The Very Best of F & SF v1 (18 page)

When I came out
here on the raw frontier where people all carry weapons, I had my cane made. It
combines the better features of the epee and the cattle prod. Only, it is the
kind of prod which, if you were to prod cattle with, they would never move
again.

Over eight
hundred volts, max, when the tip touches, if the stud in the handle is
depressed properly...

My arm shot out
and up and my fingers depressed the stud properly as it moved.

That was it for
the org.

A noise came
from beneath the rows of razor blades in its mouth as I scored a touch on its
soft underbelly and whipped my arm away to the side—a noise halfway between an
exhalation and “peep”—and that was it for the org (short for “organism-with-a-long-name-which-I-can’t-remember”).

I switched off
my cane and walked around it. It was one of those things which sometimes come
out of the river. I remember that I looked back at it three times, then I
switched the cane on again at max and kept it that way till I was inside my
apartment with the door locked behind me and all the lights burning.

Then I permitted
myself to tremble, and after a while I changed my socks and mixed my drink.

May your alleys
be safe from orgs.

Saturday.

More rain.

Wetness was all.

The entire east
side had been shored with sandbags. In some places they served only to create
sandy waterfalls, where otherwise the streams would have flowed more evenly and
perhaps a trifle more clearly. In other places they held it all back, for a
while.

By then, there
were six deaths as a direct result of the rains.

By then, there
had been fires caused by the lightning, accidents by the water, sicknesses by
the dampness, the cold.

By then,
property damages were beginning to mount pretty high.

Everyone was
tired and angry and miserable and wet, by then. This included me.

Though Saturday
was Saturday, I went to work. I worked in Eleanor’s office, with her. We had the
big relief map spread on a table, and six mobile eyescreens were lined against
one wall. Six eyes hovered above the half-dozen emergency points and kept us
abreast of the actions taken upon them. Several new telephones and a big radio
set stood on the desk. Five ashtrays looked as if they wanted to be empty, and
the coffee pot chuckled cynically at human activity.

The Noble had
almost reached its high-water mark. We were not an isolated storm center by any
means. Upriver, Butler Township was hurting, Swan’s Nest was adrip, Laurie was
weeping into the river, and the wilderness in between was shaking and
streaming.

Even though we
were in direct contact we went into the field on three occasions that
morning—once, when the north-south bridge over the Lance River collapsed and
was washed down toward the Noble as far as the bend by the Mack steel mill;
again, when the Wildwood Cemetery, set up on a storm-gouged hill to the east,
was plowed deeply, graves opened, and several coffins set awash; and finally,
when three houses full of people toppled, far to the east. Eleanor’s small
flyer was buffeted by the winds as we fought our way through to these sites for
on-the-spot supervision; I navigated almost completely by instruments. Downtown
proper was accommodating evacuees left and right by then. I took three showers
that morning and changed clothes twice.

Things slowed
down a bit in the afternoon, including the rain. The cloud cover didn’t break,
but a drizzle-point was reached which permitted us to gain a little on the
waters. Retaining walls were reinforced, evacuees were fed and dried, some of
the rubbish was cleaned up. Four of the six eyes were returned to their
patrols, because four of the emergency points were no longer emergency points.

... And we
wanted all of the eyes for the org patrol.

Inhabitants of
the drenched forest were also on the move. Seven
snappers
and a horde of
panda-puppies were shot that day, as well as a few crawly things from the
troubled waters of the Noble—not to mention assorted branch-snakes, stingbats,
borers, and land-eels.

By 1900 hours it
seemed that a stalemate had been achieved. Eleanor and I climbed into her flyer
and drifted skyward.

We kept rising.
Finally, there was a hiss as the cabin began to pressurize itself. The night
was all around us. Eleanor’s face, in the light from the instrument panel, was
a mask of weariness. She raised her hands to her temples as if to remove it,
and then when I looked back again it appeared that she had. A faint smile lay
across her lips now and her eyes sparkled. A stray strand of hair shadowed her
brow.

“Where are you
taking me?” she asked.

“Up, high,” said
I, “above the storm.”

“Why?”

“It’s been many
days,” I said, “since we have seen an uncluttered sky.”

“True,” she
agreed, and as she leaned forward to light a cigarette I noticed that the part
in her hair had gone all askew. I wanted to reach out and straighten it for
her, but I didn’t.

We plunged into
the sea of clouds.

Dark was the
sky, moonless. The stars shone like broken diamonds. The clouds were a floor of
lava.

We drifted. We
stared up into the heavens. I “anchored” the flyer, like an eye set to hover,
and lit a cigarette myself.

“You are older
than I am,” she finally said, “really. You know?”

“No.”

“There is a
certain wisdom, a certain strength, something like the essence of the time that
passes—that seeps into a man as he sleeps between the stars. I know, because I
can feel it when I’m around you.”

“No,” I said.

“Then maybe it’s
people expecting you to have the strength of centuries that gives you something
like it. It was probably there to begin with.”

“No.”

She chuckled.

“It isn’t
exactly a positive sort of thing either.”

I laughed.

“You asked me if
I was going to run for office again this fall. The answer is ‘no.’ I’m planning
on retiring. I want to settle down.”

“With anyone
special?”

“Yes, very
special, Juss,” she said, and she smiled at me and I kissed her, but not for
too long, because the ash was about to fall off her cigarette and down the back
of my neck.

So we put both
cigarettes out and drifted above the invisible city, beneath a sky without a
moon.

I mentioned
earlier that I would tell you about Stopovers. If you are going a distance of a
hundred forty-five light-years and are taking maybe a hundred-fifty actual
years to do it, why stop and stretch your legs?

Well, first of
all and mainly, almost nobody sleeps out the whole jaunt. There are lots of
little gadgets which require human monitoring at all times. No one is going to
sit there for a hundred-fifty years and watch them, all by himself. So everyone
takes a turn or two, passengers included. They are all briefed on what to do
till the doctor comes, and who to awaken and how to go about it, should
troubles crop up. Then everyone takes a turn at guard mount for a month or so, along
with a few companions. There are always hundreds of people aboard, and after
you’ve worked down through the role you take it again from the top. All sorts
of mechanical agents are backing them up, many of which they are unaware of (to
protect
against
them, as well as
with
them—in the improbable instance of several oddballs getting
together and deciding to open a window, change course, murder passengers, or
things like that), and the people are well-screened and carefully matched up,
so as to check and balance each other as well as the machinery. All of this
because gadgets and people both bear watching.

After several
turns at ship’s guard, interspersed with periods of cold sleep, you tend to
grow claustrophobic and somewhat depressed. Hence, when there is an available
Stopover, it is utilized, to restore mental equilibrium and to rearouse
flagging animal spirits. This also serves the purpose of enriching the life and
economy of the Stopover world, by whatever information and activities you may
have in you.

Stopover,
therefore, has become a traditional holiday on many worlds, characterized by
festivals and celebrations on some of the smaller ones, and often by parades
and world-wide broadcast interviews and press conferences on those with greater
populations. I understand that it is now pretty much the same on Earth, too,
whenever colonial visitors stop by. In fact, one fairly unsuccessful young
starlet, Marilyn Austin, made a long voyage Out, stayed a few months, and
returned on the next vessel headed back. After appearing on tri-dee a couple
times, sounding off about interstellar culture, and flashing her white, white
teeth, she picked up a flush contract, a third husband, and her first big part
in tapes. All of which goes to show the value of Stopovers.

I landed us atop
Helix, Betty’s largest apartment-complex, wherein Eleanor had her
double-balconied corner suite, affording views both of the distant Noble and of
the lights of Posh Valley, Betty’s residential section.

Eleanor prepared
steaks, with baked potato, cooked corn, beer—everything I liked. I was happy
and sated and such, and I stayed till around midnight, making plans for our
future. Then I took a cab back to Town Square, where I was parked.

When I arrived,
I thought I’d check with the Trouble Center just to see how things were going.
So I entered the Hall, stamped my feet, brushed off excess waters, hung my
coat, and proceeded up the empty hallway to the elevator.

The elevator was
too quiet. They’re supposed to rattle, you know? They shouldn’t sigh softly and
have doors that open and close without a sound. So I walked around an
embarrassing corner on my way to the Trouble Center.

It was a pose
Rodin might have enjoyed working with. All I can say is that it’s a good thing
I stopped by when I did, rather than five or ten minutes later.

Chuck Fuller and
Lottie, Eleanor’s secretary, were practicing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and
keeping the victim warm techniques, there on the couch in the little alcove off
to the side of the big door to T.C.

Chuck’s back was
to me, but Lottie spotted me over his shoulder, and her eyes widened and she
pushed him away. He turned his head quickly.

“Juss...” he
said.

I nodded.

“Just passing by,”
I told him. “Thought I’d stop in to say hello and take a look at the eyes.”

“Uh—everything’s
going real well,” he said, stepping back into the hallway. “It’s on auto right
now, and I’m on my—uh, coffee break. Lottie is on night duty, and she came by
to—to see if we had any reports we needed typed. She had a dizzy spell, so we
came out here where the couch...”

“Yeah, she looks
a little—peaked,” I said. “There are smelling salts and aspirins in the
medicine chest.”

I walked on by
into the Center, feeling awkward.

Chuck followed
me after a couple of minutes. I was watching the screens when he came up beside
me. Things appeared to be somewhat in hand, though the rains were still
moistening the one-hundred-thirty views of Betty.

“Uh, Juss,” he
said, “I didn’t know you were coming by...”

“Obviously.”

“What I’m
getting at is—you won’t report me, will you?”

“No, I won’t
report you.”

“... And you
wouldn’t mention it to Cynthia, would you?”

“Your
extracurricular activities,” I said, “are your own business. As a friend, I
suggest you do them on your own time and in a more propitious location. But it’s
already beginning to slip my mind. I’m sure I’ll forget the whole thing in
another minute.”

“Thanks, Juss,” he
said.

I nodded.

“What’s Weather
Central have to say these days?” I asked, raising the phone.

He shook his
head, so I dialed and listened.

“Bad,” I said,
hanging up. “More wet to come.”

“Damn,” he
announced, and lit a cigarette, his hands shaking. “This weather’s getting me
down.”

“Me too,” said
I. “I’m going to run now, because I want to get home before it starts in bad
again. I’ll probably be around tomorrow. See you.”

“Night.”

I elevated back
down, fetched my coat, and left. I didn’t see Lottie anywhere about, but she
probably was, waiting for me to go.

I got to my car
and was halfway home before the faucets came on full again. The sky was torn
open with lightnings, and a sizzlecloud stalked the city like a long-legged
arachnid, forking down bright limbs and leaving tracks of fire where it went. I
made it home in another fifteen minutes, and the phenomenon was still in
progress as I entered the garage. As I walked up the alley (cane switched on) I
could hear the distant sizzle and the rumble, and a steady half-light filled
the spaces between the buildings, from its
flash-burn-flash-burn
striding.