Samuel R. Delany, page 5
Alter looked up, her wide eyes like turquoises behind her tanned face. "That's right, someone stepped on it—once." Then she asked, "Why did you tell me that?"
"Because I'm astute. And I want you to know it." Crisscross, criss-cross, four strips of tape went over the edges of gauze padding on Alter's shoulder. Clea went to the freezer, took out some fresh fruit, and brought it to the table. "You hungry?"
"Un-huh," Alter said, and fell on the fruit, looking up once to say a mouth-filled, "Thank you." When she was about half finished, Clea said, "You see if the government sent you, there's no reason for my even trying to get away. But if somebody else did, then. . . ."
"Your brother," Alter said. "And Arkor, and the Duchess Petra."
"What about my brother," Clea said softly.
"He didn't send me," said Alter biting into the fruit, "Exactly. But they told me where you were, and so I decided to come around, and see what kind of person you were."
"What kind of person am I?" "You fight well," Alter grinned. Clea smiled back. "How's Jon?" "Fine," said Alter. "All in one piece."
"In three years I only heard from him twice. Did he have ii message?"
Alter shook her head.
"Well, I'm glad he's alive,"' said Clea, moving the bottles together on the table.
"What they're trying to do with the war . . ."
"I don't want to hear about it," Clea stood up,, and took the bottles back in the bathroom. "I don't want to hear anything about the damned war." When she closed the medicine chest, she looked in the mirror for the length of a held breath.
When she came out, Alter had gone to the desk, pushed aside the crumpled poster, and was looking through the note-hook. "What's all this?"
Clea shrugged.
"You invented the thing that sends you over the barrier, didn't you?" Alter asked after a moment. Clea nodded.
"Is that what this is about?"
"That's just fooling around."
"Can you explain how the barrier thing works?"
"It would take me all night, Alter. And you wouldn't understand it anyway."
"Oh," Alter said. "I can't stay up all night because I have lo see about a job tomorrow."
"Oh?" asked Clea. "Then I guess you can sleep here. What were those Malis after you for?"
"I was out," Alter said. "And so were they. That's how they work."
Clea frowned. "And you don't have any place else to
slay?"
"There was a place I thought I could sleep at, an inn over in the Pot, but it's been torn down. So I was just wandering around. I've been away for a while."
"Away where?"
"Just away." Then she laughed. "You tell me about how
that over the barrier thing works, and I'll tell you about where I was. Your brother was there."
"It's a deal," Clea said. "But in the morning."
Alter went over to the, sofa and lay down with her face to the back so that her bandaged shoulder was up. Clea went to her own bed. Before she sat down, without turning, she said, "I thought I saw you following me last night."
"That's right," came the voice from the sofa.
"And suddenly you disappeared."
"That's right."
"Explain."
"Ever hear of viva-foam?"
"Neither had I until four days ago. And until this morning I never had my hands on any. It's a plastic pigmented spray with pores. I'm covered with it. Otherwise, in dim light you couldn't see me."
"You'll have to go into that in more detail tomorrow."
"Sure."
Clea sat down on the bed. "Those Malis were just out? Where do they come from? What do they want?"
"Aren't you sort of a Mali too?" Alter asked after a moment. "How do you mean?"
"A malcontent," Alter said. "Why are you all holed up here, hiding from everybody like this? With some people it turns inward, with others it turns out, I guess."
"You know everything, don't you." She chuckled.
The sound of a yawn came from the sofa.
What am I doing, Clea wondered, and thought about that, instead of screaming.
Early morning light slapped a red-gold streak across the gray wall. Someone was in the bathroom. Water crashed against the porcelain washbowl.
Then Alter walked out of the bathroom. "Hi," she grinned.
"Where are you off to?"
"The circus," Alter said. "To get a job. Want to go with me?"
Clea frowned.
"Come on," Alter said. "Getting out will do you good."
Clea stood up, went into the bathroom, washed her face, and came out coiling the hank of black hair laboriously into a tight, black bun.
"Braid it," Alter said from behind her.
"What?"
"Why don't you braid it? It'll take half the time and it won't look so—" She gave a nameless little shudder.
Clea let her hair fall to her shoulders again, then reached up and divided it into three.
When they came out on the street, Clea's collar was open and her hair hung in a thick black braid over her shoulder. She was smiling. Only a few people were out. The sun set crowns of light on the central towers of the city. Gold caught on a balcony railing, snagged on a bright window as the light descended to street level.
"Which direction?" Clea asked, pausing to look at the towers.
"This way."
They walked between the buildings toward the Devil's Pot.
In that crushed rim of the city a vacant lot was a rare thing. The Triton Extravaganza ("The Greatest Spectacle of Entertainment on Island, Sea, or Continent") had commandeered the one two-block area and set up its emporium. Criss-cross ropes webbed green and purple canvas against the sky. Cage upon cage lined one side of the lot: pumas, an eight-legged bison, a brown bear, a two-headed fox, a giant boar, and a five thousand gallon aquarium housed a quivering albino squid. In another, tiger sharks nosed the glass corners, while further on the octopus raveled and unraveled over blue sand.
A cove of aerial artists clad in bright tights, ran from one tent, and disappeared into another. "Who?" Clea began.
"Trapeze workers," Alter said. "They call themselves the Flying Fish. Corny. Come on. I've got to see Mr. Triton."
"What's over there?" Clea asked as they started toward a large wagon at the end of the lot with its great papier mach6 ucptune-bearded, big-bellied, artd beaming from the roof.
"Huh? That's the chow wagon. Hey, why don't you go over there and get something to eat while I see Mr. Triton. I'll join you later but I have to audition on an empty stomach, or there'll be hell to pay."
"Well, I—" But Alter was up the steps of the big wagon; and Clea was alone. The morning was noisy and cool.
She turned toward the cook-tent where a green and yellow awning spread over wooden tables. Hot grease sizzled on the grill. Clea sat down across from a man in a purple shirt sipping chowder from a terracotta mug. He gave her a grin that pulled the sudden net of wrinkles tight around his smoky eyes.
A waitress at her shoulder said, "What'll it be, come on now, I don't got all day, please?" "Ah, what do you have?"
The waitress frowned. "Fried fish, boiled fish, broiled fish, fish roe, fish and chips—special is eggs and fried fish, fifty centiunits."
"The special," Clea said.
"Fine," the waitress smiled. "You're in for a surprise. It's good today."
The man across the table grinned again and asked, "What sort of act do you do?"
Just then a woman in a brief spangled jumper sat down beside the man and said, "Is she one of the new auditioners?"
"I'm a clown," the man volunteered.
"Oh—I—a—don't have an act."
Both the man and woman laughed.
"I mean I don't have an act in the circus."
They laughed again and the woman nodded. "I just train seals, honey, so don't hassle."
Just then the waitress slipped her a plate of bursting white fillet and scrambled eggs with butter streaming through them, down to the white crock plate. She picked up the fork, and the clown said, "Honey, you enjoy eating, don't you."
Surprised, Clea looked at him, and then down at herself.
"No, I don't mean your weight. I mean the way you look at food. Someone who looks at food like that, like it was the very special experience it is, that sort of person never has to worry about his figure." He turned to the seal trainer. "You know what I mean? Another look, and you know why they're fat as a tug. Or if their eyes get slightly narrow and their mouths purse in, then you've got the reason for their rail thin bodies. But the look you gave—" he said, turning back to Clea.
"Oh, shut up," the seal trainer said. "You start talking and we'll be here all day." Clea and the two circus folk laughed. Then the clown said, "Hey," and was looking over Clea's shoulder and far behind her.
She turned.
Across the lot someone had set up a trampoline. In evenly paced leaps, a white-haired figure vaulted and spun against the blue sky: back triple somersault, front triple somersault, half gainer, recovery, full gainer, recovery, jack-knife opening backwards to a reverse swan, triple back, then triple front again.
"She's good!" the clown said.
The seal trainer nodded.
Triple forward, triple forward, swan, triple back. Then a straight candle through a quadruple back into a full gainer, closing with a double forward before she hit the elastic for the last time.
People over the entire lot had stopped to look. Now roustabouts, rubes, sidewalls, and performers set up a scattering of applause.
Then Alter was coming toward the cook tent. Beside her, a man had his arm around her shoulder. He was elderly, rotund, and a great cotton-ball beard fluffed across his chest.
Clea rose to make room for them at the table, then saw to her surprise that everybody else at the table was standing too. There was a sudden, uneven, but cheerful chorus of, "Hello, Mr. Triton. Good morning Mr. Triton."
"Sit down, sit down," proclaimed Triton expansively, and chairs slid back into place. Now he continued talking to Alter. "So you'll join us the day after tomorrow. Very fine. Very fine. Do you have a place to stay, because you're perfectly welcome to sleep on the lot."
"Thank you," Alter said. "Oh, this is the friend that I was telling you about."
Surprise pulled down the corners of Clea's mouth before she caught it back up in a defensive smile.
"You're an accountant, right? Well, I could use somebody to get the books in order. And we will be doing quite a business on the mainland torn-. Be here with the kid—"
"But I—" Clea began, looking to Alter who was grinning again.
"—the day after tomorrow," finished Mr. Triton, "and the job's yours. Good morning, everybody. Good morning." Then he paused, looked hard at Clea, and said, "You know, I like the way you look. I mean the way you look at things." Then he called again, "Good morning."
"See, what did I tell you," said the clown to the seal trainer on the other side of the table.
"But I—" Clea repeated. Mr. Triton was walking away.
I don't want a job—I don't think."
Alter was shaking hands with the seal trainer, the clown, and even the waitress who were congratulating her on her audition. A moment later she looked around to say something to Clea, but the black-haired woman was gone.
Clea walked, looking neither at the smoky faces of the clapboard buildings on her left, nor the screaming boy hurling chunks of pavement at a three-legged dog to her right. She looked neither at the Uttered gutters nor at the pale towers that rose in the center of the city. She walked straight ahead until she reached her apartment building.
"Oh, Miss Rahsok, there you are. Out early as usual." It was not yet eight-thirty.
^Oh-eh-hello."
"Like I always say," said the woman, adjusting her head scarf, "it's always good to get out bright and early." Suddenly the expression on the woman's face reversed itself, and she repeated. "Speaking of bright and early, do you know what my daughter Renna—well, she snuck out of here at sunrise this morning, and I know she's run off to spend the day with that Vol Nonik character. We were arguing about him last night. What are his prospects? I asked her. After all, I'm a reasonable woman. What does he intend to do with himself? And do you know what she told me? He writes poemsl And that's all! Well, I had to laugh. I have a surprise for her though, that I'm sure will drive this Nonik individual out of her head. I got an invitation for her to the Victory League Ball. I had to wrangle with Mrs. Mulqueen for half an hour. But if Renna goes she'll meet some nice young man and forget this idiot boy and his idiot poems. Why isn't a young man like that off in the army anyway? We have an enemy beyond the barrier, and I ask you—"
"Excuse me," Clea said. "Excuse me, please."
"Oh, of course. I didn't mean to keep you. Good morning."
But Clea had already pushed past and was walking up the stairs. We have an enemy beyond the barrier. She thought of the poster crumpled on her desk, and like the stimulus of a conditioned reflex, it released.
His arms strong, confident around me as his laughter and wisdom were confident, his bright eyes blinking in sudden sunlight, and the bear growl tenderness—he's dead. . . .
We may send between two hundred and three hundred pounds of matter anywhere on the globe with a pin-point accuracy . . . Anywhere at all. . . .
That computer, what else could they use it for, that insanely programed, crazy, random. . . .
Then she had slammed the door behind her, razoring through the thought she had been thinking and the scream that had been building in her throat. She leaned against the door and bit into the breath that plunged again and again into her lungs so hard they hurt.
She did not go out again all day. It was not until midnight that she managed to make herself leave the room for a walk. But as she reached the stairs, she heard a crash. Someone had just crumpled at the foot of them.
Frowning, she hurried quickly down. Then the someone uncrumpled slowly, grinned sheepishly at her, and put a finger to his lips. "Shhhh. Please, shhhh. So my wife won't know."
"Are you all right, Doctor Wental?"
"Of course I'm all right." Then his Adam's apple lunged upward. "Oh, excuse me. I'm perfectly all right. Really in very fine—"
"So I gather. Just a moment. Here you go."
They started up the stairs, the doctor chuckling. "Oh, the trials and tribulations that a man must go through. Oh, the trials." He gave another burp. "Got that poor old lupug erythermatosis case in this afternoon. Did I say poor? Excuse me. I meant "bloody rich.' In a month he'll be swollen as a blowfish. But what can you do when General Medical won't give out any adrenocorticotropic hormone? Gave him a shot of good old saline solution with a bit of food coloring. It certainly won't hurt him and I charged him fifty units. He'll be back tomorrow. Maybe I'll be able to get some by then. But it's terribly hard, Miss Rahsok. I could almost cry."
As they reached the door, Dr. Wental motioned for silence a final time. She left him fumbling for the print lock. When she reached the front door, she stopped.
This time she did not think of her three discoveries. She thought instead, very briefly, about Renna's mother, Renna, and Vol Nonik. She thought about Dr. Wental, Dr. Wental's patient, and Dr. Wental's wife. Outside inky blackness pressed against the j*lass door, but beyond she could just hear the last faint tinkle of the calliope from the circus blocks away. She turned, and went back up to her room.
The next morning, her hair in a braid, her collar opened back from her throat, she walked along the deserted street toward the circus lot. Morning chill cooled the shadowed half of her face while the sun stroked the other with yellow fingers. The sea smell came in strongly from the wharves, and she was smiling.
As she walked by the fence that rimmed the already bustling lot, she saw someone coming toward her. A flash of silver white hair, and Alter, laughing, ran toward her and caught her hand. "Gee, I'm glad you came back."
"Why shouldn't I?" Clea said. "Though it was touch-and-go for a while. Why didn't you come back to my place? You could have stayed there. You had me worried."
Alter looked down. "Oh," she said. "I thought you might be angry. That job business was sort of a funny thing for me to pull." With one hand Alter was fumbling with her necklace.
"What possessed you to tell Mr. Triton I wanted a job?"
"It just hit me that it might be fun. And maybe you would get a kick out of it."
"Well thanks. Hey, I hope your friend who gave you that necklace comes around some day. Did he put them at logarithmically increasing distances on purpose?"
"Huh?" asked Alter. "Oh, no, I don't think so. He's off in the war now. Hey, did I say something?"
"The war? No—he can't—"
"What is it?"
"Nothing," Clea said. Suddenly she put her arm around Alter's shoulder and gave a friendly squeeze. "Are you sure you're all right?"
Clea took a breath and let her arm fall away. "I'm sure," she said.
They walked together into the lot.
rv
The next day Tel began basic training.
"All right, you guys. Split up into your respective groups and report to your instruction rooms."
He came into a large classroom the far wall of which was covered with charts of machinery. There were no labels on the charts. Across the front wall stretched a full-color unappetizing swamp-scape, wreathed in mist and spiked with serpentine, leafless vegetation. A loudspeaker in the front of the room suddenly announced in a friendly voice (friendly, though oddly sexless, he noticed) "Take your seats everyone. We are beginning your basic training."
The recruits shuffled to their places at the metal desks.
"You are in the wrong seat, Private Rogers," said the loudspeaker affably. "Two to your left."
A baffled blond boy looked up, then dutifully moved two seats over.
"I am going to read a list of names out loud," continued the speaker. "Every one whose name I call must leave here and report to room 46-A. That is two flights up and along the corridor' to your right. Now, Malcon 831 BQ-N, Motion 601 R-F, Orley 015 CT-F . . ." Everyone looked a little puzzled, but the named recruits rose and went out the door.
