Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume One (30 page)

“Darling, you’re beautiful. Very, very beautiful. I brought you a Christmas present after all.” He held it out for her to take. A stuffed dog, one eye closed in a wink, a ridiculous grin on its face. “You knew how it would be just like I knew about our son, didn’t you?”

“I just knew. It was threatened. Any other way of countering the threat would have endangered it even more. We have all those terrible things that we would have used on each other. No one would have survived the war that would have come. It left them. That awful vacuum in Wymann, in Conant, all of them. They do what they are trained to do, no more. They do it very well.” She patted her newly flat stomach.

“You did it. You, others like you. The ones who could open to it, accept, and be possessed wholly. A two-way communication must take place during such times. That cultural explosion, all over the world. You at the one end of the spectrum, Wymann, them, at the other, from total possession to total absence.”

“It will take some time to search the records, find our babies…”

“They’ll help us now. They need guidance. They’ll have to be protected…”

“Forever and ever.”

• • •

The Encounter

(Orbit 8 — 1970)

The bus slid to an uneasy stop, two hours late. Snow was eight inches deep, and the white sky met the white ground in a strange world where the grubby black bus station floated free. It was a world where up and down had become meaningless, where the snow fell horizontally. Crane, supported by the wind and the snow, could have entered the station by walking up the wall, or across the ceiling. His mind seemed adrift, out of touch with the reality of his body. He stamped, scattering snow, bringing some feeling back to his legs, making himself feel the floor beneath his feet. He tried to feel his cheek, to see if he was feverish, but his hands were too numb, his cheek too numb. The heating system of the bus had failed over an hour ago.

The trouble was that he had not dressed for such weather. An overcoat, but no boots, no fur-lined gloves, no woolen scarf to wind and wind about his throat. He stamped and clapped his hands. Others were doing the same.

There had been only nine or ten people on the bus, and some of them were being greeted by others or were slipping out into the storm, home finally or near enough now. The bus driver was talking to an old man who had been in the station when they arrived, the ticket agent, probably. He was wearing two sweaters, one a heavy, hip-length green that looked home-knit; under it, a turtleneck gray wool with too-long sleeves that hung from beneath the green sleeves. He had on furry boots that came to his knees, with his sagging pants tucked tightly into them. Beyond him, tossed over one of the wooden benches, was a greatcoat, fleece-lined, long enough to hang to his boot tops. Fleecy gloves bulged from one of the pockets.

“Folks,” he said, turning away from the bus driver, “there won’t be another bus until sometime in the morning, when they get the roads plowed out some. There’s an all-night diner down the road, three, four blocks. Not much else in town’s open this time of night.”

“Is there a hotel?” A woman, fur coat, shiny patent boots, kid gloves. She had got on at the same station that Crane had; he remembered the whiff of expensive perfume as she had passed him.

“There’s the Laughton Inn, ma’am, but it’s two miles outside town and there’s no way to get there.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! You mean this crummy burg doesn’t even have a hotel of its own?”

“Four of them, in fact, but they’re closed, open again in April. Don’t get many people to stay overnight in the winter times.”

“Okay, okay. Which way’s the diner?” She swept a disapproving glance over the bleak station and went to the door, carrying an overnight bag with her.

“Come on, honey, I’m going there, too,” the driver said. He pulled on gloves and turned up his collar. He took her arm firmly, transferred the bag to his other hand, then turned to look at the other three or four people in the station. “Anyone else?”

Diner. Glaring lights, jukebox noise without end, the smell of hamburgers and onions, rank coffee and doughnuts saturated with grease. Everyone smoking. Someone would have cards probably, someone a bottle. The woman would sing or cry, or get a fight going. She was a nasty one, he could tell. She’d be bored within an hour. She’d have the guys groping her under the table, in the end booth. The man half turned, his back shielding her from view, his hand slipping between her buttons, under the blouse, under the slip, the slippery smooth nylon, the tightness of the bra, unfastening it with his other hand. Her low laugh, busy hands. The hard nipple between his fingers now, his own responsive hardness. She had turned to look at the stranded passengers when the driver spoke, and she caught Crane’s glance.

“It’s a long wait for a Scranton bus, honey,” she said.

“I’d just get soaked going to the diner,” Crane said, and turned his back on her. His hand hurt, and he opened his clenched fingers and rubbed his hands together hard.

“I sure as hell don’t want to wait all night in this rat hole,” someone else said. “Do you have lockers? I can’t carry all this gear.”

“Lock them up in the office for you,” the ticket agent said. He pulled out a bunch of keys and opened a door at the end of the room. A heavy-set man followed him, carrying three suitcases. They returned; the door squeaked. The agent locked it again.

“Now, you boys will hold me up, won’t you? I don’t want to fall down in all that snow.”

“Doll, if you fall on your pretty little ass, I’ll dry you off personally,” the driver said.

“Oh, you will, will you?”

Crane tightened his jaw, trying not to hear them. The outside door opened and a blast of frigid air shook the room. A curtain of snow swept across the floor before the door banged again, and the laughing voices were gone.

“You sure you want to wait here?” the ticket agent asked. “Not very warm in here. And I’m going home in a minute, you know.”

“I’m not dressed to walk across the street in this weather, much less four blocks,” Crane said.

The agent still hesitated, one hand on his coat. He looked around, as if checking on loose valuables. There was a woman on one of the benches. She was sitting with her head lowered, hands in her lap, legs crossed at the ankles. She wore a dark cloth coat, and her shoes were skimpier than Crane’s, three crossing strips of leather attached to paper-thin soles. Black cloth gloves hid her hands. She didn’t look up, in the silence that followed, while the two men scrutinized her. It was impossible to guess her age in that pose, with only the dark clothes to go by.

“Ma’am, are you all right?” the agent asked finally.

“Yes, of course. Like the gentleman, I didn’t care to wade through the snow. I can wait here.”

She raised her head and with a touch of disappointment Crane saw that she was as nondescript as her clothing. When he stopped looking at her, he couldn’t remember what she looked like. A woman. Thirty. Thirty-five. Forty. He didn’t know. And yet. There was something vaguely familiar about her, as if he should remember her, as if he might have seen her or met her at one time or another. He had a very good memory for faces and names, an invaluable asset for a salesman, and he searched his memory for this woman and came up with nothing.

“Don’t you have nothing with you that you could change into?” the agent asked peevishly. “You’d be more comfortable down at the diner.”

“I don’t have anything but some work with me,” she said. Her voice was very patient. “I thought I’d be in the city before the storm came. Late bus, early storm. I’ll be fine here.”

Again his eyes swept through the dingy room, searching for something to say, not finding anything. He began to pull on his coat, and he seemed to gain forty pounds. “Telephone under the counter, back there,” he said finally. “Pay phone’s outside under a drift, I reckon.”

“Thank you,” she said.

The agent continued to dawdle. He pulled on his gloves, checked the rest rooms to make sure the doors were not locked, that the lights worked. He peered at a thermostat, muttering that you couldn’t believe what it said anyways. At the door he stopped once more. He looked like a walking heap of outdoor garments, a clothes pile that had swallowed a man. “Mr.­—uh—”

“Crane. Randolph Crane. Manhattan.”

“—Uh, yes. Mr. Crane, I’ll tell the troopers that you two are up here. And the road boys. Plow’ll be out soon’s it lets up some. They’ll keep an eye open for you, if you need anything. Maybe drop in with some coffee later on.”

“Great,” Crane said. “That’d be great.”

“Okay, then. I wouldn’t wander out if I was you. See you in the morning, then. Night.”

The icy blast and the inrushing snow made Crane start to shake again. He looked over at the woman, who was huddling down, trying to wrap herself up in the skimpy coat.

His shivering eased and he sat down and opened his briefcase and pulled out one of the policies he had taken along to study. This was the first time he had touched it. He hoped the woman would fall asleep and stay asleep until the bus came in the morning. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to stretch out on the short benches, not that it would matter anyway. He wasn’t the type to relax enough to fall asleep anywhere but in bed.

He stared at the policy, a twenty-year endowment, two years to go to maturity, on the life of William Sanders, age twenty-two. He held it higher, trying to catch the light, but the print was a blur; all he could make out were the headings of the clauses, and these he already knew by heart. He turned the policy over; it was the same on the back, the old familiar print, and the rest a blur. He started to refold the paper to return it to the briefcase. She would think he was crazy, taking it out, looking at it a moment, turning it this way and that, and then putting it back. He pursed his lips and pretended to read.

Sanders, Sanders. What did he want? Four policies, the endowment, a health and accident, a straight life, and mortgage policy. Covered, protected. Insurance-poor, Sanders had said, throwing the bulky envelope onto Crane’s desk. “Consolidate these things somehow. I want cash if I can get it, and out from under the rest.”

“But what about your wife, the kids?”

“Ex-wife. If I go, she’ll manage. Let her carry insurance on me.”

Crane had been as persuasive as he knew how to be, and in the end he had had to promise to assess the policies, to have figures to show cash values, and so on. Disapprovingly, of course.

“You know, dear, you really are getting more stuffy every day,” Mary Louise said.

“And if he dies, and his children are left destitute, then will I be so stuffy?”

“I’d rather have the seven hundred dollars myself than see it go to your company year after year.”

“That’s pretty shortsighted.”

“Are you really going to wear that suit to Maggie’s party?”

“Changing the subject?”

“Why not? You know what you think, and I know what I think, and they aren’t even within hailing distance of each other.”

Mary Louise wore a red velvet gown that was slit to her navel, molded just beneath her breasts by a silver chain, and almost completely bare in the back, down to the curve of her buttocks. The silver chain cut into her tanned back, slightly. Crane stared at it.

“New?”

“Yes. I picked it up last week. Pretty?”

“Indecent. I didn’t know it was a formal thing tonight.”

“Not really. Optional anyway. Some of us decided to dress, that’s all.” She looked at him in the mirror and said, I really don’t care if you want to wear that suit.”

Wordlessly he turned and went back to the closet to find his dinner jacket and black trousers. How easy it would be, a flick of a chain latch, and she’d be stripped to her hips. Was she counting on someone’s noticing that? Evers maybe? Or Olivetti! Olivetti? What had he said? Something about women who wore red in public. Like passing out a dance card and pencil, the promise implicit in the gesture?

“Slut!” he said, through teeth so tightly pressed together that his jaws ached.

“What? I’m sorry.”

He looked up. The woman in the bus station was watching him across the aisle. She still looked quite cold.

“I am sorry,” she said softly. “I thought you spoke.”

“No.” He stuffed the policy back in his case and fastened it. “Are you warm enough?”

“Not really. The ticket agent wasn’t kidding when he said the thermostat lies. According to it, it’s seventy-four in here.”

Crane got up and looked at the thermostat. The adjustment control was gone. The station was abysmally cold. He walked back and forth for a few moments, then paused at the window. The white world, ebbing and growing, changing, changeless. “If I had a cup or something, I could bring in some snow and chill the thermostat. That might make the heat kick on.”

“Maybe in the rest room…” He heard her move across the floor, but he didn’t turn to look. There was a pink glow now in the whiteness, like a fire in the distance, all but obscured by the intervening clouds of snow. He watched as it grew brighter, darker, almost red; then it went out. The woman returned and stood at his side.

“No cups, but I folded paper towels to make a funnel thing. Will it do?”

He took the funnel. It was sturdy enough, three thicknesses of brown, unabsorbent toweling. “Probably better than a cup,” he said. “Best stand behind the door. Every time it opens, that blizzard comes right on in.”

She nodded and moved away. When he opened the door the wind hit him hard, almost knocking him back into the room, wrenching the door from his hand. It swung wide open and hit the woman. Distantly he heard her gasp of surprise and pain. He reached out and scooped up a funnel full of snow and then pushed the door closed again. He was covered with snow. Breathless, he leaned against the wall. “Are you all right?” he asked after a few moments.

She was holding her left shoulder. “Yes. It caught me by surprise. No harm done. Did you get enough snow?”

He held up the funnel for her to see and then pushed himself away from the wall. Again he had the impression that there was no right side up in the small station. He held the back of one of the benches and moved along it. “The wind took my breath away,” he said.