Orbit 14 Read online

  ORBIT 14

  Edited by Damon Knight

  HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London

  ORBIT 14. Copyright © 1974 by Damon Knight.

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto.

  FIRST EDITION

  Designed by C. Linda Dingler

  ISBN: 0-06-012438-5

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-18657

  They Say

  The lead story [in Astounding Stories, December 1933] was Nat Schachner’s “Ancestral Voices,” in which a time traveler, having returned to the past, happens to kill a ferocious Hun who, unknown to the traveler, is one of his own ancestors. This brings about the immediate nonexistence of the time traveler as well as that of many thousands of people throughout history. Above all, the Hun’s death causes the disappearance in 1933 of Hitler and numerous Nazis, along with an equally large number of Jews! Thus Schachner denounced the myth of the superiority of the “Aryan race” along with that of the “chosen people.” Jews or Nazis, all men are of the same race. This very courageous story, written at a time when Hitlerism had many supporters in the United States, caused a shock among die readers. Certain admirers of the Third Reich went so far as to threaten the editors with reprisals; adult science fiction was born.

  —Jacques Sadoul, in Hier, Van 2000 (Denoel, Paris, 1973)

  * * *

  “I owe what I am entirely to paperbacks. I am a PX and bus station author; and I’m lucky because people think of my books as science fiction, and they always print a lot of copies of science fiction.”

  —Kurt Vonnegut, at the Bookworkers’ seminar on “Open Publishing,” New York, April 9, 1973 (reported in Publishers Weekly)

  * * *

  HEINLEIN (Robert A.)

  Here is the typical product of America, as seen by those who are repelled by America but who like the Americans. As an individual, he so perfectly represents that country, crammed with blinding faults and made up of often delightful people, that he seems a parody of it: the best conscience in the world, more extraverted than flesh and blood can be, a juvenile mentality furnished with an extravagant power (his talent), a purely visceral racism without any rational foundation, all this in the service of science fiction—it’s too much.

  —Pierre Versins, Encyclopidie de I’Utofrie et de la Science Fiction (L’Age d’Homme, Lausanne, 1972)

  * * *

  We who hobnob with hobbits and tell tall tales about little green men are quite used to being dismissed as mere entertainers, or sternly disapproved of as escapists. But I think that perhaps the categories are changing, like the times. Sophisticated readers are accepting the fact that an improbable and unmanageable world is going to produce an improbable and hypothetical art. At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence. A scientist who creates a monster in his laboratory; a librarian in the library of Babel; a wizard unable to cast a spell; a space ship having trouble in getting to Alpha Centauri: all these may be precise and profound metaphors of the human condition. The fantasist, whether he uses the ancient archetypes of myth and legend or the younger ones of science and technology, may be talking as seriously as any sociologist—and a good deal more directly—about human life as it is lived, and as it might be lived, and as it ought to be lived. For, after all, as great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.

  —Ursula K. Le Guin, accepting the National Book Award for Children’s Literature, New York, April 10, 1973

  TIN SOLDIER

  In Hans Christian Andersen’s immortal story, a tin soldier fell in love with a ballerina and passed through the fire for her. Their fate was cruel; but now, centuries later and light-years away, another tin soldier and his ballerina might have a second chance.

  Joan D. Vinge

  The ship drifted down the ragged light-robe of the Pleiades, dropped like a perfect pearl into the midnight water of the bay. And re-emerged, to bob gently in a chain of gleaming pearls stretched across the harbor toward the port. The port’s unsleeping Eye blinked once, the ship replied. New Piraeus, pooled among the hills, sent tributaries of light streaming down to the bay to welcome all comers, full of sound and brilliance and rash promise. The crew grinned, expectant, faces peering through the transparent hull; someone giggled nervously.

  The sign at the heavy door flashed a red one-legged toy; TIN SOLDIER flashed blue below it. eat. drink, come back again. In green. And they always did, because they knew they could.

  “Soldier, another round, please!” came over canned music.

  The owner of the Tin Soldier, also known as Tin Soldier, glanced up from his polishing to nod and smile, reached down to set bottles out on the bar. He mixed the drinks himself. His face was ordinary, with eyes that were dark and patient, and his hair was coppery barbed wire bound with a knotted cloth. Under the curling copper, under the skin, the back of his skull was a plastic plate. The quick fingers of the hand on the goose-necked bottle were plastic, the smooth arm was prosthetic. Sometimes he imagined he heard clicking as it moved. More than half his body was artificial. He looked to be about twenty-five; he had looked the same fifty years ago.

  He set the glasses on the tray and pushed, watching as it drifted across the room, and returned to his polishing. The agate surface of the bar showed cloudy permutations of color, grain-streak and whorl and chalcedony depths of mist. He had discovered it in the desert to the east—a shattered imitation tree, like a fellow traveler trapped in stasis through time. They shared the private joke with their clientele.

  “—come see our living legend!”

  He looked up, saw her coming in with the crew of the Who Got Her-709, realized he didn’t know her. She hung back as they crowded around, her short ashen hair like beaten metal in the blue-glass lantern light. New, he thought. Maybe eighteen, with eyes of quicksilver very wide open. He smiled at her as he welcomed them, and the other women pulled her up to the agate bar. “Come on, little sister,” he heard Harkane say, “you’re one of us too.” She smiled back at him.

  “I don’t know you . . . but your name should be Diana, like the silver Lady of the Moon.” His voice caught him by surprise.

  Quicksilver shifted. “It’s not.”

  Very new. And realizing what he’d almost done again, suddenly wanted it more than anything. Filled with bitter joy he said, “What is your name?”

  Her face flickered, but then she met his eyes and said, smiling, “My name is Brandy.”

  “Brandy . . .”

  A knowing voice said, “Send us the usual, Soldier. Later, yes—?”

  He nodded vaguely, groping for bottles under the counter ledge. Wood screeked over stone as she pulled a stool near and slipped onto it, watching him pour. “You’re very neat.” She picked nuts from a bowl.

  "Long practice.”

  She smiled, missing the joke.

  He said, “Brandy’s a nice name. And I think somewhere I’ve heard it—”

  “The whole thing is Branduin. My mother said it was very old.” He was staring at her. He wondered if she could see one side of his face blushing. “What will you drink?”

  “Oh … do you have any—brandy? It’s a wine, I think; nobody’s ever had any. But because it’s my name, I always ask.”

  He frowned. �
�I don’t . . . hell, I do! Stay there.”

  He returned with the impossible bottle, carefully wiped away its gray coat of years and laid it gleaming on the bar. Glintings of maroon speared their eyes. “All these years, it must have been waiting. That’s where I heard it . . . genuine vintage brandy, from Home.”

  “From Terra—really? Oh, thank you!” She touched the bottle, touched his hand. “I’m going to be lucky.”

  Curving glasses blossomed with wine; he placed one in her palm. “Ad astra.” She lifted the glass.

  “Ad astra; to the stars.” He raised his own, adding silently, Tonight . . .

  They were alone. Her breath came hard as they climbed up the newly cobbled streets to his home, up from the lower city where the fluorescent lamps were snuffing out one by one.

  He stopped against a low stone wall. “Do you want to catch your breath?” Behind him in the empty lot a weedy garden patch wavered with the popping street lamp.

  “Thank you.” She leaned downhill against him, against the wall. “I got lazy on my training ride. There’s not much to do on a ship; you’re supposed to exercise, but—” Her shoulder twitched under the quilted blue-silver. He absorbed her warmth.

  Her hand pressed his lightly on the wall. “What’s your name? You haven’t told me, you know.”

  “Everyone calls me Soldier.”

  “But that’s not your name.” Her eyes searched his own, smiling. He ducked his head, his hand caught and tightened around hers. “Oh … no, it’s not. It’s Maris.” He looked up. “That’s an old name, too. It means ‘soldier,’ consecrated to the god of war. I never liked it much.”

  “From ‘Mars’? Sol’s fourth planet, the god of war.” She bent back her head and peered up into the darkness. Fog hid the stars. “Yes.”

  “Were you a soldier?”

  “Yes. Everyone was a soldier—every man—where I came from. War was a way of life.”

  “An attempt to reconcile the blow to the masculine ego?”

  He looked at her.

  She frowned in concentration. “‘After it was determined that men were physically unsuited to spacing, and women came to a new position of dominance as they monopolized this' critical area, the Terran cultural foundation underwent severe strain. As a result, many new and not always satisfactory cultural systems are evolving in the galaxy. . . . One of these is what might be termed a backlash of exaggerated machismo—’”

  “‘—and the rebirth of the warrior-chattel tradition.’”

  “You’ve read that book too.” She looked crestfallen.

  “I read a lot. New Ways for Old, by Ebert Ntaka?”

  “Sorry … I guess I got carried away. But, I just read it—”

  “No.” He grinned. “And I agree with old Ntaka, too. Glatte— what a sour name—was an unhealthy planet. But that’s why I’m here, not there.”

  “Ow—!” She jerked loose from his hand. “Ohh, oh . . . God, you’re strong!” She put her fingers in her mouth.

  He fell over apologies; but she shook her head, and shook her hand. “No, it’s all right . . . really, it just surprised me. Bad memories?”

  He nodded, mouth tight.

  She touched his shoulder, raised her lingers to his lips. “Kiss it, and make it well?” Gently he caught her hand, kissed it; she pressed against him. “It’s very late. We should finish climbing the hill . . .?”

  “No.” Hating himself, he set her back against the wall.

  “No? But I thought—”

  “I know you did. Your first space, I asked your name, you wanted me to; tradition says you lay the guy. But I’m a cyborg, Brandy.

  . . . It’s always good for a laugh on the poor greenie, they’ve pulled it a hundred times.”

  “A cyborg?” The flickering gray eyes raked his body.

  “It doesn’t show with my clothes on.”

  “Oh …” Pale lashes were beating very hard across the eyes now. She took a breath, held it. “Do—you always let it get this far? I mean—”

  “No. Hell, I don’t know why I … I owe you another apology. Usually I never ask the name. If I slip, I tell them right away; nobody’s ever held to it. I don’t count.” He smiled weakly.

  “Well, why? You mean you can’t—”

  “I’m not all plastic.” He frowned, numb fingers rapping stone. “God, I’m not. Sometimes I wish I was, but I’m not.”

  “No one? They never want to?”

  “Branduin”—he faced the questioning eyes—“you’d better go back down. Get some sleep. Tomorrow laugh it off, and pick up some flashy Tail in the bar and have a good time. Come see me again in twenty-five years, when you’re back from space, and tell me what you saw.” Hesitating, he brushed her cheek with his true hand; instinctively she bent her head to the caress. “Good-bye.” He started up the hill.

  “Maris—”

  He stopped, trembling.

  “Thank you for the brandy . . .” She came up beside him and caught his belt. “You’ll probably have to tow me up the hill.”

  He pulled her to him and began to kiss her, hands touching her body incredulously.

  “It’s getting—very, very late. Let’s hurry.”

  Maris woke, confused, to the sound of banging shutters. Raising his head he was struck by the colors of dawn, and the shadow of Brandy standing bright-edged at the window. He left the rumpled bed and crossed cold tiles to join her. “What are you doing?” He yawned.

  “I wanted to watch the sun rise, I haven’t seen anything but night for months. Look, the fog’s lifting already: the sun burns it up, it’s on fire, over the mountains—”

  He smoothed her hair, pale gold under a corona of light. “And embers in the canyon.”

  She looked down across ends of gray mist slowly reddening; then back. “Good morning.” She began to laugh. “I’m glad you don’t have any neighbors down there!” They were both naked.

  He grinned, “That’s what I like about the place,” and put his arms around her. She moved close in the circle of coolness and warmth.

  They watched the sunrise from the bed.

  In the evening she came into the bar with the crew of the Kiss And Tell-736. They waved to him, nodded to her and drifted into blue shadows; she perched smiling before him. It struck him suddenly that nine hours was a long time.

  “That’s the crew of my training ship. They want some white wine, please, any kind, in a bottle.”

  He reached under the bar. “And one brandy, on the house?” He sent the tray off.

  “Hi, Maris . . .”

  “Hi, Brandy.”

  “To misty mornings.” They drank together.

  “By the way”—she glanced at him slyly—“I passed it around that people have been missing something. You.”

  “Thank you,” meaning it. “But I doubt if it’ll change any minds.”

  “Why not?”

  “You read Ntaka—xenophobia; to most people in most cultures cyborgs are unnatural, the next thing up from a corpse. You’d have to be a necrophile—”

  She frowned.

  “—or extraordinary. You’re the first extraordinary person I’ve met in a hundred years.”

  The smile formed, faded. “Maris—you’re not exactly twenty-five, are you? How old are you?”

  “More like a hundred and fifteen.” He waited for the reaction.

  She stared. “But, you look like twenty-five? You’re real, don’t you age?”

  “I age. About five years for every hundred.” He shrugged. “The prosthetics slow the body’s aging. Perhaps it’s because only half my body needs constant regeneration; or it may be an effect of the anti-rejection treatment. Nobody really understands it. It just happens sometimes.”

  “Oh.” She looked embarrassed. “That’s what you meant by ‘come back and see me’ . ., and they meant—Will you really live a thousand years?”

  “Probably not. Something vital will break down in another three or four centuries, I guess. Even plastic doesn’t last forever.
”

  “Oh . .”

  “Live longer and enjoy it less. Except for today. What did you do today? Get any sleep?”

  “No—” She shook away disconcertion. “A bunch of us went out and gorged. We stay on wake-ups when we’re in port, so we don’t miss a minute; you don’t need to sleep. Really they’re for emergencies, but everybody does it.”

  Quick laughter almost escaped him; he hoped she’d missed it. Serious, he said, “You want to be careful with those things. They can get to you.”

  “Oh, they’re all right.” She twiddled her glass, annoyed and suddenly awkward again, confronted by the Old Man.

  Hell, it can’t matter—He glanced toward the door.

  “Brandy! There you are.” And the crew came in. “Soldier, you must come sit with us later; but right now we’re going to steal Brandy away from you.”

  He looked up with Brandy to the brown face, brown eyes, and salt-white hair of Harkane, Best Friend of the Mactav on the Who Got Her-709. Time had woven deep nets of understanding around her eyes; she was one of his oldest customers. Even the shape of her words sounded strange to him now: “Ah, Soldier, you make me feel young, always . . . Come, little sister, and join your family; share her, Soldier.”

  Brandy gulped brandy; her boots clattered as she dropped off the stool. “Thank you for the drink,” and for half a second the smile was real. “Guess I’ll be seeing you—Soldier.” And she was leaving, ungracefully, gratefully.

  Soldier polished the agate bar, ignoring the disappointed face it showed him. And later watched her leave, with a smug, blank-eyed Tail in velvet knee pants.

  Beyond the doorway yellow-green twilight seeped into the bay, the early crowds began to come together with the night. “H’lo, Maris . . .?” Silver dulled to lead met him in a face gone hollow; thin hands trembled, clenched, trembled in the air.

  “Brandy—”

  “What’ve you got for an upset stomach?” She was expecting laughter.

  “Got the shakes, huh?” He didn’t laugh.