Nest of Worlds (23 page)

The storm didn’t let up. Ozza shut it out completely, reading
Nest of Worlds
.

* * *

Battered sofas had been placed along the walls, some with covers, some without. The room hadn’t been renovated for years: the walls were dirty, the ceiling had black stains from the air-conditioning, the curtains were thick with dust. The former tenants left at the end of spring, and Linda and Jack Lasker moved in a couple of days ago.

Jack, overweight and phlegmatic, gave an impression of helplessness. Linda, small and with closely cropped hair and a round face, was the opposite: energetic, enterprising. She blossomed in company. The couple, synchronized, had changed Lands in the same transporter.

They were not alone. With them sat Gail Rottman. Her husband, Zbigen, parted the curtains with disgust and looked out the window on a miserable little wood, behind which gleamed the surface of a lake. Very thin, tall, and stooped, he resembled a wading bird on long, matchstick legs. The Rottmans occupied the other half of the one-story ranch by the lake.

“The house is a fascinating part of the landscape. Quite amazing that it’s natural,” Gail said, looking to her husband.

The fifth person was Zekhe Gomesh. He had arrived a couple of days ago from Magaysch. Because of the short stays, people in every Land generally knew one another from before. Gomesh was an exception. Therefore, though shorter and older than Jack, for Linda he was the main attraction. Her animation was for his benefit.

“Jack’s colleague, Taylor,” she began (Taylor was the previous object of her interest, but he had moved to Tolzdamag), “says that houses may be of artificial origin. That they are too complex to have arisen naturally.”

“A well-known experiment,” replied Gail, “shows that during the hardening of lava that is saturated with gas, chambers may be formed of any size and shape and having walls as thin as you like. With a little technological effort, true, one can put together an object that resembles natural phenomena of the land, but that proves nothing. It is obvious that consumers have supplied these natural chambers with the embellishments of panes, sills, and doors. The practice has been discontinued, however, as ineffectual and too expensive.” Gail, though younger than Linda, looked more serious. She worked at the Godaab Office of the Census, so she had no difficulty obtaining a house with panes for her family. “Considering the number of uninhabited homes in the wood and on the steppe, it seems unlikely that someone constructed them all.” Gail had access to so much census information, it was hard to argue with her. “At the other end of the lake is a factory. Only partly occupied, because in many of its rooms are pools of toxic chemicals. Convincing proof, for me, that the factory is a natural, postvolcanic land formation. The chemical compounds are probably the remnants of eruptions, or else the water deposited them, just as it deposits sedimentary layers of other minerals. The average home is a simpler, smaller version of a factory. Therefore it is also natural. The poisoning of the lake is the result of those same volcanic processes, the same chemical compounds,” she concluded confidently.

“It’s cloudy,” muttered Zbigen. “This morning I thought we might go sunbathing by the lake.” He fingered his scruffy beard, feeling for pimples. When he found one, he popped it using a thumb and finger, with pleasure. There was pain, which increased, then came the sudden drop in pressure in the swollen tissue as the bit of yellow pus erupted, and after that, flowing slowly, a larger quantity of blood. He wiped the battlefield with his hand and sought the next pimple. “I like Godaab. The weather’s good here.” In Magaysch it was cold and rainy.

“You always talk nonsense,” Gail said, deflating him. “In Magaysch it was winter. Now it’s spring . . .”

“Genetic information, they say, is recorded in a sequence of units of some chemical compound, a biopolymer.” Linda was showing off her knowledge in front of Zekhe.

“Taylor says that?” asked Gail, and at the name of Taylor Jack shot her a look that didn’t go with his phlegmatic face.

“Yes,” replied Linda, unfazed. “He’s a biologist, and biologists call that sequence the Code of Life. I suppose the Significant Names might be called the Code of Death by analogy. Mine, for example, is Flo-Vor-Myz-Int-Udda.”

“And you have figured out their meaning?” Jack ran a hand over his bald spot, which was covered with a light fuzz. His fault was telling old jokes. He couldn’t help himself, though it confirmed the low opinion people had of him.

The meaning of a Name became clear only after the death of its possessor. Linda’s Name was “From fire caused by struggle caused by mind caused by the internal organs caused by lightning.” Which could mean death from a cold contracted in the course of a storm and leading to a fever and hallucinations, and during a hallucination one became twisted up in one’s bed sheets and, flailing, overturned a candle and started a fire. Or it could mean a severe electric shock that not only injured one’s body but also confused one’s mind, so that one could not find the way to safety out of the burning building. Or it could mean something else.

“A short polypeptide,” remarked Zekhe.

“What?” Linda didn’t follow.

“The Significant Name has only five units and therefore twelve possible positions for each. Biologists, on the other hand, deal with polymers that have a great many units, each of which can be an amino acid, and there are dozens of those.”

“Jack has a book that enacts itself as you read it,” she told him. She was on firmer ground there. “Many other books are nested within it. He got to one in which there were Names that had twelve units.”

“Twelve to the twelfth Names, that’s something,” muttered Zbigen. “No Name would be repeated.”

“I have a book like that too,” Zekhe put in.

Enacting books were popular. Thirteen versions of them were known. People liked seeing, as they read, the heroes come to life.

“I don’t care for it,” said Linda. “It’s unpleasant. I end up feeling sorry for their suffering, and guilty, because I know that they’re suffering only because I sat on the sofa and opened the book.”

“Do you plan to refurnish here?” asked Zekhe, changing the subject.

“I’ll repair the armchairs and get rid of the table,” said Zbigen. “Everything else is fine.”

“You’re not making yurts?” asked Linda. “More and more people are doing that. That way you have something of your own. It’s neater than a room, and in addition it’s manmade. I heard that yurts were invented for rooms without panes. Nowadays they’re also putting them up outside houses.”

“One should live in a house,” maintained Gail. Zbigen and she didn’t have to face a room without panes. “Anyway, yurts aren’t healthy. You get a draft from the ground . . .”

“You can weave a mat out of willows or hemp for the floor.”

“Are you buying a yurt?”

“Linda talked me into it,” said Jack. “We didn’t have the money to actually buy one, but all you need is canvas and those large scissors that tailors use.” He laughed. “So I decided to sew myself a yurt. It was only yesterday that I cut the pattern, one of the ones recommended.”

Zbigen nodded, impressed. He wasn’t good with his hands.

A warm, bright morning. The sun was still low in the sky, but it promised a hot afternoon. The gray sand that had been spread about by the feet of the beachgoers reached into the thin grove of pines. It was cool in the grove, damp. The water of the lake was dyed no color, had no stink or suds; the poison was more subtle—its existence invisible, therefore less convincing. This was probably the reason for the many NO SWIMMING signs posted along the shore.

Everyone planned to go to the beach, but Linda went before the others and took Zekhe, and he took his camera. She spread a blanket on the sand, took off her skirt, and carefully applied suntan oil to her skin. Her two-piece swimsuit had a flower pattern. Zekhe took pictures, chewed on one stem of dry grass after another. Jack would be bringing Gail and Zbigen soon.

The sun climbed higher, but the angle of the light was still good for taking pictures. Because the air was still, the leaves didn’t move, and sand didn’t get into the camera.

“I like photographing women,” said Zekhe, to be polite, having no particular desire to immortalize Linda. She wasn’t fat but seemed on the dumpy side to him. “They make the best subjects. If you like, after you get a little more color from the sun, I’ll take some shots of you.”

“You can now.”

He put her in his finder. She sat in profile and smiled over her shoulder at the camera. He clicked the shutter once, twice. Something wasn’t right: a pale horizontal across her shoulder blades from the strap.

Linda, smiling, turned more toward the camera, and removed her top. Her bosom was unimpressive, but at least she had one. Some women didn’t, all ribs. Linda’s breasts had a nice soft curve to them, though the moles and nipples were too large.

She had taken off the rest of her swimsuit as well, he noticed. He stepped back to get a lengthwise shot, to fit her whole body in. She was more attractive than he thought.

“I can run on the beach. You can get me in motion. But why don’t you also take off . . .” She stopped, sat, covered her hips with the skirt that was lying in the sand and quickly put her top back on. Jack and the Rottmans were approaching from the house. At that distance he was the only one who failed to see that she was getting back into her suit.

“Ozza, come to the truck,” said Hobeth’s voice in the speaker. “It’s creepy being here by myself. It’s so dark.”

Ozza stopped reading. “I’m in the middle of a chapter,” she said.

“Please, come . . . I’ll tell you what happens to them.”

Ozza sighed with exasperation, got up from the sofa, and tucked the book under her arm.

The seat by the driver was uncomfortable. The fake leather, though patched with care, was too hot.

“You can’t manage on your own, you old hag?” she grumbled.

“Sit with me a little. Tell me what they’re doing.” Hobeth wasn’t in the mood for crossing verbal swords.

“This evening Jack plans to develop Zekhe’s roll of film. It contains three, maybe even four, pictures of Linda without a stitch.”

“I read that too,” said Hobeth. “So many times I stopped the scene, stopped reading . . . so that Zekhe could take more pictures of her naked. With each picture he sees her body better, and she appeals to him more. He’s taken a whole roll of film.”

“What happens?”

“Jack develops it but says nothing to Zekhe.”

“It must not be pleasant for a photographer to have someone else develop his film.”

“It isn’t supposed to be pleasant for Zekhe. Jack’s not stupid, though he pretends to be. He’s been suspecting Linda for a long time. When he sees those pictures, he’ll kill her, in cold blood. He’ll stab her with the sewing scissors, trying to make it look like an accident, though it won’t.”

“And Zekhe?”

“I haven’t got that far,” Hobeth said. “Jack intends to kill him too, even though Linda’s affair with Taylor went on much longer.”

Now Ozza was driving. The voices of Fnorrah could no longer be heard. The buildings of Zatr loomed ahead. It was dawn already, yet the windows of the oasis town were all dark. Not one car went by. The remarkable thing about Zatr was that it maintained three tram lines for its narrow streets—but no tram went by either.

Ozza parked the truck in front of a store. When the engine was turned off, the silence was unbroken. No wind at all—otherwise there would have been rustling leaves or the stir of paper litter in the street, or the bang of a loose shutter somewhere. Everything around her—the parked cars, the trees along the street—was covered by a thick layer of red dust.

The dust had silenced the town. Like soundproofing, Ozza thought. “We should move our bones,” she said.

“My uterus practically fell out from those bumps,” Hobeth grumbled. “I have to piss.”

“What do you need a uterus for, at your age?”

“I’ve grown accustomed to it.” Hobeth, scowling, went to the toilet.

Ozza slowly climbed down the ladder. She was no longer strong, though she was still slim, and didn’t look that bad when she stood up straight.

She held onto the door handle so her heart would stop hammering and return to its normal place beneath her breastbone. The reddish deposit on the sidewalk and street was more like dried mud than dust. Perhaps a drizzle had wet down the dust carried by the wind.

Hobeth, bent over a cane, joined her.

“I heard something plop in the john,” Ozza said. “Your uterus, bitch?”

“No, it’s where it belongs.” Hobeth started to pat her belly with her free hand, but instead she clutched her side because of a spasm.

There was the wreck of a car resting against a twisted road post—no one had removed it. Bits of glass were strewn under a shattered store window.

They went inside. On the floor, in different positions, lay more than a dozen people. The cashier leaned on the register, her head against it.

Ozza trembled. Usually she was confident, ready to taunt her sister, but that was only in the absence of real danger. Hobeth was braver: she went up to the register and poked at the cashier with her cane. The body slipped backward but was stopped by a chair. The face that now turned up at them was hideous, blue, its gaping lips as black as tar, its bugged eyes red and covered with a network of black veins.

“Ahh,” Ozza said, hoarse with horror.

The stiffened fingers of the cashier, raised in some gesture, were as dark as her face.

Hobeth lowered the cane, but the corpse held its new pose.

“No point moving it,” she said. “And I’ll bet the others look the same. Must be a plague. We shouldn’t touch anything. Let’s go.”

Ozza let herself be led out.

In the silence they heard a knocking, or perhaps a scraping behind a door, then what seemed a weak groan. Someone in Zatr still lived and was calling for help.

Again they were on their journey’s endless road. The truck bounced so much over the ruts that the patched seats creaked and groaned. Ozza drove, Hobeth sitting beside her. They felt good today. The sky was without a cloud.

Hobeth held her new possession on her knees to warm her wrinkled hands. It had long, fluffy, dark-violet fur. It was missing a front paw, the left one—a casualty of some bygone adventure. The possession then gently but firmly slipped out of her hands and, limping, began to crawl across the dashboard. It purred quietly and arched its supple back. Ozza looked at it uneasily.

“If it pisses, that could ruin the ignition.”

This anxiety notwithstanding, the new possession delighted her tremendously. She was constantly giving it milk to drink or offering it a spool of yarn, though the creature didn’t seem interested in games. Now it curled itself into a ball, yawned, revealing a thin, tiny tongue, closed its green eyes, and fell asleep.

“Do you think it will agree to stay with us? Cats are territorial animals,” said Hobeth.

“This could be its territory.”

“But it has such stupid brows,” laughed Hobeth. “Seven hairs on each . . . and completely gray . . .”

“You’re getting senile,” said Ozza, but glanced fondly at the cat from her driver’s seat.

“What should we name it?” Nothing could spoil Hobeth’s good mood.

There was a moment of silence.

“Roan,” said Ozza.

“Good, Roan lives again. But won’t he be angry with us for that?” she asked, turning to one of the photographs stuck in a slit between two metal sheets of the chassis.

“The cat even looks like him,” said Ozza with a grin. “He’s gone to sleep, and we must prepare his meal.”

“You haven’t opened
Nest of Worlds
since yesterday,” Hobeth said.

Ozza shrugged. “Linda ran off with Zekhe before Jack could do anything.”

“How could she run off? Jack killed them both.”

“Jack overlooked the pictures of Linda the first time he went through the roll of film. Meanwhile the couple figured out what was up and left before the film dried. Gail might put Jack on their trail. They have to show their identity papers in their new place, after all. I’m not looking in the book until Zekhe has had time to think up something.”

“Zekhe will get what’s coming to him. Linda won’t stop picking up strangers.”

“You think? I’ve grown to like her.”