filled with bewilderment. I grabbed his belt before he hit the bulkhead and pulled him to the hatch, shoving him into the lighted tube beyond. He didn’t feel confident until I’d manhandled him down to the hydroponic farm level where the tug of centrifugal force gave him something to base his bearings on. He grabbed the center pole and pushed past the succeeding levels until he could slide. At the outer rim, he stood again, signaled an “okay” to me, and ducked into the corridor. I was right behind him.

  Jill, Lindy’s wife, was waiting at the pole. She’s a red-haired woman, freckle-skinned, with height that makes me feel like a dwarf. There were healing wounds on her arms and fresh ones in her mind.—Big fat question mark surrounded by anxiety.—

  “He’s there, Jill,” I said. “I’ve been reading him during transfer.”

  Her eyes moistened and I felt her anxiety give over to relief.

  Uninhibited excitement turned my attention to the doc. —What does he say? Telepath, aware while in a coma. Computers and medics inadequate . . . perhaps not really coma... confusion when dealing with telepaths ...—

  The doc was athirst to see his patient in the clinic just meters away though outwardly he was appropriately composed. I was pleased with his mind’s impatience; I’ve learned that most competent professionals are exhilarated by their work. I gestured and we three went into the clinic together.

  Lindy lay amid stark white sheets with TV’s feeding in and tubes I couldn’t identify draining out. He’d been shorn of his tight brown curls and his skull skin was stitched together like a patchwork quilt. But within the mind of the fallen giant was a brilliance: thoughts, which were not stacked in his usual order of concentration but which were somehow pasted into a collage, swirling in that same desperate intentness I’d seen while in the eva-pod. What I did then was not like comparing a shout to a normal speaking voice; it was like leaping and hitting him with two feet square in the brain. It had to be quick for I had to get back and catch my body before it collapsed with nothing for support.—Lindy.—

  The collage splintered.—David!—

  My name was a sonic boom in my skull as I felt his joy. My own pleasure was no small thing either.—I’m here, Lindy.—

  The exchange went quickly without words to slow us down. In minutes I knew of the agony he’d suffered by being trapped within his own mind yet hearing Jill and the crew, picking up the medic’s concern for the injured and himself, the grief of the funerals without being able to communicate in any way. Fearing insanity, he’d worked state vectors, doing the computer’s work in his mind. When I understood what it was like for him to have only the deep complication of his own mind for company, I perspired. Then I realized the doc was talking to me:

  “Can you read him?”

  “Loud and clear; he’s fine,” I said.

  Jill smiled but the doctor shook his head and went back to the medical computer printouts he was studying.

  Lindy, still content from my arrival, asked me almost lightheartedly,—What’s the latest prognosis?—

  I tried to feel optimistic.—The doc has no confidence in computers.—

  But it’s difficult to keep a secret from Lindy. Lindy was listening to the doc while listening to me, and the doc, who was fresh from Earth and did not have command of the privacy request normals develop when they live around telepaths, was spewing diagnosis like a siren: — coma for sure . . . paralyzed even if he can be revived . . . rapid deterioration . . .—

  —Give the man a chance to think, Lindy. Thought processes are not final conclusions.—But Lindy knew that.

  Resignedly, he sighed. —Coma, the medic was right. It’s less difficult to accept with you here. At least I can communicate.—

  —He may change his diagnosis when he’s done examining you.—

  Lindy laughed.—Right now he’s thinking of the implications of an aware telepathic mind while the body lies in a coma and about a paper he will write.—

  I glanced up at Doc Varner, seemingly involved only with the printouts. The paper was only a fringe thought; the human mind cannot help exploring its thoughts even while pressing needs involve the conscious. I wished I had Lindy’s ability to decipher simultaneous thoughts. I had to shift from one person to the other. Lindy already knew more than I.

  —How’s Jill taking it?—Lindy said.

  I was aware that Jill’s thoughts were drawn tight in privacy request. Telepaths honor normals’ privacy because we’ve carefully cultivated trust within the closed social system of the ships. Lindy wouldn’t breach the privacy pattern with any of his crew—except Jill, whom he couldn’t resist touching often. But he honored her request now, fearing that her love had been replaced with pity she could not hide from him. Yet he was asking me if pity was there.

  —I don’t know,—I said honestly. —She was relieved when I told her I could read you. Beyond that I’m not sure. Why should pity worry you? It’s a normal reaction.—

  —I don’t want her pity and none from you either! There’s enough around the ship without yours and Jill’s.—

  —Been busy since you’ve had me to lean on, haven’t you? Be nice, or I’ll stop listening...—

  Lindy’s mind screamed:—No!—

  I regretted the jest immediately. I touched his hand. He couldn’t feel my touch with his body’s nerves, but his mind felt the gesture.

  —I’m sorry, David. I’ve had enough silence . . . perhaps more than I can take. Don’t leave me.—

  —I won’t. I’ll stay.—

  —Until the end?—

  I was startled. —We don’t know that you’re going to die. The doc . . .—

  —. . . is doubtful. I need the services of an Earth specialist but the planetfall would surely kill me even if Earth-eaters gave dispensation for surgery on a telepath. My body is wasting. Men have lived months, even years, in comas, but Varner sees only months for me.—

  The doc was talking in muted tones to the medic. Sure enough, they were planning life-prolonging, not lifesaving, measures. Stricken, I turned back to Lindy. —To the end, then . . . but I’m not convinced you’ll die. You know that.—

  —Do I?—

  Fringe thoughts. “Hey, Doc, give Captain Linden a frank report on his condition. Forget the bedside manner: it would be wasted.”

  He verbalized and his words were pretty close to the truth; “It’s not good. On Earth, I would give him a fifty-fifty chance on the paralysis after surgery, but I’m just not sure about the coma. The symptoms hinge on each other. I’m not qualified to perform the surgery and we can’t transport him to E
arth because his spinal cord could be severed during atmospheric re-entry. I don’t even want to subject him to the jolt necessary to exceed speed-of-light.” The next part was almost a lie, designed to comfort the next of kin—Jill and me—and to keep up the patient’s spirits. It helped only Jill. “I’m going to set up a temporary clinic on the hydroponic farm level. The lesser centrifugal force will help heal the bedsores and relieve nerve pressure. Then you’ll have to decide if you want me to return to Earth and find a competent specialist.”

  “No decision involved, Doctor.” It was Jill who spoke. “Of course you must go.”

  The doc had the good grace at least to try straight-line communication. He was clumsy, but I got the message. Time was the problem, a three-month round trip from Barnard’s Star System to Sol, not including downtime in locating the right doctor. Lindy probably wouldn’t last. There also were fringe thoughts about his paper and mental explorations about sending the medic to Earth while he remained with Captain Linden.