Complete Fiction, page 36
Venus twisted his nerves and he woke up with a hoarse scream. There were hands on his face, trying to . . . to—he beat them away.
“Are you all right?” asked the girl. She touched his forehead again. He lay glowering at her, pain receding, consciousness fighting its way lethargically up front. He became aware that she was naked. He shifted his gaze and saw her damp underclothes stirring against the air-recharger. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Leave me the hell alone,” he growled.
“Very well,” she said. Her feelings weren’t hurt. The exchange had nothing to do with Venus, so it didn’t touch her. She moved calmly back to the loafer-chair and sprawled out with her notes.
He watched her and slowly began to grind his teeth.
She was as unconcerned in her nakedness as if she were at home in the presence of a house-cat.
He didn’t matter. He didn’t belong. She hadn’t the sensitivities, the intuitions, of a human being. The capacity for empathy, for sympathy was just not in Veenies—it had been left out along with laughter and ecstasy and the sense of wonder . . .
And what made it worse, she was so goddam beautiful.
She said, “We can leave soon now.” All eager and obsessed to get on with the work.
Mike swore. She glanced out at the raging muck outside. “You take your time,” she said kindly. “Stay here until you’re sure you can handle it.”
“Don’t be silly,” he growled, and, while every muscle-fiber in his body called him a liar, he added, “I’m as ready as you are. Let’s get out of this rat-trap.”
They dressed rapidly, checked air-filters and face-masks, and went out together. The black drizzle greeted them gladly, with a roar and a terrible thumping that spun him half around. He saw Lora’s teeth flash behind her mask as she accepted the challenge, and then she was gone into the murk. He leapt after her, slid and fell wallowing in the mud while she vaulted lightly into her flyer. By the time he had reached his, hers was gone, flung up and away into the storm.
He slumped into the seat and closed his greenhouse. He goosed the drivers and settled down to flying and feeling sorry for himself. After an hour he was hopelessly disoriented and had to call and get talked in. He got onto the apron at last and called to thank the tower and add, “Lora Sims check in?” He hadn’t even known he was thinking of her.
“Sure. Checked in and took off again. Want to relay a message?”
“Just wondered,” Mike said, feeling like a damn fool. He grunted out of the flyer and glanced at it without affection. What a hunk of bubble-gum to be bucketing around this planet in! Now on Earth, they worked like magic.
Which, of course, was one of the troubles. These compact, wingless craft, ingeniously powered from the planet’s own magnetic field, with a magnetic transformer no bigger than a man’s two fists and a power-plant smaller than his head, had been invented here on Venus. No airfoils, no fuel, no trouble except when the magnetic field itself started churning up, which just doesn’t happen to any serious extent on Earth. So having invented the machine, the Veenies proceeded to pirate all sorts of expensive Earthside equipment to build a fleet of them. And in addition, they never told anybody about the flyers. They didn’t exactly hide them—un-conditioned spacemen usually huddled close to their ships and got out of there as soon as they could. And when at last someone did notice one of the flyers, the Veenies were perfectly willing to part with the blueprints.
“Why didn’t you report this? This’ll change the whole pattern of transportation on Earth!”
“Why didn’t you ask?” said the Veenies. It never occurred to them to think of Earth, what Earth might need or like.
Mike limped into Assignment and checked in. “Anything else?”
“Hadley?” said the despatches “Not just now—oh yes. Dr. Brandstedt wants you to come in for a checkup.”
He nodded and paused a minute to watch her. She was a slender little brunette except here and here, and she was already totally oblivious to him.
He sighed again and slogged tiredly off to Brandstedt’s quarters. The doctor always made him mad. So did everything else on Venus, but he glumly enjoyed getting mad at the great originator of Venus Conditioning, the biggest wheel here—as near to a leader as the Veenies (who needed no leading) had. At least the doc had a little objectivity left. He had to have it, partly to keep his mind free for his work, which covered a fantastically wide spectrum of physiology and psychology. A man could talk to Brandstedt for—oh—minutes at a time, and forget he was a Veenie.
Mike went in, kicked the door closed, and leaned wearily against it.
“Mike!” said the doctor jovially. “How do you feel, boy?”
“Mostly,” said Mike, “I don’t. But when I do—oh, brother.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Mine Five, with timing gears for a jaw-crusher. Then over to Artemis Camp for some slime-mold. Got sugared in by a slush storm, complete with quakes and an area-charge and one of the more gorgeous of your zombies.”
“How’d you take it?”
“What?” growled Mike, coming across the room and falling into a loafer. “The quakes threw the corner of a desk at my southeast ribs. The area charge was fun. Miss Lora Sims, whom I did not take, was not fun.”
The doctor’s bright eyes brightened a candlepower or two. “Lora Sims? You like?”
“Did I say so?” Mike snapped. “Well, in a way you did.”
“Don’t give me that esper glop, Doc,” said Mike bluntly. “You don’t know what I’m thinking. Veenies are strictly null in the psi department.”
“A lot better off for it. What good did it ever do anyone anyhow?”
Mike thought vividly of the pile pit where he had gotten his dose, and of Tommy’s white face showing up above him. But that was a story he couldn’t tell the doctor. So he said nothing.
“Well, let’s get to it,” said the doctor, rising.
Mike rose too and shucked out of his clothes.
Just under an hour later he was back in them again and sprawled on the loafer. His body yelled for sleep and his joints were raising hell.
“You haven’t been taking it any too easy,” commented the doctor. “Why do you fly so much?”
“Something to do,” said Mike, and shrugged. He wasn’t about to admit that his first half-day out of the sick-bay had been the most humiliating stretch he had ever lived through. An idler on Venus was like a leper in the Fourteenth century.
“Well, it’s appreciated.”
“The hell it is!” Mike barked, feeling at last the kind of anger he almost enjoyed. “A crotchety haemophiliac like me can work a twenty hour day eight days a week and all it does is raise him to zero! If he does any less he’s a fester!”
“My,” said the doctor mildly. “How many times a day do you fly off the handle like this? . . . Did Lora bother you?”
“Yes she did,” Mike admitted. “And she made me mad. And I got thumped around by the quake and I didn’t like that either.”
“You’re going to have to take it easy,” mused the doctor.
“You’re driving at something.”
“Well, yes. Mike, you might be fit for blast-off stresses when Tommy gets back, and you might not. If not, you might not last until the next time. Not on Venus, Unless—”
“Unless—” Mike said in unison with him, and then wagged his head. “Doc, I thought we made an agreement six weeks ago that I was to get no more recruiting speeches from you. We agreed that I was irresponsible, irrational, and unworthy to be a Veenie and we’d let it go at that.”
“I’m afraid this isn’t just a pep talk, Mike. It might be conditioning—or else. You see, Mike, you have a fine chance of surviving if you could only get clear of the emotional stresses and strains this place puts on you. You can’t leave, because your blood-vessels say no. The alternative is to change yourself so that Venus can’t hurt you.”
“Go along with the Venus Project?” Mike began to laugh. “Doc, I’ll just go on being irrational and unfit. And I’ll outlast the Project. You remember I said that.”
“You’re a damn fool, Mike. You’re worse. You’re a suicide.”
“So are you. So’s the Project,” said Mike, but he didn’t say it aloud.
“Mike, listen to reason. We could use you here. You could be happy. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lora Sims—”
“Don’t go bribing me with that ambulating florence flask! Quit the matchmaking, Cupid. Lora Sims has a very nice structural design—that I’ll admit. And she’s a whee of a chemist. But even on a temporary basis all she’d want would be to snuggle up to me and discuss 17-ketosteroids. No, Doc—I’m afraid I’d crawl over nine of her to get to Mother Machree.”
“Well, you take it easy.”
“I will. I will. I’ll go sleep for a week and then just sit on the bank and watch you squirrels bury your nuts.”
He shuffled out past the girl despatches He was concentrating so hard on holding himself together that her voice came through him as if filtered through four blankets, and he managed four steps past her before her words got into his head.
He whirled and got back to the desk in one jump. “What did you say?”
She looked at him calmly over the microphone she had been speaking into. “I’m reporting a flyer down, that’s all.”
“You said Lora Sims!” He hammered suddenly on the counter. “What are you going to do?”
“Requisition another flyer, if we can find the material. Get a summary of Lora Sims’ work and pro-rate it among qualified personnel. Find out if it requires additional training for—”
“What about Lora!” he yelled. “Aren’t you going to search?”
“The area has been scanned twice.” She indicated her board. “Now a storm front has closed down everything between here and Artemis Camp. There is nothing we can do for her.”
He made an unspellable sound and pounded out at a dead run. He galloped past the small flyers and skidded into the side of a three-seater. He snatched the cabin door open. There was a Veenie inside. “Out, boy,” Mike barked. “Unless you want to come along.”
“Come along? You can’t take this ship out.”
“Lora Sims is down some place between here and Artemis!”
“All the more reason for not losing another flyer. We can’t afford—”
“Get out,” Mike said in a terrifying whisper, and with one hand on the Veenies wrist, snatched him out and literally threw him away. He dove into the flyer and slammed the Go. The craft shuddered for a moment and then rammed him back into the cushions as it dove for the Blanket.
He turned on his ‘scopes and the radio. The signal was full of grass. Through all the garbage on his speaker he heard his name being called.
“. . . Dr. Brandstedt here. Come back! There is nothing you can do! The Project can’t—”
“Don’t talk to me about the Project, Doc! I got a project!”
“Hadley, listen to me. We’ve had flyers down before. We’ve tried to rescue the people. We never have. Never, do you understand that? Just write her off. You can’t do a thing. It’s a waste. It’s a waste.”
The doctor said the word as if it was the very peak of his vocabulary. “If you knew just where she was—well, maybe. But your radar is out. Your nav is out, Come back while you can—you are in no physical—”
Out with a snap as Mike Hadley cut the switch.
He flew the machine. The doe was right about the radar, and the nav. Bright whirling worms, meaningless. He shut them off too.
He flew the machine with his eyes, with his pants-seat.
Hairbreadth Hadley, here we go again. Good sense, goodbye.
He looked ahead. A wall of oatmeal, boiling down on him.
He looked down. All the vegetation, bowing down in one direction, slimy cilia on the inside of a great gut.
Suddenly he knew what he was up against—he knew what would happen if he flew head on into that roiling yellow wall. He knew how right, how very right the Veenies were to attempt no rescues, risk no flyers.
He hauled the flyer around in a turn so tight the whole machine crackled from end to end. And when he was headed away from her, something within him, born of his ravaged body and his tortured mind, the failure to save the Venus Colony and therefore the starship program—all came out in a great silent bleat of yearning: Lora!
“She’s alive,” he said aloud, in wonderment. “She’s alive . . .”
He throttled back, and then the storm front took him.
It took him with surprising gentleness. Had he kept up his insane dash full-speed into it, it would have squashed him flat and flung him down. Now it simply surrounded him.
With the greatest act of will he had ever exercised, he let go the controls and flew hands off. The flyer hung seemingly motionless for apparently forever, then suddenly plunged backwards and began to spin . . .
Lora!
And again the response—weak and wordless and almost not there at all. Not enough. Not enough . . . she must send, not just he there.
Abruptly there was clear air under him—in Venus terms, clear. Not oatmeal, at any rate. He fought the flyer to something like flight position. He was in a storm, a bad storm, but at least he could see a little, fly a little.
He let his hands do the flying, and closed his eyes. Loral
Something was happening, or had happened to him. He had had the odd sensation of sending before, but never like this.
Try something, Mike—try!
He reached into memory, selected a picture, built it to vividness and merged himself into it.
Autumn, a slight nip in the air, the world young and exciting and alive. Stars and a huge orange moon silhouetting the trees on a distant hill. Top down, engine of the car making faint irregular cooling sounds. And—
Himself in the car, eager, before he ever went into space. Feel of his body. Feel of his position, turned sideways in the seat. Not alone. Shape of the girl. Her perfume. The softness of her hair. Sound of her breathing.
Leaning toward her. Her face In ruing toward him. Her lips parting slightly against his in the kiss. His hand finding its way into the warmth beneath her sweater, touching the responsive welcome of her breasts.
His feelings. His desires. His sensations.
He gathered the impressions, then made the odd mental movement he had felt in his early blind callings: transmit! Drive them at Lora’s mind as if they were hers, building into her a pseudo-memory.
He felt a confusion of identity, a stirring up of words and concepts she wouldn’t, couldn’t acknowledge to herself. Herself feeling that way about another girl! A horrified My God what am I thinking!
He felt his mind prickle and writhe with the effort of holding the transmission. Then he switched it off and lay back, gasping.
Lora stirred, came up halfway to consciousness. She was in pain and her pain came through to him, Grimly he held oil.
He got, with the pain, a more-than-hunch of direction and distance, and he saw that his hands had done what was needed.
The girl was back in resignation, apathy, hopelessness, approaching surrender to the wind-whipped cold, the nostril-stopping mud. He sank back to try again.
Pure emotion this time. Man brutally clubbing little dog, crimson lust for murder knotting his muscles. Three overstuffed stupid maliciously unhappy old bags and their even more distasteful husbands gabbling the race prejudice and Aryan superiority line, and a howling urge to stuff their foul mouths with greasy rags until they choked in agony. Other hates, dozens of them, all the hates in his memory.
He packaged them in his mind, stripping away the incidents and leaving only emotion—and pushed them out.
Lora reacted. He could feel her mental defenses click in, Then she kicked back with indignation, anger to bring her out of apathetic resignation to death and up into rage and life.
His hands found the right thing to do with the controls again, He roused himself and looked out and down. Nothing, and nothing, and nothing but frenzied mud and supplicating branches.
He was only closer. He was not near.
Pseudo-memories not enough; pure emotion not enough. So—involve her completely. All of her, mind, body—but not in agreement. He had seen her body (with his eye and with that of the sometime artist) and he’d read books on abnormal psychology. He’d known men who . . . people who . . . then, in the newspapers, that fellow, you know the one . . .
Select . . . gather . . . synthesize . . . transmit.
Her reaction rocked him into dizziness, and it was sheer agony to hold on while he got it all out . . . (grunt) again! (grunt) again! (grunt and a scream of agony) that’s my honey, that’s my dear, bite-bite. (Moan and the laughter of insanity.) Hands here and here and here and they won’t stop, die my honey, die my dear. bite. See? See? Picture of this, picture of that, picture the other, my honey, oh my dear.
(The laugh.) (The whisper: Ah-h-h-h . . .)
More of it, and more until she fights back, panics, tightens, she’s going to faint and escape and be gone so hold it . . .
Timidly she queries, Oh God is it over?
Mike Hadley stirred in the bucket seat, aware of some exterior sensation that he knew he must identify; but he did not know how.
I know! he told himself in the slow stupidity of weariness. Let go all that sew age—cut it out now. This other thing’s important.
Slowly he opened his eyes, slowly he turned and looked out.
There was a green glow around the flyer, the green glow emitted by the little transformer when it was near ground, or on it. Yes, that was it; he was on it.
He came alive with a rush and shouldered the door open. And there was her little solo flyer, and there was she, under it, a leg; and there were eyes mute and muddy and full of what would be hate when she recovered her strength. But no matter; she was here, she was alive, and he had found her.
He put one hand-only one hand—under the broken flyer where it lay on its side, pinning her leg, and he pulled, so hard the machine righted and fell away on the other side. He stood looking at his gloved hand in astonishment, then bent and picked her up. She fainted immediately.
