The Very Best of F & SF v1 (31 page)

“Ruth, are you
telling me you’re prepared to accept a half-Indian grandchild?”

“Why, Don, that’s
up to Althea, you know.”

Looking at the
mother, I guess it is. Oh, for mahogany gonads.

Ruth has gone
back to listening to the wind, but I’m not about to let her off that easy. Not
after all that
noli me tangere
jazz.

“What will
Althea’s father think?”

Her face snaps
around at me, genuinely startled.

“Althea’s
father?” Complicated semismile. “He won’t mind.”

“He’ll accept it
too, eh?” I see her shake her head as if a fly were bothering her, and add with
a cripple’s malice: “Your husband must be a very fine type of a man.”

Ruth looks at
me, pushing her wet hair back abruptly. I have the impression that mousy Mrs.
Parsons is roaring out of control, but her voice is quiet.

“There isn’t any
Mr. Parsons, Don. There never was. Althea’s father was a Danish medical student....
I believe he has gained considerable prominence.”

“Oh.” Something
warns me not to say I’m sorry. “You mean he doesn’t know about Althea?”

“No.” She
smiles, her eyes bright and cuckoo.

“Seems like
rather a rough deal for her.”

“I grew up quite
happily under the same circumstances.”

Bang, I’m dead.
Well, well, well. A mad image blooms in my mind: generations of solitary
Parsons women selecting sires, making impregnation trips. Well, I hear the
world is moving their way.

“I better look
at the fish line.”

She leaves. The
glow fades.
No.
Just no, no contact. Good-bye, Captain Estéban. My leg is very
uncomfortable. The hell with Mrs. Parsons’s longdistance orgasm.

We don’t talk
much after that, which seems to suit Ruth. The odd day drags by. Squall after
squall blows over us. Ruth singes up some more fillets, but the rain drowns her
smudge; it seems to pour hardest just as the sun’s about to show.

Finally she
comes to sit under my sagging serape, but there’s no warmth there. I doze,
aware of her getting up now and then to look around. My subconscious notes that
she’s still twitchy. I tell my subconscious to knock it off.

Presently I wake
up to find her penciling on the water-soaked pages of a little notepad.

“What’s that, a
shopping list for alligators?”

Automatic polite
laugh. “Oh, just an address. In case we—I’m being silly, Don.”

“Hey,” I sit up,
wincing. “Ruth, quit fretting. I mean it. We’ll all be out of this soon. You’ll
have a great story to tell.”

She doesn’t look
up. “Yes... I guess we will.”

“Come on, we’re
doing fine. There isn’t any real danger here, you know. Unless you’re allergic
to fish?”

Another
good-little-girl laugh, but there’s a shiver in it.

“Sometimes I
think I’d like to go... really far away.”

To keep her
talking I say the first thing in my head.

“Tell me, Ruth.
I’m curious why you would settle for that kind of lonely life, there in
Washington? I mean, a woman like you—”

“Should get
married?” She gives a shaky sigh, pushing the notebook back in her wet pocket.

“Why not? It’s
the normal source of companionship. Don’t tell me you’re trying to be some kind
of professional man-hater.”

“Lesbian, you
mean?” Her laugh sounds better. “With my security rating? No, I’m not.”

“Well, then.
Whatever trauma you went through, these things don’t last forever. You can’t
hate all men.”

The smile is
back. “Oh, there wasn’t any trauma, Don, and I
don’t
hate men. That would
be as silly as—as hating the weather.” She glances wryly at the blowing rain.

“I think you
have a grudge. You’re even spooky of me.”

Smooth as a
mouse bite she says, “I’d love to hear about your family, Don?”

Touché. I give
her the edited version of how I don’t have one anymore, and she says she’s
sorry, how sad. And we chat about what a good life a single person really has,
and how she and her friends enjoy plays and concerts and travel, and one of
them is head cashier for Ringling Brothers, how about that?

But it’s coming
out jerkier and jerkier like a bad tape, with her eyes going round the horizon
in the pauses and her face listening for something that isn’t my voice. What’s
wrong with her? Well, what’s wrong with any furtively unconventional
middle-aged woman with an empty bed? And a security clearance. An old habit of
mind remarks unkindly that Mrs. Parsons represents what is known as the classic
penetration target.

“—so much more
opportunity now.” Her voice trails off.

“Hurrah for
women’s lib, eh?”

“The lib?”
Impatiently she leans forward and tugs the serape straight. “Oh, that’s doomed.”

The apocalyptic
word jars my attention.

“What do you mean,
doomed?”

She glances at
me as
if l
weren’t hanging straight either and says vaguely, “Oh...”

“Come on, why
doomed? Didn’t they get that equal rights bill?”

Long hesitation.
When she speaks again her voice is different.

“Women have no
rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful,
and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called
rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We’ll be back where we always were:
property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the
fall of Rome was. You’ll see.”

Now all this is
delivered in a gray tone of total conviction. The last time I heard that tone,
the speaker was explaining why he had to keep his file drawers full of dead
pigeons.

“Oh, come on.
You and your friends are the backbone of the system; if you quit, the country
would come to a screeching halt before lunch.”

No answering
smile.

“That’s fantasy.”
Her voice is still quiet. “Women don’t work that way. We’re a—a toothless world.”
She looks around as if she wanted to stop talking.

“What women do
is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine.”

“Sounds like a
guerrilla operation.” I’m not really joking, here in the ’gator den. In fact, I’m
wondering if I spent too much thought on mahogany logs.

“Guerrillas have
something to hope for.” Suddenly she switches on a jolly smile. “Think of us as
opossums, Don. Did you know there are opossums living all over? Even in New
York City.”

I smile back
with my neck prickling. I thought I was the paranoid one.

“Men and women
aren’t different species, Ruth. Women do everything men do.”

“Do they?” Our
eyes meet, but she seems to be seeing ghosts between us in the rain. She
mutters something that could be “My Lai” and looks away. “All the endless
wars...” Her voice is a whisper. “All the huge authoritarian organizations for
doing unreal things. Men live to struggle against each other; we’re just part
of the battlefield. It’ll never change unless you change the whole world. I
dream sometimes of—of going away—” She checks and abruptly changes voice. “Forgive
me, Don, it’s so stupid saying all this.”

“Men hate wars
too, Ruth,” I say as gently as I can.

“I know.” She
shrugs and climbs to her feet. “But that’s your problem, isn’t it?

End of communication.
Mrs. Ruth Parsons isn’t even living in the same world with me.

I watch her move
around restlessly, head turning toward the ruins. Alienation like that can add
up to dead pigeons, which would be GSA’s problem. It could also lead to
believing some joker who’s promising to change the whole world. Which could
just probably be my problem if one of them was over in that camp last night,
where she keeps looking.
Guerrillas have
something to hope for...?

Nonsense. I try
another position and see that the sky seems to be clearing as the sun sets. The
wind is quieting down at last too. Insane to think this little woman is acting
out some fantasy in this swamp. But that equipment last night was no fantasy;
if those lads have some connection with her, I’ll be in the way. You couldn’t
find a handier spot to dispose of the body... Maybe some Gu
é
varista is a fine type of
man?

Absurd. Sure...
The only thing more absurd would be to come through the wars and get myself
terminated by a mad librarian’s boyfriend on a fishing trip.

A fish flops in
the stream below us. Ruth spins around so fast she hits the serape. “I better
start the fire,” she says, her eyes still on the plain and her head cocked,
listening.

All right, let’s
test.

“Expecting
company?”

It rocks her. She
freezes, and her eyes come swiveling around to me like a film take captioned
FRIGHT. I can see her decide to smile.

“Oh, one never
can tell!” She laughs weirdly, the eyes not changed. “I’ll get the—the kindling.”
She fairly scuttles into the brush.

Nobody, paranoid
or not, could call
that
a normal reaction.

Ruth Parsons is
either psycho or she’s expecting something to happen— and it has nothing to do
with me: I scared her pissless.

Well, she could
be nuts. And I could be wrong, but there are some mistakes you only make once.

Reluctantly I
unzip my body belt, telling myself that if I think what I think, my only course
is to take something for my leg and get as far as possible from Mrs. Ruth
Parsons before whoever she’s waiting for arrives.

In my belt also
is a .32-caliber asset Ruth doesn’t know about—and it’s going to stay there. My
longevity program leaves the shoot-outs to TV and stresses being somewhere else
when the roof falls in. I can spend a perfectly safe and also perfectly
horrible night out in one of those mangrove flats.... Am I insane?

At this moment
Ruth stands up and stares blatantly inland with her hand shading her eyes. Then
she tucks something into her pocket, buttons up, and tightens her belt.

That does it.

I dry-swallow
two 100-mg tabs, which should get me ambulatory and still leave me wits to
hide. Give it a few minutes. I make sure my compass and some hooks are in my
own pocket and sit waiting while Ruth fusses with her smudge fire, sneaking
looks away when she thinks I’m not watching.

The flat world
around us is turning into an unearthly amber and violet light show as the first
numbness sweeps into my leg. Ruth has crawled under the bromels for more dry
stuff; I can see her foot. Okay. I reach for my staff.

Suddenly the
foot jerks, and Ruth yells—or rather, her throat makes that
Uh-uh-hhh
that means pure
horror. The foot disappears in a rattle of bromel stalks.

I lunge upright
on the crutch and look over the bank at a frozen scene.

Ruth is
crouching sideways on the ledge, clutching her stomach. They are about a yard
below, floating on the river in a skiff. While I was making up my stupid mind,
her friends have glided right under my ass. There are three of them.

They are tall
and white. I try to see them as men in some kind of white jumpsuits. The one
nearest the bank is stretching out a long white arm toward Ruth. She jerks and
scuttles farther away.

The arm
stretches after her. It stretches and stretches. It stretches two yards and
stays hanging in the air. Small black things are wiggling from its tip.

I look where
their faces should be and see black hollow dishes with vertical stripes. The
stripes move slowly....

There is no more
possibility of their being human—or anything else I’ve ever seen. What has Ruth
conjured up?

The scene is totally
silent. I blink, blink—this cannot be real. The two in the far end of the skiff
are writhing those arms around an apparatus on a tripod. A weapon? Suddenly I
hear the same blurry voice I heard in the night.

“Guh-give”, it
groans. “G-give. . .”

Dear god, it’s
real, whatever it is. I’m terrified. My mind is trying not to form a word.

And Ruth—Jesus,
of course—Ruth is terrified too; she’s edging along the bank away from them,
gaping at the monsters in the skiff, who are obviously nobody’s friends. She’s
hugging something to her body. Why doesn’t she get over the bank and circle
back behind me?

“G-g-give.” That
wheeze is coming from the tripod. “Pee-eeze give.” The skiff is moving upstream
below Ruth, following her. The arm undulates out at her again, its black digits
looping. Ruth scrambles to the top of the bank.

“Ruth!” My voice
cracks. “Ruth, get over here behind me!”

She doesn’t look
at me, only keeps sidling farther away. My terror detonates into anger.